over the horizon radar 1 march 2002
So we went to Paris last weekend. Nice. High points:
Day one, morning - take the train in to London. We can't get tube passes cheap with our tickets, so we say "fuck it" and walk from King's Cross to Waterloo. It takes us four hours. Well, about an hour actually walking, and three hours looking at stuff. Specifically, we walk to St Paul's, and have a saunter down the millennium piazza to the newly-reopened Millennium Bridge. Really newly reopened. Like, that week. Funnily enough, the bridge was massively crowded, and slightly disconcerting. They may have stopped it swayed, but it still bounced up and down a noticeable amount. Very cool, though.
Stuff we looked at included the truly excellent Saturday food market near London Bridge station (don't know its real name, but it's wonderful), and then on to the Tate Modern. Oooh. Modern art. I love it I love it I love it. Since I've always been slightly bemused by art of any sort, I don't find the bemusement factor in modern art a problem. I like Damian Hirst's stuff. I like Roy Lichtenstein. I like Joseph Beuys (though the fat motif is a little disturbing). Mm.
After being culture-schmultures, we walked to Waterloo and hopped on the Eurostar. The actual process of boarding Eurostar was more involved than that, but not by much. It's worth noting that my passport didn't get a particularly thorough investigation before the trip to France - compare this to the trip back, when I had to wait in the "ALL OTHER CITIZENS" queue for ten minutes. The UK is noticeably more paranoid than France was - hopping off the Eurostar at Gare du Nord wasn't any different to hopping off the Cambridge train at King's Cross. Off the train, down the platform, out the door - no mess, no fuss, and no customs or immigration.
Being keen as mustard, we decided to walk from the station to the hotel (about 20 minutes, which took 45 due to a couple of wrong turnings). We got to the hotel, dropped our kit off, and flipped on the telly. First thing we saw: new MC Solaar song. Style. Yeah, cool - we're in Paris, man, we're watching French hip-hop, yeah, we're cosmopolitan. We were so fucking cosmopolitan that we went out for a walk and ended up eating dinner in a sushi bar. Hip hip hip. Reasonable sushi, though nothing particularly exotic was available (think lots of tuna, lots of yellowfin, some fish eggs). Back to the hotel, picking up a bottle of scotch on the way. It's a hard world.
Day two, morning. We hop up and out of bed. Breakfast. Ah, ces miracle du La vache qui rit. We wander off to see the joyous sights of Paris. Down into le metro. A battered, romantic-looking French metro train rolls in. Doors open, and romantic French accordion music spills out. There's two buskers playing accordians. One of the other passengers is carrying a baguette. At this point, I start looking around for the hidden cameras - "Shocking tourists with stereotypical scenes". Nice though.
On to central Paris. Of course, Paris is sufficiently small that most of it counts as 'central'. We womble off along the Champs-elysees. A fun day of walking around Paris. A crepe outside Notre Dame cathedral (ham and cheese - nice), a walk alongside the Seine, squinting at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - not in that order - culture! Culture! I'd also like to take this chance to say that I rather like the I. M. Pei glass pyramid in the Louvre. Nice.
Day three. Wake up, check out, metro to Pompidou centre. We get there at 10am to find that it doesn't open until 11. Bugger. Oh well, time to buy the souvenirs. Sorry, I said souvenirs? I meant chocolate for the workmates. 11am rolls around, and we get into Le Centre de G. Pompidou. Modern art, see comments above - some lovely Klein paintings, some pretty cool industrial design stuff, and all within a really excellent building. Blue piping. Mmm. Need more blue piping in our house. Water. Baby.
Eurostar home was mainly distinguished by a very annoying American woman who insisted on speaking at the top of her voice. Annoyance with value added stupidity - she booked a taxi at one point and could be heard clearly enunciating her credit card details. Tch. She was so irritating that after she got off, the Canadian couple behind us heard us going "Thank god that's over" and leaned forward to agree. You know you're annoying when even Canadians comment on it.
So, Paris: good. Two thumbs up.
Chris was off work yesterday, burying his ferret. We asked: no, it's not a euphemism, one of his pet ferrets died. We're still having trouble keeping a straight face, though.
And big ups to the UK government for taking steps to halt peat bog depletion. Nice one lads. This classes as 'something I don't mind my tax dollars going on'.
The Soldiers at Lauro
Young are our dead
Like babies they lie
The wombs they blest once
Not healed dry
And yet - too soon
Into each space
A cold earth falls
On colder face.
Quite still they lie
These fresh-cut reeds
Clutched in earth
Like winter seeds
But they will not bloom
When called by spring
To burst with leaf
And blossoming
They sleep on
In silent dust
As crosses rot
And helmets rust.
Spike Milligan
Another good man done gone.
the beach at redpoint 21 february 2002
Our second wedding anniversary was yesterday. We had a romantic evening in. I bought Heather a miniature rose, and she bought me some sunflowers. We had a lovely, romantic meal of venison steaks with lightly sauteed leaks, over chips from the local Chinese takeaway, then drank a bottle of Moet et Chandon that we were given as a wedding present. We're romantic buggers at heart, though we resisted the urge to declaim spontaneous poetry. Two years and counting!
We seem to have new neighbours - so those of you who've been reading this in the vain hope that we'll start adding more crash & burn psychotic neighbour stories can stop reading now. The new neighbours seem pretty calm; so far, they're painting the inside of the house before they move in properly, so that's a good sign right there. And they've put a bowl full of bulbs outside. Seem to be a respectable couple in their 50s, so it should be a lot calmer at Chez Elder from now on. They're probably more worried about us, come to think of it - we do need to get our front garden tidied up. It'll be a nice change to have us as the scruffy bastards bringing everyone else's property values down.
Got some new albums over the weekend.
- Boards of Canada: geogaddi - not really doing anything that Coil weren't doing in the '80s. Not that that's a bad thing, mind.
- Daft Punk: Discovery is well nice. Much better than the first album, I'd say. Kind of if Kraftwerk had been really into funk and had taken up breakdancing. Vocoders as far as the eye can see. And they've got at least one track where the lyrics boil down to "Wooo, hey!", which wins them points.
- Aphex Twin: drukqs - 50% blithering noisecore, 20% quiet bits, 20% harpsichord solos, and 10% sub-Satie piano work. Eh? That 54 cyrmu beats is a good track, mind. Interesting stuff, good for work (no vocals, keeps you alert), but not the sort of thing you'd put on at a party. Unless it was 3am and you wanted people to leave (I usually use FSOL's ISDN for this - I think it's a thing of great joy and beauty, but it normally cleans the living room out in ten minutes).
Christ, I hope I don't write like this. Or, indeed, this. Nice to see that someone's converted KantGenerator Pro to python and stuck it online.
Gagpipe is surprisingly addictive. News aggregation, ho!
dean thorkwung is embezzling the cafeteria fund 15 february 2002
Remember that homily, "every day, do something that scares you"? That's the spirit in which I bike to work each morning.
Email exchange with a coworker yesterday:
Self: Richard, I've migrated your outstanding 5.0 release notes to the 5.1.0 model, and have created new 5.1.1 ones as well.
Richard: I'm glad you think they're outstanding. Most people regard them with a nasty mixture of scepticism and contempt.
High quality documentation since at least a fortnight ago, kids. Bloke in question wears a cardigan to work most days, has a quiet sense of humour, and the first album he ever bought was by the Dead Kennedys. Interesting bloke to work with.
I don't ask for much out of life. Actually, that's a complete lie. I ask for quite a bit, but that doesn't sound as self-sacrificing. Regardless. Sorry, what was I saying?
A great thinker - Henry Rollins, actually - once described the difference between America and England thus: attitude to pallid, depressive people who listen to Morrisey. England: "Oh, wow, man, like, I know where you're at, man." America: "Here's some vitamin C, here's a handgun, get out there!" Hard to argue with that one.
Orthorexia links. Wired News provide a capsule summary, Bratman's own article provides more depth, variation available on his official site. Interesting reading, especially as I'm trying to eat more healthily at the moment.
do not touch these incredibly menacing citrus fruit, man 12 february 2002
Spring projects - I'm torn between redecorating the living room and making a paludarium. Hmm. How about redecorating the living room to incorporate a paludarium, eh? Mind you, the reinforcement would be a bugger. Maybe I should just go back to plan A, and set up a bigger terrarium for some of my plants. It'd be nice to have a decent highland Nepenthes terrarium going again.
That said, we'll be redecorating the living room, 'cos it's doing our heads in. And we definitely need at least another metre of bookshelf space.
Fun fun target marketing: Amazon have just sent me an email announcing the imminent release of the new Boards of Canada album, Geogaddi. I was sent this 'cos I am "someone who has bought music on the Warp Record label". Of course, the only Warp Records album I've bought off Amazon has been... Geogaddi as a pre-order. Nice one lads. Still, it should arrive this time next week, and I hope to be a happy bunny in consequence. Fingers crossed.
In one of the upcoming usability tests that we're running at work, the sample scenario requires the user to add a service address (physical location where the product is being used, for service purposes - for example, the address at which a telephone line is being supplied) to a product. Specifically, to the product 'Email address'. Service address for an email address? Do people ever think about what they're writing on these test cases?
Um... fun links that have been burning a hole in my pocket.
- FOLDOC (Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing) - it's the bomb.
- Ooh, ooh. Phat-ass muscle bike action!.
- Fascinating article about video censorship in Britain, using the case of the original Evil Dead as an exemplar. It's paradigmatic, baby!
So we're watching the winter olympics last night - inadvertantly taped the finals of the Women's Snowboarding, watched it 'cos snowboarding makes good TV. Anyway, the song Heaven is a half-pipe comes on. "Why are they playing this?" Heather wonders aloud. "....Because it's about skate and snowboarding?" I hazard a guess. It then turns out that Heather had thought the song (sample lyric: "If I die before I wake / at least in Heaven I can skate") was about drugs. Well, when you think about it, if you didn't hang around with skaters/boarders the term 'half-pipe' could be ambiguous... And, in fact, looking at the complete lyrics there's definitely a drug influence, although that's probably just the skater/stoner crossover. Demography, ho!
mind the oranges, marlon! 8 february 2002
I picked up a copy of The Complete DR and Quinch yesterday. Ooooh yes. One of Alan Moore's earlier works in 2000AD (mid '80s), it's a hip-shot of comedic brilliance. Surreal situations! Improbable resolutions! Deadpan insanity! Internal narration! Nuclear weaponry! Woo hoo!
There's an insurance company here called "Legal and General". I'd like to set up a competitor called "Legal and Moral". I think it'd rock. And the domain is still available.
Lisa wants me to point out that she didn't think I had plastic tubing in my ear, she thought it was rigatoni. I feel so much happier now. Is pasta a step up from piping?
Found a rather nice article on carnivorous plants in the SF Chronicle. Introductory stuff, but gets the tone right.
To pick back up on the topic of the changing face of song names, I noticed this morning that one of the tracks on Disk 3 of the Ministry of Sound annual 2002 is called Light a Rainbow. Now I don't know about you, but to me that's just sloppy writing. Talk about naming the track while stoned. Light a rainbow. How? Douse it in petrol first? Leave it parked in the wrong part of town? Tch. Mind you, the album also has a track called Fire Wire by *cough* Cosmic Gate. Still, it's nice to see an ambient trance homage to Apple's proprietory name for IEEE1394. Actually a pretty banging track, too.
I'd have to say that I agree with a number of the points made about the Waiting for Star Wars guys by JD Wiker in the Rants section of PVPonline. I also rather like the new PVP offshoot Waiting Longer for Star Wars - a nice little bit of parody.
are you sure this is legal? 5 february 2002 Grr, foam foam foam. Every morning, we listen to Radio 4 as we're grumbling out of bed. Every morning, at about 7:50am, they have a religious leader on to deliver their "Thought for the Day". Yesterday morning saw Clifford Longley deal with the issue of whether it was OK to lie. He started out with the standard "homicidal maniac" argument about it being OK to lie sometimes (homicidal maniac asks you where a person is - you know, but know that the maniac will kill the person if you tell them - is it morally permissible to lie?). So far, so classic - there's reams of fun literature about that particular argument. But then he moved on to another example, going roughly as follows:
Supposing that you work in the management of a particular company and have insider knowledge of an upcoming stock deal. A friend asks you if it is true that the deal is about to happen. A utilitarian would argue that you should weigh up the good that your friend would do with the money, against any problems that their knowledge would cause.
Show me the utilitarian philosopher who'd make that argument and I'll show you an idiot who needs a good bitchslapping. For god's sake, we used to fail students in PHIL102 who couldn't see a host of possible consequences to insider trading that would need to be considered to formulate a possible utilitarian response. Well, we used to give them a good talking-to, anyway.
But what really got me was his proposed better solution, the Jesuit answer: the person did not have a right to the truth, as they were not entitled to know the truth about the stock deal. There you go: you can lie to people if they weren't entitled to know the truth in the first place.
So: we're to prefer a paternalistic and circular principle - "Always tell the truth to people who have a right to know it" - to a cut-down straw man version of a classic ethical position. Not that I think utilitarianism is necessarily correct; I think that it deserves a better run than this out-of-hand dismissal crap.
Interesting email around work today, asking people not to use the pay-per-use directory enquiry number 192. Since services like Yell.com are freely available and, indeed, free, there's no major reason to use the £1-a-time phone service. Fine. But then we were also asked to not call "Premium Rate" numbers from the office phones. Now, really. Calling directory enquiries from the office phone - you can see how it would happen. But ringing premium rate porn lines? I mean, we've got a bloody open plan office, for heaven's sake. You think someone would notice.
Someone asked me yesterday, "If Dracula met Saruman and there was a fight, who would win?" I just looked at this man. What an idiotic thing to say. I mean, really, it was half-witted.
Christopher Lee
Today's Dilbert provides a rather nice demonstration of the naturalistic fallacy (the fallacious assumption that because something is natural, it must be good).
The other night, I was listening to a CD I bought about five years ago (TEXtures). Had a bit of a glance at the track listing. Noticed a song by Coldcut. Called 'Nominal Aphasia'. Ah, the sweet innocence of the early '90s, when you could use song titles like that - I remember it well.
I have had a couple of 12mm bamboo plugs from Cold Steel in my earlobes for the last three days. So far everyone thinks they're plastic. I've had one coworker ask why I had cut-down plastic pipe in my earlobes. Maybe I'll move back to the sawtooth eyelets I've been wearing for the last few months.
That new Chemical Brothers album's alright, though, innit?
personal - hey, seuss! 1 february 2002
Worrying pub moment this afternoon - discussing gambling in Las Vegas (one of my coworkers highly recommends it), we got on to strategies. As a committed non-gambler, I offered the advice that you have to know when to hold 'em. Lisa then suggested that you should also know when to fold them. Jim was of the opinion that you should know when to walk away; I thought that you should also know when to run. And we all agreed that you should never count your money when you're sitting at the table, as there's bound to be time enough for counting when the dealing is done.
Heather encountered some Mormons the other day. In fact, it was the day she handed in her thesis, which of course means that I should have written it up sooner. Anyway. Heather is walking along the street, bouncing from having submitted her thesis, and along come these two young lads. Average age about 18 (Mormons tend to do their missionary service between high school and university), clean-cut, probably lead a bit of a sheltered life so far. The conversation goes about as follows:
Mormon: Hello sir, we'd like to talk to you about...
Heather: Mate, I'm a girl, and I don't want to hear about your dumb-ass religion.
Conversation then ends abruptly. Mad props.
Microsoft Project is actually pretty fun to play around with. I'm using it to do project planning for the documentation for one of our new products (a surprisingly sexy piece of kit - well, if you're into billing or customer interface design). Of course, since all the main release dates are already locked into place, the project planning consists of me finding a convincing explanation for how we can do it within the projected timeframe, rather than actually using the project management functionality and figuring out how long I actually think it should take. Mind you, we look to be pretty solid at the moment. This opinion liable to change without notice.
toasting on me dub plates 29 january 2002
Heh. Nice moment watching a Channel 4 documentary on Andy Warhol. They're talking about Warhol's fascination with taking someone else's image (picture of soup can, Elvis, car wreck) and making it his - with reinterpretation as itself the creative act. And I had a beautiful trainspotter moment, spotting a subtle joke - the background music was Richie Hawtin's album DE9 | Closer to the edit. I think I've mentioned it before - the basic premise of the album is that he took about 100 tracks, cut them down to their basic components (from a single sample to a 4-beat bar), and then made 50 minutes of music out of them. A nice little subtle joke about the whole Warholian creative reinterpretation idea, I thought.
I hate Friends. It's a quintessential "kidult" show that portrays a kind of generation who are biologically capable of reproducing, but rationally incapable of induction. It makes me feel nauseous.
Will Self
So we're in the gym yesterday and MTV is on. What do we see? Marilyn Manson doing a version of Tainted Love, that's bloody what. A crime! A sacrilege! How can that low-grade shlock-jock dare to mess with one of the finest tracks of all time? One of the greatest pieces of Northern Soul ever? Bastard! Personally, I'm undecided as to what my favourite version of the song is - torn between Soft Cell's well-known cover, and Coil's much slower (and in many ways more powerful and emotional) version. I've not heard the original version of the song, I'll have to admit. But I will go on record as saying this: the Marilyn Manson version is diabolical. And not in the way that skanky odd-eyed fuck obviously hopes it is.
And since I'm on a music tip, Salon is getting pretty desperate. Reading their review of the new Chemical Brothers album, I'm forced to conclude that they're resorting to the journalistic equivalent of trolling: writing deliberately inflammatory tosh in the hope of exciting some comment. The basic premise of the article was: Dance music was created in Detroit, then went big as the soundtrack to dotcom companies, and now that the dotcoms are gone, dance music is dead as a dodo. A wonderfully Americentric view. One wonders if she even realises that the Chemical Brothers are English... ?
In fun corporate foolishness news: we got an email around from our Director of Quality Management ("You there! More quality!") today. It was a polite request for everyone to make sure that their signature block conformed to the corporate style guide, including a sample version and a reference to the section on the intranet that describes how we should be doing this. So far, so pointy-haired. It would have been more effective, however, if the sample provided in the email and the sample on the intranet had matched formats... Faced with this, my quibble that they were assuming that you were using HTML email was pretty pedestrian.
We are in very unconventional times. We're in a very unconventional war. So every aspect of it, including the Geneva Convention and how it might be applied, should be looked at with new eyes.
Victoria Clarke, Spokeswoman for US Dept of Defence
Or: no-one made much of a fuss when we blew off the ABM treaty. Why are people quibbling over the goddamn Geneva Convention?
insert witty comment here 23 january 2002
Off to the gym tonight. January in the gym is always interesting. Everyone makes a New Year's resolution to get into shape, keep off the beer, and generally increase their fitness. And so lots of people join the gym. And about 75% of those people fizzle out within three months. Some of them do a hard first workout, wake up the next morning stiff and sore, and never go back. Some of them last a couple of weeks doing light workouts, don't notice any difference to their fitness, get discouraged and quit. Some people get all fired up for a while and then slowly flag - five times in the first week, once in february, never again. Regardless, the gym's pretty crowded at the moment (though it's starting to thin about again).
So we've got lots of people in the gym at the moment. OK, fine, get there early and avoid the rush. But the really fun bit is that it's amateur hour. Most of the guys who've just signed up are too macho to admit that they don't know what they're doing (nothing new there), so just go in and faff around for 45 minutes, doing some half-assed exercises and then looking pleased with themselves. I swear to god, I saw someone doing squats the other day with just the bar (no additional weights, 20kg olympic bar), where the rep consisted of vaguely bending the knees and moving approx 5cm in a rough downwards direction. Thighs parallel to the floor wasn't even in the ballpark. Tch.
Mind you, it's always a boost to get into the gym and realise that for once, I'm lifting heavier than about half the people there. Coming from the traditional nose-in-book non-sporty background, benching more than some beefy twerp really cheers the hell out of me.
I arrived home last night to find a full set of bathroom acoutrements - bath x1, washbasin x1, toilet x1, towel rails x2, misc fittings (various) - sitting around on the lawn outside the neighbours' place. At 8am this morning, a council van was parked outside the house and banging noises were coming from within. Looks like the "tidy it up a bit and rent it out quick" plan the council told us about is out the window, then. I think this was a case of 'No renovation plan survives contact with indescribable squalor'. Still, props to the council for getting mucked in and getting the place cleaned up.
In other news: one of my coworkers - who sits very near me - has just been prescribed antipsychotics. Well, great. I guess I know who's making the tea from now on. In her defence, it's because she wanted something to help with dizzy spells - so the doctor prescribed her a drug that actually causes dizzy spells. But you're really very calm about them.
big neck big noise 22 january 2002
Went to see the Rollins Band last night (playing at The Junction in Cambridge). A good gig all around, really. The support band - Queen Dreena - weren't much cop (Tori Amos meets Pantera via Bjork), but they passed the time. Then the big boys came on. Henry Rollins is not a wee lad. He's not amazingly tall, but he's very much the powerhouse muscular shouty testosterone type. Music was good, energy was high, and they played some of my favorite songs. Overall, pretty kickass. Rollins kind of helped get me through some bad times a few years ago. He's a good part of the reason why I got into weights, as well. Just the relentless positivity in the face of tragedy, the 'can do, fuck you' attitude to calamity, and the sense of humour about the whole thing. The emphasis on strength, physical and mental, and being able to take whatever comes your way. That it's OK to be fucked up by things, but not to let it take you over. Basically, being able to take a load of sentiments that you thought were horseshit when your high school guidance counseller put on an inspirational poster, and put them forward in a testosterone-loaded hit that goes right down and gets you up. He's the sports coach every black-clad 19-year old needs: you're a good person, now get the fuck up and get back out there.
So seeing him live was one of the things I'd been after for a while. It was pretty damn cool. Empowerment, ho.
It's reciprocal link-wank time. Lisa From Work has just linked to me, so there you are. Blog available here. She's using Blogger, so you can expect her site to be updated a damn sight more often than this is (our content management system involves BBEdit and an FTP client). And she's got a 'leave a comment' system working. Of course, I could install a comment system - but would any of you actually use it, eh? Would you bollocks.
Mind you, it's a bit odd discovering that the person sitting next to me at work (literally - half my papers are on her desk) has been keeping a detailed online journal for the last year or so. Now I'm just reading through it to see if I'm in there.
done and dusted 19 january 2002
It's over, it's done, it's off and away. Heather submitted her thesis yesterday afternoon. Many beers and much congratulation followed. She had three copies bound - two in blue (to submit to the authorities), and one in purple to keep. A few quiet days in celebration, methinks. The big piss-up is going to be next Friday, when our mate Ruth also submits. A combined submission celebration is the order of the day.
This is just getting silly. The Corpus webserver's been down for how long? Fucksake. One more bloody day and I'm switching to a host that I have to pay for.
Of course, the act of writing the above is pretty wanky. After all, the point about the previous paragraph is that you won't see it until the page goes live again (Corpus webserver gets back up or I shift hosting). By definition, when you read this it'll all be fixed. So bitching about it is pointless and self-indulgent.
Of course, this is a weblog. Pointless and self-indulgent is the order of the day. Hence.
Heather's thesis is nearly done. A bit of editing last night, a quick google to find a cure for Word's insistence that it's OK for footnotes to appear on random pages, and we're ready to print. Woo hoo!
Big deadlines at work. I've spent the last couple of days working comfortable amounts of overtime, beavering away to get my stuff finished. Coming home after a hard day at the office, I then spend a couple of relaxing hours in the evening formatting Heather's thesis... Actually, the thesis formatting is pretty fun. Anyway, working hard. All together class, what do we do when we're working hard? That's right: we pop on the headphones and funk out. I find it much easier to concentrate while listening to music on headphones (cuts out other ambient noise), so I've been listening to a lot of stuff recently. Top tips on the old headphones:
- Rollins Band : Nice - me stressed. Me need testosterone boost. Need loud tattooed man yelling about strength. Grr. New Rollins Band CD good. Rollins Band actually gigging in Cambridge next week. Good CD. Good yelling.
- Roots Manuva : Run Come Save Me - lovely piece of UK hip-hop. Chunky beats, rough around the edges, and some kickass vocals.
- Richie Hawtin : DE9 | closer to the edit - lovely stripped back minimalist techno. The fun bit about this is trying to spot the remains of the 70 tracks that he constructed this out of. It's like appreciating a collage both for the overall effect and for the composite materials. Very nice, very calming.
- Consolidated : Friendly Fascism - I know I'm stressed at work when I start listening to postmodernist vegetarian agitpop industrial hip-hop. Mind you, I do quite like that song "The Sexual Politics of Meat".
cloud of nails (pump up a storm) 15 january 2002
Heather's thesis is currently on the ropes, with her standing over it, repeatedly hitting it with a chair. More news as events warrant (content is solid, now we're getting Word to play nice with the footnotes). Heather also wants me to point out that she isn't being rude or snobby, she just hasn't had any non-thesis time recently during which to socialise with people. Expect many beers after the submission. More news as events warrant.
More Neighbour News! No, she hasn't reappeared. This is more of a work in progress. Middle of last week, we're woken up at 8am by a hell of a lot of banging and crashing in the street. I stagger to the window and am confronted with the sight of a skip in the street outside the neighbours' house.
A rather large skip. 2.5m high, 6m long, 2.5m wide. Large and square. The sort of skip that you don't throw stuff over the sides into; one of the ends is hinged, so you can push wheelbarrow loads of shit into it.
Wow, says I, and off I go to work. That afternoon, Heather emails me to tell me that the skip - remember, this skip is larger than some flats I've been in (OK, in Tokyo, but the point's there) - is full to overflowing. The city council lads have come around and thrown everything from the house into the skip. The aqualor was apparantly quite a sight. And by 3pm, the overflowing skip was removed.
So:
- Who says the council can never be arsed to do anything?
- It definitely looks like our neighbour is gone for good.
So a good day all around, then.
Yesterday's news that George Bush fainted after choking on a pretzel while watching an American Football match provoked much hilarity. Somehow, this is exactly the kind of injury we'd imagined Bush having. He's the slapstick president! We're waiting for "Bush trips on pavement, falls into vat of jam" (joke courtesy of Chris From Work).
Bugger of a deadline at work. Still, we're making it. I'm doing the normal stress routine - my RSI is kicking back in. And my knees hurt. Still, that's what they pay me for (apart from the knees).
benzedrine and grappa 10 january 2002
Back at work on Monday. I was welcomed back with a laminated ID card, which I had to sign for and which must be "prominantly displayed" when I'm in the building. Did I mention that we've been bought out by the Yanks? Still, the share price is up so I suppose I shouldn't complain.
A good christmas was had by all at Chez Elder. Christmas actually migrated to Chez Barker halfway through the evening, in order to get us access to an oven. Since the usual inhabitant of the flat in question (Alison) was out of town for chrimbo, she very kindly allowed Mum to stay in her flat for the better part of a fortnight. This meant that we spent most of Christmas day at our place, then decanted the entire party (self, Heather, Mum, Charlotte and her boyf Ben, and Blair) across to Alison's flat to cook a lovely roast dinner. Unfortunately, I'd indulged a little much in the festive spirits, and thus the leg of lamb got stuffed with garlic a little more enthusiastically than is normally considered wise. Tasted alright though.
So yeah, Christmas went well over here. Mum and Charlotte were over here, as mentioned. Charlotte ended up taking off around Europe for a lot of the time they were here (including Hogmanay in Edinburgh - lucky for some). Mum spent a bit of time in Wales with relatives (Hi Shirley!), and then rented a car and did a few missions around the Southeast of England. I accompanied her on these missions, and learned many useful and interesting things about England:
- Colchester is actually pretty interesting. The museum definitely warrants a good solid afternoon spent wandering around. Next time I'd like to go on one of the tours down in the basement... where the foundations of the original Roman temple sacked by the Iceni (AKA the mad wicked Boudicca posse) still exist. Of course, the current museum building dates a bit later. It's a castle built in 1076. Style.
- Norwich is lovely. Nice old town, good castle, wonderful cramped and windy streets, good mustard, nice hills. The museum was pretty cool, but the older bits were rather creepy. As in, the exhibits from the '20s and '30s were very terrifying - lots of stuffed dead things in threatening poses. Some very nice watercolours though.
- King's Lynn has some very nice old architecture - I rather liked the old warehouses along the waterfront - but is otherwise eminently missable.
- Hunstanton is bloody cold in winter. It does have an excellent bike shop and a very nice aquarium (incorporating a seal rescue center). The walk along the scenic cliff-front is very nice, too. However, in midwinter, the wind coming straight off The Wash is bloody arctic. Might try going back in midsummer... or maybe not.
Anyway, it was lovely seeing the family over for Christmas. A good time was had by all - well, at least no-one complained to me. And we even managed to knock off the Tate Modern, so that was cool. IKB79. Yeah.
I gave Heather a PDA for Christmas. A Handspring Visor Edge. Very sexy, very thin, very nice piece of kit. In red. Yeah. We've finally got AvantGo working - were the servers down over Christmas or what? Heather's joy on discovering that she could carry around a permanently updating copy of the Guardian and Le Monde was tremendous. Woo hoo! I've actually just ordered myself a Visor Edge as well - well, it's what the insurance money was for, after all. More fun with silly technology.
Heard from Dad the other day. I now have a half-brother. Named Barnaby. I'm pretty weirded out about the whole thing.
Merry Christmas to all. Hope you're all having a great day out there in funland.
Bollocks, the Corpus webserver is offline for the duration. Well, I guess no-one's seeing this update until New Year, then.
a nice glass of solstice 21 december 2001
Bottomed a pedal out on the way into work the other morning. I was making a rather sharp right turn into the business park where I work, when something went 'clunk' and my rear wheel washed out about a foot. Realised I'd taken the turn with my inner (right) pedal down, which is not recommended (to avoid accidents like this). Kept control, but the outside edge of my right pedal (nice new DMR V8 that I put on a week ago) now has a long grind-mark, removing the blue anodising for about three inches. Fun. I'm commuting into work in tha mad skate-grind stylee!
Fascinating story in The Guardian the other day about Lance Armstrong's victory in the 2001 Tour de France. Manages to make road racing (which is, frankly, pretty esoteric) compelling.
It's the winter solstice today. Bloody cold it is too.
Went to see Lord of the Rings last night. There's no point in writing a review - you're either already going to see it, or you're deliberately avoiding it. I will just say that I enjoyed it immensely. Got a bit homesick during some of the long scenic shots, which is slightly embarrassing. Is it just me, or did the NZ tourist board pay Peter Jackson a rake-off to get as much cool scenery in as possible? Either way, it's pretty impressive.
In lieu of a review, I'll just say that it's a good sign for a 3-hour movie when people come out and immediately arrange to see it again. OK, people other than the three guys wearing Keep Mordor Tidy t-shirts.
Anyone got any underlay?
Sorted!
Cosmetic surgery is an improvement or refinement of what you've got. I get women in who've had their tummy buttons pierced, their nipples pierced - I just cringe. To me, that's like mutilation.
Christine Davies, clinic director of the Transform plastic surgery clinic [source]
I'm reminded of Kant's quote:
Much might be added to a building that would immediately please the eye, were it not intended for a church. A figure might be beautified with all manner of flourishes and light but regular lines, as is done by the New Zealanders with their tattooing, were we dealing with anything but the figure of a human being. And here is one whose rugged features might be softened and given a more pleasing aspect, only he has got to be a man, or is, perhaps, a warrior that has to have a warlike appearance.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement
Personally, I think it's all in the eye of the beholder. And I just got the latest Wildcat catalogue the other day, so I'm a happy bunny. And remember kids - it's not self-mutilation if you pay someone else to do it to you.
Today's fun link: a very good political analysis of Harry Potter. Informed criticism, and a cut above most of the other critiques out there.
the run-up to festivities 18 december 2001
Office party photo here. Fortunately, I was still fully clothed at this point.
So the big thing at the moment is taking a wander through the Deja/Google archives for all the crap you wrote many years ago. I'll happily admit that I've had a bit of a go, and it's a laugh. It's kind of fun wandering through All your old usenet and mailing list posts (my middle initial is M; bear this in mind, as not all of the posts are from me). I note with interest that my written style hasn't changed much over the years, although the topics have. Nowadays: less tattoos, more tech writing. Sigh.
I am a citizen of the moment! I've built my white picket fence around the now with a commanding view of the soon to be.
The Tick
Last week (13th) was the third anniversary of my arrival in the UK. I've been here three years. Slightly intimidating. What have I learned during this time?
- Drinks are served in units of 564ml... also known as a pint. There are exceptions to this (wine, spirits), but the pint is the basic unit of alcohol. This leads to the classic case where you want another drink, but not an entire pint - so you get a half-pint and pour it into your previous pint glass, half-filling it. You do not just drink it straight out of the half-pint glass, because that's not a proper glass, alright?
At this point, all my readers who've never been to the UK are bemused. Everyone who has is going, "Sounds normal to me...". - Taxis are bastards. You never know when they're coming; booking has little or no effect; and the dispatchers will happily lie through their little teeth. Bastards.
- Wearing a replica football team uniform can get you refused admision to pubs. Odd one this. It's kind of the UK equivalent of the "No Gang Patches" rule that most NZ pubs run. Saves on fights though.
- London is the centre of the universe. Most countries with more than, say, one million people have two or more major cities where one can reasonably earn a living and not be regarded as living in a hideous backwater. The UK is so tilted towards London it's not funny. London is where everything happens. It's like the entire rest of the country has a cultural cringe about how much better than anything else in the entire world London is. Including the fact that most people outside London think that the people there are a bunch of bastards.
- The weather's better than I thought. We had quite a nice summer; apart from the flooding, obviously.
- Brown sauce is one of the five food groups. Though I've not gone native enough on the food to enjoy the traditional fried breakfast.
The men in suits are telling us what the men in uniforms are going to do to the men in turbans if they don't turn over the men in hiding.
Ken Kesey
What I've been looking at recently.
- An excellent history of Cambridge.
- The Smokehammer. Finally, someone manages to imitate The Onion and actually make something that's as funny. Unsurprisingly, it's Chris Morris (though the sad internet fanboys don't reckon on it).
Woo hoo! The insurance just came through on the burglary a few weeks back. I can now buy myself another jacket. Thank god. It's bloody freezing biking in in the mornings.
couple of quick points 14 december 2001
Two points:
- Yesterday was the third anniversary of my arrival in the UK.
- I'm wearing a dinner suit while typing this.
Funny old world, really.
question your media, please 13 december 2001
It's been misty recently. Very misty. Monday morning, I was biking with lights. As of 4pm monday, as twilight fell I'd say that we had 50m visibility at absolute best, and 15m or so of actual useful visibility. It was like walking around inside a ping-pong ball. Or at least, like cycling slowly inside a ping-pong ball, with occasional lampposts.
It's been an interesting few days on the psychotic neighbour front. Friday night, 5:50pm, the police turn up at the front door and ask if we know whether the neighbours are still living there. The reason? The front door was wide open and no-one was home. Interesting. The police then tell us (in as many words) that our neighbour has been evicted, and they're onto the council to get the place boarded up. The police are apparantly concerned that someone has a key to the house, and suspect that the local kids are using it as a 'hang around, smoke drugs and drink lots' location. Not an unreasonable suspicion, as it turns out: about 8:30 a load of the local youths turn up, go inside the house and start drinking heavily, vomiting on the lawn, running around outside, etc. So we ring the police and go out to the pub. It's a simple life.
Come Monday morning, we ring the council to complain. And they say that our neighbour has unequivocally not been evicted. They can't evict her, as they can't find her. The police are wrong, and our neighbour is still legally entitled to live in the house. There's nothing they can do.
Bugger, sez us. We report the rotting food in the front garden, invoke the magic phrase 'vermin' (as in, "is attracting..."), and generally make all the appropriate noises. Looks like we'll have to leave it at that, we think.
But no! On Tuesday afternoon, two burly lads from the council turn up and install new front and back doors on the neighbours' house! Inch-thick steel doors, to be precise. And some very large steel grille on the back window. The house is now locked down quite solidly. Of course, there's still a fair bit of rotting food lying around the front/back of the place, but otherwise it's OK. Apparantly there's a certain amount of legal machinations underway at the moment, but it's all looking promising on the neighbour front. As in, now both the police and the council have asked us to dob them in if we spot anyone in the house. Mind you, at the moment it's either climb in a second story window, or smash the front window (rather obvious).
I'm telling you, our emails from reception are getting ever more surreal. Today's gem was:
There is alot of
Cambridge College of Therapeutic Massage forms been left on my desk, does it belong to anyone please
You couldn't make this stuff up, I tell you.
Mae'n bosibl bod gwybodaeth gyfrinachol yn y neges hon. Os na chyfeirir y neges atoch chi'n benodol (neu os nad ydych chi'n gyfrifol am drosglwyddo'r neges i'r person a enwir), yna ni chewch gopio na throsglwyddo'r neges. Mewn achos o'r fath, dylech ddinistrio'r neges a hysbysu'r anfonwr drwy e-bost ar unwaith. Rhowch wybod i'r anfonydd ar unwaith os nad ydych chi neu eich cyflogydd yn caniatau e-bost y Rhyngrwyd am negeseuon fel hon. Rhaid deall nad yw'r safbwyntiau, y casgliadau a'r wybodaeth arall yn y neges hon nad ydynt yn cyfeirio at fusnes swyddogol Cyngor Dinas a Sir Caerdydd yn cynrychioli barn y Cyngor Sir nad yn cael sel ei fendith!
You couldn't make that up either. Bonus prize if anyone recognises where this is from. Extra bonus if you know what it means. Clue: it's not Arthurian.
on with the pathos 4 december 2001
So on Saturday morning, we come downstairs and start getting ready to face the horrors of the weekend. Alex & Martyn are coming over for brunch, so I'm cutting up bagels, making pikelets, etc. Heather chides me for leaving the back window open. I deny this. Feh. When I'm in the kitchen, I notice that the back gate is ajar. Must have blown open. Alex and Martyn arrive and breakfast happens. Hmm, bit chilly - I'll put my fleece on. Hmm. Where's my fleece? Must be upstairs. No, it isn't. Forget my head next. Hang on, where's my raincoat? And my palmtop PC? Must have left them in the office - not like me to be that forgetful. Back downstairs, decide to shut the back gate, so go to unlock back door. Door is in fact already unlocked.
And at about this point my brain cut in.
We've been done over.
Bugger.
What we think happened was this. Heather popped out the back of the house for a ciggie on Friday night, then locked the back door and left her keys on the windowsill by the door. We went to bed. Sometime during the night, some thieving scally fucks get into the back garden, shine a light into the back windows and spot the keys. They jemmy the back window open, grab the keys off the windowsill, and unlock the back door. They then come into the house, grab a couple of items (my good fleece, my brand-new cycling jacket, my Handspring Visor, and a rather nice cycle multitool that Heather got me for my birthday), and bugger off again, taking Heather's keys with them. Bastards.
So we ended up spending most of Saturday morning ringing the police, our insurance company, various locksmiths, and so on. Alex and Martyn were incredibly helpful - they popped out to B&Q and got various lock acoutrements, including a new barrel for the Yale on the front door and a new deadbolt for the back. Short-term security was thus assured while we waited for the locksmith. Unfortunately, we got broken into on the morning that there was a bomb scare at the industrial estate around the corner (airport bus terminal), so we ended up waiting a Very Long Time for the police to turn up. Like, in the end, two days. Ah well. Now it's all over apart from the rolling insurance claims...
we're gonna have a good time 30 november 2001
I've noticed two things today.
- If I'm playing a CD through the computer, I get very slight static whenever I use my scrolling mouse or during heavy CPU activity (in this case, batch processing EPS files and printing books from Framemaker).
- When you're bloody tired, working late, and just want to get the damn thing compiled and out the bleeding door, you need good, old house music to keep the funk alive. It's amazing the effect Snap's The Power can have on the extremely annoyed. Jack to the sound of the underground indeed.
Not that you're interested in those fun facts, but the neighbours have been quiet for a while and it's that or I have to start talking about my compost heaps to keep the verbiage up.
Chelsea Flower Show, dead cars, and punt races.