Vacation!!!!

Conditions: Oh, who cares?


It's happiest time of the year! It's the saddest time of year! It's time to leave this techno-dungeon and ...become imprisoned in the home non-techno-dungeon. Yaay! I wonder if a holiday job would be any fun, like mixing drinks at a beach bar in Hawaii, or an elevator operator for that giant luxury hotel in the Middle East they show on TV. Looks like a big sail, only made out of hotel. Or a guest lecturer on a cruise ship. I could speak about the plight of the speckle-nosed MGB, and it's endangered environment. Something unpretentious, a nice little earner with a great view. I suppose I could sneak into work when no-one's looking.

Xmas is just around the corner, like a mobster with a crowbar, only wearing a silly hat. "Happy Holidays!" he will bellow, while bludgeoning my kneecaps. I hate Xmas. Crowbars are nice, though. The New Year will be next, I suppose, which always struck me as a stupid reason to celebrate. 'Yaay, this one second will be commemorated as the passing of the entire year! Huzzah!' There's always a harsh nature to new year's celebrations. We all hate the old year, it's been around too long and we can't wait to shrug it off, like an old rotting coat, and put on the new shiny one. All night we kick and spit upon the old coat. Never liked the old coat. Hate the old coat. Can't wait for the new one. But if we do this every year, then what are the prospects for the new shiny coat? Can't anyone else see the pattern?!!

Seeing the family survivors will be fun, I suppose. Every year there's less and less of them, which becomes a more terrifying prospect every time I realise it. The ratio of younger people related to me is increasing, and older people related to me is decreasing. This is a conundrum that asks for some investigation, but my mind has deemed this upsetting in nature, and has declared the whole area off-limits. Hey, look, puppies! Pets get the best out of Xmas. All day they wander around, meeting and re-meeting people, and accepting their tidbits.

I'm rambling, the important thing is that we're going to pretend to take a break for a few weeks, then hopefully rejoin as if nothing happened, and continue on. So perhaps the world comes to an end, perhaps it just stops for a bit, but whatever happens things will still likely suck. Enjoy!


End transmission.

Time's person of the year: Me.

Conditions: Sunny.



Well, this is a shock. I have so many to thank. Mom and Dad of course. And God, naturally. Plus all of you guys out there that I stepped on along the way. I'll never forget you guys: we did it together! I will take this award and move forward with it. There'll be no resting on my laurels. I don't want to be some old guy in a nursing home who's only comeback is "Oh yeah? Well I was Time's person of the year 2006, you bastard. Spit out the prunes and suck on that, Hodgson!" Oh no, like the American Soldier, I won't let this honour become a burden. He ignored this honour in order to safeguard middle eastern oil reserves for future generations, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Bless him and the Humvee he drives, with one foot. I will overcome my POTY to become, well, whatever is next for me. First man on Mars, perhaps. Greatest Human Being To Never Star In Sitcom, maybe. Human With The Most Perfect Liver, certainly. So in closing, I may be the person of the year, but you guys are the audience of the year! Give yourselves a hand!

(Don't believe me? How dare you! Begone, I say!)



Iraq again, some more.

BBC News

The word is that President Bush is going to send in another 30,000 odd troops into Iraq next year. In theory this is a good idea, but it's likely that even more will be needed to truly end the civil war there. 140,000 are already in the country, and the violence spills out of control. Powell has said the extra troops won't make a difference, but what does he know? He's the guy that convinced the U.N that Saddam had WMD, at this point if Powell said the sky was falling, I wouldn't exactly run for cover.



Xmas movies.

Well it's that time of the year, Xmas movie time. What, I hear you say, is on the roster for this years Xmas viewing? Why, the staples of course: Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Last Boy Scout, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. And who knows what may crop up as a special presentation. On that arc, I was asked to purchase Ice Age 2 as an Xmas present for a certain neice (oof, I have a neice). And I note that the film has two commentaries. Is this really necessary? Two commentaries for Ice Age 2? What could they possibly have to say that couldn't have been covered in a documentary? Perhaps a commentary takes up less space on the disk than a documentary. I'll have people look into that. But on the face of it, it seems a tad excessive.



End transmission.

Spotted Mel

Conditions: Cloudy. Stressful.


Apocolypto, Mel Gibson's latest action film, apparently has a secret that's hidden away in it's trailer: It's Mel himself, complete with crazy-man beard, grinning at the camera. Some say it's a conspiracy, I say it's just goofy hi-jinks. See the video here.


Al Queda space attack?

That's the latest bit of fear-mongering from the Bush administration. In a speech recently, Undersecretary of State Robert G. Joseph asserted that the US has a right to use force against hostile nations or terror groups that might try to attack American satellites or ground installations that support space programs.

"We reserve the right to defend ourselves against hostile attacks and interference with our space assets," Joseph said in prepared remarks to the George C. Marshall Institute.

Joseph, the senior arms control official at the State Department, said nations cannot all be counted on to use space purely for peaceful purposes.

"A number of countries are exploring and acquiring capabilities to counter, attack, and defeat U.S. space systems," Joseph said

What, is Bin Laden going to load rocks into a giant slingshot? Is he going to recruit some Astronauts to hijack the next Space Shuttle and crash it into the Space Station. Does anyone really think Space Station Alpha isn't already equipped with some big artillery guns just in case? You don't think all that cargo they sent up there was scientific? Heyyy, that just gave me an idea for a blockbuster movie! Keanu Reeves as the Shuttle Captain. "Dude, I can't change course. Dude." Sandra Bullock as the Space Station commander. "Okay, I knew I should have been a lawyer instead." This'll be great. In related news, the teaser for Die Hard 4 just came out. Wheeee!


Stress Busting.

In these days of corporate madness and consumer insanity, how does one try to fight the mountain of stress one lives beneath? Damned if I know, but I figured it was good for a mention. See you in hell!!


Five Lessons from Kofi Annan

Kofi's ten year tenure as the United Nations Secretary General is coming to an end this January. I genuinely admire Kofi Annan, a respectful and intelligent man who helmed the U.N through some of it's worse ever crisis. The damage the American administration has done in riding roughshot over the U.N on Iraq is something it may never fully recover from, but through it all Kofi maintained a dignity and a clarity of purpose sadly lacking in the American halls of power. He has written of five lessons he has learned over the last decade, and they make for interesting reading. As to be expected, rather than make accusations or excuses, he's written a calm general article about making the future a better place for all of us. Link here.


Uninterruptable power!

A new gadget plugged into my computer calls itself an uninterruptable power supply. I find that amusing, since I have to set the computer as to what to do if the power ever goes out. If I'm not here (which:unlikely), the computer is instructed to save everything and shut down. I don't know about you, but I'd call that an interruption.



End Transmission

Online purchasing

Conditions: Warm, but not sunny.


In the past, if you want to purchase a technical book you had many fine options. There were about 6 different technical book shops spread around our fair city, any one of which was a large, well-stocked fountain of technical knowledge. You could check their inventory, take a book from the shelves, and leaf through it in order to see just how good it was before purchasing it. This scenario now belongs to that era I will refer to as 'the long distant past', because every single technical bookstore in this city, bar one, is gone. Taken over by coffee stores and bike stores and even, Mabus help us, instrument stores. The one exception is a piddling little store that doesn't really qualify, it's more like a technical book shelf, than store. No, if you want to buy a technical book, the only way you can do it is via that thing we call the internets. And this is a problem.

Because the internet world is a virtual one. And much like purchasing a car, purchasing a book requires more than just looking at the outside. Amazon.com try the hardest by scanning in the Toc, index and a small excerpt, but it isn't enough. Customers need to know what the actual text regarding the actual topics look like. These books are expensive and important to the jobs we're doing, we need to read them before we buy them. But nobody cares. It's cheaper to buy books online, so to hell with the brick and mortar stores. We humans being are so stupid.



Film review: Casino Royale

Bond started out, many years ago now, as a thug in a suit. A soldier dressed up to look sophisticated, but still always a soldier. Sean Connery embodied that character very well, he had the look of a soldier, but could come across very classy when he had to. Over the years, though, Bond actors became more and more 'posh', and the character became an odd sort of spy who could rough and tumble without messing up his hair. It was an interesting trait, someone who was so good they could wear a tuxedo while scaling walls or fighting bad guys. A lot of the time it worked, but with the enhancement of the character the environment had to be ramped up to suit. So the gadgets were brought in, devices that could do all the 'heavy lifting' that Bond was now too good for. Later movies were so full of gadgets it seemed Bond was yet another device, a comic book superhero engineered to figure out the plot and make a few good quips. The movies made a lot of money, but to the fans it seemed that the spirit of Bond had been diluted. Enter Casino Royale, and new guy Daniel Graig. The hype is true, this is a new Bond. This guy is a thug in a suit.

This is lain out carefully from the very first scene, where Bond confronts a business man in a very nice office in a very nice building in Prague. And while the scene plays out, another scene in flashback is shown where Bond fights with someone else in a dreary bathroom, slamming into walls and stalls and fixtures. The contrast of the familar, cultured Bond sitting in an office holding a gun, with a brawling, rough Bond getting knocked around a bathroom states from the outset that while this is James Bond, it's a bit rougher to what we're expecting. Many times in this film we're treated to Bond getting knocked around, and it does make his character seem a lot more real than in previous films.

This is presented as a prequel, in that this is Bond's first ever mission, and so he's a little rough around the edges, but there are no gadgets in this movie. This film is essentially about Bond having to rely on himself to defeat the bad guy, through wit and strength. The 'Bond girl' (and I use the term loosely) really does play a romantic part, and when the film ends it really feels as though Bond has changed due to what has happened to him. It's gritty, it's brutal, it's fast and enjoyable. It's a very good film, and kudos to all involved. Four and a half out of five poker chips.


End transmission.

Fame.

Conditions: Clearing. Yes, clearing.


Anyone who pays any attention at all to popular culture, and considering that popular culture is forced down our throats all day every day thanks to the society we live in that thinks celebrity news is more important than what's really going on in the world, the latest photographic escapades of certain Hollywood starlets will not be a surprise.

Without naming names (the best way to combat the disease of fame for fame's sake), certain starlets have been the subject of a lot of juicy photographic celebrity gossip not because of anything important they may have done (snort.) but because of something they didn't do. Or rather, something they didn't wear. Yes, it's the underwear post.

First and foremost, let me say that I'm not critisizing the choice itself. Wear what you want to wear, and don't wear what you don't want to wear, I say. Go nuts. Have fun, see if I care. No, the issue as I see it is the simple brashness of the assumed scandal. Let's see if you can follow the apparent steps:

1. You're a hot American celebrity, with a pack of paparazzi who are dedicated to following you around 24/7 and will take approximately 1.5 million photos just of you putting the trash out.

2. You decide to go out with some fellow hot American celebrities, who also have their own pack of paparazzi's and, presumably wanting to save gas, you all decide to travel together in an SUV.

3. You know for a fact, FOR A FACT, that when you and your friends try to go to wherever it is that you're going, before you even get there there will be a scrum of photographers ready to shoot you getting out of the car. Shoot with cameras, I mean.

4. And so you decide to wear, for this highly-documented night out on the town, a short skirt and no underwear.

Can you see how this shit doesn't add up? Who in their right mind would be caught out by such a thing, *especially* after the first time a celebrity was caught out by it. How stupid would you have to be to get trapped in this situation?

This is why I don't think it's real. The scandal, I mean. I think these celebrities know *exactly* what they're doing. This is simply what they do now to be shocking. They can't just show up. They can't just stay out late. Or only get drunk. Or simply flash someone. It's not enough anymore. So this is what they now do. And I heartily applaud.


Film review: Crank

Gimmick movies are nothing new. Speed is a gimmick movie. Die Hard is a gimmick movie. A movie that has a gimmick at it's heart is nothing to be ashamed of, providing you make a good movie out of it. Crank is a great gimmick, but sadly the 'movie' part of the deal is not really there. Our 'hero', Chevy, wakes up and discovers he's been poisoned, and that the only thing that will keep him alive is adrenaline, so naturally he goes on an adrenaline thrill-ride, trying to avenge his own impending death. The problem is that the actual story, the whys and the hows that make up a plot, is pretty much ignored. We get a lot of perspective as to how Chevy is feeling at any particular moment, but this is a computer-game of a movie, all sound and fury with no real story underneath it. It's unfortunate, but somehow not at all surprising. Back in the day, a gimmick was a starting point to creating a great story. 'Hey, what if a cop got trapped in a building with a bunch of terrorists', or 'Hey, what of a bus was rigged to explode if it slowed down?'. Now, the gimmick itself is enough, and once it's played out the movie quickly ends. I'll give it three out of five cc's of Epinephrine.



End transmission.

The little things.

Conditions: Weird. Hot one day, cold the next.


The new computer, you'll no doubt be pleased to know, is working correctly. All that's really left is the little things, the myriad details, the huge quantities of tiny little adjustments and things that the old computer had been set perfectly to over the years, that a new one just doesn't have. I assume it's much the same in any enterprise where you trade one thing in for another, there's a breaking-in period where the new won't fit right and doesn't sit right, from clothes to toothbrushes to wives. It's annoying, but this is the price you pay for progress. Anyway, it's fast and grunty and has a big screen, so I'm not complaining. Much.


Ancient Civilisations.

A hobby of sorts, I was struck by two separate articles in todays New York Times that dealt with new findings from ancient civilisations. Two separate articles, two separate authors, two separate civilisations, in the same newspaper. Here begins the lesson:

Scientist Says Concrete Was Used in Pyramids

In new research on the Great Pyramids of Giza, a scientist says he has found more to their construction than cut natural limestone. Some original parts of the massive structures appear to be made of concrete blocks.

If true, historians say, this would be the earliest known application of concrete technology, some 2,500 years before the Romans started using it widely in harbors, amphitheaters and other architecture.

Reporting the results of his study, Michel W. Barsoum, a professor of materials engineering at Drexel University, in Philadelphia, concluded that the use of limestone concrete could explain in part how the Egyptians were able to complete such massive monuments, beginning around 2550 B. C. They used concrete blocks, he said, on the outer and inner casings and probably on the upper levels, where it would have been difficult to hoist carved stone.

“The sophistication and endurance of this ancient concrete technology is simply astounding,” Dr. Barsoum wrote in a report in the December issue of The Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

Dr. Barsoum and his co-workers analyzed the mineralogy of samples from several parts of the Khufu pyramid, and said they found mineral ratios that do not exist in any of the known limestone sources. From the geochemical mix of lime, sand and clay, they concluded, “the simplest explanation” is that it was cast concrete.

(Reference)

There's long been speculation about how the walls of the Pyramids could hold the massive weight of the rock used to build it. If true, and Egyptian official Zahi Hawass does say it could be concrete from a recent restoration, it could be a clue to the real way that the Egyptians built these monuments.

Now, to Greece:

Early Astronomical ‘Computer’ Found to Be Technically Complex

A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone. But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.

The instrument, the Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers deciphered inscriptions and reconstructed the gear functions, revealing “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period,” it said.

The researchers, led by the mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth and the astronomer Mike G. Edmunds, both of the University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting their results today in the journal Nature.

They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions, and the gears were a representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.

The Roman ship carrying the artifacts sank off the island of Antikythera about 65 B.C. Some evidence suggests it had sailed from Rhodes. The researchers said that Hipparchos, who lived on Rhodes, might have had a hand in designing the device.
[...]

Dr. Charette noted that more than 1,000 years elapsed before instruments of such complexity are known to have re-emerged. A few artifacts and some Arabic texts suggest that simpler geared calendrical devices had existed, particularly in Baghdad around A.D. 900.

It seems clear, he said, that “much of the mind-boggling technological sophistication available in some parts of the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman world was simply not transmitted further.”

“The gear-wheel, in this case,” he added, “had to be reinvented.”

(Reference)

Isn't that cool? An ancient computing device that civilisation just forgot about, and re-invented centuries later. This fits nicely into the theory that human civilisation progressed in giant fits and starts, rather than a smooth progression of knowledge. Anyway, it beats talking about Iraq, another ancient civilisation that's been pounded into the sand.


Peace out.