# Moseley Festival kicked off with the Street Fair last Saturday. The Street Fair is, basically, a load of stalls up either side of the High Street, coinciding with the Farmers Market and the craft market. Some of the stalls are taken by local organisations, some by local businesses, some by people selling the kind of stuff that once the preserve of jumble sale white elephant stalls.
Natalie was manning (womanning?) the Moseley in Bloom stall, so I wandered round with Bean and Hal-baby. We picked up various bits and bobs in the way - various balloons, some tennis balls, a skipping rope, that kind of thing. Hal also ate a samosa which I rated as at least three degrees too spicy for a novice. In the course of our stroll, I solved my immediate book problem with the help of local crime novelist Maureen Carter and (possibly) these people.
So semi-shuffled and ready are
- Carter's Baby Love, which I read on the train yesterday. It's what you might call a racy police procedural, and I enjoyed it. I like the way Carter uses real locations for places she's nice about about - The Prince of Wales, La Plancha - and makes up places if she's unpleasant about them.
- Artifact by Gregory Benford, a hard sf novel so hard it has an appendix explaining the physics. I hate to start a book and not finish, but I've had a look round and the reviews are not glowing.
- The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which I read when I was about 8 and it made me fall in love with Alan Garner for a while. Will it hold up?
- Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia. If you haven't read Chatwin, you should because he's terrific. Try What Am I Doing Here?
- Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow, Time Magazine's Book of the Year for some unspecified year and, according to the cover blurb, the literary phenomenon of some unspecified decade. I'd only heard of it because it was turned into a film several years ago, and I remembered seeing a picture of Julia Ormond on the telly.
- Three Men in a Boat, because I think I'll deserve a bit of light relief after that (except the bit with body which isn't light at all). Top though. It's on Project Gutenburg should you lack for a nearby second hand bookshop.
- back to Carter for Hard Time
I've stacked up a pile of comics too. Since I was passing as I headed back from a client's yesterday, I bobbed into Gosh, London's finest comics emporium. Even without venturing into their Alladin's Cave of a basement I managed to spend over 75 quid, which I'm slightly embarrassed about. It's by far my largest single comics spend, but they just had so much top stuff on the shelves. I bought the Edginton and D'Israeli Great Game collection. Their War Of The Worlds adaptation and sequel are solid comics, and I'm this second sequel should be good too. Gosh also had a new volume of Rick Geary's Treasury of Victorian Murder. It's a series, published over the last 15 years at least, in which Geary documents famous British and American murder cases. You wouldn't think his whimsical cartooning would really suit, but it actually works better than more photo-real style would. Further, Geary really knows the period, and his details and observation are excellent. If you ever see his adaptation of Wuthering Heights or The Invisible Man in a second-hand bin, pick it up.
The major chunk of that 75 quid went on Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, a fat hardcover collection of his bonkers New Gods run in the early 70s. I've just flicked through it with The Bean, and told him it would blow his tiny brain. I haven't got a tiny brain! he retorted, then fell silent as I continued to flick ...
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#[linkfarm] Twenty20 Cup - Warwickshire Bears v Northamptonshire Steelbacks
Steelbacks? Puh-lease. Should be fun, though. The Bean and I will be off there in a few minutes.And we got to see a Twenty20 win for the first time. Yay! [added 26th Jun 2007]
Northampton's van der Wath did hit the biggest sixes of the evening though - including one that went through the pavilion window [added 26th Jun 2007]
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#It's Official. I know more about nothing that anyone else in Moseley
Why isn't Natalie here this evening? asked Barry
Because hard work and determination don't win quizzes, Barry, I replied, Furtling around does. Natalie does not furtle.
It was the fourth Moseley Masterteam Quiz last night. My team (or rather, the team I was in) won, despite (maybe because of) having to balance simmering political discord between a serving LibDem councillor and Labour former councillor. I don't want to brag, but I will as my team (or rather, the team I was in) has won three times now. No one else can make that claim, so go on, ask me anything.
Ken [e] said What's the load capacity of an African swallow?
[added 26th Jun 2007] Well a swallow, European or African, weighs about 20 grams. So let's say it can manage a quarter of its bodyweight for shortish distances. 5 grams.
Next? [added 26th Jun 2007]
Ken [e] said Sorry, Jez - the correct answer is a coconut.
[added 26th Jun 2007] Swallows can only transport coconuts when they're in a swoggle, everyone knows that. [added 26th Jun 2007]
I was, of course, using the 2nd definition here ... with the something in question being useless facts.
[added 26th Jun 2007]
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#A: We Are Devo!
Super-fun!
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#Q: Are We Not Men?
Slipping out shortly with chums Pete and Tom to see veteran art-punk-rock-whateverers Devo. This is one of those do-or-die now-or-never gigs that come round every so often. It's at the Symphony Hall, so it won't be anywhere near as sweaty as our famous Dead Kennedys outing, but I'm hoping it'll be fun nonetheless.
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#[linkfarm] xquery-mode.el
Handy. Should you need it.
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#[linkfarm] Volunteers sought for Mars test - The European Space Agency (Esa) is after volunteers for a simulated human trip to Mars, in which six crewmembers spend 17 months in an isolation tank.
Glurk! 17 months is pretty much the minimum for a return trip to Mars. I guess they won't be simulating much more than a couple of quick holiday snaps before they turn round and come home again. Pay's not great though - Eur120 a day, but you'd have nothing to spend it on until you came out I guess. Write to ESA if you're interested.
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# Radio 4's current Book at Bedtime is
Seeds of Greatness, which I recently "bigged up" (as today's young people apparently
don't say very often). It's read by Stephen Mangan, who you may remember as the donkey-faced
Dr Guy Secretan in top TV comedy Green Wing, and you can
listen to it here.
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# Will Self, Enigma. I bet he has that on his business card. Years ago, I read a colour sup article he'd written describing his book promotion tour. His Self-promotion tour, of course. Here was a man trying to hard to be arch, I decided, and instead had shoved his head up his own bottom. Since then, Will has tried hard to change my mind. His Saturday essays on the Today programme started well and become increasing brilliant, although he was helped by alternating with fulminating Tory twit (sorry, plain-speaking man-of-the-people) Frederick Forsyth. I was given and read Great Apes, which I enjoyed but felt was a little long. His walk from Southampton to New York was splendid. Arch, but splendid. Nudged by anonymous recommendation, yesterday morning I decided to take the plunge and spend my own money on his The Book Of Dave.
But I couldn't, because WH Smith's at New Street don't stock it.
wunderwoman said That's my boy! Don't know why I wasn't logged in. Should have it somewhere if you can wait til your hols.
[added 19th Jun 2007] Thomas Guest [e] [w] said I find Will Self entertaining in small doses. He's a fine short story writer and essayist and always good for a sound-bite, but I do think he spreads himself a bit thin. I wouldn't go out of my way to read one of his novels.
[added 21st Jun 2007]
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# Andrew Dubber is a senior lecturer down the road at UCE and from what I understand from people who've met him all-round nice chap. He has a research interest in online music, radio, and new media technology. In that context, he published an interesting email correspondence with a chap called Paul Birch, who runs a record company, and sits on the board of the IFPI and the BPI. The IFPI is a international recording industry body, and the BPI the British record industry trade body.
The conversation starts slightly abruptly
Looking at your site I do think allowing indiscriminate criticism of the RIAA is inappropriate for a Government funded institution.
Dubber responds that he isn't a Government funded institution, nor is he indiscriminately criticising the RIAA. The
RIAA is the US recording industry trade body, currently engaged in a number of court actions over music downloads. Unfortunately the conversation heads off into the wilds from there, with Dubber offering to correct any factual inaccuracies, while Birch asserting that Dubber promotes "hatred of the recording industry" by linking to
this article. He finishes by saying
It expresses opinion, it's not factual. If you persist then I shall make a formal complaint to the University.
Persist here means, I think, persist in linking to the article.
Andrew Dubber's crime, which I had to hunt around for was this
RIAA, extortion, and conspiracy, in the same sentence
Finally someone, more specifically Ms. Del Cid has filed counterclaims against the RIAA under Florida, California, and Federal law.
That's a quote from the article, by the way, not Dubber's opinion. Does linking to something necessarily endorse it? Nope.
Earlier this week, Ben 'Bad Science' Goldacre reported that a professor at UCL, David Colquhoun, was subject to a similar complaint. Professor Colquhoun had written a piece saying that the claims made for red clover herbal supplements by Dr Ann Walker were a load of nonsense. Rather than respond to the facts, Walker's husband, Dr Alan Lakin made a complaint directly to UCL, alleging defamation and holding UCL jointly liable because the article was hosted on a UCL server. After an initial wobble, UCL is backing Prof Colquhoun and asking Lakin and Walker to, basically, put up or shut up.
As a nation we fund university lecturers to be clever. We pay them to teach - both to impart facts to students, and to teach students how to be similarly clever - and we pay them to think and research. If, in the course of that thinking and researching, they find out something or form an opinion we dislike, is it appropriate to kick up a stink about it? To demand that they only say things we agree with? To "shut up or I'll tell your Mum and she'll stop your pocket money". Leaving aside that my children can form a better argument, it absolutely isn't. If you think someone's wrong, in fact or in opinion formed on fact, then show the error. Produce the evidence, show the logic is flawed.
In these two examples that hasn't happened. The "injured parties" haven't even tried. The Colquhoun case seems particularly egregious, as Lakin and Walker appear happy to trade on their academic backgrounds until challenged. In Dubber's case it seems remarkably trivial - pointing to article you dislike isn't grounds for anything, let alone a formal complaint. Nevertheless, complaining to an academic's university is a pretty serious business. It can cause all kinds of unpleasantness even if it the complaint isn't upheld. Threatening such a complaint is a bullying scare tactic, and if you have to resort to it you've probably already lost.
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#[Arabica]XSLT: tests
Once of the difficulties in running the OASIS test suite was picking out real test fails from noise. Because I haven't yet implemented some XSLT elements and functions, there are many tests which will fail but which don't represent an actual bug. There are some other tests which have HTML output which I also don't do, want to use alternative text encodings (which I think is outside spec), where there's some implementor discretion, and there are a few where the test itself is wrong.
I've extended the XSLT test runner to read an list of expected fails, and adjust the test results accordingly. Individual tests can be marked as expected compile or runtime fails, and the summary output is annotated accordingly. It's a little thing, but it helps :)
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#[linkfarm] A celebrity British chef hopes to woo "over-spiced" Indian palates with her version of "bland" British food.
Life emulates Goodness Gracious Me sketch *
Ken [e] said Haha, it's funny isn't it? My good lady labels non-spiced food as 'bland': that's a gross simplification of the truth. I suppose you could say porridge oats are bland, but there's a wide variety of tastes hidden in your average Sunday roast (if done properly) - subtle tastes perhaps but there nonetheless. I like variety, frankly. And my plumbing thanks me for it.
[added 15th Jun 2007]
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#[linkfarm] It's All Text! - Edit textareas using an external editor, because it's all text! Right click on a textarea, select "It's All Text!" and edit the text in the editor of your choice.
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# Generally, you can't believe a word that comes out of a wrestling commentator's mouth. Their job, after all, is to help tell the story of the match. They will, for example, describe someone as a "veteran" if they need to emphasis someone's age, and as a "young man" to push them as plucky underdog. They'll do this even if the "veteran" is actually younger that than the "young man". Tonight though, during the Yang/Kendrick/London vs Guerrero/Daivari/Noble six-man tag, JBL said "this is fun to watch" and it was the absolute truth. I never thought I'd say this, but hurrah for him.
Russ L said Is JBL doing commentary frequently now, or was that a one-off?
I tell you what, Jez - I have a pile of pro-wrestling stuff I could do with getting rid of (for space reasons). Ebay is too much fuss and I'd rather give it away to someone who would actually be interested (rather than just taping 'Eastenders' over it). It's mostly copied VHS, but with some original VHS/copied DVDs/original DVDs. There's a fair mix of Japanese stuff, American indies, mainstream American stuff, a bit of Mexican stuff etc.
All free, if you can take it off my hands. I don't mind sticking it in a bin bag and bringing it to a pub in town if needs be. I can type up a list if that's absolutely necessary, but for giving it away for free that sounds like too much fuss to me. There's some obvious stuff (J-Cup etc, AAA When Worlds Collide etc), some less obvious stuff (various sundry non-big NJPW events), some stuff somewhere between the two (a five video Misawa compilation), and loads else too.
Interested? Email me at the RussLStylee that happens to be at the Yahoo of the dot com if you don't want to talk about it here. [added 9th Jun 2007]
He's been the colour man on Smackdown for about a year or so. While I don't really go for his redneck heel persona, he's turned out to be a much better commentator than I expected. He can advance a storyline, he knows his wrestling history, although a heel he's not above praising faces, and he can be extremely funny. He has the misfortune, though, to be paired with Michael Cole as the lead man, who is really quite dreadful.
[added 11th Jun 2007]
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# Been on a bit of book binge the last few weeks, and need something to cleanse the old text-pallette. Before heading off on our Italian jaunt, I'd been scratching at Boris Johnson's Seventy Two Virgins. Like Boris himself, it's amusing enough but slightly tiresome in anything more than smallish doses. It was also an unwieldly and uncomfortable hardback, so I decided to can it and buy something at the airport. Yes, an airport novel.
Unfortunately, I hadn't reckoned on the bookshop at East Midlands Airport turning out to be one two-foot wide shelf unit. Guess it's that kind of airport. Anyway, I made the best of bad job and come away with Knots and Crosses, Ian Rankin's first Rebus book. I'd read one of that later ones, which was okay, but I enjoyed Knots and Crosses a lot, in part because of Rankin's rather good and self-deprecating introduction.
There's not much to do except read when you're spending the whole day on planes and trains, so by the end of the next day I was well into A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian from the small pile of books in my Mum's swanky Italian pad. It was amusing, pleasant.
Back from Italy, I've whipped through the Hide & Seek and Tooth & Nail, the next two Rebus novels, while zooming from Birmingham to London and back again. (Stations really aren't good places for book buying unless you want James Patterson thrillers or platitudes for people in management - now, where's my cheese?) They are solid books. Rankin does dialogue particularly well, he gives people distinct speech patterns but subtly and without show. The novels also have a very strong sense of place - the setting feels real, despite Rankin describing in one of his introduction precisely which bits he made up and why he through it was a mistake. Perhaps I'd feel differently if my knowledge of Edinburgh was better than cursory. A few months ago I read Dead Old, a police procedural set in Moseley and Kings Heath. Some of the locations were real, some not. Trouble was it jarred when you transitioned from one to the other. Copper stops for a drink in The Prince of Wales - yes! Copper turns off the Alcester Road into street that doesn't exist - no! When I read Rankin though, I'm convinced.
In between the Rebus 2 and 3, I read a novel called Seeds of Greatness, which Nattle gave me for my birthday. It's written by a chap called Jon Canter, who's been a script writer or editor for Not The Nine O'Clock News, Alas Smith and Jones, Fry and Laurie, Arabella Weir, amongst others. Consequently the publishers have seen fit to the sell it up as the funniest novel you will ever read. It isn't, but it's none the worse for that. I've yet to be convinced that the novel as form can actually by "funny" from start to finish. Humourous perhaps, but not funny. But I digress. Seeds of Greatness has its comedy moments, I actually laughed aloud on several occasions, but it succeeds because the characters are strong and the storytelling is good. If a novel's got that, you really can't complain.
I'm about to head into Mark Steel's As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandala, but I need to get off this little run of books from airports and stations. Any suggestions?
Ken [e] said Further to my recent comments about Peter F Hamilton, try the double-set Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained for SF thrills'n'spills. Then, if you're picqued, head back for the trilogy of The Neutronium Alchemist-The Reality Dysfunction-The Naked God. Big books, every page a keeper.
[added 9th Jun 2007] Ken [e] said Actually Jez, scratch that - keep the Hamilton stuff for the winter, they're hefty tomes and won't really cleanse the palette. You become immersed, and for some time!
There's a novel I can recommend very strongly, and (surprisingly) it was something my wife passed along. From what I can gather it's a mainstream thing, so probably available at bigger airports! It's called The Kiterunner by Khaled Hosseini, and it's the story of a young boy growing up in Afghanistan just before the Soviet invasion. I read it fairly quickly, and my summation is that if I'd been watching it as a movie I'd've been in tears. It's a good human interest story, with plenty of background info, but pleasingly light on the detail - exactly correct for a child's perspective. Often harrowing, and rarely predictable. Read it. Now. [added 9th Jun 2007]
anonymous said I enjoyed The Book of Dave by Will Self - another airport purchase though I'm afraid! Sort of sticks in your head. [added 10th Jun 2007]
Thomas Guest [w] said I greatly enjoyed the Tractor Farming book: original, amusing and ultimately moving.
[added 21st Jun 2007]
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# Just bought a pair of tickets to see Cirque Du Soleil. Have I become fully middle-aged? Is anyone free to baby-sit on the 10th of October.
smellygit said Watching them was one of the most tiresome evenings of my life.
[added 10th Jun 2007] Thanks a bunch. I feel *so* much better about it now. [added 10th Jun 2007]
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#[linkfarm] Lego Universe - NetDevil are in production of LEGO Universe, the LEGO Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). LEGO Universe brings the construction and creativity inherent to LEGO into a new, safe and fun virtual experience.
Apparently it's going to be safe and fun for children. Screw the kids (no, not screw the kids, screw the kids), I can't wait. Nor can a million other Dads, I bet you.
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# Emacs 22 is out, not that you'd immediately notice from the website. My impressions from the pre-release still apply, except I was wrong about how long it would take for the release to arrive, and it's definite quicker on start-up. Nippy even.
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# Toddled over to the UK Games Expo on Saturday afternoon with the Bean and chum Ken. I've been out of the serious gaming loop for 15 years or so, but the website seemed pretty keen to stress it wasn't solely a hard-core gamers event, and so it turned out to be. In many ways it was pleasingly amateur - the rather rickety games tables which were liable to lurch alarmingly if you leaned on them. In other ways it was annoyingly amateur - the illegible floor plan, for instance - although that didn't detract markedly for things.
I done my homework and was intending to spend. The main game I was after was Ticket To Ride, which I'd read was good and fun and accessible. We, the Bean and I, played a game there and so it proved to be. It also combines two of the Bean's favourite things, maps and trains, so it really is a winner with him. Ken disagreed with the accessible part, being red-green colour blind he was unable to tell some cards from others. Having had a proper look at it, all the colours are matched with different symbols and other visual cues so maybe we can have a go another time, matey?
We also came away with Carcassonne: Hunters and Gathers. Since we already own two other Carcassonne games I wasn't on the look out for it, but the Bean saw on a stand and grabbed it. It was pretty cheap, I was feeling in an expansively good mood, I had a nostaligic soft spot for the retailer, so I bought that too.
It was pleasantly relaxed afternoon, that extended to retailers. I talked to the chaps from Bishop Games about a Carcassonne expansion, and they were quite happy to talk themselves out of sale. It wasn't that the expansion was no good, but that it suited games with 4 or more players. Since it's usually just me and the Bean, they advised against. Top men. I was so impressed I went back later and spent more with them than I would have done if I'd bought the expansion.
Black Industries, part of the Games Workshop juggernaut, had their new edition of Talisman there, although unfortunately not for sale. We weren't able to play, but we saw a game in progress and it is very handsome looking. One for Christmas, perhaps.
Ken [e] said Ticket to Ride - certainly give it a go. I'm generally alright once I've acclimatised to the relative grey levels of the (in this case) picture cards. The actual pieces are not a problem (were the dark ones black or very dark green?)...
[added 4th Jun 2007] They were black. [added 5th Jun 2007]
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