fancy goods

Blog address has changed!

2010-06-20T20:09:00.005+01:00

Try http://chrismcr.wordpress.com/ for a fuller flavour and longer-lasting happy times.

Also Wordpress looks better on phones, which is the real reason. How sickeningly modern.

http://chrismcr.wordpress.com/

Digital economy bill

2010-03-26T01:10:00.004+01:00

Below is the letter I sent to my MP about the digital economy bill. For more info on the bill, have a look at..

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/disconnection/why-care
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/extremeinternetl

The 38degrees site will help you write to your MP too.

Dear Mr Lloyd

Have you read the digital economy bill being rushed into law without debate?

It makes the owner of an internet connection liable for any copyright infringements that occur through its use, even if those infringements are carried out by someone unknown to the owner, without their knowledge.

Let's imagine an average household. Fred has wireless internet installed at home, but he's by no means an expert. His 13-year-old son knows far more than he does about the computer. Unfortunately for Fred, one of the things his son knows is how to download songs for free. He has a vague feeling that it's supposed to be wrong, but he's never really understood how - it's not like he's stealing them after all. Sadly, an infringement is an infringement and the kid will learn when Fred gets the first letter from the ISP. A couple of weeks later Fred's son invites a friend over to work on a school project. His friend brings his laptop, and it automatically connects to the wireless network. It then resumes what it was doing before he put it to sleep at his own house - namely downloading the torrent of the new Transformers film. Oh dear! Infringement two. Fred is now particularly tense - the second letter has made it quite clear he'll be disconnected next time, and he has no idea how to stop the computer letting his son download songs. Can you make the computer do that? He doesn't know, so he has to rely on his son's word. Unfortunately for him his technically-literate neighbour has hacked into Fred's wireless network and downloaded several films.

When Fred gets disconnected, the letter says he can appeal. But what can he say? He has no idea who downloaded that last batch of films. His son is adamant it wasn't him, or any of his friends. Fred doesn't have the technical knowledge to know where to begin proving his innocence.

It's fair to say I grew up with the Internet - I was "online" before the web had been invented - but even with that experience I couldn't prove Fred innocent either. His wireless router probably doesn't record information about the computers it connects to the Internet (mine doesn't), but even if it did all it could record would be the MAC address. This is effectively just a name, unique to each computer. The record would contain entries for Fred's computer, his son's computer, and a mysterious other computer, which was connected at the time of the infringement. Unfortunately even with this information Fred still can't prove his innocence as there's nothing to say he doesn't own the third computer too.

The fear of similar situations will mean public wireless internet will all but vanish. What cafe owner will take the risk? A technically literate one would realise the need to record extensive logs, which comes at a cost significant enough to make the free internet too expensive to be worth the effort.

Perhaps more important than the technical considerations is the fact we are talking about "proving innocence". If that concept in itself is not fundamentally wrong then it is surely a significant enough departure from the usual application of law that it deserves intense parliamentary scrutiny - don't you agree?

The music and film industries like to portray anyone disagreeing with their draconian copyright reform demands as freeloading "pirate" pseudo-anarchists who just don't like paying for things. This is simply not true - all of my technically-literate friends are against this bill, and all of us regularly buy music and films, whether in shops or online, through services like iTunes and Spotify.

In a leaked email (available at http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/12/leaked-uk-record-ind.html) Richard Mollett, Director of Public Affairs at the BPI relates a "strange sense of detachment" amongst MPs regarding the digital economy bill. Apparently, MPs are "already resigned to the fact that they will have minimum input into the provisions". Are you already resigned to it Mr Lloyd?

Yours sincerely,
Chris Russell

game development: behind the scenes

2009-12-23T17:32:00.003+01:00

John says:
felch!
can i make carry its nonstandonable?
Chris says:
dont use such foul words in my direction please
maybe
maybe not
who knows what fate has in store.. for the curious traveller
just passing through - or so he claimed. and yet i observed he had an unhealthy interest in Lady Tabitha, wife of the recently-departed lemon tycoon Lord St John d'St John
and with naught but a string bag some said contained only bottles of semi-polluted river water, he had intrigued all of the villagers
thus began the tale
of Geoffrey Howe: Carryit Traveller
*cue organ theme*
John says:
never mind, i fugured it out....
then i figured it out
Chris says:
aunt irma remarked: "his riposte would've been so much more effective, if only he weren't a nincompoop"
John says:
it didnt work
Chris says:
and with that we had spencer fetch another decanter of port

Do you speak broken website?

2009-12-04T22:33:00.003+01:00

Every so often I get the urge to learn a foreign language. Normally when I spend some time in the company of someone who, despite having learned English as a second language, speaks better English than a lot of English people I know.

The last time this happened I came across a piece of software called Rosetta Stone - it claims to teach languages in an "intuitive" way, and has an endorsement from Eddie Izzard, which is quite impressive to me. However it costs a small fortune (~£400 for a full course) which put me off at the time.

Recently though it was bonus time at work (woohoo!) and I was reminded about Rosetta Stone. So I did a bit more research.. and found one or two reviews that talked about a concern of mine - that Rosetta Stone's "intuitive" method completely avoided teaching grammar, leaving you with a good stock set of phrases for various situations, but little ability to develop your knowledge beyond that point.

Another product seemed to deal with that - Tell Me More claims to be used by substantially more European governments, universities and businesses, and will happily tell you all about grammar if you ask. Iiiinteresting..

So tonight I decided it was time to just go for it - out came the debit card, onto Tell Me More's website goes the browser. After being redirected to the correct site for buying in the UK, I started entering my details. I tend to have things delivered to work (cos most of the time I'm there, not at home - clever eh?) so I had to enter a separate delivery address. The website invited me to check my details - it listed the correct addresses, but had me as "Miss" on the delivery. Oops! Must've filled that in wrong - "amend".. I set it to "Mr". Invited to check my details again - I'm still "Miss". Hmm. I tried to fix this a couple more times but the site was adamant. Whatever, it's only an address label. Next stage! I entered my payment details - and was sent back to step 1. Getting quite peeved now. Payment details again.. back to step 1. Right. RIGHT.

Off to the "contact us" page. I entered a polite message suggesting that I expect somewhat better service when they're asking me to part with £400, and hit the send button. Javascript errors galore! *sigh*

I went back to the front page. "Contact us". "Consumer". I'm presented with a slightly different contact form. This one has a field marked "Date:" followed by SIX boxes, marked "Day", "Month", "Year", "Day", "Month", "Year". You want two dates? Which two dates? I only have one birthdate, so it can't be that. If it's the date I got really fucked off with your website, that's today. The date I went to your competitor and gave them £400 - that'll be tomorrow.

(In case you were wondering - German)

HF2 earphones

2009-11-14T00:33:00.002+01:00

Executive summary: Apple 0, Etymotic 1

A few weeks ago I tweeted my annoyance at Apple refusing to replace my knackered Etymotic HF2 earphones. A few people have asked "what happened next", so I thought I'd post the (slightly odd) tale here..

My headphones started having problems a few months ago - I sometimes had to wiggle the cable around at the jack to get sound in both channels. In hindsight it was obvious the wire was coming away internally, and I should've taken them back to Apple then, but I didn't *shrug*. As you can probably guess, some months later one channel died completely, so I took them back to Apple.

The guy in the Apple store was remarkably difficult. At first he told me I couldn't bring the earphones back as I'd owned them longer than two weeks. I pointed out that since the earphones were faulty that rule wasn't relevant (you can take something back to a shop for no reason at all within two weeks of buying it). He went to talk to the manager.. when he came back he asked if I had the debit card I'd used to buy the earphones. I said no, the card had been replaced since. His face lit up - "I'm sorry, we need the original card to trace the electronic receipt!". His smile faded when I showed him the emailed version of the receipt in my gmail. He went to talk to the manager again.. and this time came back beaming - "Apparently we don't stock them any more, so we couldn't replace them anyway. Sorry about that!" I didn't think I could demand a refund as I'd owned them for about 8 months, but I wasn't sure.. so I left it at that.

I did a little more research when I got home (as I couldn't get data on O2. Again. Oh, I can't wait for this contract to be up.. anyway) and found things a little hazy. The only concrete rule I could find was that if something you buy develops a fault in the first six months, the law considers that the product has always been faulty, so the retailer must replace it for you. After six months, the onus is on the consumer to prove they didn't cause the fault - which of course they can rarely do. I certainly couldn't..

Etymotic have a 2-year warranty on HF2s, so I guessed I'd have to go to them. The thought of possibly having to pay postage to and from the US, and the potential lengths of time involved concerned me, but I didn't have a lot of choice. I emailed Etymotic's tech support, and tweeted my woes.

A day or so later @Charles_Kennard rather enigmatically offered to help with my HF2s. Google suggested links to Etymotic, so I mailed him. He was very helpful, and interested to hear what happened at Apple. I explained all, and sent my broken earphones to the address he gave me (in the UK, handily). My shiny new HF2s arrived on Monday. Thanks Charles!

Etymotic's tech support got back to me yesterday.. suggestion was that they would pay the postage back to the UK, so it wouldn't be quite as expensive as I thought. But I told them I didn't need their help after all..

So I've learnt to be much more of an arse with Apple - the next thing I buy from the Apple store is being returned if anything about it is less than perfect. Etymotic, on the other hand, have come out of this ok in my opinion. HF2s have really good sound quality, and they're the most isolating earphones I've ever owned. The cable problem is widespread, and that's disappointing in a product so expensive, but the warranty does much to ameliorate it.

The punchline of this whole thing is that I spent so long without HF2s my ears have regained their virginity :)

the 13 1/2 lives of captain bluebear

2009-09-18T22:42:00.003+01:00

Is a book by Walter Moers which I'm currently reading (swapping occasionally for Dawkins' Greatest Show on Earth).

There is a gushing quote from the Telegraph review on the back which starts "Within the first 15 pages I was carried away by the sheer craziness of it all". I'm 100 pages in.. and I still think it's bobbins.

I looked it up on the web tonight in case it was meant for under 11s and Waterstones had just mis-shelved it - apparently not. Not only is it for "all ages" (and it appears to have quite a devoted following) but it is often compared to The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy. I can't help but find that slightly irritating.. Hitchhiker's is a book full of witty insights on human behaviour. Despite the fact it started as a vehicle for various of Douglas Adams' sketches it had several plotlines and many well-developed characters. Arthur Dent particularly was so well characterised you couldn't help but feel an affinity for him. Against this we are to compare a blue bear who is born into a wacky situation before moving into another wacky situation, pausing briefly to describe the new wacky situation before tumbling headlong into, yes, another wacky situation. Not only is that not particularly entertaining, it's easy. Let's see if I can show you what I mean:

I don't remember how I first met the trolls of Hum-da-woo, but my earliest memories were of their warty faces peering in at me in my basket of custard. For reasons unknown to me at the time they took me in as one of their own, combing my feathers and changing my custard regularly. In return they expected me to help hunt for Toffee Wombats on the plains - a task for which I was ideally suited, being a parrot with a sweet tooth and eyes that could see a thousand yards.

Gradually my need for custard became too great for the trolls to satisfy, and after many years of friendship I knew we had to part. The fateful day came when I perched atop the handle of my little custard basket and, with tears in my parrot-eyes, squawked a fond farewell to my carers of many years. Their eyes similarly moist, they turned from me and walked back toward the village - the Toffee Wombats wouldn't hunt themselves after all. Taking a deep breath I picked up my basket in my beak and flew off into the sunset.

Bedazzled by the brightness of the sunset I quickly got lost. I say I got lost, I didn't really know where I was going in the first place, but nonetheless I wasn't going in the direction I had intended and this caused me some anguish. After some hours of not knowing where I was I decided to land. I came to a standstill on a large grey rock. I put my basket down, and preened for a moment. To my deep astonishment, the rock spoke! "Have you no respect?" it boomed, "How dare you stand upon an Elder of the Granite Magisterium?! I, who have beheld the Darkening of The Wonkysocks - I! who single-stonedly thwarted The Army of Miserable Pasties!"

(etc.)

It's train-of-thought nonsense. It's hardly the beginnings of a novel.

I don't know, maybe I'll change my mind in another 100 pages.

sunny, lovely, cuddly manchester

2009-09-12T16:25:00.008+01:00

It's days like this I'm happy to just wander aimlessly around Manchester like a tourist. From my beautifully overgrown, tree-filled adopted home of Whalley Range to the various beautiful and striking buildings and views in the centre, Manchester stuns on a sunny day.

I went into town for a dull 5-minute errand this morning, and ended up staying most of the day - hopping between coffeeshops across town, sitting outside each one for an hour or so reading another chunk of novel and watching sunny people meandering by.

I wandered into St. Ann's Square to find one of those peculiar markets that always sells the same things, whatever theme it claims and wherever it's meant to be from. Basically fudge and wool. And stollen if it's a German Christmas Market. A few elderly people were listening to a female guitarist sing some sugary ballads, clapping politely between songs and smiling serenely, probably thinking how nice it was to see a young person who wasn't stabbing someone to death in a drug-fuelled craze. Families were happily being fleeced at the fudge stalls (my favourite is covered-in-fluff-because-it's-been-out-in-the-open-all-day flavour), and young women were dragging their boyfriends around the clothes stalls cooing excitedly about bargains while said boyfriends nodded absently, calming their thinly disguised irritation with memories of just how much she put out last time it was this sunny. The advance guard of this year's gay freshers was also in town, looking oddly sweet in their identikit Top Man clothes, each one's eyes like saucers at the opportunities for moral turpitude; many salivating at the thought of binge drinking and casual sex, some salivating at the fudge. They'll figure it out.

On the fringes of this jolly scene there was a man shouting at the happy people as they milled past, causing brief expressions of confusion to pass some of their faces - what was this incongruous dog turd of hate in our collective mixed salad of summery fun? Ah - after a few sideways glances (never look a madman in the eye) the confused passer-by spots that he is carrying a book. That explains it - he's one of them. Yes, the one man in the square who isn't remotely happy is the one who's found the love of Jesus. I don't understand why St. Ann's Church doesn't send out some kind of hit squad to deal with him. There is a man stood next to your church, clearly demonstrating that God's love is corrosive and malignant. That can't be good for business. Surely this is the Christian equivalent of a man stood outside a Scientology shop handing out leaflets on dianetics and vomiting into a bin? "I used to be stressed but scientology fixed me - BWWUUAARRGGGHHHH - no, come back.."

I was sorely tempted to stand next to our man in St. Ann's, loudly shouting extracts from my own currently-beloved book. Unfortunately it's "Making History" which is largely about Hitler - rather difficult to precis without people thinking you're a Nazi. Perhaps next time I'll try with a Robert Rankin..

(By the way, Manchester also looks lovely by night - yowzer!)

Customer Service Demands: Unilever

2009-08-09T12:59:00.002+01:00

From: chris*@*.com
To: Via website contact form
Date: June 10th 2009

Hello*

I am writing** with a query regarding your lovely pepperarmi sticks which I have just finished eating one.

I read on the packet that a stick has 150% pork. I had to ask my friend Sammy what % means because I never knew and Sammy is clever so I knew he would know what % means so I asked him. He said it was something to do with "out of a hundred" and that 100% of something is one of it, and more than 100% means more than one of it. He was going to draw me some pictures but he had to collect Cheryl from the swimming baths and when he got back we'd forgot but I think I know what it means now.

What I want to know is if 100% pork means one whole cow, does 150% (which is 50 more than a whole one) mean one pepperarmi stick has 51 cows in it?

Because if that is what it means I think you should tell more people about it because if you can fit 51 cows into a little stick, that means you can fit a great big farm in a carrier bag instead of lots of fields! I think farmers would like to know how to do that.

I was worried that you might not have time to go out to all the farms in the world telling farmers how to fit their cows into sticks but then I thought if you tell me how to do it I could go out and tell the farmers for you. I am free in the evenings except on Thursdays when I am a Cavalier*** in my local reenactment society.

I have packed my bag already, I thought I would go to Mr Wollesley's farm first as it's only just down by the paper shop but I will wait for you to say yes first.

If you do want to do it yourself then tell me that too, I don't mind. I would like to hear how it goes though!!

Thank you, and keep up the good (pepperarmi making) work!!

Chris

*Sammy says emails shouldn't have "dear mr X" written on. If you find this rude please tell me and I'll try harder.

**or rather EMAILING!!

***not the car!!

From: peperami@unileverconsumerlink.co.uk
To: chris*@*.com
Date: June 15th 2009
Subject: Peperami CaseID#701249#

Hello from Peperami

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your recent query about the confusing labelling on Peperami.

Under the labelling laws for processed meat products like sausages, we are
required to state the amount of raw meat as a percentage of the finished
product - including all the other ingredients like spices, salt etc.

For raw sausages the meat percentage will be less than 100% because other
ingredients are added during manufacture.

However, Peperami is a cured sausage and weight is lost through evaporation
of water during manufacture. This means that the weight of the raw meat we
put in before cooking and curing is higher than the weight of the finished
Peperami that is sold. The meat content is therefore more than 100%. As
an example - a 25g Peperami is made with 27g of raw meat.

I hope that this has helped. If you need any further information, then
please let me know.

Kind regards,

Aysha Pirgali
Careline Advisor

[booooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiiing]

Customer Service Demands: Swizzels-Matlow

2009-08-09T12:50:00.005+01:00

From: chris*@*.com
To: sweets@swizzels-matlow.com
Date: March 11th 2008

dear mr swizuls-matlo my name is christopher and i am 7 yers old and i liv in manchester and i hav just been eaten jelly spiders FUN GUMS i like them lots becose they r cullerful and nice i have dun a project for school on spiders and i learnd that they hav got 8 legs but yor ones only hav 6 my dad seys they must be mutunts and if i tell yuo yuo will giv me sum 4 free i hav sent yuo my project so yuo can see it miss elkin scant it in 4 me she seys i shud eat fruits not swets but i think fruits are boran my adress is **** fank yuo yors sinseerly christopher russell

[No reply. Heartless bastards!]

Customer Service Demands: Next

2009-08-09T12:26:00.004+01:00

From: chris*@*.com
To: (Via website contact form)
Date: February 2nd, 2009

Dear Sir/Madam,

Last Saturday I was enjoying a pleasant perusal of your homeware department when I was confronted with a product the purpose of which I could not for the life of me ascertain. When I came to compose this email I checked your website - perhaps in the hope that I had imagined the product - and discovered it in a section labelled "Kitchen Essentials". The product is displayed alongside numerous others, all in the same category. I have taken the liberty of listing some here:

1. Mugs - yes, they're certainly "kitchen essentials". I like to drink tea from mine. But never tap water! That's what glasses are for.

2. Knife block - handy for storage and juggling, certainly essential

3. Mug tree - most necessary - without one your mugs will fall victim to mug weevils

4. Cream ceramic decorative cook letters - umm..?

I hope you begin to see my point. The other items can all be categorised - crockery, utensils etc... but - "decorative letters"? That isn't a "type" of "thing". You may as well sell "denim horses" or "submarine shoes", they make as much sense. You even go as far as to say they're wipe clean only - as if someone might be tempted to eat their dinner off a massive ceramic 'O' and then be upset when they can't put it in the dishwasher. Surely they'll be more concerned about their trousers?

Ultimately I suppose what I'd like to know is how on earth the idea to sell decorative letters came about in the first place. I can only imagine at the most recent board meeting the head of marketing said something like "well I've noticed we aren't getting any of the decorative letters market, so I propose we gain 100% by INVENTING IT".

Can you make enquiries please? I am most perplexed.

Many thanks,

Chris

From: Customer Service Management Team
To: chris*@*.com
Date: February 5th 2009

Our Ref: CRN/007955-09/CPI

Dear Mr Russell,

Thank you for your recent email enquiry about this seasons ‘decorative cook letters’.

I am sorry that these have been the cause of bewilderment and confusion to you whilst perusing our Homeware Department. Certainly, this would not be our intention.

I can confirm that decorative letters are not a new concept in terms of marketing and have been used over many seasons by Next.

We carefully consider and plan our ranges many seasons ahead and study current trends and moods to reflect the products that we offer our customers.

Based on our findings during previous sales of these products, decorative letters are a very popular range and have featured over our Home and Christmas ranges, with great success. We have therefore, taken the opportunity to offer the letters in the Kitchenware section and current response from our customers has been very promising.

To also help to explain, in categorising our products each item must fall into one of our product codes, for the purpose of ordering, storage and distribution. Additionally, for marketing reasons each item must feature in the area most appropriate for its purpose. On this occasion, the ‘decorative cook letters’ are intended to be placed somewhere in a kitchen.

Whilst I would agree with you that these are not essentials, they have on this occasion been placed with other ceramic products which may fall into such a category.

We appreciate the fact that you have taken the time to contact us and I do hope that I have been able to answer your query.

Yours sincerely,

Claire Pickering

In The Loop

2009-05-02T12:53:00.002+01:00

I've always been a big fan of The Thick of It, the TV show on which In The Loop is based, so I had great hopes for the film.

The TV show was written by a team including Armando Iannucci, a name attached to several of my favourite comedy shows ever* (The Day Today, The Armando Iannucci Show, Time Trumpet, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle), as well as Jesse Armstrong and Simon Blackwell (Peep Show). The team remained the same for In The Loop, except for Iannucci who directed instead.

The film's similarities to the TV show go beyond the writing of course; the shooting style is identical, using handheld cameras for that "fly-on-the-wall" look, and there is no soundtrack. The comedy is entirely about the dialogue, which in the TV show comes thick and fast, before the title has even appeared. Because of this I was slightly wary as In The Loop opened with comparatively sparse dialogue. It got up to speed soon enough though; I can only assume it was deliberately calmed down for audiences unfamiliar with the style.

Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) is a new face for In The Loop, although a very familiar character. He is a career-obsessed, decidedly untalented minister who you find yourself siding with one moment then hating the next. It struck me halfway through the film that perhaps this was basically Hugh Abbot (Chris Langham**) from the TV show, but Hugh Abbot was never careerist, he was just useless. I suppose they share an awkward (and mainly suppressed) desire to "do the right thing", but Hugh was much more of an old-guard lifetime civil servant type of character.

Chris Addison and Olivia Poulet reprise their relationship, though with different character names (Toby and Suzy in the film, Ollie and Emma in the TV show). Their relationship isn't nearly as interesting in the film - in the TV show Emma worked for the opposition, and their relationship was entirely based on mutual espionage. Since In The Loop isn't about domestic politics that's not massively relevant, so Suzy is part of the government in the film.

The central character of Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) is thankfully identical in the film. He is the same foul-mouthed, basically evil bully he was in The Thick of It. His assistant Jamie MacDonald (Paul Higgins) also returns, though I thought with far too small a part. Both have the same delightfully offensive way with words (I can't believe I've never thought to use the word "catastrofuck" before..) with Jamie being the slightly more unhinged and potentially violent of the two. There are several marvellous scenes of rooms full of hapless victims silenced by Malcolm's acidic rejoinders, which I suppose is really the hallmark of The Thick of It. But where in the TV show Malcolm often appears as the only one with any sense in a government staffed by ministers completely detached from reality, with the weight of an all-too-real story about dodgy intelligence he becomes actively evil by the end of the film. I did leave the cinema feeling slightly cold; not what I'd expected.

Still, I definitely recommend it. And if that's not enough to convince you, here's a clip (warning! contains references to "lubricated horse cock")

* I was going to declare Iannucci incapable of wrongdoing, but wikipedia tells me he directed the recent Post Office adverts. I hope he didn't write them..

** I looked up Chris Langham on wikipedia, to check the facts of his sentence, and found out one of his first jobs was writing for The Muppet Show. Bet you didn't know that!

Why I love the Pope

2009-03-14T13:05:00.003+01:00

Pope Benedict XVI is a Pope for the modern era. In a world where atheists, homosexuals, and (God forbid!) homosexual atheists parade their sins in full view of all decent members of society his guidance shines as a paragon of moral teaching.

Long gone are the glorious days of the Crusades, of course, in a time before so-called "political correctness" saw us giving "rights" to blasphemers and infidels. But while the Pope no longer wages religious wars, his instruction of the faithful remains unquestionable.

Take the recent example of Bishop Richard Williamson, who made certain remarks regarding concentration camps that were perhaps a little out-of-touch. Unfortunately when the Pope lifted Williamson's excommunication he didn't realise Williamson held such views - after all lifting an excommunication is such a minor thing the Vatican would only have done the most cursory of research. Besides, Williamson had only declared his holocaust-denial on Swedish TV - and I don't suppose they get Swedish TV in the Vatican! As soon as the Pope was informed, his action was decisive and immediate - he had his staff issue a frankly poetic statement saying the excommunication had "nothing to do with the personal opinions of a person". Then he was told that wasn't good enough, by Israel's envoy to the Vatican. And The Chief Rabbinate of Israel. And France's Europe Minister. And the German Chancellor. So he exercised his power as God's representative on Earth and demanded Williamson publicly recant his views. Which Williamson still hasn't done.

Another demonstration of the Pope's ironclad morality and certitude of purpose came shortly thereafter when he deftly linked saving the environment with not-being-anything-but-heterosexual in the beautiful phrase "human ecology". In his end-of-year speech to senior Vatican staff the Pope denounced gender theory as likely to cause the destruction of the human race, and declared lifelong wedlock between a man and a woman "the sacrament of creation". Fairly typical stuff - but here again the liberals spring into action, harping on about rights and oppression and all the rest of it. A lesser Pope would've responded with "**** you, I'm the Pope, I've got the hotline to God" and moved on - but not Benedict! No, he realises that would be inappropriate for today's world and has his staff declare the liberals to have misunderstood - "He was speaking more generally about gender theories which overlook the fundamental difference in creation between men and women" apparently.

What people forget about moral guardians like Pope Benedict XVI is that they hold back the floodwater of corruption. They stand, seemingly alone, reinforcing the dam against the tide. Every hundred years or so they move the dam back a bit to make it slightly easier but the new position is just as valid and holy as the last.

Another admirable aspect of Benedict is his refusal to conform to the modern obsession with vanity. In these days where every public figure has fashion advisors and makeup artists to have them present a flawless image, Benedict's purity again shines through by always looking like the Emperor out of Star Wars. Or an evil old Nazi.

God bless him!

have we reached the future yet?

2009-03-07T23:38:00.004+01:00

I watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" tonight, for the first time in years. I think it's a great piece of cinema, but also it's a wonderful insight into the optimism of the 60s - it seems laughable now that at the beginning of the space race people genuinely believed we'd have both space travel and artificial intelligence "sorted" inside forty years.

We don't really have that promise-of-technology excitement any more, and that's a shame. While the expectations of the 60s were somewhat unrealistic, science and technology do enrich our lives - but I think perhaps we take them for granted. The film made me think about the cool stuff 60s sci-fi promised, like robots and hovercars, and wonder that if the year 2001 didn't bring superintelligent computers or artificial gravity, what did it bring? Put another way, what technology does exist today that makes me think "that's the future - right there"?

So far I've only thought of two examples. The first is Google Earth, which I sat and played with for hours when it launched. I learned more about the geography of our planet in that one night than I ever did at school. It made the world seem.. not small exactly but.. somehow closer together. I just wish it were realtime! The second is the iPhone - simply because it is the first real demonstration of mobile internet. The Internet is the sum of all human knowledge (leaving porn and nazi forums to one side for a moment) and having it available at all times, in all places, I think will make a great difference to society. Remember - there was a time back in the dark ages where you had to go home or use a phone box to make a phone call, and I think our static use of the Internet will soon be remembered the same way.

I'm sure there must be many more. Any suggestions?

Mixed messages at the BBC

2009-02-14T01:07:00.003+01:00

Today the BBC are running this story (how awful!) and this story (how cute!)

(slightly related: I notice in the first article Iain Duncan-Smith is using the tabloid's favourite phrase "broken Britain". Nice to see he's still in touch with ordinary folk. The poisonous little twerp.)

Why Reading Matters (or, Why Susan Greenfield Doesn't)

2009-02-12T01:16:00.004+01:00

Tonight's iPlayer-based dinner entertainment was "Why Reading Matters", a documentary on BBC Four. This is what the Beeb had to say about it:

"Science writer Rita Carter tells the story of how modern neuroscience has revealed that reading, something most of us take for granted, unlocks remarkable powers. Carter explains how the classic novel Wuthering Heights allows us to step inside other minds and understand the world from different points of view, and she wonders whether the new digital revolution could threaten the values of classic reading."

Eek.. minor alarm bells. No, don't panic, it can't be that bad, I thought. This is the BBC after all, and only this morning I was singing their praises regarding the high quality of their documentaries. Still, I have a defence mechanism picked up from years of reading the Metro over people's shoulders - if I come across a sentence that sounds like it wouldn't be out of place in the Daily Mail, the Bullshit Detector gets turned up to maximum. I was on high alert for balderdash.

The needle started to waggle two minutes in: ".. the Internet, blogs, and videogames - it's a digital revolution that some think challenges the old world of reading". Precisely how do the Internet (undoubtedly meaning the web, which is mainly text) and blogs (entirely text) threaten reading? This was beginning to confirm my suspicions - that the "controversy" had been made up to try and make the programme more interesting. But I stuck with it - sensationalism to hook the idiot viewer at the beginning, I'm sure they can back it up, I'll give them a chance.

So... nearly 50 minutes later and I realise there's been no mention of the Internet yet. It's been vaguely interesting - quite lightweight; I question the value of some of the "research" mentioned, but so far so not-so-bad. 49 minutes in and we're celebrating how reading in the UK still seems as popular as ever - moreso even (quoting stats from 2005). Hurrah for reading! Ah but hang on, the tone's changed: ".. but since the beginning of the 21st century, the spectacular rise of digital technologies like the Internet and videogames have brought a fresh wave of fears in their wake". Had the 21st century not started by 2005? Am I missing something here? Perhaps I'm being too picky. Carry on, science writer Rita Carter. "In the United States - exposed to digital media for longer - " er, no, gonna have to stop you there. In the words of wikipedia, "[citation needed]". In what way has the USA been "exposed to digital media for longer"? That's just silly.

51 minutes in and we are introduced to Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of The Royal Institution - "an outspoken critic of digital media". We get a minute or so of her saying how good books are - fair enough, nothing to disagree with here. Then our voiceover says "there's one aspect of the digital revolution that especially troubles Professor Greenfield - videogames". Ahhh, now I get it. This is really just about games, but for some reason you felt the need to say it was about "the Internet, blogs, and videogames". Which became "the Internet and videogames". Which has now become "videogames". Perhaps in the closing minutes it will become "Grand Theft Auto" in which case I won't mind after all.. let's see..

Greenfield again: ".. videogames .. emphasise the thrill .. as you win the princess or slay the dragon ..".

Now. It's quite difficult for me to express just how utterly, inanely stupid that kind of statement sounds to me. Perhaps this will help:

Me: "Science is evil because scientists spend all their time putting shampoo in rabbits' eyes!"

Scientist: "We don't really do that."

Me: "You do! I saw it in a picture once. At least I think I did. About 6 years ago. In the Daily Mail."

Scientist: "Well that's not a very accurate view-"

Me: "BUNNY KILLER!"

I may have got carried away at the end there. But my point remains! To claim all computer games are about winning princesses or slaying dragons is to demonstrate that you haven't seen a computer game, possibly ever. And therefore you really don't have the right to comment. But anyway, we're nearly at the end, it can't get worse, surely?

Our voiceover tells us we've gone to "Gamebase in Piccadilly" which is apparently where gamers go to.. well, play games it would seem. Carter appears at this point to ask probing questions of the various gamers. Gamer #1 is playing some kind of WWII-themed first-person shooter. Carter asks "what's the aim of this game?". Gamer #1: "Just to kill people basically".

Well frankly I give up. If the people I'm trying to defend are going to say things so blatantly stupid, what's the point. *sigh*

Another gamer is asked "do you think its an either/or thing? That you either play videogames or you read books?". As dimwitted as the first gamer he agrees wholeheartedly. "Why do you think that is?". "Cos it's easier to just play a game isn't it?".

Well sorry to ruin the stereotype but I'm a gamer who loves reading. And in fact, when I think of all my gaming friends, I realise that every one of them is a big reader too.

Thankfully Carter admits that her "vox pops" can't represent the majority, and accepts that a lot of online games have a huge cooperative element to them. But unfortunately she then lets Greenfield speak again:

"When you rescue the princess [oh CHRIST this again] you don't care about the princess, the princess is meaningless [..] whereas when you're reading a book you do care, that's why you're reading the book.."

A lot of games require no empathy, I would agree with that. Certainly a lack of engaging story in games is something I constantly lament and hope to have some part in changing, but to suggest that is true of all games is as stupid as suggesting the opposite is true of all books - nobody reads Tom Clancy because of the moving interactions between the characters, people read Tom Clancy because they like guns. This can be applied to a large number of books, I'd suggest almost anything advertised in a train station for instance (more on that in a later blog post!).

Thankfully the programme finished with an interview with Naomi Alderman who rather neatly crosses the divide by being a novelist and a game designer.

I looked up "Susan Greenfield" - The Times and The Independent have both run articles about her theory that computer games will create "a generation of children becoming emotionally stunted, inarticulate adult hedonists with tiny attention spans, who can't differentiate between blasting away aliens on screen and happy-slapping grannies". I couldn't help noticing that all the way through both articles she repeatedly advertised her new book, but never once backed up her theory with scientific evidence. And then, oh the irony, I found a BBC article which was basically an advert for her new DS brain-training-alike game. The last site I found listed a few reactions to her book (in which she promised to explain exactly how games were rotting children's minds) which made me feel somewhat less infuriated:

"Greenfield's neural account of personal identity is, despite her claims, profoundly reductive, if not incoherent. As such, it removes the very premise upon which her book is based: that technological advance poses a unique threat to personal identity." - Raymond Tallis, writing in the Times

"The neuroscience never marries up with the complaint, just impressively but speciously adorns it. Which is why Greenfield's speculations, interesting as they are, don't get much further than Tunbridge Wells whimsy." - Jane O'Grady, writing in the Guardian

Golden Circle and Blue Lagoon

2009-01-07T20:57:00.004+01:00

On Monday we hired a car to do the "Golden Circle" tour - we were going to go with a tour company but Helgi and Paul insisted it would be cheaper and easier to drive ourselves. The car didn't come with satnav, so I appointed George the cuddly puffin to do the job instead. I'd bought George the day before to assuage my guilt (see earlier post!).

The Golden Circle tour consists of four sites relatively close together: Geysir, the Gullfoss waterfall, Þingvellir, a national park containing the site of the oldest parliament in the world, and Skálholt, one of the oldest Christian sites in Iceland.

Geysir marked the beginning of what were to be a fairly surreal couple of days. The Haukadalur valley in which Geysir is situated features a field full of holes pouring steam, man-sized pools of boiling water, and rings of expectant tourists clustered around larger stone pools waiting to say "blimey" in their native tongue as they get soaked through by rather pleasantly warm towers of water. All of the major geysers are named - Strokkur is a regular chap, belching wetly every six or seven minutes, but the great Geysir only graced us with one eruption, which none of us managed to get on film. All of the geysers confirmed our egg-sulphur theory however, as the whole place had a familiar whiff of rotten eggs to it.

Leaving Haukadalur valley we drove on to Hvítárgljúfur canyon, where the Gullfoss waterfall was ready to boggle our braincells with terror. The terror started some time before reaching the waterfall, when I stepped onto the wooden walkway to the visitor centre and found it immensely slippery. "Jeezaforfucksakes" exclaimed and flailing dances performed we all wandered gingerly down the hillside. At the bottom of the hilariously iced-up wooden steps we reached the path that followed the edge of the top of the canyon, trailing slightly upward around to the peak of the waterfall itself. To describe this path as "a bit icy" would be akin to describing a pavement as "a bit concretey" - the entire thing was one long (and rather cambered) strip of ice. At the peak there was a safety rope, which reminded me of previous conversations about Icelandic health and safety, because it was lying on the ground in the main. Of course that means nothing gets in the way of the photos :)

Þingvellir is an immensely peaceful place. We didn't see a lot of it as it's not the best time of year to go - most of the wildlife has done the sensible thing and buggered off for the Winter. But the Almannagjá ravine was still very impressive. It leads to the site where the Alþingi (Icelandic parliament) convened, from 930 AD. What I found most interesting is that the parliament convened there annually right up until the end of the 18th century. The view from the cliff above the ravine is beautiful - huge plains broken by small streams and the occasional tiny lake stretching out to the horizon, bounded by shining snow-speckled mountains. The plains are actually much more rugged close up - the land is broken quite a lot by fissures and caves because the whole area is right on the join between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

Tuesday morning saw another early rise - we were due to do the only thing we booked in Iceland before leaving the UK: our trip to the Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon is an artificial outdoor pool created by filling a large natural gully through volcanic rock with waste water from the geothermal power plant next door. The result is a pool of water coloured blue from the minerals in the rocks, at a temperature of 37-39 degrees celsius. It steams immensely, and the steam is carried by the wind, so you can't see further than about 25m - you certainly can't ever see one side from the other. There is a restaurant in the building where we had lunch - including a white chocolate Skyr mousse, yum yum. The restaurant is called "Lava" because two of it's walls are carved out of the volcanic rock. The other two were almost entirely glass, looking out onto the lagoon. The architecture and lighting left me with the distinct impression we were guests of some archenemy of James Bond.. there was a pretty neat "supervillain's volcano hideaway" vibe to the whole place. I had an hour-long massage while I was there too, which was very nice. I was impressed (and slightly disturbed) when the masseur said, ten minutes in, "You work in IT, right?". I said "Yeah, but what specifically?". He didn't even pause - "Games". Masseur and psychic, clever stuff. We chatted quite a lot; by bizarre coincidence in his previous job as a carpenter he helped build CCP's studio in Reykjavik. Small world..

local delicacies

2009-01-04T02:46:00.002+01:00

Skyr is tasty. I read about it in some touristy leaflet this morning, where it was recommended for children, old people, bodybuilders, dieters, and also as relief for sunburn (presumably you rub it on your skin for that). I had a Skyr Brulee for dessert tonight in a restaurant called "Thrir Frakkar", which means "Three Frenchmen" or "Three Trenchcoats" depending on how you interpret it. Anyway, our new friends Paul and Helgi took us there tonight after drinks in the Penthouse.

I've waffled about that to lead up to something that might shock some of you. Those of you of a nervous/'awwwww' disposition, make sure you're sitting comfortably.

For main course I had whale.

And for starter.. I had..

puffin.

Now I didn't make the decision lightly. My thinking was that chickens, which are pretty ugly, don't taste of much. Ducks on the other hand are quite cute - and taste yummy. So.. puffins? They're extra cuddly - so they must taste fantastic, right? Well, kinda. To be honest it was difficult to tell - the meat was heavily smoked so not a lot of flavour got through. The meat is very red though, not remotely like chicken or duck.

Whale, Helgi assured us, was not remotely fishy - and he was right, it tasted like an incredibly flavoursome beef steak to me. Whale I'd eat again (if I didn't think it so controversial) but puffin I can leave. I'll leave them to posing for photographers with gobfulls of fish.

Hallgrímskirkja is ugly

2009-01-03T00:49:00.004+01:00

I'm sorry, people of Reykjavik, but it is. You've made a valiant attempt to disguise the fact by a) making sure all tourist leaflet photos of it are taken from a great distance and b) covering half of it with scaffolding, but you haven't fooled me.

It's "Hallgrim's Church" in English - it dates from 1945, and it looks like a concrete space rocket.

Now that I've got that off my chest, I'll change the subject.

On New Year's Eve we met a lot of people. Some were Icelandic, some were British, one was Venezuelan, one was cross-eyed with booze but knew the "correct" way to kill a duck ("and that's what we should do to the bankers!"), and all were marvellous fun. Two who we got on with particularly well were a couple called Paul and Helgi, who live in London, but were over visiting Helgi's family for New Year. When they went home around 1am we told them it would be nice to see them again, maybe go out for a meal, and that we were in the penthouse for the rest of our stay (but of course!) and they agreed, but no numbers were exchanged so we didn't expect we'd see them again. So it was great to have them knock on the door this morning! Armed with cups of tea we sat around various maps, and they showed us all the best places to visit - and were adamant a hire car would work out cheaper than a tour bus.

The weather forecast isn't great so we're gonna stay in Reykjavik for a day or two yet. The flea market is open tomorrow, which should be fun, and in the evening we're having dinner and drinks with Paul and Helgi. Worryingly one of the places Helgi mentioned that he liked was one of the first restaurants we'd walked past, and immediately written off as far too expensive (~£35 for a fairly basic main course), so it'll be interesting to see where they've decided upon.

Interesting fact I looked up today: the population of Iceland is around 320,000. The population of Manchester (central, not greater) is slightly less than 460,000.

Penthouses, eggs, and Icelandic TV

2009-01-02T13:02:00.008+01:00

We moved up to the penthouse apartment on New Year's Day. It's a bit nice - I'd post a picture but normal USB cables don't fit my camera unfortunately. The guys running the hotel told us they used to live up here until they sold the hotel just before the recession (good timing!).

The water in the shower smells hugely of eggs - we've decided it must be sulphur.. we're blaming volcanic activity. On the bus from the airport we noticed several plumes of steam in the distance which appeared to be coming straight out of the ground. Quite a surreal sight really.. adds to the general feeling I have about Iceland - that it's the last outpost of civilisation before you fall off the world. The darkness here is so total.. no light pollution I suppose. It makes for fantastic views - looking out across the bay from the jacuzzi last night I saw the nearby buildings lit up perfectly, then just nothing beyond. Tremendously geeky reference: it looks like the skybox isn't rendering :)

We got up around 9am this morning - it was as dark outside as it was when we went to bed at 1am of course. Interestingly when Russell turned on the TV there was only a testcard to be found. I'm beginning to think people here are offset by a few hours to get up with the sun at 12 - the road outside was still full of people at 1am, but there was barely a soul at 9..

To the whores of Italy!

2009-01-01T18:56:00.009+01:00

New Year's Eve began with us getting the bus out to the Kringlan shopping centre to buy food for the week. Icelandic supermarket highlights: all manner of "Lazy Town"-branded fruit products, tens of types of flavoured butter (garlic, herbs, tomato etc.), and more types of gouda than I could count (but no cheddar! b*stards!).

Of course along the way we encountered a lot more embarrassingly good English-as-a-second-language speakers - the woman in the shop who told us where the bus stop was (clueless bloody tourists), the exceptionally friendly woman at the bus stop who, unprompted, told us which bus to get and to have exact change, and various members of staff at the supermarket who recognised all of our requests except "pancetta". To be fair our description of it consisted purely of the words "pig" and "carbonara".

In the evening, after dinner and a few rounds of fuzzy duck with some wankered-on-gin cockney couples we met in the jacuzzi, we wandered into town to see how the night's preparations were getting on. There were fairly regular fireworks going off every couple of minutes, seemingly all from family homes. We saw several bonfires across the bay but couldn't find the one alleged to be nearby (we surmised later we'd somehow walked round it several times without seeing it - pesky buildings getting in the way).

Eventually we made our way back to the apartment building and the party the owners were throwing in the lobby. After much champagne and chat we wandered up to the roof to watch the fireworks. From there we had a panoramic view of the city, all of which was alight with explosions. In every direction there was pyromania. It felt rather like everyone in Reykjavik was trying to outdo everyone else - the major fireworks started at 23:30 (because that's when the comedy revue on TV finishes, apparently - and out of interest last year's audience figures showed 96% of Icelanders watched it. Eat your heart out Angus Deayton) and remained constant until 00:30. Tourist jaws remained dropped throughout, but some of the Icelanders seemed a little ambivalent - enjoying themselves but somehow a little disappointed. One said "you can tell there's a recession on". If only all recessions could be so spectacular!

On a related note I had an interesting chat with one Icelander, who'd said I might be "surprised" by the roof itself - because there was no guard rail. Walk too far and you'll fall off. So don't walk too far. Similarly the stairs up to the roof go past the (completely unguarded) lift control mechanism. We're talking big grindy gears at face height. The chap I was talking to (who'd spent many years living in England) suggested Iceland just has a different attitude towards health and safety - he pointed out the Gulfoss waterfall had no guard rail either until a tourist fell to his death about 5 years ago. Something to bear in mind when we visit next week!

As the fireworks slowed, and the cold started to bite, people gradually started making their champagne-soaked way past the grindy-geared lift back down the stairs to the lobby. Russell, Mikey and myself decided to stay out - the fireworks were still ludicrously impressive by our standards. We wandered around the roof and found a very drunk Norwegian couple. The husband mainly stood in the background, laughing at his wife, who was very loud and very entertaining. We were shortly joined by an Icelander who kept lighting flares in his mouth, which was an interesting sight. There was much cheers-ing - I enquired what the Icelandic for "happy new year" was and quickly regretted it, so we settled on "skál" ("cheers", in case you hadn't worked it out - oh, and it's pronounced kind of like "scowl"). Various toasts were proposed by the Norwegian woman - to the people of Iceland, to the people of England, to Barack Obama. For some reason at this point the Icelander decided to recount a tale about losing his virginity at the age of fifteen to an Italian whore. I raised my glass: "To the whores of Italy!".

"Skál!"

Mum's gone to Iceland. Tell a lie - I left her at home

2008-12-31T00:00:00.001+01:00

If there are only two of you getting a flight, don't rely on the other one to keep track of time. A lesson I considered as Russell and I ran to the gate with -3 minutes to spare, having only moments before been enjoying a breakfast-and-beer repast.

I'm now lying in bed listening to drunken Icelandic people giggle their way up the street outside the window. It's a fascinating language to listen to - some words are easily recognisable; so far we've discovered "Hi", "Bye", "Taxi", and "Tea" translate pretty directly. Other words.. are not so simple. This is partially because the Icelandic alphabet itself is a little different to English: in Iceland they use letters like ð and þ (called 'eth' and 'thorn', respectively), and in 1974 they abolished Z. Of course, as always seems to happen, everyone we've met has spoken perfect English so it really doesn't seem to be an issue.

I'm quite excited about tomorrow, it seems all the tourist gubbins on the web declaring New Year to be a major event in Rekyjavic are quite true - we've had quite a few people in shops etc. tell us how much we're going to love it. I think we'll probably go out to a bonfire or two late in the evening, then back to the apartment building where the owners have invited everyone to have sparkling wine on the roof, while we watch the fireworks. New Year's Eve, metres from my bed? Yes please.

Night all!

Simon the Sorcerer and other reminiscences

2008-10-12T12:06:00.011+01:00

I woke up with this tune in my head this morning. It's the theme from Simon the Sorcerer, by Adventuresoft, as remastered by James Woodcock for the ScummVM project.

Simon was originally released in 1993. I'd played a demo on a magazine coverdisc and completely fell in love with it. At the time I was 12, and lived in a surrealist-humoured world of hobbits and elves and goblins* so to see a very similar world in a computer game was wonderful.

[Midly context-establishing but mainly just wistful digression: the same year saw the release of Return to Zork, with its full-motion video (but only if you had an MPEG decoder card.. I find it amusing to consider the same hardware is now inside pretty much any mid-range mobile phone..). Another big adventure release was Myst, although I didn't play it at the time. Simcity 2000 also appeared, which I remember thinking was brilliant purely because it had aliens in it, and of course 1993 also saw the release of Doom.]

And back to Simon. The graphics were (and still are) a delight, they're very low-res by today's standards but you can still see the care and detail that went into the "real world" versions. I wonder if the originals still exist somewhere.. Similarly the music really captures the spirit of the game, kinda cute, often atmospheric, very rarely annoying (I never did like the village shop tune, but then the two-headed shop owner was annoying too so I guess it fits).

Simon was one of a lot of games at the time that came in floppy or CD "talkie" versions, which had recorded dialogue instead of text. Adventuresoft had enough money to get Chris Barrie to do Simon's voice on the talkie version, and the end result is quite good. The quality of the supporting voice talent varies wildly, but overall it works. (As a side rant, the proliferation of CD-ROM meant bad scripts and worse voice acting exploded in the mid-nineties as the games industry became obsessed with "interactive movies". This is still happening - Free Radical claim to have hired RSC actors to do the voice acting for Haze, but the dialogue was still widely panned)

The game's plot is fairly simple: Simon is summoned to a fantasy world - via a spellbook in the attic - to rescue the wizard Calypso from the evil sorcerer Sordid. The details of the plot are then basically made up of parodies of famous fantasy references strung together with occasionally elaborate (but always sensible) puzzles. I suppose the thing that really sticks out though, and the reason I still love the game today, is that a lot of the characters are very well developed. Simon is a master of sarcasm and one-liners, and who could forget the entirely adorable Swampling. As demonstrated in that video, a fair amount of breaking-the-fourth-wall happens, which I'm generally a fan of (Robert Rankin, probably my favourite author, does the literary equivalent throughout his books).

Ahhh, I think the urge to reminisce is leaving me now. Still there's no harm in listening to the remastered music for the rest of the afternoon though..

Maybe I'll talk about Grim Fandango next time :)

*I still have the schoolwork to prove it - including the entirely perplexed comments by my teachers :)

"Chris Russell"

2008-10-11T17:28:00.004+01:00

When I first started gaying it up round Newcastle every second person I bumped into was called Chris, and googling "Chris Russell" suggests the whole name is quite common too.

Recently I joined Facebook.. and it occurred to me today: how many Chris Russells can I find?

A general name search finds over 500, unsurprisingly, so I restricted the search to the Manchester group.

There are only 18 Chris Russells in Manchester, according to Facebook.

But now I was interested - with such a small group it would be quite fun to see what we did or didn't have in common. I suppose I was a little inspired by the scene from American Splendor (which is a great film anyway, you should watch it!).

So I restricted my search further: show me the gays!

Zero.

According to Facebook, I'm the only gay Chris Russell in Manchester. I always *knew* I was special!

So how else are these Chris Russells different from me? And how are they similar?

Well lets start with the basics: of the 18, 6 are girls. 9 of the profiles are private.
3 Chris Russells declined to specify their exact age. The rest are older than me - their ages range from 29 to 49.
Religion came as a surprise - 7 Chris Russells avoid the question by not answering or saying something very vague. 1 Chris Russell is Christian, which I can't help but think of as letting the side down. I am the only obvious atheist in the group.
When it comes to politics the Chris Russells are similarly coy - 6 don't specify a bias, 1 describes his political inclination as "moderate", 2 are "liberal".

Now obviously this has been a thoroughly scientific study so far, but I decided to depart slightly from my rigorous methods for the final "similarity metric" - of the profiles I could access, if Chris Russell listed an interest that I actively agreed with, I incremented their "score". Likewise, if something struck me as dreadful I decremented the score.

The otherwise perfectly valid statistics are somewhat wrecked by the fact 5 of the Chris Russells have completely empty interest sections. Anyway..

Name: Chris Russell
+ points: classic rock, blue planet, family guy, spaced, red dwarf, monty python, back to the future, indiana jones trilogy, lord of the rings, bill bryson
- points: the f word, tom clancy
Similarity score: 8

Name: Chris Russell
+ points: nintendo ds, scissor sisters, pavarotti
- points: house, corrie, scent of a woman, pretty woman, barbara taylor-bradford, catherine cookson
Similarity score: -3

Name: Chris Russell
+ points: steve vai, simpsons, my name is earl, the matrix, forrest gump, labyrinth
- points: lost, da vinci code
Similarity score: 4

So clearly this demonstrates I'd get on with Chris Russell, but that I should avoid Chris Russell at all costs.

I wonder if I can get a grant to pursue this..

praise be to allah!

2008-07-22T21:00:00.003+01:00

From the BBC again:

' "When the writings were discovered there were some Islamic scholars who come and eat here and they all commented that it was a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind," he said. '

Well that settles it!

Nice to see God's moved on his message-carrying technology from illiterate prophets to slices of beef.

I really, really, hope someone finds "Allah" on a gammon steak now.

creme egg #4

2008-06-29T15:51:00.006+01:00

Note: please read previous parts (#1, #2, #3) first!

From: Jane Potts [***@csplc.com]
To: chris***@***.com
Date: 12/12/2006 15:57

Subject: Re: How do you MISPRONOUNCE yours?

Thank you very much for your further email. The brand manager for Creme Egg has kindly provided the following response:

Dear Chris,

Many thanks for your email, you raise a very interesting question! We've looked into it, and unfortunately we haven't been able to uncover an answer as to why its spelt French and pronounced English. At this stage in the game, with Cadbury Creme Egg celebrating it's 83rd birthday this year, it's too late to change it, and I'm not sure we'll ever have a full resolution!

If I was to give my personal thoughts:

---
I've done some further digging on the subject of "creme" vs. "cream", and stumbled upon this handy resource:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creme

...which appears to suggest that "creme" may be pronounced:

[krem, kreem; Fr. krem]

The middle of which would be the one chosen for Cadbury Creme Egg, if I am correct in thinking? Unless I am completely missing out the vital matter of the accent above the first "e", which "Cadbury Creme Egg" does not contain but may have an absolutely invaluable role to play in this conundrum. If so, then this leaves me completely stumped!

---

On the matter of the Amazin Raisin bar - unfortunately at this stage I know of no plans to resurrect the bar. In the mean time, I'd invite you to try some of our brand new Dairy Milk Melts, which (although they don't contain any fruit per se) are scrumptuous. Available from all good shops now.

I hope this gives you our perspective on the matter for you, and that you have a truly Merry Christmas.

Many thanks,
Ross

P.S. - Please pass on my regards to Pickles and your genuine living French colleague.

creme egg #3

2008-06-29T15:41:00.007+01:00

Note: please read previous parts (#1, #2) first!

From: chris***@***.com
To: ***@csplc.com
Date: 23/11/2006 11:26

Subject: Re: How do you MISPRONOUNCE yours?

Dear Charlie

Thank you for your kind response.

With regard to the "creme" debate, I am afeared that we are "pulling from opposite ends of the dog" as it were. To quote your fine reply directly:

" .. Cadbury chose the French pronunciation of Creme .. "

But you do not! And this is precisely my point. If you were to choose the French pronunciation all of this MADNESS would end.

I am lucky enough to have a genuine living French person as a colleague, and they have given me their personal guarantee that there is no way the word "creme" can be pronounced like "cream" without changing the spelling.

Please understand that I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that the Creme egg is "Creme" and not "Cream" as it contains no cream. And yes, I also acknowledge that "Cadbury's Fondant Egg" hardly rolls off the tongue. But this apparent disregard for the rules of pronunciation disturbs me immensely.

On the matter of a "fruit and fruit" bar, I am greatly heartened to discover Cadbury's have "been there" on no less than three occasions. Is there any news on a fourth venture? You could even reuse the name "Amazin Raisin", about which my friend Pickles is still laughing in the porcine manner he has come to make his own.

In conclusion Charlie, I entreat you - why is a creme egg spelt French and pronounced English? And when might I expect advertisements for the *all-new* Amazin Raisin bar to grace my telescreen?

You have been so helpful thus far, I am confident together we can bring this matter to a swift conclusion.

Yours,
Chris

PS Please note I haven't commented on the lack of an apostrophe in the name "Amazin Raisin". That would be a level of pedantry inappropriate to level at a manufacturer of confection.

Next...

creme egg #2

2008-06-29T15:34:00.007+01:00

Note: please read part #1 first!

From: ***@csplc.com
To: chris***@***.com
Date: 23/11/2006 10:00

Subject: Re: How do you MISPRONOUNCE yours?

Thank you for your e-mail, Cadbury chose the french pronunciation of Creme as the centre of a Creme Egg is a rich fondant rather than a Cream centre. with reference to a fruit only bar. Cadbury's have made a fruit only bar three times in its history. The first time was a bar called Amazin Raisin from 1971 to 1978 and then Sultana bar from 1982 to 1988 and then California Dream which was discontinued in 2001

Charlie

Next...

creme egg #1

2008-06-29T15:19:00.013+01:00

From: chris***@***.com
To: cadburycouk@csplc.com
Date: 21/11/2006 13:46

Subject: How do you MISPRONOUNCE yours?

Glad tidings of the season!

Ordinarily this would be the time of year for casting aside one's problems but alas! I find I cannot. A query is gnawing belligerently at my braincase, and only the good people of Cadbury's can help.

Why is the (otherwise delectable) Creme Egg mispronounced so? Surely it should be pronounced "cremm egg" or be spelt "cream egg"?

The modern era is one of jolly European relations - surely you should move with the times and update the pronounciation? We even pronounce "Nestle" correctly. Indeed, in my village anyone caught pronouncing it "nessel" is immediately put in stocks and pelted with milky bars. Other pronounciation crimes include the words "cremm brully" and "cremm fraitch". Laughable I'm sure you'll agree!

I also have another, smaller, query - a "microquery" if you will. If there is a fruit and nut bar, and a whole nut bar, why is there not a whole fruit (or "fruit and fruit") bar? You could replace those hideous caramel ones with it, no-one likes them.

Thank you for your time, I await your reply with not inconsiderable apprehension and intaking of breath.

Yours,
Chris Russell

Next...

Blair 'to devote life to faith'

2008-05-29T21:38:00.003+01:00

From the BBC (click the title), quoting an interview with Time magazine:

"What faith can do is not tell you what is right but give you the strength to do it."

So can voices in your head, if they're sufficiently loud.
But then I never did recognise a difference.

lullaby of birdland

2008-05-17T16:27:00.005+01:00

This is my first attempt at recording my Clavinova with GarageBand on the new laptop: Lullaby of Birdland

Now also available as a podcast! (feed the link at the bottom of the page to iTunes or Google Reader etc.)

one of my 5-a-day

2008-05-17T14:52:00.020+01:00

I bought a shiny Macbook Pro last weekend, and it's great!

I've been having fun making stupid videos with iMovie and the builtin camera. I've posted a few on youtube, but rather bizarrely blogger will only podcast movies uploaded to it specifically (despite blogger and youtube both being owned by google.. *shrug*)..

So this was my first video - Pete demanded I make a video "about spoons". Admittedly this is a fork, but that's not the point.

Then onto more advanced techniques - a soundtrack no less!

I'm going to regret this

2008-04-08T21:14:00.002+01:00

But I've added a Digsby widget to the page - so now you random visiting types can send me abuse abuse. Might I suggest "digsbi is teh ghey" as a starting point?

Update 17/05: it stopped working ages ago so its gone. That was pointless!

new oceans to explore

2008-03-23T22:07:00.005+01:00

It was my last week at Rockpool last week. Instead of a card they gave me these "leaving fish", signed by everyone. Needless to say I was most impressed :)

It's a cliche, but resigning was the hardest decision I've ever made - I was comfortable at Rockpool, which I think is testament to the generally positive atmosphere in the place. When I originally applied for the job I was fairly desperate - I didn't drive (still don't!) and I couldn't afford to move, so finding a games company in the centre of Manchester was fantastic. I had to fake an interest in mobile games (when I went to the interview my phone couldn't even "do" games) but I thought it would be fine to tide me over for 6 months or so, then I'd move on. Turns out I was quite happy working sensible hours (I haven't "crunched" in two years) - it gave me a lot of time to work on personal projects, and more importantly to decide what the hell I want to do with my career. 3 years later and I'm finally moving on.

I made a lot of friends at Rockpool, and I'll always remember my time there fondly. Thank you Rockpoolians!

got a light mac

2008-03-15T20:44:00.004+01:00

Well now this is interesting: I found myself compelled to buy a Macbook this morning.

I haven't, yet.

Reasons to buy a Macbook:

I want a laptop
OS X is very nice, and it being based on Unix is A Good Thing (tm)
Having looked into it, Macbooks don't seem much more expensive than equivalently-specced PC laptops
Being a Linux/Windows dual-booter I enjoy the challenge of writing code that's as system-independent as possible.. adding OS X to the list of OS's supported by my current project would be neat :)

Reasons not to buy a Macbook:

The cheapest one I think I could get away with is £820
I might end up like the Mac guy in the PC/Mac ads (at least the PC guy has a JOB)
It may well open up the path to iPod, iPhone, iThinkJobsIsJesus etc.

Ok so that got a little frivolous towards the end.

More deliberating to be done!

Portal

2007-10-23T00:05:00.001+01:00

Just finished Portal. I have to say I'm glad I bought it as part of The Orange Box, rather than on it's own - it's length puts it quite firmly in the "tech demo" category. That said, it is a very interesting idea, if a little nauseating (I'm one of those weird people who gets motion sickness playing FPS's for too long - Portal's bouncy-flippy-which-way-is-up shenanigans meant I had to have a lot of breaks :)

It will be interesting to see how Valve (or anyone else for that matter) try to fit the idea into a more traditional FPS setting.. it would surely make level design a nightmare if you have to make sure the player can't just leap across huge sections of level - and if you invert it so the player can only use portals in particular sections I think it could very easily seem contrived. Hopefully we'll see soon enough..

My favourite thing about Portal is the sense of humour throughout - the ending particularly is great: the idea of having the game finish with a psychotic computer singing to you about cake approaches Tim Schafer levels of oddball. It gives me some faith that there are some left in the western games industry who remember that it's more important for games to be fun than cool. Blue skies in games!

Leenooks

2007-10-22T17:57:00.001+01:00

I installed the new version of Ubuntu ("Gutsy Gibbon" - what?) this morning. I was running the old version and tried to upgrade, but during the install I somehow lost support for my USB hard drive and various apps stopped running. I decided I'd be best off reinstalling completely (not that much of a problem if your user data is on a separate partition - most Windows users I know are only just coming round to this idea). After downloading the .iso I burnt it to a disc using cdrecord (the gnome burner was one of the apps that had died earlier) and restarted.

The installer was nice enough; pretty much the same as when I installed the previous version. One new little feature that impressed me was when the installer asked if I'd like to copy personal settings (everything from browser bookmarks to desktop wallpaper) from my Windows partition. It's features like this that make Ubuntu fans declare every new version a "Windows-killer". While ease-of-use features are always welcome, I wouldn't go that far (I'm not sure I want something to kill Windows.. unlike Microsoft I recognise the need for competition).. but I digress!

Everything installed nice and smoothly, like the previous version of Ubuntu all my hardware was detected and setup perfectly first time - even my wireless network, once I remembered where I'd put the network key :)

On to the most fun part: the eye-candy! Most of the noise about this new Ubuntu is about the inclusion of Compiz-fusion, a pretty-if-somewhat-pointless system that takes advantage of your 3D card to do silly things with your desktop. There are plenty of videos of it on youtube, have a look. There are quite a few features that are gratuitous if not entirely useless (unless you consider painting a burning particle effect over your windows useful) but the main features are pretty without getting in the way. I particularly like Expo and the shift-switcher. Now that I've written that it sounds like a band name. Anyway.

So - Ubuntu 7.10 gets the thumbs-up from me. To the various people who ask me fairly often which Linux they should try - this one!

PS I know! A post where I didn't whinge about anything! You can tell I'm on holiday :)

What's so bad about J2ME anyway? I forget - ho, ho.

2007-10-01T21:38:00.001+01:00

This is something of a continuation of my earlier rant.. you have been warned :)

Not many people buy mobile games, in comparison to the number of people who own them. So the carriers want games that work on as many handsets as possible to maximise the number of potential customers. This is one of the things that makes J2ME game development more like PC dev than console, in the sense that we don't have a fixed platform. This I think was the original selling point of Java on mobile devices - that it standardised the way games would be developed and distributed; the much-touted "Write Once Run Anywhere" promise. But that only makes sense if you completely blind yourself to all other technical questions: while games developed for similar-spec'd PCs were created using all manner of low-level assembly tricks to squeeze every precious cycle out of the processor, Java actively prevents the programmer from finding out any information about the hardware on which the program is running. John Carmack made some mention of this during his experience creating Doom RPG. There are even more fundamental questions like "how do you make a sprite-based game that simultaneously works on a 120x120 screen and a 240x320 screen?".

The reality is even devices that are very similar behave completely differently, due to the manufacturer's JVM implementation. Since I make 3D games I'm somewhat blessed in that I only have to deal with fairly few devices, all of which are fairly high-end. On my first couple of 3D titles the worst device by far was the Nokia 6680 - it has a severe issue whereby the garbage collector either doesn't reclaim unused memory or never compacts memory, allowing it to fragment. The end result is, as you release the resources from one level to load the resources for the next, a big chunk of memory disappears, and very soon the phone runs out - at which point Crazy Things happen. The accepted "solution" to this problem is to work around it i.e. to load all the resources for all the levels at startup and never release anything ever. Thankfully the 6680 was eventually superseded by the n70, which doesn't seem to suffer from the same problem.

On my most recent project we deliberately "pushed the envelope" in terms of graphical quality, meaning we had a hell of a lot of resources. So many in fact that they couldn't all be loaded at once on the 6680. It was fine on the n70, so the client didn't seem to mind too much. I created reference builds for various other devices, leaving the new one until last: the n95. This is the phone Nokia are very heavily pushing at the moment with their "what the PC has become" ad campaign. When I first looked at it I was very impressed - it has a great screen, and hardware acceleration allowing it to spew polygons onto the screen faster than any other device I've seen. When I finally came to do a full build of the game I was soon disappointed - after a couple of levels I noticed the loading times became incredibly slow. I discovered a call interrupt was enough to kill the game after this had happened. It took me some time to conclude that the 6680 memory issue was never resolved. Nokia's "fix" for its n-series devices was to put vastly more memory in them, so you'd need to play a game for several days non-stop before the phone crashed. Unfortunately the n95 has about as much available memory as the 6680 - so the issue has returned. The annoying part is Nokia are perfectly capable of producing a phone without stupid memory issues - the 6280 is such a good phone I even own one, yet its an arguably low-end s40 device. Actually no, that's not the annoying part - the annoying part is Nokia's refusal to admit that there is even a problem.

Now if only SonyEricsson could get their M3G implementations right, I would convert!

Yossarian lives?

2007-09-30T21:28:00.001+01:00

Pete's uploaded the photos he took of our work-sponsored paintballing day yesterday. They're pretty good, although I didn't quite respond properly to the instruction "look aggressive"...

Still, the aggression started early when our bus driver pulled away from the train station and cut up a taxi. At the next set of lights there was a great deal of "you think you're f***ing 'aard like?", "come over 'ere an' say tha'" and other scouse cliches. So we knew we were in for fun!

It was a really cool day - there were over 70 people playing, of which we made up 17. QA demanded to be in their own team, fighting the programmers.. which made for some entertaining trashtalk :)

I'm amazed today by the effect adrenaline must've had to keep me going all day - when I got home yesterday I discovered a 10cm purple bruise on my shoulder that I hadn't noticed, and today I woke up to find my legs didn't work. That's gonna make biking to work fun tomorrow...

Why does this always happen to J2ME?

2007-09-27T22:31:00.001+01:00

Telling people you make computer games for a living is a little like telling them you own a sweet shop: some look panicked while they remember where they left the kids, but most smile and say things like "Cool! What have you done that I might've heard of?". Then you say "Well actually my sweet shop only sells Pontefract cakes and horrible flying saucers filled with poisonous dust.", or "I make mobile games".

At this point things can go one of three ways:

"oh right" followed by me mumbling how mobile games are a lot more advanced than "snake" actually and oh, you're not listening anyway
"oh right, yeah - like snake?", followed by the same mumbling explanation
"oh cool! I play a lot of mobile games - I got this zip off the web with 1000 games in it.."

Its a shame mobile games are held in a relative disregard (especially by the rest of the games industry) because a lot of hard work goes into them. The designers have the decidedly unenviable task of thinking how to get the same "experience" as a next-gen console game on a device with a 2" screen and a control system designed for a single thumb. The artists have a hilarious time satisfying license-holders demands about getting the personality of their beloved cartoon character across in a sprite that's only 12 pixels high. At the same time the programmers alternate between writing code (more on this later) and reminding producers that their latest suggestion, while clearly born of genius, might not be feasible as the target device has the processing ability of a Daily Mail reader, and only slightly more memory.