Inspirational Books

I was asked to give a lecture at my old Alma Mater to some undergraduates to encourage them to consider doing an industrial placement year (rather than race through their degrees as quickly as possible - but that temptation is understandable in the current climate of student debt), to also pick up PRINCE 2 Project Management skills and learn (or rather practise) an Agile/SCRUM approach to product development. At the end of this by way of a light relief I offered them a reading list of work related books that changed the way I think. So here goes (see below - related specifically to the talk's content):

• Covey's - "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"
• Sutherland's - "SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time"
• PRINCE2 Manual

This book (and the YouTube video of the lecture) is inspirational (see below, my personal battered copy):

You simply have to listen to someone has been an Astronaut and wants to teach you some lessons on perspective as in what is important and if it is important "how to sweat it like an astronaut" (see below):

This is a classic - not a light read but at the same time not that heavy given the importance of understanding "Black Swans" (see below, a key take away is that sometimes scrutinising every piece of information to the [n]th degree becomes counter productive, there is the powerful notion of "good enough"):

I cannot get away from Axelrod and "Tit-for-Tat" - it is such a powerful concept and proof that when you mix a Political Scientist with a Computer Scientist you get something novel and interesting (see below, his classic book and its lesser known follow on):

Lastly a general readers introduction to the Game Theory classic of the Prisoner's Dilemma (see below, and along the way Poundstone opens up some interesting nooks and crannies): 

There are more but these would keep me busy for a while on my desert island until a rescue ship came by!

Tim Peake's Space Capsule: York Railway Museum

Same space capsule, and if anything it looked smaller, but this time at York Railway museum (see below, note the circular glass panel on the right was not there during the launch, but cut in afterwards so you could get a better view of the cramped claustrophobic conditions):

I have to say the Shildon folks put on a better display as there were plenty of volunteers telling you lots of interesting extra facts. For example on the actual mission, there was such a tight set of docking parameters to the International Space Station that when the docking computer broke) they has to do a manual docking process, but get it wrong and they were floating off lost into "deep space". They did it with just two minutes to spare!

Tim Peake's Space Capsule at Shildon Railway Museum

Hard to believe it but someone (actually three) sat inside this thing and went up into space then came back down again (see below, the parachute mechanism is to right and to the left an "after the event" observation portal into the interior):

I kinda think it looks like the head of a giant Dr. Who robot villain (see below):

Hats off to you Tim Peake you are a braver man than I am ;) Also a big thank you to the Shildon volunteer experts who made the visit all the more worthwhile by being on hand to tell kids and adults alike interesting facts.