A Labourer at the Bitface » Uncategorized http://devilgate.org/blog Warning: contains language from the outset Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:39:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Subway Calling http://devilgate.org/blog/2010/04/12/subway-calling/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2010/04/12/subway-calling/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:22:09 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2010/04/12/subway-calling/ I’ve worked in Paddington for nearly two years, and had no idea this was here until today. Edgware Road, just by Paddington Green Police Station.


Subway Calling
Originally uploaded by devilgate.
]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2010/04/12/subway-calling/feed/ 2 Calling all Green Wing fans http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/05/10/calling-all-green-wing-fans/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/05/10/calling-all-green-wing-fans/#comments Wed, 10 May 2006 15:37:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/05/10/calling-all-green-wing-fans/ Would any kind person out there have a copy of last Friday’s Green Wing on video they could lend me? I had an accidental-taping-over-disaster before we had watched it.

Other formats are acceptable too, of course.

Thanks.

]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/05/10/calling-all-green-wing-fans/feed/ 0 New website, blog http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/17/new-website-blog/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/17/new-website-blog/#comments Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:57:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/17/new-website-blog/ I’ve had the devilgate.org domain for nearly two years, now. But it has taken me this long to actually start using it for more than a source of throwaway email addresses.

At last, though, I’ve put some readable stuff up there. So far it’s just a main page and a blog. In time, though, I might put up some stories, pictures or other material.

WordPress, which I’m using for the blog, has a nifty little plugin that allows you to automatically crosspost to LiveJournal. So you should shortly start seeing posts here with links back to original posts over there.

Pop on over and have a look; or why not add the RSS feed to your favourite feed reader?

To summarise, then: the site; the blog; the feed for posts; the feed for comments.

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]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/17/new-website-blog/feed/ 0 The Many-Angled Pub http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/03/the-many-angled-pub/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/03/the-many-angled-pub/#comments Fri, 03 Mar 2006 16:11:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/03/the-many-angled-pub/ I went out for a drink with some people from work last night.  We went to a place in Covent Garden called The Porterhouse.

It’s a very curious place.  It extends across three or maybe four floors.  Or maybe only two, but with lots of mezzanines.  It’s full of alcoves: everything, it seems, is an alcove.  I have no idea, for example, how many bars it has.  And in fact, I didn’t go to the bar all night.  That, though, is because they have something that is remarkable in a British pub: table service.

Yes, it’s very strange.  waiters come and go, collecting glasses and trays, but also, when asked, taking orders and returning — very quickly — with trays of beers.

So I spent the night drinking Caledonian 80/-.  A taste of home, perhaps, but a) it was bottled; b) it was too cold to taste right; and c) it’s been such a long time since I drank it back home that it hardly counts.  And I always preferred McEwan’s 80/-, anyway.  Oh, and pizza.  They serve food, too, and claim a woodburning oven.

It was a good night.  But that pub.  You know the old computer game that used to say, “You are in a maze of little twisty passages, all the same”?  It was a bit like that.  But mostly it reminded me of the house in HP Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch-House.’

Oh, I suppose the angles weren’t really that wrong; that the walls were quite straight. But there were definitely too many rooms, and bits, and stuff: if not angles.

]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/03/the-many-angled-pub/feed/ 5 Book Notes 5: Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/03/book-notes-5-sputnik-sweetheart-by-haruki-murakami/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/03/book-notes-5-sputnik-sweetheart-by-haruki-murakami/#comments Fri, 03 Mar 2006 13:00:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/03/book-notes-5-sputnik-sweetheart-by-haruki-murakami/ I read a review of this book in The Guardian years ago (this one, I think). It sounded absolutely fantastic, and I’ve wanted to read it ever since. But I only got round to buying it recently.

I was aware, of course, of the danger of approaching a work with unreasonably-raised expectations, so I tried not to. You can’t make yourself think “This won’t be very good,” when you actually think, “This should be pretty good.” The trick, therefore, is to convince yourself to have a slight seed of doubt. I’m not totally sure how well that can ever work, though.

I did enjoy the book, however: it starts with a light, easy style, and has an endearing central character in Sumire. The unnamed (though referred to in the back-cover blurb as “K”) narrator is a slightly-annoying, madly-but-unrequitedly in love with Sumire figure. They met at university. Sumire dropped out to write; the narrator went on to become a schoolteacher.

Shortly after the start of the book, Sumire, who has until then seemed largely devoid of any sexual or romantic feelings, falls in love with an older, married, woman; who then gives her a job as her PA. Sumire’s love is also unrequited; indeed, unspoken.

It’s when they go on a business trip to Europe, which culminates in a holiday on a Greek island, that something strange happens.

It is a curious book. It’s hard to work out what is supposed to have happened to Sumire. It is, until then, so much a realist novel that it is hard to believe that the apparently-fantastic, dream world sequence that is all the explanation we get, is meant to be taken literally.

Then when the narrator, having gone to Greece to help find out what happened to Sumire, returns home to Japan, there is an apparently-unrelated section concerning one of his pupils. He has been having a sexual relationship with the pupil’s mother, so when the boy gets into trouble, she calls him to help. This section really appears to have no connection to the rest of the story,, and no bearing on what happened to Sumire.

So while I enjoyed reading it, on looking back over it, it seems that it is deeply flawed. Or maybe I’m flawed, because I failed to fully understand it.

I expected that it would inspire me to read more of his work, but it hasn’t: or not yet, at least.

]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/03/03/book-notes-5-sputnik-sweetheart-by-haruki-murakami/feed/ 3 A discussion of (possibly a rant about) ID http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/23/a-discussion-of-possibly-a-rant-about-id/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/23/a-discussion-of-possibly-a-rant-about-id/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:30:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/23/a-discussion-of-possibly-a-rant-about-id/ But not cards, for a change. I was listening to a programme (essentially a religious one) on Radio 4 recently, about ‘Intelligent’ Design (ID).

It was the second time that day that I had heard SETI pulled in to support ID. The thesis seems to be that, since SETI searches for meaningful information hidden within random noise, it is “the same as” the search for a designer amidst the seeming randomness of the universe. The proponents of ID think that the complexity of the real world means that there must be an intelligence behind it. But the main thing these people need to learn is that complexity does not equal design.

Or not necessarily, at any rate. They are doubly confusing themselves — and others, who may be unsure about the realities of science and the tricks of creationists. They look at the search for order among the chaos, and liken it to — really, identify it with — the belief that order lies behind the chaos.

Let’s put it another way. SETI searches through random noise and attempts to find ordered data, all the while aware that the ordered data may not be there; indeed, to date it has not been. It further proposes that, if ordered data is found, then that may imply that there is an intelligence behind it.

The ID proponents observe the order in the universe and assume that there must be an intelligence behind it; they also see the randomness in the universe, and jump to the conclusion that SETI is doing the same thing as they are.

It is arrant nonsense, of course, but then ID is, from start to finish. Oh, don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing in the laws of physics, chemistry or biology that precludes the existence of a designer, a creator, a supreme being: a deity, in short. As, indeed, there is no need for science to be incompatible with belief in, or the existence of, a deity. Back when I was a Catholic, I remember one of my primary-school teachers explaining that, while the Bible says that God created the world in six days, a day to God might be a million years to us. Don’t take it literally, in other words.

And therein lies the problem: creationists and believers in ID (who are just very thinly-disguised creationists) take the Bible (though which version, I have to ask?) literally.

Which is a bit like taking any of humanity’s great history of myths literally. Why stop with the Christian Bible, and their strange god, “God”1? Let’s take the Norse gods literally, for example. So the next time you’re caught in a thunderstorm, remember, it’s not just the random discharge of static electricity in the atmosphere: Thor is after you.

Or the Greeks: they had some great ones. When you light the gas to cook tea tonight, say a prayer of thanks to Prometheus, OK?

Oh look, we seem to be back at my latest Book Notes post, American Gods. Which makes sense, since it is American fundamentalist Christers who want to foist their god on the rest of their country — and by extension, on the rest of the world. By the not-so-subtle device of using the law to control what can and can’t be taught in schools. What is wrong with these people? Have they never heard of the separation of church and state?

Fortunately the US courts seem to be holding the line of sanity so far; but oh my non-existent, speculative all-powerful creator-figure: I hope we don’t get a branch of the Christian Taliban trying to introduce this shite into our schools over here. I have children to bring up, so I have a direct interest in these things.

Let’s not teach our kids to be stupid.


1. As the NME used to say.

]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/23/a-discussion-of-possibly-a-rant-about-id/feed/ 10 Book Notes 4: American Gods by Neil Gaiman http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/22/book-notes-4-american-gods-by-neil-gaiman/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/22/book-notes-4-american-gods-by-neil-gaiman/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:59:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/22/book-notes-4-american-gods-by-neil-gaiman/ I’ve been reading Neil Gaiman’s blog since the time when he was writing this book — as, I’m sure, have most of us, what with his site being the number one hit on Google when you search for ‘neil’.

But I hadn’t actually read the book until now. I had read the first chapter online, and I had an idea roughly what it was about: real gods (maybe all gods) walking the Earth in the present day.

And it’s a stormer of a book. The pages just keep turning, the quotes are quotable (girl-Sam’s “I believe” speech is particularly fine) and myths are mashed up in glorious style.

It’s shortcomings are, perhaps, that it slows down a bit too much in the middle section; and Wednesday and Shadow make perhaps too many visits to down-at-heel gods without anything very specific happening during them. It reads like a road movie in places (which is fine), and it would probably make a good one.

There are surprises right up to the end, though, and I’m sure I’ll read it again in the future.

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]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/22/book-notes-4-american-gods-by-neil-gaiman/feed/ 2 That about wraps it up for freedom http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/13/that-about-wraps-it-up-for-freedom/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/13/that-about-wraps-it-up-for-freedom/#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2006 22:50:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/13/that-about-wraps-it-up-for-freedom/ Start saying goodbye, then, to civil liberties in this country. Oh, maybe not now, and maybe not even that soon; but when the identity cards bill is passed, and the database has been built 1 then the infrastructure will be in place for the world’s largest ever experiment in social control.

We already have near-ubiquitous surveillance, with constantly-improving automatic recognition: of faces and of vehicle number plates. Add to that the national identity database with its biometrics, and the growing collection of DNA data, and I foresee the potential for a future that even Orwell in his worst nightmare wouldn’t have believed possible.

Pessimistic? Yes, certainly. It may be that the public will rebel against it when they realise how much it will cost, for example. I gather that that is what happened in Australia. But even if they do, once the legislation is in place, how can it be stopped?  It seems likely that the best we can hope for there is a change of government. And realistically, that means the Tories.

After all this time there’s no way on this Earth that I’m going to put my faith in that lot. No matter that they might have voted against the government on the bill, if they get into power and the act is in force, there isn’t a chance — not a chance in all the worlds of the putative multiverse — that they’ll repeal the legislation.

In fact, that is the true nightmare scenario: it’s possible that Blair and Brown are not actually malicious about this, just stupid and corrosively misguided. Imagine, though, what it would have been like if Thatcher’s government had had ubiquitous, mandatory ID and surveillance. Imagine (as I’ve suggested before) if that had been the situation during the miners’ strike. Or when MI5 were undermining the Callaghan government, for that matter, although that’s a slightly different nightmare.

And it just goes on and on: the Metropolitan Police are now going to drug-test their own officers. Now, you can safely argue that police officers shouldn’t be under the influence while on duty: but it is a clear violation of their personal liberty, and it just adds to the way in which our national culture is becoming more and more authoritarian. Even totalitarian.

1. I realise that that requires success in the biggest-ever government IT project, but bear with me.

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]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/13/that-about-wraps-it-up-for-freedom/feed/ 0 Drink, Sex and Elections http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/10/drink-sex-and-elections/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/10/drink-sex-and-elections/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:42:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/10/drink-sex-and-elections/ How quickly do events overrun the tardy blogger.  A few weks ago, when Charles Kennedy went public about his drinking, I started writing a piece about him, and his revelations’ potential effect on the Liberal Democrats.  I didn’t post it that day, and by the following evening things had changed so dramatically that what I said was almost useless as a post.

Later I started a replacement piece, but I never got round to completing and posting that, either.  Today’s by-election victory is slightly ironic, then, considering that what I was originally saying was  mainly that he really had to resign because he had become an electoral liability to his party.   Add to that the Lib Dem leadership election and its Shock! Horror! personal revelations, and many would have expected them to do badly at the polls the next time they had a chance.

And then we get Dunfermline.  Which suggests to me that the personal affairs of the actual and potential party leadership are minor items at best in the eyes of the voters.  And also that people (in Scotland, at least) have had enough of Blair’s repulsive Tory-lite policies, and are (not surprisingly) unimpressed by, and suspicious of, Cameron’s cuddly stealth-Tory aproach.

I hoped, in my original piece, that the Lib Dems would be able to recover from their problems, because they’re an important force in British politics.  Not least because they’re still the only ones taking a principled stand against ID cards, on which everyone but No2ID seems to have gone silent recently.  Now I’d have to add the hope that the new guy, Willie Rennie, can get himself established in the Commons in time to vote against the next reading of the Bill.

I never thought that, in my life, I would be toasting a Labour by-election defeat, while at the same time bemoaning their privatisation and (lack of) civil-liberties policies; but we live in interesting times.  Times in which Britain desperately needs a third force in politics; and it remains the case — perhaps more so than ever, today — that the Liberal Democrats can be that force.

But I wish they weren’t needed: I want the Labour party back.

]]> http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/10/drink-sex-and-elections/feed/ 0 Book Notes 3: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/07/book-notes-3-someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-by-cory-doctorow/ http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/07/book-notes-3-someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-by-cory-doctorow/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2006 23:13:00 +0000 Martin McCallion http://devilgate.org/blog/2006/02/07/book-notes-3-someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-by-cory-doctorow/ Cory Doctorow’s third novel is his best so far; and it’s strange. Really, really strange.

It is the story of a man whose father is a mountain and whose mother is a washing machine. These are not metaphors.

Or perhaps they are. If so, though then the whole book is a metaphor, and I’m not entirely sure for what.

Since Alan (or Adam, or Albert, or Aaron) is very different from other people (he doesn’t have a navel, for one very minor thing) it could be seen as about alienation. Alan, however, is not particularly alienated.

His brothers are a different matter, though.

Each of the five is given a name starting with the next letter of the alphabet after the previous brother’s; but they are not called constantly by this name, either by each other or by the narrator. Instead, they are called by a seemingly-randomly-chosen name starting with ‘their’ letter of the alphabet. There seems no real purpose to it. If it is intended to emphasise the brothers’ ‘otherness’, then it does so: but not enough.

As well as that, each brother has a unique characteristic. Billy, Buddy, Bob (etc) can see the future. Charlie is an island. Davey is twisted, damaged and dangerous. And Ed, Fred and George are a sort of composite being, living inside each other like Russian dolls.

Not surprisingly, one of the subplots centres on one of Cory’s real-world interests: building a free, community-supported wireless network across the city (his native Toronto, in this case). In a way, that subplot doesn’t really mesh very well with the fantastical story: but it does provide a backdrop for it, and it shows that Alan has a life outside of his weird family.

And there’s a woman with wings. Read it for yourself. It’s quite amazing, and like his other books, available for free download under a Creative Commons licence.



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