Designing 007 and A Day in the City

I went to see some former colleagues today who've moved into new offices in 30 St. Mary Axe, a.k.a. the Gherkin. It was good to catch up with current developments in the team and I did the obvious joke, "who's got the corner office?" I'd worked with them two years ago, but with all that's happened since then, it feels half a lifetime ago. After much gossip, we parted and I continued on to The Barbican to see the James Bond exhibition.

Designing 007 at The Barbican

I couldn't take any photos in the exhibition itself, but I took one of the Aston Martin outside the front entrance:

Even if you're not a Bond fan, I'd recommend the exhibition, certainly to those who are interested in films generally. The sheer quantity of things on display is astounding: gadgets (Oddjob's hat!, Scaramanga's golden gun), costumes (a LOT of tuxedos and amazing outfits for the ladies), plus lots of film clips, original storyboards and models used for both planning and filming.

Afterwards, I took a walk through London from the Barbican to The V&A, through Holborn, Picadilly and Knightsbridge:


View Larger Map

These are the ornaments in Chinatown.

At the V&A, they have these giant "tops" which people sit in and roll around.

It seems to be addictive as I've never seen any unused.

Avé

Every so often, I like to go out of my comfort zone and watch something I wouldn't normally. This is a Bulgarian romance/road movie whose theme is lying; peoples' motives for doing it and the benefits, not just to the lier but to those being lied to.



It's a bit slow in places, not helped by the language barrier as it's a wordy film, but it's a bittersweet romance, which appeals to me, and I did find myself empathising with the couple. What the director had to say was quite interesting too.

Fiasco in the Park

Today, I went up to Regents Park for a game of Fiasco:

It was fun! Fiasco uses playsets, which are pre-defined options to generate stories in a particular context. We had the Los Angeles, 1936 playset. The City of Angels, gangsters and Femme Fatale's with 45's.

I played a gangland boss who gets ripped off one last time, gets blackmailed and dies in a shootout in a burning building. So a bit like work, then.

Drokk!! Judge Dredd in 3D

On the back of the latest SFX magazine, delivered today, there's an advert for the new Judge Dredd movie, which is in 3D:



It's out on the 7th September and I think it's going to be my first movie in 3D.

Stander

Having worked with a few white South Africans, including one who's an authority on the works of George Orwell, they seem to think of themselves as decent, honest, hardworking, upright members of the community. There are exceptions, though:



It's all pretty true: Andre Stander robbed over 30 banks, often on his lunch break, and then turned up as one of the investigating police officers. As in the UK, sometimes the Police aren't as bad as the criminals: sometimes they are the criminals.

I found the DVD at the shop. The movie is pretty good, even if it drags a little towards the end, and is a good pizza movie. The hair styles are amazing and, considering the number of car chases, I'm surprised it's not called Drive.

Oxfam Friday: Blood, Radio Moscow and Music for the Bride

When I got into the shop this afternoon, Mark said to me "You've missed all the excitement! There was blood everywhere!". Apparently, some pensioner had fallen down the little step on the first floor, obviously wondering what step was being referred to by the sign saying "Mind the Step", and had landed nose first. There was quite a bit of blood, but luckily no worse than that.

I did slightly longer than my normal shift upstairs as my mate Simon was doing Saturday. Suits me as I got to play a new compilation which has Joan as Police Woman and Radio Moscow:



Rock On!

About halfway through the shift, a rather well dressed chap in a real hurry asked me where the love songs were. We don't have any specific stuff, but I pointed him in the direction of Classical instead. He said that he wanted something for a wedding and he grabbed a CD, saying, "You'll just have to trust me: I haven't got any money!". I just shrugged and said that he could pay us later.

Just before we closed, a similarly attired lady came to the counter, with a little bridesmaid in tow, to pay for the CD. It turns out they'd been waiting for a hour or so, but the music had been fine. "What's an hour when you've got the rest of your life". A nice philosophy.

Riff Raff

I've started going to the Southend-on-Sea Boardgame Club. This week, we played Riff Raff, which is a balancing game and ages of fun for all:

You have a load of cargo each and you have to load them all onto the ship, which is gimbaled at the base, and thus unstable. The numbers correspond to cards that you hold. When the ship unbalances, the cargo falls off and if you can't catch them, you have to keep them. The one who gets rid of all his cargo wins.

Adeptus Mechanicus

Of interest only to the minority, I know, but Fantasy Flight Games are planning to publish an addition to their Dark Heresy W40K RPG range:

Called Lathe Worlds, it promises to cover the Mechanicum, the engineers and technicians for the Imperium, something only hinted at from other sources (The Black Library, mainly), and not at all from Games Workshop. Yum!

John Carter (A Princess of Mars)

I never manage to get all the way through A Princess of Mars, the beginning of the Barsoom series, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.



The film is really good, a superior pizza movie, with the tribal Tharks in particular being very well done. I don't know why it didn't do well at the box office, because it's a good romp, with a decent romance thrown in, but maybe The Avengers coming out at the same time, plus the ambiguous title didn't help.

The dog's great, though.

Arn - The Knight Templar

Apparently, this is the largest Swedish film production in history:



I can't say I really warmed to it. The acting is good, but there's a mix of languages which can be a little confusing. It's epic in length, but it feels more like a joined together TV series, rather than a truly epic film. It doesn't compare well to Kingdom of Heaven.

Unknown

Unknown is a not-half bad spy thriller starring Liam Neeson and Bruno Gantz. Dr. Martin Harris (Neeson) awakes from a coma in Berlin only to find that his life has been taken by someone else.



It's has more than a few twists and turns and, for a film not called Drive, it's got quite a good car chase.

Coffee

My relationship with drugs of any kind has always been a bit patchy. I do smoke on odd occasions (and they are odd), and my alcohol intake is low and very specific (alcoholic ginger beer is my favourite tipple at the moment). Coffee I do like, although I've noticed that if I drink in the afternoons, I don't sleep so easily that night. Recently, my Father gave me a percolator:

It's an old fashioned way of making it; percolation steams the coffee grains and it makes a strong brew that has a smoky quality I rather like. This model is a one from Asda and it doesn't have an element, so you have to use a hob, but it's simple construction means it is reliable.

Parkour

'Sall supposed to be a bit passe now, but I was looking for a Youtube of Professor Longhair's Mardi Gras in New Orleans when I found this:



The music is Big Chief and I felt a bit ripped off until I started watching it. I'd forgotten how good Parkour is to watch, and these guys are good! Plus it's a good backing track. I don't know why we don't have this stuff in the Olympics.

G'won. Treat yourself, but don't tell your Mum or I won't hear the end of it.

Duck Hunting With Dad

As it was his 70th birthday, I took Dad into London for a little trip:

It's a DUKW amphibious vehicle, made in WW2, essentially a floating truck, or bus in this case. It was really fun, especially when we hit the water:

It's run by London Duck Tours and is a great way to see the city:

Cloud Atlas Movie

I've recently finished the book that I thought to be unfilmable, at least from a plot perspective, but someone's done it:



This might be a rare case of the movie being better than the book, but it does have Tom Hanks in it. But with a ridiculous wig, so dunno.

Mel Gibson's Fahrenheit 451

I've just been reading this:

http://io9.com/5932803/100-wonderful-and-terrible-movies-that-never-existed

It's a list of might-have-been (or even might be made) sci-fi movies. Included at 46 is Mel Gibson's idea to remake François Truffaut's adaption of the Ray Bradbury novel. I'd pay to make this NOT happen.

Oxfam Friday: The Go! Team and The Black Keys

I was playing The Secretary Song in the shop today, but the video for that is a bit underwhelming, so I thought I'd post you Junior Kickstart, which is still a good song, but a much funnier video:




I was also playing The Black Keys "Grown So Ugly", so which this is quite a good version, if more laid back than the original.



Rock on!

Gravitas

While I was in the shop, Mark, John and I were having our usual giggle-fest. John was feeling extremely chipper for some reason, singing and whistling ("Where the Streets Have No Name", by U2 was being destroyed at one point, it was that bad), so Mark and I tried to bring him down a bit by discussing his rival Michelle and how successful her fiction section was. Fiction is a larger category than John's literature and she shifts a lot more books, to which we suggested that John have a handicap (a positive one, like in golf) to give him a fighting chance and to enable those that are interested to see how successful he is on his own terms. To this John said, in a mock forlorn tone, "... but a literature section adds gravitas". To which me and Mark fell about giggling and snorting again.

It's nice to be home, at long last.

Drive

I've been waiting a while to watch this film.



It's a pretty tough (i.e. bloody) crime drama. Ryan Gosling plays a getaway driver who gets too involved in a robbery gone bad. There's lots of double crossings and one decent car chase (the above is not it, although that is clever).

Although it's a pretty good movie, it's not as good as it thinks it is. It's too long, more complex than it needs to be and a bit too arty. The players are under-used (Gosling's not bad, but he's no Pacino) and for a film called Drive it needs more car chases.

New Blog Title

I thought I'd change the name of the blog for a while as I noticed that when I searched the name, there were a few sites with a similar name, including a restaurant. Obviously, I didn't want to use theirs, so I thought of a new blog name. Let's see how it goes.

Olympic Fever/Farce

Yes, folks, I went to the Olympics. A former colleague of mine asked me if I wanted to meet up with him and his family to watch the Triathlon in Hyde Park. When I got there, I couldn't contact him directly, so I just joined a flood of people heading for a cordoned off area called the BT Live area.

I got searched and had to surrender a pen-knife and multi-tool which I always carry. The security was absolutely abysmal (what Schneier has called "security theatre") because the person completely forgot to search the coat and bag I was carrying. I even got frisked while carrying it. Also, no drinks and food were allowed in, which meant that food and drink were to be bought inside (£5 a pint!), so you can see who the security was meant for.

The area itself was covered in wood chippings, just in case it rained, and it was just giant TV screens. Everyone parked themselves in front of the big one:

but around the corner on the left was another screen which had tables and chairs, so I sat there for a while. There was also a better bar, and while I bought an orange juice, I asked the barman about a band that were forlornly playing in the corner.

He said that they were a band of a mate of his brother's (or maybe a brother of his mate's). They are called Jaimie Thorn and the Mystery Pacific and what a damned good band they were! I'm not saying that they were worth the price of admission, but WOW! Sort of Alt-country, like Calexico. At least some good came out of the debacle.

Afterwards, I walked down to the V&A museum to sit in the courtyard and relax:

Kids paddling in the pool, everyone mellow. A total contrast to the crap earlier.

I went around the Japanese room afterwards and saw these:

They are called "Netsuke". The Japanese at the time had no pockets in their Kimono's and so used pouches or lacquered boxes tied with cord that were then looped through a belt. To prevent the cord slipping, these toggles were then used and became very decorative. Each one of these is about the size of my thumb, so you can appreciate the skill!

Mona Lisa (1986)

There weren't many films of note that came out of Britain in the 1980's. We didn't do blockbusters, and there wasn't much CGI. Handmade Films, owned in part by George Harrison, made one or two notable ones, in particular this:

It's a Film Noire. The protagonist is an ex-con called George, played by Bob Hoskins, who is hired by his old boss Mortwell, played by Michael Caine, as a driver for an expensive escort Simone, played by Kathy Tyson. Mortwell's motive is to get George to find any blackmail material on Simone's clients, but Simone manages to turn the tables on Mortwell and she and George form a bond while she uses him to look for a friend who's embroiled in the seedy world of London vice.

They do find the friend, but instead of a happy ever after, the gangsters catch up with the trio and there's a gun fight, Simone and Mortwell being killed. George confides in a friend Tom, played by Robbie Coltrane, who's supplied him with detective novels while he was in jail. At the end, George is forlorn at the death of Simone and they discuss what has happened, ponder on the nature of love and whether George had made any real difference to Simone's fate.

The film won a host of awards, but missed out at the Oscars, and it's a film worth watching even now.

Oxfam Saturday

I've been doing a few shifts in the shop of late: I usually do Friday afternoons anyway but the manager, Anne, had asked me to do the Saturday afternoon as well, downstairs. Upstairs is pretty quiet, but downstairs is where the action is, so I was fairly busy.

We were winding down to shut-up the shop when I got Angry Customer of the Day. He picked a book that, in retrospect, he must have had his eye on for a while. It was an old Penguin paperback that was priced at £6.99, which, I agree, was steep. What I didn't like was that he wanted to pick an argument and I wasn't in the mood. It went something like this:

Mr. Angry: "The price of this paperback is £6.99"
Me: "It is, sir"
A: "All the other paperbacks are £1 - £2, so do you think this is a fair price?"
Me: "I can't possibly comment on the pricing, sir"
A: "Is the person who does the pricing available to discuss this?"
Me: "Not today, sir"

There was a few more equally frustrating moments of conversation (for him: I was having fun), but it had to end.

A: "If I come back in a few days time, will the prices have changed?!!"
Me: "I couldn't possibly say, sir, but, in my opinion, the odds would not be good"
A: "Should I put this back on the shelf then?!!!!"
Me: "If you would, sir"

At which point he stormed off in, what I took to be, an air of frustrated self-righteous indignation. One of the student volunteers was watching all of this and she seemed a little awestruck by what had happened, which gave me a bit of a lift. The Great British Public: always there when you need them.

A Complete Person

Back in the steam age, there was a job on the railways known as a wheeltapper. This guys job was to go around the locomotives in the shed and tap the wheels, listening to the sound that they made to see if there were any defects, which would make a discordant sound. A perfect wheel would ring like a bell.

There have been some people that I have met that can also described in the same way: they ring true. I did a psychology course a few years back and one of the theories of the development of human personality was Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the concept of a self-actualised personality. They seem to be really "together" and you get the feeling that whatever they wanted to do or achieve they would. They have ambition, but it doesn't unduly affect their personality. They are not achieving in order to be happy, but are already happy and are achieving in order to satisfy a sort of curiosity. To see how far they can go, what can be achieved.

Notes on Religion

Now I'm something of an atheist, and I have no real experience of religion. I have an innate distrust of all authoritarian organisations, be it governments, corporations, charities even, much less the various churches, so what you are going to read may be something of a surprise. There are some positive aspects to religion which are often underrated. Specifically, religion teaches people to learn to live with disappointment.

We have certain expectations in life. We want to be loved. We want to be happy. We want to have a spouse and a family. We want to be beautiful. We want to be intelligent. We want success. We want to be important, either at work, amongst our friends or family, or even in society. We get these expectations from our parents, our peers, from stories we are told when we are children (Cinderella springs to mind) and from the media. A kind of brain washing or programming.

What happens when we don't get these things?

We lose self esteem. We start to think that we are losers in the game of life because, if you're not a winner, you must be a loser. This is where religion comes in. It says, "OK, so you lost. Remember that, ultimately, we all lose and if you're a good, kind person you will be rewarded in the next life". Now this all sounds like a big lie, and it is, but the lie has a purpose. Not everyone can win. You can't get everything you want, no one can. Sometimes, when you do get what you want, you screw your life up (and everyone elses'), so badly you're more unhappy than when you didn't have it. In fact, you should feel lucky to have what you do. You can breathe, walk, feel the sun on the back of your neck, have all five senses, talk, watch a sunset on a beach. You have a roof over your head and food in your belly. Maybe a cold drink on a hot day or a hot drink on a cold day. A cup of coffee, a quiet smoke and a read of the paper. Religion teaches you not to be selfish. That what you want is not the be-all and end-all of your existence. That you're part of something that's bigger than you ("God's plan", or whatever). This is partially correct: you are part of the human race. Maybe not a big part, certainly not as important as you thought, but still a human being and not a half-bad one at that. And you made it this far.

Now this doesn't mean that you should not try to improve your lot in life, nor the lot of others, but it does mean that when you win, others lose, even if you are not aware of it. What should be of concern is that when others lose, they do not lose something that's important. Plus maybe we lose something important when we win: a little of our humanity.

Religion is not as important as it was, especially Christianity, and I'm certainly not advocating it, but that ability to deal with our disappointment is important. It's all part of growing up, being an adult.

"Meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same".

Manchester Mini Maker Faire, 2012

I regularly buy Make magazine, an electronics and hobby DIY magazine for the 21st century. There are official Maker Faires organised every year, but there are also several Mini Faires, mostly organised by museums and local societies that are unofficial but associated. They are used to demonstrate new technologies and ideas, mostly by startups, but also students.

Today, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester to see one.

There was lots of ideas, but, as always, I was interested in 3D printing:

And this is the kind of stuff that people are making now:

We also had a look around the museum, which has a working replica steam locomotive and other steam engines:

Cambridge Folk Festival, 2012

I haven't been to a festival proper for a while (I don't count ROTW as I'm a volunteer), so I was looking forward to Cambridge as I'd never been before.

It was all very well organised, but relaxed. I managed  to get to the site fairly easy and parked up in a huge field dedicated to the purpose. Walking in, I noticed that Crabbies were a major sponsor and had brought their own bus:

I had one of their alcoholic ginger beers later on and it went down very well. It's the ideal festival drink!
 
I got myself a drink of lemonade flavoured with mint:

I think it was meant to be strained, but the mint tasted OK.

Benjamin Francis Leftwich

I missed the first act, but the second was a singer/songwriter who wasn't bad.

He sights his influences as being Bob Dylan and Eliot Smith, but he's not derivative of either. He's a good musician and the songs were engaging, plus he's a good singer.

Dry The River

I confess, I didn't have much time for this band.

Maybe it was the sound system, but they jarred on me. They got the crowd going, though.

Billy Bragg

I saw him walking around the field earlier, looking for a bite to eat, so a man of the people.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, so Billy is touring with a set of his songs. He was as good as ever, bantering with the audience. Small gigs like this are his meat and drink.

Overall, I really enjoyed the festival. It still has a local and folky feel to it which make it relaxed, with just a little commercialisation (inevitable in order to pay for the acts) but not too much to spoil it. Whether I could have enjoyed it for a full weekend, I don't know, but I'd certainly recommend it for the day.

On Holiday

I'm on holiday until next week. The plan is to see Billy Bragg at the Cambridge Folk Festival tonight and then to travel into the bosom of my family to take my father and uncle to the Manchester Mini-Maker Faire at the Museum of Science and Industry on Saturday.

Also, the actress Mary Tamm has died recently. She played Romana, a Time Lord companion in Doctor Who back in the 1970's. Men of a certain age can be defined by which Romana they fancied: Mary Tamm or Lalla Ward. I'm the former, so I felt an odd moment of poignancy at the news. A Memento Mori.

Shoeburyness Shore

Yesterday I went to Shoeburyness for some exercise and quiet contemplation. Unfortunately, it was the first week of the school holidays and also the first bit of summer weather we've had, well, all summer, so the shore was crowded:

I settled for just the exercise and took a few photo's of the shore and wildlife:

Sad Stories of the Death of Kings: Richard II

Currently, on the BBC, a set of Shakespeare's history plays are being broadcast under the title of The Hollow Crown, which I've just started watching and recommend.

As a person brought up in the Anglo-Welsh education system of the 1970's, Shakespeare fills me with less than fond memories. I did Julius Caesar for mock O Level and Richard II for the real thing: no comedies in Wales in the 1970's. Probably just as well.

Julius Caesar is all about ambition, pride and treachery; Richard II about tyranny, mental instability and paranoia. And treachery, again. However, the best thing about the plays is that they are quotable:

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

Stirring stuff from John of Gaunt.  ("Star spangled banner" is not really in the same league; we're English, we do this thing for a living. Mind you, they did have Richard Nixon, a Shakespearean villain if ever there was one).

How about this from Hamlet, which seems to have the most quotes:

one may smile, and smile, and be a villain

How many politicians would fit that description?

Appropriately, it's also my birthday today, a whole 48 years. How hard can it be?

On the Subject of Gay Marriage

OK, so why is a middle aged bachelor commenting on marriage at all, much less gay marriage. Normally, I'd agree and say "what's this to do with me?"

Let's examine marriage from a functional angle, removing the emotional, historical and religious aspects: what is marriage for? From a legal perspective, it allows the secure transfer of wealth, property, estate etc. from one generation to the next, especially if the family has only daughters. From a health perspective, in a time before advanced medicine, it prevents (in theory at least) the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases: most societies frown upon infidelity and it's even punishable by death in some. It creates a stable social unit in a society which has grown beyond the extended family, clan or tribe.

What is now being discussed is extending this social and legal structure to encompass a social phenomenon which, although has been around for as long as we have, has only been public for the last fifty or so. Non-mixed marriage, anybody?

What bothers me is this: why is it such a big deal? If we have so many problems doing this simple thing, what are we going to be like dealing with real issues which affect everybody? Stem cell research, cloning, anti-ageing drugs and longevity, sentient and semi-sentient AI, genetic modification, physical and mental augmentation, smart drugs, consciousness uploading, nanotechnology. These are not trans-gender issues, these are trans-human issues. The next fifty years, much less the next one hundred, are going to see a revolution in what it means to be human, and I don't think we are even ready if we are bickering about whether two people who love each other can get married or not.

Back at the Shop

As part of my post work therapy, I've started back at the Oxfam book shop in Chelmsford. It was a most welcome return, after a bit of a shaky start, and I'm now doing Friday afternoons on the top deck, looking after the music and DVD's. Surprisingly little has changed in eighteen months and there were a few familiar faces. Michelle and Michael were still bickering over shelf space (she does sci-fi and general fiction and he does literature), and Mark has now been proper (paid) manager for some time and runs a tight ship. I had a few hours serving on the till, lightened by a conversation with a young Spanish woman who wanted Heavy Metal. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of my kind of music, except for a Goldfrapp album, Black Cherry, and an old Groove Armada album, back when they were actually good, but there was also a so-so James Brown Greatest Hits (aaaaaaooooooowwww!!!! git down! funky! Tell me if there's a better tune that Papa's Got a Brand New Bag. Not likely). I then did a few hours labelling things and price research on some AD&D books which weren't worth as much as I thought. I'm not much of an expert on Fantasy RPG, mostly sci-fi.

It's a Wrap

While on a weekly trip to Southend, I spotted a couple of Tesco employees shrink-wrapping a colleagues car. "Payback", said one. I know it's been done loads of times, but it's the first time I'd seen it. I gave them a hand and took some photos.

Rhythms of the World Part 2

Yes, folks, it did indeed rain and it was muddy.

I did my four hours picking up litter and then went for a meal afterwards, as usual. There were a lot more volunteers than last year and, rather than seeing one or two people throughout the shift, we were bumping into them all the time. Plus people seemed to be a lot more cautious about littering (perhaps because of the mud?), so the job seemed a little more aimless than before. Maybe I ought to volunteer for gate duty or programme selling, at least for a few hours to break it up a little.

Here's young John after the shift:

He's going through a CHiPs phase, I think.

One of the Lovettes posed for me back stage, replete with wellies:

Very charming.

Rhythms of the World 2012 Part 1

On Thursday evening, I went with my mate John to the get it for ROTW. This is usually a walk-around, but I was really late due to all the nonsense on the M25 (some things never change) and we missed it. It hammered down all the way through Hitchin and all the way back, so I was cold, wet and miserable, plus the site was pretty muddy as you can see:

So what it's going to be like on the day... Bring your wellies: I will.

Rezzed 2012

On Friday, for a trip out, I went to Rezzed, a computer games show in Brighton.

Despite being billed as an "Indie" games show, the vast majority of the PC's were for big name publishers, SEGA for example. Amongst the new games being shown were Borderlands 2, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and lots of other FPS's too boring to mention (I'm a 3rd person RPG man, myself). I played a strategy game called Prison Architect where my first task was to build Death Row (seriously, this is a game). I also had a go at a game called Krater, a proper RPG I have now bought, but seem unable to run on my PC properly.

I attended a demo of Total War: Rome 2, developed by local game subsidiary of SEGA, The Creative Assembly. It's pretty astounding stuff, technically, but I think they are in something of a rut creatively (what are the odds that the next game will be Medieval Total War 3?).

It lashed it down most of the day, so I was glad to be inside, but I got a free T-Shirt, loads of flyers. Brighton seems to be something of a centre for game development, not so much a silicon roundabout as a silicon seafront. But you know what Britain is like: we don't really do industry, we just pretend to and try to rip people off.

The End of Something...

...and the beginning of something else.

Leaving Work

I left work yesterday for the final time before I began my University course in September. I'd given about three months notice but, for some reason, they had not managed to find a replacement by the time I had left. The work has been a little slack of late, though, so that might not be an immediate problem.

It's been rather a strange little job. Stressful, yes, but as if for no reason other than no body could think of any other way of doing it. Baffling. I asked one of my colleagues why, despite all the problems and inefficiencies, the company was successful and he thought that it was because there was little competition. One does feed off the other: if you are successful doing it this way, there is little reason to change. You'd think some big firm would have come along by now and bought the firm up, for the customer base alone, but no one seems to be interested in the market. Odd.

So, onwards and upwards.

On the way back from the job yesterday, I kept humming this: 



Seems appropriate somehow.

Down with the Monarchy, Up with the Republic

As an antidote to all the b***s*** which usually permeates this country where the Monarchy is concerned, I decided to join the Republican protest on the South Bank of the Thames, near Tower Bridge. Both sides of the Thames were cordoned off, tickets only. Most of the flag-waving crowd had been allowed onto the site first, with a couple of hundred protesters getting in early. Mid-day was the official start time, but the gates to the area were closed long before that. When I arrived, I noticed a small group with T-shirts and loudhailers and followed them, but, after trying to get through the cordon, we ended up outside a gate where we were told we were not to be admitted for health and safety reasons as too many had already gone through. Someone on the inside was contacted and came along with banners for us to hold and we staged our own little demo:

 

All very well and good, but hardly a real protest. We numbered about fifty until another, much larger, group joined us, swelling the numbers to about two hundred:

In the end it was claimed about a thousand, but five hundred, inside and out, was about right.

As for the cause, well, personally, I don't like the idea of being told, literally or otherwise, to know my place. If this country is going to be one worth living in, and it is the country of William Blake and Thomas Paine, all the unearned and inherited privilege and corruption (witness the tip of the iceberg that is the Leveson Inquiry) has to be got rid of. And that starts at the top. When people say that this is not a popular protest it's worth remembering that appeasing Hitler in the 1930's was a very popular government policy and that overwhelming majority were against legalising homosexuality in the 1960's. The majority are not always right.

Southend Air Show

This year I decided to attend the Southend Air Show. The show started at 2pm, and I arrived early, so I spent a delightful few hours on the cliffs overlooking the seafront waiting for the show to start.

The first show was the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight:

 

Then a display team called The Blades, all ex-Red Arrows pilots, came on:

Not bad. I retired somewhat early as there were suddenly a lot more people around, and load more when I got back to the station.

Software: The Past and Into The Future

Yesterday I went to see a presentation on the architecture of the ZX Spectrum at the BFI in London. This was part of SCI-FI London. The presenter had reverse engineered both the hardware and the software from several spectrums (I still have a Spectrum+ boxed up somewhere). I was somewhat dull, as you'd expect, but I respected the dedication!

I'm also watching "The Hunt for A.I.", a BBC Horizon program which shows how advanced the science is at the moment. In particular, pattern matching people in a crowd and evolving robots.

A Journey Through London

I haven't blogged for a while, so I thought I'd go back about two weeks to the start of the Easter fortnight. I was on holiday that week, so I thought I'd go into London to visit some museums and art galleries.

Stratford to Kew Gardens

I got off the C2C from Pitsea at West Ham and made my way to Stratford to pick up the overground. From there, I got the Richmond train. I normally get off at Camden Road, but I stayed on all the way to Kew Gardens. The Overground shares the same rails as the District line from Gunnersbury.


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I got to Kew and wandered around for a bit (£15 to go in!) and ended up at Gunnersbury station, where I took the District and Piccadilly to Hyde Park:


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The idea was to go to see the Hockney exhibition, but the queue was massive: a four hour wait. If it had been Rembrandt or Raphael, maybe, but not a Yorkshireman!

The Design Museum

Being at a bit of a loss of what to do, I decided to walk to the Design museum on the South Bank:


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I hadn't seen Design of the Year competition last year, so it was good to have a look. The standouts where a giant dandelion for blowing up mines;

a suite of furniture which folded up into crates;

a font for Nokia phones (as a fontophile, one of my favourites); two electric cars; and a temporary house built of wooden blocks under an overpass in East London:

In particular I liked the idea of Not-so-expanded Polystyrene (NSEPS), created by making textile moulds, filling them with polystyrene granules and then steaming them, causing the granules to both expand and harden. Cool materials stuff.

Magic City

A new crime series is starting over in the states called Magic City, on the Starz network:



Obviously taking a cue from Mad Men and other such nostalgia related shows, such as Pan Am, this is going for a much harder edge. Looks good, though.

Awake

A new TV series has started over in the states on the NBC network which looks intriguing:



The premise is that a man, a police detective, has a car accident in which a member of his family is killed. When he recovers, he switches between two realities when he sleeps, one in which his wife survived, and the other in which his son survived.

There was a similar series a while back called Journeyman, which involved time travel rather than alternate realities, that wasn't successful, so it remains to be seen whether this stays the course. With so little competition at the moment, though, it might survive, and it does look good.

Update: The show got five stars from SFX magazine this month.

Remembering Moebius

Jean Giraud, a.k.a. Moebius, has recently passed away aged 73:

Moebius wrote The Airtight Garage, The Blueberry books and The Incal, amongst others, and always impressed me with his complex, intricate style. He also worked on the initial stages of Alien, Tron and influenced the Star Wars movies. If I had to choose only one comic book artist to be like, I would be Moebius!

"Oh-point-Oh" - Microserfs

I've been reading Microserfs by Douglas Coupland:

I read jPod a few years ago and this is pretty good as well. In it there's a part where everyone is offered jobs at a new start-up and leaves their secure, and profitable, jobs at Microsoft. One of them explains that he want to do it because he will be "oh-point-oh": he'll be in at the start of something new, something potentially revolutionary.

I think that's what's been eating at me the last few years with the job. I've been working, time after time, on systems well past their best years and it's been grating on me a little bit too often. I want to start anew, make something no-one has ever made before, even a new programming language. "Oh-point-oh".

The relationship between the protagonist, Daniel, and his girlfriend Karla also intrigued me. He's not as smart as she is and she provides a way for him to grow into being someone better than he starts off being, while he and his colleagues and family provide something for her to belong to, being alienated from her real family. Maybe this is the post-modern situation, that we are closer to our friends and colleagues than we are to our own flesh and blood?

Daniel keeps a sort of diary on his laptop (an Apple Powerbook) and he writes some of the most romantic and hauntingly direct prose I've ever read:

"I don't want to lose you. I can't imagine ever feeling this strongly about anything or anybody ever again. This was unexpected, my soul's connection to you. You stole my loneliness."

There's a moment when he's with Karla and she's reliving a traumatic episode in her life. He holds her tight, almost holding her together, and says:

"you're a thousand diamonds - a handful of lovers' rings - chalk for a million hopscotch games"

(the elemental composition of the human body: carbon, the diamonds, and calcium, the chalk)

Another one of the themes of the book is the transition, or even evolution, of the characters from merely being corporate cogs in the Microsoft machine ("cannon fodder" as Daniel says at one point), to being individuals in the start-up. It's a little like the self-actualising personality Maslow was on about.

Hey "Karla"! Thought you might like it this way. Try looking at the source.