added Extraterrestrial and loft conversion blog posts

src/pages/blog/2021-10-23-extraterrestrial.md

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+---
+date: "2021-10-23T16:42:00Z"
+title: "Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb"
+description: "My thoughts on the book Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb"
+tags: [100daystooffload, book]
+---
+
+I often enjoy books that try to take a different view on known events. I don't mean consipiracy theory - more around thinking laterally or "out of the box". Such ways of thinking often inspire ideas that drive innovative change, and it's important in order to counter "group think" or simply accepting what's easiest.
+
+One such book that tries to do this is [Extraterrestrial](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48930288-extraterrestrial) by [Avi Loeb](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19762699.Avi_Loeb).
+
+![Extraterrestrial book cover](/media/blog/extraterrestrial.jpg)
+
+I finished this book a couple of weeks ago, and have been thinking about it since. Whilst I am not an astronomer - and know very little about the science of astrophysics and the probabilities of celestial events occurring (simply understanding how the distance to the moon is calculated still baffles me) - the themes around the automatic rejection of theory by scientific communities based on pre-conception makes me consider all of the other possible scientific theories we may have thrown away, almost by default, as we strive to learn more as a human community.
+
+The book's subtitle is "The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth", and the focus is on the event of an intersetellar object travelling through our solar system back in 2017. Whilst it is not uncommon for objects to be seen moving around our solar system (think planets, asteroids, comets, etc.), the author posits that the particular attributes of _this_ object are such that it is unlikely that it can be something that was created naturally.
+
+The author discusses the size and shape of the object, the way it moved on a non-natural trajectory through the system, along with other factors, and essentially asks the question to the scientific community, "why could this not be the creation of an extraterrestrial intelligent community?".
+
+The book is about pooling theories and scientific approaches to proving or rejecting them based on available evidence. The author talks about his peers and how they often simply reject extraterrestrial intelligence as the basis for candidate theories simply due to the fact that "because, aliens" is such an unlikely option. Loeb argues that, in these cases, one shouldn't just reject such theories based on pre-conceived notions of likelihood, but should instead consider all viable theories until the evidence grows sufficiently enough to disprove them.
+
+Avi Loeb, the author, is a well-published professor of science at Harvard University, and makes robust and compelling arguments whilst trying to remain neutral throughout the book. I enjoyed it; the book is non-technical and is written in a way that makes it easy to consume if you are interested in this space.

src/pages/blog/2021-10-24-loft-conversion.md

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+---
+date: "2021-10-24T20:43:00Z"
+title: "A mini loft conversion"
+description: "We converted part of our loft into a cosy bedroom."
+tags: [100daystooffload, life]
+---
+
+Following on from my [previous post about renovating our garden](/blog/2021/08/14/garden-renovation), I wanted to write an entry about another project we've recently completed.
+
+Our home is a Victorian townhouse over three storeys, but the top floor has only one bedroom and a bathroom. The rest of that floor is essentially attic (or loft) space, accessible through a hatch in the ceiling of the middle floor.
+
+As such, the loft is quite long, and far too big for us to use as-is. In fact, I'm a big believer in that if you *need* to put something in the loft then you probably don't actually need it at all. I'm pretty sure we only have Christmas decorations stored up there.
+
+This felt like a big waste of space! The loft was a decent height and one could (mostly) stand up in some of it. It also had old fashioned windows in the pitched roof - I have no idea why.
+
+Based on this, we thought we'd try to convert half of the loft into actually usable house space.
+
+The rest of this post briefly describes what we did to accomplish this.
+
+## Accessing the new "room"
+
+The stairway up to the top floor has a switchback in it. The mini landing at the switch point happens to be at the same level as the loft floor, and we were able to knock through the wall on that landing in order to reveal the loft behind.
+
+## Knocking through the loft wall
+
+As we knocked through, we revealed the loft space. You can see the windows, roof beams and insulation (along with promised bag of Christmas decorations) in the image below. Sorry it's a bit dark.
+
+![After knocking through the loft wall to reveal the loft space](/media/blog/attic1.jpg)
+
+## Adding a door
+
+Since the aim was to create a bedroom, we needed to add a door (for obvious privacy reasons). Luckily we had a spare one lying around from a bathroom project (I may write about this soon!) that we were able to cut to size and shape, and then install within a door frame.
+
+![Adding a doorframe and door](/media/blog/attic2.jpg)
+
+In the image above you can see the original "sticks" (I'm sure there's a more technical word for these) that form the wall structure. Afterwards we were able to plaster and paint over this, as shown below.
+
+![Tidying up the doorway](/media/blog/attic3.jpg)
+
+## Back to the room
+
+Next we added a floor to the room, insulated the (new) roof space and added plasterboard to form a celiling and wall.
+
+In the image below you can see the new floor and the plastered ceiling and far wall. We added hatches to the wall to provide access to the rest of the loft space now behind this room
+
+![A ceiling, floor, and wall for the loft room](/media/blog/attic5.jpg)
+
+We also hired an electrician to add some nice lighting, switches, and electrical outlets.
+
+![Lighting and power outlets in the loft room](/media/blog/attic4.jpg)
+
+## Finishing touches
+
+To finish the room off we washed and coated the brick wall in PVA. This allows us to keep it as an exposed brick wall, but without having dust or dirt coming off from it.
+
+We also painted the walls, ceiling, and beams, and added some wallpaper. We added some flooring, skirting and some shelves. Finally we added some furniture, and the result is below.
+
+![The finished loft conversion room](/media/blog/attic6.jpg)
+
+The little window lets through a surprising amount of light. It's a small bedroom, but it's cosy and it's great to have the extra space for when we have visitors!