Adrian's Likes and Dislikes

Likes

Bookshops with good coffee shops built in

I'm a bibliovore. My book collection keeps growing... and growing... and growing... There are few pleasures greater than sitting in a comfortable chair, reading a virgin book with a large latté and chunk of toffee apple tart to hand. Trust me on this.

A really good rare steak

"Arthur's" in Morris Plains, New Jersey has the perfect receipe for success. The menu is very simple: 24oz or 48oz steak, beer, and salad if you really insist. The steaks are done to perfection, nothing like the English standard burnt beermat. Done rare, you can practically cut the corn-fed beef with a fork. Mmmmm...

Walking in snow-covered mountains

Late December '98 I was up in the Catskill mountains with my brother and his girlfriend. We drove out of Woodstock, stopped at a random trail, and started walking up a valley into the mountains. There were 3-4 inches of virgin snow on the ground, a perfect blue sky, and the occasional gust of wind that would blow up the powder into a swirling dance through the trees. We stopped at a saddleback around 1000 feet up, and admired the sheer peace and beauty.
Mount San Jacinto on the edge of the Mojave Desert in California provided a similar vista in April 2000. 10800 feet up, with six inches of snow around, a dark blue sky, and a clear view down to the plain 9000 feet where Palm Springs, Cathedral City and Palm Desert spread out over the sand.

Dislikes

Clueless journalists

This is not entirely a tautology but is disturbingly close to it. As a mathmo I have a pretty good idea what truth and accuracy is. Very few things piss me off more than people who mangle, distort and outright ignore the truth in order to write something that they want to. Unfortunately, most journalists are guilty of this.

Advertisers

If you can't state clearly and accurately in 30 seconds why people should buy your product, then shut up. If you can't, at least make the advert entertaining (c.f. Boddington's, early Carling Black Label, Barclaycard.)

Microsoft and everything that they stand for

Marketing triumphed over technology, and it was a sad day for the human race. While not going as far as asserting that Bill Gates is the Anti-Christ, he has held back the development of good software by about ten years. This is my estimate based on the fact that Windows '98 does not provide an interface that is as simple and easy to use as the Acorn RISC OS (1988) and early Macintosh OS -- despite stealing ideas from both of them.