Interesting Links for 27-12-2014

• Crowley’s Law
  (tags: censorship criticism freespeech )
• We got my dad a done for Christmas. It will probably end up like this.
  (tags: drone Christmas presents )
• More flexible hours for working women could save the UK £700m a year
  (tags: women work UK money )
• The 20 best games of 2014
  (tags: games )
• Some fascinating background on the Christmas Truce of WWI
  (tags: wwi history war )
• Twelve new genetic causes of developmental disorders - increasing the proportion of diagnosable diseases by 10%
  (tags: disease genetics )
• First scientific report shows police body-cameras can prevent unacceptable use-of-force
  (tags: research police cameras transparentsociety )
• The Shawshank Residuals
  (tags: stephen_king movies money )
• The same pathways that help with physical pain seem to moderate existential distress.
  (tags: pain psychology )
• Why Do American Jews Eat Chinese Food on Christmas?
  (tags: jews jewish usa chinese food China )
• The Ten Myths of Innovation
  (tags: innovation myths )
• Scientists use skin cells to create artificial sperm and eggs
  (tags: sperm eggs technology reproduction )
• The Sunsets of 2014
  (tags: sun photos pretty )
• White people become less racist just by moving to more diverse areas
  (tags: racism diversity psychology )
• This Is Maker Faire’s Secret Wall of Animatronic, 3D-Printed Dicks
  (tags: 3dprinting penis )

Home from the holidays

Back from a week with Julie's family, which I enjoyed altogether more than I expected to. Julie's mum's boyfriend's family were also there, so we had six for Christmas - and between Julie's Mum and the boyfriend's son I was fed so much delicious food that I'm going to feel full all the way through to the end of the year. I find spending prolonged time with _anyone_ stressful at the moment, and was expecting to spend most of the time hiding, but actually felt somewhat relaxed, and enjoyed chatting to people. Still glad to be home now, though, and falling over for the next day or so.

Travel there and back was generally fine - the tram still works, the flights were smooth (although an hour delayed on the way home), and the flat was still here and un-burgled when we got back. I had done a quick video before we left, just in case someone broke in, but thankfully we won't have to show the insurers just how untidy it was when we left.

The central heating is now back on, and over the last two hours the temperature has risen from 12 degrees to 14. Despite my complaints on Facebook about the lack of snow here, I'm actually pretty glad it didn't get too cold while we were away. One year we arrived back to find it was 4 degrees in the flat (which is the point the anti-frost setting turns the heating back on) - and it took about two days to warm the flat back up to a decent temperature. This shouldn't take quite so long!

The only downers are technological in nature - me stepping on my laptop screen (as mentioned in a previous post), and the NAS telling me that one of the hard drives has died when I turned it back on just now. Thankfully, the redundant set up can cope with a single disk dying, so tomorrow I'll be heading along to our local PC repair place and buying a new 3TB disk and asking how much a new screen will be.