I’m still resting after five straight days of activity with our friend and also as reported yesterday more visits to art galleries and centers which I enjoyed enormously.  I have to let things settle so today I’m doing very little by my standards anyway.

So the topic of the day is …. books

198.6 million books were sold in the United Kingdom in 2023, which is 70.32% fewer sales than in 2022. 2022 was the year with the highest book sales overall, at 669 million. However, the good news is that the trend is not declining, 

About 11:30 this morning my latest Amazon book arrived by Paul Golding ‘ the Battle for Britain’. Paul runs a political group called Britain First and is fighting the aggression and violence of the Islam religion who want to turn the United Kingdom into a caliphate. They are showing every sign of doing so within the next decade. For some reason, the police and the judiciary are on their side.

Why am I telling you all this? Paul’s book is 343 pages and as I start to write this diary entry at two pm I’ve already read good chunks of it. No question I take to some styles more than others. My concentration span is very low particularly with academic books. A 20 minute session would be a long read for me. I wonder what it is for others. Any comments?

As for buying, I no longer browse in bookshops.  I now find Amazon so convenient because I can read about or come across a book at 7pm , order it, and it will arrive next day sometimes by midday. I know I am supporting a system that is not the most humane in the world but I find it difficult to resist.

A big factor in my spending so much money on Amazon is that if you don’t like a product and that includes books you can just send it back within 30 days and get a full refund . I have discovered that a refund happens the moment the collecting agent scans the return package from the point of reception, normally a local shop or in my case the post office. 

To get a refund, all you have to do is to give a reason why you don’t like the product and a refund is full and instant. The rules for unseen goods purchase are more in favor of the purchaser compared with stepping into a shop, seeing the goods, and purchasing them.

Anyway back to the books themselves, I buy at least half a dozen books a month but most of them I don’t read through to the end. Funnily enough I get benefit from knowing that the book exists at all and in reading it I acknowledge it’s place in the world . There are some types of books, art books in particular, where I inspire myself by just glancing through them. Some books are meant for reference and not intended to be read from beginning to end.

This is in contrast to thrillers and detective novels which are designed to be page turners. I also found that to be the case with the Carlos Castaneda volumes. Such was my imagination when I first read them that everything in the book activated my imagining and imaging and before I knew it I was there in the Mexican desert with the protagonists, Don Juan included as the main star.

Other books I like for their technical brilliance and timeliness for example ‘You Are the Placebo’, making your mind matter, by Dr Joe Dispensa which has deep and insightful insight  into the human psyche and what motivates us to live a better life.

I don’t read The Bible as often as I should do but I find it very comforting and relevant.  If God made us and spoke to us through his son Jesus or Yeshua as I will prefer to call him then he should know a thing or to about human nature and is a good source of wisdom and advice .

Sometimes I have to read a book just for the one sentence which jumps out at me. It’s a pity I have to go through so many hundreds of pages but I know that what I need is lurking there somewhere and appears when I most need it.

My experience with Paul’s book  today has caused me to review the way I choose and read books. My decision is that if it’s too much trouble, if the words if the style do not suit my way of thinking it is best to just stop and not wear myself out by trying to make it to the end of a book.

Reading should not be a labor but a joy.

I have a rule that I never never loan books unless I have a duplicate. They never come back and I do not appreciate that fact. It’s very nice if you have a number of duplicate books that you can give away at a whim but I’m not in that category. 

I must have about a thousand books at the moment which are stored in three of the rooms of my bungalow, floor to ceiling job,  and sometimes double parked.

How AI is shaping the future….

This evening I attended a talk by Matt Stone in my wordpress Meetup Group. Beyond the Hype: How AI is reshaping the future of professional web development.“Join me as I embark on a brief history of development tools, an overview of some of the tools that are re-shaping web development, the positive uses, the negative uses, and how being “AI Native” will set developers and agencies ahead of the curve when the hype  is over”

There were about 25 of us in TCNUK.Co.uk,  part of wonderful offices come workspace come community center. The situation is convenient, adjacent to Bristol Temple Meads Station.

I will use this opportunity to comment on the do’s and don’ts of being a speaker especially one with visual presentations. The speaker told us that he has not presented to a public group before and we should understand if he made mistakes which indeed he did.

 We spoke about the history of WordPress and indeed of text manipulation right from the early 2000s. We then discussed AI and the speaker said that there were those who were  supporters of it and those who were objectors to it.

I said in the Q and A that the priority was to embed the right memes both in individuals and the population in general so that people would develop a more mature and balanced attitude to AI. I felt we were still in the early stages of public perception and we should give it time.  The speaker said that you can ask AI to do quite complicated things such as designing the front page of a WordPress document with all the coding implications.

He submitted the request to AI but alas we could not see the result and there were too many silences while he fumbled with the equipment.  In spite of that, after the talk he received a good round of applause from those who realized that he was doing a high risk demonstration

The most important thing is to rehearse. Get your Power Point ready, go through the sequence shortly before the presentation and  iron out any problems. .

I don’t think he needed to hear any advice from me because it was abundantly obvious that one  cannot be over careful with preparation. Everyone has to learn how to address an audience which basically means speaking to the person at the back and not dropping the voice of the end of sentences.

I also like the old formula in three parts; tell them what you’re going to say, give them the message, and then tell them what you have just said.

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Back on the 172 bus. The days are getting very long and it was nice to come back with a red glowing sunset in the West. It took me an  hour door to door.