Air by Geoff Ryman

Hey ring the church bells for I have finished reading a book! While I was away somewhere I read Air by Geoff Ryman. This is a book about the effect of a new type of wireless network that plugs into people's brains. The story is about the effect of this new Internet on the lives of a remote village close to China. There was a small amount of science fiction in it, but it was mostly about the effect of the Internet on a small rural village. Although this Internet was easier to use than the one we have. I enjoyed this clever book. The copyright for the book is 2004, so it is post the first dotcom bubble.

some unread books by Doris Lessing

When I tried to follow literature in some way I decided to try and read something by the person who won the Nobel Prize in literature for that year. The first year I tried this I read "A Personal Matter" by Kenzaburo Oe. I thought the book was fantastic, but the review of the book on Amazon makes me feel like a crude guy. The next year a poet won the Nobel prize in literature, so I easily gave up on my quest for self improvement. This year Doris Lessing has won the Nobel prize in Literature. I already own two Lessing books: The good terrorist and the golden notebook. Needless to say I had not read either of them. Now that my half shattered brain is rested enough, I think I can blast through some new books. We shall see. I am pleased that Lessing has won the prize, because she has a streak of science fiction in her. Anyway I just glad that nasty Salmon Rushdie didn't win. He is too loved by the literary establishment, and I didn't get "Midnight's Children"

PJ Harvey and me

PJ Harvey has a new CD out. The CD is called "white chalk". There is no guitar or drums on this new record, she mostly just plays the piano. It is very different from her normal guitar based man hating output. I was frankly stunned by the new sound, although that might have been due to the cans of the 8% Tesco lager. There are some really haunting tunes on this record. PJ looks like some Victorian governess on the photo for the CD. She doesn't look like the cool governess, who reads French novels, but more like a governess in a Henry James novel. I was going to say that secretly that I loved PJ Harvey, but I doubt that it much of a secret. Most men of my age love PJ. Somehow she is beyond style and cool. If I did go up and try and talk to her, I would end up rambling about extra DVD features and pyramids as I do around pretty women. Then the air would get hazy and I would lose sight of PJ as semi-transparent pictures of Picasso would dismiss me from her presence in a cool and educational way.

public enemy versus PJ Harvey

When I was growing up I listend a lot to public enemy. They just had such a fantastic sound, that was both positive and gun related. I don't tend to buy a lot of hiphop or rap, but that is because I never know who to buy. The closest to hiphop I have been recently is Mike Skinner's the streets (that I really love). I don't know why I don't listen to too much hiphop: the guns, drugs, loose women, and guns are so relevant to my life. Anyway I heard a public enemy track on the radio, so I went out and got the new album: How You Sell Soul To A Souless People Who Sold Their Soul I still love their sound. I got PJ Harveys latest CD at the same time, but I put public enemy on first.

Two walks in Ruchill park in Glasgow

Now that I am slowly finishing off various deadlines, I have been trying to take it a bit easy. Behind me there is a big park. I would not have noticed it, until I looked for my flat on google maps.
View Larger Map The name of the park is Ruchill park. I went for a walk there today (and last Sunday too). It is a big park, but it is almost deserted. There are way less people in Ruchill park than there are in Kelvingrove park, or the Botanic gardens. I walked up a hill on my own and looked at unkempt bushes. The first person I met last week, was carrying a bottle of Tennants, but wasn't a tramp. Its a good place to die I thought, there are so few people that muggers can get your cash and slit your veins before anyone notices your screams. There was a good climing frame, that was 4 or 5 m high. There is a good view at the top of the hill. Through the high rise buildings you can see the hills. Also the University of Glasgow looks grand.

Day watch

I went out see the film called "Day Watch" last night. This was a Russian film mostly set in Moscow. What was it about? Good question, I wasn't so clear what was going on. There were forces of good versus the forces of darkness. There was a truce of some kind. Moscow got destroyed, but they turned time back with the 'chalk of destiny'. Anyway it was a reasonable action fantasy film set in Russia. The film is the second part of a trilogy. The first film was called Night watch.

The equation that couldn't be solved

When I was a graduate student at Edinburgh during a seminar by someone in the maths department. He mentioned that he had an 8th order polynomial to solve, so he said "so by an elementary application of Galois theory I factored the polynomial in two quartic equations." Woow. We were all deeply impressed by this. (Of course I would have just used maple to solve the equations numerically). I have always felt that I should be able to solve equations by Galois theory. I have just read the book "The equation that couldn't be solved" by Livio. This is a popular mathematics book about Galois's theory. There was a lot of generic stuff about symmetry in the book. As usual strings make an unwelcome appearance. Galois died young in a duel, so he is a romantic figure as well. There wasn't enough detail for me to understand why there is no closed solution to polynomials with order higher than 4. I should have read the 79 pages of Galois theory by Emil Artin instead. This is a more hard core book on sums.

The unfairground

I have been listening a lot to the latest Kevin Ayers CD called "the unfairground". Kevin Ayers has an interesting career history, he was in the same scene as Syd Barret. He had not made an album for over ten years. The new CD is so catch and fresh. I can still feel the songs when I walk into work.

Scott Walker 30 century man

I watched the DVD "Scott Walker 30 century man". This is a documentary about the singer/artist Scott Walker. He started out in a boy band, but ended up as an experimental artist. I love Scott's rich voice and the way he always used to wear sun glasses. Julian Cope released a compilation record of his work during the 80s. So he invited on the film, but Julian doesn't appear in font of the camera, so they showed his email instead. Julian is always so cool. Perhaps I will check out some of Walker's later experimental work.

not a review of death proof

I have been feeling realy burnt out recently. One of the ways I like to relax is to go and watch some a film. There is a new Tarantino film out called Death proof. This is a film about a stunt man who kills women, and then maybe gets killed by women in some way. I am not a high brow kind of person. Trash is my middle name. I felt better after watching "shoot em up" last week, but I really couldn't face going to see this film. Somehow I get annoyed that a big hollywood company would make an exploitation film. Instead I went home and watched a DVD called "Blade house of Chthon". This was a straight to DVD film about the blade vampire killer. It was actually better than blade III. THis looked like a TV series film, because it ended in a strange way. Thanks to google I found it was a pilot for a TV show that got cancelled. Never let it be said that I am not a man of principle.

airport security

I thought I was being so cool when I used a picture of William Burroughs sitting on a porch holding a rifle as the desktop background on my linux machine. I don't use linux for presentations, so I thought I would be safe. However, it didn't seem such a good idea when I was going through security at an airport and security asked me to turn the laptop on. As I watched the screen come up at the airport, I suddenly thought this could all end in tears (or me missing the flight). Anyway the security guard was not watching the screen. I have a picture of a bluegene computer on the windows partition.

Advice to new bloggers.

I have been keeping this BLOG for over 3 years now, so I am entitled to give some advice for new bloggers. One thing that is very IMPORTANT is that you don't write anything that might stop you getting a job. The human resources departments usually have nothing better to do than than surf the web and send people word documents. So I humbly suggest that blogging that smoking a garden of blow is your main hobby is probably not a good idea, if your goal in life is to be corporate. (This shouldn't be a problem if you want to sell fast food and stay up late watching DVDs). Also I would stay clear of talking about controversial subjects. For example I would never consider writing a blog post about necrophilia. This is not really a problem because I don't really know anything about necrophilia. Of course there was that Soutpark program about the kids stealing the corpse of somebody's grandmother for some zany reason. When the police are telling the family about the lost of the corpse, the police make some very tasteless remarks about necrophilia. In the UK, this had people ringing in to complain. This must be one of the reasons that we can't see southpark on terrestrial. I did watch the DVD "visitor Q", directed by Takashi Miike, that had a long segment about necrophilia in a green house. Given the type of films that Miike directs, this was pretty tame, by his standards. I could of course research necrophilia by reading a wikepedia article, but you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. Some things need to be experienced. I did have a dream about having sex with someone who was tied up. I was pretty shocked by this and woke up immediately. The only part of my action film script has two hit men killing a woman. So this is part of the script (I own the copyright) Bang, bang the woman dies, Hitman 1, says "she's dead." Hitman 2, says "oh well waste not, want not", and starts to pull down his trousers. Hitman 1, says "what are doing man." Hitman 2, says "but she is still warm. I don't like it whan I have to talk about Eastenders, and they wriggle around when we are doing it". Hitman 1, says "put your trousers back on or I will kill you". Hitman 2, says "ok, ok, man your so weird". The two hit men exist stage left. I am a bit stuck on the next 87 minutes of the film, but there is clearly enough to hook Tarantino in to direct it. Anyway if you follow my advice you will be able to keep bloggng and hold a job.

blog in search of a theme

I was staring at the vortex of the toilet, trying to get my head in the mood for another day. I am so stressed that I have been unable to think of anything to blog about. The toilet bowl mouthed back "you have got Bloggers block", but your pooh is still runny, frequent and smelly. Ten minutes later I had an idea for a posting. I can still do this, I thought. I am not just a broken shell with all the creative juices lost in a pub toilet somewhere. Then I went to work. I got back home an hour ago. I looked at the keyboard, and I had this vague feeling that I had something to type. I remember reading about some young genius, who wrote poetry, but he didn't have enough life experience to write about the world, so was reduced to writing poems called "poem in search of a theme". Anyway I have remembered what I was going to talk about. In the online guardian there was an article about broadband from the grave. Essentially you get a web site when you are dead, so you can record content and email, and send it tour family and friends when you are dead. It reminded me about a conversation I had with someone over 10 years ago. We were asking what happens to a persons web site when they are dead? There should be a graveyard of web sites. Effectively this already happens with myspace, because many of the people on my friends list are actually dead. They still manage to post video and pictures, and that makes me very proud.

Venray

I started this post sitting in a hotel room in a town called Venray in the Netherlands. Why was I there you may ask? Good question. I took a plane to Dusseldorf airport to go to a conference. I used ryanair, and the Dusseldorf/Weeze airport turns out to be 70 km from Dusseldorf. I stayed in Venray because it was closer to the airport. When I got off the plane last Sunday I noticed that there were many people actually sleeping in the airport. Venray is a nice town. I arrived there in the afternoon and went for a walk in the city center. There were lots of nice cafes with seats outside. Cafe culture, so sweet. Later in the evening I went for a walk. Many of the street cafes were closed, so I walked into the outer edges of the town's centre. There I found a kebab shop where I feasted on another Donner kebab. Although I like to think of myself as an outlaw, I am not so wild. At the edge of the town there were some cafes where you smoke dope. I just stared in at the window and watched the cool young things get mellow. I did go to a bar. No one there spoke English, but I did hear a conversation, that involved the words Stella and Heineken. Yes, isn't it wonderfull how travelling broadens the mind. There was some kind of rave/dance party at the edge of the town center. The drive to the airport was mostly through the country. Even the countryside seems ordered and designed in the Netherlands. The forests in Germany always strike me as very ancient and full of wild fury. The German forests have not been designed, but seem to have been there since the birth of mankind. Of course in the Netherlands, everytime I passed a big greenhouse. I winked to myself and wondered what they could be growing.

shoot em up

I went out to see the film "Shoot em up" on Friday night. I felt a bit guilty, because Mark Kermode gave it a bad review. The film is just a lot of mindless violence, however it was done with style and was actually quite funny. Anyway I felt better for watching it, though it was not the kind of film I would take my mum too. Somehow I feel a lot better after a bit of a laugh. I just watched a south park episode that involved Cartman taking off all his clothes to do a Ninja invisibility trick. He did this in front of an audience. I have to admit I laughed so hard, I thought I was going to die.

the historian

I have finished reading "the historian" by Elizabeth Kostova. I am not sure that reading a book about Dracula at a nuclear physics conference is a good idea. It was a very clever book, involving scholarship, and some good forward-backwards narrative. I am ashamed to say that it was on Richard and Judy's summer read.

slaves of sleep

I have just got back from a conference in Germany. While I was there I read "slaves of sleep" by L. Ron Hubbard. This was a kind of cheesy fantasy novel, with a nerd living a different life when he slept. It was a fun read, but not very deep. I have read some great science fiction books that are based on some philosophical idea. The strange thing is that Hubbard was the writer who founded Scientology. He just writes a standard by the numbers fantasy book.

online viewing

When Apple announced that you could buy TV shows from ITunes, obviously my first thought was to try to get a science documentary. Somehow I ended up downloading a Southpark episode. I like to think of my self as unique in some kind of pompous way. However, I noted that the top download of TV shows from Itunes was Southpark. People in the UK clearly miss Southpark since it was pulled from terrestrial TV. I watched the episode "make love not warcraft". I used my old laptop. Trouble is the scenes slowed down and sometimes stopped. The animation on Southpark can be pretty weak, but it doesn't usually stop for 2 minutes. I was more successful watching "brother" downloaded from Channel4 on demand service. I originally wanted to watch a film, but couldn't be bothered to walk to Blockbusters. Unfortunately it took 2 hours to download, so I ended watched it a week later. Of course the software from Channel4 interfered with the BBC iplayer software. Of course if I was really cool I would download free stuff from peer to peer sites. I just get nervous having to deal with viruses and things. Anyway Blockbusters on Byers Rd have now got a much bigger collection of box sets. So I rented "family guy volume 3". Who needs the internet? One of my friends asked "what are you reading", I replied "that I was much too busy and stressed to do any reading". Umm.

Bourne Ultimatum

I am behind on this blogging thing. I went to see the Bourne Ultimatum maybe two weeks ago. I was really excited to see it. I am not really sure I enjoyed it so much. Part of the reason was that half way through the film, I really needed to go to the toilet. OK. perhaps if I hadn't drunk the traditional pre-film beer, I would have been OK. I bet Jonathan Ross doesn't have this type of problem. Somehow the film was too much of a mismatch of the earler films. The film made me want to really go to Tangiers. Jason Bourne and the Nicky went over to Tangiers via a ferry from Spain. That is the best way to go, after going to Spain via some cheap airline route. Tangiers looks so sunny and beautiful.

The new old thing

I have just finished reading a book called "The old new thing" by Raymond Chen. Chen was on the development team that wrote Windows 95/98/XP. It is interesting to hear his side of the story in the be nasty to Microsoft debate. His view was backwards compatibility at all costs. The programming examples were very ugly though.