If I were a character in this terrific novel, I would remember exactly who had recommended it to me, under what circumstances, and everything else about them. Alas, I am not, nor do I really wish I were, but as a story it has that kind of appeal, of making me think, what would I have done. The plot covers a dozen or so years, from Bulgaria in the early 1930s to America in 1946, and it concerns a group of NKVD recruits whose allegiance to one another is stronger than their allegiance to the NKVD. Or is it?

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A friend who is completely technologically unable and a great painter asked me to help him create a website. Having cleaned up his various content files, a few days ago I made a start on the presentation, and heavy going it was too. Although he really wants only a very simple site, I began by trying to simplify an extremely powerful, all-singing, all-dancing framework. It was incredibly difficult, with bits of markup being injected from who knows where and doing who knows what. Very frustrating indeed, to the point where I was beginning to regret having agreed to do it.

Then I had a revelation.

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It is done. A year and a month, because holiday, after starting to bring old posts back on a daily basis, the job is finished. I wrote a bit recently about what the endeavour meant to me and about some of the ways in which I might take it forward, but there are other things I maybe need to think about too.

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Quite a few years ago, Jim Hansen, described as “a leading NASA climatologist” was at a panel to discuss global warming's significance for humanity. He is reported as saying “Humans have taken over as the major forcing of long-term climate change.”¹

Who do you suppose countered with:

I don’...

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It’s a little like the old time warp, having said which I confess I never really bothered to get my head around those puzzles about meeting yourself in another time. Anyway, a little more than a year ago, and inspired by Peter Rukavina, I set out to restore my previous online self, one day at a time. That anniversary passed on 18 July, but I couldn’t easily celebrate it with a blog post because in a sense it hasn’t passed yet.

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