F.act..Frag.m.ents.

2005-07-08T23:26:00.000+01:00

Post from python

RealClimate

2004-12-19T00:01:00.000Z

..I would recommend you to check out RealClimate. It is basically a bunch of qualified climate scientists who want to dispel any disinformation about global warming that is in the media. What's so refreshing is that as scientists they don't just post and leave it there, but they respond to their commenters and adjust their articles accordingly. This is true science and these guys are doing a great service to their profession.

Depressing stories of the day

2004-12-14T21:13:00.000Z

- George Monbiot writes: "I hope that newspapers do not represent public opinion. If they do, it means that we consider the Home Secretary's love affair more important than the resumption of the most deadly conflict since the second world war. On Sunday, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), already responsible for 3.8 million deaths, started again. If you missed it, you're in good company."

- Also try to check out Poisoned planet on radio 4: "Up to 75 million people in West Bengal and Bangladesh are drinking water contaminated with arsenic after an initiative to provide safe water went tragically wrong.

It was assumed that underground water which flowed from the Himalayas would be clean, when in fact it is laced with deadly arsenic which has unleashed a human tragedy described by experts as greater than Chernobyl or Bhopal"

Yahoo playing dirty with gmail

2004-12-13T22:01:00.000Z

Here's an interesting fact. If you send a gmail invite to a yahoo address then yahoo classifys it as spam.

Coincidence. I think not!!!!

Bush in this seasons fashion wear

2004-12-12T00:39:00.000Z

Hmmm, I'm not sure if Blair would have worn one of those

digital london

2004-12-11T00:49:00.000Z

....Here's some recent interesting pages on London (my current home):

- Someone has taken a bunch of the BBC traffic cams and stuck them on a single webpage. Interesting page, although a little disturbing (remember the film sliver!)

- Look in any design book and they will mention the underground map as a great example of simplifying something complicated. Its not perfect though. Stations on the tube map may look miles away from each other may actually only be a short walk away. So Rod McClaren decided to draw a tube map with walklines. A great idea!

- NYCLondon blog has some amazing pinhole photography of london buildings

- Site dedicated to photographing derelict buildings, cafes and other premises in london.

Setting up drupal

2004-12-08T22:27:00.000Z

....Here's some notes on setting up Drupal for personal reference. I thought it would be fairly simple and besides from a few quirks it was. Documentation was okay but could again do with a few updates here and there. From my experience I can say that an average user would not be able to install such an web app

I guess I'm a typical user. I have ftp access to a host for my webpages and cpanel access with various features to control the sql etc. The version I was installing of Drupal was 4.5.1

- Download drupal. I want my drupal site to be www.investigata.com/cms (my new empty domain). That means it will be a "subdirectory installation" which makes it a bit more fiddly than a "simple installation" (e.g to www.investigata.com)

- Unzipped and put into the folder www/cms on my hosted site (through ftp)

- Now to set up the mysql databases. Two stages to this. Firstly I created a database through the mySQL maintainance in cpanel. For the purposes of this blog I created a new database "test" in this window which automatically is created as mylogin_test by this application.

- Go to phpMyAdmin (well hidden link at bottom of the mysql admin page) and opens the db management window. Select the database to be mylogin_test.

- Select the "sql" tab in the main frame and browse for a file called database.mysql in the drupal installation in the includes directory. I still had this file in the downloaded zip file on my local machine so I used that version of the file. Click "go". This script should now automatically create all the sql tables.

- Next allow the application to access the mysql database. We need to create a drupal "user" (which will actually be the website). I called it something like mylogin_drupal. This is done in the mysql admin page in cpanel

- Give the user mylogin_drupal access to the mylogin_test database we created. This is done in the mysql maintainance window. Select the appropriate database and user. Tick "ALL" in the privilidges boxes (beware of shoddy interface which means you might tick the wrong box) and then hit the "Add User to DB button". Now we're cookin!!

- Now time to modify some files. This could have been done locally on my machine before I uploaded them to the host.

- The folder structure I use was www/cms as the base so all folders are referenced from that
\www\cms\sites\includes\conf.php (this is wrong in the online guide)
changed
$db_url = "mysql://username:password@localhost/drupal"
to
$db_url = "mysql://mylogin_drupal:my_password@localhost/drupal"
Here I've set the username and password to that of the database user I set up in the previous step

changed
$base_url = "http://www.example.com";
to
$base_url = "http://www.investigata.com/cms";

- Because I'm using a subfolder e.g www.investigata.com/cms instead of www.investigata.com I need to change some extra settings

www\cms\.htaccess

changed
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
to
ErrorDocument 404 /cms/index.php

changed
#RewriteBase /subdirectory
to
RewriteBase /cms

- It should be working now. I went to www.investigate.com/cms and the site was ready to roll. Creating a login and a user name trought he site made me the administrator

- So I thought it was all perfectly going, but i discovered a slight problem. When i clicked on some links, particularly in administration I got a "file cannot be created" (or similar) error. To solve this, I simply created a folder called "files" in the directory www\cms. This is not well documented at all and I had to scour the web to solve it

- Cron jobs keep all the cleanup and config files ticking over nicely. It runs the file www.investigata.com/cms/cron.php. I set this throught the "cron jobs" in cpanel. I used the "advance unix style command". To run once a day the command is
0 0 * * * ~/www/cms/scripts/cron-lynx.sh
The file pointed to is a supplied script in drupal which will now run every day at midnight. I had a couple of problems getting this to work (I debugged by switching the cron job to every 1 minute by replacing the 0 0 with * * and getting any error). One problem was that I had to change permissions on the script file to allow the computer to exectute it (this was done inside my ftp application)

So there you have it an, heres a link to the empty site, First time I've installed such a script from scratch. Good bit of fun. As I say most of this info is in the drupal admin guide .

I'm hoping to mess with the look and feel so likely I will document this as well in the future.

Stories from Africa this week

2004-12-07T22:33:00.000Z

1) WHO is making sure that cheap generic ARV drugs that are produced in India won't be around for very long. So the only option for people with AIDS in Africa will be the expensive versions (or nothing)

2) Uk continues to hire all the nurses from Africa and screw up their hospitals

3) Anarchy may sound like fun, but Somalia a country with no central government is proof that it doesn't

Wikalong

2004-12-01T21:49:00.000Z

....An interesting new extension for firefox is the wikalong extension. It is a sidebar, and every single page on the web potentially has its own "wikalong" page that appears in the sidebar.

Uses? Well, the big one is for people to comment on the news stories they read on the web and get equal coverage. A bad example might be the flippant comment I just added here. Anyone with the extension who goes to this page can now chuckle an my biting wit!! (graffiti, or adding some passwords for nyt are the other alternative uses)

Personally, i'd pefer it on the right of the screen but you can't move the sidebar it seems and it feels a bit clunky (still beta). But i'll definitely keep an eye on this one

Clinton and Bush: "A Tight Spot"

2004-12-01T21:09:00.000Z

.....Classic snap of Bush and Clinton at the recent opening of the Clinton library. Bush think he's at a baseball game so tries to squeeze past Clinton and get away quickly to avoid the traffic!!

You gotta love those business presentations

2004-11-20T00:50:00.000Z

....I recently moved into a less corporate job at a university, and one of the joys of working there is that you never hear anyone using "business speak". Yes, it must have been a few months now since I heard anyone using phrases like "lets take that off line" and "synergy" and it feels good.

I think that culture is summed up by this blog entry. How come every scientific and business presentation needs to have some type of Venn diagram in it?

Personally it doesn't beat some of the presentation graphs I saw at my former company, such as the legendary "Parthenon of values" where each pillar of the mythical building contained a "value" the company stood for.

The chaos of walking around in London

2004-11-20T00:34:00.000Z

....After having to deal with the every day chaos of walking around London (people jams, crap everywhere, complicate road crossings), it is great to see that someone is trying to do something.

The public space survey of london (pdf - quite big) entitled "Towards a fine city for people" is a great read with fantastic diagrams explaining the chaos of Londons streets. It is also (unintentionally) very humerous, I'm sure a lot of people will relate to it.

MP3 recommendation for today

2004-11-18T22:41:00.000Z

If you didn't see the spoof educational BBC TV program "look around you" a few years back then you missed a classic. To whet the appetite for the new series coming soon,I've just discovered their section of electronic music downloads from the old series, They're spectacularly good.

Who needs CCTV when you've got this

2004-11-18T22:03:00.000Z

...If you want to the future of surveillance check out this 2.5 GPixel photograph. When you can zoom in on a car that looks like a dot in the original picture to see the number plate then you realise the power. Imagine a camera using this technology. No need for a bunch of puny CCTV cameras just stick a few of these babys up

Take one country, add some badly planned regime change

2004-11-13T23:45:00.000Z

......Even if they had tried intentionally, I doubt the Americans and the British could have made a bigger mess of Iraq (why does everyone just blame Bush, remember Blair should be equally called to account).

Newsnight had an excellent piece in their show last night (ram of show) about a young guy who was basically a rich entrepeneur making soft drinks in Fallujah. To cut a long story short, he describes how his uncle and cousin have been killed, his town has been destroyed to rubble, his business and home were bombed and then looted, and finally he was arrested (if you find plastic in a bottling factory it may turn out not be WMD). This guy is completely reasonable and he doesn't go into any anti western tirades or anything like that. But just to see the anger as he walks thorugh the rubbles of his factory is really sobering.

And Naomi Klein, who has done more to expose the hypocrisy in Iraq than almost anyone else, is talking in the Guardian about the recent bombing raids in Fallujah. There not a great deal new there, but she summarises the whole mess as a tale of two elections. Mainly the American one, and the way the Iraqi election have been cynically manipulated to suit the American elections.

My verdict on firefox

2004-11-13T23:14:00.000Z

Well I've cursed Internet Explorer crashing on me for far too long (and no i never sent them an error report either). So I downloaded firefox.

After 10 minutes my verdict: What's the hype about? This does nothing interesting at all!

After 2 days and adding the delicious, google and gesture extensions: Wow, this is fantastic!

Gestures is definitely the killer funtionality that will make firefox for me. It looks cool and it is amazing useful (particularly when you have a tiny desk and everytime you go up to the back button you have to pick up the mouse).

Blogging fallujah

2004-11-12T23:19:00.000Z

....Kevin Sites has been in Iraq blogging for a while now (formally working for the US conglomorates but due to his blogging, now as a "freelance"). The pictures he's posted today of Fallujah are fantastic. This one of a marine about to attack is disturbing. He looks really young, he looks angry but he also looks really scared. There's something about his expression and those sunglasses that he is wearing that really burnt the picture into my head.

This is the type of thing that make blogging so great and important.

This is the internet

2004-11-12T23:16:00.000Z

.....I'm really enjoying this blog currently. It is written by Tom, a bloke who works on cable boat that travel around fixing cable under the sea. It feels like another world.

Cultural highlights

2004-10-28T22:56:00.000+01:00

....Seems everyones down complaining about politics, complaining about technology, and now winter is coming. Definitely time to do something cultural, Here my recent sources of inspiration:

Music

Music for airports: Brian Eno - From 1979 and still sounding fantastic whilst on the tube. Pioneer.

Evil 7: You can be special too - Check out the track "Crooked" with Def Jux rapper Aesop Rock. Elements of hip-hop, dance and rock all in there somewhere.

Company Flow: Little Jonny in the Hospital - And after hearing the above album, I had to listen to this hip-hop/breaks masterpiece again.

Book:

The Secret Agent: Joseph Conrad - Underground foreign spy networks in London, people blowing themselves up, psychopaths fighting for a cause. Ring any bells?

Film

Repulsion: 60's film about a women losing her mind in South Kensington. A film I can really relate to!!

TV

The Day Today: Oh yes, it may be a few years old, but a recent hmv sale prompted me to buy the videos of the classic news satire . And it is still fantastic to watch. I still chuckle everytime I think about the characters; Brant, the physical cartoonist from the Daily Telegraph, and Jaques Jaques Liverot, providing 24 hour intellectual comment on the incoming news.

Random

If you're in London go and see Bruce Nauman's sound installation in the Tate modern main hall. It's free, it's freeky and it's completely amazing. You walk along and here different voices, that's it.

And whilst your at the Tate modern, pop upstairs and see "Time Zones" an exhibition of modern film/video from around the world. Its not all great (e.g Wolfgang Staehle's live webcam of a castle = shite), but there were two brilliant pieces for me. Fikret Atay super lo-fi film of some Kurdish kids humming next to cash machine, and Fiona Tan super high resolution video installation about a coming of age festival in Japan make it worth the fiver entrance.

RIP John Peel

2004-10-26T21:42:00.000+01:00

....Now two of the greatest English men of recent times have died in the last two months. First Cloughie and now John Peel.

A very sad day indeed. Also quite a surprise, as I was only listening to his Radio 1 show recently. He was only 65 and died of a heart attack whilst on holiday in Peru.

I wouldn't credit Peel as being the sole reason for my love of music. But he's certainly a very large factor. A Radio 1 DJ since it started in the 60's, he has the unique standing of never playing a record from a playlist, except by choice. To last that long without compromise, particular in recent decades is a testament to his integrity. If there were more people like him, then we wouldn't be swimming in the crap of overproduced commercial albums.

This is an interview I was reading the other day and I think this quote sums him up.

Recently I got sent a demo tape by a musician called Jawbone, from Detroit. I thought there was some good stuff on it, and so I played it on the show. Afterwards, he was bombarded with emails from the UK and throughout Europe. He hadn't had much exposure in the US - even in Detroit, nobody seemed to know much about him - but his music generated a big reaction. Because it had, he came over to London and played live on the show: it was an extraordinary moment for him, because he'd never even been to this country before and suddenly there he was, live on air. It would be great to see radio taking the chance of giving more people those moments of personal triumph, of being able to perform their music live for radio listeners in so many different places.

It was amazing how he would literally play anything that he liked, no matter how it came to his studio. Personally, he's cost me a fortune in CD's. Some of bands who became popular, but many more who stayed in obscurity: Smog, Sonic Subjunkies (remember that one? What a track!), Yo la Tengo, Stars of the Lid, Psychic Warriors of Ghia, Orbital, Hydroplane, Boards of Canada, ESG.....

Recently Peel's shows have added a new dimension. He was one of the first DJ's to introduce emailing into his show, and the show recently felt like a parnership between him and his listeners. Someone would email requesting a random post-punk album from 1973 he remembered Peel playing many years ago, and Peel (who presented some shows from his home) would get one of his kids to go out to the shed and get it to be played later in the show.

To be honest I think that to commemorate his passing, Radio 1 should remove the playlist from all shows for a week. Its the only fitting tribute.

Another public terminal crashes

2004-10-23T23:59:00.000+01:00

..... Here's one from the main information board in my home town of Cardiff. Public information at it best!! [found on flickr]

The Power of Nightmares

2004-10-21T00:30:00.000+01:00

...If you think about the ratio of the amount of TV people watch, and the amount of useful knowledge they acquire, I suspect that it would be quite low. So I commend to you an outstanding new documentary series on BBC2, The Power of Nightmares. It is an analysis of the political technique of using fear to control the population, and a history of the "war against terror". It is also the first occasion that I've ever had to get a pen and paper mid program to write some notes, which I will summarise here for my own use as well as anyone else.

So there were two parallel stories, which begin to merge closely:
---

--1. Radical Islam

They start with Sayyd Qutb, an Egyptian who in the 50's, who on returning to Egypt from America became concerned with the slow dilution of Egyptian religious culture by the Westernised values. He joined a political group, the muslim brotherhood which tried to support politicians with similar views in power. They initially supported the incoming president Gamal Abd an-Nasser, but on seeing his close partnership with the Americans they rebelled against him.

Eventually Qutb ended up being jailed for his political work, and during this time he was tortured by Egyptian guards who had been trained by the CIA. In jail he also developed his theories about "Jahiliyya". The philosophies' basis is that individual ideas of prosperity and individualism brought about by western culture are a corrupting disease that destroy society and have to be stopped. The leaders are ripe for assassination because they are themselves "infected by this disease". Eventually in 1966 Qutb was executed by the Egyptians, but his writings, mostly written during his time in prison have lived on.

People such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the mentor of Bin Laden, and groups such as Islamic Jihad, fighting against secular enemies, extended the philosophies beyond just the evil of the leaders, to all muslims who agreed with status quo. They were also infected by the disease of western society and hence, they were expendable.

--2. Straussian and the Neo-cons

This starts with Leo Strauss who was a political philosopher during the mid 1900's. I won't detail the philosophies here, but in a nutshell, it is about the rejection of the modernist agenda and an appreciation of the dangers of modern Western thought. Well....that might not be an accurate representation, but that's how it became to be interpreted.

So, in the 70's the "Straussians" seemed to be a loose collection of people in Washington with a conservative outlook, who agreed on the potential dangers of individualism in society and the need for an encompassing goal to unite the populace. Come 75: Nixon, Kissenger, Vietnam, Watergate and suddenly they had an opportunity. Wolfovitz and Rumsfeld found themselves in power.

The program focuses on Rumsfelds conviction, in disagreement with President Ford, about the dangers of Russian to America at the time, his underlying "Straussian" philosophies being an influence to his beliefs. The CIA disagreed with him about Russia, but Rumsfeld managed to get an inquiry into the issue, which was headed up by a team of Straussians, called Team B. It resulted in a report that exaggerated the danger of the Russia to the US. An example used in the program, is of the Russians not having any "Acoustic Measurement" devices on their subs, so Team B concluded that they must have newer and more dangerous secret weapons. Was this their genuine belief or just a tool to increase their control and exert their philosophies in government?

The Strausians campaigned together behind their growing influence and one of their members was Reagan. They supported him in his campaign for president, the first real campaign to use the religious vote. Reagan campaigned partly on a ticket of the moral degeneration of society due to the liberals, and how the religious had to vote to take back that power. In the program they described the religous right vote as being effectively "the troops for the neo-cons" at the time.

In power the neo-cons again tried to increasingly demonstrate the threats of Russia, but this time in a new way. The new idea was that most of the flashpoints in the world at the time, Ireland, PLO, Baader Meinhof, Afganistan etc were being financed by the Russians. The CIA again disageed, but a secret policy of eradicating this new threat from the Russian was agreed by Reagan.

--And so part 1 ends
-----

Very important and very insightful stuff. Wierd though how the Islamists and the neo-cons are using virtually the same philosophys in their respective parts of the world. Certainly something that made me jump out my chair that I hadn't thought about before.

This is exactly what you'd expect from director Adam Curtis who's previous documentary on the BBC was the equally enlightening "Century of the Self", which described the history of the Freuds and their massive influence of modernism.

Have you heard the one about Toys R Us and Iraq?

2004-10-17T00:28:00.000+01:00

....Naomi Klein has written an important article in the guardian today. Just when you thought the iraqis couldn't get more impoverished. Now they've got to pay money to KFC, toys R us and pepsi.

You couldn't make it up.

newspaper double speak

2004-10-17T00:23:00.000+01:00

....Well, I'm not usually one for shouting about the junk that you get from the tabloids in the UK, it just provokes them more. But there was particularly bad piece in the Sun today, which I happened to pick up when I was travelling on the tube. Its not archived online thankfully at the moment, but its a nasty piece written by Clarkson.

He trying to be his normal provocative self, by trying to put down the myth of multiculturalism and political correctness in the context of a number of recent shootings in the UK, but he's overstepped the mark this time.

"Spare us from these multi-cultural killers"

This is the title...What a start. You couldn't write "spare us from these black killers" because that's blatantly racist so he's gone for multicultural instead to disguise the fact

"we have seen Sol Cambell playing for England but where's the multi-culturalism in that? He doesn't lope about at the back in a fug of cannabis smoke, with a big picture of Haile Selasse on the back of his shirt"

Well here he's either implying that anyone who believes in multiculturalism is a pot smoker or he could be saying that most black people smoke pot???

"you have the NHS which we're told wouldn't function without Indian doctors or Nigerian nurses. True, but they don't bring their culture to our hospitals. They don't try and cure ear ache with the bark of the jojoba tree"

This is an absolutely discraceful line. Clarkson is implying that the inherent culture for these countries is some type of voodoo or tribal medicine. This is completely untrue as anyone who has been to these countries will know. So he is using a blatently untrue fact to belittle whole culture or race. I would say this line certainly comes within this definition of racism

"Its multi-culturalism that this week alone has seen a 14-year old girl killed and a toddler hospitalised"

Here comes the doublespeak again. Its like a code language multi culturalism, political correctness, asylum seekers. If you hide an article behind this language you can effectively write anything you like and know one will care

"You can bring your exotic food and your work ethic. You can bring your religion and you clothes. But if its not too much bother, we'd rather you left your tendancy to shoot people with disrespect in the back strrets of Kingston"

mmm...what else is there to say....

Beyond the post-it note

2004-10-14T23:05:00.000+01:00

....Whilst doing some work on a closely related project recently, I've hit on the beginnings of a possible great social platform based around collage. I guess the first step is something like this . The work i'm doing is kind of related and if i can just shoehorn the project the right way, I could be a conversion to flash away from a new supercharged social platform...(at the moment its just wishful thinking)

Fuji Water

2004-10-14T22:58:00.000+01:00

....Another fascinating post from Ethan Zuckerman today. He noticed in Harvard, that a popular brand of water was from Fuji. Cue some quick calculations and coming up with the fact that it cost roughly 100% more to transport water by road across a few hundered miles in the US as it does several thousand miles on a ship...

Takedown

2004-10-09T01:14:00.000+01:00

....Reports say that the FBI have taken down Indymedia's servers in the UK, in very strange circumstances.

The real question I have about this raids is, how the hell did the FBI get the rights to raid a place in England. The statement says "It is unclear to Indymedia how and why a server that is outside the US jurisdiction can be seized by US authorities". We also hear from their ISP, "Rackspace stated that "they cannot provide Indymedia with any information regarding the order". This is astonishing, in its desregard for the legal process and in its arrogance. It also reads very close to Kafka's "The trial"

This is not the first time indymedia has been raided. During the Genoa anti-capitalist protests, the Italian police raided the servers in Italy and also recently in America before the Republican convention. In fact Indymedia, knowing that they are at risk from being raided, wisely ensure that their log files do not log user IP addresses so that when the FBI comes in they cannot glean such information.

Indymedia was first thing that got me interested in the radical capabilities of online media. In particular I started reading the open news wire, which in its early days was a radical and interesting source of news. It always guaranteed a fantastic range of stories from different parts of the world written by people seeing situations first hand:

- Coca Karma is a great example, a long story that reads like Michael Mann's film "the insider" about a guy who got slightly conned by Coca cola and ended up getting dragged into the most astonishing legal wierdness

- This story is another one that I am still curious about, CAFR. I personally can't believe this is completely true. It is such an utterly astonishing story that I cannot believe it could just be swept under the carpet to the extent that the only coverage is from a few "nuts" on the web, but its still makes interesting reading.

- And in the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp in Palestine, a few years ago. Reporting from the Palestine point of view was almost singly sourced from "open source" reports, mostly from indymedia posters because journalist couldn't get in. (There were some mainstream articles about this but i can't find any online)

Over time the open newswire became popular because of its sucess, and became a magnet for too many people with extreme views trying to shout each other out. That's not to say there aren't any decent articles on there now, its just that there are better sources to get independent news from. Glancing back at the newswire again now, perhaps I should start to read it again on occasion. Most commendably, its structure has helped it embrace the ongoing battles for national independece from the WTO, lead by Charvez and Lula. Hence the mass of spanish grassroots articles posted are growing, which is excellent (if disappointing because I can't understand them)

Update: Timeline
+0 days: Apearance on all the blogs that count: slashdot, techdirt etc
+1 day: Eff gets involved
+2 days: Apparent some dodgy Euro legal agreements allows other countries to take stuff from the uk
+3 days: Time it took for the first major media to take interest (and only breifly)
+5 days: Hard drives returned (suspected ghost copies made)
+? days: Still no one knows why the stuff was taken

Guns II

2004-10-05T00:33:00.000+01:00

...This story could be massive.

Lessig had a link temporarily on his blog which he has taken off presumably because he wants to find the best way to harness the argument, but from my reading around it I think it is something like this.

Its all about the INDUCE act in the US. Well, Lessig has spotted a simple but powerful fact. The law will mean that the companies that run the P2P service or produce new technologies will have to ensure that their customers are not infringing any copyrights and that they are responsible for any illegal actions of their customers. Now replace "infringing" with "killing", "P2P technology" with "guns" and perhaps it is not too hard to imagine that INDUCE might become a way to hold gun companies responsible for shootings.

This would certainly be a good thing, but the NRA and the gun control lobby will not like it. Anyone for a few pounds on Charles Heston and Lessig fighting together against INDUCE, it sounds almost unbelievable, but maybe its possible!!!

Guns I

2004-10-05T00:12:00.000+01:00

....Hmmm, I haven't heard any big guns and weapons news stories recently, but I think theres a few bubbling under the surface.

Firstly I spotted this (curtesy of oneworld). It seems that the "code of conduct" for ethical weapons control which is operated in Europe is being circumvented by a bunch of countries/companies so that they can make profit, through supplying questionable regimes with weapons or by supplying governments with weapons to help supress their own people.

Lets not make a bones about it. Anyone who has been abroad to any country with a troubled past or present will know that guns are out of control and a massive problem. If you live in these states, you can easily arm your rebel group if you have a few quid and the right contacts. To put it quite simply, in these countries it is often easier and more productive to fight wars using weapons, than get around the negotiating table. And its always seems plain that although some of these guns come from illegal racketing, the gun companies at the best turn a blind eye and at the worst are complicit in underhand dealings. The report describes examples where gun companies/governments have worked in a range of underhand ways to make sales. They tend to use the old trick of exporting parts of guns to countries with less restrictive laws, only to reassemble them to sell on. Alternatively they simply take weapon to pieces and then sell the bits to the questionable countries, bypassing the laws.

Lets face it, it would be better to reduce the weapons trade beyond just a few "dodgy countries", the number of innocent deaths worldwide from people having guns is unbelievable. But at the very least this is the first step to sensible gun distribution in the world.

In Britain any calls to reduce the selling of weapons abroad is countered with the "Bae" argument, an argument that is often repeated by the discredited UK commercial/government department, weapons "company" BAe systems. It goes something like this. "Well, if we don't sell these weapons, then the economy will be dented with hundreds of jobs lost, and another country will just come in and sell the weapons anyway". This is a flimsy excuse, and does not stand up to any rational thought. It effectively equates a job in a local economy with a life in a far away country. In short, we should stop thinking from the "little britain" viewpoint when it comes to weapons and lives. Maybe another company won't take their place. Maybe it will push the prices of weapons up so to make them more scarce, and even if someone else sells the weapons instead, we'll just chase them down instead.

A change to the EU code of conduct, is the clear way forward here. There's currently an attempt to try to tighten the laws, but according to the report "NGOs say that there does not appear to be the political will to implement the changes needed to make a difference". This basically means that at the moment public pressure is low, but the pressure from weapons company against the laws is high and hence the changes won't go thorough. As with these things, the only way to change this is to campaign, pester your MP etc and get some pressure going to resolve this disgrace.

City of Men

2004-10-03T22:57:00.000+01:00

....Not having digital TV, I get to miss out on loads of interesting and good things. Over the weekend though I was in a house with a digital box and managed to catch City of Men on BBC4.

This is a Brazilian TV series which uses the same director and characters as the excellent and sucessful film "City of God", about kids in the slums of Rio.

I was impressed with the program, not quite as good as the film, but still with vibrant digital camera techniques and amazing editing. Also worth mentioning really raw, genuine acting from the actors, who are mostly just kids pulled out of the slums.

After seeing the crap opening titles, I was worried that this would be a really poor low budget TV version, but I think keeping the directors and characters helped the continuity. Recommended

Ask metafilter filter

2004-09-30T21:49:00.000+01:00

I decided to add the Ask Metafilter rss stream to my indespensible bloglines account the other day and ever since it has been a constantly interesting source. It 's like an agony aunt, a recommender and a helpful techy mate rolled into one!

Today there was a fantastic post pointing out what to listen to for comtemporary music classical music. So many things to follow up, and I've spent the rest of the day listening to this great live 365 station.

This has to be someone who watched the sixth sense and is taking the piss

What the hell is this?

How can you know these things so easily?

Why are there so many people asking about growing beards and facial hair? Is there really any knowledge needed to grow a beard?

Gerrymandering

2004-09-28T23:31:00.000+01:00

....Politicians escaping over state lines to avoid voting, people being locked in rooms, corruption. It could only be the presidential race.....I've got to admit I'd never heard of Gerrymandering until i caught the excellent Radio4 documentary tonight (listen here).

Basically, the party who is control of a state gets the census and then works out how to divide the voting boundarys so that they get the most seats. The boundary decisions are controlled by whoever is in control of a state. It fucking corrupt, everyone does it, its just that over the last four years the republicans seem to have done it more blatantly than anyone previously.

Theres a great quote in the program from a Texan republican who makes no apology for the fiddling. He says something along the lines of "well everyone does it, its just part of the political process.... We want to help get Bushes policys[????] through the house and we'll do everything in our power to make sure that happens"

Ranting on tax

2004-09-28T23:17:00.000+01:00

...So Monbiot is pissed about the tax system and he well within his right to be. Ever incumbent government in the world says they will close the tax loopholes, and every government who get elected knows they cannot close those breaks. There's too many influential people in the media and in top companies who are benefiting from the breaks and the government know they would get slaughtered if they closed the tax breaks.

Monbiot advocates publishing all tax returns as a way of shaming the people who avoid taxes, but he knows that this will never happen. I reckon the name and shaming idea is a great way forward. Lets get the public available accounts, lets find some confidential documents and lets shame big companies into paying tax. This is the seed of a great internet campaign.

The media has to be the first place to start. I've heard quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that many newspapers pay very little in terms of tax to the government, and yet they expect to be listened to, they expect to have they're voice heard. Well you're not the voice of the people if you're stealing of them.

....And oh yeah, why should these companies pay up? Well, every year working people have to pay more and more tax to keep the public services going, the schools, hospitals and police. And the reason we don't see any difference in quality, because big companies and the super rich have found a new inventive way to avoid paying. Every time they do it, they're effectively stealing from the nation, taking money from your pockets.

Wikipedia and its 1 million articles

2004-09-26T16:08:00.000+01:00

....Well done to Wikipedia for becoming a phenomenon. 1m articles is an awesome achievement. But we shouldn't be too smug yet and here's why.

Check out this embryonic project on Wikipedia which I consider very important. Its argument is that because of the natural demographic of users, wikipedia has come to represent a completely skewed view of the world.

"An example of this problem is that even after 1 million articles have been written, the article on the Congo Civil War, possibly the largest war since World War 2 (and which resulted in over 3 million deaths), has much less information than articles such as Babylon 5, Languages_of_Middle-earth, Slackware etc which appear to fit into the Wikipedia demographic"

So the aim of this project is to specifically address the disparages in wikipedia. Discussion is ongoing about how to do this, but this is the type of project that need to work for wikipedia to continue growing and turn from a sci/tech encyclopedia to a invaluable source of knowledge on anything.

Tiddly Wiki

2004-09-26T00:29:00.000+01:00

....It describes itself as a reusable non-linear personal web notebook. Whatever its is, at first glace it is damn cool toy, I may post some experiments at some point.

Unfortunately you can't save anything on one at the moment because it is all static html.

Technorati

2004-09-25T23:58:00.000+01:00

.....So ain't technorati a great tool?

...Hmm, kind of. So I'm sure there's been plenty of views been given on this already, but whilst I have been gathering my thoughts on distributed investigative journalism, I've taken another closer look.

Yes it is!!
A little while ago I came to the conclusion that being able to see what is linking to a specific website or a backlink, could be a key tool to reducing big media. I tried to build a backlinking tool myself a year or so ago by trying to write an ie plugin that would query the google API with link:www.sitetoquery.com.

The plan was, that you would be surfing your favorite biased news source and on any page you could click on the backlink button. This would then split the window into two frames. The left frame would be the current site (80% width) whilst a right frame would query google for backlinks to the page and then parse and display the appropriate snippets of text from various blogs that would be a commenting on the site you were looking at.

Can you imagine the power of this? You're reading another pro-war telegraph screed, and you click on the backlink button. Suddenly without leaving the site, you have a bunch a blogs pointing to evidence that this is a fabrication. For me that's a first step to allowing anyone to scrutinize the media for truth and be noticed.

No it ain't
So what went wrong? Well the plan fails on the first step. Googles backlinking searches are extremely slow. Try writing a link on your blog and then see how long it takes for it to appear in googles' backlink database. 7 days, 14 days, longer. Sometimes your links are even "rejected" because the algorithms in google search results in links below a certain score not being added to the database (and this is more common in blogs) . Try alltheweb, altavista etc, they're a little bit quicker but not by much. Fortunately I found these facts out before getting too involved in the complexities of COM deskbands for internet explorer and for that I'm truly thankful!!

So basically technorati is a more thorough version of google's backlinking database. It is quicker to update and it includes all blogs. But, still not quick enough. If you put a link in and see how long it takes to get into technorati it can still be greater than a day (even if you add to the priority queue).

Is this too slow for news content? Stories in the news are read quickly and accepted, after a day it could be too late to have an effect. I don't have any actual evidence to support this statement but I suspect its true. Anyway, there are another problems. Too many "static links" and blogrolls being picked up by technorati. And that's not forgetting the fact that a lot of people who blog links don't have an opinion on the link. They just point it out or cut and paste.

Here's the site that comes closest to what I've described. It very good and if they genuinely don't have humans checking it then I'm impressed. I think it would be better if it was possible to use it with any website, to check for backlink comments, but i can't really fault them besides from that.

Boris on the issues of the day

2004-09-23T23:05:00.000+01:00

...Todays dose of right-wing ranting comes from Boris Johnson, conservative MP, shadow arts minister, and mumbling posh idiot. He's always an entertaining read for his wierd humour and slight madness.

...On dealing with the miners strike while at university

I looked up. I stopped crunching my Harvest Crunch. It was one of the goateed Marxists, and he wanted me to cough up for the miners....Oi, I said to my fellow-student. No, I said. I won't give any dosh to these blasted strikers, because, as far as I can see, they are being execrably led.....The bearded student Marxist (I think he's now at Goldman Sachs) looked so amazed that he almost jumped out of his donkey jacket, but I stuck to my ground.

...On the conservatives new arts policy

Boris will unveil some new tentative arts policy ideas at Party Conference in October.

Unmissable blog!!!

Clone towns and urban regurgitation

2004-09-23T22:15:00.000+01:00

Dot cotton says: "Another yuppie takeover. More Eastenders forced to move out of our own area"

.....One of the worst things about UK towns is that over the last 10 years, virtually every town has lost its individuality. It has only been commented on recently in the press, but this slow drift has been developing for many years.

I think it first came to my attention from listening to the manic street preachersin the mid 90's. One of the tracks was entitled "NATWEST - BARCLAYS - MIDLANDS - LLOYDS" in celebration of the generic main street of Blackwood in Wales. To me, the song was always a testament to a kind of alienation that kids have growing up living in suburbia.

The emergence of clone towns is most accurately understood by reading George Monbiots' depressing, but vital book "Captive State" which details how the slow drift in planning laws in tandem with questionable corporate partnerships with local governement resulted in local businesses and shops being unable to obtain properties in town centres. It also details the underhand way some "out of town" shopping centres were granted planning permission and funds, even when local opposition is huge.

So now we reap the seed we have sown. Kids grow up angry and violent because they hate the same desensitised crap no matter where they go and have to be locked away at home.

What's the point of celebrating the diversity of a country if we're all being fed the same clones McDonalds, Dixon, Next, Gap, UGC, Sainsburys, Tie Rack, Specsavers......in every town

Well, there's not much that can be done about that now. If you're a tourist and you want to see what England is really like, go to Ipswich, Norwich, Newport, Guidford etc. As far as i'm concerned its too late in these places. But its not too late to start the fight against the next step.

It's detailed in the Guardian today and it is described in the paper as "ciabatta cities". This new phenmenon is similar to the clone town, but in a different area. It starts with a run down central urban areas, normally an area of workers, or immigrants. This area will be slowly demolished and replaced with trendy flats for professionals and glass panelled offices. All fair enough except the fact that no one will build affordable housing, the prices will sky rocket and suddenly any local resident with a small income will be forced out of the areas, normally to a much worse estate on the outskirts of the town. Ciabatta cities are like clone towns but with people.

I think the photo sums it up fully. This was taken in East London, formally enhabited by lower paid workers, now taken over by city dwellers and trendy types

Cat Stevens refused entry to US

2004-09-22T23:00:00.000+01:00

You can imagine the conversation at the airport

"shall we let him in"
"well he does look a bit like Bin laden, better not"

The guy above is former marillion singer Cat Stevens. Now a moderate muslim, he was refused entry to the US yesterday with the plane being diverted 600 miles to Washington for safety. Apparently he's on the FBI watch list but after recent articles aren't we all?

The only thing in Cat Stevens life that even remotely constitutes terrorism is the banal soft rock he has produced over the years, but unfortunately there are currently no law against this crime.

Bollywood action

2004-09-22T22:13:00.000+01:00

....My mate Gaz is currently wandering the globe and his most recent entry on ballofdirt describes his hilarious attempts to become a a Bollywood extra

"The original plan was for me to just walk across shot pushing a trolley whilst the main actors do their stuff, but they obviously saw my talents were wasted in such a meagre role and so was transfered to another studio set by motorbike"

And on arriving at the next studio

"Finally a guy comes up to me with a script, and jesus it turns out that I have to say a few lines! I'm playing an English gentleman named Bush (the script writers really are geniuses). With literally two minutes rehearsal I'm thrust in front of the camera to join two of the main stars.
..I have four lines in English to nail, but as most of it is in Hindi and the director's English is bad I haven't a clue what is going on. And even with the required 10 takes I have to say my acting is shocking. I'll cross that off as one of my potential careers, the BAFTAs are safe for another year. Still, in playback the director seems pleased enough. And for all this work I get paid a princely sum of 400 Rupees!"

Rainwater harvesting

2004-09-21T22:10:00.000+01:00

.....Worldchanging has a mention on rainwater harvesting. An interesting subject after my recent forays to rural Uganda because this is blatently a very important tool that can be effective in reducing lack of water.

I'm not quite sure it is an emerging technology, but it may be that just recently the importance of such technology has been realised. Much of the work that I saw that has taken place in Uganda has focussed on medium to large cheap storage solutions that could be used in schools for sanitation and community solutions etc. Much less has been made of individual water harvesting that could still be equally useful.

For example in Uganda many of the houses in rural areas have sheet steel roofs, but the majority still have to visit the water sources numerous times a day. At the moment the application of water harvesting is just too expensive for the individual. I would like to see some work done on some sustainable lo-fi solutions to this problem. Using plastic bottles and wastes which are common and somehow improvising storage containers it should be possible to make cheap water harvesting systems. The water would likely be unsuitable for drinking but definitely useful for washing and cleaning.

I'm really interested in lo-fi tech because it has amazing potential in rural developing areas. There has to be the educational reinforcement to allow such inventions to be sustainable, but stuff like this and lo-fi solar solutions have amazing potential to reach out

This should have got funding

2004-09-21T21:33:00.000+01:00

....While surfing on some job related research on VR I came across this great project which made me laugh. It seems that the idea was to produce three dimensional representations of the legendary "hanging chad" votes from the florida presidential election for historical purposes. Unfortunately it never got funding.

"The proposed process would scan all undervotes using laser scanning devices, create a three-dimensional representation of these questionable ballots, and make this dataset available on the Internet for inspection by any interested party"

Brian Clough RIP

2004-09-20T22:04:00.000+01:00

...The greatest ever British football (soccer) manager Brian Clough died today. No one else had the ability to make people who were average players play so well. He managed to win 2 European cups with Nottingham Forest in the 80's. He also had the great personality, and could pull out a set of brilliant quotes off the cuff

Distributed reporting

2004-09-20T21:48:00.000+01:00

.....So there's been this whole Bush/faked reports/CBS story winging its way around the web at the moment. For an English citizen, its only of passing interest for its subject value, but the thing that struck me about the whole affair is that it confirms a long standing belief that social networks could be great investigative reporting tools if they were used in the right way.

When you get a mass of people focused on an issue, then the speed and skill with which they combine to find facts and understand a story is far superior to what can be done by a single loner investigating an issue. This is particularly true these days, where most controversy is hidden within masses of legal documents, statistics and confusing facts. I have admired the work of Groklaw and Politech for the way they have used a mass of willing volunteers to provide information, and to sift through documents for the collective understanding of issues.

These good works are mostly focused on a specific (tech) cause, and other cases of "mass investigative reporting" such as the Bush story have been started on a fairly random ad-hoc basis. This is a great model to help tear apart corruption, lies, distrust of the media etc, if we can just harness the power of social networks in a more focused way.

So this brings me to my forthcoming project. I hope to build on social networks to produce a "distributed investigative reporting network". I'm still considering the details, but the basis behind the idea is to allow people to start personal investigations into issues and injustices that they are aware of. By building a social network around this idea we can hopefully build "open source investigations" which will attract new people with similar interests, to join the network and/or follow their progress, building up momentum with the increase in numbers.

I think there has to be an output at the other end and at the moment this is likely to be a regular style news webpage/pdf newsheet that can be distributed, to highlight interesting storys that are written by members of the respective "open source investigations".

So any tangible actions still a few months away. I need to work on how the interactions will work seamlessly and how the platform will attract people to join. I don't intend to rebuild the wheel and I expect to use all/or nearly all exising platforms and networks to begin. I also need to decide a set of exciting subjects that I can lead on in the early days that will get the whole thing going.

All in all, I'm really excited about this project. I kind of had it in mind for a while, but when I saw the Bush storys it suddenly made me jump out of my seat and realise that this was a real life experiment that had proved my ideas on the potential of social networks for distributed investigative reporting.

Out there radio

2004-09-19T23:46:00.000+01:00

....I'm still being blown away by the quality of radio that can be had in London. By far the best at the moment is the astonishing Resonance FM. It is sold as a "community arts" radio station and this basically means it can play and say what it wants anytime, anyday.

I've been blown away by some Saturday and Sunday night programmes which consist of either random field recordings or completely out there music. In fact I have had to turn the radio off a few time because either the stuff was either unlistenable noise or I wasn't sure if the sounds were coming from my radio or if my radiator was malfunctioning.

But there's an equal number of excellent things like last nights show as... which was roughly an hour of a slow burning drone, that kind of subliminally hits you after about 15minutes. It was so slow shifting it even made slowburn ambient masters stars of the lid look a bit active.

Grafitti

2004-09-18T23:20:00.000+01:00

.....One of the articles i was reading in FACT magazine (see previous post) was a piece on "Brandals" a new type of grafitti artist who tend to use logos and culture jamming as the basis for their work rather than tags. The author reckoned this signalled a new creativity in grafitti with the likes of banksy livening up london with his media terrorism/branding/grafitti antics.

This surprised me because a few weeks ago I read a piece in the guardian that gave the exact opposite viewpoint. This claims that graffitti was effectively a dead culture and had absolutely no innovation in it for the last 20 years. Most of the grafitti now is just poor rehashed shit and artistically would not stand up to works such as those ofBasquait in the 80's.

To be honest i think I'm more inclined to the second opinion than the first. As much as I am amused by a lot of Banksy's work. I think his work lost value to me because the way he ended up selling out his work as part of corporate media campaigns, exactly the ones he opposed. He has been co-opted by the cool-hunters and once that happens the works start to look a bit stale. And adding to that most grafitti out there is still bullshit tags so i think that most grafitti is creatively a waste of time from my point of view.

So many good magazines

2004-09-18T22:44:00.000+01:00

I have to comment on the amount of good quality non-mainstream magazines that are around at the moment. People are always whining that the mainstream press is crap but there are plenty of excellent alternatives, and I seem to have picked up a couple in the last few week.

Only just discovered FACT magazine which has made it to its sixth edition. Its free and I picked it up in a soho record shop (Here's their site although its not got anything on it at the moment). Its beautifully set out and designed, its a strange size, just slightly larger than a CD cover and mixes photos and random text and figures. Really high production values and not too many annoying ads (unlike Dazed and Confused). Most of the articles are quite short but really interesting. 06 has articles on slang in hip-hop, women in Jamacan music, the twenty best brazilian records ever made , and a wierd messed up article on Japan, all very interesting and worth picking up.

Also to while away a few hours the other day i picked up the latest copy of Adbusters magazine. Now to be honest I've never been completely convinced by some of their journalism. A lot of their writing is to idealised anti society/capitalism stuff which although mostly valid doesn't quite hit a nerve as it should. But, the thing that always get me about Adbusters is the awesome design and look that it has. Some of the photographs and diagrams n this one blew me away and are now on my wall. Some of it is based along the work of their very interesting true cost economics campaign.

But for me the master of the alternative magazines has to be vice magazine. This is another free job that can be picked up (normally in your local indie record shop in the UK) and it borders between genius and offensive, and I think is what make it themost edgy exciting magazine around. Man, I wish I could write like these guys, kind of Hunter S thomson esque, with that same don't give a shit attitutde. This month I loved this amazing fashion spread which sums up urban inner city UK to a T (and you sit there wondering if it is dangerous to glamourise kids who get suspended from school, but then you think forget it because it is so fucking cool!). I think this has to be my favourite article they've written.

Creative Commons and new licence

2004-09-16T00:03:00.000+01:00

A new creative licence had just been released called developing nations. For content released under this licence, the licence restricts use in developed nations but allows open use of content in devloping countries. I agree that this is a useful addition to the creative commons and in line with thinking on how such restrictions can stifle development in the developing world, but I have a few reservations about it.

I can see the point if someone is making a creative work, say a photo who does not want to be exploited, but does not mind it being free in a developing country. Effectively this licence is a legal document to reinforce the unspoken rule that we let the smaller players get away with using content when we don't consider it to be exploitation. The problem is that even in a country that is excluded from this licence, there are people who such a licence would also be useful. There are groups and individuals who are poor, who would equally like to take advantage of such a licence, say in poor areas of France, US and Puerto Rico. For example if i was working for a small local NGO in a developed country I would question why I was restricted from using such content.

Another thing, its a myth that everyone in developing nations is poor and should be afforded such a licence. For example big companys in South Africa will get an unrestricted licence (Heres the excluded countries)

Any doubts I have on this licence is not on its intellectual validity but that the measure that they are using to determine who is worth access and who is not. To be honest I can't think of an appropriate measure. I guess the usefulness is that there is no more "turning a blind" eye to people infringing in the developing nations. It is now explicitly stated that they have unrestricted access to content.

ESF in town but its pricy

2004-09-15T23:30:00.000+01:00

.....The European Social Forum 2004 is coming to London next. I'm not sure whether to sign up at moment. To be honest I don't have an exact idea of what happens at these event, but I like the idea of a democratic "mass" of people who are in it to further society as supported by Monbiot, Naomi Klein etc ,but i can't quite work out what the event is and what happens.

My knowledge is not helped by the slightly incomprehesible website which gives no indication of the program and mainly the fact that they are charging £30. I know there are costs, and its good to finance certain speakers but this seems excessive. So I'll keep my eye out and maybe I will go but at the moment it looks doubtful. Looks like the price of "democracy" is too high

Cracking session

2004-09-13T23:14:00.000+01:00

....Only just picked up on the work of nils petter molvaer. He played an excellent session/ laptop performance on Flowmotion last night. The sound he plays are quite abstract but they are grounded by the trumpet that is played by Molvaer himself. Sit ends up having some elements of crazy abstract house beats, but with really good jazz trumpeting added to the mix. Check it out!

The Fog of War

2004-09-13T23:08:00.000+01:00

...Seem to be in a film mood at the moment. Went to see "the fog of war". This is Errol Morris' oscar winning documentary about Robert S McNamara, who was the US defense chief during the vietnam war, now 85 years old

If you reading this and considering whether to go and see Farenheit 9/11 but are not sure, because you think it might be a bit in your face then I'd suggest you go and see this. Without mentioning the present political situation and the current fiasco of iraq, Morris has made a strongly powerful film that persuasively argues against the Iraqi war and eve the so called "war on terror". History is the ultimate record of cause and effect, but it is too often sadly ignored with a swipe of a hand and a "the past is the past" or similar comment. Thats what I liked about Morris' film, the way he drew parallels out and highlighted them.

Not having a big enough knowledge of that period (not being alive then!) I don't know much about McNamara but I remember this this quote I recently read in a collection of Hunter S Thompson's papers that he wrote in 68 about McNamara moving house to Aspen, just after he lost his job

"McNamara came last week to check on his new house; he arived in a black car with six secret service men - acting like some humanoid from another planet"

From this type of description and various view of the press attitude to him in the 60's, I see him as a 60's version of Donald Rumsfeld, although I don't know if this is accurate. Obviously for him the film was his attempt to right the wrongs and get his view over about the time. But he comes across as a curiously confused figure. For example he doesn't deny he made many mistakes and his 11 lessons are surprisingly "dovish". Also his meetings with Castro and his North Vietnamese enermies in the 90's to talk about the past illustrate that he is a more complex character than the shadowy figure he was painted to be. He seems to be still grappling with what he did and both in agreeing to do the film and meet those former enemies, he trying to understand and learn even now.

Saying this he still comes across as an arrogant figure. He is still outwardly convinced that at the time he made the correct descisions even though they may have been wrong with hindsight. This and the fact that he now claims that he was just serving the president and that's all show the other side of him. He is an interesting and amiguous figure definitely worth studying.

Battleship Polemkin

2004-09-13T00:40:00.000+01:00

Went down tothistonight. Basically, it was a performance by the Pet Shop Boys, who have written a new soundtrack for the Eisenstein silent film Battleship Polemkin. It took place live in Trafalgar Square and it was free to anyone. I reckon there must've been at least 10,000 people there.

The first thing to do is commend them for doing something so brave. I'm by no mean a great fan of the pet shop boys (Although I've always liked disco which is a great 80's pop disco synth crossover album) but here they're attempting to do something different and it was amazing to see so many people standing in Trafalgar square watching a black and white Russian film about communism.

It started very badly with some guy talking about Trafalgar Square and how it was a centre of protest. He then made a few predicably lame anti-Bush comments to get the crowd going, and then mumbled on about the chartists, miners etc., interspersed with some video clips. It reminded me of a really crap museum exhibit, and was basically an exercise in trying to connect having an event in trafalgar square with communism. At the end of the day everyone there knew that there was no connection.

Onto the actual show, and although I was expecting the worst after the introduction bullshit, I was pleasantly surprised. I have never seen Eisensteins 1920'sfilm before, but I thought it was excellent, a story of a navy crew rebelling against their leader and the subsequent fallout in a Russian town, It is staggering well made and some of the effects and editing are the basis of what is now modern cinema. The soundtrack was great, it was typical pet shop boys in one way, but there seemed to be an extra dimension, probably due to the form they were working with, and also thanks to the Dresden Sinfornia who were accompanying them . I particularly liked the work which started off the film, kind of synthy slow moving core which was reprised later. The scittering beats of the famous pram on the stairs scene [think untouchables] was also really outstanding. I don't believe it, but maybe Neil Tennant has been listening to minimalist glitch genius Jan Jelanek. The vocal stuff was also very good. I was concerned that this might overpower the film, but it was only used a few times and when it did appear it in was not the focus. Credit had to go to Neil Tennant for his restraint and having the good sense (and no ego) to realise that his voice should not be the centre of the work. Due to it being used so sparingly, the scenes where he did use his voice had a surprising emotional resonance.

There are a couple of criticisms that I would have. Some of the stuff in the middle, was a bit "coffee table" and didn't quite have enough hooks. Also I ended up at the back which meant that I couldn't read all the translations of the captions at the bottom of the screen because of the crowd. You would have thought someone would have had a plan for this, after all it is essential to understanding the film and hence the work as a whole.

I'm rather a fan of modern artists writing soundtracks for silent films. These works really allow important historical films to be more accessible for people today, and that can only be a good thing. This reinterpretation is not as good as the amazing "a man with a movie camera" by the cinematic orchestra, but it an excellent work. So all credit to the boys, and if any other well known artists are reading, why not try to do something interesting and artistic like these guys, rather than touring the same shit again and again.

I'm back

2004-09-12T23:41:00.000+01:00

Back and this time forever.

There nothing more annoying than setting up a blog and then loosing the abilty to connect to the web. Then again, I guess it was expected, as the only reason I had access was due to a hack involving fiddling addresses n dns.

Prison food

2004-08-22T16:52:00.000+01:00

The Muslim News reports that the UK tabloids favorite hate figure Abu Hamza or "Captain Hook" and other alleged muslim terrorists are having problems in jail.

Belmarsh high security prison has "accidently" been feeding them pork chops which are in conflict with their halal requirements.

I'm sure some will say that it is an intentional attempt to humiliate, but I reckon more likely to be due to overwork and overcrowded prisons and incompetent managers...

Amusing Newspaper Corrections

2004-08-22T16:45:00.000+01:00

I like this correction.

"The short edited extract from JM Barrie's Peter Pan yesterday, changed Barrie's line from "...so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless". to "...so long as children are innocent". Internal editing of that kind is not a good idea"

Don't want offend those of offensive sensibilities!

Oil gubbins

2004-08-22T16:33:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting story I read in the Guardian the other day. Apparently, over the next few years the amount of oil that the UK will produce from its North Sea oil reserves is going to go into decline.

One of the main reasons for this according to the article is because of the governments "ideological unwillingness to make public investments in oil and gas exploration and production"

Sometimes we forget that one of the basis of the UK economy comes from the fact that we have north sea oil, and when it Runs out then thing might start to go downhill due to "an annual burden on the balance of trade of £25bn-£28bn"

In conclusion I guess this piece is throwing down a challenge to exponents of alternative fuels and environmentalists (and I guess I would consider myself an exponent). The pressure that you have put on the government has been sucessful in making them focus on green fuels, but because of this focus we are putting the economy at risk because we have not focussed on our profitable fuels.

On another note, it seems that the oil price rises are not solely due to increase in demand. Those shady hedge funds are apparently betting on the price increasing still.

"There is a lot of speculation. Hedge funds are still buying, expecting prices to go even higher"says an expert

So whilst countries economys teeter on the edge of problems it's nice to know the people running hedge funds are pocketing a profit!

Welcome to this blog

2004-08-22T16:13:00.000+01:00

So I don't know what its going to be about exactly but I think you should let these things organically...Anyway les get started............

2004-08-21T22:21:00.000+01:00

Done

And one hour later

2004-08-21T22:18:00.000+01:00

Ah now that seems to have improved the formatting a bit, and testing the posting from google.toolbar. We are go....

Hello..o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

2004-08-21T21:02:00.000+01:00

Hmm, there seems to be a strange echo around here, perhaps that because this blog has just been created and I'm talking to myself....