I personify all that is good, pure, and peaceful... apparently...

2005-05-27T01:47:00.000-07:00

Ki-lin
You scored 54% Esotericism, 34% Power, and 24% Malevolence!

A mythical being of Chinese mythology, comparable with the Western unicorn. Ki-lin personifies all that is good, pure, and peaceful. It lives in paradise and only visits the world at the birth of a wise philosopher. The unicorn, which can become one thousand years old, is portrayed as a deer with one horn, the tail of an ox, the hooves of a horse, and a body covered with the scales of a fish. It is one of the four Ling.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 61% on Esotericism

You scored higher than 30% on Power

You scored higher than 30% on Malevolence

I think I'm going to try find a picture of a Ki-Lin and paint one; I've never heard of one before.

Wielding the radiator roller of destruction...

2005-05-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

Two more pieces of artwork:

My first still life I did at my Oils and Acrylics evening class. This is in acrylics on paper.

A unicorn in pastels. This is 70x50 cm. The shadowing doesn't come out too well (the unicorn does have 4 legs, not 3) but you can get the idea.

I painted the unicorn for a friend (or drew it - pastels are a dry medium and you can rub them out) and she really liked the half-finished picture... then I realised I had a bit of a problem.

Pastels are, in essence, chalk. The painting is done on a 70x50 cm slightly floppy piece of paper. I can't 'fix' it because it darkens the colours to soot. Pastel paintings are so fragile that you can lose detail even carrying the thing about and the pigment will drift if they are stored the wrong way around. They have to be framed under glass immediately and that means glass because perspex causes static which leads to the pigment lifting off the picture. Even glass can cause 'lifting' so you have to use a double mount to give distance between the pastel and the glass. Framing for a picture of that size would be probably about £60.... I'm giving the picture away for free and thus problem.

I didn't want to bitterly disappoint Liz since she's seen the unicorn half-finished and loved it. I don't want to do a copy in a better medium since it'll look different...

Anyway, I've now bought a 60x40 cm canvas. It's a deep-edged gallery canvas which means it can be hung without framing and the shop provided it in a nifty translucent plastic bag with carrying handles. I've primed it with black primer (using a radiator roller. I had one accident with the carpet but fortunately it's an industrial carpet and I *think* it's come off) and I'm going to paint a large red dragon in acrylics. If it turns out ok, I'll probably repeat with some other fantasy animals.

The War on Fashion

2005-05-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

Has anyone noticed that the Labour government seem to have a real uniform/fashion thing going here.

They've obviously decided that why they don't like yobs wearing hoodies is because they'd look far better in orange. Has anyone ever considered that maybe a load of youths wandering about in bright orange jumpsuits hanging floral baskets might be intimidatory? In fact, more intimidatory than youths in hoodies on the grounds that they're not just suspected yobs - they've been tried and judged to be yobbish already.

I can almost understand the 'evading CCTV' thing at Bluewater. After all, people are discouraged wearing crash helmets, balaclavas, etc. in banks. It's not even the dress code thing necessarily (after all, lots of clubs have dress codes and a shopping mall is private property), although this is a debate in itself. It's the fact the government felt the need to jump in and agree that I object to. I think they're missing the point entirely, and have an abnormal fixation on fashion... and I'll explain why.

The CCTV issue can be pretty much dismissed as a red herring immediately, unless Bluewater instigate a policy so that all headgear must be removed before entering the shopping centre (a bit authoritarian but at least vaguely comprehensible). Why? Well, I somehow suspect that if I wore my very wide brimmed black hat in Bluewater (it shadows the whole top half of my face so you can only see my lips which I usually paint bright red. I think it looks glamorous), I wouldn't get thrown out. In fact, if a whole gaggle of us went in wearing large floppy straw hats completely shadowing our faces from CCTV, I doubt anyone would blink an eyelid. However, if a load of vaguely 'chav-looking' youths were standing about taking videophone pictures and flicking cigarette ash whilst wearing tweed, cords and brogues, I bet they'd be chucked out fast enough.

Hence, the problem isn't the hoodies. So perhaps it's the fact they're in a group loitering... Although what's loitering? Are we going to prevent people standing about in a particular place in a group in a shopping centre for a specified amount of time? After all, if a group of 15 old ladies are sitting about in a shopping centre smoking then they're theoretically 'loitering' but I'm sure we wouldn't want to throw them out. However, if a similar group of 14-16 year olds wearing sportswear were sitting about in a similar place then they might be intimidating people by 'loitering about in a group'.

Hence, the problem isn't CCTV, it isn't hoodies, it isn't being in a group loitering. The reason why these particular people are intimidating is because they are 'youths who may have a resemblance to people on the chavscum website or Vicky Pollard'. These youths at the moment happen to wear hoodies and the fact of their presence, regardless of what they happen to be doing, intimidates people doing their shopping.

Given that these youths can't exactly change what they look like (as I say, I doubt they'd stay undisturbed long in the shopping centre even if they were wearing pinstriped suits) then who else might intimidate people doing their shopping? Well, black people. So how about Bluewater ban black people? Offensive? Racist? Well, obviously.

Everyone agrees that being harassed or assaulted whilst visiting a shopping centre is a problem. However, there is plenty of security in shopping centres (usually out the front of shops) so why don't they wait until someone (in hoodies or otherwise) actually does something that is intimidatory or violent and THEN throw them out. A perfect system that doesn't discriminate against 'possibly scary-looking' people, 'foreign-looking' people, groups of people standing about, people wearing large hats, people wearing hooded tops and caps, etc. Simple...

The thin end of the obesity crisis...

2005-05-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

I decided to go for a walk to Cribbs Causeway, the Maaallll on the edge of Bristol. Maaallll being how they pronounce it in the vaguely creepy and dystropic public service announcements that keep ringing out. It kind of sounds like deep south American pronounciation of mall but produced in that intensely reassuring sort of British voice they used to have on government educational adverts in the 1960s. The ones about what to do in the case of nuclear war. In this case, instead of making annoucements like "This is a colleague announcement. Can Mr Jones go to the south door?" they make announcements like:

"If you get separated from your friends, family, children, shopping trolley full of grenades [ok, I made the last one up] or pets please meet at the fountain. This is the fountain in the centre of the maaallllll. Welcome to the mallllllll and enjoy your stay. In the case of nuclear war, do not panic. Please assemble with your family in the furniture department of John Lewis. Ensure that you have bought a flash torch and some bottled water and tinned food from Marks and Spencer. Tilt a table slightly to the side and then collect some duvets from the second floor. Prop the duvets up against the table. Now, ensure that you have found a radio and switched it on before crouching under the table wtih your friends, family and pets. Then, wait for further announcements that it is safe to come out from under the table." [SNIP]

Returning to topic, I was looking for a skirt. I came back sans skirt with something of a grudge against clothing manufacturers. The 'creep' of clothing sizes is pretty common knowledge. My mum is 1 1/2 stone heavier than she was when she was my age and yet has miraculously decreased a dress size. Shoe sizes have also increased although this is possibly due to better nutrition rather than obesity. I used to wear a size 5 1/2 and my mum wore a 3 1/2. I bought a size 3 pair of shoes in a sale that are slightly tight on one foot; normally I wear a 4. I'm sure my feet haven't shrunk.

At age 14, I outgrew my mum's size 12 skirts. I wore a modern size 12 and was 9 stone. I dropped to 8 1/2 stone where I've remained to this day. I then was a borderline size 10/12.

Today, I have reached a point where I can no longer buy clothes that I like on the high street. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not gaunt. My problem is several-fold:

a) Teenage girls clothing (think Topshop, New Look, etc.) is about 1 size smaller on average than more mature women's clothing (think Wallis, M&S Per Una). However, teenage girl's summer clothing assumes that you have a perfect body and that you are actually a meek naturist. It's all lycra and enlarged belts/handkerchiefs. I model my dress sense on Jackie Onassis and Audrey Hepburn, not Jodie Marsh. This means I want to buy clothes from Wallis and the Per Una range, not Top Shop

b) The minimum high street size in 'mature' women's clothing is a size 8. I used to look good in size 10 M&S jeans (I still have then; they still fit). About 2 years ago, I discovered I was wearing size 8 in Kaliko (expensive older woman) and size 8 in M&S (try finding a size 8 in M&S. I dare you?! I dare you?! If there is one it'll be stuck on a size 16 hanger and there'll be one of them in the entire store). Today I tried on a size 8 top in M&S and it was huge about the waist and had enormous gaping armholes that made my arms look like a couple of broom handles. This leads onto...

c) I'm a funny shape. Apparently women have increased waist size disproportionately compared to their hips, etc. meaning the hourglass is becoming increasingly rare. I'm an hourglass; manufacturers cater for the average woman and, hence, this doesn't really assist dressing. Things either ride up over my hips and fit my waist OR they fit my hips and end up being inadvertant hipsters (or just form unsightly folds at the waist). My chest is pretty similar. I have to wear an awful lot of elasticated waists and lycra to look like I have a waist. It's very difficult to get styles to fit me too. If I wear tops for a woman with a small bust then I end up nearly falling out of the thing (think keyhole tops, tops with gaps in) or looking like I have a huge, bulky mound stuck in my mid-section. If I wear styles that suit a big bust, I look flat chested (a bit like this) and it normally draws attention to the fact that I have huge visible ribs extending from my neck to my bosom.

d) I'm skint. I have a feeling that I could probably get into Karen Millan. However, I can't afford £120 for a top that is dry-clean only.

Hence, despite spending 3 hours in Cribb's Causeway, I could find not a thing to wear! Apart from a corset - sadly that was £100... I'm probably going to try the funky independent shops on Park Street/Park Row and see if I have more success and, if not, the Le Redoute website (Le Redoute size 10s are tight).

Join the Lib Dems for fresh air, freckles and freedom!

2005-05-06T02:16:00.000-07:00

Just processing out my data and desperate for a chatter with someone about the election. Sadly, everyone else is in bed.

I had an interesting day. I've had terrible 'mental fog' and insomnia for weeks and ended up lying awake until midnight on Wednesday night. I was mentally tired but physically it was as though I'd just got up. Good I was not in work on Thursday, then.

By 7:30am I was attempting to pick-up a 'leaflet drop' Tom had left me of 'Good morning' leaflets behind some trees. What Tom didn't tell me was the trees were in the centre of a roundabout on a busy road and it took me about 10 minutes just to get across before I could do anything :P I leafletted two council tower block. One was utterly lovely - the front was deceptively dull but the back was 'open access' on about 6 levels facing a scar of rock. It seemed to be predominantly occupied by old ladies who had put garden gnomes, wind chimes and plants on the landings. One waved at me as she read her leaflet :D From level 6 I could see the distant, misty hills and the sun rising over the buildings. My only quibble is that access to the upper levels was by an open access, spiral staircase which was a bit hair-raising given that I have vertigo. I kept feeling I was about to fall off almost constantly despite the fact there was a mid-high wall around the stairwell.

The other one wasn't as pretty but was higher and the view was amazing. From there I leafletted in Clifton for a couple of hours near the Suspension Bridge (again, pretty scenic) and in the high street of Clifton where all the nifty designer clothes shops are. After a short detour to check my e-mail and buy some mushrooms, I spent the first part of the afternoon leafletting students in the campus area. It was wonderfully sunny with a light breeze. I was wearing no tights and an above the knee satin skirt and the occasional gust was sufficient to lift it. Just as I was addressing a group of young men lying on the grass near the Wills Memorial Building, a gust of wind lifted my skirt right up across my face, causing one of them to remark he was definitely going to vote for us following a display like that, that I was a definite plus point for the Lib Dems and that I should flash my pants more often! If we had won by 1 vote, I guess I could have said it was my skirt that won it (maybe, just maybe).

After that, I walked back to the committee room and got a lift to the edge of the Clifton ward to deliver more leaflets. Clifton is very hilly and has great views. I suss that 'Clifton' probably means 'Cliff Town' or 'On top of cliff' or something. It also has lots of Georgian old houses and trees. I spent a while leafletting near Clifton College which is oddly Oxfordian. Whilst there, I met a bad tempered old lady in a retirement home who refused to take leaflets since "The election is almost over and the poor dears are all in bed at this time" (it was 3 in the afternoon). By this point, the wind was getting up (I accidently 'mooned' some students on the way home and probably gave some lads playing rugby a thrill. Fortunately, the girls were having similar problems with their wrap skirts and we all found it very funny), I had several blisters, one of my toenails had concertined into my foot and my soles had friction burns. I carried on leafletting and got colder... and colder... and colder... I started shaking. I finished the delivery round and managed to get to the polling station by a force of will. I had goosepimples all over and it was 5pm. I had eaten most of my dinner at about 10 am and had only had soup since then and I'd been leafletting solid for 10 hours, only sitting down once for 2 minutes. I had 'glucose crashed' in a way I hadn't since I nearly collapsed on Grassmere during my first Lakes trip.

I had perked up again by about 7pm after I'd made dinner but was utterly exhausted. I watched the Culture Show in bed and went to sleep at 9pm. I woke at 1:30am when I realised I had forgotten to switch my phone off and Chris N. had texted me a Kettering result. I checked the Guardian website and found Labour had won. Thus content, I slept again like a stone until 4 am when I woke up due to having cold feet. I was dreaming I was canvassing some people who were having a rock carving party in their lounge. I recall dreaming about hanging onto some netting over an abyss but don't remember what that had to do with the rock carving party.

Once again, I switched on my phone and by this time had accumulated quite a few text messages about various constituencies. I found we had won Bristol West from a text from Tom and one from Jonathan who had just seen the result. Jon didn't mention Cambridge so I assumed we'd lost it. I slept naturally and deeply until 6:40am when I woke up and checked the BBC website and found we had, in fact, won Cambridge. I had two conversations with people who hadn't gone to bed yet on MSN. I felt full of energy, mental fog that's been plaguing me for weeks lifted, well rested and what I thought was my face darkening with cold last night is actually a facial tan that is unsurpassed since I went on holiday to Chamonix. My nose is dark brown with freckling. Luckily, I only have a tiny bit of a burn on part of my exposed neck. My hands and wrists are also very tanned. It's beautifully sunny again and I want to chatter to someone about the election... Sadly I can't until tonight since everyone else has gone to bed... :(

The borrowing of Liberty Belle

2005-05-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

Checking through the aggregated blog I noticed that Liberty Belle has been borrowed!! :D I'm pleased because I think she's kooky... She should be appearing as the cartoons for "Young, Free and Liberal: A Young Person's Guide to Liberal Democracy" soon... In fact, YFL is being launched (preliminary date) on Sunday 15th May in Bristol so watch this space.

The violet eyes of Venice

2005-05-02T01:25:00.000-07:00

As a break from work (lots of it) and deliveries (lots of those too), I'm doing a new piece of artwork, this time in acrylics.

It's currently at this stage but after some thought and a poll on the LDYS forums I'm probably going to take out the right-hand side of the picture just after the tower and replace that area of the picture with distant hills. I am going to draw the Emmanuel II monument on the right-hand edge of the picture under the eyes and 'near-field'.

I printed lots of pictures of Venice to get an idea how to draw the houses, etc. and being very good at visualisation, I could imagine standing on the edge of the Grand Canal looking out over the water. I've never been to Venice but I now have a deep and burning desire to go sometime after I finish writing up since I adored Rome so much. Sadly I have no one to go with and trekking about for more than a day on your own sucks... It is at these moments I wish I had a boyfriend (or a non-coupled-up close female friend or even a group of people who are really into the Venice/Florence idea and want to do it the same time as me). Travelling anywhere in the company of one other person requires you both to more than enjoy one another's company. You also want to either be very flexible or want to go the same places, have a similar 'activity level' and work together well and support one another in the case of problems.

I think I've been taking the wrong approach to 'potentials'. My personal revelation for the day is that it's about more than meeting well-educated, cultured guys who you fancy a duvet day with. Although initially you need to have some connection to the person of some sort that makes you want to find out, even if it's pretty faint. It's about meeting someone who (when you get to know them) you believe you could go to Venice with without beating them to death with your suitcase before you get out the departure lounge. Or having them storm off in central Venice in a huff. Or just being bored out of your mind because they want to sit out in the sun for 5 hours and you want to visit another 15 places but neither of you are prepared to compromise. If you enjoy their company but you can't envisage the Venice trip really working - it's a friendship. If you don't really hit it off and you can't imagine the trip at all then it's probably lust. I'm not entirely sure I've met any guy yet who I could make that trip with painlessly. On the other hand, perhaps I'll have more success finding them now I know what I'm looking for...

Still life... (just not as we know it >8) )

2005-04-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

I attended my first art class on Tuesday evening (after delivering leaflets - delivering leaflets always comes in somewhere) and I began a still life in acrylics - a hat and a tomato. I didn't get to the tomato and I didn't really 'feel' the hat, at all, as an object. It ended up being a set of random, abstract colour that I didn't feel looked much like a hat.

The instructor said that I had a good grasp of tone. I learned how to draw angles using a pencil as a guide.

Yesterday, I decided to practice drawing the hat and tomato (in a slightly different position) from imagination using oilbars since I knew the lighting angle and the shape and colour of the hat because I had been drawing it all Tuesday evening. Again, this was on a really tidgy bit of canvas paper (I've now bought a larger pad... and a larger white oilbar since I seem to have eaten the way through about 1/4 of my white oilbar).

I still haven't quite mastered the hat. I didn't remember how the folded edge of the brim looked so it's not quite right, and the shading isn't quite correct. However, this is probably my best piece with the possible exception of Le Signore del e aumentato.

It shouldn't happen to a canvasser...

2005-04-27T23:01:00.000-07:00

Felt the need to share what has been described as 'the funniest story on [the LDYS forums]'. Not sure if quite hits the height of the chap who canvassed a half-naked woman, who had a naked man standing behind her chained the bannister to which he remarked "Erm, I see you're liberal then". I should really have said that but it took me a while to catch on...

A friend and I were canvassing a block of scary flats (they didn't look scary, but the first guy we met told us that none of the other parties dare canvass said flats and the second person we met told us to "watch out for the druggies in this block"). Most people were out and the people we did get were very pleasant. However, one was just a little TOO keen to make my acquaintance...

I rang the doorbell of an elderly man who seemed to have a very large tongue (he kept licking his lips all the time). I gave him my spiel and he said: "Have you come to whip me?"

Assuming he meant 'whipping' in the parliamentary sense as in encouraging him to vote a certain way, I responded:

"Well, only metaphorically speaking. I'm calling on behalf of the Liberal Democrats and wondered whom you were considering voting for in the general election?"

"Oh" said the man "I thought you'd come to whip me. I'm expecting a whipping in 5 minutes"

Realising I had been mistaken for a dominatrix despite the fact I was wearing flat shoes and a big red anorak, I persisted. "Well, since I'm not the person you were expecting. Are you considering voting Lib Dem?"

"Have you brought your own whip?" [to which my friend shouted from the neighbouring door that was situated slightly around a pillar "I left it at home"]

"Erm, well, thank you for your time anyway" And made a swift exit.

"You've got nice tights" He shouted to my retreating back. Friend and I made a swift run at the door leading off the landing, my friend only pausing to remark "Thank you" in response to the remark about the tights (he was wearing slacks).

And tremendous fun was had by all...

2005-04-26T00:19:00.000-07:00

Last night I popped into the candidate's husting at the student union. It was the most fun I've had in years (but I'm a very sad person)... ok, it was mildly amusing.

This was partly down to the Socialist Worker's Party candidate's stand-in who managed to sound so much like a cliche of a Socialist Worker's Party candidate that myself and friends were unable to stop laughing. We were debating if he had a sheet in front of him with a ticklist of 'things I must somehow work into my responses regardless of topic or question in order to sound like a stereotype'... Arthur Scargill... CHECK... repeated railing against privatisation... CHECK... Margaret Thatcher... CHECK... Miner's strike... CHECK... Palestine... CHECK... 'The Rich'... CHECK... Anti-Trade Union Laws... CHECK... I don't think he managed to work in Karl Marx, revolution or solidarity but perhaps he squeezed all those things in after we left.

The second main point of humour was the Tory candidate's introduction in which he felt the need to give us his entire life story including where he went to university, where he practiced at the bar, what he studied, where he moved too... Everyone did this to some extent by way of introducing themselves, but he did this at such great length and in such immense detail that it invited wonderful parody along the lines of "And in 1973 I married Freda Smith, a charming lady whose father was from Crewe. We married in a small chapel near Plymouth and the vicar gave a very charming sermon on that day. It was Corinthian's III if I recall and then we sang "There is a green hill far away" as the sunlight streamed in through the window. Shortly afterwards, we had our first child - John David and we bought 3 gerbils called Fluffy, Frederick and Nibbles... and a dog called Ernest. Then, after I lost my seat we decided to move back to the South West and I began to practice at the Bar and worked in a small practice on Queens Road..." I believe he was trying to establish that he had local roots. However, given the audience, he would have been better off doing what our candidate did and making jokes about storming the stage or something.

Love is...

2005-04-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

So true, so true (well, certain types of love anyway... The Greeks did have 4 words for it :) ):

Love is...

When you are tied with invisible threads
When their pain is your pain regardless of the distance between you
When in facing the greatest trials of your life the last thought you wish to hold for eternity is of them

Unlike lust, love does not torment your dreams
For it is not what may be or what was but what is, as the stars are
The pain is muted, almost exquisite in its everpresent ache, and delicate as a caress

Love has neither the intense heat of infatuation nor the tepid familiarity of friendship
It is sex without desire and torment without demons
Instead it has a closeness and intimacy that transcends flesh, yet seeks to be made flesh
It is unselfconscious and sustainable through the turning of the years

Most of all, it looks beyond the trappings of external things the face and the body and taps deep into the soul embracing the spirit with the loyalty of kin…

Still Young, Free and Liberal

2005-04-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

Apart from the obvious campaigning, I'm also helping with the final discussions, etc. for the release of Young, Free and Liberal: A Young Person's Guide to Liberal Democracy. My role has been mostly to pester contributors and my two co-editors, to draw the 'Liberty Belle' illustrations. I also wrote two of the sections! :D

After a consultation with the LDYS Chair (Chris) yesterday lunchtime, it appears we're going to have a formal launch a couple of weeks after the general election. I'm quite excited because the guide looks great and so many people have contributed vast quantities of time to it. We have 7 contributors, the 3 person editorial team, plus Chris who has done all the pagesetting for us. This excludes all the people who have input ideas, critiques, etc. at various stages. I feel really proud to have been involved in this project.

Since I'm really frustrated about some missing data then it's good I feel positive about something. I came home yesterday about 4:30pm practically shrieking with boredom and frustration after spending about a day and a half plotting a map of Greenland. If you don't understand how it takes a day and a half to do that, bear in mind that I had to go through 11000 points of coastline data working out how many segments there were and how big the segments were. Then I had to write this up into a file to tell the computer how to plot the coast. Then I had to write a short program to plot this and to overplot some data showing the coordinates of some photos. Then I overplotted millions of coordinates for some other data (laser scanner). Each of these laser files took about 3 minutes to load and made the map file so big it refused to load into Adobe for editing. I then had to write a further procedure to sample every 500th point so I only had 10s of thousands of laser points, not millions. I then had to reload all the files and replot them... I digress.

I was so irritated, I spent the evening 'virtual hiking' since I find it therapeutic. I probably could have gone canvassing but didn't want to end up beating someone over the head with my clipboard when they told me they were voting labour - I was that work-frustrated. My virtual hiking program is otherwise known as a computer game called The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I believe it's supposed to be an RPG with quests and such-like but it's so open-ended that I just go hiking. It has an entire island and, provided the slopes aren't too steep, you can pretty much walk anywhere (and it all looks entirely different! There is genuinely a whole uniquely designed island, rather than just repetition of the same bit of slope/lake, etc.). The graphics are beautiful, the sounds are immersive and it has a proper night and day cycle. I have the impression if you follow the footpath then you would pass various bandits, etc. However, they don't look up or move from their designated position. Thus, if you use the map and head as the crow flies rather than using any of the footpaths then the only thing you meet is the occasional bit of unpleasant wildlife (which is significantly easier to kill).

My in-game 'trade' appears to be alchemist, amateur mage and opportunist thief. I collect various bits of vegetation whilst hiking (I've always thought that the real world should have little labels that pop up over your head telling you what the plant is that you're looking at - it'd save buying a book), and if I don't have sufficient money, I nick things when no one's looking and sell them (I don't do either of these things in real life, you understand). I can cast the occasional spell and I use the plants to prepare potions. I'm hoping to be able to find enough useful vegetation (rather than vegetation that goes badly together) after I've travelled through a few different regions to be able to create potions that I can sell. Although I'm sure it's not everyone's idea of an exciting game experience (collecting plants and spending hours walking in unpopulated valleys admiring the scenery), I think it's wonderful. It's the closest I've got to playing AD&D 'live' (on in my case, a scenario of Planescape with some people from the walking club last year). Personally, I think scary has to be 'realistically' scary (like you can imagine yourself in that situation) and I'm never going to be a spy or a member of the SAS, but being jumped by a multi-legged green thing with a big mouth at dusk whilst admiring toadstools after walking about for ages without seeing anything is kinda realistically scary. It's somewhat akin to the feeling you get when you're trying to put a Focus through a letterbox and there's lots of vegetation and you're expecting a dog to come at you any minute... but usually dogs aren't green, multi-legged and have sphincter-shaped mouths... and I don't have a bow and arrow when leafletting...

Have you ever considered the inequalities inherent in capitalism?

2005-04-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, frequently, but it didn't make me a socialist... Unlike the elderly gentleman that myself and the eminent PPC for Bolton NE had a brief and informative discussion with last night on the doorstep. After a discussion of how the collapse of Soviet Communism was the fault of the US, we agreed that we were both exceedingly principled but would sadly have to agree to differ. His wife, incidently, was considering voting Lib Dem.

A very interesting area generally with numerous people who seemed up for a debate about something or other on the doorstep be it the local council, the threat of the Tories getting back in in Bristol West, socialism, reasons for voting Green... Oh yes, and the students who invited us in to their house party before one of their friends told us to f**k off...

My enjoyment was only marred by the fact I realised the washing up refill I bought yesterday appears to be laundry fluid meaning I couldn't make my packed lunch this morning...

Contentment is being efficient at finding interesting things to do...

2005-04-19T02:08:00.000-07:00

I've signed up for a 10 week course (2 hours, one night a week) at Bristol Folk House on 'Painting with Oils (and Acrylics)'. My mum was concerned that my oils would smell too much, it'd give me too much cleaning to do when I got home and I later decided that carrying wet compositions about Bristol could be moderately unpleasant (acrylics are water-based and dry fast). Hence, despite being a terrific material purist (I like the idea of producing dark, moody works that crack after about 30 years), I bought my materials list in primarily student quality acrylics. The cost of course and materials practically made me faint but I'm not going on holiday this year and I should learn something, even if it's that art classes are a waste of time. Interestingly, I loathe the smell of the acrylics more than linseed oil and 'Zest-it' - they smell like molten plastic and remind me of how I'd expected 'dip' in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? to smell.

I'm 'double-booked' for Saturday (I'm heading off the campaign trail and hiking in Cheddar since I haven't done a good 15km walk for months and I've been campaigning every Saturday for weeks now) and am canvassing and delivering again this week. All incredibly lively and interesting! I'm just really 'on edge' at the moment, early waking and not sleeping very well. I think it's to do with my thesis - I've started a new part of my project and have been floundering for a week, skirting about the base of the mountain infront of me unsure of how to surmount it. I tried to relax last night reading about acrylic paint, The Turning Point (he just seems to be making the same argument applied to different fields of endeavour so once I'd read the first two chapters I don't seem to be able to summon up the enthusiasm to read the rest of the book since I know where he's going) and a sci-fi book recommendation, Speaker for the Dead. Usually if I get to a point where I don't appear to need sleep then walking for miles knocks me out of it - it appears walking to the Bristol constituency HQ wasn't sufficient to vent the excess energy so I'm hoping wandering around for hours on Saturday should knock me out of it and help my focus.

Ye typical potted flowers

2005-04-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

I lost the ability to paint last week, probably due to reading far too many art books and trying several techniques that didn't seem to work for me... :( I was persisting with the oilbars and they weren't really responding as a medium. However, in 30 minutes whilst watching Dr Who I drew ye classical artists still life in charcoal and oilbar (multi-tasking, don't ya just love it. But then, flatulent aliens impersonating MPs and taking over Britain isn't exactly a very demanding storyline). Here it is. No idea what type of flowers those are - I saw them in the flower shop in Clifton Downs shopping centre. Neither the flower or the pot exist...

I'm probably going to be signing up on Monday for a 10 week art course on Tuesday evenings on 'Painting in Oils (or acrylics)'. Annoyingly, I only have about 4 of the course material list colours in student quality oils at the moments and mum recommends I use acrylics (since they are water soluble and smell less). I am starting to come around to this idea since acrylics also dry fast meaning taking a piece home should be a lot easier since it should be dry by the end of a 2 hour class. It wasn't booked up this afternoon and, hopefully, shouldn't be booked up by Monday. I thought I'd sleep on it since the course is pretty expensive and having to buy a set of acrylic paints is going to only increase the cost. They don't give student discounts off the course price, which sucks...

Postscript: Same picture again but without the distortion.

The man, the cat and the guitar

2005-04-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

Slightly outdated since I was canvassing Wednesday and this is Friday but...

I was canvassing some flats. I arrived at the bottom of a flight of stairs leading up to a door halfway up a wall (Bristle is a bit like this) and there was a man, a guitar and a cat at the top of the stairs on this very narrow wrought-iron railed landing.

I enquired if he was an occupant of any of the flats I had listed since I had to canvass them. He said he was attending a guitar lesson at the middle flat. After some debate over which was the middle flat and where the garden flat was, I asked him if it was his cat and he said he hadn't brought a cat with him.

I then rang the top flat bell (bear in mind we were both standing on a narrow landing at the top of a flight of stairs in front of this door) and a bad tempered elderly bloke opened the door and demanded of the bloke with the guitar what he wanted. Guitar bloke told him it was I who wanted him.

Just as I was about to speak to him, the cat ran into the building. The elderly man excused himself, shouting "I've got to remove a cat that I don't own" back towards the door. Me and guitar bloke then waited patiently on this little landing whilst there was much banging and shouting from inside the building as the elderly guy (and evidently his housemate) attempted to chase the cat out (it was a very fine, black cat with large, lantern green eyes).

After about 5 minutes, he managed to get the cat out of the door and barked "Yes?" at me. I repeated my canvassing spiel at which point he shouted "Green" and slammed the door, leaving the gent and his guitar standing forlornly on the doorstep!

This probably isn't half as amusing written as it was happening (in the great tradition of slapstick) but I was unable to stop giggling for about 20 minutes afterwards which was very bad since I then had to canvass someone called "A. Spitterwick (Jnr)" and someone else with the surname "Pasta" (fortunately, both were out).

The only other amusing incident of the evening was the slightly inebriated chap who was leaning right over my canvass sheet breathing alcohol fumes all over me. He was very keen on voting Lib Dem and I managed to foist a poster off on him which was rather cool.

What were they thinking?

2005-04-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

When they created such eminently spoofable posters?

If you haven't had the opportunity to apply your own creative talents, you can here.

Scowld today, int it?

2005-04-10T00:44:00.000-07:00

As they say in East Yorkshire. In Hull, however, just 17 miles away, it's "Scurld today, innit?". Having something of a mixed accent (but definitely Northern), I talk about being 'curled' all the time.

Bristle is a bit quiet at the moment with it being out of term so I spent last weekend leafletting a residential area by myself. Hence, I decided since I was in Bristol West between now and the election, I would take a trip to do some campaigning in Cambridge where I happen to have a good friend who is also a PhD student and is thus around during university holidays. This did require getting up rather early in the morning to arrive in Cambridge by about 10:30 am and Cambridge was, erm, 'curled'. This was something I hadn't taken account of when picking my outfit. I am spoiled by Bristol which, warmed by the Gulf Stream, ranges between balmy and Mediterranean. Apparently they had a snowstorm on Friday in Cambridge, which didn't surprise me one bit.

Myself and friend took a short bus trip to one of the outer wards and were canvassing between 11 and 3pm, mostly on the same street. The only people who appeared to be in on a Saturday morning on my side of the street were elderly ladies who were predominantly Tory, and weren't particularly welcoming to someone wearing a Lib Dem rosette (one of them leant out the window and yelled "I'm not Liberal" before slamming the window). His side of the street was apparently quite positive (two people took posters to put up in windows); I do wonder if the demographic on my side of the street was repeated on his side of the street, but that the appearance of a well-spoken, handsome young man on the doorstep elicited a different response from said ladies. After all, I have had many conversations with gentleman of mature years who take the time to lay out to me at length their opinion on the issues of the age before adding finally "And, you know, dear, I'm 85 and I've voted Conservative all my life".

By the time I finished, I was blue up to my elbows (in fact, one of the older ladies who did speak to me said that she was so impressed by my dedication standing shivering in howling wind on her doorstep that she was going to vote Lib Dem this time, which was very gratifying). I went back to the campaign HQ and was huddled up shivering continuously. I also discovered that the mild pepping cough I have had all week became a full-blown 'hacking my lungs out' on exposure to the cold.

I ended up stuffing envelopes in the campaigns HQ for the rest of the afternoon, worrying that my friend was a) probably sick to death of listening to me making remarks about how cold I was and sorrowfully holding out my skinny purple and orange flecked limbs for inspection and, b) wanted to walk across town to do more leafletting (he was entirely sensibly wearing a jumper and a fleece).

Got home about 8:30pm sort of time. Cold apart, a really nice day out.

Women, women, women...

2005-04-06T23:38:00.000-07:00

Article in the Guardian about women's magazines... To me, the whole concept of a 'women's magazine' is an oxymoron (is that the word I'm looking for?) since women are not a discrete category who have entirely separate interests from men. Thus, you either sell magazines about eyebrow plucking and lipstick lesbianism... or you sell a magazine about burning your bra and hemp t-shirts.

I would say that women who want to read about more politically charged and deep issues than what Jordan is wearing during pregnancy buy a specialised magazine on the subject rather than a 'women's magazine'. I buy with reasonable regularity - New Scientist, Artists & Illustrators and The Economist. I do, of course, read all the women's magazines on the newstand since they're very entertaining - I think the trick is not to take them too seriously (something the Guardian seems to have overlooked). I'm apparently not entirely unique in this. In a discussion with a female friend on the subject, she pointed out she did exactly the same thing (reading the magazines in the shop) but then bought Private Eye.

They also neglect the fact that a fair few of the 200 women's magazines are probably bought by 15-year olds aspiring to behave how they'll feel when they're a 30-year old professional (when, if they get to be a 30-year old professional -"First date dont's" is probably pretty much common sense... you know, don't inhale spaghetti, get roaring drunk and discuss how you firebombed your previous BF's car are kinda obvious) and socially inept young men who want to know how the opposite sex think.

May 5th

2005-04-06T00:55:00.000-07:00

I thought I had better mention the election :D I'm doing a delivery of the 'start of campaign' newsletters this lunchtime, canvassing tonight (although it's raining so it's going to be very pleasant :( I had an easy time campaigning last week - about 17 degrees C leafletting all morning Saturday in a nice suburban area) and doing a youth activism event tomorrow lunchtime.

I probably need the distraction this week - my conscious mind is focused on my thesis but my unconscious mind is in turmoil. I'm a dreamer in the literal sense - most of my important thinking gets done by me running 'scenarios' in my dreams. When I'm powering unconscious and conscious through my thesis I'm hugely productive but it can exhaust me since I'm working all day and then I dream it all night. At the moment, I'm not exactly having recurrent dreams but my dreams are all part of a long running story. They're trying to tell me something that I don't think consciously I'm quite willing to accept yet (that said, it was a very nice dream opera house. It was pale coloured and that style of architecture where there are several stacked levels with pillars - unsure what that's called. It had the most wonderful heavy carved wooden stairways and was reached by crossing a white marble bridge - I may try painting it. It's a real shame I didn't dream about it under different circumstances since I wasn't really in a dream frame-of-mind to appreciate it. It's also a terrible shame that I woke up before the opera started). I think I will know what to do finally and absolutely by the end of the week.

Either way, I'll be campaigning somewhere on Saturday.... I'm unsure whether I'll be in Bristol West (4% swing from Labour needed) or a train journey away.

Death by leeks

2005-04-05T04:25:00.000-07:00

Am somewhat concerned by the morbid titles that this blog is acquiring...

I'm still on the GI Food Plan (I say 'Food plan' because anyone who knows me will know that the only diet I probably need to be on is a rapid weight 'gain' programme... Despite the general consensus amongst gentlemen-friends that I would be better being a bit more curvy, I vigorously defend my right to look like a furry-ended pencil) and now have a cookbook (the Times Supplement recipes seemed to involve an awful lot of cheese and I felt eating so much feta probably wasn't healthy). The original intention was to avoid being hungry and low in energy in an afternoon which stopped me working since I left work to go home to eat something. Initially, I seemed to have a lot more energy than my previous diet (a lot simpler but not dissimilar to the GI diet), my hair looked better and I had fewer spots. I've either stopped noticing having more energy or it's balanced off. I certainly still don't seem to have the number of spots I used to (although I do have one or two at the moment). I suspect the difference would only be really noticeable if you'd been living on sugary trash food before you switched. How hungry I am in an afternoon varies although it is less acute than it used to be.

Following said cookbook recipes seem to involve an awful lot of cooking and vegetable buying. Thus, a fair bit of expense and need to stir fry things before I go to work in a morning. I also spend a lot of time worrying incase strange item 'x' causes me either food poisoning (because it's incorrectly prepared) or I'm allergic to it. After some fretting about the correct way to prepare an aubergine last night, today I am fretting about how to prepare leeks. In my experience, leeks are slimy, soggy things you boil in winter with potatoes but my recipe required I stir-fried them, which seemed very irregular. Upon consulting the internet it does appear that you can, indeed, stir-fry leeks but my mum concurred that although she believed them to be rather like large spring onions, they would probably be rather tough (which they were). I suspect I had to slice them thinner than I did and am now worrying about leek poisoning, especially since I want to do some general election campaigning this week.

Postscript: For anyone who has ever considered having (cold) a toasted wholemeal and lemon pitta bread stuffed with cream cheese and stir-fried leeks, mushrooms, tomatoes and parsley... don't...

Hmmm...

2005-04-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

Still not sure what I think about the oilbar test painting thingy I did yesterday... I've got it pinned to my noticeboard and I keep glancing at it and I just don't know. Normally I either think "This is c**p" or "This is good"...

...relatively speaking... for me... although I think a fair few of my art problems are due to impatience. The longest piece I've ever done in conventional art media (I once did a very intricate silk painting) took 6 hours [working weekday evenings just before Easter]. Normally I take about an hour to two hours, and the oilbar painting took around 3/4 of an hour whilst I was washing up simultaneously just to see if I could get the things to produce anything half decent. The technically competant paintings I wish I could produce seem to take anywhere between weeks and years (full-time) involving draughtsmenship and preparatory sketches, preparatory paintings, underpainting, etc.

Oilbars generally seem to be used on a large-scale (like 1/2 m * 1 m canvases) of simple subjects (like a flower), as a way of laying down colour before conducting an oil pastel painting or by abstract painters. Hence, I probably should be proud I've produced something using 1.6 cm oilsticks in 30 minutes on a 17*25 cm piece of paper that looks reasonably compellingly like a harbourside from about 6 m away, even if it looks like something done by a Year 7 group close up. I could probably rework it using oil pastels but I'm afraid of losing the impression of a harbourside I have when I'm sitting at this end of the room (even if the Lloyds building does look like the Colosseum), esp. since they'd change the tonal values because they're more vivid than the watered out oilbars and I don't want to start Zest-it washing the whole thing again so I think I'll leave it.

In a mood...

2005-04-03T00:31:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm trying to capture a sense of mood anyway...

I went leafletting yesterday in Bristol West with Alex from BULD. It took me about an hour to walk to the HQ, I did a few hours leafletting and then went home via the supermarket to do my grocery shop. Since I was leafletting way out beyond the Downs, I had to walk back home via the top of Whiteladies Road which was a financial disaster since it meant passing Hockney's art shop. I wandered in on passing and saw some oil bars (which I've read about but never seen). They are quite expensive (about £2.30-£3.99 each) and thus I purchased only two - an ivory black and an antique white out of idle curiousity.

Oilbars are a trademark of Winsor and Newton (although you can buy oil sticks from other manufacturers). Info is here under 'oil colour'. They are oil paint in a chunky stick form (bonded with wax). I bought 'slim' bars which are about a centimetre and a half across (the 'original' size are the size of a prittstick)! They behave rather like a combination between pritt stick and a wax crayon and thus subtly and detail are not really the essence of the technique unless you're using a large canvas.

I 'trialled' the oil bars on my minute canvas paper (25 cm x 17 cm) before Dr Who along with a set of 12 garishly-coloured oil pastels I randomly bought about 2 years ago during a camping holiday in Chamonix (and had no success with). I tried 'smoothing' the oil pastels by dipping them into liquin (which turned them into a gooey, sticky mess) and then tried to blend everything using 'Zest-it'. The experiment was good fun. Merryn and Adam came around just after I finished and informed me that the result was 'modern' which was enough of an excuse to throw it out as any I've ever heard!

Not deterred from playing with the oil bars, I tried again this morning after breakfast (I ended up putting a dirty jar of Zest-it into my washing up bowl with my breakfast pots which was a really great start :/). I decided that since I had very small canvas paper, very thick oil bars and could only work in greyscale, I decided to take a blocky tonal approach, use big dots of black and small dots of white for dark areas, vice-versa for light areas and then smooth the whole thing using copious 'Zest-it' and brushes. I tried copying a picture of Bristol Harbourside I'd taken and this is the result. Looks ok (according to my mum, I'm not convinced) from a distance - looks dreadful close up (just a load of damp splodges).

I may try adding a bit of highlighting and lost detail (some boats near the Lloyds building) using black and white oil pastel when it's dried (in a week or so).

Is not more, has ceased to be... just not quite yet

2005-04-01T22:27:00.000-08:00

Simon Titley comments he finds the wall-to-wall coverage of the ailing Pope a bit ghoulish...

I agree... Take the BBC Q&A on the Pope's condition given by their medical correspondent/doctor (that I was stupid enough to read yesterday and now can't find). Did I really need to know that elderly men often get urinary infections because they can't empty their bladder properly? Did I really WANT to know that? He's an elderly, ailing chap who is very ill. That's all we really need to know to get the picture.

Other unusual and gross facts I learnt yesterday

2005-04-01T22:12:00.000-08:00

Woad was one of the original blues. Woad smells bad and dyes your hands. It smells so bad that woad-dyers had to live on the outskirts of medieval towns... I know the last bit because I watched "The Worst Jobs in History" some time ago, amongst which was woad dyer. This program also included that most reverend of jobs - the guy who wiped the King's backside (a well-respected job that obviously involved a lot of trust since you were standing right next to the king and directly behind him several times a day).

Caput Mortuum means 'death's head' supposedly after the colour of skulls in the Rome catacombs. I ordered 2 Caput Mortuum pastels (it's a violet-brown colour that looks a bit like dried blood) and it did sound a bit of a morbid name when I saw it.

Red attracts attention because it's a long wavelength adn thus appears to come 'out' of the picture.

Being an artist was a pretty lethal thing to do in the past since from what I can see, a fair few pigments seemed to involve some compound of arsenic. As far as I know, a lot of pastels still contain cadmium (cadmium red, etc.) which means I'm pretty stupid working doing big pastel drawings in the space I live in and I'm also relatively stupid deciding I like doing oil painting (since turpentine and white spirit reek). In the latter case, I've bought an environmentally friendly solvent that smells of oranges.

And the most ultimately gross - mummy brown was used as an art pigment for around 120 years... The name probably gives away where they extracted the asphalt from...

Death by wallpaper

2005-04-01T11:41:00.000-08:00

I've been having a crisis of faith recently. I've just started trying to pursue a social friendship with someone who I've predominantly known in a professional capacity and they're such a fascinatingly well-informed polymath that I feel the fact we seemed to have pretty much only ever discussed politics and thinking styles seems such a waste of a mine of potential conversational topics. I'm just concerned that some of my alternatives are found to be rather dull but I have the problem of finding extremely strange things really, really interesting (like whether you could produce a galaxy-wise computer network using fluctuations of the quantum vacuum as a faster than light speed signalling medium) and having the burning desire to tell everyone about them when I first find them out.

Generally I like random facts. For example, I have just bought a book on colour to help me choose pastels. However, it's absolutely fascinating. It contains a history of colour (pigments basically).

Did you know that Napoleon apparently died from his wallpaper? In 1822, they discovered true Emerald Green which is is copper aceto-arsenite. This was very popular in wallpaper pigment. The chemical name probably gives the game away - when damp, arsenic fumes were released from the wall, killing people including Napoleon in his prison home on St. Helena. Death by wallpaper is a bad way to go, a little like watching paint dry (groan) especially for a famous conqueror - although Wikipedia seems unsure how Genghis Khan died, the story I heard said he died on his wedding night to his 'x'th wife which seems a somewhat more pleasant method of expiry.

Everyone knows that why Roman Emperors wore purple, of course, was because Tyrian purple pigment was very expensive. This is because it is extracted from a small colour-producing cyst within a whelk. Apparently up to 12,000 molluscs were needed to produce 1.4 grams of dye.

Other interesting and random pieces of information about pigments include:

Ultramarine (the colour) was originally derived from grinding up lapis lazuli during the Renaissance

Earth colours were derived from soils and include ochre, chalk, sienna, umber, terra verte (green earth) and soot black. Green earth was the pigment used in underpainting Renaissance pictures of flesh which is why pictures like Botticelli's Venus have green tinged flesh.

Indian yellow was originally derived from the urine of cows fed soley on a diet of mango leaves in the 15th century. This ceased due to uncertainties over the religious status of the cows (whatever that means).

How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?

2005-03-28T22:54:00.000-08:00

Varying responses but the one I found was "Two - one to hold the giraffe and another to fill a bathtub with brightly coloured machine tools".

What prompted this?

Well... I was finishing the last Liberty Belle picture for the inside of the guide (I'm doing the front cover today) and sent the previous two to my co-editors with the note "I've nearly finished the last one but it's missing a Scales of Justice and a fish". It occurred to me this sounded rather odd, infact, rather like a "How many surrealists..." joke.

I went to my parent's for the weekend where I, of course, watched Dr Who. I've never watched the original series but it seemed to be one of those cultish sci-fi things that I really should watch and there's a shortage of quality sci-fi on television at the moment, I feel. I found it highly entertaining... utterly silly in a knowing, amusing way. It reminded me of "Xena: Warrior Princess" and "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys", those trash classics of Channel 5 whilst far exceeding them. The trailer for the next week's episode looks even better, featuring many more special effects and I shall definitely be parked in front of the TV accordingly.

Now, I just have to meet a guy who uses the line "Oh, and by the way, it also time travels" (and is telling the truth). That said, no one would ever want me in the Tardis given I talk constantly, never sit still and read too many popular science books - "How does this time travel business work? Do you create two super- strings and make them hurtle towards each other at near light-speed? How does this work when you have a galactic mass like the earth in the way? What does this look like without the disguise? Do you create a pocket universe in here sorta like inflationary theory?". It's now reached the point where I actually notice really, really scientifically unsound sci-fi. Take for example, Hidden Empire (Saga of the Seven Suns) by Kevin Anderson. I picked this up to read on the train because I like space opera and can categorically point out that it is the biggest pile of steaming dung since this (which I couldn't be bothered to finish). Given we have genetic engineering, nanotech, etc. now then what's the probability we'd be able to get to major, cross-system space travel without majorly genengineering people or without this being a major, debatable ethical issue that caused tensions, etc. in society? And if you did have that, the whole of human nature would change. We would be aliens to each other. Society would be unrecognisable. And what about virtual reality?

But no... these people write current or earlier technology, base-line functioning humanity, feudal social structures and big spaceships (and aliens which aren't very alien). URK. It's so lazy and brainless. Good books include anything by Alastair Reynolds (that I've read so far) and the Deathstalker series. The latter, his writing is crummy and often repetitive, his technology is not really mentioned (but at least he manages to include space travel, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence all simultaneously) and his society is feudal... However, it's so gory, gratuitious, utterly cynical about modern society and politics and downright funny that you can forgive him the lapses.

Once I've put Libby B. behind me, I keep wanting to restart my book. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to work out how a galaxy-spanning computer could work. The Turning Point suggests I might be able to use quantum effects for signalling because using light would make it unbelievably slow... not sure what I think of this book. I'm a holistic thinker so I kinda like what he's saying but I think his political views are driving it a little too overtly. That said, his view of quantum theory puts a spin on stuff that seems to make a lot of sense... and can potentially help me with my book. I'm also having problems with making some of the 'human nature'/'societal' background plausible...

My 'back story' is that humanity has a very nasty civil war between groups of humans who have been genengineered and are partly artificial which wipes out earth and the 'centre' of human spread leaving a disconnected 'doughnut' of human habitation that is initially planet-bound and has little knowledge of what went before the 'Cataclysm'. By the time the book starts, they have piecemeal reassembled a lot of the pre-Cataclysm technology and the disconnected 'doughnut' is beginning to connect again.

However, they have a pseudo-religious 'proscription' against artificial life and genetically engineering people beyond their 'traces' (their pre-cataclysm genetic modifications) since this was what they believe caused the cataclysm in the first place. I'm having problems justifying this 'proscription' holding up.

The other thing that is 'left' was the cross-system VR network. People who had downloaded into it were 'trapped' post-cataclysm and the 'external' parts of the network (a web of nanotechnology which allowed these virtual people to 'manifest') was also pretty much rendered planet-bound. Again, in the meantime, these people developed apart from humanity and have forgotten they are human. They don't really understand that they are trapped in a computer web or are virtual, and they have 'evolved' way away from being human since they are not constrained by human needs, human desires or anchored by human society. They can 'self-create' and have fragmented into pseudo-philosophical/caste-like factions which endlessly debate over the meaning of life. For example, the nominally ruling group have a 'physical' need (literally like hunger) for information and believe the purpose of existence is to accumulate information. Without information they 'starve' to death. They have to create themselves with some emotions or physical needs or else they'd just sit there doing nothing but I'm unsure what exactly they'd need to be created with to function and whether they would end up fighting each other over their needs if a 'need' was the only thing they were given. They are highly computationally 'intelligent' but have simple physical needs, almost like a cross between a computer and an amoeba. I'm not sure if this would function or how it would function...

Young, Free and Liberal

2005-03-24T23:02:00.000-08:00

I'm currently busy working on cartoons for Young, Free and Liberal: a young person's guide to Liberal Democracy (I love that title, it rocks).

I've been doing them slowly but am now trying to get all of them done by Monday/Tuesday. A tall order but I've done 3 this week already. I need to do another 4 and they take anywhere between 4 and 6 hours to do, depending on complexity.

I've added the new ones to my Yahoo photo album. I've been sending them to my co-editors to check they're not too risque for a mixed audience (or they don't look anything like the thing they're supposed to, which is more likely in most cases).

I spent from 2 pm to 9:30 pm last night drawing the social liberalism one (with a couple of breaks including an hour watching 'Art that shook the world' on Wagener (sp?) before I realised I wasn't actually watching The Culture Show. Art that Shook the World was presented by Michael Portillo and I can sorta see why various women have expressed Michael Portillo is sexy, since I haven't seen him on TV before and the effect isn't the same in a still picture... but then I can kinda get the whole Boris Johnson thing too. I fail utterly to see the attraction of Wayne Rooney, however [a strange LDYS conference conversation] but then I like bright and cultured, rather than athletic and rugged). End of digression...

Well, not quite... I did have the realisation that Tolkein unashamably nicked Wegener's Ring Cycle, unwrote it out of operatic German and altered it a bit. Get this - a dwarf-like creature nicks some gold and forges this into a cursed ring. Everyone who gets hold of the ring is corrupted (and dies and/or destruction follows). Peace is only returned when the ring is returned from the place from whence it came (The Rhine, though, not Mount Doom). Many dragons, giants, nymphs, etc. feature... Sounds familiar? [I can't find the link about how Tolkien was anti-industrial, romantic and establishment tho'... Same period/thread of thought tho' AFAIA]. Digression definitely over...

I originally intended to draw Liberty Belle holding a spliff for the Social Liberalism section and then I thought about it and realised that Liberty Belle has a strong Manga influence (mostly off Gameboy games) and I forget if I invented her before or after I saw Spirited Away at the cinema. She has the same long, skinny legs as Chihiro. Either way, she'll be about the same age as Chihiro which means she's supposed to be 9-10 years of age. I was not about to draw a 9-10 year old (even a anime cartoon one) smoking a spliff. Hence, after leafing through the guide I eventually drew her trying to reach some very tame soft porno mags but, because she's a little person, she can't... quite... reach... despite standing on the tips of her toes (which is, of course, a good thing given she's somewhat below the age of consent).

Le Signore del e aumentato

2005-03-18T11:21:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Rome and fractals (although this isn't a proper fractal), I decide to do a classically proportioned figure.

Dull geeky discussion of my materials

I now have a lovely selection of pastels - mostly Unisons, a soft pastel hand-made in Derbyshire which I can recommend wholeheartedly for its velvety bloom. I have a few Daler-Rowneys which I found good for detail although a bit grainy and stiff and some Faber Castell polychromous artists pastels which are smooth and light fast and good for fine detail. I've found the Conte crayons (another hard pastel) aren't very robust (they just splinter into pieces if you so much as blink at them) and I don't find they work as well as the Faber Castells. Unfortunately, you can't buy Faber Castells loose, only in large sets (I have a 36 set). I also have a limited selection of Faber Castell pastel pencils for outlining which I've found very sound. My support is an A3 pad of 3 colour Daler-Rowney Ingres pastel and charcoal paper.

Link to picture

Anyway, after I've bored you with a discussion of materials, I will make the usual warning that if you are embarrassed by nude women don't look at this and most certainly don't go to Rome (although they seem to favour the male nude which, as I previously said, is very inspiring for the female sightseer).

NB: The title translates as "The Ladies of the Rose"... You can translate it in Google language tools. Hey, after all, I translated it from English to Italian in Google so it should go back the other way!

2005-03-12T01:45:00.000-08:00

The interesting bit

Anyway, that summarised I can get on with discussing Rome which was significantly more interesting than either Frascati or (to the lay reader, at least) the intricate details of a conference on an ESA earth monitoring satellite that hasn't been launched yet ... or even me oohing and ahhiing over Hollywood interpretations of clothing worn during the 15th and 16th centuries by ladies of 'the night' in Italian cities.

It is recommended in various guides that you don't try to cover all of Rome in a day and, well, TBH I'd agree. It's just in my case I'm used to walking for 7-8 hours straight, I was on my own and I didn't really have much choice (only being there for a day).

Hence, I organised my day as follows:

8:11 am - leave hotel. The hotel was the Astoria Garden just to one side of the Stazione Termini (central station). It apparently has an tropical garden but although I kind of saw it through the glass window in the breakfast room, I was barely in the hotel and it is March. It was really cold the first day but by the time I left Italy it had warmed up to British May-type temperatures. Hotel is recommended for niceness although their breakfast was dreadful. The central station was nowhere as impressive as Milan's station (which was built by Mussolini, apparently, and an excellent example of fascist architecture). In fact, so confused was I by what the architect was thinking of that I photographed it. Maybe he (or she) was thinking "Hmmm, Rome is full of spectacular buildings so I think I'll create something that looks like a fan heater. That's confuse them"... or maybe not.

8:30 am - am very impressed by 2 domed buildings, a tall pillar (like Nelson's column in Trafalgar square), some Roman ruins, a distant glimpse of the Colosseum and this all occurring in the same square (Piazza). I got very excited, especially by what I thought was a large fascist architecture art gallery since it resembled Milan station (in fact, it's actually a monument built in 1911 called Emanuelle II monument and now contains some military museums. The Italian Intelligence chap shot in Iraq :( was apparently lying in state here whilst I was there although I didn't go into the monument. You can see people laying flowers in the first picture). I cannot explain how much I loved this monument. It is splendid in an overbearing way. I adored it, I photographed it at least 7 times. I practically expired of pleasure just looking at it. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I just wanted to uproot it somehow, pack it in my case, take it home and have its children. I loved it *that* much. AHEM...

8:50 am or so - reach the St. Angel bridge. As you can see from this photo, the sun is now rising properly casting a warm glow on the bridge. The view of the St. Angel castle is wonderful. I can't tell you much about this castle; I didn't have time to go into it and my guidebook got lost with my luggage (Alitalia baggage handling - booo! Hiss! Shame! Resign!) :( This bridge had some really kick ass statues like this one of several naked men falling over a horse (I think that's what they're doing - perhaps I don't want to know... I do like the Italian fondness for depictly the nude male form publically. It's very inspiring for purely artistic reasons (cough)).

9:00 am - I reach St. Paul's Basilica and Vatican city. I've crossed the whole of my map of central Rome in the space of an hour. I bought some postcards on the way for friends and sit at the point on the photo on a bench to write them out using a pen purchased from a souvenir shop just to the left of this photo. It's still very cold because it's early and the sky is clear and my hands get progressively stiffer, more chapped and more painful.

10:00 am - I have walked back across the bridge to the post office where I post the postcards in the box marked Estera (abroad). I am very glad I have an Italian phrasebook or they would have ended up in the wrong box and would never have got there :(

11:00 am - I walk to St. Paul's Basilica. My hands are turning purple/orange/blue so I buy silk-lined navy blue leather gloves from a shop on the street going to the Basilica - I work out the price and they're cheap by UK prices. At the time, I think the Basilica is the entrance to Vatican City (I assume it's a walled city and this entrance is the front gate). The square in front of the Basilica is massive. There are lots of columns and some mega-sized fountains (I took photos but I haven't uploaded them). After entering through an x-ray machine (like in an airport), I walk to the Basilica cupola queue accidently. I meet a Brit whose on holiday who tells me that the Sistine Chapel is in the Vatican museum and he gave up due to the size of the queues. I walk around the square in front of St. Pauls and walk a couple of streets to the end of the queue. It stretches around the museum walls for probably 1/2 a km (! and this is March. In summer it would be h*ll, esp. as it's now getting quite hot by 11 am and everything is pretty white). I find the Sistine Chapel closes at 12:20 am and think I won't get to see it.

11:30 am - the queue moves fast - I enter the Vatican museum. Don't do what I did and rush through the Vatican museum to get to the Sistine Chapel before it closes and to see as much as possible in a short space of time. There are many treasures there. Stuff you'd have to pay £15 a throw to see in UK is just stacked about in back rooms like it's commonplace. I paid 8 EURO to get in as a student under 26 (bring a passport or driving licence) and it's normally only 12.50 EURO and it's amazing. I missed all the 7ft high marble statues of Egyptian goddesses in the antiquities museum section :( There were at least 5 museums that were closed when I was there. Walking constantly I saw the picture gallery and main rooms in 2 hours and I could have spent hours rather than minutes in each one.

11:40 am - I enter lots of corridors like this. The first one I think is the Sistine Chapel and I take several photos. Despite peering intently at the ceiling I can't see the picture of Adam and God reaching fingers towards each other (the famous fresco by Michaelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) and belatedly realise this isn't the Sistine Chapel.

11:50 am - I enter the Raphael rooms. These were frescoed floor to ceiling by Raphael and his students and were previously the living quarters of the Pope. They are amazing and the rooms quite large. The picture hopefully gives some indication of the scale and there were many adjoining (and crowded) rooms like this with many pictures. Sadly, I was only able to glance at each of the many frescos. I feel sad I cannot read the signs or study each fresco in more depth but I must carry on walking to get to the Sistine chapel before it closes.

12:00 am - enter the gallery of Modern religious art. Stuck on one dingy wall somewhere is casually located a Van Gogh (there was apparently a Matisse - I must have missed it or it wasn't on display; I tried to glance, at least, at everything :( )! Many of the artists, however, I don't recognise. There are several enormous (like 2-3 m high plus) religious statues like the Madonna in a large back room with stained glass windows.

12:10 am - enter the Sistine Chapel. After all the other stuff, it's really not *that* impressive above and beyond the rest of the things - I don't get what the big deal is about the Sistine Chapel except that the ceiling is high and it took 4 years for Michaelangelo to do but then, the Basilica has higher curved domes that have been done in an illusionist style so even that isn't *that* special although Michaelangelo was about 200 years before I suspect the Basilica domes were done since Illusionalism was Baroque (I think). I feel a bit sorry for the people who took the Sistine Chapel express route, missing the Raphael rooms, etc. You are not allowed to take photos despite the fact you can photograph (or even video) everything else which is weird. I covertly take one with my flash off - I suspect they are afraid of damaging the frescoes with flashes. This is naughty but everyone else is taking photos and keep getting shouted at - the photograph is thus a bit blurred.

I walk more casually through lots of other corridors filled with cool opulent stuff like this globe. I can see the Vatican gardens through the windows of these corridors (I take photos - not uploaded). The corridors go on for a very long way - they are all gold leaf, frescos, embossed huge wooden doors, marble... It is terribly extravagant and not particularly subtle - it's frightfully vulgar really.

12:30 - I leave via this spiral staircase which is famous in of itself and was built in 1930s. The queue has gone despite the fact the museum closes at 15:20. I'm unsure whether it's because the last entry is at lunch or it's because everyone was queuing for the Sistine Chapel. I walk around the museum, see some souvenir shops, first entertain the prospect of getting myself a 1/2 m marble statue of 'David' (in Florence, not Rome) but it's too expensive, pass back through the metal detector ensemble and enter the basilica. I am blown away... It is apparently the biggest cathedral in the world and I can quite see this. This is a small side nave. The scale is incredible. I feel the urge to drop onto my knees and wonder how many people have done so, sensing the presence of the Almighty and clinically, I realise that they are not sensing the presence of the almighty, they are feeling the force of an agglomeration of centuries old human power. It is just a manifestation, a brute force demonstration to anyone watching of human political, social (and in the case of the Roman Empire stuff to come later, military) power.

~1 pm - pass these chappies on the way out. Resist the urge to shout "Nice leggings, mate" incase they speak any English. I wonder how much they get paid to stand about wearing that.

2:00 pm - I am making my way back to the station where I know I can locate decent food. I am going to buy baguettes and make sandwiches in the hotel with cheese. Later I give up and purchase a sandwich from an Illy coffee bar in the station. I take a detour to view the Pantheon. At the time I don't know what the Pantheon is but it appears to be something to do with the golden rectangle and a dome, and the photo of the inside in the guidebook looks interesting. It is apparently a Roman temple from 126 AD that was reconsecrated as a Catholic church. It has a hole in the domed roof. I can't believe how old it is and still standing! This really impresses me, although the inside is pretty good too.

3-3:30 pm - sandwich eaten I return to the Emanuelle II monument area and decide to do some 'Ancient Rome'. I see this and still have little idea what exactly it is but I think it's some sort of fort. Not sure what period - my guidebook got lost with my luggage and Google isn't necessarily helping because some of the descriptions don't have pictures.

I head in the direction of the Colosseum along a road lined with ruins. It's now late afternoon and the misty light looks really interesting over the ruins at one side of the road. Apparently this is the Forum of Augustus (built by the Emperor Augustus, dontya know... Sometime between 100 BC and 100AD I guess).

3:45 pm - reach the Colosseum. It's in pretty good shape - it's hard to believe it's been here since 76 AD or suchlike. It's a ripoff to get in 10 EURO and there isn't much inside apart from it being a ruin. I decide that it is 'The Colosseum' and I am on my own (so it's about £6 of my money which isn't *that* bad) so I go in. I go up to the first floor and try to imagine myself wandering about in a stolla and sandals. I mentally put the ruin back together and try to visualise sitting up there listening to the roar of the crowds, the blood, the shouting, chariot races, etc. I'm unsure if women were allowed in the Colosseum though.

Since I've paid 10 EURO I spend 1/2 an hour or so wandering around the ring on the 1st floor photographing things. I photograph this arch which reminds me of the front cover of my copy of the Song for Arbonne. The sun is setting casting everything in a golden light (sadly, my camera wasn't too keen on it and everything kept going pink). I photograph some carved stones extracted from the ruins and displayed inside.

4:20 pm - I leave the Colosseum. Outside near where this picture is taken, a man is playing a piece of music that I know but don't know what it is on the accordian. I take a video so I can capture the moment - the gentle sound and increasingly strong frosty nip of the wind, the golden light, the Colosseum, the beeping of horns and the accordian.

I walk up a hill towards the arch of Titus (there are 3 arches and I only have names for 2). I am trying to get into the area with the ruins. I walk up a hill and see people moving about but I can't get through a fence. I eventually end up at a chapel and come back down to find the gates are closing to the garden around the Forum de Augustus ruins (I missed the gate). I walk back towards the Emanuelle monument passing a church and a ruin with 4 maps on the side showing the expansion of the Roman Empire.

4:45 pm - I try to reconstruct the size of the forums in this area with my mind using the available pillars and ruins. I am overawed by the size and scale of the public buildings that must have been here in classical times. The centre of ancient Rome was of modern proportions (although the population was, of course, smaller). For some reason, I never imagined this. There is kilometres of this stuff. I can imagine the sweep of buildings even just from the pieces exposed between the Colosseum and the Emanuelle monument. I walk up the hill behind the Emanuelle monument for a birds eye look at the largest ruined area. It's now getting quite cold and my feet hurt; my ballerina shoes have been worn lose by walking.

5pm - I walk to the main city museum behind the Emanuelle monument on the top of the hill. It's beginning to get dark and I'm getting cold. I photograph Rome from the top of the hill at sunset. Next to the museum I see this statue which I know to be famous (and it's in several of the souvenir shops); compared to most of the stuff in Rome, it's small, discreet and easy to miss.

I return to the hotel.

The next morning, I realised I'd missed the famous Trevi fountain so I hiked back about 8:00 am before my train went at 10:30 am to Frascati (or Tor Vergata station - it's next to ESRIN and about 2 km from Frascati). Given the size of everything else, I assumed it would be terrifyingly large (some of the architecture was so not-human-proportioned that I found being in its company rather scary. It loomed in a way that made me feel it was trying to force me into the floor by force of presence and I kept wanting to run) but it wasn't. It was just a bit out of place given the size of the square.

On the way back, I saw some election posters for the regional elections. This one amused me. I think it's saying to vote for 'Buona Politica' (the good politician?) as opposed to Belusconi's Forzi Italia party (which isn't good!!!!). There were some ones for the Italian communist party elsewhere (I forgot where so couldn't take a photo) which I *think* said they wanted to not sign the EU constitution but my Italian, as I say, is not much beyond "Good morning" and "Excuse me". Although I can guess other stuff from GCSE Spanish, again, it's not really designed for the intricacies of Italian domestic politics.

Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it infamy

2005-03-12T00:41:00.000-08:00

Carry on Caesar is close enough, sadly I can't spell "Et toi Brutai" and my functioning Italian is limited pretty much to the crucial "Un Biglietti alle e ritorno a stazionale termini, per favore" (One return ticket to central station, please).

I returned yesterday evening from a week in Rome. Or rather, about 1 1/2 days in Rome and the rest of the time in an industrial estate on the edge of a small town called Frascati, about 20 minutes out from Rome on the train.

The boring bit

I was, of course, at the aforementioned CryoSat conference at the European Space Agency ESRIN facility. It was a passably interesting conference: more relevant bits than the cryosphere (ice) conferences I've been to, a few pictures of satellites (always fun for a technophile/sci-fi type like me) and I found some people working with my instrument with whom I can hopefully do some informal email exchanges. The poster session was a dead loss - the posters were crammed onto foldable stands about 50 cm away from each other so that only one person could view any poster at any one time provided they didn't try to turn around and they were thin. The rest of the room was empty and had food so, needless to say, no one looked at my poster. The conference was free so they didn't bother providing any food most of the time and although the staff canteen was ok for lunch, I did spend a long time eating chocolate digestives, crispbreads, babybels and an assorted fruit and nut selection and raiding buffets (a skill learnt at Lib Dem party conferences).

Frascati was about 2 km away down a road with no pavement and, although pretty, had few entertainment options, a disturbing amount of white power/fascist graffiti and lots of teenagers loitering about snogging one another, staring threateningly at passersby (me) and smoking. The most interesting thing there that you could get to without being run over (no pavements or I'd have headed into the hills) was the supermarket where I spent an hour on Thursday afternoon (I was bored, ok?). I amused myself by making up tourist slogans for the place and generated "Frascati: more palm trees than Grimsby", "Frascati: visit our supermarket, it sells octopus" and "Frascati: close to Rome".

In general, I spend an awful lot of time hanging about so if anything goes wrong I have plenty of time to sort it (this has not prevented Alitalia losing my luggage :( ). I spent 5 hours hanging around the airport because I unexpected shared a taxi with some researchers from the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge who were trying to catch a 9:30 am flight (mine was 1:30 pm local time).

This was an advantage to some extent because I discovered and purchased a rather excellent replica Venetian mask in the airport. My favourite film is The Honest Courtesan and I've read Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay. The whole 'drifting about in provocative but elaborate costume showing lots of cleavage and having frenzied assignations anonymous due to said mask during sultry Mediterranean night' business really appeals but sadly, erm, in real life I wouldn't be able to stay awake long enough and wearing the mask I look rather more like a red indian than a mysterious lady who drifts about tantalisingly between Corinthian pillars in the misty twilight. I am going to persist - I shall make myself a rather elaborate corsetted gown (like this one) to go with the mask at some point. It will be midnight and black velvet with gold lame, low cut square neck (like the one in the photo), tight waist, lots of skirt gold panels and some exposed leg, probably gauze sleeves but with slits in so I can wear elbow length black velour gloves. Preferrably they would be elbow length fingerless gloves so when I grow my nails back (and my hands stop being chapped) I can paint them gold... [SNIP]. Where I would wear this outfit escapes me but I'm sure I can find somewhere wholly inappropriate.

A very nice chilli

2005-03-03T23:11:00.000-08:00

The poster is finished, submitted (1/2 an hour before it needed to go to the graphics department) and I'm just worrying incase it'll come out on A0 alright. Oh, and the fact I still have to do all the numerous preparatory tasks I didn't do yesterday...

In the meantime, here is a very nice recipe for vegetarian chilli loosely remembered from the Times on Sunday Style supplement. Ingredients are for a single portion.

Take 2-3 sticks of celery, 2/3 of a pepper, a small red onion, 1/3 of a fresh chilli, some parsley and a garlic clove. Chop finely and gently stir fry for a few minutes.

Add 1/3 of a tin of chopped tomatoes, about 1/3 of a tin of mixed beans and approximately 1/3 of a 'tin' of water.

Simmer gently for ~20 minutes until thick. Serve in a warmed tortilla.

To add extra flavour use more chilli, 1 tsp of cumin seeds and some lemon thyme. I am unsure if I'm allergic to cumin (it's either cumin, coriander or tumeric) and I couldn't find any lemon thyme.

I used organic vegetables from Fresh & Wild although if you make this *not* in March you may be able to find some ingredients at a farmer's market and the farmer's market stuff will probably be better (despite not being organic). The environmental and purported health benefits of this is a happy byproduct to the taste factor (some sprouts I got from the Bristol farmer's market were lovely). My mum has her whole garden, 2 greenhouses and a rooftop glasshouse conservatory turned over to produce growing so I grew up with things straight out the garden... and I find most vegetables from Sainsburys taste as if the contents of the packet is made out of the same material as the packet (this isn't just confined to vegetables - their margarine lasts for about 2 years and tastes of zero). The vegetables seem to have been *plasticated* within an inch of their life - looks nice, tastes of nothing in particular.

In short, use good quality produce and the chilli will have a gentle, subtle flavour that is faintly spicy but not overpowering. Most processed 'chillis' taste as if someone has upset about 6 tablespoons of chilli powder into them, probably to cover up the fact that the remainder of the ingredients have lost any vestiges of taste.

Food issues are always difficult. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure that the whole 'poncy middle class muesli eating types whittering on about organic/locally-produced food which the poor couldn't afford' stereotype is strictly true. Take my chilli. It costs me about £3.64 per portion (for 3 days). If you imagined adding 3 £0.50 pots of yoghurt to that (to add to the tortilla) you could probably stretch my 1 portion between 2 [women - men eat loads]. It would then cost £2.14 per portion. If you bought some stuff from a farmer's market it would be even cheaper (I bought an entire stalk of sprouts that I couldn't get in my fridge for £1.12). Total production time for this meal was around 30-40 minutes in total.

Now think of buying a microwaveable chilli in Sainsburys and it'll be about £2.49. It'll take about 10 minutes to prepare (probably 5-7 minutes cooking time). Please don't tell me most people have such hectic lives that they can't afford an extra 20 minutes out of their life on an evening to chop some veg... And if you do have such a hectic life, in my experience (as someone who patented the 'have so little time to eat I am cycling whilst eating' approach to life) you must be so stressed out of your mind that your immune system will be shot to pieces meaning you'll catch everything going and, to be honest, you're unlikely to be satisfied with your life if you're that stressed however much you're earning so... maybe it's trying to tell you something.

Apparently the swizz is that:

'Supermarkets have fostered the notion that we have no time to cook. These days, if you still make time to cook fresh food from good-quality raw ingredients, you can be made to feel you are a loser, pottering away in the sleepy backwaters of modern life. Supermarkets like us to think that cooking is the first thing that can be cut from a busy home/work schedule, with no negative effects whatsoever. This is because supermarkets make far bigger profits from selling us value-added processed foods than they do from straightforward raw ingredients. There is only so much you can charge for a potato, even an heirloom, hand-scrubbed variety. But transform workaday spuds into low-fat gratins or Louisiana potato skins, and the sky's the limit.'

Perhaps there aren't all these people combining raising children, charity work and 15 hour days working for Morgan Stanley after all...

All over bar the shouting

2005-03-02T23:02:00.000-08:00

My poster, I am happy to report, is all over bar working out the number of looks at each along-track position (which probably means nothing to anyone but me), fiddling with the introduction, 1 easy coherence diagram and adding a pretty picture of flightlines over Svalbard.

My supervisors recommended that instead of doing extra slope coherence calculations, which are rather dry, I 'moistened' the poster a bit by including a pretty picture of the NASA P-3 aircraft and some pictures of flightlines over Svalbard in the rationale of the project.

I should be all done by mid-afternoon (poster needs to be in by pm today for printing) and then it's just a matter of getting bus tickets, travel money and my E111 stamped, re-learning some Italian and trying to avoid the ravages of the LDYS flu which everyone else seems to have got (if they didn't get sickness). I'm hoping that the fact I was only in the conference hall for about 3 hours coupled with the fact I didn't eat anything there will be enough to save me and, if not, my diet and general level of fitness (although I've worked over lunchtimes this week instead of walking) will. I've been stressed and had disrupted sleep over the poster, travelling to Rome and other things, so I'm worried incase it's knocked my immune system. Flu and an academic workshop in Italy would be a bit of a disaster. The workshop is actually 20 minutes away on the train from Rome at ESRIN in Frascati. For the truly interested, I'm going here.

Lazyliberal thinks the whole travel thing is really smug and points out that although, yes, I am working - he doesn't get to go to Rome before teaching class 10B. I don't feel sorry for him (:P); his choice to go into teaching - I only initially did Geography A-level because there was a trip to Switzerland, wandering around European and Scandinavian cities on my own isn't all it's cracked up to be and I have only been abroad with my PhD twice in the last 2 1/2 years (3 times including this workshop).

Vivienne likes...

2005-02-28T04:50:00.000-08:00

"Vivienne likes to be taken to movies and bars.... she has some skimpy outfits for the gym, and is a tease... She can converse on 35,000 topics, from philosophy to movies to sculpture."

But would anyone want me on their mobile phone given I think I'm one of these...

"Partly to prevent anyone from becoming addicted to Vivienne's charms, the program will limit users to an hour of play time a day." [SHAME! RESIGN!]

Give me alpha; give me omega...

2005-02-27T03:18:00.000-08:00

I'm having a real time with myself at the moment. I'm supposed to be preparing a poster to give at a conference in Rome and I'm flying out a week today and I was just completely stumped last week, my mind distracted. It's the first time in years my emotions have affected my work (possibly nothing to be proud of). I initially had a sense of loss, then I fretted about the superficially puritan appearance of my lifestyle (yet I deny myself nothing. I have a very long Period 3 gene and I was raised on vegetables, in part because I was hyper as a child). Now, an entirely irrational fear I've been forgotten is creeping across my mind like breeze-blown cobwebs brushing against a wall.

I'm now writing the poster, eating smoked salmon sandwiches with added vanilla lipbalm and trying to disguise myself as a toothpick for no apparent reason. Black is a slimming colour so if you're a pallid, slender woman with badly chapped hands and lips then the effect is striking for all the wrong reasons (especially if you also have a very BIG hat). I'm doing the usual fretting that since I'm trained as a Geographer but doing the work of an Applied Physicist I've probably missed something a first year physics undergraduate could have picked up and am going to look like an unmitigated idiot.

Despair

2005-02-25T12:49:00.000-08:00

Another sketch on the site; this one pastel and charcoal. It's a very rough sketch done in the space of minutes and designed to convey a sense of emotional agony. The lower legs are grossly extended but this doesn't look too bad. I think it makes the figure appear to be stretched out across the dust or being blown away and melded into it. The left hand and arm of the figure melds into the ground.

In the absence of the forums, another test...

2005-02-23T01:06:00.000-08:00

This one's about the sex of your brain.

Despite often quibbing that I'm actually a gay transvestite trapped in a woman's body (and thus I'm perfectly happy being there :D), I come out as being an absolutely average woman with a score of exactly 50% female. The breakdown of topics is more interesting (although not entirely unexpected).

I got 11/12 in the manipulation of 3D shapes test, 6/10 in recognising facial expressions (which is apparently pretty high), poor on word association (about 4-5 words only) and low on recognising the positioning of objects (below male and female average). Proper breakdown of scores possibly later. Apparently I'm attracted to men with more feminine faces (again, no surprise to me).

I wonder if I'd get different scores if I do this in a few months time... The self is a philosophical problem because biologically, we shed all our cells and replace them about every 6 months (or is it 6 years) IIRC. We regard ourself as being the same person despite the fact that if we replaced all the timbers of a ship, kept the original timbers and built a new ship, which is the 'real' ship? I've started to question seeing myself as the same person. I have the same broad characteristics but I seem to have these periods of rapid mental and personality development in which all my perceptions, interpretations and objectives change. At the end despite the fact to the casual observer, I probably seem pretty much the same, I don't recognise myself in the memories I have of a few months previously.

I've been going through one of these periods since around November and it's challenging all my beliefs, my priorities and what I believe my future holds. I don't recognise myself in conversations I had as late as last November. I can almost sense people reacting differently to the subtle differences from 'past me' and I feel I'm moving into synchronisation with some of them and out of synchronisation with others. One or two friends, I'm really not in the same mental place anymore. Others I've moved into a different place and the nature of our interactions have changed. Some I seem to have slid into phase with and I'm really having to think very carefully about where I want to be in a year's time or what I really want out of our friendship - it's sending me into existential spasms and somersaults right now. I think I want to stop changing for a while so I can get my breath back...

Veni Vidi Bidet...

2005-02-17T09:03:00.000-08:00

How to be an intellectual.

Remember, the line between intellectual and pretentious bore is measured in picometres...

Why I love myself

2005-02-16T03:08:00.000-08:00

I got about 2/3 of these correct first time. There were one or two about which I had no clue but otherwise I was pretty spot-on.

I've known about this effect for sometime. In fact, I enjoy studying it and have been right in a couple of cases where the people in question look, to me at least, like long-lost brother and sister. It really does show that beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder.

Noticing a resemblance is very holistic and intuitive because 'resemblance' is something intangible. Out of people who I've liked who've liked me back that I've been very aware of, all have my sharp nose (but it's not that obvious on me because the spectacles cover mine up). One has exactly the same sandy/earth colouring that I have (sandy hair, freckles, green or brown eyes) and another has a very similar face shape to me (face wide and square at the cheekbones with a point at the chin).

When I was new to university, shy and more introverted and brooding, I was attracted to introverted, brooding men. Now I'm lighter and my animated nature is not just surface, I appear to be attracted to openly intelligent/informed men who are very lively and animated. Further, I don't find introverted, brooding men instantly attractive anymore.

All terribly interesting, especially since it's extremely rare I have *chemistry* for anyone. I'm 'vaguely interested' more frequently but it's all rather 'cold fish'. Evidently, there aren't that many people I intuitively feel are *like me* around - I'm not sure whether I should be happy or worried by that... Not that I'm claiming this to be an all encompassing theory or anything; I've never been quite sure the resemblance my parents are supposed to have.

It's a plug...

2005-02-14T01:43:00.000-08:00

On Saturday I went to the Tate Modern... Or rather, I went to the Tate Modern briefly and then walked to the Tate Britain and spent a somewhat longer time there.

The Tate Modern has a very non-intuitive entrance leading into the cavernous turbine hall. It's spectacular - a huge cathedral-like industrial space... with a speaker mounted somewhere in the roof constantly looping a voice which was how I imagine a guy faking a female orgasm whilst hiccuping would sound (no idea what it was supposed to be).

The ground floor has a large bookshop/shop, cafe and cloakroom behind glass doors. We began on the first floor where my first remark was:

"What's that supposed to be?"

My companion, formerly known as The Squire but who now looks rather more like a smart-casual goth computer programmer (no offence :D ), stood under it, looked exasperated and said "A plug". Yep, that's right, a 6ft long 2-pinned plug made out of wood. After the scattered broken wooden furniture in the shape of an axe, the large object that looked like an oversized metal fan heater and the canvas with a slash in it... my companion's eye-rolling and general frustration had increased to the point where he informed me he was leaving. I was curious to know what was on floors 3-6 but he said that life was too short to wander about the Tate Modern. Thus, we went to the Tate Britain instead.

Due to their Turner, Whistler and Monet exhibition (which we didn't visit), they had put out a lot of Turner. Thus, I've seen probably more Turner paintings than... insert frequency of choice. I especially enjoyed the paintings by Watts especially these . More Watts here.

Although Turner did a lot of [repetitive IMO] traditional scenes (rooms of them), Francis informs me that as he got older he focused on his strengths and did a lot of background and far less foreground (his backgrounds were far superior to the figures he did at the front). This is an example and the painting I liked the most out of the whole exhibition. His work with light and the forces of nature, etc. was stunning. Francis kept pointing to his images of natural disaster and saying "Doesn't this say more about the nature of human suffering than anything produced by the Young British Artists?"... After a while, he won the argument :)

He pointed out that past painters had real craftmanship out of necessity and that the only merit of modern art was originality yet if something had never been done in the past, there was probably a good reason. The contrast between the two galleries was profound. I can look at a scene like this and feel moved by the use of light and colour, the power of the image and the force of nature it represents... I can look at Julian Opie's air vent (check first floor Tate Modern site under 'After Duchamp' - lots of prize examples) and feel precisely nothing. It's just dead, vapid, passionless. It's disposability might be the point but TBH I don't care about it enough to really give it any thought. It says nothing -it may as well actually *be* an airvent for all I care.

The Squire has converted me to his point of view (from my ambivalence or general 'ha, ha look at that' mentality to dubious modern art) - if you want to make a point about colonialist oppression or AIDs or feminism then at least do it properly, with some degree of skill, power and intelligence! I guess that theoretically makes me elitist but actually, I think a fair bit of 'sensationalist' modern art is elitist. It hides the fact it's unadulterated pap that the artist thought up one morning on the toilet and then paid someone to hammer together by pretending that if you 'understand' it, it will all make perfect sense. You shouldn't *need* to understand it - that's why it's art and not a book. If it requires an essay on post-colonialism, you're missing the point. The fact is that non-elitist art is generally well-crafted, powerful and often attractive. That's why people like it.

As an aside, I had a long argument over whether Dali was better than Matisse, i.e. whether being weird for the sake of looking pretty without anything to say was appropriate (I keep thinking he must have meant Magritte because Matisse was modern but not a surrealist AFAIK) and I'd say yes. Francis says "No". He thinks that Matisse knew what he was doing and was saying something, whereas Dali was just being weird in the interests of aesthetism and this didn't make him as good an artist [or maybe I'm misrepresenting the argument here :( ].

New picture on site

2005-02-13T12:39:00.000-08:00

I have added my first pastel painting/drawing.

It's an imperfectly remembered scene I saw at a demonstration of Bob Ross classes/paints whilst visiting Hobbycraft at Cribbs Causeway last week. Something vaguely like this, although it wasn't this painting. I personally think that going to a class where you follow step-by-step brushstroke instructions to produce exactly the same as everyone painting as everyone else from a set series of proscribed paintings is slightly soul-destroying and pointless. This guy kinda agrees with me but I don't think he'd be wild about my choice of subject matter.

On the other hand, utopian landscapes at least look nice - a huge improvement on the sh*te in the Tate Modern (more on that later).

This is the original picture - my memory ain't great, huh?

2005-02-10T23:18:00.000-08:00

More political flash animations:

Backing Blair
The London Underground

I've now sketched out another version of the landscape but this time put in all the trees first (in various shades of brown and orange pastel pencil since I don't have any other colours at the moment). Now, I just have to colour it in... I see trouble ahead...

Getting your priorities wrong...

2005-02-10T02:10:00.000-08:00

There's a discussion on the LDYS open forums here about whether Ellen MacArthur deserved front page news, even temporarily, for her solo circumnavigation of the world given the Israel/Palestine ceasefire occurring on the same day.

The topic has now navigated onto the priority of sport in the news. I personally think that Ellen MacArthur's achievement was somewhat rarer and of a different magnitude of significance from the World Series. However, it does raise an interesting issue of what is 'important' and worthy of news attention.

Radio Humberside, being a local radio station, evidently has a remit that anything 'local' is more newsworthy than something more significant happening further away giving rise to circumstances like my parody:

'And today's main news headlines - man from Grimsby narrowly escapes death after choking on a Wotnot. Mr Bloggs of 3 Rose Crescent, Grimsby was rushed into Grimsby General Hospital yesterday afternoon after choking on a Wotnot whilst watching football on the television. He was saved in the nick of time by paramedics slapping him vigorously on the back. Our Grimsby correspondent, Lara Johnson is now live with his family as he recuperates at home and we go to her now for an exclusive 25 minute interview. "Mrs Bloggs, your husband choked whilst watching the game on the television yesterday. Which club was it? Was it the superb performance by Grimsby Rangers against Bognor Regis United? How do you feel about the 3:1 result?".......

... And in other news. WW3 started today with a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the United States against China'.

Seriously, though, they are happy to stop the news headlines (including items like people having their limbs blown off in Iraq - if that's mentioned at all) to report 'important' items of news like "We stop this program to announce - the Chairman of Hull Kingston Rovers has resigned".

In terms of getting your life priorities wrong though, you can't beat these people... I mean, not only did they INJURE EACH OTHER trying to get into a furniture superstore but they DUMPED THEIR CARS and it was AT MIDNIGHT! Don't they have anything more important to do than buy a cheap sofa! GET A GRIP PEOPLE (apologies to anyone at the Edmonton IKEA opening). It makes you wonder the pointless lives some people must lead:

"Darling, what should we do this evening? We have a choice between staring at the wall, cleaning out our nostrils with a fork or going to IKEA at midnight to buy a Sundnes bed frame"

"You've forgotten watching prime time television."

"I excluded that deliberately because that might actually be remotely interesting."

"Ah, well, given that's not an option - IKEA it is. I'm so dull that buying a new bed takes on the significance of a life and death experience; I'm prepared to trample people in my bedroom furniture-induced purchasing frenzy."

Pastel light

2005-02-09T23:33:00.000-08:00

I have now worked out how to use the pastels (I think). I carried out an abortive attempt the day before yesterday to draw a mountain landscape. The distant mountains, a patch of sky and the water had real promise but I left the front of the picture covered in brown squiggles (mud) for later work with some gorse bushes.

My brown was somewhat terracotta so I bought a few green and brown Unison (nothing to do with the trade union) and Sennelier pastels yesterday.

Last night I came back and drew a really crummy tree. I realised that I'd overworked the front of the picture with soil, and the mountains/snow too early so I was unable to add the trees and gorse bushes out front. However, it was a definitely an improvement over the powdery first attempts.

I probably should stick with a medium I'm good with to start off (watercolours and/or oils) but it's a challenge to see if I can get it to work (esp. since pastels are supposed to be easier to work than oils/watercolours [and presumably silk])! Also, pastels can be taken pretty much anywhere and worked directly, and are colourful (I'm really bad at monochrome and esp. monochrome shadows).

I've worked out, like fashion, the trick seems to be that less is more, i.e. produce an outline in fine pastel pencil (colour irrelevent), begin with a faint suggestion of colour/shading in harder pastels (my Faber Castell student half-sticks) and aim for the suggestion of reality whilst covering as little as the paper as possible with pastel. This leaves a soft, luminescent image rather than a muggy brown smudge.

Apologies to anyone who reads this for the insufferable focus upon the use of varying art materials...

Links for the day are this and this (insulting Veritas/Kilroy-Silk songs).

A series of interesting events...

2005-02-08T01:11:00.000-08:00

After several weeks of just me and a sketchpad, everything is getting more lively in the next month or so.

On Saturday I'm going to the Tate Modern with a tall, dark and handsome stranger... Ok, it's not a tall, dark and handsome stranger; it's a tall, dark-blond and freckly friend who I've known for about 5 years (although he's not exactly bad looking). I've been wanting to go and stare at twisted bits of metal purporting to say something about the intensity of human experience for several months but didn't have anyone to go with. As a result, I'm exceedingly excited and this morning I got up and was promptly completely paranoid that fate was going to prevent me going and I will have Norwalk virus/flu/severe insomnia/broken limbs by Saturday. Although I have tackled my existential pessimism quite a lot since it was driving me to distraction, it occasionally rises and just grabs me by the throat and I have to just quietly reason with myself until it dies a death.

The week after, I'm going up to Leeds for LDYS conference and am staying with my parents. I promised mum I'd show her how to draw figures using conte crayon but I've had zero success with the pastels so far. I think I press too hard and fill the 'tooth' of my paper with the first layer. I'll have another go tonight and use very light strokes to 'build up' a picture.

Then I have about a week and then I'm going to Rome (or rather, Frascati which is a suburb of Rome) to present a poster at a CryoSat workshop at ESA (European Space Agency). However, before then, I need to have somewhat more research and a poster which is worrying me rather and was brought home by having a meeting with my supervisor yesterday afternoon. This is possibly driving this morning's paranoia that I'm going to lose days through sudden illness. One of the organisers is from the Space Science department at UCL and although I don't want to live in London, that's somewhere I might consider for a job so I really need to impress them. I'm going to have to dust off my 'Learning Italian' CD and get a city guide to Rome. I'm hoping to fly up a day early so that I can get some photos and maybe a carefully selected museum/art gallery in whilst I'm there.

I'm off to see Tony, Tooonnnyyyy Benn...

2005-02-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

First, I'd like to share these links with anyone not on the LDYS forums. The first is hysterical, the second is mildly entertaining but mostly for the music.

Yesterday, Tony Benn spoke at the Bristol Council House to a Stop the War meeting. Everyone commented on how everyone was so fired up by the cause that they'd filled an extra room with 200 people they didn't expect. However, I think many of the attendees were probably there for the reason I was - to see Tony Benn. That said, I agreed with almost everything they said about the reason for the Iraq elections, Iran, erosion of British civil liberties... We do need to be careful how and how quickly we withdraw troops though; after all, I'm sure American capitalism is better than a result in which Tony Blair suddenly took all the troops out to appease the domestic voter and then our TV screens were full of starving Iraqis who didn't have replacement infrastructure and the country fell apart into civil war. We just need to be sure that the long-term aim is that they ARE going to pull out, and in such a way that they don't generate resentment that boils over into sudden civil war (like a sensitive and non-messed-up withdrawal is likely to happen under Bush)...

I don't agree with Tony Benn necessarily that the US foreign policy is being driven by big business - apparently their environmental policy isn't. A US academic who came to lecture at the Geog department last term told us that most big businesses realise that if the environment f**ks up, it will affect their profits and they need to adapt to a changing business situation (e.g. some of the big oil companies switching to selling 'energy' not just fossil fuels). However, the neo-con government is driving forwards a prolifigate environmental policy anyway. As an aside, for those of you who still remember the US presidentials with a furrow in your brow and a tear in your eye, This Land is our Land is quite entertaining (although now dated).

Humorous moments - running the gauntlet of sellers of 'The Socialist', 'Socialist Worker', etc. on the concourse to the council building, and the Bristol Socialist Choir singing The Internationale before the event started (they were very good).

Best quote - "When you first say a sensible thing, people ignore you. If you carry on saying it then they say you're crazy. If you persist on saying it after that then you become 'dangerous'. Then there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone higher up who doesn't claim they agreed with you all along" Tony Benn 2004 (taking off Ghandi IIRC).

Is there anything these people can watch?

2005-02-04T11:36:00.000-08:00

Never expect to see any of these chaps/ladies at the cinema...

Tentative online gallery

2005-02-04T10:34:00.000-08:00

Is here.

There are three folders - one of general bits of artwork I've photographed, one of the Liberty Belle cartoons and another one in which I'm going to put any bits of life drawing practice (so that anyone who doesn't want to look at it doesn't have to).

Nope, I'm not the next Michelangelo... :( But it's fun, relaxing, creative and it keeps me out of trouble.

2005-02-04T02:58:00.000-08:00

More art tutorial stuff here.

I'm going to start putting my various practices (mostly crummy) and compositions online.

My main project currently is the illustrations for 'The Little Yellow Book: A young person's guide to Liberal Democracy' for which I'm drawing a character called Liberty Belle who is a sorta manga-looking little girl in a voluminous yellow cowl necked jumper, large orange sneakers and sticking up ginger plaits (inspired by a character called 'Winnie Lucy Atwell' who used to appear on calendars in my mum's childhood. Never seen 'Winnie Lucy Atwell' and I can't find a link for her on Google [can anyone help?] but apparently she had plaits that stuck up vertically). Liberty Belle was originally created as the sprite for a flash game I've never got around to writing called "Liberty Belle goes leafletting" in which you had to avoid homocidal letterboxes, mad placard-wielding Tory farmers (ok, I've never met any of those), vicious dogs, etc...

I did buy some willow charcoal yesterday in 2 different sizes (charcoal = very cheap) and have done a vaguely passable life drawing of myself (in lieu of another subject) on WHsmith sketch paper using some of the techniques in the book mum bought me (part of a set) on 'Introducing Drawing the Nude' and on one of the sites I put down last time. It's amazing how using reference points and cylinders can produce a passable approximation to the human form completely painlessly. My only problem was I got the proportions wrong and overextended the torso. The photo I was using for the drawing (drawing one's back is difficult otherwise) was also completely washed out (poor lighting and bad colour capture by digital camera) so I couldn't use the photo to practice shading. I'm going to have to borrow the desk lamp out of my office to practice capturing lighting effects using pastels and conte crayon since I'm pretty good at outlines now but very bad at knowing how to shade properly.

Apparently if you can draw the human form you can draw anything so if I can produce an appropriately shaded person in more complex posture (lying or poised for dancing, for example) then I'm sorted for stuff like oranges, flowers, dragons, aliens, spacecraft, fractals...

Various drawing links

2005-02-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

I've noticed that a fair few of my pictures feature nude moving or stationary slim female figures (indeed, I painted a 'futurist' style running female nude on an LSE blackboard during a break in an LDYS meeting). Unfortunately, due to a lack of people who would either pose naked for me (or I would want them to pose naked - volunteers may have unwanted intent) I'm pretty stumped for some life models at the moment for anything but slim females (of which I have much experience - being one myself).

If you're interested in drawing the human form, there's a good tutorial here. There are more online art lessons on various things here. And more tips on drawing the human form here.

I've just got some soft pastels in a sale at a local stationary shop. I got 12 full stubs of various loud, contrasting colours and 48 half-stubs. Since you can't blend pastels 'on the palette', it's useful to get a set with graduated colours (think gradient function on PC paint programs). The 48 half-stubs give a limited set of white through yellow/orange/red, blue through purple/pink, green into aqua/grey and brown through sand/pink. The latter is a good set for portraiture or life drawing (if I had someone to life draw) although soft pastels aren't good for holding outlines/hard shapes. I may be better with some portraiture conte crayons which are harder and can be bought in a specified portraiture range of earth colours. Charcoal is also a popular medium for drawing the human form.

Wikipedia says this about pastels. More on pastels, including common mistakes. This is the main page about pastels from that site.

I do have some oil pastels that I bought on holiday in Chamonix about 2 years ago (I have a poorly executed picture of the campsite). Again, these are in a series of foul colours and, generally look like they were carried out by a pre-school group using wax crayons. I may have more success if I either smoothed/mixed the oil pastels with turpentine or combined them with the soft pastels.

Ten things

2005-02-01T05:17:00.000-08:00

Courtesy or no-one but the BBC website:

The best one:

Britain: Ideal for visiting France

Ha, ha!

2005-01-29T13:43:00.000-08:00

Just found on my Livejournal friends list. This is a book written by some sci-fi and fantasy writers to prove a particular American publisher was actually a vanity publisher and would accept any old trash... So they attempted to write the worst book ever written. This is it.

It's definitely worth a read; it's great fun. In fact, it reminds me an awful lot of Jilly Cooper's Riders. The same sex-starved characters who sh*g anything that moves, with the plot (in this case, absent) being merely a substrate to carry the excruciatingly described bonking. The same awful cliches, poor descriptions of characters and parade of banal conversationalists in glamorous settings. But this is, ummmmm, a joke... Riders isn't...

My hovercraft is full of eels...

2005-01-27T23:57:00.000-08:00

Yep, I have a DVD set of all 4 Monty Python movies (although I don't think "And now for something completely different" can be counted as a movie, exactly). I haven't watched The Meaning of Life yet. I've only ever seen The Holy Grail before (which convinced me I liked Monty Python) so the rest of the stuff has been an experience. Interesting just how much has got into the public consciousness (and how sophisticated Monty Python is compared to Little Britain - a series of repetitive sketches with oft repeated catchphrases).

The Life of Brian contains some amazing political satire of far-left groups - "The only group we hate more than the Romans is the People's Front of Judea... But aren't we the People's Front of Judea... No, we're the Judean People's Front. I thought we were the Judean Popular Front. No - I wonder where the Judean Popular Front went. Oh, he's over there."

A friend wondered why I hadn't updated my blog recently (same friend has now agreed to accompany me to the Tate Modern/Tate, diary permitting, wheee heeee :D Am really looking forward - there is only so much you can look around the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery without wanting to see a 'real' art gallery but had no one I could go with who would be the slightest interested in art :( ). Blogwise, it was just a matter of busyness and keeping off the computer weekday evenings.

I did want to post two links: First - An Area the Size of Wales which converts physical quantities into the object they are equivalent in size to. For example, 150 m is the same length as 3 London buses.

Second - the British Library's 'Turning the Pages' project where you can digitally view various famous, precious and illustrated books online by flicking through with the mouse.

And finally I will leave you with:

[World Service style commentator in calm voice] "Yes... Mrs Mc [something] has learnt the first rule of 'not being seen'. Don't stand up. Now, Mr [something] has put us in a bit of a quandary. He could be hidden behind any of three bushes. However, we will soon see which he is hiding behind." BANG... BANG... BANG... AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH... "Yes, it was the middle bush...."

That special gift... for the person who has everything...

2004-12-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of the Bristol University website - here are the instructions and some pictures of the finished item for your delight and delectation.

Blunkett's resignation

2004-12-16T04:04:00.000-08:00

Like most liberals, I have harboured a passionate dislike of the policies of our authoritarian ex-home secretary.

However, when he eventually resigned and pictures like this emerged where it's obvious the poor guy has been crying, I could not feel anything for him but intense pity.

From articles like this, I feel that if he was to sacrifice everything for love (being frightfully romantic this seems like an entirely admirable aim to me) he could have chosen a woman more worthy of his obvious depth of feeling. I suspect that had their roles been reversed, she would not have made the choices he did.

The sheer number of affairs and devotion of all these guys tho' - what do they say about nice girls finishing last!!!!!

2004-12-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

You are 'Christmas Time is Here, by Golly!', by Tom
Lehrer. Hmm, you really don't like Christmas,
do you? From the moment they start playing
carols in the shops in October to the
appearance of the first Easter Eggs in the
shops on New Years Eve, the rampant hypocrisy
of the Christmas spirit sets your teeth on
edge. You know just how many family fights
start over Christmas dinner, how many people
are injured in the Boxing Day sales, and how
few people actually find Christmas even
remotely merry. You liked Scrooge far better
before those ghosts got to him, and you are
only doing this quiz because you are bored at
work and anything is better than listening to
everyone else discuss their Christmas shopping.
Still, it is two days off work, which does
count for something... Enjoy the break.

What Christmas Carol are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks to Chevalier2 for the link!

In which the heroine has a cultural experience...

2004-12-07T01:09:00.000-08:00

According to the Times 'Critic at large', art is 'high culture for people who can’t read.' (he should have added 'and are tone deaf' at which point he'd encapsulate me perfectly).

As a result, it is no surprise that yesterday I wandered into an art gallery. To be precise, I wandered into the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery which is free (because I'm skint and tight) and which is worth the entrance fee just for the inside of the building... oh, and the automatic glass doors. There's nothing like walking in and out of automatic glass doors lots of times. Anyway, it has a nice high ceiling with glass in it, some marble pillars, one of those marble branching staircases with wrought iron railways and a balcony! :D... and some automatic glass doors (which have recently been added).

My reason for going into the art gallery was entirely pragmatic. I have recently purchased an oil painting kit and don't know how to execute stuff like water, trees and stonework since I normally work on silk. Thus, I decided to see how various artists had depicted these things.

Upon entering the gallery and being unable to find the paintings, I encountered a rather stern looking woman who enquired as to what I was looking for. I said "oil paintings" to which she squinted myopically at me and said in a lofty tone "anything specific" with the disgust heaped upon someone who lumped anything done in oils into some interchangeable and homogenous category. Given this, I widened my search criteria to "and possibly water colours".

Being about as cultured as The Full Monty (and unable to remember names), I can say I know nothing more about artists than I did when I entered the gallery. I do know, however, that in the 15th century or earlier, people tended to draw people. By the 16th-17th century, they drew wild-looking landscapes (Romanticism), later they liked technology and cities, and in the modern and post-modern era they draw stuff where you squint at it for ages and don't know what it is. This is a simplistic reflection of the concerns of society, pretty much (although I may have got the centuries wrong) - transition through the Industrial Revolution, blah... I know you can oil paint on cardboard, how to depict water in oils and a good technique for patterning a shawl. I also have memorised how to draw noses using oil pastels (I did some simple oil pastel drawing last year in Chamonix on holiday. Gavarnie at 800 m this year was too cold to sit outside).

I enjoy painting in silk and can produce relatively pretty scarves despite being hopeless at Art at school, which has encouraged me to see if I can paint using anything else. However, I'm utterly unskilled at drawing anything 3D or real (school art - here is a fruit bowl. Draw it in 3 types of medium). My silk paintings are very abstract and not particularly realistic. They're very 'child-like' with unmixed loud colours, basic shapes, an absence of perspective and use Jungian archetypes and unsubtle symbolism to make a commentary on exactly nothing whatsoever. Abstract art is usually a commentary on cultural identity or social alienation in a capitalist society. Mine just say "trees are nice" or "anger is like a flame". But then, my favourite 'classical' artists are Bosch and Dali, so that's possibly to be expected. NB: I especially like the bird with the goldfish bowls (or diving helmets) on its feet and head, and the man with the hollow body and the hat. Like, what was he saying here? (if you go to hell, you will be condemned to an eternity of being eaten by your pet parrot?)... I'm being facetious - there was a social/cultural significance. Dali though, just liked being strange on purpose from what I gather (his moustache being exhibit A for the prosecution)...

The curse of e-silence...

2004-11-28T01:13:00.000-08:00

Replies 3, despondency 300000, belief my profile is aOK 100%

Well, ladies and gents, I officially have e-fleas... I have received exactly no replies beyond the chap who wrote to me before with whom (for the moment), I am still communicating and the two other blokes (45-year old opportunistic... and creepy guy who, yep, he looks creepy 'cos I saw him in Broadmead when out jogging... he didn't notice me, fortunately).

I wrote to approximately 5 men yesterday and so far 2 of them definitely checked their account yesterday and haven't written back. Now, this could be because they're not actually subscribed to the site but it still makes me feel that rather than just being picky (my understanding of why I'm perpetually single), I actually have something so fundamentally wrong with my personality that it can be sniffed out in 2000 characters or else I just look c**p in photos.

I have been added to someone's favourites and he sounds really, well, me but my subscription has expired and he has no photo currently. I'm not intending to resubscribe unless someone writes to me since I'm not spending the next month e-mailing a void.

Postscript: I started communicating with 2 guys from that e-mail around, one of whom sent the sweetest e-mails. I speak in the past tense since they now both appear to have disappeared. I've had maybe one other serious reply (i.e. not a form letter) from the site I'm not subscribed to, which wasn't interesting enough to give me the motivation to subscribe. Mum guesses that maybe it's because it's the Christmas period so the sites are slow full stop. Lazyliberal tells me [again] I'm 'niche' (the word niche always sounds like an itchy type of parasite... You could imagine having an infestation of niche or getting niche and having to itch all the time). Regardless, it's not exactly doing much for my ego...

The Kingdom of Loathing

2004-11-25T13:14:00.000-08:00

This is extremely amusing but rather random...

Rage and despair...

2004-11-24T23:49:00.000-08:00

Views 101 off the Guardian site, messages 2 plus from the one from yesterday, morale 0

I subscribed for a 3 day trial to write back to the chap who sounded nice from the Guardian website. I came home last night to discover I'd received a further 2 messages from the other site. One was a wink from the inevitable "I am 45 and look my age but want a quick sh*g" (at least I get intelligent guys who fulfil this category. They like a bit of discussion about the 2004 US Presidentials and a discussion of Foucault before the quick sh*g, evidently) and the other was an entirely sweet sounding guy from Bristol whose photo gave me the creeps and I'm not sure why (I think he has a startling resemblance to the pervy BF I had when I was 13... Needless to say, not a great starting point so he's going to get a "Thanks, but no thanks" reply)

Likes 'Getting it on'... or maybe 'Getting onto it'

2004-11-23T22:27:00.000-08:00

Sites 3 (one about to be taken down), Replies 1, Nutters 0, Views can't be bothered to check

Well, folks, I got a reply... And it was a perfectly nice, non-weird sounding chap who has a PhD and works in conservation! But it wasn't on the Match.com site which I originally tried. No siree...

I was getting a bit disillusioned with my lack of replies and the MSN site was a bit, well, entertaining to say the least. One of those testimonials I read on a website somewhere said that internet dating was like being a kid in a candy store, except I felt rather like a kid in John Bull Rock... You know, loads of candy but it all looks and sounds the same!

Every guy has his hair shaved off and all their profiles sound identical. It's like, are they cloning these guys? Demonstrating this to mum, I searched briefly and found this wonderful example within MINUTES. Burly, shaven headed guy, 6ft 0" tall...

"i am a good humoured geezer from essex who likes to chat"

The rest of Essex, of course, is as grouchy as heck and utterly silent..

"Enjoy going pubs and getting on it and also enjoy nights in getting on it and some times nights in resting ."

What a wide range of hobbies you have there! What an indepth insight this profile gives into your hobbies, character and view of the world...

"Dont really believe in these internet dating sites"

I've heard that one before. I could make a joke about whether he doesn't believe in Father Christmas or just internet dating sites but that would be milking this profile for laughs.

"as i have tried recently with no joy"

I wonder why... Nothing to do with THE FACT YOU SOUND LIKE EVERY OTHER GUY ON THAT SITE... Apologies for shouting...

"and i consider myself to be fairly normal, if there is such a thing ha ha"

Well, that's you out, man... Provided you are not odd, weird or creepy then being normal is definitely the death toll... Normal = like everyone else which no one should really admit to. However, I guess if he hadn't admitted it, I may just have twigged on...

"Any way i am six foot tall, slim/med build (12 stone), brown hair and eyes and am always up for a laugh. I can always make a lady smile and if i cant then i'll just try harder."

You are more than making me smile. I was laughing because the bloke just hadn't TOUCHED his personal preferences. I mean, fair enough, I don't have any preferences for hair or eye colour but he was thus asking for a woman between 3ft 1" and 8ft 11". You wonder what would happen if someone wrote back and put "I, like you, am a normal woman but I'm 8ft 10". Is that a deal breaker?". Maybe he wouldn't mind - it does sound a bit like "I am a bloke. I would like something to lie on in bed" and I guess it possibly wouldn't matter then... Actually, no, I won't allow speculation to proceed in that direction. Another chap HAD actually changed it - he only preferred women between 4ft 5" and 6ft 0" (he was, incidently, 5ft 2"... Bernie Ecclestone eat your heart out).

And another one (actually, if you read straight on, the two profiles meld flawlessly into a single entity):

"Are you adventourous, fun, up for a laugh? Like all the usual things, Exotic travel, great music, good restaurants, good nights out, good cinema. Lookin for someone to share life pleasures and see how it goes, look forward to hearing from you!!"

You and every other guy on this site, mate... The rhetorical question really gets me. I mean, seriously, does any woman think she's NOT fun, adventurous and up-for-a-laugh? And, like the other chap, he's seeking a woman between 3ft 1" and 8ft 11" who is 'All the usual things'. I mean there's 'not overly narrowing your criteria' and there's... well...

Anyway, given the site works on someone sending you a message and you wanting to reply so paying the subscription, after reading a couple of web reviews I worked out that this was the site of the forever expectant. Yep, everyone sits about waiting for SOMEONE else to contact them so they can see if they want to pay the subscription or not. Kinda "We have 5 million members and 2 of them can send messages". This possibly explains why I haven't got many replies... Or maybe it's because I don't think that by 'good nights out' he means the London Philamonic Orchestra (that would be TOO original) and I'm not really a pubbing and clubbing person (I don't go to classical concerts regularly either but I've been to more classical concerts than I have been out to a club, which is potentially a frightening admission to make). Hence, I guess I manage to NOT fulfil one of the criteria of the chappie above (and all the other guys who've written nearly the same thing - I wonder if they make them up to pad out the site).

I decided at this point to try the Guardian website instead (which was full of anti-establishment types who liked painting and lots of women who described themselves as 'feminists') and, hey presto, within an hour of my profile going up I got a reply! Whahay! Or not whahay - I'll see if I get anymore.

It's a ruddy nutter! Oye! You! Nutter!

2004-11-22T23:28:00.000-08:00

Day 2, sites 2, replies 0, winks 1, nutters 1, morale -30000 (ok, the latter's a gross but amusing overexaggeration. I would have liked a male stampede as soon as the thing went up there tho' - does wonders for the ego)

Yep, I got a wink (someone sends me a smiley and nothing else) from someone whose profile has a) No picture b) No factual information bar he wants to meet a woman with a pulse (or mebbe that's not factual)... Oh, sorry, he's 6ft 0" and has no interest in politics. Yeah, it's funny but it doesn't really get me further than "I have a loony sense of humour".

I've changed my profile (again) so the reader doesn't hit POLITICAL ACTIVISM 3 lines in... It suggests anoraks and an interest in the 1920 by-election results in Upper Snoring - or maybe for that Lib Dem stereotype you need to be actually *in* the Lib Dems :)

Femme de R's diary

2004-11-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

Day 1: Sites 2. Replies 0. Views of profile 62

Given my current drought of fanciable chaps whom I see regularly and have not previous foisted my attention upon, I have decided once again to step unto the breach... Sally forth into the unknown... Take up internet dating...

I did try this approximately 2-years ago and had exactly zero success. It was around that time I wrote this article. I terminated the exercise after I generally got bored of having no success and after I changed my photo to a very pretty picture of me cut from a group photo on my camping holiday to Chamonix. In the general oddness of the world, after spending 10 days in a spider-infested tent with 3 changes of clothing and broken glasses, I actually look significantly nicer when photographed than I do when I dress up. After changing my photo, I received around 3-4 replies from guys significantly older than the age range I was looking for (think 47-55). This perplexed me rather until a helpful chap sent me a rather rude/jokey e-mail enquiring whether I was *really* 23 as I was claiming... Apparently, I looked around 14. Given my 'spotty pubescent lad' set of hobbies (they remain NOT concordant with common interests of 24-25 year old gals), I guess I looked like I was a slightly precocious 12-15 year old tomboy spacecraft and Dungeons and Dragons type trying to look grown-up by getting an 'older' boyfriend (and I was attracting kiddie-lovers like blowflies). I was pretty urcked out at that point.

Yellow Duck and Lazyliberal have been trying to 'de-niche' my profile, making the entirely fair comment that the number of sarcastic, hill-walking, telescope-wielding geniuses with a keen interest in geopolitics and Neil Gaiman graphic novels is not exactly huge.

However, with my list of requirements being reduced to sarcastic, non-evangelical, newspaper-reading graduates (with hair) who like scenery, I have currently received exactly no replies (apparently in the first couple of days, women posting profiles get upwards of 200 replies, ahem... but then PhD students who prefer painting on silk to clubbing are automatically niche esp. if they combine that with political activism).

For the delight and delectation of readers who are used to online dating diaries of this nature then I will be recording my success (or more likely otherwise) at regular intervals. In the meantime, please feel free to laugh at this although seeing her ads, well... I was worried about putting I was an 'unconventional thinker' for fear I would get replies of the 'I'm an unconventional thinker - I enjoy orgies involving multiple corpses and sacrifice a goat during the conjunction of the three black moons at the time of the Feast of Ogg' variety. I mean, I'm a Liberal and each to their own and all (apart from the corpses and the cruelty to goats issue).

For some unknown reason

2004-09-29T01:18:00.000-07:00

I really liked this article...

Time to say goodbye...

2004-09-22T23:02:00.000-07:00

Well, not quite yet. I am leaving Thursday morning, long before Charles Kennedy takes the stage since I have to ensure that I have reviewed some final edits made to an academic paper before 'first thing on Friday'.

I rushed down to the auditorium first thing because of the singular, apparently controversial debate on financing of the BBC. The debate itself wasn't controversial but the amendment to abolish the licence fee was (I should really stop complaining about debates not being controversial; conference is there to make policy, not provide me with an amusing sideshow and if every debate was controversial and close fought then we would probably have a lot of policy members were unhappy with which is obviously NOT good).

After that, I went into town for coffee with Neil from Aberwysth Uni (spelling, tut, tut) who I spent a fair bit of time hanging around with and who was excellent company (thanks Neil) and who had interesting opinions on a wide range of issues... I then trailed about the exhibition for a while before heading off to a fringe on Wind Power given by the Renewables industry. Jokes about Deflatine apart ("The public loves wind"), this fringe was distinguished by its hot buffet, use of power point presentations and the fact that due to there being only 2 reasonably interesting sounding fringes going on (Poverty and wind power), the fringe was packed out... Or it could have been the free buffet advertised. I do have a perfectly good reason for attending rather than being the stereotyped cheap student who tries to save money on food by 'grazing' buffets all conference... Despite people claiming to manage the feat of not having to buy anything but chocolate bars all conference, most people I know end up either missing a lot of meals (in which case I normally take charge of them and march them somewhere to eat) or do what I do (popping out to buy food in free periods) [For the serial thinkers, that was an aside]. I have to teach students sustainability stuff for their open units and picked up various bits from the fringe. I can always get them to try to critically assess the literature as being the output of a lobbying group for the wind industry. Cool, huh?

After the fringe had finally finished, I rushed to a Stress Management fringe. We discussed our Stressor Drivers and learnt how applying diluted lavender oil to the back of the neck in the position of a classic tension headache can relax you. The sound of the sea or running water is reputed to be very therapeutic. Also, your hand can move involuntarily if you are holding it up and switch from a pleasant to an unpleasant/stressful memory. You should, I guess, ideally try to remember a pleasant memory about running water to destress... No lavatory jokes please...

I was then supposed to be manning the LDYS stall but several other people had had the same idea. I thus ended up discussing Britain's nuclear deterrent, who is a war criminal under interational law and issuing orders to submarines all afternoon. This was absolutely fascinating. It wasn't the heaviest conversation I've had here; I distressed everyone in Crash that morning by getting onto whether if you had a plane the size of the universe if it could crash... Okkkkkk... I interspersed this by trying to beat someone to death with an inflatable 'loan shark' (and Lord Rennard took this opportunity to visit the stall).

Once the exhibition shut, there weren't many fringes that floated my boat. Most of Wednesday evening is aimed at well lubricating people before Glee Club. People either love Glee Club or hate it. Enjoyment-wise, I rate it someone around having to eat your own extremities. I hate bad singing at the best of times but an entire room of it is like scraping nails across glass. Yep, I sound like a complete fogey and my general Victor Meldrew quality is reinforced by my alternative option which was to read the Orange Book in bed. Unfortunately, by the time I had located food and ambled along the promenade back to Crash appreciating the therapeutic value of the sea, I fell asleep on page 7. This is a function of my being tired and not a discredit to the authors of the Orange Book.

Ladies, ladies...

2004-09-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

Title alludes to my spending much of the afternoon at GBTF (Gender Balance Task Force training). It also has a certain, well, Victorian seaside town air to it does it not...

I started my morning with a fervent discussion of ethics which plain horrified certain hungover members of LDYS staying at Crash. I discovered the ethical difficulty of consent and keeping public and private separate.

This being that if we suspected a friend was experiencing domestic violence (bruises on the arms, say) but refused to admit to this, is it our duty to intervene through the state given that it is possible to have a consensual relationship involving physical assault which I would argue is no business of the state?

Problem issues: domestic violence is both emotional and physical meaning someone can be reduced to a state where they accept this behaviour. However, a lack of self-esteem exists to some extent in all of us should not be a reason to assume someone cannot make a responsible decision about their own life.

Where did this come from? Well, the conversation roved over suicide in prison, suicide not in prison and fox hunting. The fox hunting issue being that my companion at breakfast said that he felt that allowing people the freedom to be cruel denigated the human condition. This, of course, led to the obvious response that if someone is a sadist then provided they can find a consenting partner, does this constitute cruelty? Does this denigate the human condition? Thus, should we make it illegal? (I would say no, patently). Of course, the fox cannot consent whereas a partner can... And thus the domestic violence conversation started - how do we allow privacy but ensure consent? Can someone be reduced to a condition where they will consent something they don't want? But if we believe this to be the case, surely this is rather like Marxist false consciousness...
The solution could be to try to work on the self-esteem of the abused. Once they gain the confidence to belieev this is not what they deserve, they will leave the relationship on their own... But what if they are beaten to death before then? Problem...

Could you follow that paragraph? If not, you may be a serial thinker. Many men are serial thinkers, proceeding from one idea to the next. Women are more likely to be parallel thinkers who can multi-task between ideas. Neither method is better, both are different... I am apparently an intense parallel thinker. I'm also a strong verbal processor (although I actually think pictorially). This means I think through often by talking to people or rather, at people. Strong male-style communicators appreciate facts, strong female-style - anecdotes. To communicate successfully with both groups you must not overstate either...

And so says the GBTF 'Gender differences in communication styles' training. Very interesting if just so I can irritate my supervisor by doing training-speak at him (he is an intense serial thinker - communication is virtually impossible with him. Oh, and he doesn't appreciate my habit of using him as a medium for verbal processing... He feels the need to provide a solution rather than listen to my drivel).

Before I went to this training I was at the Markets and the Environment debate. The agenda is generally devoid of controversy, unlike the rollocking Southport Spring Conference one. Thus, the debate was confined to people standing up in a 'This motion on transport completely neglects any mention of local cinemas, thus despite agreeing with all of it, please reject this motion' vein... and the 'I'd like to speak to fervently agree with line 16'. Thus, interesting content, not interesting debate-wise.

I attended the Porpoise/dolphin fringe.... This was due to the fact I had submitted a motion on Sustainable Marine Management to the conference. It wasn't accepted but it's in redrafting (Federal Party policy are looking at it) and I will try to resubmit next year.

After that, I was in GBTF training all afternoon. Annoyingly the early evening fringe on the Orange Book launch was cancelled (apparently due to a 'lack of interest'... hmmmm...) so I had some free time before ducking in and out the LDYS fringe on single issue organisations (with Amnesty) and going to the Liberal Revue. There was too much singing, it was predominantly trying to have a go at a division in the party I don't think exists except in the mind of a small minority of which a fair few write Liberator... and I'm the eternal critic given I have a shot at political satire every now and again... thus, I sit through deciding that I could do better. As you do.... :D One day I will have to write and stage a sketch to see if anyone but me finds my humour funny.

Rocking all over the pier

2004-09-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

And it improved from thereon in... Hartlepool has only been mentioned twice (Hartlepool a particular bugbear since I can't get there to campaign due to work commitments) and there is a definite note of defiance and of trying to put clear yellow water (maybe I shouldn't use that particular expression...) between us and the other two parties. I also stopped being ill which improved my day considerably.

Anyway, I attended the Free Trade debate for a while. I thought this could be controversial but, in fact, it ended up as being a discussion about whether water and health should be included in GATs. I possibly came out more informed about GATs than when I started but that wouldn't be hard. I have always prided myself on knowing nothing about politics for fear I might start wanting to talk to people about different types of voting systems or something... and may need to shoot myself in the interests of public safety. Thus it came as something of a disappointment to me when I got 8 out of 10 on the 'Are you a political anorak?' quiz run by the Electoral Commission. For my pains, I won a blue plastic anorak and a mousemat. I would have thought it was a swizz but my companion at the time had done it earlier and only got 6 (thus, not winning said anorak). Not bad for almost purely guessing... well, not quite. It was kinda multiple choice and I felt some of the names/answers were sorta familiar.

Next we debated asylum/immigration. This was apparently daring of us but, to be honest, I couldn't see how the Mail could possibly spin the policy given it was moderate and in favour of an accountable quota system... I maybe surprised - perhaps I should try flicking through a Daily Mail today. Alternatively, I could buy one, read it publically and see how long it took for me to cause a riot (riot = more than 5 people. I think you need 2-5 for an affray).

I ended up at a lunchtime fringe on Penal Reform. This was because I was following some people who were following someone interested in Penal Reform. I always prefer following friends to fringes rather than choosing my own unless i have some desperate preference since i often end up in something which is pretty interesting but that I'd have never considered myself. Penal Reform was actually interesting since I now know what Restorative Justice is and that there is a difference between a Secure Children's Home, a Secure Training Centre and a Young Offender's Institute.

I left the main hall after Charles Kennedy's Q&A. Charles was pretty funny, although I could tell by his body language (crossed legs, hunched neck into shoulders) that he was nervous. If the questions were really unscripted then this is entirely understandable. There was, of course, the inevitable question about The Orange Book. I still haven't got around to reading this yet. I'm getting plenty of sleep so my concentration is ok so probably a task for the train.

After the Q&A I went around the exhibition. Correction - I attempted to stock up on pens for the year... Pens and squeezy planes (where the wings pull off easily, allegedly), and a hedgehog keyring. Best goodies so far was NASUWT just because of the flashing pen and the sheer size of their goody bag. The Local Government lift (it wobbled as well, it felt like a lift) was pretty coolish. I still don't get how anyone got 29 seconds on the IFAW porpoise game. I was going really fast but lost the ball; the guy I was with did it very slow and completed the course. I am also going to have endless amusement out of the British Heart Foundation waist size tape since I have more than one podgy male friend (hee, hee). I was directed to this stall by Heather on the LDYS stall. They were going to find the healthiest political party so she sent me because I'm 'whippet-thin' (according to the woman on the stall) - we decided to help this process along slightly [grin].

After visiting that old favourite, Pizza Hut, we went to the Royal Bath Hotel for a Europe fringe. Europe fringes are generally complete underwear but I was convinced by my companion's killer reasons for going to this fringe a) he'd always wanted to go into the Royal Bath hotel (he lives in Poole) to see what it looked like b) it was in the Gladstone room. c) was that it served food but this became less important after I'd gone to Pizza Hut. He spent so long telling me how conservative and elite the hotel was that inevitably I caused utter proletariat chaos upon arriving... arriving covered in tomato and cheese (hands and face) carrying a takeaway pizza box that I had nowhere to put. I needed a bin and ended up trying to force the box into an ashtray bin in the lobby. 2 doormen converged on me and looked at me and the box as if I was something nasty they'd stood in. Bear in mind that I was not only covered in cheese, I was also wearing a halternecked copy of Marilyn Monroe's dress in pink underneath a bright purple velvet coat... and bright red lipstick...

The Europe fringe was one of the more interesting I've been to although no one tackled the whole issue of 'Where next?' for the EU. Apparently we lose at least 3bn due to the government not being able to borrow at euro rates due to not being in the euro zone (don't question that stat - I *think* I've got it right). Oh, and the main Lib Dem EU fringe attraction, Idris (not a Geographical Information system but a person... I think that's the name) the UKIP chap who heckles amusingly and incoherently. Idris, incidently, was reason d) for attending the fringe. Unfortunately, everyone shut him up :(

Afterwards, we went to a Q&A session run by the Chard group on the erosion of civil liberties. This was in a very small, very hot room with Mark Oaten and Peter Black AM. No speeches, just a discussion. Although conversation kept drying up from time-to-time, it was very unscripted and quite entertaining esp. when ten minutes before the end someone decided to bring up fox hunting just to stir things. I asked some questions about ID cards although my main contribution was showing a councillor from Derby everything I'd collected from the exhibition... loudly.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

2004-09-20T01:42:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are again, dear readers... How long for is a different matter seeing that I've felt ill since about 7pm yesterday... and I only arrived at 3pm. Maybe I've become allergic to Liberal Democrats - not something I'd exactly relish (although other people may differ ;) ).

Sunday afternoon was as dead as those militaristic, melon-brandishing critters in Ice Age (for anyone whose seen that cartoon), so I loitered about the LDYS stall hoping someone I knew would turn up. Lots of people I know arrived and when we got ejected I went to the conference rally.

If I hear that the Liberal Democrats have no no-go areas I'm going to scream... Likewise, if anyone else tells me to go to Hartlepool or that the Lib Dems are the new challengers now... This conference is very much aimed at the media rather than the members from what I've seen so far and I think that's a shame to some extent, being the purist that I am :( I can also be cynical about anything. Oh, and rather depressed that my semi-regular dining/dancing/informing me what debates are about partner isn't coming. It's not we spend a lot of time together or anything, we just often end up at the same academic/sciency fringes. I miss his remarks, his laughter, his presence really, a great deal.

Later I went to the Roy Jenkins life & times fringe... In which I found he was a overall good chap and not much else (although I did miss about 50% of it). I guess I'll just have to buy the book. Crucial conference buy: The Little Orange Book. I bet they're moving sheds of them.

Anyway, a new one on me. Someone I'm sure tried to chat me up. I wasn't that interested but it's not happened before such that I've noticed. I'm aiming for 3 attempts by the end of conference, just to prove I can bait even if I don't want to bite. I'm wearing a very fetching burgandy 'Seven-year itch backless number, which makes me feel disturbingly naked (Marilyn was obviously braver than I). Despite the tape (which keeps becoming visible... or maybe I have a complex), I look like her anorexic younger sister. It's understandable that she was a size 16.

Onwards to fair trade...

Fowl!

2004-08-12T05:34:00.000-07:00

I have added a couple of new links to my sidebar since Lazy Liberal obviously wanted my numerous readers (does anyone actually read this drivel :) ) to be able to savour his blog like a fine single malt (or something). Whilst there, I found the Yellow Duck.

Is a duck a fowl? Lazy Liberal has a soft duck called Paddy (after Paddy Ashdown, don't ya know?) who bizarrely reminds me of his owner.

Links and chains

2004-08-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

A turn-based battle game, just like the ones on the Gameboy!!

Also, check this site out!

And this one

Cedric and me!

2004-08-06T00:27:00.000-07:00

So, I've now been using the PDA for a couple of weeks so what do I think?

Well, it's rather like finding out you've won the services of a butler. Initially you're thinking "this is a very extravagant way of keeping my diary" but by the end of the first week you don't know how you've managed without having a butler and your butler has gone off work with stress-related illness.

The PDA has acquired the dubious anthromorphication of 'Cedric', something I thought up during the 'seagull hours' of 4-5am one over-hot morning when I had the windows open. Cedric has, I realised this morning, that annoying reassuring female computer voice when it told me that despite having only 54MB of free memory when I had 9MB left I had 'low memory'. I am sure if robots takeover the world they will have that niggling, overly polite and reassuring female voice "Welcome to the Type X3 human exterminator. I am here for your comfortable and convenient anhiliation so simply lie back and relax". Previously, I had been somewhat concerned when Cedric started beeping furiously at me despite me having switched him off. He was telling me I had to send a birthday card.

So how has Cedric been performing? Well, he didn't like my demo of Agenda Fusion and I had to hard reset him, thus losing everything I'd installed. Fortunately, it's easy to reinstall using broadband and all the files in My Documents (I currently only have 2 ebooks there) are automatically synchronised with my PC. Likewise all my contact details, task list and calendar. This is worrying me a fair bit since I am intending to take Cedric to Norway later this month and am concerned incase he dies when I'm away especially since the internal storage memory is groaning with several large applications.

So, what did I install eventually? Well, I've ordered everything from Handango which is an excellent site. I currently have:

Battery pack

If you get a PDA buy this program. There is no equivalent to the desktop on a PDA and you can't see your battery life or memory or, indeed, really work out how to close rather than minimise programs without wading through about 600 menus. This program puts them all on the front screen. I trialled this one and preferred battery pack although I'm not quite sure why. This one just seems simpler and more intuitive somehow.

Textmaker

Pocket Word is borderline useless. I downloaded a paper I was taking to the LDYS Executive meeting which was simply formatted, Times New Roman font with basic bullets. Most of my PhD work is full of tables, text boxes and images so this was a good test. It lost all the bullets leaving the text floating aimlessly about in the centre of the screen. Textmaker is a well-featured word-processing program and, if you don't have MS Office, it installs a PC version as well.

Adobe Acrobat Reader

This is free but not in ROM (you lose it if you hard reset)

MS Reader

For ebooks. This is significantly better for books than Adobe Acrobat since you can bookmark and go immediately back to where you were reading last. Also free

Pocket Slides

If you have a VGA card you can apparently present from a Pocket PC! However, despite getting this almost bankrupting me, I intend to use it for viewing my Norway poster (it will actually allow you to view an AO size slide) and for producing crib cards... I'm very worried about my poster. I just thought academic postering was just writing a pretty poster and standing next to it looking glamorous. But, no, I will have to answer questions too [quiver, quiver] so crib cards, an electronic version I can look over without getting it out the tube, my draft chapter in Textmaker and a few key papers in Adobe Pocket Reader will be a huge help... Writing an original poster is hard work:

"The best general advice I can give a first-time poster constructor is to describe the circumstance in which a poster will eventually be viewed: a hot, congested room filled with people who are there primarily to socialize, not to look at posters. And, because poster sessions are often concurrent with the "wine and beer" session, chaos is further increased by hundreds of drunk, uninhibited graduate students staggering around hitting on each other. So as you design your poster, keep in mind that it must be informative, brief, and visually slick in order to attract viewers. A good motivational exercise is to imagine that you will be sandwiched between a poster on "Teaching house cats to perform cold fusion" and one on "Mating preferences in sex-starved red pandas." In such a situation, your poster must be great, not just OK, if you hope to attract an audience."

Pocket Informant

After trialling both this and Agenda Fusion I found this had similar functionality but the interface was less chaotic so I didn't keep getting the wrong thing by accident, could be made just as garish and lurid by careful customisation and hasn't made Cedric very ill yet.

It is vastly superior to the built-in programs and this is my main use of Cedric. Tasks, Calendar, Notes, etc. are interfaced together and you can categorise the type of event with icons and colour-scheme everything (I use this a lot). It also chimes and alerts me to appointments by switching itself on which the Pocket Outlook program just didn't do at all.

A to Z viewer and map of central London

Has the tube map and everything. Saves me remembering to take my paper version and having to lug the paper version about. Since it's on my SD card, I do have to remember to take the SD card but I will start taking the SD card everywhere as a matter of course once I have a few files on Cedric. Once you have the viewer you can buy extra maps of anywhere you might be going which, of course, is very useful.

Universal Converter

Converts everything - lengths (imperial/metric), clothing sizes, astronomical units (parsecs anyone?) and currency including the Norwegian NOK which is going to be very useful very soon...

Background themes

Do you just want the boring Windows Mobile Pocket backdrop? No... Me neither...

I bought 2 theme packs - this one and this one.

But you can always get nice themes like, well, flowers...

Ebooks

There are lots of ebooks around but I got a big heap of classic philosophical essays (excellent value) and Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Games

With having a Gameboy I wasn't too keen on using Cedric as a games machine especially since the Gameboy will take a lot more abuse to its little keys, joypad and it doesn't have a notoriously delicate touch screen.

However, I got a couple of things mainly because there aren't Gameboy equivalents and because they were cheap for what they were and because you can only play Jawbreaker on ROM so much if I haven't got the Gameboy with me. The graphics tend to be better too, you can get far more puzzle games... but there tends not to be the predominance of random Japanese games with bad translations and manga graphics of which I'm an enormous fan.

Marble Worlds is excellent but rock hard. I may consider getting the expansion packs at some point.. if I can ever finish Level 1 that is before Cedric's joypad and screen dies. Basically, guide a marble around a maze jumping on trampolines and trying not to fall off. It's a version of a classic Atari game called Marble Madness and similar to Ballance (see other reviews).

Snails is, well, Worms but with Snails... It has equally cute graphics and subversive humour "Moogie is going to the bathroom, please wait". It's £7! You can play it on the move! It has chirpy music! It has a Deathmatch mode, missions and you can play it with a friend! What's there not to like?!

This is a version of a game called Sokoban (I think). It is £3.50. It has cute music, cute noises and is generally quirky.

Command and Conquer! But in space and with pounding music which drives people mad if you've forgotten your headphones... Very cool game and plays just like C&C as well. Great graphics, lava, forest, desert scenarios and not at all buggy. Apparently very short but I'm c**p at computer games so I doubt that's going to be a problem.

He who must not be named...

2004-08-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

Despite my general dislike of Harry Potter and my enduring belief that both Sabriel by Gareth Nix and the Dark Materials Trilogy knock stars, spots and stripes off it, I am looking forward to the 4th in the series.

Half-aware and half-alive

2004-08-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Lady Chatterley's Lover. This particular decision reading matter-wise was purely determined by the fact I wanted an MS Reader ebook for Cedric (the PDA), saw Lady Chatterley's Lover and was curious on the grounds that it was banned in the 1960s as a result of being obscene. There's nothing to encourage something's popularity than banning it.

Despite the fact it's notorious for being about a lady f***king her gamekeeper, it's actually a very political novel about the effect of creeping industrialisation on the landed aristocracy, class relations and the human condition. The most telling quote is not the one on Handango but:

'Sex is really only touch, the closest of all touch. And it's touch we're afraid of. We're only half-conscious, and half alive. We've got to come alive and aware'

It's all about Marxist alienation and Cartesian dualism... the way that the miners are mechanically and metallically incorporated into the machine of the collieries by the cold emotionless husks of thinking men. The anti-establishment vibrancy of the gamekeeper and the passion for the body, is contrasted with the dead passion for the mind of Lord Chatterley who is Cambridge educated and only seems to care for books and technology.

And it's there we diverge, the D.H. Lawrence and I. Whereas he seems to see the joy of communicating with an intelligent man as the two girls do at the beginning as being separate from the 'sex thing' as he so charmingly and 1928ingly puts it, the 'sex thing' being a dreary side-effect that must be consented to... I see the pleasures of the mind and body as interlinked. There is nothing that inspires passion such as either burning desire repressed behind a mask of reason such that its promise cries out to be unleashed or verbal sparring with someone who is smart and brandishes it with wit and mischief. In the latter case, the mental challenge, eyes locked, words and ideas used like rapidly flicking rapiers in combat, can so easily evolve into physical sparring. It is in those sort of fights that the senses come alive for what comes after.

2004-07-31T07:23:00.000-07:00

How to make a speech:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3940093.stm

My contribution to this is here:

Joseph Goebbels didn't really contribute much positive to society... However, he did say a couple of useful things and those were to do with making an effective political speech. It is to him that we can attribute the phrase 'Throw enough mud against the wall and some of it will stick' i.e. repeat your point numerous times and you'll convince people that it's valid. He also (according to my old history teacher) told us that you should only ever make 3 points in a speech regardless of how long it is. The trick is, of course, to rehash your point several times in slightly different ways.

Another useful tip is to start a controversial speech (or indeed any speech at all) by telling people positive things. Complimenting them is often a good tactic. After all, how could you EVER disagree with someone who's telling you how great you are!

As someone whose been to a couple of party conferences and is keen to improve their speech-making skills, I've picked up another useful tip and that's keywords. These are words that form the base of the belief system of the group you're talking too. In the case of Lib Dems they're things like 'freedom', 'liberty', 'human rights' and 'our common humanity'. Add a couple of these keywords at critical moments and you can have them all leaping about in the aisles without saying anything of substance whatsoever (people with other political allegiances can replace these ones with their own choice of 'buzzwords').

[Exercise: watch a couple of politicians in action - the higher profile the better, and try to work out the 'keywords' by which they can cause the audience to surge to their feet and applaud vigorously. You'll find it's not when they've just concluded an argument of immense gravity and importance - they'll have said something like "Tell the world why you're proud of America... [because] being American means being free. That's why they're proud " which adds zero to the sum of human knowledge but, well, it makes the Americans feel really GOOD about themselves...]

To test this theory and to amuse my flatmate, I spent an entertaining 5 minutes demonstrating the theory that you can construct an entire speech (or at least the beginning 1/3 of one) from the above rules without actually needing to add any information at all. I made grave pronouncements and grandiose gestures interspersed with sweeping pauses... It was profound! It was dynamic! It was completely meaningless... Here is the (absence of content) in full:'Fellow delgates... This weekend we have shown the gravity of our intent [dramatic pause]. We have spoken with seriousness... and with conviction [pause for effect]. We have worked hard, fellow delegates, and I take this opportunity to stand and thank you for your unyielding determination that has permitted us to be here today [final 3 words emphasised](probably at least one round of applause by this point). We have remained uncowered and this has allowed us to take bold leaps forward and to show the world what we are made of. Yes [emphasised strongly. Pause]. And we have done that [pause]. But we must continue. Our fight is NOT over. We must take it forward, fellow delegates [voice begins to rise]. We must strive for freedom. We must press for liberty. We must recognise our common humanity in this struggle [voice drops](audience should be hyperventilating by now). But I have great confidence in you. You have shown time and time again that you have what it takes to do what needs to be done.[HUGE PAUSE] I trust in you to do it again... Etc.'

I'm not the only person to pick up on this one, by the way. It also appeared in a political satire called 'In the Red' on BBC2 in 1998. It involved a rather self-important politician who spent a lot of time eating in the Ritz and his speechwriter did everything else. At the end, the nubile daughter of said politician ended up in a passionate clinch with the speechwriter who had left his cassette recorder going. This was, of course, the tape he used for recording the politician's speeches and thus the latter part of the speech he was going to give to the Commons consisted of a transcript of the young couple's foreplay. The speech was amazingly well received and received a standing ovation despite making no sense at all...

All this talk of clinically tugging the heartstrings whilst saying nothing sounds terribly cynical and, indeed, it is. Surely politics should be about working to change the world for the betterment of society rather than trying to convince people how great you are (and how great they are) whilst "compress[ing] the most words into the smallest idea" (Abraham Lincoln)? It is, of course, fine in moderation (exciting your audience is helpful to the presentation of your material) and clocking up a few mentions of 'our common humanity' is innocent enough (annoying if you actually want an idea of someone's policy from their speech and they spend the first half telling you that you're brilliant. I mean, I know I am already - tell me something useful. I once attended a fringe on Europe like this - they spent the entire time telling us how insightful we were to be in favour of the Euro whereas I'd gone to find out why our pro-Euro arguments beat anti-Euro ones... I should have just got a book).

They wrote this on purpose, right?

2004-07-29T03:41:00.000-07:00

From the Guardian backbencher

Sunday. 10.45pm, R4: The MPs Road Show
The science and technology committee begin their inquiry into human reproduction.

Only been out a couple of days...

2004-07-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

... and here's the spoof already.

Losing your marbles...

2004-07-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

And if you haven't had enough of stupid games involving guiding marbles about then you can try the demo of Marble Worlds, a copy of the Pocket PC game or Ballance which has thought puzzles, different textures of marble and gorgeous, ambient Japanese-style music. The full game can be bought from Amazon here.

Thanks to the Squire for pointing me in the direction of Metafilter which is where I'm getting strange links from.

Marble Madness...

2004-07-24T02:59:00.000-07:00

Very good fun if you have broadband. Does what it says on the tin...

Find it here.

Questions... Questions...

2004-07-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

On my friend's site:

Sleeping Beauty

We plan to put Beauty to sleep by chemical means, and then we'll flip a (fair) coin. If the coin lands Heads, we will awaken Beauty on Monday afternoon and interview her. If it lands Tails, we will awaken her Monday afternoon, interview her, put her back to sleep, and then awaken her again on Tuesday afternoon and interview her again.The (each?) interview is to consist of the one question: what is your credence now for the proposition that our coin landed Heads?When awakened (and during the interview) Beauty will not be able to tell which day it is, nor will she remember whether she has been awakened before.She knows the above details of our experiment.What credence should she state in answer to our question?

From my philosophy book [101 Philosophy Problems]:

The island

Take an island. There is the possibility that a fatal disease will strike the island and kill 2/3 of the inhabitants. 1/3 of people have natural immunity. Some of those people know they have natural immunity (they had it before and survived) and some do not. If they chew a particular leaf then they will be immunised but 1/20th of people will die of the vaccine. If anyone gets the disease at all then it mutates into a more virulent form in which case chewing the leaves is useful.

Is a majority decision towards vaccination fair and democratic? Should the vaccination program be adopted?

Fahrenheit 9/11

2004-07-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

Having never encountered Michael Moore's films before I can say that whatever your political persuasion, he is a brilliant film-maker. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a remarkable but flawed polemic that thunders through the cinema with the emotional force of a punch in the chest and all the subtly of one too.

The popularity of the film was probably evidenced by the queues of people who had turned up for the Watershed Sunday matinee showing. They were queuing into the cafe and down the stairs into the main foyer. A cinema the size of a small Odeon screen was packed and they were showing the film 3 times a day. That doesn't mean it's good but it does mean the publicity worked [wink].

So, what did they and I see? Was it worth the hype? Straight answer is yes and the whole cinema erupted into applause at the credits. He is a far better film-maker than an author. I read Stupid White Men and alternated between being appalled and wanting to strangle him for the bouts of c**p, pointless cynicalism and outright exaggeration. This about summarised how I felt about the film as well. However, the book didn't move me close to tears at least three times nor fired me up afresh with the knowledge of why exactly I became and am a political activist.

Some reviewers have criticised Michael Moore for his lingering shots of Lila Lipscott wracked with tears over the death of her son in Iraq. I felt it wasn't tasteless since if I was her, I would probably want George Bush to watch every drawn-out painful moment of it. The sounds of the aircraft hitting the two towers, the screams, the aghast faces and then later, the gruelling shots of screaming Iraqi families and mutilated bodies and even the derelict, shabby and impoverished surroundings of Flint, Michigan are all harrowing. It brings home the fact that the decisions our political representatives undertake are important, not to be taken lightly and certainly not for a few extra million bucks. Michael Moore's argument, of course, is that they were.

So far so good... Michael Moore rips through the accusations: Afghanistan invaded for a gas pipeline, Bush Junior's failed companies being bankrolled by the Saudis whilst his daddy was in office, the familiar election fixing and US corporation contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq. Even if 10% is true it is damning and you really get a sense of Marx's argument about government being merely a tool for capitalism in the current US although it is less government and more the Bush administration.

The problem with the film is that the grains of truth, the things that should make every American vote Kerry are easily torpedoed by Moore's desire to keep on going... and going... and going... with the amplitude of his polemic. It makes it far too easy for his opponents to shoot down the exaggerations so discrediting the grit. A leopard print coat is striking, adding matching leggings and shoes is just too easy to criticise (hope this doesnt conquer any images of Michael Moore wearing said items [wink]).

Take, for example, the coalition of the willing where he generates laughs from naming Romania and Costa Rica completely missing Britain and Australia... Yeah, it's true but it's a bit of an omission. Pictures of Rice and co preening themselves - what's that in aid of? They look funny, they have idiosyncracies... So what? As for the footage of Bush sitting there reading the goat book in the school for nearly ten minutes after the second plane hit the two towers, well I just felt sorry for Bush as Moore ridiculed him in voiceover. It really looked like he was shocked, horrified and trying to take things in and THAT'S why he didn't move. Moore's comments about Iraq never killing US troops was plain rubbish although I do disagree with the reading some critics have made about the peaceful Iraq cafe and kite-flying scenes. I don't think these are intended to portray Iraq as an ideal holiday destination pre-invasion. To me the main horror was seeing the children, the cafes... and then the bodies, the frightened families, the shouting. The power is recognising our common humanity.

The Saudi links bit is also terribly confused and I'm not exactly sure what the implication was that he was aiming for in places. In fact, sometimes when I was watching it I wasn't sure he knew. It was like he'd stumbled on some shocking stuff, wasn't sure what it meant and just threw it in and allowed your favourite conspiracy theory to fill in the gaps. It's to his credit as a film-maker that the general muddle in parts wasn't that noticeable and didn't spoil the thrust and power of the film.

In conclusion, if you want to see someone reading the US Patriot Act from an ice cream van... cut... let's try again... Ahem... It's a must see film if you can find somewhere showing it even if you think it's all rubbish because of its emotional force and potential influence. Michael Moore hardly makes a personal appearance so it's fine if you don't like him. Bush appears lots of times and, ummmm, really reminds me of my dad for some extremely worrying reason. Perhaps it's because he comes off as being extremely laid back with a vaguely 'can't be arsed' rebellious air... Beats Shrek 2 for the film of the summer.

For the person who has everything

2004-07-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, the immortal question. What to get that special person in your life who has everything. Well, now we have the answer. You can find the explanation here.

Small... and beautifully formed

2004-07-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

Her chaotic life

The fact that my life is, well, a tad chaotic and usually planned several months in advance has been bugging ME for a fair bit of time as well as bugging other people who often have to book an appointment with me several weeks in advance :( This isn't improved by the fact my diary is on my work computer and my telephone numbers and contacts are spread between my e-mail account and my mobile phone.

What I need

Thus, with the aid of a nice mother who will give me money, I went on a search for a PDA (personal digital assistant if you aren't physically fused with your computer... courtesy of Microsoft [bleurgh] ). My specifications were something that had a nice colour screen, would keep my addresses, phone numbers, etc. and that I could write memos on, edit Word documents with and view photos with. I didn't really need internet connectivity because my phone thinks Bluetooth is something to do with whales [my mum thinks Bluetooth is something to do with mobile phones and given she is still struggling to work window scrollbars I'm shocked!] Since I only have a maintenance grant, ideally this should come to less than £200 including accessories.

What I'm looking for [this sounds like song lyrics... what I'm looking foooorrrrr?!]

I've decided to share my results purely because, well, computer reviews don't really deal with the sort of thing I want to know. There's no point in having an all-singing, all-dancing system that not only plays MP3s and keeps your diary but also runs the London marathon and can rustle up a nice curry if 3 days in the screen goes dead and it goes to electronic micro-computer heaven. Likewise, there's not a lot of point in something if it has a fixed expected life before you've got to pay the cost of the thing to get it replaced. You may want to upgrade in 2 years but you might not be the CEO of a major corporation and own a yacht. I thus look for warranty, reliability and known faults, and computer reviews never have the things long enough and get them when they've just been released so people have had less chance to complain.

In the Palm OS of your hand

Apparently the first thing you should look at is whether you want the Palm operating system (OS) or Windows Pocket Mobile 2003 (or whatever it's called). One of them is by Microsoft who brought us Windows . Windows, in case you're not familiar, is that operating system that crashes at least 16 times a day. Palm has Documents To Go which is kind of like Pocket Office 2003 but better. As a Liberal, I am dead against monopolies since they stifle creativity and allow the development of big, bloated attempts at software which have huge hackable faults in them and which require vast quantities of memory and run really slowly (I don't like Windows, ok, so shoot me)... Rant over... As a result, I really wanted a PDA that ran Palm OS 5.2.1. Unfortunately, Sony is allegedly pulling out of the PDA market (source PDA Buyer Issue 07) and the only other company using Palm OS 5.2.1 is PalmOne. Palm PDAs do tend to be less expensive than Pocket PC ones and this is A GOOD THING.

Bottom of the palm

The main systems that you would be looking for Palm OS 5.2.1 at bottom of the range (almost bottom actually - I wasn't paying £70 for a glorified address book) are the Sony Clie TJ35 (~£145 from Amazon) and the Palm Tungsten E (~£133 from Amazon). I never really got into looking at the Sony seriously until later because the Palm Tungsten seemed a really great buy and did everything I wanted it to do without being horrifyingly expensive. You can play MP3s on it, keep schedules, addresses, diary and use Documents To Go to edit Powerpoint (Pocket Office can't edit Powerpoint although you can buy a 3rd party application to do this), Word and Excel files. Unfortunately, the 'E' has a 90-day warranty... Checking on the Amazon site, a worrying number had died and you keep wondering "why not 365-days?"... Hmmm, maybe this thing is a bit, ahem, disposable. So I googled Palm Tungsten E and warranty...

"...Unfortunately Palm has an established history of poor hardware..."

"... I called Palm tech support and was told the Tungsten E is the only Palm that has this 90 day warranty, and I should try doing a hard reset. ... "

"... Anyways, my experience, around a month and a half (thank gd it happened within the warranty) my palm started loosing battery life very fast, it got so bad that ... "

And that was just page 1 of the Google results... I could have chosen to get one from Comet or Dixons with an extended warranty but that made the thing so expensive (+£45-£49) that I could have got a higher specification model. Furthermore, it didn't include the built-in battery which was one of the main things that went wrong.

That didn't work so...

Anyway, I then started looking at the Zire 72 which is the model up from the Tungsten E and is very fluffy and consumer (rather than business) orientated. Although this was notable for suffering from peeling paint, I assumed it might have a 1-year warranty and it seemed to be easier to buy a case for it. Somewhere on the UK PalmOne site I found that the 90-day warranty appeared to apply to all their products (I now can't find it again - these people bury these things deep).

Power to the people (or the battery/consumerable rip-off)

The Zire 72 ALSO had a built-in battery which meant as soon as the lithium-ion battery runs out, you have to return the thing to the factory and pay £100 to have it replaced. Now, for some reason, this issue never bothers me with the Gameboy but this is probably because the Gameboy is cheaper and because I try to hang on to computers for years because speed rather than the system determines what you can play/do and I never really test the limits of the system. By the time the Gameboy goes wrong, I will have probably got a DS (which plays all existing GBA games :D). I just keep thinking by the time you start paying close to £200 for something, it shouldn't go off in 2-years. The Sony TJ35 had a year guarantee but the battery isn't included because it's a consumerable. This means that if your battery goes wrong in 2 months then it's your fault for 'abusing' the battery and hence you have to pay £100 to have your battery replaced. None of the Palm OS systems, regardless of how expensive they are, have user-replaceable batteries. I found this pretty crazy although you can buy third party batteries here for £30 provided you're ok with taking the thing apart yourself.

Slinking back to Windows

Well, given the Palm's didn't seem brilliantly reliable and the cost of extended warranties from Dixons, etc. is a joke and given Sony is pulling out of the PDA market with the belief the next systems won't be running on Palm OS AND none of the Palm OS systems have user-replaceable batteries limiting their life to 13-24 months (it is nice to think your system can run on and on if you want it to)... then... well, I had to start grudgingly looking at a Pocket PC rather than a Palm (Windows... Booo! Hiss! Shame! Resign!). It's lucky I have a Windows PC though - only Palm systems will interface with Macs. Sadly, as in every other sphere, it looks like Microsoft is going to get its iron hand around the PDA market. There are a fair number of the usual brands running Pocket PC: Toshiba, HP/Compaq, Dell... and probably Sony at some point in the future. The Pocket PCs tend to start at a higher base price than the Palms with a 'bog-standard' model getting on for close to £200. I wrote Toshiba e400 off instantly due to the built-in battery again leaving me with two systems with user-replaceable lithium-ion batteries - Dell and HP.

Choices, choices...

It's now hard to buy the older HP iPAQ h1930, it appears, so I was looking at the HP iPAQ h1940 instead. Dell have a range of systems, the oldest X5 Axim, the older X3i and the new X30. The Axim X30 has just come out and thus they have a free postage offer on it and have slashed the price (until 21/07/04). The X30 was thus significantly cheaper than the X5 for better specs. This to me seemed a shame since I liked the chunky, rubbery appearance of the X5 (it appears I'm in a minority on this one). All these systems come with a full year's warranty. The Dell you could extend the warranty for 2-years. I had a Dell laptop for 3-years which was immensely powerful and as ugly as sin (I called it 'the black brick' for good reason. It's kind of like this but chunkier, black and with sharper edges. It weighed a ton and had a fan which sounded like one on a jeep) and the thing that gave out on it was the power cable which had a nasty habit of shorting and cutting the laptop off. My dad has been promising to mend the power cable for ages and hasn't got around to it. The brick was reliable but I had terrible problems setting it up due to software issues, it took ages to come and the technical support was awful. That said, once it did get going I had no problems with it at all bar some loose keys. Apparently various people had had problems with new Axims being delayed for weeks because of supply problems and the newer systems having teething problems. Early teething problems also plagued my Psion 5(badly peeling paint) which I'm replacing since the backlight has died (I've had the Psion for about 5-6 years). Given the technical support was dreadful the limited time we had to deal with it, I felt unsure about the system especially since the Dell Axims (bar the X5) are very ugly and boxy (rather like the much lamented and missed 'brick') and I felt that perhaps there were some corners being cut with the casing which is a bit worrying with a PDA but not too much of a problem with the notebook.

iPAQs

The iPAQ h1940 with aluminium case, spare battery and SD card bought from elsewhere was actually cheaper than the similar specification Dell X30 (the cheaper models of most PDAs don't come with a decent case, sufficient memory to play MP3s or a cradle. The latter computer reviewers seem to think is important but I've never had a cradle so I'm not going to miss it). The only problem with the iPAQ was that various people had reported broken screens that HP wouldn't replace since it was deemed to be accidental damage and not a design flaw. The consensus seems to be that it's more susceptible than something bigger and you've got to treat it carefully... I would have a fit if I dropped any electronic equipment from waist-height even once rather than be angry the screen had broken! My Psion lost its stylus because the spring broke in the 'stylus holding in mechanism' when it was dropped (once in the 6-years I've owned it). The iPAQ h1940 is also notable for having a yellow screen but a lot of reviewers conclude that the first-time PDA user won't be too bothered about this and I found the yellowness I've seen on pictures rather homely and warm-looking.

And after all that...

Anyway, conclusion. I bought a h1940 with an aluminium case to protect it. I've always (touch wood) been satisfied with HP printers I've had so decided I'd try HP this time to see how it went. The h1900s are apparently design classics; small, shiny and beautifully formed... rather like me (well, ok, not the shiny bit [wink]).

More shortly (I should have the device on Monday)...

It's ice, Jim, but not as we know it...

2004-07-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

Today I went to THE most interesting seminar I've ever attended, without exception, given by this chap. It was close enough to my PhD topic that I could understand the hard-going bits (I use different radar frequencies) but because I'm a sci-fi nut I find Jupiter's moons far more interesting than Greenland or Antarctica.

He'd been involved in doing the feasibility and instrument design for the proposed JIMO mission to 3 of Jupiter's moons. Jupiter has 4 large moons (from inside outwards): Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Due to the presence of Jupiter and other moons, the inner moons of these moons especially experience huge tidal forces. Io is the innermost and the most volcanic object in the solar system. Europa is ice-covered but due to tidal forces is believed to have an ocean under an ice crust because of the geothermal heat generated from below. This makes it one of most promising sites for LIFE in our solar system. The best evidence for this ocean is the fact that gravity measurements have shown that the outer part of this moon has a density of 1 (water). Europa is pretty structural differentiated and has a silicate mantle. Although Ganymede and Callisto are progressively less differentiated (substance is the same right down), it's also believed they have oceans but buried far deeper.

There are lots of theories about how thick the ice crust is and how the ice moves about. For example, there is the chaos regions where the ice crust seems to disappear and then there are the ridges where material is injected and ice crust seems to be being formed. Blankenship and others (inc. Keith Raney who designed one of the radar altimeters I'm working on) were testing the feasibility of using a ground-penetrating radar to look a the internal structures of Europa and consider the success of these theories. They had to estimate the penetration depth of the radar considering things like grain size, impurities and the radar noise from Jupiter on the side that faced the planet.

Anyway, the JIMO launch is supposed to be 2013 and the instrument should be collecting data in 2027 provided the money isn't taken out of the space program. Space travel is expensive - putting a coffee can into orbit around Jupiter apparently costs $1bn. The feasibility study was promising and the technology has come on since they did the feasibility assessment in 1999. The JIMO mission is using ion fission propulsion which can carry a larger payload. The spacecraft has to be quite long in order to protect the radar from the radiation from the propulsion system. It also has a tennis court's worth of heat dissipating fins and a special cone for deflecting the radiation. However, the ion acceleration plates are at the back. The picture is under the JIMO link.

I'm shocked I can remember all of this. However, the lecture was at 10am and I DID think I had just found my postdoc topic [wink].

Courtesy of Dead Ringers

2004-06-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

"And now, we're going to go live to some townhall somewhere in England and talk to some politician or other whose waiting to speak to us. Oh, hello, and how would you sum up this evening?"

"Well, it's categorically been a success for us and the other two parties didn't stand a chance. What we can take away from this evening is that we've made real progress and nothing is going to take that away, whatever bluster the other parties come out with"

"Erm, and which party are you from?"

"I don't think that's relevant. The crucial thing is that I've said the right thing in a reassuring voice and, more importantly... I sounded like I meant it."

The old ways...

2004-06-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

For some reason, despite being as much of a europhile as you can get, I can feel nothing but pride in UKIP's European election result [see here the Telegraph, the Guardian and the BBC].

I always had a terror in the back of my mind that the British public were like zombies who would vote methodically for the same parties year-on-year and when they didn't vote it was a consumerist-induced apathy. I think the main parties have campaigned along this line. It's always 2 parties (we're seen as 'irritatingly' in the way, but increasingly where we are first or second it is still 2 parties. Us and them. The Lib Dems can't win here, Labour can't win here, the Tories can't win here), tribalism, your supporters, their supporters and voting strategically against whoever's in competition. Policy is rarely mentioned. This is an observation made from debating on boards with 'the other side', reading leaflets dropped into my pigeonhole and campaigning. Sadly, in many cases the Lib Dems are as bad for this as everyone else.

I am glad that Tony Blair has proved for us what happens if you ignore your electorate or just assume they'll vote Labour because they always have. I'm glad that it wasn't the BNP who had to show this to the political establishment. I'm proud to be pro-Europe and Liberals are always internationalist but pre-UKIP, Europhilics had nowhere to vote. Now they do and I hope that we can now start having a dialogue about Europe and asylum to win hearts and minds instead of lazily pretending that Europhilics don't matter and that the BNP only win seats on low turnout. Europhiles and people fervently anti-racist like me KNOW we're right; it's our job to convince the UKIP and BNP voters instead of sitting around with our fingers in our ears and pressing on regardless. Politics is about winning hearts and minds NOT expecting people to put a cross in the box for you because you're not the team with a different rosette.

It's also our job to form a cross-party coalition to go out and talk to people who aren't voting in person. It's amazing just how many people you can talk around on the doorstep if someone says they're not going to vote and you don't just walk away (I've done this). Better yet, if you're the first one to do it then the likelihood is that you're the one they're going to vote for because you took the time to listen and talk to them. It's a mammoth job and it's no single group's responsibility. The interesting thing is just how many people you could get out there to help if it was non-partisan. There are many who would never join a party but are fervent about the importance of the political process.

Finally, the machinery cranked out every election by all the parties needs to be taken apart and examined carefully. The people have a lot more information than they used to and the old conflicts: owners/workers, Tory/Labour don't mean what they did. The wind has changed, the old ways are just that, old, and the establishment doesn't seem to have noticed. We need to 'shock, horror' have a proper conversation with the people for once instead of leaving it all to the Sun. Viva the new age of politics! (she hopes but Tony Blair won't... too set in his ways sadly).

Harry Potter and Gollum's twin brother...

2004-06-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

...starring as a werewolf (the CGI was so bad I can't find a picture). Werewolves, so far as I gather, are SUPPOSED to have hair. As it was, it did have a strange resemblance to the bro or sis of gollum who was mighty annoyed at appearing suddenly in the wrong movie bang in the middle of a balding chap wearing tweed.

Out of the three movies I've seen this summer so far, this was the best. An added bonus was the fact I managed to pick a subtitled screening which meant that NOT ONLY did I not have to watch the trailers and adverts (instead, the lights didn't go out for 20 minutes during which time I was reading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) but also the subtitles wrote out ALL the script including remarks mumbled at the back of the set. This meant I got to enjoy, for example, the whole of the conversation occurring between Minister Fudge, the Executioner, Dumbledore and Hagrid about tea whilst the main trio were conversing behind some pumpkins. This was otherwise inaudible. My only objection was that birds do NOT witter... They twitter (grrrrrr)... [yep, all background noise was also helpfully subtitled].

So to the movie. Well, it misses out about 3/4 of the book. Fortunately or unfortunately, I read all the books last summer in Chamonix since they were the only things I could find in English translation in the town bookshop. As such, I don't remember which bits were missing. All I did remember was that Sirius Black was the good guy which pretty much scuppered any sense of suspense. That said, Harry Potter isn't really big on suspense. You know that at the crucial, terminal moment a hitherto unmentioned or unmastered magical spell or artefact will miraculously appear and save the day. Thus, Harry on the verge of death brings about nothing but mild curiousity as to what plot device J.K. Rowling is going to conquer up next.

Putting aside for the moment that the only good actors were the ones playing Professors Lupin and Snape, and possibly Dumbledore, and that Malfoy had become so wimpy that he gave me cause to do nothing but shake him vigorously, give him a kick up the ass and then take him to the hairdresser... Putting aside for the moment that Hogwarts had moved location from the previous film, translocating the whomping willow and Hagrid's cottage in the process... I loved the hippogriff

I also loved the clock face on the tower, and the gyroscope and solar system model that appeared whilst Lupin was teaching Harry the Patronus charm. A friend liked the rollerskating spider which was faintly amusing if you like black widows wearing pink rollerskates, that is. I preferred the Monster Book of Monsters myself.

I'm sad to say that the Dementors weren't very scary, rather like wrapping the end of a vacuum cleaner in strips of dirty linen before sticking a few twigs on the end and plunging the whole ensemble into liquid nitrogen.

"Oye, washing-face... Think you can suck out my soul, you son of a lamprey!"

Maybe if I was 6 or 7 years old I'd have been scared but if I remember myself at 6/7, I could think up far worse things than the Dementors all by myself. It was supposed to be rather dark but it was as menacing as Riverdance performing on the forecourt of a 1960s shopping precinct during a rain shower. However, it was based on a children's book and I've just been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman so go figure:

I don't think a nightmare with teeth in its eyesockets "the eyes are mine" really goes with the territory. In conclusion, mildly entertaining but don't expect profound revelations about the life, the universe and everything. I'm waiting for Shrek 2.

Yet another stupid statistic...

2004-06-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

£770m is spent on prostitution in the UK every year, and £400m is spent on going to the cinema, the Royal Economic Society says

Yes, because each time anyone visits a prostitute it doesn't cost £4.75 and £3.50 with a student discount during off-peak times [rolls eyes].

The joy of statistics...

2004-06-03T23:16:00.000-07:00

They never explain the interesting stats, do they? Take this article. No one bothers to explain why 79% of 15-year olds in Greenland have had sex... What is it about Greenland? I'm fascinated...

The Day after Tomorrow...

2004-06-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

... you will have forgotten this deeply forgettable film. Or perhaps it would have possessed an air of menace had I not known that the events it depicted were, to put it bluntly, complete dogs bollocks.

The chain of events ran as follows: enormous crack opens up in an Antarctic ice shelf in exactly the location that a group of scientists happen to be camped (convenient, ain't it?). Then, giant football sized hailstones (why?! apart from the fact that normal hailstones don't kill people) begin falling in Japan.

Next the thermo-haline circulation (THC) shuts down in a matter of hours. Now, ahem, apart from the fact it wouldn't shut down in a matter of hours (even the 'rapid' warming of Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles happened in a matter of decades) the potential of the thermo-haline circulation shutting down (AT ALL, even slowly) comes as a huge surprise to an entire room full of eminent American climatologists. In fact, this theory has been around for some time.

By this point in the proceedings, lots of extreme weather events began occurring that are in fact to do with El Nino. I don't understand ocean currents well enough to know what effect a shutdown in the THC would have on the Pacific but methinks that it wouldn't be to increase global hurricane frequency and intensity right across the globe.

At this point, the film gives up its attempt to be scientific because a few bad winters never hurt anyone (ok, they did, but great movies they don't make). So, hey ho, we were introduced to the mega-muther storm cell thingys that appeared suddenly and had a non-existent relation to the thermo-haline circulation (I would love to know the purported connection). In fact, the thermo-haline circulation was pretty much forgotten as people fast-froze and America disappeared under hundreds of metres of snow in a matter of hours (and despite the amount of water moved onto the continents, the sea-level from space looked exactly the same... hmmmmm). Sorry to break this to folks but in real-life, ice ages tend to be caused by bad winters, cooler summers and the resulting glaciation. However, again, 'Snow patch the Movie' (in which Sylvia the Snow Patch becomes a full formed cirque glacier over a matter of, erm, a fair bit of time) isn't exactly going to sell to Hollywood (minus its sign).

Apparently, this had happened before around 10,000 years ago (some grain of truth there). This patently included the very nicely rendered tornados (huh? Where did they come into things?)...

Cod science over, the film degraded into 'American people of all social groups bond in crisis' whilst our intrepid Quaternary Glaciologist fought his way to Manhattan accompanied by hard-core polar fieldwork equipment. No, I don't think he was a climatologist... He appeared to be either a Quaternary Glaciologist (using ice cores to examine past climate fluctuations and modelling past glaciations) or he could be some sort of Oceanologist (thermo-haline circulation). There is a lot of cross-over... Either way, he'd be in a geography department!

Whilst Mr Geographer & co were fighting their way to a snowed-under Statue of Liberty accompanied only by their fetching bright-orange three-man dome tent, we were exposed to the continuing tribulations of Mr Geographer's son, Donnie Darko...

Ooops, Sam, same actor. Talk about type-casting, imagine the scene:

"We'd like you to star in our exciting new feature. It makes a tenuous link to climate change to get publicity and then we run through our entire collection of CGI weather effects applied to various famous American buildings. We want you to play a late teenage pseudo-genius"

"Ummmm, but I played one of those last time"

"Yes, but last time you were a schizophrenic pseudo-genius. This time we'd just like you to be rather moody-looking"

He and his dad faced many entirely manufactured crises. As if trekking through snow without a snowmobile (?) wasn't bad enough, Mr Geographer hero had to lose one of his number falling through a mall roof. If Donnie Darko having to cross to the ship outside the public library wasn't enough of a trial (a ship which had no one aboard), then there had to be some wolves AND the centre of the 'freezing people alive' storm had to swirl overhead ALL at the same time. Oh pleeeezzzeeee...

The only thing that this is going to add to the climate debate is that lots of people are going to refuse to believe global warming is happening until the football-sized hail showers commence. It made an associated field of study to my own look rather glamorous and heroic which was nice (and international glaciologists do tend to be a hyper-healthy bunch so not TOO far-fetched) but Mr Joe Public is going to be slightly too impatient for results... I loved the way Professor Hall wanted a 'Paleoclimate model' *immediately*. Heck, people spend an entire thesis producing a model! But then again, "our intrepid hero debugs a FORTRAN routine for 2 years without success" wouldn't put many bums on seats. The use of scientific language was definitely from the Vivienne school "Well, Mr President, there's a bit of air coming in from the left. This could mean the end of galactic civilisation as we know it... or it could mean that the sensor went wrong" and probably made my supervisor cringe because he's always correcting my slovenly or non-existent use of technical terms (my supervisor, incidently, was interviewed on Classic Gold about the film and thus decided he had better tag along to see it).

The one inspired moment for which you should see this film is the remarkedly convincing news reel of desperate American refugees attempting to get through the Mexican border and then wading across the Rio Grande with their possessions on their heads. If just the rest of it had been as profound...

Yet another sport I'd be bad at...

2004-05-31T02:21:00.000-07:00

Urban golf

Like Extreme Ironing but less funny...

More poetry...

2004-05-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

Kingsdown, Bristol

City of colour that hangs in my dreams
Pastel-hued homes warm under sunbeams
Cobbled walls to which ivy clings tight
View of misty hills as dusk turns to night

Moving on

I float through sensation like a shade
Perhaps in truth I seek to hide
It takes an anchor long forget
To realise that inside I've died

I sought in vain to eject the past
My flaws were all inferno tossed
Amongst them were my greatest gifts
And now I realise what I've lost

Freedom's Banner

2004-05-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

Unable to choose his life's pleasure
Man has suffered as a slave
Oppressed by the forces of tradition
Freedom is fought for by the brave

Through the long, dark paths of history
Sound the horn for liberty
Precious are the sun and flowers
But not so cherished as our right to be

The fight has fallen upon our shoulders
Raise the wind-tossed banner high
Strive to stand equal with your brothers
Consuming every breath until you die

Shout strong the clarion call for power
To seize yet return in due course
Dignity is your heart's battle
To pursue with passion's fullest force

Come, Liberals keep your eye on victory
Authority will never rest
Strike timeless blows for liberation
Mill's word has always been the best

A random interlude

2004-05-25T12:55:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Ancient Greeks had several words for love:

Philia - love between friends
Eros - romantic/sexual love
Agape - unconditional (possibly sacrificial, unreciprocated) love
Storge - affection/familial love

Source, Wikipedia

Seaweed trek

2004-05-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

And in the continuing adventures of the crew of the starship seaweed...

Well, it smells of kelp. In fact, it smells like the beach when the tide's just gone out. Want to know what that smell is; drying seaweed... Now you know.

Photos later of the concoction I made. It was hard to tell what it tasted of given it was served with water chestnuts and smoked tofu. However, it seemed vaguely salty with a mineral tang and a general rubbery/leafy texture.

Now I just have to survive the night. I did prepare it and the mung bean sprouts entirely correctly bar a concern over the difference between a brief rinse and a careful rinse.

Troy on...

2004-05-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

I've been told I didn't mention Peter O'Toole playing King Priam. Weeellll... Had he been in a film where the actors could act instead of being chosen for how well they looked covered in baby oil then he would have really shone. As it was, he looked permanently mournful throughout. He wandered around, blinking his rheumy pale blue eyes furiously and it was hard to see whether he was so distressed due to any plot developments or whether it was just he seriously regretted agreeing to play Orlando Bloom's dad...

Stirfrying with seaweed...

2004-05-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

I finally did it... I finally bit the bullet and bought from Fresh & Wild (the 'real' food store as opposed to one selling imaginary food)... drum roll... some sea vegetable. I got some Arame [Latin name: Eisenia Bicyclis] which is apparently a gently flavoured sea vegetable ideal for soups and stir fries (according to the packet and website).

And if that image doesn't put you off, I don't know what will!! Apparently the arame needs to be soaked for 10-15 minutes after which time it will double in size. I am going to prepare it by stir frying along with mushrooms (probably the big brown ones - oyster mushrooms seemed more authentic but appeared difficult to cook), bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, savoury beech-smoked tofu, onions, possibly bean sprouts, the ever-useful broccoli and will be garnished with soy sauce and served with noodles.

Whether this will be a culinary hit, a miss or completely inedible is anyone's guess. If I stop blogging it will be evident I've died... I am on a roll since once I'd stopped adding too much of the incredibly pungent pesto, the roasted vegetable and pine nut salad with pesto-style herb couscous I made last week worked really quite well. It was only about £2.50 per serving too!

Given the sea vegetable ensemble should last for about 3 days the total cost should be £2.50 per serving (again) despite the sea vegetable costing £2.97 (it's dried and will swell up so I should get quite a bit out of the packet). The noodles are probably negligible cost - a packet can last me for months...

2004-05-24T02:25:00.000-07:00

'Oliver Letwin today revealed his wish for Tory MPs to cut their nasal hair. Here we see him demonstrating to a Guardian photographer that he's already been busy with the clippers...'

More testosterone than a rugby team's shower cubicle...

2004-05-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

... and as many tanned, muscular thighs... You could practically smell the dried sweat. Yep, I went to see Troy and although perspiring, hunky guys brandishing pointy objects and grappling with one another might get some ladies drooling at the mouth, I prefer my men with more than one brain cell and there weren't many of those in this feature.

The only remotely intelligent characters were Hector and Odessyus (played by Sean Bean). Odessyus did the 'epic' voiceover at the beginning and end, and if you don't know why I was falling about the cinema with laughter, try delivering lines akin to 'And all of us wonder, will our names echo down the centuries with those of the Gods. Will they remember how bravely we faught, how fiercely we loved' in a flat West Riding accent. Since there were so many changes ('close' male 'friends' replaced by 'cousins', for example), the casting team really should have got rid of the moderately irrelevant character of Ajax. I'm sorry, Ajax might be a Greek hero but I can't take seriously a burly, scarred, shaven-headed bloke carrying a big hammer when he's named after cleaning powder... My mum used to use Ajax powder. And look, Ajax even comes as a cream...

The omission of the Gods (which would have rationalised the religiously/fate motivated decisions) and what appears to be a lack of explanation generally (I am now inspired to read the original Iliad... perhaps I should take up Ancient Greek again and see if I can read it in the original) meant that most of the events didn't seem to have much rational behind them which I suspect wasn't the case in the Greek poem. King Priam seemed like nothing more than a dithering idiot when he didn't even check to see if the boats had left. Given over what a short timespan everything happened, the whole plague business seemed so sudden. Surely SOMEONE would have noticed SOMETHING? I had absolutely no sympathy for Paris and if I'd been Hector I would have dispatched him and Helen back to Menaculus to take terminal responsibility for his actions straight away given the sheer stupidity of the way he behaved throughout. In fact, he was so immature, impulsive and rash at all times that why on earth he was sent as an emissary in the first place really does escape me. Perhaps I'm overly cruel but given the alternative was thousands of deaths, genocide, enslavement and the potential destruction of Troy then maybe not...

Since I was impervious to the lingering shots of Brad Pitt's upper thighs, I was able to concentrate on the deficiencies in tactics displayed during the prolonged warfare sections.

Since I've owned Medieval Total War on the PC I've got very excited about the best application of spearman and the way to deploy cavalry during a siege and may I say the defensive structures and strategy in Troy sucked. If films are supposed to inspire passion then this one did. I wanted to grab a toga, storm through the screen and take charge myself because despite being the world's worst tactician I couldn't have done a worse job. First, by Zeus why was the Temple of Apollo on the beach? Given this was in the Aegean and so naval transport would be important and given it was outside the walls, the temple was pretty much going to get sacked from the word go. Second, the attacking forces had sufficient wood and ropes to build a big horse so why by Jupiter (nope, he was a Roman god) didn't they build a nice mangonel-type thingy or a trebuchet? No, that would evidently be just too much of a good idea... So instead they tried the highly sensible tactic of trying to attack a wall manned by archers by placing infantry with small round shields into a close formation and running them at the wall... And they got defeated... Oooh, big surprise there... Oh yeah, and what exactly did they eat because everything I saw was semi-desert?

And last but not least, acting. Orlando Bloom and Diane Kruger (Helen and Paris... Do you like Paris in the summer? Ho, ho), well, I suppose they could have been acting as if they were having a wild, torrid affair or they could have been discussing the sale of a personal pension plan. Rose Bryne would have been better cast as Helen because she had some character and becoming infatuated with her was something the audience could believe in. Brad Pitt couldn't really do arrogant, sullen and moody either. Brian Cox was over-acting like mad and it was left to Eric Bana as Hector and the occasional appearances of Sean Bean (if you could ignore the accent) to carry the entire film. I had more fun trying to imagine people I knew in the key roles, people who had similar character traits to the ones the Iliad characters were supposed to have. Visualising them in leather skirts grappling with one another; hours of amusement...

In conclusion, I REALLY enjoyed this film. There was so much potential to laugh at it that didn't really exist in LoftR, another macho leather and skirt-fest. That said, if you want to see really big armies marching about having long, drawn-out battle scenes whilst people rant about honour a lot go see Lord of the Rings (they have trebuchets and siege engines). If you want to see big armies being used in an effective, strategic way don't see Lord of the Rings because their idea of a tactic is 'Oh, the enemy have 6 million orcs, we have 5 men... CHARGE!'. If you've seen Lord of the Rings and want to be entertained for a few hours and titter at a character named after floor cleaner (next year: Battle of Hastings the Movie featuring Cif, Pinefresh and Flash Bathroom) then definitely a go see. I didn't waste my £3.70 but rent the DVD.

Something in the water...

2004-05-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

Splosh!

Backtracking to the budget

2004-05-23T07:37:00.000-07:00

Chancellor Gordon Brown was today accused of trying to deflect attention from his budget by impersonating prize-winning author J.K.Rowling's prize-winning creation, Harry Potter.

Here we see him pretending to cast a spell on opposition leader, Michael Howard to turn him into an animal. One Labour MP was heard to mutter "Well, Tories are pigs anyway so I doubt anyone would notice the difference" whilst another speculated on whether Michael Howard would automatically be transmuted into a bat...

Number 11 Downing Street was unwilling to comment at length this afternoon, making only a brief statement to insist that the chancellor had simply been making some very expansive gestures about fiscal prudence. They would neither confirm nor deny that he had read the Potter books.

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Chewing my keyboard