#[Arabica]XSLT: The Big Merge
Since I started on my XSLT development it's hung out on its own Subversion branch, so as not to clutter up the trunk with something that was half-cocked. In the meantime, I've committed various little changes and fixes to the trunk, and so the two have started to diverge.
For the next piece of XSLT development, I'm looking to implement it using some DOM Level 3 facilities. Aha! They don't exist yet, but would clearly be useful in their own right and so I'd like to have that stuff on the trunk too.
After some humming and harring, I've merged the dev branch into the mainline. The XSLT isn't finished, but there's enough there to be useful in certain circumstances, so I don't feel it pollutes the place too much. I've committed a big set up changes to svn this evening. It all builds ok, although I'm seeing one or two regressions in the tests. The XSLT tests unsurprisingly have loads of fails and may, depending on your platform, core dump.
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# CSI: Miami went high, wide, and handsome over the shark some time ago, but the first episode of the latest series hit a frontside air half cab roll clear over a metric hatload of lamniformes. What a stinker.
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# Chum Ken had his FeelingFortyFest on Friday, so I peddled over to join the fun on my new bike. Which is fantastic, by the way. Although, at 500 quid, it's comparatively low-end, it is the whizziest bike I've ever had. It's made of aluminium with carbon fibre forks! I mean blimey! At it goes like the clappers. When you ride it, it's almost like it wants to go, especially when you stand up on it. Anyway, I zoomed over to join in the drinking, chilli-eating, bollock-talking fun. And jolly good fun it was.
Ken introduced me to The Baron. We hadn't previously met, but in today's modern world that doesn't necessarily mean we're complete strangers. As we did the orienting recollection and confirmation thing, he said So you know Pete Ashton? Yes, I replied, I knew Pete before he was on the internet. Perhaps I'll have that made into a t-shirt.
Another of Ken's friends, whose name embarrassingly (although not surprising, I'm afraid, because I'm good with faces but terrible at names) escapes me asked how Ken and I knew each other. A few years ago, I sold Ken some comics, seemed like a full and complete explanation to me. And you kept in touch? he persisted in mild disbelief. Yes said Ken. Yes I said, It was a lot of comics. It was like, I'll take your money, but I feel your pain. I'm still not sure he quite understood.
I'm indebted to Ken for his choice of music. I was particularly taken by Hawkwind's Brainstorm and some early Peter Gabriel and Genesis tracks I hadn't heard before. Always interesting to have a good rootle through somebody's bookshelves, and so it was also fun to poke through Ken's comic stack. It's not enormous but it is rather lovely, tending toward the cosmic. Plenty of Jim Starlin's Dreadstar, Kirby's Eternals and 2001 adaptions. If that means nothing (and let's face it, it probably will) don't worry. Just accept that comics are particularly suited to bonkers cosmic SF and that Kirby and Starlin are the two most bonkers, most cosmic SF writer-artists there are. Kubrick's film of 2001 is only a toe-in-the-water compared to some of the madness Kirby came up with.
I rode off home into the brightening morning, pausing briefly to slide off my bike at a roundabout (more the cause of wet road than an excess of beer), and was slightly alarmed (since I had to get up at 7) to find myself getting into the bed on the stroke of 4 o'clock.
Looking forward to next year's already. Thanks chap.
Pete Ashton said ROLFcopter!
Another t-shirt might be "I introduced Pete Ashton to blogging." In The Bear pub in Bearwood if I remember rightly. [added 15th Jul 2007]
Ken [e] said Colin is a chap you're more likely to remember for his mannerisms than his name. Top bloke: the life and soul of any social gathering, *and* a big-firm accountant. How on earth does he manage that combo?
[added 16th Jul 2007]
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#[linkfarm] Tintin's Congo book moved out of children's section in race row - The Commission for Racial Equality said yesterday it was unacceptable for any shop to stock or sell the 1930s cartoon adventure of the Belgian boy journalist because of its crude racial stereotypes ... the only place the book was acceptable was in a museum - with a sign accompanying it saying "old-fashioned, racist claptrap
Tintin in the Congo? That old chestnut? My chum Pete picks this little news item apart pretty well, noting that books with pictures are particularly prone to this kind of treatment. If you have to actually read the words to find your stereotyping people tend to take rather less notice, it seems.
I searched the CRE site, but they have nothing there about this. Perhaps they only deliver their messages via reporters, which I have to say they're doing very badly. Leaving aside any of the merits or otherwise of this complaint, doesn't the language strike you as rather shrill? "Peddling this material" makes it sound as if shady street bookdealers were encouraging kids in to racist ideas, using Tintin comic as a gateway book to something harder. The book should be in a museum labelled "old-fashioned racist claptrap", while making a nice soundbite, suggests a slightly strange attitude to museums. Part of the job of museum is to contextualise and explain, not point and ridicule.
I also liked the detail of the complaint being made by a London solicitor. A solicitor, eh? Must be a fine upstanding member of society.
Personally, I'd much rather see virtually all Tintin books racked in the adult section, or at least in the "older kids section" rather than the practice (in Birmingham at any rate) of standing a spinner full of them next to the younger children's picture books and movie tie-in stuff. Just because a book has pictures in it, doesn't mean it's a book for children.
This has been written up in several other papers and news organisations
Daily Telegraph: Ban 'racist' Tintin book, says CRE
Daily Mail: 'Racist' Tintin is banished to the adult section of bookshops
Sky News: Tintin Book Embroiled In Race Row
Bid to ban 'racist' Tintin book
None of them differ substantially from each other. Sky has a little video with Herge biography Michael Farr, while the Telegraph wheels out Ann Widdecombe to splutter in outraged fashion. Curiously the Mail notes that Herge apologised for the book in his later life, both for the potrayal of Africa and the vast quantity of animals killed. As ever, the comments on the websites add almost nothing to the discussion, with this exception from Telegraph site,
'“I was aghast to see page after page of representations of black African people ... speaking like retarded children," he wrote.'
Hmmm. I have a disabled child who has considerable problems with her speech. Am I allowed to be offended by the outdated terminology used by the chap who saw fit to complain to the CRE?
[added 13th Jul 2007]
The CRE search is clearly rubbish, because they do have a statement on their website after all
A CRE spokesperson said:
A hundred years ago it was common to see negative stereotypes of black people. Books contained images of 'savages', and some white people considered black people to be intellectually and socially inferior.
Most people would assume that those days are behind us, and that we now live in a more accepting society. Yet here we are in 2007 with high street book shops selling 'Tintin In The Congo'. This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the 'savage natives' look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles.
Whichever way you look at it, the content of this book is blatantly racist. Highstreet shops, and indeed any shops, ought to think very carefully about whether they ought to be selling and displaying it.
Yes, it was written a long time ago, but this certainly does not make it acceptable. This is potentially highly offensive to a great number of people.
It beggars belief that in this day and age that any shop would think it acceptable to sell and display 'Tintin In The Congo.'
The only place that it might be acceptable for this to be displayed would be in a museum, with a big sign saying 'old fashioned, racist claptrap'.
I assume the spokesman was addressing an audience of ten-year olds, although I suspect that they too would pick up the condescension in their tone. [added 13th Jul 2007]
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# Just bought a new bike from a nice man in Bromsgrove. Yay.
Many recommendations for the Trek Pilot, Mr S, so good call there. Unfortunately, lots of other people liked them too and there's not one to be had anywhere. Speeds suggested the Lemond Etape, so I gave it a test spin. It's comparatively low end, but after my dear old Dalesman it's amazing.
smellygit said Only thing that looks low end to me is the gears which won't be a problem around brum. I think LeMond are in the trek stable. Mr Bontrager was taking part in that small race I did too.....
[added 3rd Jul 2007] The Pilot 1.0 and 1.2 have the same frame, but different chainset and gearset. I reckoned that for the miles I do, I won't notice and it wasn't worth the extra 150 for the 1.2. This Etape has almost exactly the same bolt-ons as the Pilot 1.0, because Lemond bike are, as you say, built by Trek. [added 3rd Jul 2007]
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