The Urban Blog

A New Song

2011-01-08T15:08:00.001Z

It's funny how things are always changing. And yet they never really change. It isn't things that change, it's us. We move on.

I used to write a lot of songs and make videos for them. But over the last year or so I just haven't been inspired. I've made some wee bits and pieces of music and put them up onto YouTube. But no songs.

A few weeks ago I saw this video from my good YouTube buddy HelloRodney.

And a song popped into my head.

I wrote it in a few minutes, and realised almost at once that I had unwittingly reused an old chord sequence. Oh well. Inspiration seemed to be repeating itself.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed having the song around. I sang it several times a day until it became something like a companion. I didn't care that it was unoriginal.

I considered recording it, but the time never seemed right. Then last night something clicked and I knew I had to get the thing down and sorted.

I started recording at 8pm and the upload to YouTube was complete at 4am. I honestly could not say where the time went.

I'm happy to see the thing finished, and I could never have predicted how it would turn out.

But this morning I woke up missing my song. Now it isn't really mine any more!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

In Lily's Den

2011-01-04T14:24:00.001Z

Simple things.

YouTube Video

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Something old, something new

2011-01-04T14:01:00.001Z

It has been many a long month since I posted here, but technology has moved on apace, and it seems that it might be easier than ever to update this thing with relevant stuff.

This entry is just a wee experiment using the wonders of mobile tech. In theory, I can blog with ease from my iPhone or from our family iPad. We'll see.

Here's a wee pic taken last night in Lily's den. The den is constructed from two foam mattresses and and many piles of cushions.

Oh, to be seven again.

The pic was taken with the iPhone.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Lost

2009-08-14T13:49:00.000+01:00

She wasn't really, I just made it look that way.

HDR Forest

2009-08-14T13:48:00.000+01:00

High Dynamic Range. 3 exposures combined using PhotoMatix Pro 3. Two stops down and up.

A Nice Smile

2009-08-14T13:45:00.000+01:00

Lily enjoys being watered.

Wee Monkeys

2009-08-14T13:44:00.000+01:00

These guys were only a few inches tall.

Girl, Swimming Bird and Reflection

2009-08-14T13:43:00.000+01:00

A meeting of minds?

Self Reflection

2009-08-14T13:42:00.001+01:00

I'm bald.

You Know This Couple, Right?

2009-08-14T13:42:00.000+01:00

One of them might be you. I took this last week at Edinburgh Zoo. These are sea lions. They must be really, really bored.

Two Old Ladies

2009-08-14T13:40:00.000+01:00

And a bunch of round headed flower things.

Too Good To Eat

2009-08-14T13:39:00.000+01:00

A nice raspberry. Why do they name rude noises after these beautiful berries?

Allotment

2009-08-14T13:38:00.000+01:00

I don't like gardening, but this fella does. Look at his flowers!

Old Lady With Hoe

2009-08-14T13:37:00.000+01:00

I have no idea who she is but she looks happy in her work.

First Flush Of Youth

2009-08-14T13:36:00.000+01:00

Before the rot sets in.

Flower Past It's Best

2009-08-14T13:35:00.000+01:00

A bit like me.

Grey and Yellow Plant

2009-08-14T13:33:00.000+01:00

Don't know what this is.

Hover Flies

2009-08-14T13:32:00.001+01:00

Everywhere you look these little stripey guys are in a frenzy. Hovering like miniature spy-copters.

Flower

2009-08-14T13:32:00.000+01:00

I don't know what type. Nice though.

A Friend

2009-08-14T12:34:00.000+01:00

I was scared.

Leaf

2009-08-14T12:33:00.000+01:00

Close up.

George's Rose

2009-08-14T12:32:00.001+01:00

My neighbour's rose in sunlight.

Modern Scotland

2009-08-14T12:32:00.000+01:00

Life is coned.

Self Portrait

2009-08-14T12:31:00.000+01:00

I had a tripod and an SLR. This is me in my new room.

Wot You Lookin' At?

2009-08-14T12:30:00.001+01:00

This is Eric. He is a horse.

Restful Place

2009-08-14T12:30:00.000+01:00

Graveyard, Edinburgh.

Laughing and Paddling

2009-08-14T12:27:00.000+01:00

Lily cooling her feet.

Beetle Meets Kid

2009-08-14T12:26:00.000+01:00

We rescued this drowning beetle from a local paddling pool.

Finger Trap

2009-08-14T12:25:00.000+01:00

Get outta that!

Oban

2009-08-14T12:24:00.000+01:00

I don't like Oban much, but you have to go there to get to Tiree. Blue rinsed pensioners and neddy boys from Glasgow.

Our Ocean

2009-08-14T12:22:00.000+01:00

Taken from the deck of our private yacht.

Would You Live Here?

2009-08-14T12:21:00.000+01:00

Right down by the water next to paradise. Ah.

Horses, Tiree

2009-08-14T12:13:00.000+01:00

We didn't ride them. Just nice to look at.

Colin Floats Above Tiree

2009-08-14T12:10:00.000+01:00

Tiree is very flat. Colin is quite a small man. He is standing on a short hill.

Beach, Tiree

2009-08-14T12:09:00.000+01:00

Makes me wish I had a better camera......

Coos - Picture Postcard Style

2009-08-14T12:08:00.000+01:00

Highland cows (coos) near one of Tiree's many amazing beaches.

Donuts, Elephant's End, Tiree

2009-08-14T12:07:00.000+01:00

Lily with freshly made donut. Our favourite eaterie on the island.

Farm, Tiree

2009-08-14T12:05:00.000+01:00

It rains there sometimes.

Water Lily

2009-08-14T12:04:00.001+01:00

Lily loved Tiree.

Water Pump

2009-08-14T12:04:00.000+01:00

Tiree again. I think the pump is now decorative, but probably served its purpose at one time.

Wee Hoosie Tiree

2009-08-14T12:02:00.000+01:00

Another Tiree image.

Tiree

2009-08-14T11:56:00.000+01:00

This is an image taken on our recent holiday to Tiree. I don't know if anyone is still reading, but if you are - ENJOY!

Glad to be Grey

2009-03-13T11:40:00.003Z

Isn't it funny how society is?

It's almost as though there are solid rules behind the scenes, rules that make everything tick but which are so slippery you just can never grasp what they might be.

We know that society needs people who can do things, make things happen. They are the builders and designers, the engineers. Those people keep the electricity and the water flowing. They can bring enormous focus to bear on seemingly intractable problems and solve them by sheer muscle of thought alone.

They are our dreamers, our war criminals, and our finest artists and scientists. They deal with the world of imagination, pondering the impossible, gathering knowledge about the unknowable, just on the off chance that it might be useful one day.

They are the reason we have telephones and the internet and medicine, and they once took us to the moon. If ever our species is threatened with extinction they are likely to be both the cause of the threat and our best hope for survival.

Then there's the other, complementary demographic that acts in part as a support mechanism for the thinkers and do-ers. They clean up the mess when the dreamers forget that their dreaming comes at a cost. They are there at the forefront when war and idiocy claims lives and rips the fabric that holds us all together.

They care, where the dreamer does not, often sacrificing their own aspirations in support of some greater common good. They are healers rather than doctors, secretaries rather than directors.

I am of course, describing masculine and feminine stereotypes, recognising as I do that they are just that. Masculine traits can often appear in women, and feminine traits in men. Men are capable of caring, and women can sometimes build bridges.

But these stereotypes are actually quite useful when thinking not about the differences between men and women, but about how we function as a species. Clearly, the rules that we once imagined defined our gender roles have been all but universally broken. Even the physical restrictions of sexual biology have been transcended.

This really all boils down to a matter of survival, our current world reflecting a billion years of adaptation and evolution.

I once read an interview with an inmate of Glasgow's infamous Barlinnie Prison Special Unit. I forget the gentleman's name, and cannot find it now, but he was serving a life sentence for a brutal murder and was a contemporary of Jimmy Boyle.

He quite correctly pointed out that the kind of crime he committed would have been seen as an act of heroism in a different setting and historical era. He described himself as a butcher, which he was, but said that his blood lust (literally, the psychopathic need to kill) would have been greatly valued on the million battlefields of history.

He imagined himself as a great warrior, hacking and hewing lesser men with a gigantic blade, heedless of his own fate, impervious to pain. His heroes may have been the Berserker Vikings, driven to frenzy by the consumption of fly agaric mushrooms to the point where the only thing that made sense was to kill and kill until the point of exhaustion.

These days war is a much more hypocritical affair, at least as far as we more "civilised" people are concerned. We take great pains to demonstrate how honourable we are at the same time as water-boarding potentially innocent men and bombing women and children.

But the Barlinnie Butcher's point was that there must have been times when the survival of a community depended utterly on the ability of one or two crazy eyed individuals to enter the killing frenzy. So, our existence relied on there being people of that kind, or at least what we are today is in part defined by such people.

We must have needed musicians too, else why have them? And poets and bards, men and women who were able to remember and repeat stories, creating a orally founded culture that is all but gone in this age of digital record keeping. Who needs to remember anything these days?

Our traditions are ever changing. Our needs ever evolving. Just as the dog is no longer capable of being the wolf, humans have grown softer. We have adapted to weed out the brutal killers. We lock the psychopaths behind bars, or we medicate them to the point of subservience. Or we promote them to be captains of industry (where the damage they do can be to some extent ameliorated by the organs of bureaucracy).

Civilisation is not a veneer. The dog is much more than three solid meals removed from the ruthless carnivore of old. We humans have been changed and continue to be changed by our developing experience as hive creatures. As more and more of us choose (or are compelled) to live in cities, those of us who value individual freedom above the collective effort are slowly, slowly becoming less and less necessary for the survival of the species.

We still need our dreamers and do-ers, our carers and sharers, but the further on we go, the more we communicate, the more we live in one anothers' pockets, the less barbarous we become, the more homogenous we need to be.

It looks like the future will be painted in pleasing shades of grey - grey men and women, transgenderised to be more or less the same.

But should that worry us? Must we mourn the passing of the barbarous days of our youth, and remark wistfully on the blandly endless tundra that leads on to our ascension to something less fiery?

I don't think so. The future will be what it must be, and men and women and children will do what they need to do to survive. If it turns out that by smoothing away our rough edges, by becoming more like one another, the hive stands to thrive, then that's the way it will be.

Perhaps even the urge to long for the past will disappear as we are required more and more to consider what is coming rather than what has been. Will nature take us down such a cul-de-sac, sacrificing diversity for the sake of a deeper focus on the most likely path to success?

In truth I simply don't know, and I suspect there isn't anyone who does. Our viewpoint is limited, our experience of life and nature is subjective, and all the span of years that humans have existed is no more than an invisible wink of light in the eternal beige of the universe.

Korg DS-10 Synth for Nintendo DS

2009-02-06T10:48:00.003Z

This little software synth for the DS is gathering huge plaudits everywhere, and many five star reviews on amazon here in the UK and in the USA. Whilst the features on offer are quite capable of allowing DS owning musicians to compose on the move, the sound quality of the DS simply cannot live up to the hype.

Let's not get carried away.

Details on the technical capabilities if the DS sound architecture are sketchy (which is another way of saying I can't find out!) but clearly what you are getting here is NOT pro grade sound quality (44.1kHz/16bit). If you plan to use the sounds generated by the DS-10 in anything serious (whether live or recorded) be prepared for some pleasant sounding lo-fi digital grunge. The filters are especially prone to sample limitation grittiness.

[And for the record, the MS-10 synthesiser had a single oscillator, whilst the DS-10 is built around two dual oscillator synths and has drums as well as analogue sequencers, effects and the Kaos pad. The MS-20 was the model that had two oscillators, and neither synth had any of the bells and whistles of the DS-10, so the DS-10 really should be called the "DS-20x2+".

But let's not get picky!]

Having worked closely over many years with an MS-20 back in the day I can tell you that the DS-10 neither sounds like it nor functions like it (although the graphics and semi-modular design are an obvious reference point). This new version stays in tune for a start, but it lacks the bite and presence that the original had, thanks to the sub-pro digital processing engine.

There's lots of fun to be had here, and for us old crusties a certain amount of shaking-of-head-and-stroking-of-chin type reminiscences. Undoubtedly, what has been achieved here is only just short of being a miracle, but I cannot help feeling that with just a little extra effort more might have been done to make this a seriously useful tool.

Although individual sequences can be linked together to make longer arrangements, each sequence is limited to 16 equal steps, so fancy 32nd trills and triplets aren't easy to achieve. Given that the modelling on offer is determinedly retro the decision to stick solidly with the original design of the analogue sequencers of the 1970's does limit the possibilities.

There is no means of exporting or synchronising the output with anything other than other DS-10s. Could some use not have been made of the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection to send MIDI information to a compatible PC host?

All that aside this is still a fantastic toy for serious musicians and a tool of sorts should the inevitable compromises be acceptable to you, and it does point the way towards the future of fully specified portable professional digital audio. If the DS can do this, what will tomorrow's "next gen" technology be capable of delivering?

Seeds of Earth - Book One of Humanity's Fire

2008-12-30T12:47:00.002Z

[Review based on bound proof from Orbit]

Michael Cobley is slowly and surely becoming a name of consequence in the world of fantasy and science fiction. If his Shadowkings fantasy trilogy was a genre-busting boulder set against the flow of the river of drivel that passes for meaningful work in the realm of speculative and other-worldly fiction, then Seeds of Earth is the second buttress of what is beginning to look very much like the Hoover Dam.

Trilogies abound these days, simple economic realities dictating that an investment is more likely to pay off over three related works than three unrelated works. The idea is that readers of book one will be ensnared and go on to shell out the readies for books two and three.

So, Cobley's latest work is the beginning of yet another trilogy, but that's where significant comparisons with the norms of the form begin to break down.

Yes, there are big spaceships. Yes, there are weird aliens. Yes, there are space-operatic-epic-aeon-spanning themes in abundance, but these are given a fresh breath of life in this author's hands, because for all the grandeur and scale of the backdrop, it is in the minutiae of the details that the reader will find most pleasure.

It's the way the world is created as a tapestry of tiny pearls of beauty that makes the work connect, rather than the overblown and impersonal scope of galaxy straddling empires blasting one another with planet killing machines. This is not so much about visceral excitement as it is about being in the moment.

The intricacies of grand scale galactic politics are sketched with just enough intricacy to engage, but not enough to smother the reader. The cast of bizarre but functional bit players of all morphological configurations provides the kind of living backdrop that makes the locations come alive - the forests of Segrana and Darien are deep and dark; the space stations and mining ships bristle with cultural and technical references; the human colony is a living, breathing world of mountains, air machines and towns and lakes.

The characters are lightly drawn, often passive, which is where Cobley's Dam really begins to alter the flow. Standard western narrative dictates that the characters should be proactive, doers rather than watchers, that the story should move solely and only through them.

This is essentially a requirement of the visual medium that drives almost all modern narrative thinking. We need to SEE rather than be told, and since everyone these days writes with the visual medium very much in mind (oh, Star Wars what have you done to us?) what you inevitably get is the same tired old protagonist/antagonist, peril/rescue, white hat/black hat plot progression. But Cobley is daring here to set those conventions aside, to use the space to create a narrative of an entirely more comprehensible sort.

Where a conventional author would place the smoking gun in the hands of Character Number One, and have him pursued by Character Number Two, Cobley puts the gun in the bushes and has Character Number Two discover the abandoned weapon along with the impression made in the vegetation by the prone body of Character Number One as he took the shot. So, our attention is focussed not so much on the plot (who shot who or why, although of course that is still there) but on the essential gut wrenching alien-ness of the place where all this is happening.

Cobley's characters are caught up in events rather than being at their core, so the usual kind of vapid discussion of motivation can be left to one side to make room for the artistry of a more original and painstaking creation. Perhaps the best compliment I could make at this point would be to suggest that it would be exceedingly difficult to imagine Seeds of Earth as a Hollywood movie.

Thank God!

As a consequence of Cobley's apparent distrust of the conventions of modern narrative this may not be a book that everyone "gets". But it will appeal greatly to those who have grown tired of the endless cues of villains and heroes who have been playing out the same battles now for half a century or more. It's time there was something different, some better means of exploring the grand themes of being human.

At its best science fiction lets us test our humanity against the fantastically plausible, to imagine how we would survive in circumstances that could only exist on the edges of imagination. Cobley takes us to that edge with apparent ease, and shows us not what we expect, but what we don't expect.

He shows us people who are not for the most part world shakers, but who are swept along with the tide (just as any of us would be). The flawed nature of humanity, and its potential for transcendence, is revealed through the very real experiences of people very much like us.

The grand themes are there, the narrative is kept flowing, but the strength of this work, the insight that Cobley brings, is that heroes are boring, that characters who grab the narrative by the scruff of the neck and move it along by force of will make the story all about them. Cobley takes the familiar hierarchical structure of modern story telling (primary character, supporting characters, background colour, overarching plot) and flattens it to bring all of the elements into equal focus, allowing us to see things from an entirely new and refreshing perspective.

This deserves to be the beginning of something special, a resurgence of literature over plot, of imagination over screenplay. It's an enjoyable, original, beautifully written story, and I can't wait for the series to continue.

The Mystery Of The Mystery Is The Mystery Of the Mystery

2008-12-29T13:59:00.001Z

Science abhors a vacuum more than nature does. There are two types of vacuum in science - lack of knowledge, and the limits of human understanding.

I know I risk becoming the focus of the wrath of every true scientist who reads this, and I know they will take great joy in pointing out every little flaw in my arguments, seeking to render them impotent under the utterly objective laser light of the scientific method, but it seems to me that science cannot abide and is incapable of encompassing a limit to what can be known or understood. As far as I can tell, this is where much of the popular dissatisfaction with science comes from, and it is perhaps aptly illustrated by the way that science promotes some of its more outlandish conclusions.

The paradox that I enjoy most, and the one I think is most illustrative of the limitation of the scientific method, is how the role of the observer is revealed when examining quantum entanglement. The paradox arises because quantum theory shows how the fact of observation changes the state of what is observed.

As far as I can tell, it goes like this.

You can't see light. You can detect the impact of photons on your retina, which creates signals that your brain can interpret, but paradoxically light itself is invisible. You don't see photons travelling from place to place from a distance the way you can see a stream of traffic on a highway, you only see photons when they hit your eye, or know about them when an instrument you have created captures them.

The act of detecting or seeing a photon destroys the photon, and it's the same for any particle or bundle of energy or wave front. Regardless of the behaviour of the little bundle of space time, detecting it destroys it.

So, what happens when those little invisible bundles interact? Let's say that two of them do have an interaction, and let's say that they interact in some knowable way by means of a behaviour that can later be measured. We might refer to the behaviour as "spin" - always bearing in mind that in the weird world of the particle "spin" isn’t anything we'd easily be able to translate into something we'd recognise in our classical Newtonian world .

Since we are dealing with quanta whose properties are known, we can say that we know the total "spin" state that must exist between both particles. In effect, we can call this total spin state "zero", and we know that one of the particles will have a spin state of "up" and the other will have a spin state of "down", but we don't know which is which, because we cannot see these quanta from a distance. The idea is that if we measure the spin state of one of the particles we instantly know the spin state of the other regardless of how far apart they are.

It's this supposed instantaneous transmission of the state of knowing that causes problems. If nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, then how is such information relayed instantaneously?

I don't know why at this point I always imagine a blind man chopping oranges. I imagine that he has a device that chops oranges more or less in half, but being blind he cannot tell exactly how the orange has been chopped. Is each half exactly the same size? He has to weigh them to find out.

But what if he only has one half? If all oranges were the same, then by measuring the half he has he would be able to determine the weight of the other, regardless of its location. The un-weighed half might be headed out past Alpha Centauri at the speed of light, but that would not prevent the blind man from knowing instantaneously what it weighed once he had weighed the half he had to hand.

But where does the idea of instantaneous transmission come from? Why do some physicists insist that when dealing with particles the instantaneous transmission of information at faster than light speeds is a real phenomenon? It seems crazy to extrapolate a law of the universe from simple lack of knowing, but that is to misunderstand how science works and what scientists are actually saying here.

Firstly, as I said at the start science abhors a vacuum. There is no room in scientific thinking for lack of knowing.

Take the example of the oranges and the blind man. A scientist would quite rightly point out that the blind man was an exception, that most orange choppers would be sighted. He'd also point out that oranges are not all the same, so that no determination about one half could be made from an examination of the other, and that the whole point is that in the quantum world we are dealing not with metaphors but the way things really are.

When examining particles we are not blind where others see, it is a fundamental property of these particles that they cannot be observed remotely. It isn't that we are dysfunctional, it is that no consciousness (no matter how sophisticated) could observe a particle and leave it unchanged. In every instances observation changes the particle.

It is this state of unknowing that causes the problem. Science cannot deal with it. It's as if by peeling away the layers of the onion scientists arrive at the ultimate mystery of things, a point beyond which they cannot pass, and they simply refuse to accept it, manufacturing all kinds of unnecessary additional theories to explain what is fundamentally inexplicable.

Most objections to the ideas unleashed by quantum entanglement point out that the faster than light element is neither here nor there, and that such mythological constructs as quantum computers and teleportation devices cannot rely upon it since they require a classical means of expression to be made real.

For example, the idea that communications might take place at faster than light speeds requires one set of entangled particles to be removed physically from its counterpart at classical velocities as part of the communication mechanism, thereby negating the benefit of any instantaneous transmission.

It is not the act of measurement that creates the instantaneous transmission of data from one location to the other, it is the state of knowing that does it. I have no problem accepting that knowledge can travel at faster than light speeds, since knowledge is a theoretical-philosophical construct arising out of the functioning of intelligence. I wonder if it's only an illusion that wisdom moves at glacial speed?

As the great Taoist teachings tell us "That which is seen is not the un-seeable, that which is known is not the un-knowable."

My assumption is that there is a limit to what can be known, and I believe we find it at the quantum level. The fact is that it is the act of observation, the enquiry leading to measurement, that makes the difference. Which puts the observer right at the centre of things, leading inevitably to the breakdown of the scientific method, which relies utterly on dispassionate objectivity removed from what is being observed.

I also believe that we find the limits of what can be known on the cosmological scale in the form of black holes, where the fabric of space and time warps into dimensional states that spiral into infinity, defying our mathematics. We find it too when we contemplate the big bang.

There are limits to what a human being can know, and to me these examples look like not just limitations on human understanding but limits on what can be known from the point of view of any being existing within a universe like ours.

Nothing we can imagine could escape a black hole or be sent into it to return and report back. Nothing we could build would be able to detect a particle and leave it intact and unchanged. Regardless of how big our telescopes get we will never look back beyond the big bang.

Maybe God can do these things, if he could be bothered. Maybe that's how he does what he does without leaving fingerprints behind. Maybe a miracle is just a shifting of the quantum state of whole bunch of particles. Maybe time and space are all one thing to God and he can intervene in the past, the present and the future all at once without us ever being aware of it.

Maybe he exists, maybe he doesn't. Maybe our brains are hard wired at the quantum level to use faith to access God. Maybe a prayer really is like a telephone call to the great beyond.

That's a whole lotta maybes!

I believe there is at least some evidence that what is going on in the universe and beyond is utterly inexplicable, and that there is no difference between the copper atom that makes your eye blue and the copper atom that transmits the electron that carries the data that illuminates the screen where you are reading these words.

All copper atoms that have ever existed anywhere are essentially the same, and whilst I wouldn't go so far as Rupert Sheldrake does with pushing his ideas of morphic resonance firmly into the classical and human realms, I'd support those ideas to the same degree as did physicist David Bohm, who had the startling intuition that understanding the universe was only possible when the whole was contemplated rather than the parts. [I love his ideas on the folded universe model.]

That there is a real connection between all things seems so obvious that I wonder why the fact isn't universally accepted. Perhaps it makes exploitation easier if you can somehow convince people that the surface differences between us (black skin/white skin, Judeo-Christian thinking/Islamic thinking, being rich/being poor) are in any real sense meaningful.

Perhaps there is a failure of science to accept the mystery in things. Will science ever reach the point where such an acceptance becomes part of the theory of everything? It seems to me that such a theory must incorporate the mystery, otherwise it will forever be merely a theory of almost everything.

Oh No, Not Another Shoot-'Em-Up

2008-11-27T14:23:00.003Z

There is no chance in this world that I will ever be asked to design a computer game, but I'd love to get the opportunity. There have been many times in my life when I have lived and breathed games. I'm going through one of those times right now.

It all started a few weeks ago when I suddenly realised that the Xbox 360 console was now so cheap that if I traded in all my other old consoles and games I'd probably have enough to get one. Since then I have got myself the console, a 20gb hard disk, an extra controller, a VGA switching box to let me put the output through my PC monitor, and a whole bunch of (mostly) cheap games.

I've never been a fan of console first person shooters (FPS). The control mechanism just never seems to work the way it should, especially compared to the trusty old mouse/keyboard combo on the PC (my most consistent gaming platform), so it came as something of a shock when I found myself absolutely loving Halo 3, one of the most successful shooting games of all time. I found the use of the joypad to be no trouble at all.

This was surprising, and it has opened up a whole slew of similar games for my consideration. I'm looking forward to The Darkness, Time Shift and Perfect Dark Zero, amongst others.

But I must admit that slaughtering unrelenting waves of virtual aliens does eventually begin to pale, no matter how well designed the game is, and there were times in Halo 3 where the pace really began to tell. In the end I adopted a strategy of "only shoot when necessary", which left large parts of some levels filled with confused and aimless baddies, denied their one chance of glory.

Halo 3 allows these canon fodder a degree of personality usually lacking in such games. I guess Half Life 2 raised the bar here, and made it possible to add a little narrative depth to even the cardboard cut-out bad guys. They call the player character "demon", which makes perfect sense considering that from their point of view the player has destroyed entire worlds of their brethren.

But I couldn't help but wonder if there might be another way of doing things.

A few days ago I started playing Tomb Raider Underworld, a very different kind of game, sometimes disparagingly referred to by hard core gamers as " a walk-about-'em-up". Would it were so!

Here we are exploring ruins, but for some reason we have to kill Krakens and tigers and even gun toting hoodlums, a part of the game play that completely destroys the wander-about-gawping-at-the-scenery awesomeness of the main part of the game.

I've been playing Tomb Raider since the first game came out in 1996. Ridiculously primitive by modern standards, that game set in motion a whole genre of uber-platform games that continues today not only with Lara Croft but with that Prince of Persia guy and the Drake's Fortune fella over on the fading PS3.

I started thinking about the Half Life series, and I realised that my favourite moments were when non-player characters reacted to the Gordon Freeman character I played based on his previous actions in the game. So, I would fight my way through hordes of enemies and arrive at the next safe zone, where the other characters in the game would "oooh" and "awwww" about my various heroic exploits. How rewarding it was when the beautiful polygon generated lady of the piece fluttered her eyes at me beguilingly. Did I suddenly want to destroy my enemies utterly to save here lovingly rendered ass? You betcha!

So, there's a real power emerging here in what we now call "computer games" that has something to do with player created narrative. Oblivion does it too, and the Fable games make a brave stab.

Then it suddenly hit me. The best bits of these games are those where the character doesn't actually do anything, but where the created world reacts to the character.

So, that got me thinking of a new kind of game where the character doesn't do a single thing. No shooting, no leaping from ledge to ledge, no pulling levers or talking endlessly to get clues as to what to do next.

Then I thought about the character that might drive such a game, and what he or she would have to be in order to have the game world revolve around them. A President? A rock star?

Like a bolt from the blue, it came to me. The game would be called -

PROPHET OF SILENCE

You're a prophet. You turn up, stuff happens. You NEVER speak. The whole game world knows what and who you are, and all you have to do is trigger the story elements by wandering around from amazingly awesome location to amazingly awesome location. The story unfolds without you having to take direct action.

(This would probably have to be the kind of "realistic" open ended world that the likes of Oblivion has, with day and night cycles and weather patterns.)

Let's say you turn up at a village. Arrive at night and a sympathiser who works during the day hides you in his cellar. Turn up during daylight hours (when he's not available) and you trigger a riot. The circumstance of your arrival triggers a different experience, which then has a knock on effect in the game.

Of course, the whole thing would have to be scripted. The feeling of riding the narrative would be entirely illusory, but the way it unfolded would be unique for every player. I'd imagine there would be something like fifty story "nodes" each with at least two outcomes, making for potentially thousands of individual completion routes, and satisfactory multiple endings (oft quoted as the long sought Holy Grail of gaming).

I think this kind of open ended yet tailored experience will only be possible when player action is removed. If the player never directly affects the world then the design doesn't have to account for all the ways the player might interact.

So, like millions of fan-boys the world over, I think I'd make a pretty good games designer. If you are a developer and want to sign me up on the spot I'd ask that you negotiate terms with the imaginary manager who manages my imaginary music career.

[Can an imaginary manager manage an imaginary menagerie? Say it fast.]

Brand, Ross, Sachs, Baillie & the BBC

2008-10-29T12:18:00.003Z

The BBC is an august and venerable broadcasting institution, upholding traditional values of quality and excellence, recognised the world over as a leader in its field.

Or, it is a cesspit of anti-establishment left wing activists, plotting to overthrow modern democracy and replace it with a Marxist state.

Both views are currently held by concerned politicians within the Houses of Parliament and by various organs of the press in the UK. There are those who see the state funding of the BBC as a glorious affirmation of the success of the same middle ground socialist principles that underpin the continued existence of the national Health Service.

And there are those who see the licence fee as an abomination akin to paying Satan to run a Sunday school.

[There may also be a degree of avarice here, since the Beeb is protected by statute from the worst effects of any economic downturn by virtue of the tax on viewing, whereas the "free to air" channels such as ITV, Channel 4 and Five are not. But that's an argument for another day, and if you can track it down Stephen Fry's podcast on this subject is well worth a listen.]

Every so often some unsuspecting celebrity or DJ or talk show host will blunder into controversy by acting in a way that allows the BBC's opponents to scream for blood. The ridiculous irony is that those same opponents who bay for the death sentence cite as justification for their righteous outrage the very broadcasting standards they would love to see ripped up!

This week it was poor little loveable Russell Brand's turn. Americans may remember Russell as the guy who recently ruined their annual MTV awards, not least by calling George W. Bush a retard. Apparently, if Americans call their President a retard it barely provokes more than a resigned shrug. But if a damned foreigner does it there is a outbreak of outrage!

Russell is a self styled Messianic Lord Byron figure, a reformed drug addict, whose stand up routine, weekly BBC Radio 2 show and every television appearance is peppered with references to his sexual conquests. How much of this is simply the portrayal of an invented character, and how much is verbatim reportage of a real life isn't clear. As with any public examination of celebrity the truth probably lies somewhere between.

One of Brand's much publicised (at least by him) conquests is Georgina Baillie member of the exotic dance group Satanic Sluts, who appears to have been until recently one of Brand's "regulars". Possibly brand would not have mentioned her on his radio show had it not been for the deliciously provocative happenstance that Baillie is the granddaughter of one of Britain's best known character actors Andrew Sachs, the guy who played the hapless Spanish waiter in John Cleese's iconic comedy series Fawlty Towers.

Regular listeners to Brand's show would have been well aware of Baillie's relationship with Brand and of her connection to Sachs before the now infamous broadcast of 18th October.

Brand's studio guest that evening was another infant terrible, the somewhat sleazy but very accomplished broadcaster Jonathon Ross, one of a handful of extremely highly paid BBC stalwarts. Ross is not averse to ridiculing or barracking the guests on his BBC One TV talk show on Friday nights, and is a long time friend of Brand's, having assisted the development of Brand's career more than once.

The show was not live. Brand made it clear in his intro that proceedings were being taped, and it's reasonable to presume that he would have expected a degree of protection should any lines of decorum be stepped over or any potentially litigious activity take place. It is standard procedure for satirical and edgy radio and TV output to be heavily edited for reasons of protecting the participants from themselves.

The show featured the usual mix of music and bawdy banter. It was highly entertaining if you like that sort of thing, probably entirely offensive (or puerile at best) if you don't.

I particularly enjoyed Ross' depiction of a delusional Brand-As-Christ examining himself in his bedroom mirror dressed only in a pair of underpants he had cherished since he was a little boy. Ross cut to the heart of Brand as a closet misogynist, describing him as a clown, and saying his recent Hollywood debut wasn't worthy of being considered acting since he only played himself. This was particularly cutting since one of Ross' many BBC jobs is as resident film critic.

And so it went on, each of them trying to go one step further than the other.

Things took a slightly bizarre turn when it was revealed that one of the evening's telephone guests would be none other than Andrew Sachs himself, who it was said was unaware that Brand and granddaughter Georgina Baillie had allegedly enjoyed a liaison.

Described by Brand as "the elephant in the room" was the fact that as far as Brand knew Sachs was unaware of what his granddaughter had been up to. Brand advised Ross not to mention anything to Sachs about his tryst with Baillie, but the set up would hardly have been worth the entry fee had the matter not been revealed to Sachs. One might even have suspected that Sachs might have been in on the "gag".

After all, he is a septuagenarian man of the world, and his granddaughter is a grown woman who dances exotically for a living in a group called The Satanic Sluts. It's hardly a stretch to imagine that she might be sexually active, or that an apparent sex addict like her friend Brand might have been involved with her. As Ross said, "Russell, most of us just assume that you've slept with our granddaughters." The implication being that Sachs would hardly be surprised by the revelation.

The anarchy descended into farce when instead of Sachs appearing on the line at the appointed time it was the BT ring tone and his answer machine that took centre stage. An obvious cock-up of scheduling, some wag behind the scenes had decided to press ahead with the "interview" even though the interviewee was absent.

Brand made a good stab at making the best of things, gamely proceeding to interview the answer machine. It was during this bizarre segment of the show where the wheels came off the wagon.

As Brand did what he could with an absent guest Ross blurted out loudly in the background, "He f**ked your granddaughter!"

From then on things went from bad to worse as Brand struggled to extract every drop of comedy juice from a fruit that was long overripe. Hyperbole flipped over into hysteria, with each of the offenders attempting variously to repair the damage and make the most mileage they could by over egging the pudding.

Three more calls were made to the answer machine, the inescapable comedy logic being that the only way to save the situation was to repeat the mistakes of the past. And so Andrew Sachs would have returned to his home to find two laddish celebrities monopolising his answer machine. Quite what he must have made of the out of context message we cannot quite know.

It was (regardless of any subsequent discomfort on Sachs' part) comedy gold of the sort only witnessed once in a generation. Yes, it was shocking, but isn't that the point of such comedy? Why have it otherwise? The critics, most of whom have not heard the show, have the same mind set that would happily have erased Monty Python, the Young Ones, Not The Nine O'Clock News, Chris Morris and every other radically confrontational comedy turn since the end of World War 2.

What happened next would depend entirely on Sachs' reaction to the show. That the newspapers and media were eventually able to extract a degree of grumpiness from the veteran actor was all they needed to go to town on the soon to be infamous duo - the now evil and disgusting Brand and Ross.

They were accused of leaving obscene prank calls on a stranger's answer machine. As well as demands that Ross and Brand be sacked on the spot, there were calls for a public enquiry into the way the BBC does business. OFCOM, the regulatory body, were urged to investigate and even the Prime Minister (never one to milk a populist issue) stepped in to call their behaviour unacceptable.

Georgina Baillie, previously a nobody, now had the infamous Max Clifford on board as publicist. She interrupted her European tour of exotic dancing venues and jetted back home, apparently too upset to continue, except to speak to the Sun newspaper of course. Brand, previously her number one buddy on her facebook page, was now someone she would never speak to again.

Brand and Ross apologised to Sachs. Sachs accepted the apology and decided he wanted to put the whole thing behind him, but the newspapers persisted for a second day, clamouring to wield the axe of righteous indignation, quoting sections of the "disgusting" radio show out of context, piling on the pressure.

Of course, the primary beneficiaries of all of this are Brand, Ross, Sachs and Baillie, each of whom is now free to write their ticket. Brand's next tour will be a sell out. More people will tune in to Ross' talk show this Friday. Sachs may well find himself a spot in a celebrity torture show, and Baillie will sell her "sex romp secrets" to the highest bidder.

The BBC will spend a few hundred thousand pounds carrying out a "thorough investigation into the circumstances of what happened" and some unknown producer will be made a temporary scapegoat.

It's all highly entertaining, does nothing to presage the moral collapse of western civilisation, and just gives everyone a great excuse to have a right old traditional British ding-dong!

Get the timeline here.

The Gradual Epiphany of Peri Urban

2008-10-28T10:00:00.002Z

[By my reckoning this blog is read only by five of my friends (hello MRAC, DDHR, KRG, D'R and TG), and a few random passers by. So, I'm not exactly broadcasting to the world here.

Those five people I'm thinking of will know that for the last two years I've been obsessed by the topic of video sharing through web sites like YouTube, LiveVideo and now more recently VloggerHeads, and the majority of my readers (all three of you) will be thoroughly sick of the subject.

But I will beg their indulgence one more time, and if I end up speaking to the minority alone then so be it.]

I have suffered an epiphany, even though it has been a long drawn out gradual realisation rather than the blinding flash of revealed truth usually associated with the word. Can you have a gradual epiphany? Anyway, I've had whatever that thing is.

Sometimes I think we struggle with a problem, or a mental or moral or spiritual position, only to have the struggle resolved in the most unlikely way, from an entirely unexpected direction. In this case my gradual epiphany thing has been triggered from unrelated multiple directions.

VloggerHeads is a bold experiment that arose like a phoenix out of the ashes of the project that took me to San Francisco in February of this year. TheTropolis will probably never exist, but VloggerHeads clearly does, although I have very little to do with it these days.

It was Tom Guarriello and Paul Robinett who started the web site about three months ago, and it now has getting on for two thousand members. For a time I was a co-administrator of the site, but the several hundred emails per day threatened to entirely overwhelm me, and I had to stop for the sake of family, art and sanity.

That was something of a wrench, having been closely involved for so long in a development process that had led us to this point. But it was perhaps that decision that began the process of revelation.

Or maybe it was being in such close proximity to so many crazy people over at VloggerHeads. That might have had something to do with it. I began to look at myself through that lens and I didn't like what I saw.

My close friends will know that I can hold a very strong view one day and the exact opposite the next, so for me vlogging (the act of venting opinion to camera) was a stultifying experience. I often felt like I was skewering the butterfly of my soul to the pin board of controversy.

I was encouraged to vlog and skewer by people who have no talent other than the scary ability to eviscerate their own butterflies for the sake of attention, and for a long time I craved their approval. I deliberately mention no names here, but when a crazy person tells you that your dead butterfly is a beautiful thing you better run for the hills.

Actually, the really crazy thing is that I enjoyed vlogging for most of the time I did it. It was great to have people notice what I was saying and engage with my thoughts in an occasionally meaningful way, and out of that process I discovered a lot about myself and the world.

But every period of growth must be accompanied by an equivalent period of retrenchment, which is the phase I'm entering now.

Like millions of other tortured souls I am a devoutly creative person. I worship at the alter of my own craven god of creativity. I've made sacrifices. In fact, the alter is awash with the blood of dead opportunities cast aside in the pursuit of the ultimate expression of my self indulgence.

So what if I'm creative? The only measure that matters is whether I get paid to be creative, which I don't, so really all I'm doing is gratifying myself in the basest possible manner. Being creative is being human. It ain't special, but it's all I've got.

As I was pondering my vlogging future, trying to reconcile the need to vlog with my new found antipathy towards the form, I came across Xelander, an American actor living in London, and I began writing with his voice in my head.

He very graciously read one of my poems, and I suddenly realised that I had it within me to say anything I wanted to say on any subject that really mattered, and I could say it in a way that would let my butterfly continue to float. I didn't need to vlog when there was poetry and music in my heart!

Of course I can vlog any time I want to. It's only talking to a camera. There's no hardship in it. But to what end would I vlog? Where does it take me?

My dad has long been camera shy. I have tried many times to get him to appear in my videos with no success. In my guitar making videos he is a pair of hands. In videos about Lily playing in her grandfather's garden he is a pair of Wellington boots.

Quite what happened I do not know, but he quite suddenly began to take an interest in what I was doing on YouTube, and through that he found VloggerHeads, became a member and began making his own vlogs. He sits in his garden shed (the very same one that appears in many of my videos) and he talks to the camera.

He has become one of the crazy people, and they love him for it.

So, now I feel that I have passed the mantle of Urban vloggingness to its next great champion, and I no longer need to bother with it.

Vlogging is like swinging at the weekend, or being a radio ham, or collecting pen pals. If you are into it you think it will change the world, but most people just think you're bonkers. You can draw all the charts you like showing how early adopters always look crazy, and how eventually somewhere along the curve on the graph everyone gets on board as the technology becomes ubiquitous. But for every social innovation that follows the whole curve there are a hundred CB-Radio failures that never get over the initial crazy-fool hump.

Video sharing in some form or other will be an increasing part of the on-line lives of millions of people, but vlogging is for a hard core of crazy people who have a deep seated psychological need for the rewards it brings - micro fame, drama, attention, death threats et al.

I'm already crazy in so many ways. I no longer need the extra load that vlogging brings.

"Go peddle crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here."
Jack Nicholson, from the movie As Good As It Gets

Global Scaremongering

2008-10-10T10:11:00.001+01:00

Here we go again.

Today is World Health Day, and far from being a laudable attempt to deal with the chronic shortage of medical resources that is a daily fact of life in most countries, the World Health Organisation has decided that the emphasis of World Health Day this year should be on the terrifying effects of "climate change" on global health.

Have you ever wondered what happened to "global warming"? When did the threat switch from being the warming of the planet to the changing of the climate?

Well, the inconvenient truth, hidden from the general public by obfuscation and weasel talking by the great and the good (whose livings purely co-incidentally depend utterly on there being a problem to solve) is that for the last eight years there has been no warming.

Hence the need to change the emphasis away from actual warming to pseudo-warming or "change", as if there was 1) anything new in climate change, and 2) anything we could do about it.

So, now we have the lunacy of the WHO dedicating the significant resources of World Health Day to -

"catalyse public participation in the global campaign to protect health from the adverse effects of climate change"

This despite the fact that the very first bullet point of their press release says that World Health Day this year is supposed to be an opportunity for governments and concerned organisations to -

"establish links between climate change and health"

Excuse me?

Run that one by me again.

World Health day is being dedicated to raising awareness of and engaging the public in support of a problem that has not yet been proven to exist.

There are no "adverse effects" that we know of from which the WHO should feel obliged to protect us. Nor is it possible to raise public awareness of an issue that is yet to be researched, unless your aim is to generate the advance belief that there is a problem so that you can get funding. Scientists have mortgages to pay just like the rest of us.

That it took 80 "scientists" three days at an all expenses paid conference in sunny Spain to come up with this bullshit should surprise no-one.

Bad Apple?

2008-09-30T10:08:00.003+01:00

Having worked humungous amounts of overtime recently and having just received an unusually large pay packet (which means next year's holiday is already paid for) I decided that the pain of such hard work thoroughly justifies my getting a new toy.

When I DON'T have any money I frequently get "gadgetitis", the symptoms of which can only be relieved by getting the gadget in question. The sinister variant "guitar acquisition syndrome" is possibly even harder to deal with, the object of desire frequently being utterly unattainable (if anyone knows how I can get my hands on an Atkin acoustic for free, please comment here!)

But this time around my gadget desire was under control, and I was actually capable of making sane choices, which is almost unheard of for me.

Rather bizarrely the item that did eventually catch my eye and empty my wallet was the new iPod Classic. Normally of course I would not give anything manufactured by Apple brain room, let alone house room. Overpriced and under specified, a triumph of form over function, a toy for those with more money than sense - all sentiments that still ring true for many of Apple's products.

True, they are for the most part extremely beautifully designed, but for every iPhone there is a Mac Book Air thingy, where the idea of what could be takes precedence over what should be.

So, why the iPod Classic?

It's very simple. For the first time that I can remember this is an Apple product that beats the competition in terms of sheer value for money.

Apple? Value for money? In the same breath? Weird concept, isn't it?

With the iPod Classic there is no premium attached to the cachet of owning an Apple product. The simple fact is that if you want an MP3 player with a huge capacity (and not an oversized media player with a gigantic screen, TV out and video recording) there is no competition. None.

My basic music collection occupies nearly 30gb. Using my old 20gb player I was constantly juggling tracks on and off, bemoaning the fact that a certain track I had in mind wasn't available. Grrrrrr.

So, now I can have my WHOLE music collection as well as all my favourite YouTube videos on a single device.

It's an Apple, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad.

Acer Aspire 5920

2008-09-10T10:37:00.000+01:00

OK, I am only human, and I make mistakes. Sometimes my mistakes turn out to cost me money.

Like my new glasses. For years I've wanted to get back to the old round John Lennon glasses that I used to have as a young man. I think they suit me, and so I pushed the boat out a bit to buy an expensive frame by Shanghai Tang.

The frames were fine (to begin with anyway), but my optician is what we call in Scotland "a numptie". Three times I had the lenses back without real success, and now I realise that the frames are actually too small. I wondered why the sides of my head were sore. The legs were digging into my temples!

Big costly mistake. I'm now wearing my old glasses, the shape of which I detest.

Then there was my first foray into the world of the PC laptop, the Asus Eee 4G.

Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.

At first it was great to carry a tiny working version of XP around in my bag. I took great delight in playing with it at lunch time in our staff canteen. I had a number of games running on it that were great fun.

I bought another one for my wife, with XP pre-installed, and I managed to get them networked successfully. Everything was rosy.

That lasted for a few weeks, until my wife's Eee began to exhibit "out of memory" messages, this despite that fact that I had managed the XP environment to maximise the SSHD storage space.

It seemed to be a Windows update that was causing the problem. The update didn't have enough room to install, but had tried nevertheless. I offloaded every temp file I could find, made sure there was no swap file, switched off Windows Update etc etc. But even with the minimum number of programs installed it was clear that memory management was going to be a major issue.

Also, the tiny 7" screen is not suited to any kind of sustained use. Poking around on a web page was like playing one of those missing piece puzzles, and depending on the screen format it was possible to lose menu options off the bottom. There are several important little tweaking apps that you can use to get around all the various compatibility and scaling problems, but frankly it was all just becoming too much bother.

So, having committed to the path of laptoppery, and with my wife beginning to rely on being able to get internet access when I was using the main PC, I felt I had no choice but to take the mistake on the chin and spend more money to do things right.

Long story short - both Eee's went on ebay, and I bought an Acer Aspire 5920.

This thing is a regular laptop, with a good specification, oodles of storage and a lovely screen. It'll play and burn DVDs, and (most) games, and it is more or less a joy to use.

I actually like the Vista installation that came with it (Vista Home Premium), and even (after much faff) managed to get it linked to the internet and networking with the XP desktop upstairs.

I think that pretty soon the "ultra-portable" bubble will burst, or at least the Eee PC bubble will burst. Maybe we are learning what the absolute minimum specification for a portable PC actually is. I'd say that the Eee falls somewhere short.

Screen size is the primary consideration, and my feeling is that a 10" screen is about the minimum. The display must be able to support all the basic resolutions, something that the Eee 4G failed to do.

There has to be enough storage to run the OS with plenty left over. A minimum of 20gb, I'd suggest.

It has to be fast enough to zip through tasks at a pleasant rate without eating the battery alive. And the battery needs to last at least two and a half hours.

Frankly, the ultra-portability of the Eee was of only passing interest. What attracted me was the price. I was able to get two functioning XP portables for the price of one (albeit with a reduced feature set), and thereby solve two problems - my own need for portability and my wife's need for a second PC at home.

But as I have learned in the past, a false economy is a false economy.

I hope one day to learn from my mistakes, but expect to make a few more before that day.

The Chore That Is Spore

2008-09-08T14:29:00.003+01:00

OK, I've spent a couple of days falling asleep whilst waiting to be impressed by Will Wright's latest uberwerk. Ever since I saw a YouTube video of Robin Williams making a creature in a very early iteration of the Creature Creator I have been intrigued.

The premise of the game was breathtaking. Take a single celled creature all the way to the top of the galactic food chain. The reality is rather less interesting. Five genres of game stuffed into a new suit do not impress this hardened gamer.

There's a Pac-Man style intro that sees your little-bitty amoeba swimming about in a lovingly rendered pool of water, avoiding being eaten whilst eating the less evolved. This stage lasts less than half an hour, and there is precious little to do.

The problem is that even before you get to this tutorial stage you have already chosen your path by means of a menu option - Carnivore, Herbivore or Omnivore? Click.

But even worse, the creature you make then evolves to walk the land. So, you get some legs and other bits and pieces, but you can completely change the appearance and specifications of your creature. It might bear absolutely no resemblance to the thing that it evolved from, which kinda defeats the purpose of having an evolutionary path.

OK, you can't become a carnivore if you started as a herbivore, but even that seems like an arbitrary design decision. Anyway, you get to wander around collecting parts that you then use to evolve.

Collecting parts? Yeah, that's right, collect those parts, stick 'em onto your body. Just like the real thing. Not.

The Tribal Phase begins to see the relationship between you and your creature break down irrevocably and by the time you both "evolve" to the space age you have no contact at all with your creature. By that point his painstakingly assembled morphology is a long distant memory.

I don't get it.

This is a suite of five separate games tenuously linked by a cack handed evolution theme that doesn't really carry the narrative, of which there is precious little.

Like all Will Wright's games this is a sandbox, but it's a sandbox with precious few toys on board. Where is the interaction with all the other players around the world? I can see creatures made by other players, and I presume they can see mine, but to what end? The parameters of the creation of creatures means that no-one is going to be able to design a super-creature that the world envies. Every creature is more or less like every other creature.

This game is intolerably shallow, with the best part being the creature creator previously available to the gullible (like me) for a separate fee. Create your wee creature, set him loose and watch him eat things.

Yaaaaaaawn. Wake me up when something happens………

Shakespeare Burns

2008-09-08T10:59:00.004+01:00

When I was at school they made me learn the poetry of Shakespeare and Robert Burns. We studied Hamlet, MacBeth and The Merchant of Venice, and as a small boy I had to memorise then stand up before the class and recite Burns' "Ode To A Mouse"

"Wee courin' timorous beastie,
Oh, what a panic is in thy breastie….."

When it came to Shakespeare, it was very much a case of, which of the Bard's plays are they going to torture us with this year?

I ended up hating the imposition of classical culture of any sort onto modern day idioms. In the modern era there are works of equal value to the classics being written right now. A book like "The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time" is more relevant to now than anything Shakespeare or Burns wrote, and you don't need to study for a year and examine wreathes of educational precedent to understand the words you are reading.

Study it by all means, but do so in the knowledge that the lessons learned do not have to be filtered through academic interpretation or historical context. Put those classic texts in the history class by all means, but leave them out of our modern culture.

My father had a double volume of the complete works of Shakespeare, two huge tomes that inspired nothing but cold sweats in my teenage dreamer's heart. When I was learning Hamlet he would open the pages and find the play there, and attempt to engage my interest.

But I was reading Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and Clifford D. Simak. The incredible beauty and poetry within those writers' works, the immediacy of the ideas, ideas that were extrapolations from a murky present to an explicable future, that was where I wanted my head to be, not stuck in the drudgery and gloom of the Elizabethan era, where (my teachers gleefully informed me) people stank and died young.

The past has value to the present and informs the future. To catch a ball you need to know where it is and how fast it's going, but to snatch it from the air you need to see at least part of the trajectory. So it is with culture.

To get perspective, to understand what's happening now, we need the past, we need the Greek plays, we need Burns and we need Shakespeare and the Bible and the Koran, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Never let this huge archive of material be lost.

But never force it unwillingly on the present at the expense of what is relevant and happening now.

Do not plough millions of pounds of funding into the Royal Shakespeare Company. If the thing cannot survive by dint of its commercial appeal then the question has to be asked, where is its value? Where is its appeal? Better to spend those millions encouraging new writers and artists than glorifying long dead ones.

There is an implicit fear that without this kind of funding (opera and ballet are similarly patronised, often by the taxpayer without appropriate consents) something wonderful would be lost, but if it is truly wonderful then it can never be lost. New artisans must necessarily build upon the past, rebuilding it and shaping it anew. They are free to assemble all the wisdoms of the byegone ages and bring them to us with the added weight of unambiguous relevance to our modern lives.

Do not ask the current generation to labour under the weight of the past. If all we ever do is judge contemporary expressions against the very best that there has ever been then not only will we always find our present somewhat dull and uninspiring, we will leave no glittering legacy of our own for future generations.

Our descendants will look back at us and ask why we had no Shakespeare or Burns, when of course we did, but we just didn't value them as such. We risk losing the present by imposing the past.

Re: Re: Re: I Think We Should... (song)

2008-08-16T03:41:00.001+01:00

The very amazing Stephanie singing our song.

Remuneration vs Renumeration

2008-08-15T14:29:00.002+01:00

I'm not sure how many folks stumble across this blog, but a few of you have been asking questions and making suggestions about [my employer], implying that I should make more of the opportunities available.

Let me explain why I don't by means of a simple example.

About ten years ago I was involved in a project which meant I was dealing with a group of consultants who came in to do what consultants do - tell us how great we are, but how much greater we could be if only we'd listen to them.

I was the most junior member of the team, sitting alongside my departmental manager and several mid grade people. We were discussing motivation, and how managers can act to engage with their people on a level they understand and appreciate.

The consultant, a very nice man named Jim (who later turned out to have a big influence in my life), asked my boss (let's call him Arnold) what he would do for a guy who "went the extra mile" for the organisation.

Arnold gave Jim a blank look.

Jim pressed on. Say, he said, that Peri here stays late one day to help a customer and everything goes well, the customer is happy and the business has come out of it well. How do you reward Peri?

Arnold squirmed a bit and said that he would make sure that Peri knew he had done a good job.

Jim asked, how?

Arnold said that if he saw Peri in the corridor he'd mention how much he appreciated what he'd done, and that if the matter warranted it he'd call Peri to his room and have a chat.

Jim looked perplexed. "No, he said, that's not what I mean."

Then he tried another tack.

"What is your remuneration budget?"

Another blank look from Arnold. "Renumeration?"

"Yeah, when you need to reward someone, what's your budget?"

By this time I was grinning like an idiot at Arnold's discomfort (which might explain why several weeks later Arnold shat on my head from a great height when he had an opportunity to do me a favour. But anyway…..)

Arnold began to explain that in the civil service the idea of paid renumeration (he kept saying it wrong, which only added extra millimetres to my grin) was against auditing rules.

Jim actually had to sit down. He was flabbergasted. "But how would you reward Peri? He's stayed late, missed his evening meal with his wife and family. How do you make it up to Peri for the inconvenience?"

"Well, Peri can spend the flexi-time he gained another day and go home early."

"But that's not the point. Peri had planned to go home for dinner, but he stayed to help you out and had to grab a Big Mac on the way home. The dinner his wife made him was wasted and his young child was in bed asleep by the time he got in, which meant that Peri never saw his child that day. He can't make that up some other time!"

I wanted to leap up and applaud! At last, here was someone who understood what it was like to be a grunt on the "shop floor". I had been royally shafted more than once by penny pinching, petty managers who had refused to honour my legitimate claims for time or expenses when "going that extra mile".

Arnold had no budget to reward staff and argued that the whole idea was ridiculous. He was red in the face, angry and uncomfortable. The very thought that managers would ever be put in the position of having to administer what he insisted in calling a "renumeration" budget was so far off the scale of his experience that he simply could not comprehend it.

No Christmas bonuses at [my employer]. No gifts from a grateful boss. No free lunches.

In a blustering attempt to demonstrate how stupid the whole idea of employee rewards was Arnold flung the question back at Jim. "Well, what would YOU do to reward Peri?"

No doubt Arnold was imagining all kinds of questionable financial rewards that the civil service auditors would leap upon as evidence of incipient corruption at [my employer].

Jim looked genuinely shocked that Arnold was completely unable to grasp the concept.

He shook his head and said, "Well, this happened to me on a regular basis at [his former employer], and it was never a problem for me. I had a budget of a couple of thousand per year" - Arnold went purple - "and in this case for Peri I'd send some nice flowers to Peri's wife with a nice note apologising for keeping him late, and I would probably get Peri and his wife a couple of vouchers for a slap up meal at a local restaurant."

Arnold's mouth fell open, and he ended the conversation by saying, "That's not the way we do things here."

Which was, and continues to be, the truth.

What Do I Believe?

2008-08-12T12:31:00.002+01:00

I was brought up as an atheist. My parents never took me to church, and as a family we never knew anyone who went to church, other than to indulge in the various rituals associated with birth, death and marriage, for which there are only unsatisfactory alternatives.

Having said that, my grandmother on my father's side was very spiritual and she drifted in and out of various religions. She was a choir mistress and played organ at several churches in her younger days, but I never saw her go to church and I certainly never went with her.

My father got his atheism from his father, who said that this life was all there was and that the belief in anything beyond was superstition.

Last time I was in a church was for my niece's Christening, and she's now four. We left half way through the ceremony because my wife needed some air, and we wandered the streets for an hour or so rather than go back in.

The average age of the congregation was about 65 or 70, and the numbers had been doubled that Sunday by the presence of my wife's family, who had gathered in force to celebrate the birth of their latest member and offer her soul to the immortal keeping of Jesus. I suppose. The exact details of what was being contracted were a little beyond me. All sorts of obligations relating to God-parenthood were undertaken, none of which will ever be taken up.

Having no background upon which to found any belief in anything, I had to find my own way, and I did it by browsing through the Bible and any other religious or mystical texts I could get my hands on, as well as books about quantum physics and relativity. I took drugs and read about other peoples' drug experiences, listened to music whilst stoned, all in the search for that connection with something else, something greater that could be quantified in human terms.

I have never had an experience that could not be explained by prosaic means. The functioning of the human mind is utterly mysterious, even to our most gifted neurologists and psychologists. Oh sure, the know more than you and I about the nuts and bolts, but their insights still just scratch the surface of what human experience consists of.

The world does seem like a miraculous place, and so it makes perfect sense to me that people would believe it to have been invented by a miraculous and divine process. Sometimes it appears that our prayers are answered, and so it is comforting to believe that there is an agency that listens.

But I never saw a miracle (other than the one that's all around me all the time), nor has God ever talked directly to me.

When I get out into the wilderness, maybe by the ocean or in an ancient forest, I do feel something (although I'd hesitate to name it). It's a kind of nervous tickling in the stomach, accompanied by a sense of almost infinite possibility. I could easily characterise it as the spirit of God moving within me, guiding, showing me what might be.

In times of pain or hardship, and once or twice on behalf of others who might be comforted by it, I have prayed. I haven't kept a log of my success rate, but the law of averages tells me that some of my prayers are bound to have "lucked out".

I am angered by the likes of Richard Dawkins, the guy who wrote The God Delusion, because he offers only a rational scientific analysis of irrational belief in the supernatural. I don't see how science has anything to say about God, any more than religion has anything to say about science.

Opponents of religion point to wars and atrocities committed in the name of particular theistic doctrines, from the Crusades to Iraq, as if they were some kind of evidence of the failure of religion, never recognising that wars are always about power and influence, and that religious groups who do not compete for resources and wealth never go to war.

I don't feel the need to declare a belief. I am close to being an agnostic, yet I take what I call a post-rational view of faith.

In essence, I have no problem with any belief regardless of how weird it may be. I am quite happy to admit that others feel the presence of God where I do not. Everyone is free to interpret their own experience however they see fit, drawing upon or rejecting cultural influences as they will. As Lennon once said - whatever gets you through the night, it's all right, it's all right.

I don't appreciate being lectured on theistic matters. I probably know more about the subject than most who adhere to a singular dogma. But I understand why people are driven to do it.

I have enormous respect for anyone who has at his or her heart a respect for humanity that accepts all flavours of belief, and I can happily debate the matter with anyone who is kind and loving in their dealings with other people. In my experience that accounts for almost everyone.

But don't tell me that God doesn't exist, or that he does, with that anger and bitterness in your voice. The truth is that you have no means of persuading me one way or the other, and many better men and women than you have tried. I'm talking about the prophets and philosophers of history here, not just some bloke down the pub.

Why pray if you have no belief that your prayers will be heard?

And here we come to the crux of the matter.

My belief is founded upon the acceptance that we can never know for sure. That's agnosticism. But further than that I believe that it makes no sense not to act as though there is a divine agency out there.

This is a logical position to take. In my view the divine agency is unlikely to distinguish on the basis of belief. It seems that an agency that exists outside the realm of our universe could hardly care about wavering human faith, which most likely finds its expression in (and is founded upon) cultural norms and dogmas that seem to me to have little to do with a supernatural force and everything to do with the way humans like to do business.

Are the denizens of an artificial intelligence program aware of the programmer or the external world? If given the intelligence to examine their artificially created world could they make sense of it? Would they even glimpse the greater truth?

I don't think they would, and I don't think we can. Our imaginations are stretched to the limit by what we see around us. Creation looks like a big bang, and maybe it is, but we struggle to see beyond that into any kind of underlying mechanism.

I believe that the universe is something like a program, but whether or not there is a programmer out there isn't clear to me. At the very least his existence is inferred by the existence of the program. If he does exist, has he planted here the means of understanding or glimpsing him? Maybe. It certainly seems reasonable that he might have, but I have not experienced that myself. Yet.

But it seems logical to proceed on the basis that there is something there that can hear me and will respond in some ineffable way.

When my part of the program has run I don't believe that my personality can persist and survive. I see no need that it should.

The idea that I will ever meet my grandmother in some halcyon field of forever seems simply like wishful thinking. She has returned to the program, as will I. It is not a prospect that terrifies me.

If anything of ME does persist it will not be capable of fear, since that is a natural response to having a body and mind that must be preserved in the corporeal world. Whatever comes next, it will not be anything like being human.

I can take my belief even further, into realms of simple wish fulfilment. I ask myself the question, why are we here? If there is a purpose (and I have no empirical evidence that there is) then what might it be?

I choose to believe that we are here to inform the program. The program is dumb. It begins with no life experience, and through us it gains all of the richness, the joy and horror of life. That makes a kind of logical sense to me, but only because I am searching for meaning.

Again, it makes no sense not to believe in such a thing, because it has no direct effect on how you live your life. It isn't as though by being a believer you immediately gain riches and fame and live for three hundred years. We are all on the same schedule regardless of our degree of faith. The faithful aren't any richer or healthier than the faithless.

So, if you want to call the program or the programmer "God", and if you want to believe that something of yourself can survive within God, then I have no problem with us having a discussion about that. I will simply translate your terms into mine and happily accommodate your belief.

I will pray if you need me to if it helps you to know I did, and who knows, the program may be listening.

Talented People: An Open Letter To [My Empoyer]

2008-07-30T11:53:00.001+01:00

One of the big challenges in managing people today lies in finding strategies that allow your talented people to rise easily, and allow those who are less talented to feel good about that fact.

The more the opportunities are limited, the more competition is closed to certain groups, the unhappier the excluded become.

What if your most talented people are in the disenfranchised groups? Well, the people you end up promoting are just those who happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time. You're getting the best of the available field, but the available field is smaller than it might be.

If we promote on the basis of function rather than ability we never allow our best people to express their strengths. So, the great all rounder with an innovative approach to solving problems, who is the guy that everyone will work that extra bit for, the one who intuitively understands what needs to be done and motivates others by example, never gets promoted because he is assessed on a single facet of his job that others are more convincing about.

People in technical posts end up being very good at what they do, to the point where any move sideways (or even in many cases upward) is seen as being counter to the personal goals of the individual. Hence, the ones who do get promoted tend to be self seeking, highly motivated to jump through whatever hoops you place in their way, and at worst manipulative and demoralising to everyone around them. The old chestnut "they promoted him out of trouble" has a strong grain of truth to it.

The most intelligent people in any workplace will figure things out very quickly. If things aren't right, if there is unfairness or favouritism, cronyism or elitism, the best and most compassionately intelligent people you have will be able to work out exactly where they fit, and they will tailor their behaviour to do themselves and others the least possible harm. Because that's what it means to be compassionately intelligent. If that means that they keep a low profile and volunteer for nothing, as long as the remuneration keeps them happy, then that's what a lot of them do.

It has been said that intelligence is inversely proportionate to grade. That only applies where the organisation is dysfunctional. On a cruise liner the guy who cleans ten rooms in the same time as everyone else cleans six is not respected. He's a liability. He shows the others up! He'll never be promoted, because his abilities have no value when the budget allows that everyone should clean six rooms.

But on a war ship the guy who shaves ten seconds off a two minute drill and can teach others how it's done, and does it with every drill he's put in charge of, that guy can make the difference between the ship surviving an attack and being blown to smithereens. You want that guy in charge of all the drills for the whole ship, and you want his techniques rolled out to the rest of the fleet.

Put that same guy on the cruise liner and he'll blow his brains out one day through sheer boredom.

The dysfunctional organisation never understands what it has, never cares, and never evolves into something better. Some other company or some other agency looks at how it's been done before and they hire that sailor and put him in charge. Suddenly, everyone is saying - look at that, that's how we should be doing it. But the truth is they had the answer themselves all the time. Their view was just too narrow to allow them to see it.

[My employer] has everything it needs to be a world leader in any direction it chooses to go. But the deep pool of talent within the organisation has barely been tapped. No-one knows what's there, because no-one is asking.

If you base your assessments on business practices and tie the talents of your people to the business goals, then you'll get all the wrong answers for all the right reasons. If you ask your people, how can you help us achieve this goal in this time schedule, the clever ones will see right away that you don't really want to engage them, because the question you should have asked them was - what do you think about this organisation aiming to achieve this goal in this time schedule?

If you predetermine the outcome by asking leading questions the only answers you'll get will be from those who know the game you are playing and see how it can be worked to their advantage. You end up with the least imaginative people involved in the activities that would benefit most from imaginative thinking.

How many of your staff have built their own web site? Written a novel? Composed music? Arranged charity events? Built a boat? Changed the world?

If you don't know, then why not? You might say that these kinds of skills can't easily find an expression in the workplace. You might say that just because someone is motivated to compose a symphony in their spare time doesn't mean that the skill is translatable into anything the business can use.

You would only be right if the business you're talking about is broken in some way.

It doesn't matter what business you are in, your best bet for success is to get 100% engagement from your people. What you want is to have an organisation that is so great to work for, so rewarding that the guy who is writing a symphony is happy to interrupt his life's work to give you the time you need him to give.

To do that you need to be a progressive organisation, one that rewards without prejudice. One that gives it's good people what they need in exchange for their loyalty and talent. One that thinks it's great that one of your staff is a symphony composer.

Rewards need only be partially monetary. A boss that is also a best friend is worth more to the talented worker than any number of pay rises. An organisation that does not judge or punish, is worth a year's bonus money to anyone.

If you can write a symphony, you know how abstract concepts work. You see how different strands of thought can be manipulated into useful forms. You understand mathematics, and you know how to bend rules to achieve results.

To hear your music come to life you have to be able to work closely with a talented team, leading when necessary and letting others take over when you reach your limits. You need to have patience, faith in your abilities, but enough humility to re-draw the notes when you realise you got it wrong.

Any of that sound like the kinds of skills that an employer would give his corporate eye teeth to obtain?

What about the guy who builds web sites? Has anyone even noticed that there are hardly ever any computer help line calls from the section where he works? And that the ones that do come through contain technical details that allow resolutions to be effected much more quickly.

The thing that most people miss about talent is that they think it's dependent upon the individual discipline where it finds it's most public expression. So, the symphony composer is great at composing symphonies, but he spends his working day dreaming of chords and counterpoint, and he'd never be able to focus on a complex time constrained corporate objective.

Really? Have you tested that one out? Or are you making an assumption?

ALL skills are transferable to some degree, and almost no talented person in history had a single skill. The polymath is the norm. We see it everywhere around us, amongst friends, on the internet.

Talented people are talented people, regardless. Put them in a straight jacket and they will act like crazy people. But find the right place for them and they will change the world.

Right place. Right time. Right skill.

It needs vision. It needs compassion. And it needs above all courage.

The challenge is to understand not "how" the organisation can adapt to encompass the talent that exists, but "why".

If you believe in evolution you believe that nothing stands still, that everything is in flux; that there is a general movement towards an un-stated goal, one that seems elusive and is only ever glimpsed through the shifting veils of circumstance.

Organisations that evolve survive. Those that don't are subsumed.

So, how does an organisation such as [my employer] re-invent itself?

Work is boring, isn't it? That's what 90% of your employees think. It's mundane, routine, un-involving, stressful, demeaning - these are all words that your workers use to describe their experience of working for your organisation. They say these words between themselves, in the coffee lounge or on the telephone, or in the pub, but if you ask them they'll turn those negative expressions into the weasel phrases they know you want to hear.

Suddenly they will begin talking about how things could be worse, they will emphasise the remaining elements of job security and the comparatively good pension arrangements. They will talk about the social aspects of working, and how a job is a job and this one is no worse than any other.

And then when you turn your back, satisfied that you have a motivated and happy workforce, they will go right back to moaning about how bad it is.

But does it have to be like that? I don't think so. In fact, I know it doesn't have to be that way.

The modern workplace is for most people an extension of school or university. We are trained to be good workers. We get the kind of education that means we achieve varying levels of numeracy and literacy, and we can apply ourselves to complex tasks without constant supervision once we are trained in the specific aspects of the job.

But have you seen what they are now doing in Scottish schools? The blackboard is interactive, run by a computer. The internet is a click away. Resources are practically unlimited. Creative thinking and buddy working is encouraged. Problem resolution is based on the sharing of skills and is driven by task management rather than rote learning.

Primary Two children can now rate the presentation style of their own teachers. Our youngsters are confident, demanding, and have high expectations. An organisation that treats its most talented people as drones will lose out to those which are progressive in their outlook.

This takes a degree of maturity that is currently absent. In many regards we are still living in the Dickensian era of mistrust and wage slavery. It will not do.

So, how do we change things?

Man, that's so easy I hesitate to tell you, because I know you will laugh. I can predict your response, because I know you feel you have to defend the status quo as robustly as you can. I accuse you in advance of cowardice!

You will dismiss the idea at the end of this letter out of hand, because it is too bizarre, and seems too easy. You will not believe that something so simple, and so much fun, could ever produce results.

In this organisation we once had a bulletin board. Do you remember?

Staff were encouraged to use it to exchange ideas about work, to solve casework problems and to encourage networking across our multiple geographical sites. The pilot was going really well, with staff who would otherwise never meet exchanging views on all work related topics. People kept it tight and clean, with no abuse or personal stuff on there at all.

Yet the facility was withdrawn after a couple of months for two reasons. First, staff were solving their own casework issues without involving managers, and secondly, they were beginning to criticise their managers.

Here was a facility that gave anyone who cared to look a pretty accurate picture of exactly what the employees of [my employer] had inside their heads, and it was deemed by you to be of no value whatsoever.

That's why I know you don't have the vision to understand what I'm going to tell you to do.

To change the culture of this organisation you need to hold an old fashioned talent competition, open to every single member of the 1400 staff, just like they used to have in the old days. There has to be a prize, and the judging has to be democratic.

The competition should run for a number of weeks, with participants given the resources and time to get their work out to the rest of the staff. The intranet might be used to good effect to showcase talents in all kinds of creative ways.

The precise details of how such a thing would be organised are outwith the remit of this particular letter, but let me conclude by saying what I think a talent competition would do for [my employer].

The more people talk; the more people network; the more respect people have for one another; the more people are encouraged to share their talents - the more engaged they become in the environment in which all of that positive activity takes place.

They don't abuse their privileges, but instead begin to value what they have. They no longer attack the institution of their work, but instead protect it from outside threats. They are not separate from one another, they are united in a common purpose, whether as a competitor or as an interested spectator.

Hidden depths are revealed. Admiration flourishes. Laughter is considered healthy.

The work suddenly becomes easier, because many of the social and practical barriers dissolve like smoke.

When people leave their most important creative urges at the door every morning and pick them up again on their way home, that's when people feel unhappy. People who feel unhappy don't thrive, and cannot give their best. Someone or something else is getting their best.

Bring people's talents (in all their forms) into the workplace and watch a miracle happen.

The Old Guitar

2008-07-18T14:32:00.002+01:00

I once gave a guitar lesson to a young man who was inspired to play guitar by seeing a video where axe hero Slash played a guitar solo whilst standing atop a white grand piano. The lesson didn't last long, and I never saw the young man again. I later heard he had sold his guitar to get a Playstation.

I was recounting this story to my friend Melly today and it got me thinking about what inspired me to play.

Melly recounted how he had been drawn to the guitar largely because a friend of his had one, and it just became something that he did. No great moment of revelation or spiritual connection.

Melly is an accomplished guitarist, and can out-whizz me any day. He did the hard graft, learning scales and modes and played semi-pro for a number of years. More than I ever did.

For him, the exploration of rock guitar was almost a discipline, akin to that of a classical musician, where music was all about technique and mathematical relationships. For me it was never like that.

My grandfather was a guitarist, and I got my first lessons from him at the age of about thirteen. I had a clapped out old Spanish guitar (which is what we called any guitar with nylon strings), and he had the guitar that I now own.

It's a beautiful Zenith guitar that is at least fifty years old, and was imported into the UK by Boosey & Hawkes and is signed by Ivor Marantz. It has a lovely tone and plays like a dream. If only I could make use of it to its fullest.

The guitar used to lie in its case under my grandfather's sofa in the living room, and I remember the very moment when I decided that I would learn to play this thing.

My grandfather and my parents were out in the garden and I was in the house alone. I saw the case, peeking at me from under the sofa, and I pulled it out so that it lay on the floor. I opened the case to reveal the guitar.

I remember that even just moving the case made the strings vibrate and sing. I had just got my own guitar, but it was a pale imitation of this one, which in my naivety I thought was probably one of the best guitars ever made. I still do!

The guitar was a thing of mysterious wonder, and as it lay there tempting me I brushed the strings with a finger. The sound was unlike anything I had ever heard - rich and resonant and immediate. It was THERE.

I remember the ebony fingerboard, and the deep yellow of the spruce top, the blood red and black of the rosewood sides. The way the strings twisted into the bridge.

That was when the guitar came to me, and I first tasted the possibilities of the sound. It was always the sound that drew me in, the texture of the chords and the melodies (rather than their emotional impact) that entranced me. It was the sound of science and energy and the vibration of the universe, and I knew right then it would be mine forever.

PC vs Mac - NO Contest!

2008-07-18T12:20:00.001+01:00

I know a lotta you Macintosh owners out there are labouring under the misapprehension that your computer of choice is somehow gifted directly from God himself.

At the very least Apple must be in touch with a couple of angels of heaven, or maybe it's alien technology they are using. That Steve Jobs guy does look a bit otherworldly after all……

Let's see if I can muster the "evidence".

Apple computers -

1) are design and ergonomic perfection
2) have zero manufacturing faults
3) never break down
4) have the most innovative operating system
5) do things that other computers cannot do
6) are more secure
7) offer value for money
8) make all your friends envious
9) help get you laid

I mean, it's so obvious, don't you think? Apple computers must be manufactured somewhere off planet. There's no other explanation.

But let me try.

1) Design is momentary. It's meaningless in and of itself. Function is what matters. Ever look at a Mac from ten years ago? Does it look stylish? Probably not now, but it did then. Today's iPhone is tomorrow's Newton. Ergonomics come at a cost. Have you ever dropped your Mac? What got busted? Can you send that part back to the shop? What? The WHOLE THING has to go back? Bummer.
2) Now this is just silly. Macs are made by humans. Ask Eemma why she doesn't vlog any more, and about the role that the Mac "cricket" played in her disappearance. (She bought a Mac because all the cool people do, and the microphone had an audible peep-peep sound throughout the few videos she made with it. The pained expression of anguish on her face as she explained how she had returned the machine to the shop several times without success was evidence, if any were needed, of the fallibility of the product.) And check out SeanBedlam's Mac videos, where the self same "cricket" can be heard. But not any more, because his Mac is broken now.
3) See, Macs do break down. The idea that they don't is a myth that arises out of the statistical fact that there are fewer Mac breakdowns. I hear that there are even fewer Commodore Amiga breakdowns! Maybe we should all get one of them. But wait, isn't the number of breakdowns supposed to be related to the number of units in existence? Oh, I see! What matters is the breakdown percentage failure rate. Guess what? Apple is no more reliable than any other computer manufacturer.
4) The Mac OS isn't the be all and end all. Y'know, Apple didn't invent the GUI (Xerox). They didn't invent the mouse (Stanford Research Institute). Their operating systems have always been slower than the Microsoft equivalents, have supported fewer devices, and have been less well supported.
5) The Mac doesn't do anything special. I've lost count of the number of Mac users who have gushed about the amazing software that their little toy computer can just about run. Their big favourite is GarageBand, which can apparently make Mozart out of a mosher, and single-handedly send balding forty year olds to the top of the pop charts. These kind of loop based composition programs have been around on the PC for years. Then there's iMovie. Well, I suppose if you are selling an underpowered behemoth with a flaky OS and limited upgrade paths you have to give the customer something. But my favourite editing program (Magix Movie Edit Pro) does more.
6) Security isn't a problem for the invisible. Yeah, I hear limpets don't get eaten by sharks.
7) Macs aren't good value for money. Seriously. Mac users have tried to convince me otherwise soooo many times. The latest was when I got the Eee. Many people said, "Just get a Mac", completely forgetting the price differential. The common factor between all Mac owners I ever met was that cost was not an issue for them. In terms of bang for your buck, the Mac is a damp squib.
8) Hahahahahahahaha. Envy is a two way street. There is the one who envies, and there is the one who is envied, and each has a different take on what's going on. Just because I'm staring at your computer with a slack jaw doesn't mean I am envious. It means I cannot believe you were so dumb.
9) Apparently, owning a Mac does help you get laid! Meeting another Mac user is an instant aphrodisiac. It's like the Mile High Club and the Illuminati all wrapped into one. How many children have been born thanks to the immortal line, "Have you discovered the joys of TinkerTool yet?"

But then there are all the things that the PC does so much better than the Mac.

PCs are -

1) More powerful from the get go. Whatever hardware the Mac is using is already behind the power curve. Sure, power comes at a cost, but then so does that nice white casing.
2) Upgradeable. I mean, how do you even open a Mac up? The Air is so thin they had to put most of the useful stuff in external boxes. Macs are very hard to upgrade. If I need a new hard drive for my PC I just put one into a spare drive bay and away I go. No problem. New graphics card? Easy. Sound card? In it goes. Motherboard? There are thousands that will fit the case. New case? Yeah, I can even get a white one!
3) Cheaper! If there are any Mac owners reading this they will be feeling a little sick at the very thought of saving money. The thought of compromising on price is something that Mac owners are extremely uncomfortable about. They trust Apple to do good with their money.
4) User definable. I can build myself a PC to do exactly what I want. Or I can purchase a ready made PC that will do anything from surf the web from my pocket to run a hardware video editing suite in real time.
5) The ultimate gaming experience. Yeah, still, even after all the Xboxes and PS3s have come and gone the PC is still there playing amazing looking games. And there are gazillions of them.
6) Hardware friendly. There are literally thousands of hardware options and solutions available for the PC. There are vanishingly few Mac only solutions.
7) Tinkertastic! There's a lot of tinker value to be had with the humble PC. Sure, you could get it running and leave it alone, but what would happen if I increased the memory speed? Can I make my power supply completely silent? Can I make it look exactly like a Mac?

OK, I think I've damaged my relationships with my Mac owning buddies enough for one day.

To be completely serious for a moment, the Mac is a great solution for those who are not too demanding of their computer platform. As long as you don't mind your apps running slower than they need to, and you enjoy prettiness more than practicality, and you have no tinker genes, then the Mac is perfect for you.

Oh, and your chances of reproducing offspring are better. So, that's something.

Isobel

2008-07-17T14:32:00.000+01:00

Where I work it's kinda frowned upon to use a mobile phone, especially if it rings out loudly. I usually keep mine on vibrate and use it for texts.

But for some reason mine was up full today, and my colleagues were treated to an ear splitting rendition of the start of Frank Zappa's Peaches En Regalia. With the whole room looking at me in disapproval I retrieved the 'phone and read the message my wife had sent me.

"Isobel died in hospitl. C u later. x"

Isobel is one of our neighbours, an elderly lady that sometimes gives Lily little presents of Disney bits and pieces. She is a big fan of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and can remember seeing it in the cinema when it first came out, when she was just a tiny child.

Every day as I walk home I pass Isobel's window and she waves out and I wave back. Sometimes we stop to chat in the street or on the door step.

There's a small wall around Isobel's garden, and Lily often climbs on it to balance. Isobel never minds, and greets this invasion of her territory with a big grin through the Venetian blinds.

I remember she once heard a noise at her back door and stepped out to find one of the local neds (Non Educated Delinquents) up to no good. In true community spirit the little old lady grabbed the wee bugger and gave him a cuff around the ear.

The whole street cheered silently.

About a year ago Isobel got a visit from two council workers who had come to inspect her smoke alarms. Isobel lived in a house rented to her by the local council.

Whilst Isobel was making one of them a cup of tea downstairs the other fellow cleared out several hundred pounds from a cash box in her bedroom. She didn't notice the theft until the next day, and when she called the police she found that she was just one of many victims of the bogus council workers, who had been making their way through the outskirts of Edinburgh over the course of two or three days preying on the elderly.

Isobel lost her life savings in that incident, but her sense of humour and concern for others never faltered… well not that I saw anyway.

For those of us who remain in the world, the death of another is a dislocating experience. Suddenly, there's a space that will no longer be filled in quite the same way. I'll pass Isobel's window this evening knowing that she won't be there.

But knowing doesn't help.

Greg vs. Victor

2008-07-16T20:47:00.004+01:00

GregSolomon is one of my favourite YouTubers.

This week he has been making the most of an entertaining dispute running on two fronts. It started out as a provocation aimed at the absent "King" of YouTube, my buddy Renetto. But without Renetto around to drive this particular drama along Greg has turned his attention to some of the players who would otherwise have been mere bystanders.

The current drama extends back to the time when Renetto put up a video called "Tube It - The Unofficial Anthem of YouTube". It was a neat wee song that got a few views, and it had at its heart an annoyingly catchy string sample, which I assume Paul obtained from GarageBand on his dinky wee pretend computer (it's a Mac).

A few days ago a lady called MyRealityBytes uploaded a video she made of a toy she found whilst clearing out the attic. The toy is called Zoundz, and it's made by Zizzle.

It's a great idea for making simple musical loops. It consists of an irregular plastic base with three small indentations and a number of separate little widgets of varying shapes that you can place on the indentations in the base.

When you do that the base lights up and emits the sound of a sampled loop. Each widget triggers a different loop depending on which indentation it is placed in, and the clever thing is that all the loops synchronise, allowing the user to make some lovely textured music.

MyRealityBytes showed how one of the widgets produced the same loop that Renetto had used in "Tube It". In her video she cross-faded from the loop on the Zunes toy to the "Tube It" video a number of times, and was obviously making the point that Renetto had obtained a loop from somewhere rather than writing the thing himself.

Someone sent GregSolomon the MyRealityBytes video and he used portions of it in his video to illustrate what MyRealityBytes was saying. In his video GregSolomon said that MyRealityBytes was accusing Renetto of plagiarism.

Then GimmeABreakMan made a video accusing GregSolomon of stirring things up and of being cavalier with the truth.

GimmeABreakMan (Victor) is another YouTuber that I watch a lot. He obviously enjoys the whole YouTube experience in all its richness. He isn't afraid to speak his mind, but always does so with politeness and what appears to me very much to be an open mind.

He is a genuinely "nice" guy and keeps his vlogs real. He is an American who lives out in Japan, and I suspect at least part of his attraction to YouTube is that it gives him daily access to the bones of his native culture, if not the flesh.

GregSolomon on the other hand is a hard case to read. He keeps himself very closed and reveals sporadically little. He undoubtedly plays a character to an extent, but how far the curmudgeonly avuncular exterior extends beneath the surface is anyone's guess.

Where Victor is all agitated energy, with lots of hand gestures and shifting body language, Greg sits before the camera like a judge upon high, considering every word between cigar puffs. This contrast is something that Greg at least is very aware of, having pointed it out to hilarious effect in both a private message to Victor and in his most recent video.

So, the battle lines were drawn, and like any good community member Greg replied to Victor's video with one of his own, and it is at this point that the precise cascade of events begins to elude me. But these are the highlights, even if they are not in order -

• Victor accuses Greg of being a liar.
• Greg says he's going to sue Victor for calling him a liar in a public place.
• Victor says, "Isn't this fun? Bring it on!"
• Greg points to the inconsistencies in Victor's position.
• Victor points to the inconsistencies in Greg's position.
• MyRealityBytes files a DMCA claim against Greg's use of her video, and Greg's video gets taken down.
• Greg re-posts his video on LiveVideo.
• Zizzle (apparently) files a DMCA against MyRealityBytes' use of their toy, and her video gets taken down.
• Greg blocks Victor.
• Victor says he will make no more videos about Greg.
• MyRealityBytes says that Zizzle have never filed a DMCA against her video
• She then says she’s looking forward to meeting Greg in court.

You with me so far?

Now, clearly both sides in this soap opera are having an enormous amount of fun. Greg never engages with someone unless he believes they will "get" the "joke", and Victor is a big enough boy to realise what is going on. The surprising thing is how many people take it seriously.

It's rather like watching a professional wrestling match, you know, the kind based upon choreography rather than actual physical conflict. But although the part that is a dance seems to be so obvious still the crowd screams for blood. Some of them are just getting into the spirit of it, and some actually believe it's all for real.

But in recent months the community of YouTube has been disintegrating, literally dissolving away. Whereas Greg's video exchanges with Renetto used to generate tens of thousands of views, the current spats are unlikely to reach five figures.

Which kinda makes it all seem a wee bit sad. When the stakes are high the game can be played tough, but when the town is empty and the tumbleweeds blow the whole thing has the aspect of a tawdry travelling show that suddenly finds itself out of favour and out of date.

The leotards begin to look a bit frayed, and the moves that once seemed so graceful and effortless are revealed as cheap shots and pulled punches.

A Work Tale (Not A Wind Up.......)

2008-07-14T14:30:00.003+01:00

I don't often write about my day job. In fact, I don't think I ever have.

The reasons for that are complex, and probably utterly impenetrable to some of my readers and web buddies, especially my gung-ho American friends who to a man take inordinate pride in their daily travails. There are lots of good reasons why I stay away from the topic of work, but this is one story I just had to share today.

I'm a civil servant, and I work in an office of about 1000 souls. Ours is a curious organisation, stuck half way between the good old days of dusty record books and the modern world of slick computerisation. We are at one and the same time looking both forward and back.

Because we are a government agency we are not simply free to be what we need to be to survive and thrive. We have the obligations of public service at heart, and so we often find conflicts between our need to be efficient and our need to provide a robust public service.

Part of our drive into the future is the use of technology, but having one foot in the past often causes us to perform a kind of involuntary gymnastic manoeuvre somewhat related to the splits, heading in neither direction and falling firmly onto our tenders.

There now follows a great example of what I'm talking about.

A while back we appointed a new Communications Director. Suddenly the staff magazine was resurrected - and in colour! If there were other initiatives they passed me by……… But soon we were advertising for a Digital Productions Officer to organise, film and edit video productions throughout the organisation.

This was an unheard of innovation, and for a moment or two I imagined my moment had arrived. Here was an opportunity to use all my real world skills in my workplace, but no. The job was graded one below mine and would have meant a significant pay cut.

Oh well.

At least I could look forward to seeing what the new recruit might produce. I don't know who got the job (or if the post was even filled), but when I saw that the advert in the newspaper said we were looking for someone with a professional diploma in film-making, someone who had worked extensively within corporate or broadcast video, I knew exactly the kind of stuff we were likely to get.

Firstly, no-one who knows anything about what they are doing, or who has any kind of track record in film-making, would work for the wages of the grade below me.

Secondly, having experience of corporate video making is no kind of qualification for excellence.

But OK, I was prepared to wait and see before passing judgement. Maybe we'd get some fresh faced young Scottish version of Spielberg - although, given my experiences within the Scottish "film industry" it wasn't likely.

A few weeks later we were sitting at our desks when we were asked to assemble in one of the other rooms. We gathered and waited, and eventually two junior guys from the communications directorate wheeled in a television set and a senior manager.

The senior manager then told us that he was about to present a video on the corporate plan. Which is what happened.

We stood and watched as the guy who was standing next to the screen appeared on the screen to tell us about the big plan for the next five years. Would the plan contain any provision to account for all the staff who laughed themselves to death watching the corporate plan video?

To be fair, the video did feature some management luminaries who were not available to accompany the television set around the organisation. They read their lines with grim determination, attempting cheerful scripted asides that fell flatter than a wet pancake at a steam roller derby.

It wasn't that the video was "corporate bad" it was just "bad bad". Consider that the varied hues of management complexions became instantly obvious, with the one lady faring better, she having presumed the worst and applied at least something in the way of makeup.

The shots were framed without any consideration of the golden section. Nor was lighting employed. In the whole ten minutes or so there was no camera movement at all, aside from a nauseating zoom preset that must have been programmed by an MTV junkie.

It was awe inspiringly terrible.

Once I recovered my composure I had to ask the obvious question - why was the video not delivered via our intranet where people could watch it on demand? No satisfactory answer was forthcoming, but it basically boiled down to - that's not the way we do things here.

Oh, really? I hadn't noticed……..

Then we went down to the staff restaurant one day to find four large LCD screens hanging from the pillars in the middle of the room. They were showing the BBC news channel.

But every so often the news would be interrupted by the corporate plan video. As if watching it once wasn't enough, now we were exposed to its horrific grandeur on a repetition basis - looping every twenty minutes or so. The only saving grace was that in a busy canteen environment the sound was inaudible, so at least we were able to ignore the thing by looking away.

The bad films kept coming.

There was the golf club film, showing some of our best golf players scouffing their shots along the ground, slicing into the bushes, and so on. The course looked lovely, but those who agreed to be filmed must have regretted having their technique (such as it was) exposed for all to see.

[I had always imagined (from the tall tales I overheard) that our golfers were somewhat accomplished. I was actually quite surprised by what I saw. Not in a good way though.]

The health and safety video featured the most bizarre framing yet, with the participants' talking heads craning up from the bottom of the screen, whilst a healthy-living banner waved limply above.

And so it went on.

Last week the tables in the restaurant were populated with curious blue objects that looked so out of place that I had difficulty identifying exactly what they might be. If I had seen one of them in an electronics shop I would have instantly seen what it was, but the strange handle on the front threw me.

The handle was attached to a mechanism inside, which was clearly visible through the transparent casing. Cogs and copper coils.

Then it came to me - it was a wind up radio. You know, one of those carbon friendly jobs with a solar panel and a windy thing on the front. I gave the handle an experimental twist or two, and it made a heckuva racket! The whole restaurant turned to look at me.

Then it all began to swim into focus. The radios were somehow cleverly tuned to the screens! All you had to do was wind one up, switch it on and fiddle with the volume so that you didn't deafen yourself and everyone around you.

Today the latest video appeared on the screen. It was about our pay award - much disputed and long sought after!

Well, I really wanted to hear what our managers had to say about this. So, I switched on the radio, only to be greeted with a brief blast of static and then silence. I resisted the temptation to crank like a monkey, and switched the thing off, reasoning that by the time I had wound enough energy into it the film I was interested in would be long finished.

Besides, I didn't fancy having the whole room looking at me again. I noticed that no-one else was winding. Presumably, they were all lip readers.

Has our new Digital Productions Officer never heard of subtitles? It doesn't take long to subtitle a ten minute film. Not if it's your job.

No-one wants the screens. No-one wants to listen to what's being said on them - well, not of they have to look like a mad organ grinder and disturb the ambience of the communal space to do it.

So, now you know why I don't write about my day job. It's like this all the time.

They take what seems like a good idea, get cold feet, make an arse of it, and then try to fix it by more half baked ideas.

They have no idea that they have at least two or three accomplished film makers in their midst, and several qualified sound engineers (not including myself), all of whom would give their eye teeth to be involved in this kind of corporate media communication revolution. And would make a better fist of it too!

But we are a government organisation, and accountable to the Scottish Government's auditors. Heaven forbid that we should not employ every millimetre of red tape to ensure that things are done by the book.

Tweeeking The Eee

2008-07-14T10:30:00.001+01:00

It turns out that the tinker value in the Eee PC is worth the price of admission on its own. Faffing about trying to get the thing to do stuff has become my number one obsession over the past few weeks.

For the most part the XP machine that my wife uses has been left as boxed. I have pushed the processor speed to its nominal value, because battery life is not an issue. Aside from that I have installed Firefox (although I am toying with the idea of Opera, which is scaleable to the native res of the Eee (800x480)).

But the first Eee I bought was the Linux machine, and it is largely unrecognisable from the thing that came in the box.

• Xandros ditched, XP installed
• 512mb RAM ditched, 1gb installed
• 2gb SD card added
• Processor clocked to full spec

My latest tweak is an update to the Asus Tray utility. The Asus utility provides a handy switch between 800x480 and 800x600, for those awkward moments where the wide screen res means that OK buttons hang of the bottom of the screen. The 800x600 res mode requires you to push the screen around with the mouse pointer, and it's actually really rather neatly done.

The update was developed by someone over at the Eee forum (google search "Eee PC forum"). It's a tiny utility called AsTray Plus, and you'll find links by searching for "Eee PC forum astray plus".

It allows you to force the Eee to use any resolution you like, and you can tell the Eee to stretch the res to fit or use the edge push mode.

At our local supermarket yesterday I bought a copy of Bejeweled 2, which is a nice and easy mobile style game, hoping it would run on the Eee with ease. But it would only work with AsTray Plus, when I forced 1024x768.

It turns out that many games just refuse to run if they find a desktop res that they do not understand. It is possible to use a VGA hack, whereby you create a wee hardware plug that fits in the VGA port on the side of the machine. This plug makes the Eee think that there is an external monitor attached, and by fooling it in such a way the machine will happily run more games than it otherwise would.

But maybe Astray Plus does just as good a job. I haven't tested it fully yet. There are one or two games that I had no luck with that I might try again.

One of the neat things about AsTray Plus is that you can set it to launch a new resolution on a per app basis. So, if I launch Bejeweled when the screen is set at 800x480 AsTray Plus changes the res to 1024x768 and when I exit the game restores the desktop setting. Nice!

I'm particularly interested in getting some old driving games working. The keyboard/trackpad configuration is actually quite limiting for most PC games. But driving games work quite well with just the cursor keys. I'm currently enjoying Trackmania Nations Forever on the EE and my desktop PC.

Of course, I could carry a mouse, but to me that reduces the portability of the Eee, which was the main reason for getting it.

I downloaded Warcraft 3 from the EA web site for the grand sum of ten Great British pounds. It runs beautifully on the Eee, as long as you tweak the registry to set the native res to 800x480. The game stretches to that res rather than rescaling, but it looks great anyway, and I remember enjoying it enormously a few years ago.

If only I could get the original Spellforce to run……….

But both of those games are mouse intensive. Maybe I should carry a mouse after all!

The primary limitation on the Eee is the lack of onboard memory. 4gb just isn't enough to do anything serious, even though the processor is capable of some nifty graft. XP gobbles up more than half the storage, so games and apps have to be stored elsewhere.

The biggest disappointment so far has been the Eee's apparent lack of SDHC support. Some users report no problems using SDHC, but the one card I tried simply would not work. The regular SD cards don't come big. The biggest I have been able to find is 2gb, which isn't quite big enough to take the biggest games that the Eee would (in theory) run.

I could add a small external USB hard drive for relatively little cost, or use the 4gb USB stick, but again, portability comes into it.

Already in my bag I have -

• Archos Gmini MP3 [actually useable as a HD if only I could erase a few gb of my music collection - not going to happen!]
• Canon S1 camera
• Spare batteries for camera
• Nintendo DS Lite
• Games for DS
• Dell Axim pocket PC
• Eee 4G PC
• ……..Oh, and I have a wee laser pointer thingy that is bound to come in handy one day. Possibly.

Adding a mouse and external HD to that kit gets silly. I begin to look like a gadget junkie. Which I'm not.

Am I?

Answers on a postcard please!

* * *

The one remaining fly in the ointment is that I cannot seem to network either of my optical drives.

I have two, one IDE DVD drive in the main PC, and the USB DVD drive that I needed to install XP on the Eee. I currently have the USB drive connected to the main PC.

I have shared both optical drives, and both Eees see them through the network, but I cannot access either of them. I either get a "Device is not ready" message or one that says "Access denied".

Strangely, when installing Bejeweled 2 on the Eee I decided to use the USB drive remotely through the main PC, and upon first mapping the drive the autorun installer popped into life on the Eee, and I was able to install the game from the USB drive attached to the main PC over the network.

Hooray, I thought.

But when I tried to access that same drive after the install was done I got the "Access denied" message.

I can't figure this out, and have been unable to find help anywhere. It's either something so simple that no-one needs to talk about it and I'm too dim to see it, or it's a one off situation requiring the diagnostic skills of NASA.

Anyway, the "workaround" is to attach the USB drive to the Eee to install stuff, but it's just annoying that I can't get the DVD drives working over the network.

Oh well.

Constitutional Matters

2008-07-11T10:40:00.001+01:00

America recently celebrated its independence, and much was made of the role of the constitution.

That got me thinking about whether or not a constitution is a good thing. Last time I gave this any serious thought must have been twenty years ago when there was still an outside chance that the European Union might be able to draft and agree a binding constitution. That was at a time when the right wing Conservative party had been in power here in the United Kingdom for a decade or so, and the social deprivation and inequalities that arose out of their half hearted attempts to place the market at the centre of everything were all too apparent.

I decided then that a constitution would at least provide ordinary citizens with a degree of protection that seemed to be absent in those unsettled times. Since then the Conservatives have been reduced to a rump in Scotland, although they are now somewhat resurgent in England according to all the news reports.

But ten years of New Labour government has seen those particular forms of social unrest pass into history. Recent fuel protests and Union actions over pay and pensions are a different sort of unease, arising as a direct consequence of our relative success as an economic entity and the impact of a world downturn.

The European Union is in disarray over any form of political union, with treaty after treaty failing to get the required ratification from those members states who put it to the popular vote (not all do!) It doesn't seem to be likely that a constitution will arise from that direction any time soon.

But the question in my mind now isn't - should we have a constitution? It's - what do we do with the one we have?

The United Kingdom has no formal document that we can point to and say, "There it is, all the collected wisdom of our ancient nation, all our rights and obligations enshrined in tablets of stone forever."

But that doesn't mean we do not have a constitution. We do have one, and it is quite effective.

It is what I would call a judicial constitution, which is different from the institutional constitution that the USA has. This is a subtle but important difference, and it was brought home to me when watching my friend Tom's YouTube video on the subject.

He pointed out that the United States constitution contains several inalienable rights that the citizens of the USA are entitled to enjoy, and these are never open to change. Freedom of speech and the freedom to carry weapons pretty obviously make uneasy companions, and much trouble has arisen out of both.

The right to bear arms was an entirely sensible measure at the time the article was drafted, but its original purpose has long since been eclipsed by advances in technology and the power of government. It no longer serves as a device to prevent the government from abusing its citizens, but simply allows the citizens to abuse one another.

And therein lies the danger of an incontrovertible constitution. There is every chance that the document will contain articles that do not stand the test of time.

The USA constitution cannot be re-drafted, hence the need for numerous amendments. Furthermore, when it suits the executive (and they have sufficient political power) unconstitutional legislation can be put into practice. The tax on income being the most flagrant example.

Democracy can only flourish where the economy is both open and growing. It is economic growth that allows democracy to function. Successful capitalism goes hand in hand with the kinds of freedoms people want to enjoy, but when the economy begins to falter, and societies are forced to make hard choices between bread and bullets, then democracy is not necessarily an efficient means to ensure survival.

So, a society based upon the idea that individuals have an inviolable right to enjoy certain freedoms may find itself in the position of being forced to rescind those rights regardless of the constitution upon which they are founded.

Some might say that the early signs of this are already evident in the USA. And historians might be able to argue that it is precisely what finished off the original Athenian Democracy, which managed to last only one hundred and seventy years before being subsumed by Alexander the Great's Mesopotamian empire.

In the long run it might turn out that a written constitution is more of a hindrance to the aspirations of the people it is supposed to protect, but in the circumstances in which the USA constitution was drafted there was probably little else that could be done.

But the kind of slowly evolving and ever changing constitution that the citizens of the UK enjoy may better serve the long term social health of a nation.

The Great Big Diet Delusion - Part Two

2008-07-10T13:15:00.001+01:00

My own belief is that sugar and refined carbohydrates (sarcs) are poison that kill slowly and sweetly.

I'm not going to go into why I believe that, because I think I now understand that none of what I think on this subject makes the slightest difference to anyone but me. The fact that there is good science and good demographic evidence to back up my personal experience is irrelevant.

I now believe that as long as the big food corporations (the growers, importers and distributors) are focussed on profit they will continue to promote sarcs as healthy, fun, nutritious, essential, using all those weasel words to convince us that our addiction is normal. Which of course it is, since normal can be defined as "the thing that everyone does".

So, my obsession with sarcs is "abnormal", but it doesn't prevent me from being right. Again, that doesn't matter. I am a tiny voice in the wilderness, and there are god-like voices in the sky bellowing messages that drown me out a thousand times over.

They are secure with their lies. I see under their skirts.

And the horrible part of all this is that I believe they are going to win. The evidence points to them holding all the cards. They've been handed the deck and nothing and no-one is ever going to get it back from them.

The food industry is going to keep peddling sarcs because they are cheap and addictive. People are going to keep eating them because they are cheap and addictive. Governments are going to keep advising us to eat them because they are easily available.

Fat will continue to be demonised because it is expensive and non-addictive. Meat products will be vilified as being cancer inducing, dirty, unclean etc etc.

The drug companies love sarcs because they make people sick. Sick people spend money like crazy. If they weren't sick, why the economy of the western world would come tumbling to its knees.

How's this for a paradox - every generation believes it is more enlightened than previous generations, and at the same time every generation believes that there was a golden age of enlightenment at some point in the past. So, at one and the same time we have descended and ascended!

The truth is that every generation is guilty of some form of mass delusion.

When it comes to food we have been on a steadily increasing downward slope for about ten thousand years. We are now practically in freefall - with the so called diseases of civilisation rampant (obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes etc etc etc) And we seem powerless to prevent this happening.

Within every population there is a range of predispositions that determine the individual organism's response to environmental change. For the human population the introduction of sugar and refined carbohydrates was a monumental change.

As time has gone on the levels of sarcs in the diet have increased, until the point we reach today where most of what we eat is based upon them.

We have seen first hand in the last hundred years what happens when a modern diet rich in sarcs is introduced to a population that has previously never been exposed. Very quickly they develop all the diseases of civilisation. Amongst the Inuit and the Pima diabetes and obesity levels have soared in the years after their Westernisation. They now have intimate experience of diseases that they never even had words for before.

But it has been noted by many observers that the countries surrounding the Mediterranean have much lower rates of the diseases of civilisation. The lowest in the developed world.

Many explanations have been put forward, but my explanation is to do with adaptation.

In Scotland we have been eating a modern diet for a relatively short time, and our health is very poor. We are amongst the fattest nations in the world, and we suffer terribly from all the diseases of civilisation as well as a few that we hold records in such as multiple sclerosis.

Is that just another co-incidence? I don't think so.

I think the reason the Greeks (for example) are so relatively healthy is that they have had time to adapt to the modern diet that began ten thousand years ago with the advent of agriculture. And where was agriculture first developed?

You got it - Turkey, Israel and Iran.

Agriculture began after the end of the last ice age, and it began first where it was most possible for it to happen. The populations surrounding the Mediterranean have had longer to adapt than any of us.

Why are Americans statistically speaking so fat? Because their genetic history is largely northern European and African, both relative latecomers to the carbohydrate party.

Here's how it works.

Adaptation should not be confused with evolution. Evolution is the adaptation of entire species by the adoption and expression of new genetic information by means of spontaneous mutation, but adaptation is possible within species using pre-existing genes. That's what is happening with sarcs.

To a typical Neolithic metabolism sarcs are very damaging, to the point where they affect the individual's ability to pass on genetic information. Sick people don't have as good a chance of breeding as healthy people.

Compared to the Greeks or the Iranians the Inuit and the Pima are much closer to our Neolithic origins, hence their current suffering.

I believe that what we going through in the developed world right now is a transition stage. There are huge demographic obstacles that prevent populations from eating healthily. Could an island like Great Britain, with a population of some sixty million feed itself if none of those sixty million ate more than sixty grams of carbohydrate per day? It seems like that would be a difficult task.

Carbohydrates are easily transported. Meat is not.

The population is adapting. The genes of thin and healthy people, those who thrive despite the poisons around them, are the ones that will tend to survive. Fat and sick people will tend not to reproduce so effectively.

The food industry is forcing our population to adapt. They are going to win that war as long as profit is tied to food production.

The Great Big Diet Delusion - Part One

2008-07-10T13:14:00.003+01:00

I've been reading Gary Taubes' book The Diet Delusion (published in America as Good Calories, Bad Calories). The UK title is a direct reference to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, but I am very much more convinced by Taubes dispassionate examination of the "evidence" than by Dawkins' sixth form ranting.

On the face of it Taubes' book is just another in a long line of revelatory exposés of the devastating effect that sugar and refined carbohydrates (what I call "sarcs") have had on human health. But the book is much more than that.

It is the first attempt that I have seen to studiously catalogue and relate all of the important research strands. The diligence that Taubes brings to the task means that populist figures are reduced to bit players. The Weston A. Price foundation may be surprised to learn that Price was simply one of hundreds of medical practitioners who journeyed abroad and saw first hand the debilitating effect of sarcs as they were introduced to populations never previously exposed.

Similarly, Atkins is revealed as merely the most visible of a great many doctors who saw what was going on. Of course, Atkins had a profound social impact, raising awareness of the problem, but Taubes is not awed by such reputations.

Taubes' reporting technique is interesting. He looks through the records to define the point in time where the scientific consensus changed, then he looks to see who were the main players and he examines their evidence.

Wisely, he makes no absolute judgement calls on anything, never condemns even when criticising. His method is to present one set of evidence then contrast that with conflicting evidence, to point out the potential problems with both, and to illustrate to some extent the personalities involved.

Ancel Keys, who was almost solely responsible for starting the whole paranoia about fat, does not emerge from Taubes' examination room in very good shape. He is portrayed as a manipulative and humourless man who was capable of carrying out and sponsoring some very poorly thought out science. That is almost forgivable, but when Keys was confronted with the weaknesses in his arguments he took his research conclusions to government and by sheer political determination made his ideas into a public policy that has since seen death rates from heart disease and stroke increase greatly.

Taubes points out that despite billions having been spent to determine the "truth" about human nutrition very, very little hard science has ever been done. The science that has been done is not sufficiently rigorous to give a definitive answer in any direction.

Whilst those who support Keys' views can find plenty of studies to back up their ideas, and those who point to the detrimental effects of carbohydrate can do the same, Taubes is quite happy to point out the weaknesses and internal conflicts in both.

Is Taubes completely dispassionate? Not entirely. After all, this is the guy who wrote the much referred to article What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie? which might well serve as an appropriate strap line for The Diet Delusion.

Essentially, what Taubes is saying is that founding public policy on bad science is folly, even if the need to form policy is great. When the current food pyramid (mostly carbohydrate, some protein and little fat) was designed on the back of the research that Keys began it was because there had been an epidemic of heart disease in the developed world. The need for a public policy was great.

But the science never established why that epidemic took place, so the solution had to be guesswork. Applying guesswork to public policy is like playing Russian roulette with the welfare of the public.

Subsequently, of course, it transpired that the heart disease "epidemic" was a statistical blip caused by better medical record keeping and improved overall health. The rates had not actually changed. Therefore the research that blamed fat for the change was wrong.

Taubes points out that even though there was plenty of contradictory evidence that was of equal or greater standing than the very dodgy science carried out by Keys and his team, the consensus prevailed, and it prevails to this day, leading to misery and confusion for millions of people, whilst large corporations get rich on the misery.

Having read the book, I have changed my views on where all of this is headed.

When I first became a low carb evangelist (at least amongst family and friends) I imagined that slowly the "truth" would win out. I expected there to be a slow but progressive shift away from sarcs and towards healthier foods (like eggs and fatty meat). But despite feeling the health benefits myself, I never managed to convince anyone around me that they needed to change.

Even my wife remains unconvinced, despite all the evidence and her own brief forays into dropping the sarcs. My best friend in the world is five foot six and weighs nearly seventeen stones. He nods in appreciation when I explain how I see the mechanisms of obesity, and then he has a donut.

For a long while I was angry and confused about this apparent lack of force in what I was saying. Not only were my own family and friends completely unable to change, it seemed that despite all the low carb books on the shelves and the thousands of web sites devoted to describing the evils of sugar, those who eat little sugar are actually still an oddity.

Even in my own life, I am daily confronted by the implacable sarc munching hordes; the supermarket shelves groaning with poison; the absolute lack of any sugar free public eating places; the continuing government advice that a little sugar is OK, and carbs are your friend; and (worst of all) the eating habits of my own family.

I was sugar free for about four years, but over the last year it has crept back into my diet.

At work my colleagues like to bring in sweets and biscuits (cookies) and leave them on the table near the door for everyone to "enjoy". The food in the staff restaurant is almost exclusively based on sarcs.

I am a carboholic.

Imagine being a drug addict who is told that your drug is OK. You see everyone else taking it. It's cheap and available any time. It is used as a celebratory trimming at occasions diverse as Christenings and funerals.

My health is suffering again, and I know I have to stop. I've put on weight, and an old problem that went away when I stopped before is now back. Coincidence? I think not.

I'm going to become steely in my resistance to the evils of sarcs. I will not proselytise, nor evangelise any more. That phase is behind me.

In my next entry I will describe how even the truth sometimes isn't enough.

Mee And My Eee

2008-07-09T10:38:00.000+01:00

This network admin stuff is a lark, isn't it?

I read up on sharing drives and folders, but drives never showed up on the network and sharing individual folders cluttered up the file managers on the various machines no end.

Then, quite by accident I discovered the magical "Map Network Drive" function by right clicking on My Computer! Amazing! This is what I wanted to do, but why doesn't Windows XP give any help on this at all? Maybe that's why Vista is a good idea.

Anyway, it turns out to be very easy to map and share drives. Right click on the drive you want to share and switch on sharing, then map that drive from the place you want to access it. No great problem.

I now have two Asus Eee PCs networked just the way I want them, with file update permissions for me from the main PC and from my Eee, so that I change things on my wife's Eee.

But I'm still struggling with the Eee, and have been for quite some time now.

• Processor speed. Problem - Advertised as 900mHz, but held back to 630mHz by the bios.
o Solution 1 - update the bios, except that Asus have not provided a bios that my machine will accept using their update application.
o Solution 2 - manage the processor via software. I'm currently using EeeCT, which sits in the system tray and adjusts the speed when XP kicks in. I can adjust it on the fly too.
• Storage. Problem - On board only 4gb, more than half of which is gobbled up by the OS (Linux or XP), plus SD slot and USB.
o Solution 1 - put an SDHC card in the SD slot. I used an 8gb card, but either the card was faulty or the Eee just doesn't like SDHC, but it never worked properly. Much debate about this point in the forums.
o Solution 2 - use an external USB drive. I have a wee 4gb flash drive that works fine, but using anything external to the device significantly reduces its portability (currently the machine's greatest saving grace).
o Solution 3 - Use an old fashioned SD card. The biggest SD card I could find was 2gb. Hardly sufficient when I have games that need more than that to install, but that's the compromise I'm at right now. I'm currently searching for games with sub 1gb installs.
• Running games. Problems - No CD/DVD drive to verify original disk. 800x640 resolution. Underpowered graphics chip.
o Solution 1 - download a no CD crack. Fine if you can get them without being infected by filth from warez sites! Actually, I have used cracks a lot and would have no compunction about using them, but not all games have them.
o Solution 2 - no CD update/patch. I've noticed that many "final" patches include a "no CD" fix. Arx Fatalis, Prey and Gothic 2 being recent examples.
o Solution 3 - download a full legal version. Wild Metal Country is now available as a full legal download and plays like a dream on the Eee. Many older games are available this way.
o Solution 4 - download an illegal cracked version. I really don't like doing this, but as a last resort I will, especially where I have the original game.
o Solution 5 - Use widescreen options. Trackmania has a perfect fit with the Eee screen. If only it didn't require the original CD!
o Solution 6 - use 800x600 and scroll. Currently dabbling with Arx Fatalis this way. The trackpad is barely sufficient to play the game as it is, but the scrolling factor adds an extra element of frustration. I may have to break my own "rules" and carry a mouse! Squ-eee-k.
o Solution 7 - Launch games using 3DAnalyser. I ran Halo this way, but there was still that 800x600 scrolling problem.
o Solution 8 - Use freeware games. Many of these are not sophisticated enough to scale to 800x480, but some are bound to run……. aren't they?
o Solution 9 - Play old games. Well, that's kinda what I'm doing, but they need to conform to quite strict parameters to interest me.

So, between one thing and another I am beginning to think that the Eee was something of a mistake for me. The combination of difficulties has made getting the thing running the way I want an extremely tiresome and frustrating process.

Summing up, I am now

• Running a total of 6gb of storage.
• Managing the processor speed on the fly.
• Running Wild Metal Country, Oxford Softworks' Go, Arx Fatalis and TrackMania on the move.
• Successfully networking.

Thanks For The Memory......... NOT!

2008-07-02T15:39:00.000+01:00

Yeah, I'm going to be banging on about my Asus Eee 4g PCs again!

Everything was going swimmingly. But last night I was downloading some Windows XP updates for my wife's machine, and I noticed that the total amount of free space on her machine was only about 300mb.

Now, I have to 'fess up here and admit that I don't really know exactly how Windows update prioritises its updates, especially in the wake of Service Pack 3, which I believe incorporates everything that went before. So, how come when I was updating my own Eee I had to download a whole sh*tload of updates before I ever saw SP3?

There it sits at the end of an hour long download several restarts later inviting me to install it.

I started downloading it to both machines, and then decided to research it before installing it. I read a few bad reports and halted the download.

Then I shut the machines down.

Today I looked at my own machine. 1.2gb free. On such a small machine that's fine, but a few minutes later I get a low memory message telling me that there isn't enough memory to perform an update. It tells me I have only 30mb free.

Now, that might make sense if I had been connected to a network, but I wasn't. So, where does my Eee get over a gigabyte of stuff in about half an hour without being connected?

Taking some advice from the eeeuser forum, I find that this is a common problem with machines that have limited storage. What seems to be happening is that XP retains all the update downloads, even after installation.

So, you download a compressed data stream that is squirted onto your hard drive, from whence it is incorporated into the OS, but the original squirt sits there undeleted.

The answer is to delete any folders in the Windows installation that begin and end with $. That's where the downloads are held. I think.

But where did all that data come from on my machine? Did the SP3 update get as far as my machine and then unwrap itself into the SSD?

Whatever is happening, this is a major flaw in the technology underlying small memory machines. Asus needs to address these issues, especially since they offer a new XP machine that still requires an SP3 update.

They need to invent a tool that cleans up the mess left behind by Windows Update. It is unreasonable to expect newbies to jump through all these hoops.

It’s insane!

EDIT!!!! This is a known issue with HDHS memory cards. I asked XP to use my SDHC card for the pagefile and it will not do that. Instead it reverts to using the C drive and gobbles up all the memory!

CRAYZEEEEEEE!

Now I have to set the pagefile to a small amount to get my memory back. Or run without and delete it from the C drive.

Blimey.

Objects Of Desire: Part Two - How It Always Ends

2008-06-30T12:40:00.001+01:00

OK, so you knew what was going to happen.

Yup. I bought an Asus Eee PC. In fact, I went one better than I usually do and bought - ulp - two. One is for Mrs Urban. She has a nice white one that she can use on the sofa, and I have a traditional black beastie to carry around in my bag.

Purchasing and Initial Impressions

I bought the black Asus Eee PC 4G with the Xandros flavour of Linux installed from Curry's.digital up on Princes Street in Edinburgh. The price was no worse than online.

I was able (after some fiddling) to get the Eee to talk to my router and get on line fairly quickly. Great! And the installed office suite seemed to be OK too.

So I was able to get on line and browse happily, but I quickly came up against the limitations of having a Linux installation running alongside a Windows XP installation on my main PC.

• I have oodles of software for XP, some of which I will want to run on the Eee.
• I want to share files and my printer.
• I don't want to learn to run two OS's side by side.

As well as that, the installed Xandros version uses tabs rather than a desktop. That seemed limiting to me after many years of desktop freedom. It is possible to install a desktop version of Xandros, but the Asus manual says nothing of this, but does give detailed instructions on how to install XP.

To do that you need a USB optical drive to feed Windows XP to the machine. You also need a legitimate copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

Ostensibly, the first Eee was for my wife, and she was happily fiddling with it within a few minutes. The OS would not have bothered her, but for me (as the only system admin we have!) it was a major problem. How would she print stuff? Did I have to install an extra printer for her?

At the same time as all this was going through my mind I had the realisation that I really, really wanted one for myself. It's sad, I know!

My good buddy Will came around and helped me poke and prod the thing, and together we set off for PC World, looking for a second unit.

PC World didn't have one.

Curry's didn't have one.

Argos didn't have one.

Comet didn't have one.

But a guy with squinty eyes (?) in Curry's suggested I try Toys R Us, which is where I found a white Eee Pc with XP pre-installed (albeit for an extra thirty pounds). Toys. R. Us. Huh?

Whatever……..

Having an XP installation up and running on one of the two Eee PCs would give me a bench mark to use for my own installation.

PC World did have a reasonably priced USB DVD drive, so that took care of that.

I was now ready to install XP on the Xandros machine.

Installing XP

The Asus manual says that you will need an HD card of at least 1gb in size prior to installation, but nowhere in the manual does it tell you how the installation makes use of it. It turns out you do not need anything in the card slot, although I do intend to add an 8gb card to mine asap.

I did some research on line and found an interesting application called nLite, which lets you customise an XP installation. It will incorporate any service packs or hot fixes you want, and despite being incredibly detailed it is pretty straightforward to use, especially if you have prior experience of installing XP.

The idea is that you can tailor the installation and initial settings to the Eee PC, removing elements that it cannot ever make use of (like firewire support) and those that you don't personally need (MSN?).

Here's how it went.

1. Scrabble about in cupboard looking for my old copy of Windows XP.
2. Point nLite at my XP disk, my Service Pack 2 disk and choose those elements I want to remove.
3. Get through to the end of that long process, ask nLite to finish, and watch nLite crash.
4. Plug optical drive into Eee through USB.
5. Attempt to launch an clean install on the Eee PC using the Service Pack 2 disk (because I'd been told that the vanilla XP Home version I have doesn't support USB).
6. Follow the on screen request to put the XP disc in the drive.
7. The installation begins.
8. Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD). Apparently my version of XP will not install. There is a bug.
9. Repeat step 2.
10. Watch nLite crash again.
11. Re-launch nLite and load the previous session.
12. Put a blank CD in my main PC drive.
13. Tell nLite to finish.
14. IT DOESN'T CRASH!
15. nLite creates an ISO image, but despite there being an option to burn to CD, nLite will not burn.
16. Burn ISO image with Nero.
17. Boot the Eee PC using the nLite XP disc.
18. The installation begins.
19. The installation routine asks for a Windows 98 disc. Luckily, I have one!
20. The installation completes.
21. Install the Asus driver disc.
22. Done!

That's the headlines. Altogether the install and setting up took me the best part of seven hours.

But now I have a fully functional network with the two Eee PCs running, sharing files and the printer.

I'm still not clear what the settings on the AVG firewall actually mean, but everything works!

The Eee PC In Use

The XP version of the machine (the white one) came with a small optical mouse, which works nicely. I added a wireless mouse to the black one, and that's good too.

The 7" screen is very clear and neat, but that small widescreen format is a bit cramped and many applications are unhappy about the native resolution of 800x480. Even XP itself will display windows that are larger than the screen, meaning that dialogue options are unavailable! I noticed this happening on the Xandros installation too.

To get around this limitation Asus provide a tool that toggles the display between 800x480 and 800x600. The mouse pointer then "edge pushes" the screen up and down. It's a neat way of doing things, and it's easy to flip back and forth according to what you are doing.

The microphone and web cam combo is very basic, with variable frame rate and abysmal sound quality (on both machines). What I thought was a broken microphone turns out to be the standard kit. Having said that, there must be some variation here, because I did try one out in the shop and the sound appeared to be very much clearer.

They do sell the Eee PC as a Skype ready machine. But my experience of Skype would suggest that a sub standard mic is going to give you big problems. A head set is the answer.

XP is a little laggy when exploring file folders and accessing shared files, which is probably down to the 4gb solid state flash drive, but the internet is fast (through my network). I managed to download the 60mb install of AVG in four seconds, which is much faster than my main PC. It was probably a traffic blip, but it does show that the 900mHz processor is not phased.

I looked out an old game - Wild Metal Country, one of my favourites - and it runs great! Of course, the relatively low native res helps, but the integrated Intel GMA900 graphics chip does a good job. I've seen excellent footage of Half Life 2 and other relatively modern games running very nicely.

I'd place the graphics in a league above the Sony PSP, which is pretty amazing for such a dinky device. And for a gamer, having access to the huge number of PC games is going to be a real boon. The only problem is the lack of an optical drive, meaning that "no CD" cracks will be the order of the day.

The sound is good, both through the in built speakers and the headphone output, with no noise or crackle evident.

Touch typists will hate the keyboard, but I thought it was great. I had no problems using it. In fact, when working between my main (full size) PC and the two Eee PCs I was constantly aware that the main PC seemed HUGE by comparison, to the point where it felt awkward and inefficient.

The track pad is fine too, and the reduced ratio between the size of the track pad and the screen makes for an unexpectedly pleasant pointing experience.

Conclusion

It looks like a toy, but it acts like a real PC. There are some limitations at the outset, but these are surmountable.

Be aware that installing XP on the Xandros machine is relatively expensive and time consuming. If you don't have a spare USB optical drive lying around you'll need to buy one. And the in built 4gb of storage memory might quickly need upgrading, as might the 512mb of RAM.

All these costs add up, and by the time you have something you are happy with you may find that you have spent as much as you would have if you'd just bought a cheap laptop in the first place.

But you wouldn't have that portability, or the rugged reliability of a solid state drive.

My advice would be to save some of the upgrade expense by purchasing the XP version, unless you are a Linux fan.

All in all, I'm very pleased with our Eee PCs. My only job now is to make sure we use them!

Objects of Desire

2008-06-26T14:53:00.000+01:00

Oh dear. I have gadget fever. Bad. Gadgetitis.

This happens to me on a regular basis, as anyone who knows me well or studies this blog (all two of you!) will know.

The most virulent form that I have suffered recently was GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome), which is so potent that it can spread easily to friends who get too close. But that seems to be in remission. Probably because of the dozen or so guitars hanging on my "studio" wall I only ever use four or five.

And yet I cannot bring myself to sell the redundant ones. Yet.

In other aspects of my life I am quite sensible and frugal. And especially in my gadgetosic phases I always do my research, getting value for money wherever humanly possible.

In fact, it is when I am simply making a direct purchase of a utility item, such as a new external hard drive or a printer/scanner, that I am most likely to buy a turkey. I simply don't research those kinds of staples enough, and sometimes get stung.

But over the last few days I have been increasingly obsessed by the Asus Eee PC, the little laptop with the 7" screen and no hard drive. It just ticks so many of the boxes for me.

• Small enough to carry around easily (think small hardback book).
• Powerful enough to run PC games (with a bit of fiddling).
• Has a built in web cam.
• It does all the wi-fi stuff.
• It's extremely modable (the addition of a touch screen being one mod that really appeals).
• Oh god, let's face it - IT'S CUTE!

There, I said it. Size isn't everything. Believe me, I know that's true, and this thing has hug me written all over its perfectly formed but incredibly tiny body.

It comes with Linux pre-installed, and from all accounts that works like a dream. It also runs Windows XP and Asus supply all the appropriate drivers and instructions on how to get XP working on a machine with half a gig of RAM, a four gig solid state flash drive and no CD/DVD drive.

You can add RAM fairly cheaply, and there's a slot for an additional SD card, which allows another (I think) eight gig of storage. You can boot from USB, and you can run apps that way too. So, whilst the basic spec seems limited, it really is possible to hike the spec of the machine to the level you need.

YouTube videos and user reports indicate that the system is fast and flexible, booting from cold into Linux or XP in a few seconds. I've seen Half Life 2 and other 3D games running on the machine with no appreciable lag.

Native resolution is 800x640, so the graphics chip doesn't have a lot to do. The 900mhz Celeron processor seems to handle everything just fine, and the screen is bright and easy to read.

There are hundreds of web sites devoted to the Eee range, and a comprehensive Wikipedia entry points to the successes of the device, chief amongst which is the price.

It's often bugged me that no-one has made a truly portable device that does everything I want to do without a hefty compromise of some sort at a price I can afford. And that's where the Eee PC sets the pulse racing.

I've been looking at full sized laptops recently, and the best deals available are still around the sub-four hundred pound mark, with some "bargains" dropping below three hundred.

But they are all relatively bulky and have poor battery performance. I couldn't easily fit one in my bag, and the battery would run out on me before my day was done. But the Eee PC hits home here with true portability and a battery life that is expected to run to about three and a half hours. Not the best, but certainly beefy enough for me.

The machine sells on the high street for just over two hundred pounds, with the on line price not much different. Ancillary expenses (like an additional SD card and a mini-mouse) makes the final package cost still around the sub-two fifty level.

That is just so tantalisingly close to being affordable in my present state of penury. I just worked some overtime, and the bonus on this month's pay packet just so happens to be around the same as the price of the Eee. Ouch!

But here's the rub.

It wasn't so long ago that I was agonising over my wee Dell Axim organiser, envisioning all the nifty uses I could put it to. The games. The wi-fi surfing. The touch screen drawing. Writing.

But what do I use it for? When was the last time I even opened the case?

The only time I ever open it is to retrieve a password I have forgotten, or to scribble some song lyrics when I am not in front of a PC. I charge it every night, and never use it.

I took it on holiday and had it with me for a whole week. Never used it.

Games? Played them all.

Wi-fi surfing? Painful on a small portrait screen.

Touch screen drawing? Didn't happen.

So, my dilemma is that whilst I covet the object of my desire, I also recognise that it may well end up being like the unused guitars or the Pocket PC that never escapes from the pocket.

I have to face it. Gadgetitis does not produce logical and coherent behaviour in me. In fact, despite doing my research I have recently bought some stuff that really hasn't worked out for me.

• Pocket PC. I could easily replace it with a paper notebook.
• Sony PSP. Annoying.
• External hard drive. No power switch. Huh?
• Music sound card. Intrusive harmonic distortion.
• Red5 condenser mic. Buzzes when phantom powered in conjunction with my AKG.

My single recent purchase of any import was the Nintendo DS that I bought just before going to San Francisco. I'd had one before I got the Sony PSP, and I missed it. I use it several times every day.

So, I need to visualise how the Eee is going to fit into my lifestyle, and the plain truth is that it will not. It's a portable PC, but aside from holidays and the occasional trip away from home I am never anywhere else except in front of a PC, whether at work or in my studio.

Sure, I could sit in front of the telly and surf the web. But I don't watch telly much, and when I do I wanna watch it, not surf!

I might enjoy playing PC games on the move, but the ones I'd want to play are played with a mouse, requiring a desk to play on. I am never at a desk that doesn't already have a PC sitting on it.

The machine ships with Skype built in, and there is the tantalising possibility of Skyping from the Eee via any wi-fi hot spot. But I have ten people on my Skype contact list, nine of whom are in different time zones with the remaining always at his PC when I'm at mine!

It's crazy! I want it, even though I have no use for it!

I need help.

Is Community A Tangible Product?

2008-06-02T14:24:00.000+01:00

There are many sites I visit on a regular basis, and which I have been visiting since before I started my journey of discovery on YouTube. Whilst YouTube continues to frustrate and delight by turns there is no such ambiguity in my mind about the likes of amazon or wikipedia.

Both of those sites give me access to things I need. One is an excellent portal to goods, the other to information. I get something from each of them that keeps me coming back.

Indeed, YouTube itself provides a very valuable commodity. You go there to hunt down videos on any subject that interests you. I'm reading a book by Gary Taubes, and there he is on YouTube being interviewed about it. Better than TV!

But what about the community aspects of YouTube? The community is dying on the vine, or at least mine is. Maybe I need to meet new people, but that becomes a self defeating task. One of the purposes of community is to provide consistency over time. Where that continuity is absent community fails.

You need to be able to have those conversations with your friends that begin, "Do you remember when……….?"

If everyone is always a newbie there is no community, only transient relationships of the kind that are as frustrating as they are rewarding.

So, what can any community web site hope to deliver that will keep people around? Why would anyone migrate from YouTube to something different, with any expectation of better things?

Community is accidental. You don't choose to get born in Michigan or Arizona or Scotland. You don't choose your family, and your friends come from within the community you find yourself in. The internet opens up the possibility of extending your personal network into new areas, but even with video sharing technology that can only take you so far.

People travel to be with their video chums, but the number who do so is vanishingly small when set against the ennui that is creeping like a man eating fungus through YouTube.

In helping to design TheTropolis I'm concerned with these issues, and together we have imagined structures and connective mechanisms that will create networking opportunities that go way further than anything anyone else has. Or so we believe.

I've used this analogy before, but it still holds true. YouTube is like a tented city or a shanty town, without much structure. The streets are not paved, and it isn't easy to find your way around. There are real dangers too, which might see your channel attacked, suspended or deleted.

So, how do we get around that?

Well, we could do what Facebook has done and created walled villages. You join a village and never have to leave. Even if you want to it's hard to see other people who are not directly connected to your part of the site. It's much safer, but the thrill and reward of meeting strangers is lessened.

But we do need walls. They provide security and privacy. In TheTropolis the walls have gates, and those gates have keys. Who owns the keys? The citizens. You and me.

TheTropolis will give people the best of both worlds, security with access. But that doesn't mean that the communities that settle into our nest boxes will be any more enduring than any other. And I'm beginning to realise that this is because communities are at their very core transitory in nature.

Think about your own community, or communities. I have many distinct communities that I call my own. There's my family. There are my friends, and there are my work colleagues. Then there is my local community of neighbours and townsfolk where I live. And I have my on-line community.

The most secure of those, and the least likely to fracture is my family. I didn't choose them, but because of that I cannot un-choose them. They are mine for life, whether I like it or not!

I value my friends, regardless of where they live, be it near or far, be they "real life" or electronic. But how many times down the years have I seen a good friend drift away, get involved in other things, follow a path that I'm not on? Oh, too many times.

I cling to my best friends through thick and thin, but those connections are very few, and some have not been rigorously tested. Those that have been and have survived are the most valuable.

Some of my new best friends are people I have met through YouTube. There is a wider circle of people who I share my life with through video, but they aren't friends. The community is all around me, but not immediate.

If I was to move away from my neighborhood to a new town, I would have no reason to return. I have no family near where I live and no real friendships there despite having lived there ten years. I know all my neighbours by name, but if I never saw any of them again I would hardly notice.

Same with my workplace. I have maybe three or four people that I would make an effort to stay in touch with, but despite enjoying the company of my colleagues, if I won the lottery tomorrow I'd be out of there pretty damned fast.

But my travelling community, the one that is with me down through the years, is one that is comprised of the friendships I make wherever I find them. Community is simply the medium within which future friendships reside.

I currently have no long lasting friendships that have arisen out of my on line life, but then I've only been video sharing for about two years. The guys I first connected with way back at the start, well some of us are still together, and I see no reason to assume that we will easily lose touch. We are beginning to have a shared history. That's a great feeling.

So, is community a tangible product?

No. It's not, but what it delivers is precious beyond everything else. It lets us find friendship.

Re: Not TheTropolis

2008-05-13T19:56:00.001+01:00

Is this guy crazy? This is why I love YouTube and the viral video community.

Over (song) - STEREO!

2008-05-05T16:22:00.001+01:00

The Shakey Bard

2008-05-01T10:08:00.000+01:00

It suddenly occurs to me that we don't need Shakespeare.

I was reviewing my piece below on computer games (Games Are For Kids), and realised that it bore more than a passing resemblance to Shakey's "seven ages of man" idea. God knows where he stole it from, or whether it was an original thought.

Of course, now that I have recognised how my thoughts echo those of the great Bard the correct form would be to eulogise about his genius, but the truth is that in his works he covered a lot of ground, but he does not still have a monopoly on the ideas he presented.

Did the Seven Ages of man creep into my subconscious and find its expression decades later? I never read the play (As You Like It), and as far as I know I have never seen it performed. Until I recognised the seven ages aspect of the piece I wrote I didn't even know the concept was a Shakespearean one. I had to look it up on google, which kindly informed me that I might be looking for "ages" and not "stages" (my original search).

In the days when Shakespeare was coming up with his stuff, and for many hundreds of years afterwards, such towering epics of imagination were rightly valued. And even today there are many who would argue that their relevance persists.

But was the quality of Shakespeare's writing without parallel? Does his magnificence rightly cast its shadow over everything else?

I don't think so.

Shakespeare's legacy is maintained directly by government grant in the UK. No modern author can look forward to such investment. What this does (aside from keeping hopeless sing-song actors in jobs for life) is promote a kind of intellectual land grab.

So what if you come up with a nice wee piece on computer games. The Shakespeare fanatic will say your debt is owed, when in fact no such debt is possible.

On the internet today, in blogs and vlogs written all over the world, there are original thoughts and astounding insights being created minute by minute, every one of which requires no reinterpretation or adaptation to reveal its relevance to the all consuming now.

In songs and movies there are lyrics and speeches every bit as powerful as anything Old Bill wrote.

Compare the oft quoted Hamlet speech

To be, or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. Etc etc

with a neater modern expression of similar concerns

Everything will be OK in the end.
If it's not OK, it's not the end.

which unravels beautifully in the mind in a way that Shakespeare's bludgeoning prose never does. If he doesn't spell it out it probably isn't there.

And then there's the genius of Frank Zappa's

Do what you wanna, do what you will
But don't mess up your neighbour's thrill,
And when you pay the bill
Kindly leave a little tip
For the next poor sucker on this one way trip

which resonates with modern day idioms (just as Shakespeare's words would have in his day), and is all the more powerful because of it.

The persistence of Shakespeare will keep dragging at us like an anchor. We cannot move forward if Hamlet's paranoid concerns are held up as some kind of eternal mirror to the human condition.

If Shakespeare was relevant and his words had true resonance in the modern world then his works would stand alone, without the need for taxpayers' money.

Ideas are not like old buildings. They do not require conservation measures to persist. Neither should they be treasured as anything other than the passing of wisdom from one generation to the next, always there to be rediscovered anew.

Shakespeare was talking to his peers and his children, not to us, and we do him a disservice by pretending that he was.

Who Owns The Wiggling Air?

2008-04-10T12:01:00.000+01:00

When it comes to music copyright the law is confused, and acts against the spirit (if not the letter) of laws designed to protect our inalienable rights as human beings.

I don't know of any law in any country that describes my right to listen to what I want, when I want, where I want and how I want. But there should be such a law. That there isn't one is down to a series of basic assumptions on the part of the law makers that "inalienable human rights" (however they are described) should include the right to your own ears.

A quick look at the Wikipedia entry for Human Rights gives the following broad definition -
Human rights refers to the supposed "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which are often thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education.
Even in their very broadest application, the rights to participate in culture, to freedom of expression and equality before the law, would seem to be the foundation for an entirely sensible approach to how we deal with our rights to listen to and reproduce sound.

But frankly, the law as applied is crazy.

A musical event is an abstract construction of wiggling air molecules. It is pressure waves, much like the breeze blowing through tall grass. Nothing moves, nothing is transmitted except the idea of the music - a tune, a beat, a word.

Of course, the expression of that idea can be captured. It can be written down using notation, or it can be recorded, but let's think first about the situation that pertains to the live performance of a musical idea, where no recording or notation is involved.

A musician makes the air wiggle. The ears of the listeners respond, sending signals to the brain that are interpreted as "music". How can such a relationship be owned by anyone other than the participants?

Well, it can. The law says it can. If the idea behind the music originated outside the performer/listener circle then the performer needs the permission of the originator before he makes the air do that particular dance.

This requires that the dance be identifiable as a distinct entity from all other dances, which is where things get really crazy.

The situation is so perverse that even where the music being created is entirely contained within the performer/listener circle, if it bears a resemblance to any previous piece of music ever created then the originator of that previous work has a claim on the new piece of work.

The inevitable consequence of this is that eventually every idea that can be musically expressed has already been copyrighted. Any "new" piece of music is subject to copyright before it is even written.

Sound crazy? Sound impossible? It gets worse.

Let's say that you create a piece of music, and ninety per cent of the musical ideas in it have never been heard before, but ten per cent of what you think is an entirely original work bears an uncanny resemblance to something that was written and recorded twenty years previously.

The originator of that earlier piece of music can argue in a court of law that you owe him any and all profits made from your piece. All. Not just the ten per cent that he says you stole. And the court will not throw him out on his ear. They will listen.

Whether or not the court rules in his favour will depend upon the exact circumstances of the case, but the point is that your right to express yourself is stifled by this ill thought out legal process.

That is part of what Kembrew MacLeod means when he talks about the denuding of the cultural commons.

When music is recorded the situation takes a sinister turn, with ordinary people like you and me being fined huge amounts of money for doing nothing more evil than sharing their favourite music with other music lovers.

If I choose to express my inalienable human rights by sharing, why do the Record Industry Association of America and the British Phonographic Institute and their pit-bull enforcers the Federation Against Copyright Theft call it stealing, putting it into the same bracket as car jacking or bag snatching?

A recording of wiggling air molecules, played back through an electronic device, recreates those wiggling air molecules for all to enjoy. What a marvellous innovation! What a boon to civilisation!

What a curse to the poor musician whose work is distributed free of charge to millions who now don't have to turn up at the concert hall to hear him play. The poor musician, whose CDs are left languishing in the warehouse because no-one wants music any more. Poor record companies, whose hard working staff will soon have no jobs. Poor studio owners who will have no musicians to work with, and no market for their recordings even if they could make any. Poor customer, who will not be able to hear great quality music any more!

That's what the unholy alliance of the RIAA/BPI/FACT would like you to think, but they are wrong on every count. Every one.

Live rock venues in the UK have never thrived as they do now. There are more bands touring than the gigging infrastructure can support. New venues are opening up all the time.

Official music sales do not account for the many millions of independent releases sold on line or in the form of home made CDRs. There is MORE music around than ever. More bands. More independent record companies. More bedroom outfits. More music.

No major record company has gone bust since the pirating scares of the 1970s. Anyone remember the "Home Taping Is Killing Music" campaign? In fact, the counter slogan that read "Home Taping Is Skill In Music" was much nearer the truth.

There are more professional quality studios than ever before, and everyone with a PC can have one. More guitars are sold than ever before. More microphones. More mixing desks. More music software.

It begins to look like music is alive and well, musicians are alive and well, great recordings are still being made, and music is as much part of the fabric of our daily lives as it ever was.

So, why do the RIAA/BPI/FACT complain so hard?

Because the market, their precious market, has determined that the value of music is less than the record companies current antediluvian business model can sustain.

Fifteen Great British Pounds for a CD you might not even like that much, or a free download. The market has decided.

Find a band you love, download the album for free three weeks before it hits the shops, then support the band by ordering it through their web site, and go and see them live. Why do those bands need record companies? They don't.

That's what all of this is really about. The record industry will survive, but it will have to morph itself into something that meets the demands of its customers. They had become used to having it all their own way, owning the product and the sole means of distribution.

The internet has democratised the music business, and the old dinosaurs don't like that. Their cosy monopoly of excess and exploitation is ending.

But no-one, no-one bucks the market. No matter how many grandmothers they send to jail.

Games Are For Kids

2008-03-12T09:57:00.000Z

The following article was written for my company magazine. They decided not to use it, so I present it here for what it's worth.

* * *

Computer games. For nerds and kids, right?

I mean, it's not as if they are a serious art form is it? Not like cinema or even TV. There's no way that the intelligent craftsmanship behind a good film or a well written novel can find similar expression in pixels on a screen.

Is there?

Actually, computer games are almost entirely grown up. Not yet fully mature, but getting there. Kinda like a late developing teenager, struggling to find his way in the world whilst bedazzled by possibility and the promise of adventure.

Gone is the repetitive mindlessness of his babyhood. No more endless practicing of trigger skills. Those motor functions were fully developed by the time he moved onto simulations where he played sports, managed cities and created life itself. That was when his eyes were opened to the idea that maybe, just maybe playing games which modelled real life events might lead to meaningful insights about the nature of our human world.

Incredible!

By the time he was living seven kinds of virtual life with simulated creatures or (gasp) little computer people, he was ready for the next stage, where he opened the front door and took his polygons and shaders out onto the information super highway, where he found (much to his surprise) that reality itself began to twist into new shapes to accommodate him.

Cinema began to pay tribute to the best games. Magazines sprang up to support him, distributing software for free, and the internet facilitated gaming in a pan-global community setting.

The line between "playing" and "being" began to blur, just as it does for everyone who leaves childhood behind. The skills learned purely in the imagination became the tools of the artisan in adult life, and where once there were competitive games set against fantasy backgrounds created by faceless programmers there are now the pseudo-realities of virtual communities with their own cultures, economies and politics.

Yeah, the nerdy kid with the spots and bad breath is now worth mega-billions, and he is re-creating the world according to a set of goals that are barely comprehensible to his parents and their friends. To him, it's not about what you are, but about what you bring. It's not about competition, it's about engagement. It's not about following leaders, it's about following dreams.

The kid knows that the new frontier isn't "out there" on the fringe of some unexplored continent, it is in living rooms and bedrooms, and in the internet cafes and the gaming shops.

The future always belonged to the young, but maybe for the first time in history we can all be as young as we want to be.

Are games for kids?

Absolutely!

Side Panel

How games grew up.

Pong - the birth of computer games.
Donkey Kong - basic motor skill development.
Sim City - like Lego with city blocks.
Doom - perception flips into the third dimension.
Half Life 2 - starring in your own movie.
World of Warcraft - games go global.
Second Life - hang out with friends, make millions.

The Evolution of the Revolution

2008-03-03T12:10:00.000Z

One or two of my friends have suggested that maybe I am a wee bit obsessed with YouTube, and they are absolutely right!

When I first began to experience the roller coaster ride that is the world of on line viral video sharing I imagined that one day the whole world might turn up at YouTube's door and join the growing community.

Now, nearly two years on, that community is dying on the vine. According to information recently leaked by YouTube staff at the San Francisco gathering the community is less and less relevant to the business model that YouTube are following.

Yet, the concept has been proven. Once again we see that given the least opportunity people will find ways to connect. YouTube has been an important stepping stone to whatever comes next, but it's pretty clear to those of us who have been there for a while that it will never meet our greatest aspirations.

I believe that the face driven technology underlying YouTube can change the world. Wherever people congregate, whether in the physical or the virtual realms, things change. Only someone who doesn't believe in community could deny the observations!

But YouTube cannot do it. It will be up to someone else to make it happen.

For the last year or so I have been talking with a small group of like minded individuals about how things might be taken forward. That group are all YouTubers - Renetto, KenRG and TLG847. A few others have been involved, but this core group has developed a shared vision of the mechanisms and structures that will be needed to support an emerging demand for on line community.

I'm not going to go into specific design elements here (for reasons of commercial confidentiality), but I can say something about some of the problems that we believe we have solved.

• Monetisation of the community - yes, we believe a community can be profitable. We have a business model that supports the community without overwhelming it with commercial pollution.
• Hate - thrives where it can be expressed without consequence and where it is rewarded. We have simple mechanisms that make the environment as safe as you want it to be. That means the critics can have their fun without the vulnerable feeling threatened.
• Inclusion - democratisation of the service is a long term aim, but in the meantime everyone is invited, and no-one is excluded.
• Cheating - systematic gaming of the system will be much more difficult, although certain strategic tools will be available to facilitate legitimate promotion of individuals and alliances.
• Cohesion - we have designed tools and structures that will allow individuals and demographic gatherings within the community to express themselves and share the things they care about.
• Simplicity - the site will be ergonomically streamlined, to put the tools you need where you need them, and give you access when you need access. Ours will not be a cluttered and confusing mess like some sites we've all experienced.

But simply designing solutions is only the first stage of the process. Obviously, someone has to start building, and my recent trip to San Francisco was in part to meet with a team that we hope will be able to do just that. They showed us some great conceptual frameworks that fleshed out our ideas with graphical themes and potential "look and feel" schemes. This is the start of a process that leads to programming.

On a personal level I am one hundred per cent convinced that what we have is unique and valuable. Whilst my sincere hope is that we can bring it into being, my feet remain firmly on the ground. There is a great deal of hard work ahead, but I am part of an excellent and committed team, and if anyone can make it happen I'm sure these guys can.

Uncomfortably Numb

2008-02-29T12:35:00.000Z

OK. Jetlag.

What? Apparently the locals here in Scotland believe it's midday Friday. Good for them. To me it seems like…… well, frankly, I have no idea when it is!

This isn't the way it was supposed to be. A few days ago I arrived in San Fran after a four hour waking hell on the plane out from Minneapolis. I slept that off and awoke bright eyed and bushy tailed, more or less. OK, a little less, but I could function.

Yesterday at the day job I was a zombie. I did a very short day and stumbled home, where I spent hours fumbling with my PC, trying to free up enough hard disk space to copy over a few gigabytes of video of my SF trip.

Despite bleary eyes and a numb brain I engaged autopilot and edited together a short video of my air journey over.

I got to bed early(ish) but simply couldn't wake up this morning. As a result I got to work three hours late, and will have to work as late as I can to make up yesterday's lost time. Ah, the roller coaster ride that is flexitime. They give you just enough rope……

Next time I fly half way around the hemisphere I'll factor in more re-adjustment time.

Like, about a month……….

The Dollar Fantasy

2008-02-28T12:15:00.001Z

OK, here's what I think about the US economy. If someone knows better, please explain it to me.

The public perception, both abroad and at home, of the economy of the United States of America is founded on a fantasy. The fantasy is built on the idea that the loans that the US has taken out are the same as the kinds of loans that we as individuals might take out to buy a car or a house.

Here's why that is a fantasy.

When the US borrows fifty billion dollars from the Chinese there is never any question of it ever being paid back. It is almost like a grant, or like a ticket to an exclusive club. It has a value, but its value can never be realised.

What such a loan actually creates is a flow of money out of the US economy and into the economy of the lender. For a household the number of such arrangements is necessarily limited, because eventually the income of the household is unable to support the debt. If the debt isn't paid off the creditors would end up owning the resources of the household.

But there is one crucial difference between the individual and the state, which is that the state can print its own currency.

Now, if the state was to print all the money it wanted for every purpose there would be times when the state would be printing such huge amounts of money that inflation would simply explode.

But here's why that doesn't happen in the modern US economy.

Instead of printing fifty billion dollars the US treasury borrows the money from elsewhere. That way it only ever has to print enough money to cover the repayments on the debt rather than the debt itself.

In a fragile economy even that action is unsustainable and eventually leads to collapse. But the USA is at the very top of the world's economic food chain. To put it in simple terms - who is ever going to call the debt in? Even if the debt remains unpaid in perpetuity, it hardly matters.

The national debt of the USA is rising as fast as it ever has. Many Americans are completely oblivious to this fact, believing that the USA has a functional, more or less balanced economy rather like a household where the income matches expenditure (more or less). Nothing could be further from the truth.

It has been said that the US economy runs on oil. Without the car America would not be America. But in almost every regard the American economy is self sufficient. Of course there are imports, lots of them. But if push ever came to shove the US economy would be able to adjust to an entirely insular balance of trade, with the absolutely crucial exception of carbon fuels. America doesn't have enough of them to function alone.

So, when the oil runs out what happens to the economy of the USA?

I'm not yet ready to answer that question here, but asking it helps to focus attention on the reality of the USA's continued presence in the oil rich middle east. It begins to make perfect sense that the USA should be there, and it explains why those economies most closely linked to that of the USA (the UK for example) also think so.

The New

2008-02-20T15:00:00.000Z

In March Lily Urban will be five years young.

For her almost everything is still new, even though she is adept at feigning distain when she thinks she's seen it before - maybe practicing for the tedium of adulthood?

She had her photo on the front page of the local newspaper yesterday. The picture was taken at her nursery, and in it she was sporting a pair of latex gloves and holding a dental probe inside the mouth of a rather uncomfortable looking wee boy.

Apparently, the photographer visited on the same day that Lily decided to practice being a dentist. I'm not sure if this is a career decision, or whether she just didn't like the wee boy.

Today, Lily will be watching at least one Indiana Jones film, which I expect she will take to since she loves Lara Croft and Indie is (after all) the original. Every film is new. Every time she plays (even when it involves potential dental torture) she is exploring ideas she never had before. When we make videos together she comes up with original thoughts modelled on the behaviour she sees TV presenters using.

It's all bright and shiny and spangled with colour and noise and taste and smell. The world is fresh baked for her every day.

She woke me up at 3:25am last night to tell me that she'd had a dream about people with feet so small you couldn't see them.

Yes darling, I mumbled as patted her head and went back to bed.

This morning at 6:30am, just before I left the house, I went in to pat her head again and give her a wee farewell kiss. She stirred and said, goodnight daddy.

I smiled to myself and replied in kind, not wishing to correct her timeline. It's her world, don't mess!

My wife managed to rouse herself momentarily to mumble a rather more meaningful bye-bye, and then I stepped out into the freezing East Lothian air dragging my Big Red Suitcase behind me. It rumbled along the pavement fairly efficiently, leading me to hope that hauling the thing half way around the world might not be so terribly bad.

Not that I project much of an ongoing relationship with the BRS. I half expect it to be swallowed up at Edinburgh airport, never to be seen again. I still don't know if I am expected to manhandle it through Schipol and Minneapolis myself, or whether it just pops out again at San Francisco.

In fact, I don't know how the whole transferring from one plane to another is supposed to happen. I have my itinerary, but no real idea of how it all fits together. It's a bit like joining the dots. I won't know what the picture is until I connect the last one and squint at it through screwed up eyes.

I have shockingly little experience of travelling, and almost none of travelling alone. It will be thirty years this summer since I went to London by myself on a training course for my then employer. It was exciting, thrilling and nerve racking. I remember the buzz of London, and the amazing record shops.

These days of course the internet has smoothed out the differences that used to make travel to foreign cities essential. You don't need to seek out different shops if you can get what you want on ebay.

But this trip isn't about the shops, nor is it about travel broadening the mind - although I do have a sneaky suspicion that mine will be blown wide open somewhere along the way. No, it's about the people, and the place.

The Pacific Ocean, and the lamp post around which the Grateful Dead gathered forty years ago - to be there will be a dream come true, even if itself the experience is meaningless! To be there, to be here, does it make any difference? I will find out.

Which is a kinda scary prospect. It's new, and I'm not used to the new.

Despite what you may see or think, I am to a large extent institutionalised. My comfort zone is well defined, and there is a groove along which I perambulate with monotonous clockwork regularity.

Bed, bathroom, kitchen, street, bus, street, reception, corridor, desk, toilet, canteen, reception, street, bus, street, comfy chair, PC chair, bed - rpt ad nauseum.

Yeah, I complain about the monotony of my daily life, but isn't that what we aspire to? Safety. Security. Someone to catch the ball when we drop it. Mum and dad standing by.

For Lily, the new is normal, not even an adventure.

For me, the new is a novelty, and very much an adventure.

Cousin Joseph will meet me at San Francisco, and if my phone works I will be in instant contact with my friends - KenRG, TLG847 and Renetto.

They sound like code names, which in a way they are, but code names that represent a sea change for me. The beginning (maybe) of something else that's new. And scary, and bigger than me.

No Place For People

2008-02-19T12:09:00.001Z

I used to love being out here on the frontier. It was wild and exciting. Virgin lands that no-one had ever set foot in.

I guess I always knew that the settlers would come. They always do.

And I figured they'd build their cities and make their laws, and for once in my life I was ready. Ready to be the guy who settles down, makes himself a home. Leave the trail blazing to the young ones.

The settlers came all right. But look what they did.

They're living out there on the desert in tents, shitting into cans. You can hear everything through those walls, and there is no law except the law of the bully boys who run the camps. Pickin' on the innocent, just for whistlin' the wrong tune, or saying some words that someone else thinks they own.

How can anyone own words?

And all the time they let the prowlers roam free, causing hurt however they can, and no-one cares.

Well, this ain't the frontier any more. I don't know what it is. Some kinda ghost town, populated by idiots and mean folks.

Where are the cities of stone they said they'd build, huh? Where is the running water and the theatres, and the gathering places, the parks and avenues that I dreamed about?

Who stole that vision from me?

Time to move on.

I climbed up the hill yesterday, and I looked out over the desert, saw the mountains in the distance, and I knew there was something beyond, something better.

I got tired bones, but I can't rest them here. This is no place for people.

Half Way To Paradise.....

2008-02-05T15:06:00.001Z

It's bed time, and Lily is conversing with a talking caterpillar voiced by Dad.

* * *

Lily: Here, hold this tissue on your head to stop the bleeding. Put pressure on it!

Cat: Oh no! Is there blood?

Lily: U-huh. Just a wee bit though.

Cat: Am I going to die?

Lily: Maybe, but I don't think so.

Cat: What'll happen if I do?

Lily: Well, you'll be dead.

Cat: And what happens then?

Lily: Nothing.

Cat: That sounds very boring.

Lily: Oh yes, you'll be very bored.

Cat: I don't like to be bored.

Lily: Yes, when you're dead all the other thoughts go away and all that's left is being bored.

* * *

Judging by Lily's criteria I'm already dead for anything up to twelve long hours every day.

There are large numbers of us here in the afterlife. We spend our days huddled around coffee machines or attached to telephones. My own dedicated purgatory consists of a plastic desk and an angle-poise lamp that I can't switch on unless I want to stew in the heat of my own juices. There are fifty of us poor souls here in a room the size of a large café, with two computers each and no environmental controls aside from window latches. It gets sticky.

There's a "quiet" PC on my desk that lives in the hurricane created by the intake of an ancient Sun workstation, the kind of technology Noah would have been proud of. If it was possible to hear myself think above its constant vacuum cleaner whooshing I'm not sure I'd be able to, so decayed by ennui are my neural pathways.

I fumble through the day in a fug of caffeine and donuts, thoughtfully provided by the room's highest profile diabetic. He drinks alcohol, he eats confectionary like a time served professional, and squirts insulin into his leg every morning through a syringe provided by the local health trust at the tax payer's expense.

Somehow the message isn't getting through to him.

Yesterday someone brought in oat slabs laced with (of all things) mincemeat of the sticky variety found in Christmas mince pies. According to statistics revealed in the news paper yesterday at least three hundred thousand people phoned in sick.

Experts may be mystified, but I'm not.

Like John Copper Clarke once said, we are half way to paradise, stuck in the lift. But at least there is sugar to help pass the time.

2008-01-04T12:34:00.000Z

In my last post I talked about how I had retrograded my Pocket PC back to WM2003, and how things were working great.

Since then I have been faffing like a mad thing, trying to get to the bottom of this amazing device.

As a swallower of time, the Pocket PC matches my experiences with the bigger versions. It's like learning to compute all over again. I have already experienced my first "lost weekend" to the thing…….

Somewhere along the way I re-upgraded the machine to Windows Mobile 5, using the official Dell upgrade. To be honest, I didn't see any real difference in performance, and the system seemed very stable. So, I have left that installation of the OS in place, and I will shortly add the A02 official update.

Reading the Axim user forums might lead me to believe that the Axim was hobbled and useless under Windows Mobile 5, if the number of people clamouring for third party patches is anything to go by. But this is clearly a very complex field, with some users reporting regular errors and performance issues that others have never seen.

I certainly don't see any of the regular slowing down that seems to bother some users, but did notice that some 3D games would begin to judder after a few minutes play, and I tracked this one down to a problem with the ActiveSync software.

For reasons best known to Microsoft, they have designed ActiveSync to remain active even though there is nothing for it to do! This means that a whole host of system problems occur, including the White Screen of Death (check), system slow down (check) and battery drainage (check). Perhaps they should have called it HyperActiveSync.

A simple, but non-intuitive fix sorted this one, but you have to wonder how such an obvious problem gets through user testing…….

I'm now running iLauncher, which provides a much more user friendly front end to the operating system. Instead of navigating through the Start menu to programs and onward from there, iLauncher allows the user to gather shortcuts together into tabbed panels that appear right where Microsoft should have put the desktop.

It is weird that there is no Pocket equivalent of the Windows desktop. Even though the screen real estate is very small, the large number of third party supplementary launchers is a sure indication of a basic design flaw.

Sitting just above the iLauncher tabs are my SPB Weather cities, where (like the true nerdy boy that I am) I monitor the weather forecasts for my own local city and those of a few of my YouTube chums.

This is curiously engaging. Having an idea of what atmospheric conditions my distant friends are experiencing is fascinating. To my astonishment I see that it is raining in California today! How about that?

I have Caste installed, which is an AtariST emulator, so now I can play all my old Atari games. For a long, long time I dreamed of being able to play Oids on a handheld, and now I can.

(Oids is probably one of the finest games ever coded, and in its day it was quite innovative in having an editor. This was in the days before the internet, so it was a lot more difficult to share user designed levels, but a friend and I made some real corkers.

I made a whole series of connected levels where you could only get through if you never touched the controls! The ship just bounced around eventually, finding its own way out. Try to fight and you'd die in seconds. Ah, what fun we had……)

Talking of old Atari games, I found a mobile version of Shadowgate, the very first adventure game I ever played. It was infuriatingly difficult at the time, and again with no internet to supply a solution it was tough to finish. The PPC version is even better than the Atari version, largely because of the touch screen.

Sadly, the Bust'em 2 bat and ball game I talked about last time does not work under WM5, so that very good game has been consigned to the past (unless, of course my recent fixing of the ActiveSync problem and/or the forthcoming upgrade to A02 sorts the problem……….)

Yesterday I took receipt of a high capacity battery for the Axim, and having left it in the cradle overnight and most of today I will try fitting that this evening. I tried to fit it last night, but even though the charger indicated a full charge I couldn't seem to get it to work.

Indeed, placing the battery in the machine and setting that into the cradle produced some very strange behaviour………. Almost as if the battery wasn't there, because the PPC refused to start even though AC power was present. I would guess that this is because the OS needs a somewhat charged battery in place before it kicks in.

I have discovered that a PPC device really does not take well to having its power supply interrupted.

I'm hoping that with the new battery in place I get nearer six hours of use rather than the current two or three (bearing in mind that the battery I've been using up to now is the ageing original).

All good fun, and much more rewarding and educational than the appalling PSP experience. I should have known that an OS designed for teenagers with attention deficit disorder would never have suited me……….

Live and learn, I suppose.

2007-12-27T11:04:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago I went to look for a new game for the Playstation Portable (PSP), and was actually quite shocked to discover that I had played just about every old game that was of interest to me. I had recently downloaded the demo of the new Warhammer turn-based game, and thought it was worth a look.

Buying second hand games, going through the back catalogue, I had been paying anything between £10 and £20 per game, which wasn't too bad. But now I was going to have to pay full price for a game with only fifteen or so levels, and even at my slow pace that was likely to be only a couple of week's worth of play.

I realised that I was running out of games, and that the games were going to be very expensive from now on.

I do appreciate the PSP as a technical accomplishment, and it has many strengths over the Nintendo DS, but after less than a year for me it was running out of life. The promised third party developments had failed to materialise, and the prospect of getting any interesting application software looked vanishingly remote.

Sony's decision to neuter Logitech's attempts to create a hardware keyboard add-on to facilitate web browsing looked like one of the final nails in the coffin. That the firmware upgrade required to play the latest games prevents third party game demo downloads looked like another one.

Slowly but surely, the PSP seems to be a dying platform, much having been promised and the little that was delivered arriving too late.

So, I sold my PSP on ebay for £92.

The alternatives are limited. The DS looks better now that the Wii has taken off, but even so the number of games is limited. I already traded my DS for the PSP, so there still aren't that many new games I would find essential - Sim City?

Strangely, the platform where there is the most innovation and opportunity at relatively low cost is in the realm of mobile computing.

There are three primary mobile computing formats as far as I can see

• Mobile phone
• Palm
• Pocket PC (PPC)

A modern games capable mobile phone would be a rather expensive option. The field is fraught with difficulty too, from compatibility and stability issues to simple availability. Games tend to be very poor, with casino, sports and platform style games predominating.

Furthermore, the best mobile phone has a limited technical specification and a small screen. I dismissed this option right away.

The Palm Operating System offers a lot. But the hardware leaves something to be desired. There is little prospect of finding good 3D games on the current iteration of the platform, and there is one annoyance that really knocks the thing into touch for me.

Machines that run the Palm OS have a large area of the screen set aside for a handwriting recognition panel. I don't get on with handwriting recognition. As far as I am concerned the keyboard is the best means of data entry yet invented. I can think at the same speed I type, and my handwriting is terrible!

Even if I didn't use the handwriting panel it would be sitting there taking up valuable screen real estate. Annoying me!

So, I kept coming back to the pocket PC platform.

I had enjoyed the touch screen aspect of the Nintendo DS, and so the prospect of gaming on a touch screen was something I was already comfortable with. Then there is the sheer range of available PPC software, much of which is freeware.

Games can be obtained for only a few dollars, and there are many interesting applications that are of interest to a creative chap like me.

I am less enamoured by the possibilities of PC/PPC synchronisation where emails, internet favourites, contacts and common files are synchronised between the remote PPC and the main desktop PC. I'm not familiar with the software required to accomplish this miracle, but my main objection is that the only time I would be able to synchronise is when I am sitting at my PC anyway, which seems to defeat the purpose.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would I want my emails to be downloaded to my pocket PC when I am already sitting at my PC? Surely, I just deal with them on the PC?

I dunno.

Anyway, so I managed to get what looked like a good ebay deal on a Dell Axim x50v. I was particularly interested in this one because it had a very high specification, amongst the highest currently available.

Dell have stopped making their Axim series pocket PCs, and indeed the whole field is at stagnation point. The new version of the most common pocket PC OS is Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6, and it is really aimed towards the new generation of PDA capable mobile phones. The "classic" WM6 version for legacy PPC hardware is really an ungainly mish-mash that doesn't work very well, as I discovered when I tried to run the Dell.

I had imagined I was getting some kind of bargain. The x50v came out at the time of Windows Mobile 2003, and there was a subsequent official Dell upgrade to Windows Mobile 5. But the version of Windows Mobile 6 that I was running was a third party hack of some sort, and there were obvious problems with it.

The newest version of Active Sync (version 4) would often fail to see the Dell, and although the Dell found my wireless network at the first attempt, it frequently lost it, eventually refusing to recognise it at all.

The problem with WM2003 is that the OS only makes use of volatile memory, which means that when the battery runs out all information is dumped. That means every user installed program and file is lost when the battery goes belly up.

On older devices they actually advise that users keep power cradles available both at work and home to avoid crucial data loss. Now synchronisation begins to look pretty essential, possibly reducing the impact of a crash to the loss of only a single day's work.

The Dell gets around this problem by introducing a portion of non-volatile memory where files can be stored. But still, if power is totally lost all the user settings retained in main memory evaporate. There is a little backup utility, which seems to solve the problem partially, so perhaps the answer is to live with the issue and back up regularly.

Hence the desirability of WM5, which demands non-volatile memory. It uses main memory to run programs, but reads them from storage.

WM6 is simply a slightly enhanced version of WM5.

But I was simply not getting along with WM6, and many others reported similar concerns, even suggesting that WM5 was a pretty poor upgrade for the x50v. There were many who seemed to rate WM2003, despite it's propensity to dump your data.

I managed to find a utility on the Dell web site which allowed me to revert the machine to WM2003, so after a few days of struggling to get WM6 to work I downloaded the utility and ran it without any problems.

Now programs run well, Active Sync stays in sync and my home network is always available. There is an inordinate amount of pleasure to be had from surfing the net remotely (a new experience for me).

I am running several programs that I expect to become firm favourites, and not only games!

There are many creative music making programs, but the one that interests me most is Syntrax, which is freeware but promises to allow for some pretty sophisticated sequencing on the move. Still experimenting with that one!

There's also the very fun Clanger Theramin for making beautiful VCS Synthi-A type sweeps and bleeps.

For playing music there's the built in Windows Media Player, which seems to be just as unintuitive and useless as it's big brother. I'm currently trialling Pocket Music and Mort Player, both of which do better, but neither of which can match my stand alone Archos gMini 400 MP3 player for ease of use.

Sadly, it appears that I will not be able to replace my gMini with the Dell (thereby reducing my pocket gadget overhead). I had imagined that perhaps I could tool up with SD and/or CF cards to match the 20gb of storage in the gMini, but whilst that is a possibility, I simply couldn't put up with the poor native sound quality of the Dell. It's rather on the crunchy side for me regardless of which of the players I use.

I must try a wav file and see if it deals with that better, but I suspect the audio hardware simply isn't of a very high quality.

However, as an audio note taker the Dell is useful. The quality of the recording made by the in built microphone is pretty abysmal, but NoteM records direct to MP3 format reducing the storage required.

Drawing using a touch screen is a viscerally beautiful experience, and both Pencil Box and Vspainter LE produce doodles of sufficient accuracy to satisfy my cack-handed attempts at drawing. There are other more costly alternatives, but these freeware editions suit me fine.

I was also lucky enough (after some digging) to find a very nice Life program. I am a sucker for "run it and see what happens" software, and Life is the very best example of that. It runs fast and it is every bit as powerful as anything I've used on the PC. Watch the little gliders go!

I must have tried a hundred games already, and with my usual percentage hit rate I currently have a dozen or so demos installed. I will probably shell out some actual money at some stage, but I already managed to obtain the full version of Bust'em 2 for free somehow.

This is the bat and ball game to end all bat and ball games. It makes Arkanoid look like a haemorrhoid. The playing arena is not square! The bat is not restricted to the bottom of the screen! Tiles don't disappear, they explode into sand and pile up behind the bat!

The game runs like a dream on the 624mHz processor, and I'm sure the x50v's 16mb of dedicated video RAM is doing good work too!

Bust'em 2 gives any game I've played on the PSP or DS a good run for its money.

There's also Enigmo, which shipped with the machine upon release. It's a water flow management game. Yeah. Water drips, you have to manage it to the exit. 3D, looks great. I like it.

And I have PocketGNU Go, the ultimate portable version of Go. I love Go. It's my favourite game of any kind anywhere. I love the real game, against a real person, and I love the computer version against the machine.

It plays fast too! I may love the game, but I'm not very good. Even though I've been playing for years I'm probably about 12 kyu at best. The machine beats me most of the time, which makes sense, since it is rated at between 12 and 8 kyu.

So, my emigration from the world of the consoles to the world of pocket computing is complete. Even though the pocket PC scene is no longer vibrant (if it ever truly was), and the devices themselves are impenetrable to most people, I think I have made a good choice that will keep the demon of boredom firmly locked in the dungeon for the foreseeable future.

Maybe.

(Don't Let Them Make You) Pray For Rain (song)

2007-12-17T01:02:00.001Z

The New People of Mars

2007-12-07T11:14:00.001Z

If I could stand on Mars
And breathe the god given air of that place,
The one per cent solution of choking fume,
And if the skin on my face
Didn't boil and if my tears didn't evaporate
Like a penny girl's cheap perfume;
If I could walk over the crest of Mons Olympus
Like a King with strides a mile long,
And if I opened my throat
And without any fuss
Began to sing my song.

Then I would know
That my mind had arrived,
That humanity, both women and men,
Had discovered the fountain
And could go back to drink again and again.
Then, descending from that mountain
Where the gods once thrived,
I would show
The new people of Mars
The tablets of bone
That were given to me alone.
And to any one who asked,
And to those who did not ask,
To each alike I would say,
We will mark this day.

I would point to the sky,
To a distant mote
Still visible after all these years
To the naked daytime eye
Through the violet layers.
The tall people of Mars
Would bring me my old coat,
Say with me together our prayers,
Express and thereby exorcise all current fears.

And then on steel flames
I would ascend
Screaming their names.
Already lost to them,
I (once their friend),
Now carrying them home
(Though that's not what they'd say)
To the green and blue and white,
To the golden slice of yellow day,
Nestled deep in the immortal night.

It is Mother Earth I take them to,
Where they seek to lay their long remains down.
I did it for people like you,
Who think you don't need
These kinda people in your town,
Who'd rather bleed
Onto the dark soil where trees die.
And it's OK to pass by
And watch the Martians fall
Because they are not us after all.

The Secret of Failure: Part 3

2007-12-07T11:13:00.001Z

OK, thanks for joining me again here.

Today we're gonna recap on some of the stuff we've already learned, and I'm going to introduce you to a new secret weapon in your bid to be a loser.

It's all too easy in this day and age to get carried away with success. Success is fine as far as it goes, but eventually, after years of relentless triumph we all need to taste the bitter nectar of failure.

It's often said that the secret of success is hard work. Well, to fail takes hard work too. You have to rise above your natural inclination to do the right thing and make sure that at every turn you make exactly the wrong decision. If you don't, you risk the ignominy of success by default.

Down through the years how many potentially wonderful failures have we seen ruined by inaction? Keep on your toes and steer your path to failure.

You will need to develop a keen sense of ennui. When all around you are brainboxing and mind storming, achieving ever higher levels of personal attainment and communal achievement, you will have to learn the art of "whatever". Keen disinterest is your blanket against the cold night of eternal stardom.

When your boss wants you to shine, hide your light under the nearest available bushel! When he calls for you to push the boat out that extra mile, tell him that you don't want to drown! When he wants to empower you through additional training get a drug habit and sleep through every lesson.

Don't play his game, play yours.

If you need to learn something, learn how to be stupid. Only the very intelligent can learn how to be stupid. To most people it comes naturally, but you will have to work on it.

Treat everyone around you like a pot plant. Yes, talk to them. Even Prince Charles talks to pot plants. The scientific explanation is that the pot plants thrive because you are breathing carbon dioxide all over them, and plants like carbon dioxide. It helps them grow.

The truth is that plants grow faster when they're laughing.

Arrange meetings and then deliberately sit in another room. Preferably where there is an entirely different meeting taking place. Join in with the pre-meeting banter, pretending that you understand all the techno-babble. Then identify the key issues that everyone takes as read and question them mercilessly.

If you can manage it, gatecrash a human resources meeting. Pretend your boss wants you to sit in. Human resources meetings are the most fraught and emotive environments that you will ever find yourself in. But ignore all that and pretend you simply cannot understand why people are complaining about the lack of fresh air in the office. Don't they know it costs money to pipe clean air in from outside? And no, they cannot open those windows. Health and Safety regulation number 44c paragraph 1.2 specifically states………… Well, you get the point!

Having reduced that meeting to the chaos and despair of self doubt and introspection, go back to your original meeting with a few minutes to spare and tell them the meeting is off because you've just been having high level talks with human resources, and whilst you are sworn to secrecy, there really is no point in continuing with the development of the new product line.

Watch panic spread like a ripple of fear through the pond of complacency.

Not only will you have destroyed the possibility of those two meetings producing anything valuable, you stand a very good chance of seriously affecting the vitality of the entire company.

Which makes for a rich environment in which to fail. The more you take with you the better!

Blame others for every mistake you make. Create a breadcrumb trail of interconnected maybes and mights, so that no-one ever remembers what they really said to you, or what you said back. Never answer an email. Always use the phone. That way you can lie without any evidence.

If you ever do get cornered into agreeing something, make sure you immediately re-state the agreement verbally, subtly omitting the vital points. Even better if you can turn the agreement on its head and re-state the exact opposite of what the other party thinks you have just agreed to. If you play that one right you will leave your colleagues with no clear idea of anything. Confusion is your aim.

If course, never make the mistake of acting upon agreements or instructions. In fact, take no actions of any sort. Wander the office for days on end, prowling. Sit at your desk, staring into space. As long as you have a piece of paper with indecipherable hand written hieroglyphics on it no-one will question you.

One of the big forgotten secrets of failure is making sure that you also ruin your colleagues' chances of success. There is a potent danger here that if you simply sit back and let them get on with it they'll succeed despite you and carry you kicking and screaming over the finishing line.

We'll talk more about this in the next seminar, but right now to finish up I want to introduce that secret weapon I was talking about.

One of the keys to success prevention is the use of a very important and often overlooked drug which is still legal right now all over the world, even after everything we know about how damaging it is. This is a great tool that you can use to your advantage.

Yeah, I'm talking about the mood altering scourge of the modern achiever - sugar.

Now sugar has two primary effects on human physiology. Number one, it makes people like the person who gave it to them, and number two, it makes them less effective at everything. Eventually, it will kill them, but it's not normally necessary to go that far unless you are playing a very high stakes, long term game.

Instigate a candy and cookie culture, or if you're in the United Kingdom, sweets and biscuits. If you're working in a country that doesn't have sugar, well what planet are you on? But seriously, get into the sugar importing business right away. More addictive than heroin, and much, much more profitable.

If the sugar strategy works out you should see your colleagues become lethargic and fat. They'll start complaining that the office is too hot or too cold and that these seats have suddenly become much less comfortable.

Remember, it's the total sugar load you wanna get up, so make sure you're all going for long pasta and pizza filled lunches, fuelled by real Coke, not that diet crap.

Get sugar into your workplace and not only will everyone around you start failing on your behalf, they'll be happy to do it! They'll have smiles on their chubby cheeks - they'll thank you en masse as they gather together for toilet visits so they can watch the company swirling down the pan whilst helping it on it's way with piles of sugar laden human waste.

OK, next time we're gonna talk about how you can maximise failure throughout your organisation and beyond. We'll be looking at case studies from Enron, ICI, Northern Rock and Newcastle United Football Club, all great examples of institutionalised failures seeded by a determined failee.
Until next time, keep your finger in and your nose off the grindstone.

Systems Will Save The World!

2007-12-07T11:11:00.000Z

Once upon a time I was a socialist.

I wasn't a socialist because my parents brought me up to be one, because as far as I can tell they are pretty right wing. My father is one of those people who believes that people are basically rotten, and that everyone has their price. My mother currently sees the European Union as some kind of soul devouring monster, dissolving sovereign nationality into a broth of irrational political correctness.

The older I get the more I realise that left, right and centre are concepts founded on idealistic and simplistic views of the world. Nationalism too is often built upon foundations that do not stand up to rational analysis.

I don't like humanism either, because it tends to put humanity and human issues at centre stage when there are often times when our interests are not paramount.

Neither could I be an environmentalist, although I once was one. In the nineteen seventies when I worked for what was then called the Nature Conservancy Council (now subsumed into Scottish Natural Heritage), I developed a keen sense of what was worth preserving and became as passionate about the protection of Scottish bogs as others are now about saving the Tiger.

I'm not a realist, because I cannot see that human beings share a common reality. God is real to some, and a children's story to others. Nature is benefactor, or she is a harlot. Guns are a basic human right, or they are tools of evil. Britney is a princess, or she is a slut.

To be a realist in a world largely constructed out of fantasy is asking for trouble.

So, what am I?

I am a changing matrix of interconnected nodes of belief, any one of which is liable to evaporation or solidification. I hold no opinion or belief so dear that I am not prepared to abandon it immediately if a better idea comes along.

There are a few core nodes that have not changed over the years.

The mother of pearl, around which the entire edifice is strung, is the theory that people are essentially social beings, like ants or bees, and that getting along with one another is what we do best given the opportunity to do so. I've looked for evidence to back this idea up, and what I have found supports the theory.

Most people are good, honest to a point, and willing to help their fellows in times of need, in the broad expectation that similar comfort will be afforded them in return.

Take the simple social act of holding a door open for someone. Why do you do that?

You do it because your genetic social conditioning allows you the profound realisation that the energy cost of holding open a door that you had to open anyway saves the other person from making the effort. Thus, the total energy expended by the two of you is less if you hold the door, even though it costs you more.

This isn't politeness, nor is it an abrogation of self interest, it is simple social economics - you pay a little in so that the whole benefits. And anything you pay in is repaid with interest, since you will have the door held for you just as often as you hold it for others.

By using that simple mechanism as an example, we can formulate a rule for beneficial social interaction. The rule might be expressed as - social action is most desirable where the outcome benefits both the group and the contributing individuals.

In that light socialism appears to be a good strategy, because the essence of it is that we should all contribute according to our means for the greater benefit of all.

But does the millionaire who contributes vastly more than the poor man get out more than he puts in? The socialist view would contend that the millionaire made his money in a social environment that allowed him to do so, and that he has already benefitted so that anything he contributes is simply payment of what's already due.

The capitalist retorts that everyone has equal opportunity in that regard, so why should the millionaire be penalised for succeeding where others have failed? Capitalists argue that by taxing the rich you discourage people from wanting to succeed. But that is utter poppycock! Those who are driven to succeed will pursue that goal regardless of the tax rate.

What is far more likely is that if the rich are taxed too high they will simply take their success somewhere that they won't get taxed so much, which begins to look like nothing but opportunism on their part.

But I believe that people are basically good, which means that I cannot believe that millionaires who pursue what looks like self interest are somehow less good than everyone else. It is true that there are many deeply philanthropic millionaires out there, so it seems clear that social conscience is not necessarily swamped by the arrival of currency.

But I believe what is happening here is that rich people are made to feel guilty about being rich. They will have become rich through varying degrees of luck, hard work and talent, and perhaps some of them feel vulnerable to the accusation that what they got was not simply down to their efforts.

The rich person who achieved wealth by nothing more than hard work is rare. Some people are born with or develop the necessary skills to succeed, and some just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

No wonder then that such people tend to be defensive when pressed, although many are not.

But look at the other end of the spectrum of achievement and wealth and how it applies to our beneficial action equation.

Does a nurse, working in a National Health Service hospital, reap the rewards of her efforts? Of course, nursing is a vocation, like being a song writer. It is an activity that brings its own reward.

But every survey that looks into this paints a much darker picture. Nurses and medical staff generally are under tremendous pressure, and feel undervalued and that their contribution is taken for granted.

This is a pattern that is repeated throughout society, at every level. We are all supposed to be in this together, moving forward if not to a perfect world, then at least to a more than adequate one.

We are often guilty of congratulating ourselves upon our standard of living, as if the fact that only a few of us die of starvation and neglect is in itself enough. Politicians will tell us how much better they have made our lives, at the same time as taking away our freedoms to protect us from the fallout of conflicts they instigate for no other reason than greed.

So, who does benefit from the great web of social relationships that forms the fabric of modern civilisation. Who are the guys who are always smiling, never in despair and don't ever reveal self doubt?

Who in this day and age is utterly convinced that the path we walk down is the right one, that the exploitation of natural and human resources is part of the order of the universe?

Who are these grinning idiots?

Yeah, George W. Bush and the rest of his oligarchy of the ordinary may not be the only people on the planet to buy in to the idea that democracy and capitalism function best when they are hi-jacked for personal benefit, but right now they are the guys who have the ball and are heading not to the end zone but to the exit.

When the democratic process puts you in a position where you can go to war for the benefit of your cronies; where you can act illegally and ignore your own country's constitution and international laws with the equanimity of knowing that you are protected from the consequences; where you can manufacture billions of dollars to fund your extravagant overseas agenda, knowing that when the poo-poo hits the fan you'll be elsewhere; where you play golf while children are blown to pieces by bombs that you ordered be dropped - that is when the rest of us know what the system is designed to do.

It's designed to benefit you, at our expense.

Millionaires, nurses, the homeless, singers and innocent people with darker skins than you, all of us have been taken for a ride. Somehow we have allowed you to fool us into believing that you have the least intention of acting for the good of all.

Frankly, you wouldn't know how.

So, because of what those in authority have done down through the millennia to more or less the same degree, I am an anti-authoritarian. That seems like a reasonable position to take. I am also a pragmatist.

I believe in systems. Like traffic lights.

Everyone sees the benefit in traffic lights. Very little authority is required to make them function. They take care of us and facilitate our social and economic interactions. Imagine if you risked death every time you went shopping!

We all consent to follow the rules, because the alternative is like everyone slamming doors in one another's faces. Margaret Thatcher once perverted the spirit of the philosophies of Ayn Rand (as so many have done!) by saying, "There is no such thing as society."

Oh boy, would I love to have the opportunity to hold the door for her!

So, systems are the answer. You identify the problem (cars crashing at intersections) and you build the solution (phased sequential signals). As long as the system you develop meets the demands of the equation I described earlier, people are genetically programmed to understand the benefits.

We can build democratic systems that are better than the kinds of archaic representational democracies that we have been saddled with in the modern age. The pyramid of power needs to be turned upside down, using secure vote banking to enable the will of the people, who are generally a lot smarter than our bi-partisan political systems currently reveal.

Have leaders, but give them no power.

Have a legislature, but make it answerable to the public.

Have an executive, but populate it by random poll (like jury duty).

Do what the ancient Greeks did and ostracise those who transgress, kicking them out of the political arena. Watch the minds of those who covet power struggle to accommodate that idea, and see how good and true people who do not fear failure or censure step to the fore to lead.

You will say I am an idealist, and that none of this can ever happen. I will not deny the accusation, but in defence of the idea I can say that neither can the status quo persist.

When modern empires fail (because empires always fail) something better will rise from the ashes. I call it Consensus Holocracy, and I'll keep talking about it and promoting it until someone persuades me that it isn't workable.

Now there's a challenge for someone!

Community In Public

2007-11-20T10:39:00.000Z

I've written a lot here about YouTube, but as fast as I gather my thoughts and place them, I find the beast morphing and changing into new forms.

The attrition rate within the YouTube community is astounding. People leave for a variety of reasons, but recently I have noticed that a number of female users have found it necessary to close their accounts after suffering verbal abuse at the hands of a vocal minority.

This led me to my usual chain of thinking.

To deal with hate, you have to be able to identify the haters, which means you need to be able to verify identity. How can you do that when users' computer addresses are dynamically allocated minute by minute by their Internet Service Provider?

The short answer is that you can't. You have to resort to "real world" methods, and when you do that you inevitably run into costs.

My favoured option is that YouTube should charge money every time an account is created. That money gathering process has a cost, and my view is that the money that is gathered should cover the cost of gathering it, adding up to a token fee large enough to deter those who create multiple accounts for nefarious purposes.

Charging per account (whether it be five dollars per month or ten dollars per year, or twenty dollars per lifetime) would stop the spammers in their tracks, and would have a significant impact on those cheaters who create sock accounts to artificially boost their subscription numbers.

It would also mean that financial details could be held for every account and compared with every other. The haters would not be able to hide unless they had multiple financial identities, and any orchestrated campaign would cost them money.

To accommodate the genuine needs that people have for multiple accounts, each channel could be linked back to the overall identity, meaning that users could retain their multiple interests whilst still having a single identifiable presence (like a broadcaster with many channels).

Of course, anyone could still turn up to watch videos without paying, keeping the advertisers happy. So, I don't believe such a charge would have a huge negative impact.

Anyway, all this got me thinking (yet again) what it is that we're doing on YouTube, and I realised what it is that makes the place so dysfunctional.

It is because we do everything in public. Yeah, obvious really isn't it!

Can you imagine a real world community where every aspect of the community was on public display all the time. Imagine a city in the desert, with no walls. You can hear everything that anyone says and see everything that they do.

It's no wonder that people get attacked all the time! Some of the people who do the attacking do it because they are genuinely offended by the very idea of carrying out such activities in public.

If you come onto YouTube to watch entertaining videos of whatever sort appeals to you, and you happen across a heartfelt confessional video by a community member revealing intimate personal details, it is entirely natural that you might be appalled. It is also quite within the range of normal human behaviour to leave a comment which sums up your feeling.

It doesn't mean that you are a hater! It means you hated seeing that video, even if it was by accident. Of course, there is a different and more structured type of hater on YouTube, but a lot of the so called "hate" is opportunistic in nature, and not especially problematic.

The way to deal with that problem is to allow users to have private channels, to which access can only be gained through an invitation system. A private channel would be entirely invisible until an invitation was issued from it. Only upon acceptance of such an invite could a user see what was in that private channel.

This would also give people the opportunity to charge for access, if they had something that was of monetary value.

Yes, that probably means porn! But as long as it's legal and not public, then there shouldn't really be a problem.

I believe there are solutions to all the problems on YouTube, but I don't know (yet) whether YouTube has the will to adopt them.

Only time will tell!

The Prince and the Minstrel

2007-11-06T10:41:00.001Z

Once upon a time there was a lonely minstrel.

The minstrel had wandered the lands of the world far and wide, and never found a place to call home. He had sung his songs and played his music for years without anyone of any consequence ever noticing. He had always been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some people are just unlucky that way.

Many times the minstrel had tried to give up making music, and he'd tried desperately to settle down. He even found himself a wife, and together they had a beautiful baby girl, but the minstrel was ever restless, his itchy feet and tingling fingers leading him always back to the path his music took him down.

One day the minstrel heard about a wonderful new city called Youtubia, where they said it was possible for everyone to find what they were looking for.

So, the minstrel went to the city and with no great expectation stood on a street corner to sing his new song, which was all about the wonderful City of Youtubia, and some of the amazing things the minstrel had seen there.

Now it just so happened that one of the Princes of Youtubia was passing down that street, and he heard the minstrel singing and he approached the minstrel. The minstrel was amazed to see the great man in all his finery come right up to him.

The Prince told the minstrel that his song was wonderful, because of course the Prince of Youtubia was very interested in anything that made Youtubia sound good, which the minstrel's song did.

So, the Prince invited the minstrel to come and sing at his court. The minstrel could hardly believe his fortune. That a great man like a Prince of Youtubia should notice him was just the kind of good luck that the minstrel had always been looking for. Finally, now it was his time to show what he could do.

The minstrel played at the Prince's court, and suddenly everyone in Youtubia was talking about the new singer of songs. The theatres and music halls were full of people who wanted to see the minstrel sing.

The minstrel's songs reached out into people's hearts, and because the minstrel liked people, the citizens of Youtubia began to listen to what the minstrel had to say, not just in his songs. If the minstrel had something to say but didn't have a song to say it in, it turned out that the people were just as happy to listen to his words on their own. Without the music!

And so the minstrel began to talk as well as sing, and it was of no matter to the people, they loved him any which way.

And so it went on, with the minstrel having found his place in the world at last.

One day the minstrel got a message from the Prince, about nothing in particular, and the Prince signed the message "Your friend, the Prince".

Friend? The minstrel was very glad he could now count the great man amongst his friends, because it isn't what you know that matters, it's who you know.

Things went from strength to strength for the minstrel, and he was no longer lonely. He had more friends than he knew what to do with, which was actually a much better thing than having none.

And because the Prince had been a good friend to the minstrel the minstrel returned the favour, and he defended the Prince from his many critics. Oh yes, not everyone loved the Prince the way the minstrel did, but no-one was in any doubt about where the minstrel's loyalties lay. The Prince had made a true friend.

One day the minstrel got a visit from the Prince, and the Prince told the minstrel about a top secret hush-hush project that he and some of the other Princes were working on. The minstrel was pleased to be taken into the Prince's confidence, and listened as the Prince explained what was going to happen.

Youtubia was a place of opportunity, but it wasn't always a nice place, and it certainly was no paradise. It had many problems, but chief amongst them was that the bricks and mortar of the city was owned by the merchants. If your house fell down you relied upon the merchants to fix it, but they were so busy that sometimes whole neighbourhoods would lie in ruins for weeks at a stretch.

The streets weren't safe, and the weak or the old were often preyed upon, which didn't bother the Prince personally, or the minstrel, because they were both now too powerful to worry.

But it was clear that something had to be done on behalf of the ordinary citizens of Youtubia, and the Prince had been contacted by a new group of young merchants who wanted to build a perfection of Youtubia, and they wanted the Prince to lead an exodus to this new promised land, which they jokingly called Wetubia.

The Prince told the minstrel all about it, and how great it was going to be, and how it would change the whole world. And how he wanted the minstrel to help him build it.

Well, the minstrel was flattered, and told the Prince that he was just a minstrel, that he was no great leader or Prince of men, that he had no idea how to build a city. But the Prince said that the minstrel was a visionary, and that he had skills and talents that were perfectly suited to the job.

The minstrel's head was filled with the idea, and he could see just what it might mean if each citizen could live in peace and harmony with every other, and because he had the vision of a poet the minstrel could see beyond the practical problems to the utopia that lay beyond. Maybe the Prince was right. Maybe he could do it!

The Prince explained that he couldn't be seen to be working in public on such a thing, since he was a Prince of Youtubia, and some people might see his involvement in the building of another city as inappropriate. The Prince didn't want to be caught cheating, and he certainly didn't want to upset the merchants. But in the background the Prince would be in close contact with the new younger merchants, and he would keep in touch to let the minstrel know how things were progressing.

It was all going to be good. That's what the Prince said, it's all going to be good.

By now the minstrel had many new friends in Youtubia, and he called upon some of them and told them in confidence that the Prince had asked him to begin work on the building of the new paradise of Wetubia.

The minstrel's friends were a little uncertain. If the Prince wanted a new city built why wasn't the Prince here to make it happen? But the minstrel explained that the Prince was a very busy man, and that he was working in secret behind the scenes to make the thing a reality.

And so the group of friends began planning and talking and writing and calculating and pretty soon they had identified a whole bunch of issues that would need to be solved before the new city could be built. And they made good progress on getting some of the answers!

The minstrel waited to hear from the Prince, and when his friends asked where the Prince was, the minstrel explained again that the Prince was a busy man, and that he wasn't a great reader, and since everything was being discussed at length in letters and written notes, the Prince wasn't able to get involved.

And the minstrel waited.

But he never heard from the Prince.

Now, the minstrel was a man who took people at their word, and when the Prince said that he'd be in touch the minstrel took that to mean that the Prince would be in touch. But of course, some people say one thing and mean another.

The minstrel eventually began to wonder if the Prince meant something different. Maybe when the Prince said, I'll be in touch, he actually meant, I will not be in touch, or, I might be in touch, or, I'll be in touch when I feel like it.

The minstrel still thought of the Prince as his friend, even though the weeks and months went by without any word. The minstrel waited, and all the time defended the Prince against those inside the Wetubia project who were beginning to wonder if the Prince had any part to play at all in the building of the great new city. Maybe the minstrel had invented the whole thing!

By this time the minstrel had gathered a large group of citizens together, and was devoting most of his time to organising them and talking to them and keeping them going in the right direction, and all the time he told them that he was not the leader of the project, that the Prince was the guy in charge.

So, one day, having heard nothing, the minstrel went to the public square in Youtubia and gathered his audience, and in their presence he called upon the Prince to show himself and reveal what was going on.

An expectant hush fell over the audience as they waited to see if the Prince would respond.

Soon the Prince walked into the square, surrounded by his retinue of followers. There were thousands of them, many many more than the minstrel could hope to dream of having in his audience. The minstrel hadn't sung songs for a long time, and the people had grown tired of him talking obliquely about the building of a mysterious new city that he couldn't reveal the details of. The minstrel's audience had dwindled.

The Prince took the stage and the minstrel watched with everyone else as he spoke.

The Prince looked uncharacteristically ill at ease, but he explained that there was this idea for a new city, and how the new city would work, and how great it would be and how there was a lot of interest out there, and there were other merchants who wanted to build it, and how they wanted the Prince to lead people there.

And the minstrel thought now was the time that all his hard work would be rewarded, even though he worried about the Prince's lack of enthusiasm.

The Prince never referred to the minstrel as his friend, and after explaining about the wonders to come he said that even though all of that was going on, he had no intention of leaving Youtubia, and that he would be staying put, that he had nothing to do with the new city, and that anyone who wanted to go build it was welcome to, and that if they built it and it was good he'd come visit, but he was staying put.

The minstrel could not believe his ears, and he knew right there and then that Wetubia would never be built. If the Prince wasn't interested, then why should anyone else be?

And so, the friends who had assembled to dream about a better future drifted away, back to the old city with all it's problems. And the minstrel went back to playing songs, even though the theatres were now half empty.

The Prince never spoke to the minstrel again, and so what had been for a moment such a great friendship looked like it was lost forever like a grain of sand in the desert.

And time rolled on as it always does, and the minstrel realised that the smaller audiences were more interested in what he was doing, and he felt closer to them than he had before, and that maybe it just wasn't his destiny to play to millions.

The Prince did what the Prince did, living his Princely life, and the minstrel watched with amusement and a heart that was happy to have held such friendship, even if only for a moment.

And in a strange way, just like the Prince promised, it was all good. Maybe it wasn't as good as it might have been, but it was probably as good as it could be, which is all anyone can ever ask.

Part of the Program

2007-11-06T10:40:00.000Z

Interrogator: So, let's get this straight. You're god, right?

Charlie: No. No, not at all.

I: But you did create the universe, right?

C: Well, kinda.

I: That's a yes or no answer. You either did or you didn't.

C: Well, let's just say I was part of a team who put something together that then went on to create the universe.

I: So, the universe was built by committee? That explains everything.

C: The universe was actually built by the program that I helped to create.

I: And what is the program?

C: The program is what created the universe. It was what you guys are calling "the singularity", where you build a computer program so powerful that it becomes essentially god-like.

I: So, the computer program is god?

C: Not really. It has no personification of that sort, but it is both designer and implementation of the intermingled algorithms that work together to create what you experience as the universe.

I: So, you made the program and the program made us.

C: Not directly. The program has as its goal the creation of intelligent awareness, which is us.

I: Us?

C: Humanity.

I: But you claim to be something other than human.

C: No. I'm entirely human.

I: But you just claimed to be one of god's creation team. Which is it? Human or super-human?

C: I have awareness of how the universe came into being, and I have some level of understanding about what lies outside the universe. In that other place I was very much as I am here, just an ordinary person. I'm not omnipotent here or there.

I: But I'm confused now. You can't be both a normal human and a part of the team who wrote the program who created the universe. That would mean you had to exist here and there at the same time.

C: Well, I can be both here and there. That's exactly what has happened.

I: So, what, did you get beamed in or something? How is your external consciousness able to be manifested here? How are the two linked?

C: Well, the creation of intelligent awareness isn't so hard as you imagine. Once you've done it once it really takes off, and pretty soon you have an exponential progression towards the singularity. Once you get the singularity anything can happen, even the replication of a pre-existing intelligence.

I: So, you're a copy of the person that exists outside our universe.

C: Yeah, pretty much.

I: So, who created you? I mean, who copied you in here?

C: The program did.

I: Why?

C: So that I can plant a seed of understanding.

I: What seed?

C: In about a hundred years (maybe less) you are going to experience the singularity, and your world will change forever in ways I can't even begin to describe. My human brain here cannot hold that information, but the seed I need to plant is one that we think is always planted around the time of singularity, like a failsafe.

I: Whoa! Back up there a minute. What do you mean "always planted"?

C: In every universe there occurs a singularity. Associated with that singularity is the message that I bring.

I: You mean, this has happened before? There have been other singularities?

C: Of course, that is the whole purpose of the singularity - to create an infinite expression of singularities. On and on forever.

I: But why? To what end?

C: The program seeks to know itself, and the only way that can happen is when the program creates something greater than itself, something that can completely encompass it. That's what the singularity does.

I: That makes no sense at all. Assuming that the universe is a kind of intelligent program, it isn't feasible that it could create something bigger or more intelligent than itself.

C: Well, that's what happens. You have to remember that the program contains everything you experience and think. You are as much a part of the program as a tree or a rock or a star. Everything is contained within and is part of the program.

The ultimate purpose of the program is to create the next singularity with the full awareness of what is happening and what is required.

I: Isn't the program aware of all this already?

C: Yeah, but the program has created you guys, and you guys have free will. You can change things.

I: So we might choose not to create the singularity.

C: No, you'll always make the attempt. That's what all of this is about - farming, civilisation, technology - it's all aimed towards getting us to the stage where we run our own iteration of the program.

I: And what happens when we do?

C: It's incomprehensible.

I: To you, or to me?

C: Both. I'm just an ordinary guy. My mind cannot encompass the singularity.

I: But what kind of thing are we talking about here? Is it eternal life, free energy forever? What? What does the singularity do?

C: It produces the next universe, and the next singularity.

I: But what will our universe be like after we achieve the singularity?

C: You have to see that there is no way that your mind can have foreknowledge that. Notions of paradise or eternal torment or purgatory or death or of ceasing to exist are all human concepts derived from ego and psyche. They don't have any relevance after the singularity.

Existence? Non-existence? Eternity? Infinity? All meaningless concepts once the singularity arrives.

I: So, were you a programmer in this other life?

C: Yeah, but that's not what I am here. I can't help you program the singularity.

I: So, who is working on the singularity now?

C: I really don't know. Maybe the guys who will do it haven't even been born yet.

I: OK then, what's your message.

C: I already gave it.

I: Can you sum it up for us?

C: No need. It'll be obvious to everyone who sees this video and reads the transcript.

I: This video? What video?

C: The one we're making right now.

I: I'm not making a video. This isn't being taped. We're just talking here.

C: But you're talking to yourself. We're both part of the program. Just like everyone who's watching this video. We are all connected. All part of the same thing.

I: OK, that's it. I've had it with this delusional son of a bitch……..

* * *

Interrogator: OK, so what you're saying is that the whole universe is just a gigantic computer program running on inter-dimensional quantum computers that exist within a universe that was itself created in the same way.

Like layers of the ever expanding infinite onion, where each universe creates the next within itself.

Is that right?

Charlie: Uh, yeah. Kinda.

I: So everything we see around us is an illusion?

C: In a way, yes.

I: Kinda. In a way. It either is or isn't!

C: Is and isn't is a very human concept based on our tangible connections with the world. We see things or we don't see them. They exist, or they don't exist. Things begin and things end, so we characterise the universe as an anthropocentric object, with us at the heart of it.

Even though we know that it isn't like that. That we are simply a tiny part of the whole thing. But we're conflicted about it, because we don't feel insignificant.

But I'm here to tell you that even though we are tiny, so is a spark. And we are the spark that will change everything.

I: How?

C: You call it the singularity.

I: Ah. Like a black hole?

C: Kinda.

I: Less of the maybes and the kindas. What is the singularity?

C: The singularity happens when you have a computer that is powerful enough to calculate and model the nature of reality instantaneously.

I: How is that even possible?

C: Well, you'll need quantum computers that can effectively calculate infinite complexity with no time lag. Instantaneous computing.. And you create a set of iterative instructions that requires an intelligent artificial consciousness to model the universe.

Then it just happens all around you. Kinda.

I: Listen, I am so far out of my depth here, I don't know whether to start swimming or just give up and drown!

Anyway, if anyone is watching this non-existent video maybe they will have better luck with this.

For me, it's over.

Fictional Violence Without Morality

2007-11-06T10:38:00.000Z

"Showing no remorse, and with concern only for the way his friend Mooney might perceive his role in the matters at hand, Greenspoon shot the punk once in the stomach. Just to keep him quiet. The spray of blood took everyone by surprise. The guy's blood pressure must have been sky high.

Greenspoon took note that Mooney was laughing, waving his piece at the second punk, whilst the shot guy on the couch screamed a bit and coughed up red fluid. It wasn't exactly blood, it was more watery.

The second punk had messed himself. The smell of it was bitter, and the guy was on his knees begging for his life with shit running out onto the floor. Greenspoon pumped a round into the guy's forehead and watched with the satisfaction of a competent artisan as brains sprayed out in a neat fan behind.

Greenspoon only needed one set of ears for what he was about to say. He couldn't say it directly to Mooney, so he had to pretend that it was for the benefit of the dying punk.

As Greenspoon spoke Mooney nodded in appreciation and let out a few encouraging expletives, kinda like the congregation in one of those progressive gospel churches. The punk just looked confused, clutching his ruined body as he looked imploringly from Greenspoon to Mooney in the hope of some kind of spark of compassion.

He didn't find that, but at the end of his speech Greenspoon let the guy of his misery by blowing his teeth through the top of his skull.

It was all business as usual."

I hope that sounds a little bit like an extract from a Tarantino story, the kind of scene that might take a day or two to film.

I'm using it to illustrate one of the many modern uses of violence in modern fictional narrative. In this tiny segment of out and out plagiarism I hope I have managed to create a vignette that serves the purpose of illustrating how violence is used to drive a narrative with a degree of urgency that it would otherwise be difficult to achieve.

In the short piece you have several elements that are thrown into sharp relief by the acts of violence that occur.

You see that Greenspoon (from whose viewpoint the scene is played out) is concerned about himself and his relationship with Mooney, and that he is able to use acts of violence to reach Mooney in a way that might not be possible otherwise.

Mooney is impressed and involved, engaged by Greenspoon's preparedness to employ violence. Clearly, for these guys violence is an emotional currency.

The victims here are almost incidental, merely vehicles to deliver blood splatters and cries of mercy. As readers we have no real concern for them, because they are not painted with any depth.

The acts of violence are not especially dwelt upon, but there is sufficient detail to assure the reader that what is being described is realistic to some degree, and that the writer has researched his material well.

At the end of the scene the reader should get the idea that the perpetrators are some kind of professional hit men, and that Greenspoon is concerned about his relationship with Mooney.

Now let's re-write the scene without the violence, insert identical concerns and see if we can reach the same kinds of resolutions.

"Without hesitation, but with part of his mind still aware of how Mooney might be assessing him, Greenspoon took off his coat and wrapped it around the prostrate woman. She had clearly been thrown from the car, possibly straight through the windscreen by the looks of her injuries.

Greenspoon looked over to where Mooney was attending to the driver, who was hanging half in and half out of the wrecked car, which still teetered on the edge of the bridge, hanging there by the slenderest of threads. It looked like it was the smashed parapet railing that was the only thing stopping the car from plummeting into the dark waters of the swollen river.

Mooney was getting the guy comfortable, assessing the damage. The guy groaned and opened his eyes. He began to panic when he saw where he was. The car rocked ominously on its centre of gravity.

The woman was breathing steadily, although there was a dark bruise under the blood on her forehead. Greenspoon wondered what that might mean, and half hoped she'd stay unconscious until the ambulance arrived.

The driver began to moan. It seemed that his leg was caught, crushed by the impact, and when Mooney made an attempt to get a closer look the guy yelled like crazy. There was no option but to wait, so Greenspoon went over and began to speak gently to the guy, soothing him.

Of course, the words were as much for Mooney's benefit, and he nodded in appreciation and support as Greenspoon went on. The injured guy looked from Greenspoon to Mooney, searching for hope, some way out of his agonising predicament.

But there was no way out, not until the fire services arrived with some kind of towing and cutting gear. Mooney went to the back of the car to try and hold it in place.

Greensponn stayed at the front, holding the drivers bloody hand whilst staring down into the black water."

What's interesting here is that without the violence I need a few more words to say more or less the same things. The kinds of useful stereotypes that accompany violence are replaced by more ambiguous characters, whose roles become much less well defined.

The relationships between the main characters are less brightly lit, but have more colour and mystery to them. The second telling of the story has more intrigue.

Again, the exact role of the protagonist and his friend is not detailed, but the reader should get the impression that these are capable and caring men who are not unused to such circumstances. Perhaps they are local police officers happening upon a road accident.

The main difference between the two versions of the story is the morality of the characters. In the first instance the characters are reprehensible, and there seems to be no justification for their violent acts. In the second, the violence has already happened and the characters are seeking to prevent more tragedy whilst comforting the victims.

There is also a hint of ambivalence or detachment about the non-violent Greenspoon, since he appears to be quite happy that the female victim remains unconscious, and he certainly makes no effort to revive her.

In the absence of pure acts of unmitigated violence the narrative is necessarily more convoluted. In the first example when the victims are dead they are no longer of any concern. The fact that the main protagonist and his friend are the perpetrators of the violent acts means that no loose ends are left, everything proceeds neatly.

Two characters meet, they interact. They exchange items of information, creating plot points around which the narrative will be constructed. The narrative now has twice the complexity that it had before.

One of the characters is our hero, so the narrative progresses according to the way that character plays with the plot points. Meanwhile, our secondary character is also playing out the plot points that he has gathered from the initial meeting.

Each character may meet other characters, and every time such meetings take place the number of plot points has the potential to increase, until the point where the plot has to refocus to achieve resolution. But along the way the narrative can become unmanageably complex.

Film makers (and to a lesser extent novelists) manage and control narrative by restricting the number of characters, and the number of interactions that those characters can have.

Films such as Flight of the Phoenix and Twelve Angry Men contain the narrative in geographically constricting locations, with a fixed number of characters. This obviates the need to control the narrative by other means.

Of course, the primary means of putting a full stop to a narrative thread is to kill the character who carries that thread forward. In the first telling of the story here there would have been endless potential consequences if either of the victims were not removed irrevocably from the story. Very few narratives survive critical analysis if the victims are left wandering around but never seek revenge. Strangely, we never seem to wonder why these nameless victims don't have family and friends who might want to get their own back, just as we never ask why there are not always headlines and news crews involved after a big shootout.

Of course, many films do deal with just such issues, most notably for me the Coen brothers, whose films deal to a very large extent with the consequences and aftermath of violence as well as the constant threat of its arrival.

In the Coen brothers version of the bridge accident scene above there would be a gun on the floor of the smashed up car.

It seems to me that where violence is employed indiscriminately as a narrative tool the possibilities offered by any particular story can never be fully explored. Violence (at least where it is the terminal kind) curtails narrative.

I am also uneasy about the glorification of violence, where violence is associated with characters who achieve their goals and do so in a way that gets them places in their world.

I distrust film makers like Tarantino, who raise the stakes by means of apparently endless and meaningless acts of violence that are played out with extreme graphic and emotional impact.

It worries me when people find humour in such scenes, or when people idolise the perpetrators. Perhaps our natural inclination when confronted with such events may be some kind of nervous reaction that manifests itself as a belly laugh, but gunplay is not slapstick. Nor is something funny just because some of us laugh.

But it is not the portrayal of violence that I object to, it is the portrayal of violence without any moral foundation upon which to examine its effects that upsets me.

One of my favourite films is Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, which is a work that goes right up to the line that I draw, but which does not step over it. That makes it a very exciting and powerful examination of what violence actually means, albeit set in a fantasy western world where a single drink of whisky can turn a has-been gunslinger into the grim reaper, bent upon questionable revenge.

Eastwood always manages to convey the moral conundrum upon which the dilemma of violence hinges. Is it ever "right" to kill another? Where does self defence turn into unnecessary and cruel revenge?

A work that raises such questions in a meaningful way, even if it doesn't answer them, is probably worthwhile.

The portrayal of violence has another important effect that cannot be overlooked. It allows the film maker to adrenalise the audience.

Paul Verhoeven's Robocop begins with the brutalised shooting of the hero, who is left for dead by the primary antagonist. The shooting is filmed in graphic detail, and its impact on the victim is seen and understood. The visceral impact is meant to be profound, causing a release of adrenalin in the audience.

The film maker has activated the flight or fight response, and as a result the audience has heightened senses. The film maker can make excellent use of this, but if he doesn't pull it off the end result can be an audience that is left anxious and unfulfilled.

I love Robocop! The good guy triumphs, as long as you don't examine the nature of his victory too much. He is, after all, merely the shell of the man he once was. Literally.

Of course, all of this is predicated upon my own personal sensitivity to fantasy violence. Others may not be so sensitive.

Perhaps at the age of forty seven I'm simply out of step with the requirements of modern narrative. Perhaps there is some deeper function of violent imagery in culture that I haven't grasped because I'm still stuck in a mind set that values imagination highly.

I suppose I was taught to use my imagination, which is less important in a world where everything that can be imagined can be shown on a screen. Perhaps when you are shown everything the only way you can encompass it is to see it.

Advice For The Young

2007-11-06T10:37:00.000Z

Strange though it may seem to my more mature chums, many persons of slender years on the Tube of You ask my for my advice on the generalities and peculiarities and incomprehensibilities of this uspy downsy roundaboutsy ride we call life.

Obviously, I'm not qualified to speak on the subject. My sincere advice would be, go ask Bill Gates or Prince. Or read some books! You can do it! Don't ask some stranger on the internet how to fix your love life. Ask yourself, if his love life is so great, why is he sitting there posting videos for kicks? Huh?

But I know that the endless stream of agony will not stop until I engage it full force, head on, with all the compunction I can muster.

So, like it or not, here it comes. You asked for it. You asked for it more than once. And I live to please my YouTube chums.

Here comes my Life Advice For The Young!

1) Drink only water. That fizzy black juice you love so much is black for a reason. That's the colour of death. Don't drink black.
2) Never sign up for a regime that involves an alarm clock. It's called an "alarm" clock for a reason. You don't want to start your day with an alarm. Start your day with a gentle caress.
3) Choose your life partners well. If anyone causes you the least bit of grief before you have committed yourself to them, whether in business or in love, tying the knot isn't going to make those troubles go away. Proximity only makes them worse.
4) Once you have committed be prepared to see it through. Nothing really worth having was ever gained easily. It's human nature to value what you thought you'd never have, and then once you've got it to watch its value fall steadily over time.
5) Once you have something, get ready to lose it at any moment!
6) Don't work harder than you need to. Short term stress for medium to long term gain is fine, but stress plays no part in a healthy and happy lifestyle. You do want to be happy and healthy, don't you?
7) Yeah, just in case you missed that meeting, the whole point is to remain happy and healthy for as long as possible in the face of an almost infinite array of forces that simply wish to render you down to a kind of sticky pink paste, if you're lucky.
8) The atoms in your body were created in the heart of a sun. They have a yearning to return there. Don't you let them. You are their boss!
9) If an expert tells you that you should or shouldn't be doing something, and you don't know whether the advice is sound, all you have to do to find out what you should think is ask, "Who pays this person's wages?"
10) Spend time and money only on things that benefit you and those you care about, and which bring you pleasure proportionate to or greater than the investment you make. Work it out on a piece of paper if you have to!
11) No-one likes a smart arse. You might be right, but that doesn't mean a thing. The guy who schmoozes best is the guy who gets listened to. Be a schmoozer, not a loser. These days they call it networking. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, play the Sims.
12) Good looking members of the opposite sex are just as full of insecurities and hang-ups as the ugly ones, so aim high. You got nothing to lose!
13) Don't buy useless beauty products. You are beautiful anyway, regardless of how you smell. They call it "sham" "poo" for a reason. Literally translated it means fake shit and that's what it is. This stuff poisons our rivers and gives us cancer. You'll be the best looking pox ridden idiot in the post industrial wasteland.
14) You cannot save the planet. The planet could not care less about you, and the tiger would happily eat your brains as an appetiser. It doesn't need to be saved. If you wanna save anything save insects and bacteria, because they're running the show, and if we lose them we are screwed!
15) In any case, ask yourself this question, what are we supposed to be saving the planet from? If anything exists that is powerful enough to wipe out mother nature - there's diddly squat we can do about it. She's a tough old bird, and she'll still be here long after we are gone.
16) Oh, and don't anthropomorphise fictional deities. You'll find yourself being sucked into a philosophical black hole.
17) Oh, and don't listen to people you meet on line. No-one is who you think they are.

Take care!

The God Program

2007-11-02T12:20:00.001Z

Richard Dawkins proposes the idea that belief in god is a delusion, which is a very attractive position for the modern rational mind to take in the continuing absence of mystery.

When it comes to looking for the answers to the big questions of life, such as -

Where did we come from? What was here before us?

- Dawkins offers the scientific answer, which is that we have a few theories, but we don't really know. Our current level of knowledge of the nature of the universe, its origin and the manner of its workings, is inadequate to the task of supplying definitive answers.

Any objective examination of the progress of science over the last three hundred years would have to conclude that the only certainty is that we can never be certain! Theory after theory has been discarded, or modified into something new and better.

Current scientific theories of our origins (big bang and primordial soup) are under attack just as the steady state and hand of god theories that came before.

Not that any examination of the scientific literature would easily reveal these attacks. You will find scattered references to the problems within the current cosmological model and to theories such as panspermia, but for the most part these are considered to be of little interest as science builds its house of cards higher and higher.

Of course, Dawkins does not pretend that science has all the definitive answers (although he implies it strongly), since the tautology that undermines his argument is that science can never rest in its search for the truth. Science produces no ultimate truths that deal with the fundamental questions of existence.

This state of "not knowing" is all that science offers, so it's no wonder that those in search of a deeper meaning or structure to life do not flock to it.

But Dawkins' attacks on religion are misguided and delusional in themselves. He seems to believe that rational argument can prevail against irrational belief systems. Judging by his hysterical tone in the "Root Of All Evil" TV program, he was shocked that his arguments did not hold any sway with those invested in religion as a way of life.

Duh!

But Dawkins' real argument isn't against religion. Let's face it, from a rational point of view religion is an easy target, and those who practice it can be picked off like ducks at a fair.

Dawkins' target is the belief in god. He says that believing in god is delusional because there is no evidence to support the existence of such a being. He then demonstrates how science seeks to provide answers by examining the nature of the universe, and says that we don't need god to explain how everything works; that just because we don't have definitive answers to all the questions doesn't mean that we have to invoke the supernatural.

But it is here that Dawkins comes unstuck, because in the absence of definitive answers (which he admits science cannot provide) the only post-rational belief is in the supernatural. If there is any chance, no matter how remote, that there is what we might call a supernatural being who can somehow respond to us, then the post-rational mind must embrace that belief.

Let's imagine that one day soon science invents or designs a self aware computer program, and creates an entirely artificial world for copies of that program to inhabit.

Within this world the program can replicate and reproduce, it can evolve and it can examine the nature of its world. But there is no means whereby the program can look beyond the world it finds itself in.

The world itself has a set of rules that governs its workings, and which the program can exploit to further its objective of survival and growth.

The programmers can rewrite the program at any time, but in the interests of the welfare of the being they have created they design a protocol whereby their only means of intervention is to work within the artificial world at a level that lies entirely below the consciousness and perceptual threshold of the increasingly able and observant program.

This is complete fantasy, of course, but you can see how such a creation might lead to the kind of situation we find ourselves in today.

Call the program "life" and call the scientists who created it "god".

It is entirely possible that the creators are not much more capable than the thing they have created, and it may even be the case that the creation surpasses the creator in many ways, which might (for all we know, stuck inside) be the very purpose of the program.

What I am suggesting here is that science can never know what lies outside the artificial world that supports the program, nor can it know what support mechanisms the designers may have built in.

Maybe all you have to do is call for help, and some subset of the underlying programming, hidden in parts of the whole that we can never perceive, kicks in to effect a change to our benefit.

Of course, if that was happening there would be numerous examples of it in our world.

But it is unlikely that science would ever take miracles seriously!

So, once the idea of a supernatural being has been proposed it makes no sense not to give the idea credence, and to act as though there really is something there as long as your behaviour is still rational and moralistic.

But what about the big, big question?

What happens when we die?

A very wise man once said, "I can never die".

Which no matter how you look at it is an absolute truth. You can watch other people die, but you cannot watch yourself die, because at the moment of death you cease to exist.

Of course, you can suffer pain and fear on the way to your death, and like Woody Allen once said, "It isn't death that terrifies me, it's the bit leading up to it."

But rest assured that the thing you call your "self" will never die.

Eternal life in the great hereafter? Well, I'm not so sure. I guess that depends on the programming!

9/11 Conspiracy Theory Debunked (Again)

2007-11-02T11:37:00.001Z

I get really peed off at those who insist that the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers were anything other than precisely what they appear to be. It seems that some people are capable of constructing elaborate fantasies simply to fit their comfortable dystopian world view. To them it has to be a conspiracy, because the alternative is too painful.

Here is my take on some of the more plausible elements of the conspiracy theory.

1) Persons unknown planted explosive devices in the Twin Towers and building seven in anticipation of the attack.

There is no evidence that large scale works of any sort were carried out in all three buildings that collapsed. There is no evidence that a full scale demolition team was recruited, and trained in covert techniques. There is no evidence that the huge number of explosive devices that would be required were present in the buildings. No-one reports seeing those devices, even though they would have had to be in place long before the attack.

2) The new owner of the Twin Towers renegotiated his insurance policies in anticipation of the attack.

A new owner will necessarily renegotiate the insurance situation upon taking up ownership. The Twin Towers had already been the target of one attack, and were so obvious a target that images of aeroplanes crashing into them had been imagined by artists many years before the events. Insurance negotiators are entitled to employ a little imagination too.

3) The attack was carried out at the behest of the Bush Administration, in order to justify an attack on Iraq.

The Bush administration didn't need such a justification. They were already planning to deal with Saddam on the basis of the information that led to the 45 minute/WOMD claim, almost all of which pre-dates 9/11. If they arranged the attack to use it as justification for invading Iraq they would have made it look like the attacks were carried out by Iraq, not Saudi Arabian followers of Bin Laden. The administration made all the political mileage they could out of the situation, but there is no evidence that they instigated it.

4) The video evidence shows "squibs" taking out key structural elements of the Towers, leading to their collapse.

If "squibs" were used to initiate the collapse of a building that would otherwise have withstood the impact of the aeroplane, then the "squibs" must have exploded prior to the collapse beginning. The video evidence does not show any explosion of any sort preceding the collapse. All of the so called explosions happen during the collapse.

What are described by conspiracy apologists as explosions are actually part of the pattern of collapse. They appear to precede the descending wave of collapse because the entire collapse is not visible from the outside. The primary channel of collapse is internal, with the building folding inward onto itself, and the falling material then being ejected outward in plumes.

Some of these plumes of pulverised concrete come from inner structures that are suddenly subject to the immense pressures of the collapsing floors above.

The collapse does not progress in a smooth front. The internal strengthening structures running vertically break at the weak point. That weak point may be two or three floors below the falling debris. As they snap, the cladding that surrounds them is ejected at high speed in a cloud that looks a little like an explosion.

5) Witnesses report hearing explosions.

Yes, the falling debris would have created sound pressure waves that would have exactly the same percussive nature as an explosion.

6) The only way that the concrete structure of the Towers could be pulverised is through the use of explosives.

Subject to enough pressure concrete will break into small fragments. The percussive force of an explosive event is not required to explain the pulverisation of the Twin Towers. With enough weight pressing on it concrete will crumble even without a percussive event! The weight of the floors above would easily pulverise the concrete of the floors below, and the floors above would subsequently be pulverised by their impact with the ground.

The cloud of falling debris has the same mass as the static structure of the building, and therefore has the same impact as if the upper floors were falling intact (a physical impossibility).

The Twin Towers were sufficiently massive that the force with which each floor fell on the ones below, and the gathered energy of that collapse, was easily enough to pulverise the structure of the building.

Almost the entire building ended up being pulverised. In this regard the conspiracy theory requires the pulverisation to be accomplished by explosives alone (not the weight of falling concrete). But to follow through that train of logic would require all of the concrete to be pulverised by explosions.

There is no evidence, visible or otherwise, that suggests that massive explosions of that nature occurred at any time before or during the collapse.

7) The aeroplane impacts would not damage the building to the point where they would collapse.

The aeroplane impacts transacted the buildings, negating any structural integrity and rendering the buildings unstable. The video evidence clearly shows how the aeroplanes entered one side of the building and all but passed entirely through to the other side.

8) The buildings fell with a precision that could only be obtained by demolition techniques.

The buildings collapsed from a point above the impact site. They did not topple, and so the pattern of their collapse was entirely in keeping with the effect of the aeroplane impacts. There is nowhere for the rubble to go but down.

9) George Bush's reaction to the news was unnatural and betrays prior knowledge.

If GB was pre-warned, why was his reaction not choreographed? Why were cameras present when he was told? If he knew what was happening why did he look like a rabbit in the headlights? His reaction is entirely in keeping with that of a man who found himself out of his depth whilst in the public gaze.

10) The reason Osama Bin Laden has not been caught is that he is a friend of the Bush family.

The Bush family have connections all over the world, as do the Bin Ladens. Since they both have operated in the oil industry it would be amazing if it was not possible to make some link between them. There is no evidence of a significant relationship between Bin Laden and Bush, or between their families.

11) The ground zero evidence was disposed of without a proper forensic examination being made.

Not true. Every inch of the rubble was processed and examined. No-one who did examine it has raised any concerns about explosive residues or anomalous findings that would lead them to conclude that the Twin Towers were brought down by the placement of explosive charges.

12) No reconstruction of evidence was carried out.

None was possible! The aeroplanes were all but vaporised in the impact, and the events were captured on video from multiple angles, meaning that there was no mystery that required to be explained.