2010s

    NoNo

    Well, this is my [NaNoFail](http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/658975) report. I managed around 15,000 words. Which isn't bad in its way, but is not only a lot less than the desired 50,000, it's also less than last time, when I at least made it to 20,000.

    Oh well. The plan now is not to stop, because then I’d most likely never finish it. Instead, I’m going to carry on, with a much reduced target of, say, 500 words per day, and see where that takes me.

    Edited to say: That’s 15,000, of course, not the meaningless “15,00”.

    Veela in the Bey Blade arena

    Autumn sky

    Autumn in Clapton Square

    Tank-Tops and Dolls

    On our recent drive south from the Highlands there was a song that briefly seemed to be following us. First at an emergency food stop in a McDonald’s in Carlisle, and then the next day on XFM, as we rolled back into London.

    Its key feature was the the refrain, which seemed to say, repeatedly: “You own a tank-top.”

    While I can see the logic of outing someone for that particular crime against fashion, I was fairly sure it was a mondegreen.

    So when I was back at a computer, I searched for “you own a tank top” lyrics mondegreen. No hits.

    I removed the word “lyrics”, which gave me a single hit. Some IRC log. But it was enough. The song is, apparently, ‘You Overdid it Doll‘ by The Courteeners.

    It’s kind of disappointing to know the truth. I’m listening to it as I type, and I can’t hear it saying “you own a tank-top” any more. Still, it has entered family lore, and will always be known that way to us.

    In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I once owned a tank-top. In my defence, it was the seventies, and I was seven.

    Also, my nephew, Paul, who is travelling around Australia and other far-off places
    , and blogging about it, once tried to introduce me to The Courteeners. I wasn’t super-impressed, but I quite like this track.

    On the same short drive Paul introduced me to Vampire Weekend, who I love, and you should listen to. And either way, you should read his blog.

    The Day After Hallowe'en

    Well, midnight on the 31st of October is fast rolling round. We're not long back from a week in the Highlands of Scotland (very wet, but great, thanks). It'll soon be the 1st of November, which means two things this year.

    1. We'll be able to buy Mitch Benn's mighty 'I'm Proud of the BBC' in downloadable single format. So head off and do that now, and help it to chart. I'll wait.

      Actually, it’s not yet midnight as I type, and I’ve just downloaded it.

    2. NaNoWriMo is about to start. I'm having a go this year. Wish me luck.

      I last tried it in 2004, which is much longer ago than I thought. I sort of had a half-hearted poke at it last year, but soon stopped. I’m hoping that expressing my intention in public like this will help to keep me going.

      We’ll see, of course.

      I see that the approaching start has brought the NaNoWriMo site to its knees. Oh well. Hopefully they'll get things back together.

    Maccetty Mac

    So, I've had this here new MacBook for a couple of weeks, and I've yet to post anything from it. I am, not surprisingly, loving it.

    The initial weirdnesses (I’ve never used a Mac before, apart from once very briefly, before OS/X) include the absence of a hash-key (though you can get the character using Alt+3: #); the plethora of modifier keys: Ctrl and Alt, of course, but also Cmd and Fn. Though actually, most laptops have Fn, so it’s really just one extra. But they get a lot of use.

    The nicest thing is probably the multitouch trackpad: scroll with two fingers, navigate with three, do some other weird navigation thing (Exposé, I think it’s called) with four. Pure dead brilliant, in the vernacular of my homeland.

    Most annoying thing is the American positioning of the @ and " keys. I’d like to remap those back to where my muscle-memory says they should be, but haven’t worked out how to do that yet.

    I’ve installed various pieces of software on trial or demo options. I’m typing this entry using MarsEdit. I’m gathering notes for the the thing I intend to write for NaNoWriMo using Scrivener. And so on.

    All in all, it’s the beginning of a big adventure.

    And now, let’s see how this posts.

    Link: Screenwriting Tip Of The Day by William C. Martell - Romeo to Rambo

    How good scripts get turned into bad movies: Screenwriting Tip Of The Day by William C. Martell - Romeo to Rambo

    Summer Reading 2010

    I've got out of the habit of writing about everything I read, but I've had such a good run of books over the summer that I want to at least make some notes on them all.

    Anathem by Neal Stephenson

    I tweeted as follows, while I was reading this:

    I don't go in for having a 'favourite' book, but if I did, right now, it would be Neal Stephenson's _Anathem_. It made my brain sparkle.Mon Aug 02 09:45:01 via Twitter for iPhone

    And making my brain sparkle is exactly the effect reading this had on me. I absolutely loved every minute of it (except, perhaps, the long detour over the pole). And the unusual thing about is this: it made me think, “Come on, get the action out of the way, and get back to the talking and philosophy.”

    I won’t go in to any detail. There are plenty of places you can read more about it. A wonderful, wonderful book.

    The Time-Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

    As is this one. There has been a lot written about this, too. I, of course, approached it with genre in mind, and was amused from the start by the review-quotes on the cover; notably The Observer’s assertion that it is “startlingly original”.

    It’s about someone who randomly travels in time along their own timeline. I kept thinking, “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”. I kept thinking, “I know where I came from, but what about all you zombies?” (which quote I misremembered; it is actually “…but where did all you zombies come from?")

    I even thought, “Spoilers,” and “Hello Sweetie.”, but a quick check of the publication date informs me that it actually pre-dates new Doctor Who, so maybe Moffat was influenced by this.

    Anyway, all those touchpoints are largely irrelevant, as this is not a work of science fiction at all (it makes no attempt to explain the time-travel mechanism, though does assign it some genetic connection). It is, rather, a love story with slightly unusual constraints. And very well told, though I’m a tad unhappy with the ending.

    The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod

    As I am with the ending of this one. It’s a fine story, though, set in a future Edinburgh where global warming has been partially turned back by technology, and there are space elevators and fully-conscious robots and other AIs. It’s a crime story, with the main character being a cop.

    Edinburgh’s SF writers seem to be trying to get a bit of Iain Rankine’s territory these days.

    The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross

    Charlie being the other of those I’m alluding to there. Here, though, we’re back in his “Merchant Princes series. I’ve reviewed the first and second volumes before.

    I said before that it was hard to believe how successful Miriam Beckstein is, given the radical changes that have happened to her. In this one she is much more circumscribed, by her odd family.

    Relatively little happens here, really, but a lot is set in place for the following volumes. The main thing is that her worlds are starting to collide.

    Pandaemonium by Christopher Brookmyre

    Worlds colliding here, too.

    I haven’t read a Brookmyre since his first, Quite Ugly One Morning, which I remember thoroughly enjoying. Not enough, though, to read any intervening ones.

    This one is very different. It has soldiers, scientists, priests, demons, and schoolkids. It’s great fun.

    There is a wildly-glaring plot hole at the end. My son read the book after me, and it was the first thing he said to me about it when he’d finished. We both hope it’s deliberate, meaning that Brookmyre has a sequel planned.

    Youssou N'Dour, Philip Glass, The Kronos Quartet, and Bela Lugosi

    Most, but not all of them at one event.

    Jamaica and Senegal Make Music

    A couple of weeks ago we went to the Barbican to see Youssou N’Dour. In support were an acoustic reggae band called Inna da Yard. They were fabulous fun, and reminded me that I’ve been missing out on reggae since John Peel died.

    Youssou and his band were amazing. They had more percussionists on stage than most bands have members (five, counting the drummer), which amused me.

    The total number of musicians on stage was about sixteen. Plus they had a couple of amazing dancers.

    And the professionals weren’t the only ones dancing on the stage. Several times members of the audience got up and joined in. Yes, a veritable stage invasion in the Barbican. The security people looked vaguely worried; I didn’t know the Barbican even had security.

    I won’t try to dance about architecture and describe the music, but let’s just say it was the rockingest gig I’ve been to at that venue.

    The Glass Eye

    A few days later it was off to the Hackney Empire, where we saw the original 1931 Dracula, with a live soundtrack. Which was composed by Philip Glass, and performed by him, Michael Riesman, and The Kronos Quartet. That’s a pretty stellar lineup from the modern classical world.

    I had at first thought that the film was silent, but it isn’t (I think I was confusing it with Nosferatu). Apparently it didn’t originally have a musical soundtrack, though.

    While it’s clear that the film is the origin (or an origin) of many horror film clichés, and the story is of course very familiar, I don’t think I had ever seen it before – though I thought I had.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, though the film volume could have done with being louder, as the music drowned out the dialogue at times. And on a related note, I’m not convinced that the music was always only there to serve the film, as a true soundtrack should be.

    But all in all a fascinating night.

    Moat Again

    I spelled Raoul Moat's name wrongly in my last post. Now corrected.

    I have to say that my sympathy for Moat was increased by reading an interview with his brother in The Guardian. A sad family story, there’s no doubt. But even Angus, the brother, condemns the Facebook page (which has now been removed by its creator).

    Sympathy, yes; but he’s still not a hero, or a “legend”. Charlie Brooker talks sense on the matter, as you might expect.

    Con/Dem Nation?

    Betrayed?

    My initial reaction to the Liberal Democrats' decision to form a coalition with the Tories was a combination of disappointment and a sense of betrayal (with a side order of impending doom, of course).

    I was, perhaps, naive. I said that I was voting LibDem, and that I actively wanted Labour to lose (while stressing that I wanted the Tories to lose even more). I was, I think, hoping for a hung parliament, which of course is what we got. But I was labouring (heh!) under the delusion that the LibDems were ideologically relatively close to Labour, and far enough away from the Tories that siding with them would be unthinkable.

    Clearly I was wrong.

    I had convinced myself that the only reaction of the LibDems to a hung parliament would be to join with Labour; and that seemed like the best possible solution.

    Wasted?

    On election day my friend Tony Facebooked to the effect that he had wasted his vote (and it’s really annoying that, as far as I know, there’s no way to link to an update or a comment in Facebook). I answered:

    I don't agree. The only way you can waste a vote is to not use it. For example I voted LibDem in a safe Labour seat, but that isn't "wasted". In fact, it would have been more of a waste to vote Labour.

    My son made the same point when I told him about that discussion. Diane Abbott got 54% of the vote in Hackney North and Stoke Newington. (That’s a proper majority.) My vote wouldn’t have made any difference, though, would it?

    But in the days immediately after the election, as Clegg took his party into talks with the hated Tories, I began to regret my decision. It really felt like I had “wasted” my vote; or maybe misused is the better word.

    Things Can Maybe Get Better?

    However the coalition document that they published today is remarkable. If you’ve read any of my political posts over the years, you’ll know that the biggest thing going on for me for some time has been ID cards, and all the associated post-9/11 terror-panic fallout. So to read this, from the wordprocessor of the Tories (and LibDems) is remarkable:

    • A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.
    • The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.

    • Outlawing the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission.

    • The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.

    • Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.

    • The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.

    • The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.

    • The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.

    • Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.

    • Further regulation of CCTV.

    • Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.

    • A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

    I mean, that's pretty much everything we could want on civil liberties, right there.

    And a few other points are good. As my friend Stuart said:

    Most important line of the agreement? - We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes. #ge10Wed May 12 14:23:57 via TweetDeck

    (Gotta keep embedding those tweets, you know.)

    Dismal Science?

    On the other hand, I’m no economist; but as I said before, I don’t trust right-wingers to run the economy. And right now, I have a gut feeling that cutting back on public spending during a recession is exactly the wrong thing to do (cutting back on most public spending is nearly always the wrong thing to do, of course).

    Keep On Keeping On

    In conclusion, I agree with Charlie, pretty much. I don’t trust the Tories, but let’s see whether Clegg & co can keep this thing on track. And let’s keep a close eye on them all, and keep that list above in mind.

    You never know: maybe this really is “The New Politics”.

    The Big Disappointment

    The Boundaries of Voting

    I’ve been boundary-changed, and it’s made it harder to decide who to vote for.

    At the last election (and until a couple of weeks ago) We were in Hackney South and Shoreditch, which was Meg Hillier’s constituency. Meg wasn’t a bad constituency MP, at least inasmuch as she answered my emails the few times I got in touch with her. Not always in ways I agreed with, but still.

    But “ID Meg”, as I liked to think of her, was the government minister for ID Cards and the Database state; the biggest issue at all recent elections for me. Amusing, really, that she got into that role, if you consider my correspondence with her in 2005

    If we had lived on the other side of our street back then, we’d have been in Diane Abbott’s constituency. She was opposed to the war, and to ID cards. Plus I like her on the telly (though some, apparently, complain about her second job; at least it’s a political programme she’s on, even if it’s lightweight to the point of triviality).

    Five years ago I’d have voted for Diane. Today, with the boundary change, we’re in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, so I can.

    And I’m not going to.

    It’s all gone too far. Our electoral system is too fucked up; our Labour party is too fucked up, too corrupt. They have developed an alarming reflexive response, it seems, to always do exactly the wrong thing. A hung parliament – or, hey: a Liberal Democrat majority – might be just the change we need.

    At least that way there’s a chance we’d get some taste of electoral reform.

    Houses. Plagues. You Know the Rest.

    Diane’s leaflet came through the door today, and it tells me that she’s still against ID cards and the Iraq war. Why, then, I have to ask, does she still retain the Labour whip? It would be more honourable to resign.

    And I can’t honourably vote for the former Labour party any more (not that I did last time, but remember, I was actively against the candidate then, too). We’ve come a long way now: we’ve reached the stage where I want Labour to lose. It’s a strange place to find myself.

    Maybe, I’ve always been more of a natural LibDem voter anyway. Any time I’ve done those “Political Compass”-type questionnaires, they tell me that the LibDems most closely match my answers.

    But even more than wanting Labour to lose, I want the Tories to lose. I remain profoundly mistrustful of them; I lived through the Thatcher years, you know? And It’s clear that, no matter how shiny Cameron may be, lots of his members remain the same old bastards. Witness this “I cure gays” bollocks from Phlippa Stroud. And Cameron has now backed her, I see. And she has denied it.

    So much for that. We know the Tories are the opposite of socially liberal; we know they take a reflexive antagonism to supporting public services; and we know we can’t trust them with the economy (you never can trust right wingers, because they believe the market is guided by an invisible hand; I mean, come on).

    I Can't Do Both, Gordie

    So now Brown is saying, ‘Vote for the kind of country you believe in; and come home to Labour.’ Sorry, mon: Labour no longer represents the kind of country I believe in.

    Keith Angus will be getting my vote.

    Link: How to Write a Story, by Robert Jackson Bennett

    "The first step is waking up." Brilliant: How to Write a Story, by Robert Jackson Bennett

    Link: "Long-standing party loyalties, even in a less tribal world, are not easily suspended"

    "... But May 2010 offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape politics for the better. It must be seized."

    Fascinating list of signatories to this letter in The Guardian: “Long-standing party loyalties, even in a less tribal world, are not easily suspended

    From Easter to Volcano Days

    I don't get round to these things quickly, but this is, at least in part, a report on my family's visit to Eastercon. This year the British National Science Fiction Convention was practically on our doorstep, just the other side of London, at Heathrow.

    As with two years ago, my son wanted to come. And since my daughter did as well, my beloved bit the bullet and came along too. SF isn’t totally her thing, but I think she may have enjoyed the weekend more than any of us.

    The telling detail was this: there are lots of things to do.

    I tend to use cons as a way of seeing friends that I haven’t seen for a while – often not since the last con I was at. So I mainly hang out in the bar. Or that, at least, is the impression I gave – give – to people who don’t go to cons.

    In fact, I have always gone to programme items. I guess I just never made a big thing of them when I got home.

    This con – Odyssey 2010 – had a particularly good set of programme items for kids. There were hands-on science workshops, making Dalek cakes, and building string-propelled robots (my son won a prize for the best ramp-mounting attempt). And not least, a thrilling battle between various knights of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).

    The programme was full of fascinating and fun things, many of which I wanted to see, but didn’t manage to, as ever.

    And of course, I saw a lot of old friends, and had a good time hanging out in the bar with them.

    We only stayed for the Friday and Saturday nights, to keep costs down. But after going home on the Sunday (and watching the new Doctor Who again), we went back on the Monday, and spent most of the day back at the Radisson Radisson.

    Travelling all across London was a bit of drag, but it was a lot shorter than many people’s journeys. And of course, there was absolutely no chance of [ash-induced delays] volcano.

    Am I a bad person because I found all the volcanic disruption kind of amusing and quite fun, really? The cloudless and contrail-free blue skies over London were gorgeous, and it was interesting to follow people’s tweets of how they were striving to get home. And a world with a lot fewer flights is something we’re probably going to have to face in the future.

    What annoyed me about it all were the idiots who blamed the government. Marginally more sensible than blaming ‘god’, I suppose1, but even if anything other than sending in the Navy had been the government’s decision, can you imagine the fuss if flights had been allowed to go ahead, and there had been a disaster?

    Plus, the idea of getting a trip home on the Ark Royal is pretty cool.


    1. As somebody said, if that's an act of god, then it's a pretty limited kind of omnipotent deity.

    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.
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