Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? [The Genius Atheist Douglas Adams]
The last few weeks have seen some interesting developments in the world of computers, or, more importantly, computer software operating systems.
The original point of the operating system, or 'OS' was to drive the hardware. It was the interface between you and the computer to get things done. This was fairly true until a few years ago when Microsoft released Microsoft Windows Vista, when suddenly lots of people realised that their existing hardware was not powerful enough to run the OS.
This was, for the first time in the home PC market a massive turn around. MS went on a bit of a marketing splurge to encourage people to upgrade their hardware so they could use the new OS. Frankly, this is a very bizarre state of affairs. Vista flopped, in PC terms, quite spectacularly, and Vista was, for MS, replaced pretty damn quickly by Windows 7.
Lots of people are still running Windows XP, which, when all is said and done, does most things that most people actually want from their home computer. They can do their email, they can do some web based stuff, reading the news, watching a few on line videos from places like TED , and of course You Tube. There have been some new and quite interesting things to have developed over the last few years, like the advent of the podcast, of which the BBC in my humble opinion, has the best quality selection there is out there.
Recently, Apple, who sell very expensive computers, have released a patch for their Linux based OS, Mac OS X, Lion. A review of which can be found here on my favourite tech' site, El Reg . Apple are charging around 30 of your British pounds for this patch. You do of course need Mac OS X to load it onto, so do not think this is an OS for thirty quid, it is a patch to the OS you have already purchased.
There have also been two important updates in the world of Linux. The Gnome interface has received a massive over haul, and introduced a new user interface that has received some mixed reviews. It seems the Gnome 3 is a little like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it.
For the last few years I have been using Mandriva, the French distribution. I've been using this on my netbook and I this served me very well indeed. However, in the other interesting development in the desktop environment, Ubuntu, the leading Linux distribution, certainly in terms of downloads and seeming popularity, moved away from their traditional desktop, Gnome 2, and introduced Unity.
Unity is, in some ways, very similar to Gnome Three, but, it is not Gnome Three, it is a Ubuntu only desktop. I decided to give it a whiz and I am very glad that I did. This is not intended to be a review if Unity, I may save that pleasure for a rainy Sunday afternoon. If you can't wait, you can read a review here .
It did get me thinking however about just how much computing power I now have under my finger tips and how many bang for bucks I was getting. It got me thinking about computing on a budget and the levels of value for money that are now out there.
As is my want, I am going to use my computer as the base line, which means of course, I will be using Ubuntu as the basis for the costing and using this as the yardstick by which I will measure everything else. I will also start with the assumption that you have a laptop or desktop already, maybe an old one kicking around doing not a lot, or one that you really want to give a boost to but are actually happy with in the first place.
SO, where to start ? Well, there is the OS, itself. As regular readers, sorry, reader, will know, Linux is free, and as such, so is Ubuntu. As it says on the website “Ubuntu is, and always will be, absolutely free.” There are two main ways of getting Ubuntu, or any other Linux distribution, either from a website, perhaps the distributions own, or from somewhere like Distrowatch which, as the name suggests, is a repository of pretty much every distribution out there.
If you don't want to download a copy of yer fav'rit you could splash out a fiver and buy a copy of a Linux magazine, such as my favourite, Linux Format which has a DVD stuck to the front usually with a couple of distributions and a pile of other goodies ready for installing.
Once installed, either instead of, or next to, your current OS, what do you get ? Well, certainly all the basics are there. There is something to read your email with, such as Thunderbird or the one I am currently using, Evolution Mail , but there are others. Many others. Of course, you'll get a web browser. Firefox, Opera, Epiphany.... the list is, frankly, pretty damn long. There are a few webkit browsers out there, webkit being the underpinnings for Apples desktop browser, Camino which indeed started life in the Open Source world. Personally, I have stuck with Firefox but again, there are others.
Music and video are fantastically well covered in the Linux. I use VLC as the main audio and video player. VLC philosophy of plays everything is something that is pretty damn hard to over look. So I have not. It is not very good at managing libraries, and this is where Banshee and Rhythmbox kick in. Both are excellent library managers and players, managing music tags and art work very nicely. This is a screen shot from my Banshee player. Yes, lots of BBC Podcasts!
One thing you will notice might be the online music stores, which are built into the music player, to allow music to be purchased and downloaded directly to your library. Usually in DRM free MP3, sometime in Open Source OGG files. There are free online stores as well as "paid for" music stores.
The other thing you might have noticed is something called the Ubuntu One Music store. Ubuntu One is Ubuntu's online storage. The buzz words right now are cloud storage or online storage such as those you'll find here. I happen to use Drop Box which gives me two gigs of free online storage. Very useful. Apple have jumped on the band wagon with their I Cloud storage , for 15 quid a month. Oh and the Apple service does not allow pictures or music. Ubuntu gives me five gig for free. Into which I can shove anything. The two together gives me seven gig of free online storage, through which I can synchronise multiple computers. I have to say, this is fantastic. Apple charge 15 quid for which they feel they can control what you save in the space you pay for. Typical money grabbing bastards.
One of the main issues often cited against Linux is installing software. All distributions have something called repositories from which you can download and install hundred of software applications. This is a screen shot of the Ubuntu repository. There are literally thousands of programmes or applications there. Office applications for example. I happen to use Libre Office which is the Open Source, free of charge alternative to MS Office. Cost saving agaisnt MS Office for Windows, £429 , and for the Apple version : $279. Savings not to be sniffed at.
And what if you want to mess about with pictures ? Well, you could buy Adobe Photoshop, through Amazon for £589.99. GIMP the GNU Image Manipulation Programme is free. And downloadable through the repository.
So what else can you do ? Money management ? Fine. Home Bank, GnuCash or Eqonomise are all free. Quicken is one of the best known proprietary programmes. $99. I use Home Bank.
Now, the cynics out there might be thinking that I am just picking the best bits to show how good value Linux is. It is a fair point. Wrong, but fair.
The truth is, Linux offers you the ability and opportunity to do pretty much anything you want, for free. It is amazing. The fact that there are altruistic people out there who write software, for no financial gain, for other people to use, is perhaps the most astonishing part of Linux. There really are people out there who really do this, simply to make life better, to make life easier, for the rest of us.
So, before you dismiss it as hokum, give it a try.
Really, you will not regret it. And neither will your bank manager......
This week has seen a small, but I think quite important shift in the way humans consumer information, both fact and fiction.
Computers have been with us for while; I've written about it here in the past. I've commented on the rise of the portable computer, the hand held computer and bizarre popularity of Steve Jobs 'n' Co's awful series of hand held devices that they insist on naming with a pro-noun. I've also written about what I see as the best hand held device ever, the Psion 5x, here.
Regular readers will know I am not a fan of the devices that Jobs, so rather self indulgently calls "magical and revolutionary", or as most people are concerned, over priced, under spec'ed and with more restrictive practice that would make the Chinese government wince with a feeling of awe, wonderment and tinged with disappointment at their own small achievements.
These are not mobile 'phones any more, they are the next generation of PDA, the electronic assistant that was once dominated by the likes of Psion and Palm. However, to keep their users addicted to their new devices, their makers are looking at more and more bizarre ways of keeping the user interacting with this devices, lest they become bored and reject their device and end up with a disgruntled Tamagotchi. Yes, this is 1984!
With my deep seated love of all things Apple and it's more then distasteful hommage to the brilliant Alan Turing, I am not going to go on a rant about how Apple remove software from devices, or about how they are trying to extract 30% from the sale price of items purchased on your device etcetera, etcetera..... Well not right now anyway.
The mobile device, regardless of the manufacturer or the software it is running, is a mobile device, capable of some quite interesting things at times. It allows the user to immerse themselves for minutes at a time, banging away on a small screen whilst listening to the tinny rantings as it reminds you of it's continued existence.
However, the rise of the hand held computer, I think has put, if not the last, a fairly significant nail in the coffin lid of one of the greatest inventions Man has ever created : T H E B O O K!
This week, venerable book retailer Borders has, in America, filed for bankruptcy protection, because, essentially, falling sales meant that it's debt and it's 'value' were almost equal and with a forecast that one would soon be bigger than the other and not in a good way.....
Dillons, another venerable retailer of all things booky, was long since subsumed into the HMV group, owners of Ottakers and Waterstones, leaving only a handful of book shops to satisfy the demand.
Books. Books are a wonderful thing. They are tactile, with pages of texture that can be turned quickly or slowly, giving the reader the most intimate interaction between author and reader. Books are a personal item, especially books which have been read, re-read and read again. Books can be read anywhere; in the bath, in bed, on the bus or train, in the forest or up a mountain, they are the most versatile of items, wonderful indeed.
They are also the most multi-purpose devices on the face of the planet; they can be used to kill mosquitoes, they can be shoved under the leg of an Edwardian table to prevent occasional tea spillage, they can be thrown at the wall in a fit of pique, can be used as an ad-hoc note book, paper weight, fan and beer mat and, if they are still in one piece, read.
It will be a long time before the book is dead, a long time. However, as more and more people are turning to electronic books, and audio books, the art of reading, the personal intimacy between author and reader is, in my humble opinion, is on a slow and steady decline.
There is another small and I think important thing to remember about books. In the current climate of eco-friendliness, of green issues, global warming and the carbon footprint, the book, the humble book, is at the top of the list of all things eco.
Think about it. Yes, there are trees to chop down to make the book, but, if the human race was clever, and I doubt that we are, we could plant more trees than we chop down. Really, we could.
Moreover, once the tree has been chopped and the book made, it will survive for a long, long time. It needs no further power to make it work, it can be passed from hand to hand many times, and re-used more times than a punch line from a 1970's stand up comic. It is the ultimate eco-accessory.
Compare that to the average mobile device, with it's massive rare earth content of lanthanum, cerium, tantalum, neodymium and europium, all of which are exceptionally poisonous, take a massive effort to get out of the ground and are, by their very nature, rare. The politics of rare earths' is fascinating, with the Chinese currently owning approximately 95% of the worlds reserves. There is a very good article about it all , here.
And then there are the power consumption issues to think about. Not just the 'where do I charge my mobile' issue, which is an issue, but the power consumption that 97% of the population do not see nor think about. There are massive data centres consuming giga-watts of dead dinosaurs. Yes, electricity comes from fossil fuels and fossils are..... ?
The data centres that keep Google and Amazon and O2 and Vodafone running are enormous; one switch site consuming enough power to run a small Shetland Island for quite a little while. Google and Amazon provide the content, or at least access to it, O2 and Vodafone provide the connectivity. Why do you always have coverage on your mobile ? Because there are RBS's or masts out there connected to BSC's or base station controllers, connected to MSC's, which, in turn are connected to switch sites. And switch sites have more servers and air conditioning units than one can reasonably conceive.
One small switch site would fit into one large shipping container and would keep circa 500,000 subscribers up and running. The UK has more connected devices than people. That is an awful lot of dino's!!
And the power consumption of a book ? Bugga all.
And yes, I am aware of the irony of where you are reading this, but then again, I am not Random House.
Denmark; home of the Danes, famous for it's Dens, large quantities of sliced, fried and grilled dead pig, Copenhagen with it's wonderfully multi-coloured water side homes and buildings and it's "green conferences"; 'Copenhagen is Hopen-Hagen' as they announced in 2009 when Copenhagen hosted the Climate Change Conference; puns and word play in somebody else's language, that is sophisticated.....
Winter 2010 is the first time I have been to Denmark and, having been here now for a about a week, I do wonder what has taken me so long to get here. Denmark is a wonderful place.
Arriving by boat into Esbjerg, on the Danish west coast the very fist thing that struck me was just how dammed cold it is here. Biting cold. Not so much because of the -7°C temperatures but the biting lazy wind; so called because it does not go around but through.
The drive across Denmark was largely un-eventful, on until the bridge linking the mainland of Denmark, to Zeeland , the island, as big as it is, containing the multi-coloured Copenhagen on the east side of the island. The bridge is actually two bridges, one a multi arch viaduct type of construction leading to a small island in the middle of the estuary, which in turns leads to a two tower suspension bridge, in the style of the Humber. While the suspension bridge itself may not be the longest in the world, over all, the two bridges combined are somewhere in the region of around 15 miles. And 220kr to get over; around £18. Pretty damned expensive, but, for country that it is essentially self sufficient and basically does not receive any EU subsidy, it is a pretty damned fine achievement.
Denmark is a fairly flat sort of place. One could imaging the Dutch feeling very much at home here. There are even a few 'olde worlde' wind mills here, fine establishments for grinding wheat into all sorts of wholesome foodstuffs, such as bread, bread and alcohol; of which the Danes make a fine selection. There are also an awful lot of new modern wind turbines, making use of the one common element that seems to be in huge abundance pretty much all over Denmark .
Driving east, then north, the Land Rover eventually arrived in Odsherred, negotiating the snow, the wind and the very early setting sun. Once there, it became clear that this is possibly once of the most beautiful places I have been to. Now, for those of you who are regular readers of these pages will know that I a not, not, a hot weather bird. I do tend to get my gander up when the temperature reaches the heady heights of 90+°F but, to my chagrin, my ramblings have always taken me to hot places; Libya, Madagascar, Algeria, even though that was a brief sojourn, Gabon and lately, Congo.
However, now, I have two weeks in the sub-zero temperatures of Denmark, two weeks up to the knees in Scandic "white gold", two weeks of having to wrap up warm and remember to wear the gloves, two weeks of base layer shirts, thermal jumpers and hiking socks..... if there is a afterlife for atheists, I damn well hope it is in Denmark.
The area of Denmark I am in is essentially a spit, a finger of land that juts out into the sea, in this case, the Baltic, that very warm sea that joins together the Scandic countries that gave the Vikings their relaxed attitude pillaging, travel and thick jumpers. That means there is ocean to the north of me, ocean to the south... get it on.
It also means that the weather on the north side of the spit can be very severe, windy with horizontal snow whipping across the fairly lively water. On the south side, peaceful, calming serenity. One can imagine how the famous Herring Sandwich experiment was devised here. 'I like Herring sandwiches.....'.
The Danes also seem to a fairly relaxed attitude to snow, unlike some parts of europe, or the UK. The Danes seem to have the attitude that it snows; live with it. There is very little of the panicking that seems to grip some parts of europe at the appearance of a little chilled water, nor is there is the over-reaction to snow that besets the UK. Snow is a fact of life here, it happens at the time of the pagan 'new year' festivals and is taken very much in their stride. Some people could learn a thing or two from this attitude.
Snow is why I came here and I have not been disappointed. There is snow here in abundance. Drifts of three feet over night are not un-common. Six to eight inches of fall have been regular here for the fortnight I have been here. Bloody marvellous!
The roads here are treated in a pragmatic way; large lorries with ploughs on the front push their way through the snow on the main roads, most days, but not every day. The Danes, like most of the rest of the world, drive cars. Cars are not people and are more than capable of getting around when there is a little snow on the ground. The Danes just drive. Tremendous.
København, or, as the Angles would have it, Copenhagen, is on the east of the island of Zeeland and is one of the more interesting and sophisticated capital cities in europe, if not anywhere. As far as history is concerned, København is swimming in the stuff. Stuffed to the gills in old stuff. More history than a stick could be waved at for a twenty minute heavy stick shaking session. But that is not what makes København so interesting.
For me, København is a small city. It is a city where you feel you will never really get lost. There is a blend of the astonishingly old, with the Kings Castle dating backs around 420 years, bang in the centre of the city. There are some wonderful 'arts and crafts' buildings, dating back to around 1890 to 1910, , all knitted together with the ultra modern buildings of a vibrant, liberal and utterly relaxed city; a city that is comfortable with it's history, a city that is comfortable with it's heritage and a city that is comfortable with open attitudes and it's expensive cafés with it's really excellent cakes.
Københavnites, as it seems, along with the rest of Denmark, are astonishingly polite people, and as befits a people whose language is astoundingly complicated, even for other Scandinavians, also speak pretty damn near perfect English. Our American cousins could learn something from the Danes.....
Everybody I spoke with, from the chap who offered me the remainder of his parking ticket, to the man who asked for help getting his car out of the snow, to the woman who served me hot chocolate and a rather delish' cake in a Christianshavn coffee shop, all spoke damn near perfect English; often even without me saying anything in the first place. Perhaps I look English.
The Københavnites, like the rest of the Danes, seem to be a fairly pragmatic bunch. And it is nice to see. Yes it is cold here, and they do keep warm, but not to the point where they look like they are going on a polar trek with Adamsson; short skirts and long boots seem to be de-rigour here right now. Nice. The Danes, like most of the Scandics, cycle a lot; indeed, there are well marked out cycle paths which seem to be better cleaned and cleared of snow than the roads. The Danes do not wear cycle helmets. Magnificent.
Public transport, at least in København, seems to be pretty good. Even in the 'out of town' areas, there are lots of very yellow buses around, taking the Danes from place A to place B, with a possible stop off at place C. Not a single 'bendy bus' amongst them.
In the centre of København there is, what seems to be a man made, or at least planned and laid out, lake. It is almost like a canal, running through the centre of the city, but with no apparent beginning nor end; it is just there. There are three bridges running over the canal, dividing the mass into four sections; this bridge being the Louises Bridge, looking from the south to the north. This view is from the same bridge, looking south. And yes, it is frozen. Which made for a wonderful walk across the canal, in between the skaters and other city ramblers. One can see how the idea of a 'city skating rink' is perhaps a Danish idea.
The city has water running through it's veins, but not just for the aesthetic of water front living. If only it were not quite so cold, the frozen canals would be teeming with Venetian style canal cruisers, yachts and barges, plying their trade in slow, but ecologically sound fashion. . Sadly, this December, it was that cold....
Denmark is one place I to which I would love to return, either in the summer, or again in the winter. This winter has for me been the epitome of what a winter should be; cold, lots of clean, crisp white snow, , heavy lashings of snow atop a forest of trees, some excellent food, really nice people, a mixture of rural isolation and the city sophisticate with some suave and rather stylish women who manage the seemingly impossible job of keeping warm and looking rather foxy.
I have, I will freely admit, been exceptionally fortunate to have had some amazing experiences over the last few years. I have seen some fascinating things, eaten some interesting foods, met with people who have the most astounding views and heard some sumptuously short stories and some tantalisingly tall tales.
I have swam in the Indian Ocean on a warm mid December day, on he eastern coast of Madagascar, I have dined with friends who have eaten crocodile and turtle, met some wonderful friendly Police in Zambia, walked into Zimbabwe, despite the protestations of Big Bad Bob and acquired a ten trillion Zimbabwe Dollar note. I have skirted across the lip of the Zambezi river at it's widest and deepest point, spent a very early Sunday morning in a Mbabane jazz club and spent some interesting hours discussing mermaids and 'half man, half goat' creatures with a friend who was astonished that the Congolese eat bush meat.
I always knew where my towel was...
There are however some things from home that I really miss. There are, in truth, lots of things about Blighty that I miss. BBC Radio Four at half past six every week day evening, Rugby, driving on the correct side of the road, proper milk, ..... and chocolate.
Now of course, England is not the only place that makes chocolate, of that small detail I am aware. And good chocolate is as personal choice as are a pair of really great underpants. Great chocolate is an even more personal choice but exceptional chocolate is, frankly, one of those sparklingly rare occurrences that an Atheist might almost belie that there were some divine provenance involved.
The joy of travelling as I do is that I have the chance to experience things from many far flung corners of the The Times Big Book World Atlas. In the world of chocolate, however, the choices are bizarrely few and far between; some european brands, some American brands and of course, Cadbury's.
During late December, I have managed to squeeze a couple of days in wonderful East Riding of Yorkshire, which as all your devout religious types will know, God used as the Template for Eden! During this time I managed to purloin myself a large bar of wonderful Bournville and a bar of two of Dairy Milk. These are, without doubt, the two greatest bars of chocolate known to Man.
The French, in their usual, subtle and understated way, claim to be the chefs of the world, but, as usual, when it comes to chocolate, they are simply wrong. French chocolate, like most French foods, is exceptionally over rated, monstrously over priced, and hideously over hyped by self indulgent mock-human mock-neys such as Jamie Oliver. Belgian chocolate would be fine if only they would stop stuffing it with fondant, ginger or lemon cream. Turkish chocolate, which I have tried in Libya, was, if anything, like the supermarket own brand, discount cooking chocolate; full of fat, devoid of chocolate and taste; pretty terrible stuff. And anybody who has ever eaten a bar of Hersheys will understand straight away way American chocolate just isn't....
I am also very well aware that it is a the familiarity with Cadbury's that gives it such appeal. Of how the advertising campaigns of "a glass and a half of milk in every bar" really did sink in and become part of the national understanding of what really good chocolate is. The English rejoiced at being told that "everybody is a fruit and nut cake" and that Cream Eggs were only an easter thing. As an atheist, the Cadbury's Cream Egg really did make me look forward to the Pagan celebrations adopted by the christian church to re-reinforce the Jesus myth of re-incarnation, after some chap may or may not have been nailed to a tree by the Romans.
For the last 18 months or so, I have been in the Francophone countries of Gabon and now Congo Brazzaville. I have really missed some really good chocolate. With my short sojourn back in Blighty, I acquiesced and tucked into some delicious Cadbury's once more. And it is delicious.
It is also slightly sad and depressing that this may be the last time I taste really great chocolate. Cadbury's is now owned by the vast international behemoth that owns Milka chocolate, Toblerone, Dairy Lea cheese, which has about as much to do with cheese as Sarkosy has to do to with ethics and honesty and a very large array of not very interesting foods.
The problem with foreign ownership is that the decision making is taken away from home shores, which, is probably the single most important feature of business; self determination. Self determination, the ability to think for ones self and makes ones own choices in life, is the very first step in all forms of maturity; economic, intellectual, political and social. Once a society abdicates the responsibility for thinking to others, that society has reneged upon it's own intellectual heritage, no matter how rich or poor that heritage is.
In the case of Cadbury's, it is the Labour Party who shall forever have the shame and humiliation, the Janus faced ignominy of knowing that they allowed Cadbury's to be sold to one of the worlds largest cigarette company's and that, because of The Lies of Labour every time your sink your teeth into a bar of wonderful milky smooth Cadbury's Dairy Milk, you are contributing to the wealth of the American tobacco industry.
For me, one of the things that really defines a country, a culture, people, is food. In the extreme countries are defined by their food, by their cuisine, the ingredients they use and the way they prepare a meal.
The Italians, for example, are epitomised by pizza and pasta, the Swedes just love their herrings, the Japanese will eat anything from the sea as long as they do not have to go the effort of cooking it, the English, sometimes known as Beefy's invented the oft enjoyed culinary spectacular that is Fish'n'Chips. In the Middle East, hummus, baba ganoush and bread that is whiter than a polar bear sucking a mint on a glacier just outside Reykjavik. Our Teutonic cousins do a enjoy a tasty sausage, fnar fnar!. while the Greeks do love an good olive. Not too hot with the Vodka Martini's, but a whiz with the olives!
There is of course the culinary power house that is America with... with.... with what they have.
For my five years plodding around bits of Africa, I have been mostly disappointed with my culinary experiences. On a very few occasions I have been amazed by my food in Africa. There have been moments, but not many. Swaziland gave me the most wonderful pap I have eaten, Libya was not outstanding except for the Ramadan sweets, a one inch square nibble, dripping with oil, laced with sugar and stuff full of finely chopped nuts. 'Tana, in Madagascar gave me one of the best Indian meals I've ever had; Malagasy food itself being rice based being bland and mostly uninspiring.
For the last 12 to 18 months, I have been in Gabon and Congo Brazzaville, and the best I can really say here is that Pointe Noire does have one really good pizza restaurant. Chicken, usually fried, is the local 'speciality' but I am not really sure than 'speciality' is the correct word, more 'millstone'....
For the last week or so, I have been back in Kinshasa, the 10 million people capital of DR Congo, formerly known as Zaire. As I write this, the rain is pouring, I am listening to the crackling across the skies while having some Kinshasa Rumba playing in the background. Nice.
Last night however I had one of the most amazing meals I have eaten in the last five years I have been here in Africa. A colleague from the office invited a few if us to join him for a meal at one iof his favourite eateries.
When we arrived we found a small, unassuming place, tucked away in a place where it can not be found, in a suburb of Kinshasa. It was beautifully laid out; tables in singles or pairs, secluded from each other with timber frames, with locally made rugs providing some privacy. A lovely little place.
The food however will stay with me for a very long time. Our colleague, Leon-Paul suggested we just 'tuck in' with the explanation coming after we'd eaten. The food looked fantastic and smelt wonderful : turtle, Boa constrictor, antelope, crocodile, crickets and the Kinshasa Caviar pupæ of something we could not quite work out.
Whoa, steady on there, I can anticipate you yelling there, where have your vegetarian morals gone ?
[/font]One of the confusing and mostly frustrating feelings during my potter around the minor cities of Africa is the sheer lack of anything vegetarian to eat when not cooking for yourself. Africa is stuffed to the gills with some of the best and most delicious fruits and vegetables which very few people choose to eat.
In Africa, the foods that people value, the foods that people want to eat are meat, meat and meat, with, if at all possible, a side order of meat. As a friend in Zambia once told me, vegetables are what you have with meat, but you don't really eat them..... Fried chicken is very high on the menu of I want with fish being pretty high on the desire-o-metre as well. Vegetables are seen as foods you eat when you simply can not afford to eat properly, or buy meat.
My Kinshasa experience however was a master class in wonderful locally grown vegetables and cooking. To paraphrase Bertie, it was delish.....
I had spinach, cooked and prepared in two different ways, but both essentially boiled, sweet potato croquettes, deep fried sliced plantain, which is a large banana type fruit which keeps it's shape and flavour when it is cooked. There was pap, prepared in a way I had not had before, but was really tasty and another sweet potato dish that has a name I can not recall, nor even pronounce when I was told it six times. Lingali is a difficult language to get to grips with, especially for a simple Yorkshire lad.
All of this fine food was washed down with a large bottle of Tembo, which is a rich, dark beer, with plenty of body and great flavour.
To round off the meal we had some local grown fruit, which included wonderful pineapple and something I had never eaten : mangostine. Mangostine is a peculiar fruit, eating only the inner, white and soft inner fruit, with the outer fruit, or exocarp, sometimes known as the outer hard skin, being thrown away. Initially the fruit looks like a large, plum, consistently spherical, and shares the same, deep purple colour. To open, the upper third of the fruit is squeezed or squashed, opening the crown of the fruit. This can then be peeled away exposing the white inner fruit.
Over all, it was a wonderful feed, good beer, great company and excellent food. I wonder if I will be able to squeeze in another before I head back to the culinary epicentre that is Pointe Noire.
It is not very often than I simply post pictures, however, with the recent rains that we have had here in Pointe Noire, Congo B', and the protestations of "neigh, neigh and thrice neigh" I felt it was only fair to present the empirical evidence digital photography.....
Pointe Noire has, just like it's more northerly neighbour Gabon, only two seasons. Hot and dry and hot and wet. Now, it is hot'n'wet...... very wet.
Very bloody wet indeed.
As I am sure you very well read and extremely well educated people know, Congo B' is, as near as makes no difference, equatorial. It is however, one of the most continually cloudy places I have ever been. To paraphrase, very, very loosely, the great Carl Sagan, very rarely are there clear blue skies. Never here in Congo have I been able to repeat the immortal lines of Dave Bowman and mutter 'my god, it's full of stars'.
Well, the cosmos is, but there is a bloody thick cloud line between me and it which means that only once or twice every few weeks do I actually get to see any stars.
Importantly though, these clouds never drop their watery cargo on the good burghers of Pointe Noire and life here trundles along in it's slow, perambulating meander *.
[/font]Until the rainy season. Which is about now.
So, follow the link below and you will see a number of images taken this very week, here in Pointe Noire, in the Republic of Congo.
Part of the problem with being where I am, Pointe Noire in the Republic of Congo, is that I very often miss some of the important news items or events. Not the big stuff, like the terrible start to the season Leeds are having, or that Stephen Fry has started endorsing Microsoft's new Window Mobile operating system, or that a new series of the BBC Science Programme, The Infinite Monkey Cage will be starting again on the 15 November 2010, but sometimes, I miss the important stuff.
David Hockey has always been a bit of an artistic hero to me. For as long as I can recall, I have been a fan of his work.
I am not entirely sure how I became aware of Hockney's work. Perhaps, when I was younger I saw similarities between Hockey and the likes of Paul Klee and Vasiliy Kandinski; the bold colours, the simplistic styles. Perhaps it was because Hockey is a relatively local lad, being of sound mind he is from Yorkshire and his Gallery, the magnificent Salts Mill in Saltaire, just outside Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the second greatest county in England, after the East Riding of Yorkshire.
It could be that, being local, he has painted wonderful scenes of Yorkshire, which, with the five or so years I have spent in Africa, do make miss Blighty ever so slightly. It could be the vibrancy of the colours he uses, the different medium, from pencils and charcoals to oils and water colours.
Or perhaps it was that, for me anyway, Hockney is a truly innovative artist. There are his magnificent 'photo collages of the Grand Canyon, his iconic Stop sign, his Nude from the mid 1980's, and those Los Angeles colleagues of his friends, his lovers, his mother and his dog. All these can be seen, in glorious Flash, here. If you have a mobile Apple thingy, well, send an email to Steve Jobs, as he has decided you can not view Hockeys wonderful work.
And then of course there were Hockney's series of faxes, or facsimiles; drawing of swimming pools, drawn in pencil at his studio in California and sent through, page by agonisingly slow page to the Gallery in Saltaire. His Tennis is enormous and really must be seen to be appreciated.
Hockey is now at it again. He is once again proving that he is at the forefront of art, that contemporary art is not just A Bird on a Stick, Unmade Bed or the Damien Hirsts Shark in Formaldehyde, which once elicited the question, 'Hirst, what is he, artist or fishmonger ?'
Hockey has a new installation, this time at a Paris gallery; Fresh Flowers, or Fleurs Fraiches, en Francais. Essentially, Hockney has as series of display screens, each showing a new, original work from the Great Yorkshire Man.
Hockey can create a new piece, digitally, and have this new, original work sent directly to the devices in Paris; a modern re-fresh of the 1980's fax-able art. As Hockney himself has said in the BBC Interview here, "You can make a drawing of the sunrise at 6am and send it out to people by 7am."
Cast your minds back, if you will, around 12 months; the last three or four months of 2009. It was a pretty exciting time. I was working in Gabon, Peter Mandelson, the the one time mortgage defrauder, some time Business Sec' and second rate hack, was covered in green custard for continuing to push the benefits of an even bigger Heathrow, fighting was still continuing in Afghanistan, England were continuing to build under Martin Johnson, England under Capello were massively confident of going a very long way in the football World Cup and London buses were proud to carry the poster featuring an atheist advertisement with the slogan 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life' . Of course there was also the small matter of the upcoming political pressure cooker of the UK General Election. There was no date set, but spring summer 2010 was a nailed on certainty.
It was around this time that a good friend of mine, Mr Lambert Simnel suggested that I join Twitter. I was not part of the micro-blogging community. For those who don't know, Twitter is an instant messaging services limited to 140 characters, including spaces, in which the vain and the vacuous can vent their spleen at almost anyone who is prepared to read. You can also send messages directly to people by prefixing their made up name with the “@” symbol. All very straight forward.
The rational behind Lambert's reasoning was there was an election coming up in the UK and it would be a good way for me, being in the far flung wilds of central Africa, to “keep in touch” with the the pulse of nation by reading what the “twitter-ati” were saying. I was also vaguely aware that the Web 2.0 phenomena, interactive internet, was being used by the main political parties to reach the great un-washed in the Blairite fashion of the “snappy sound bite”. 140 characters or less.
So, I joined up. And, I have to say, in a frightening short space, I was pretty much hooked. I began “following” some of the movers and shakers of the British political scene as they themselves embraced Web 2.0. Or, I suspect, get their press people to embrace it and push out the bland musings of our great leaders and thinkers. Sarcasm intended.
We are now knocking on the door or 2011, the political landscape in the UK is much different; we have a Conservative / Liberal coalition who are making cuts in public spending to reign in the Labour over-spend of the previous 13 years. The global economy is slowly, slowly, picking up, but, as the recent G20 meeting in South Korea has proven, it is exceptionally fragile right now. There is still fighting awash in Afghanistan, religious extremism is start is starting to gain a certain credibility as more and more people try to assert their religious rights, the art of being offended is becoming a profession while the disappointment of the England team in the summer World Cup has lead to the realisation that, despite that fact we invented the bloody game, we are not as good as we think we are. Or, perhaps, we are not as good as the media tells us we should think we are. I blame, in a large part Murdoch / Sky. Reasons are in another posting.
I still have my twitter account. I have some excellent luminaries "following" my account, reading, I hope the wise and wondrous words that wander from my laptop. It must be said, that I am "following" more people than follow me, but that is not really too surprising.
However, the last few months I have becoming indifferent to the bilge, bile and banality that I have seen on Twitter; the base and baseless chatter that has become the meat of the so-called Twitter-ati. A little self indulgent p'raps? There has been a massive growth in the "me, me, me" culture, partly driven by the change in the political climate in the UK, where there is a dis-proportionate outcry of selfishness;"don't cut my money","not in my back yard","leave me alone". This has been supplemented by the assumed view that everybody has both an opinion and a fundamental right to have this opinion shared to the masses; as if anybody cares what one is having for lunch.
Moreover, in the last few weeks there has been an increase in the underlying assumptions that everybody's inane views must be both supported and, bizarrely, propagated. I am not going to highlight the banality of individual people here, however, as an example of the very recent idiocy, I am amazed at the amount of support there has been for a man who, jokingly, we are told, threatened to blow up a UK airport. Why the support ? Because he did it on Twitter. Well, that's all right then. There has even been a suggestion of a 'benefit gig' to raise money for an appeal. Are these people mental?
My original ideals for joining Twitter have long since vanished. The cut and thrust of reasoned, passionate debate have evaporated in the months since May 2010. I am tired of reading pointless and immature messages from people with very little say, even less reason for saying it and without the wit and mental dexterity to realise either.
I am well aware that a lot of people will put me firmly in this middle of this group. There maybe one or two of those who might make me Leader. I care not a jot.
There are some out there from whom I will miss the occasional, serious and grown up debate; the cut and thrust of "you're wrong and this is why" rather than simply "it's not faiiiiiiiiiiiiir". I hope those people know who they are. There is also one good thing that has happened as a result of my being on Twitter, and that is that I managed to connect to Bletchley Park and be part of their fund raising effort to save @bletchleypark.
It is with a flourish and a soupçon of irony that I post this missive on my Opera site, knowing of course it will post to my Twitter account. Yeah, yeah......
So, tomorrow, being the last day of October is the time when, according to story, myth and, perhaps, legend is the time when ghouls and ghosts, witches and demons are said to haunt the land with chilly fingers that reach out for a quick ephemeral fondle as you climb the wooden hill.
Oddly, Monday is a national holiday, to celebrate All Saints Day. On the back of this, and a conversation I had recently with a couple of colleagues, I do have some questions about the myths of dead people, ghosts, ghouls and goblins, witches wizards and warlocks.
The first thing to say is that I do not believe in anything like this. For me, the whole idea of ghosts, ghouls, goblins, astrology, reiki, feng shui, super-natural crystals, quija boards, blah, blah, blah..... is poppycock. Amusing poppycock, but poppycock none the less. However, having said that, I do, like most people, have a restive imagination. When I am alone in a dark, outdoor, place, with perhaps, just the mooooooon to illuminate, a slight rustling in the trees...... you know what I mean, my imagination does start to wander and I do have to make a concerted effort to remind myself that I am being stupid and there is no such thing as ghosts. I do quicken my step a little though.....
So, I have some questions that, by dint of the fact that I can not answer them, is part of the reason why I know the whole field of the super-natural is piffle.
So tell me, if ghosts do exist, why are there no cavemen ghosts, ghosts of Pachycephalosaurus knocking around from 60 odd million years ago? Why do we not see ghosts of some of our common ancestors, such as Homo heidelbergensis, or it's descendant Homo Neanderthalensis or our cousins Neanderthals.
Wouldn't it be fantastic if there was a ghost of Mitochondrial Eve, the woman that lived in the Rift Valley in East Africa, somewhere in the areas that is now known as Tanzania. She is the statistically expected most recent female ancestor common to all mitochondrial lineages in humans alive today.
Yes, I know there are countless stories from Classical Greek and Roman mythology, but do they really count? The Greeks believed there was a man with the head of a bull, or is that a bull with the body of a human? And of course, on a similar vein, mermaids; half fish and half human. But no explanation of what is inside? Lungs of a human or filters of a fish? Is there just one ever lasting mermaid or an entire colony of male and female mermaids producing little mermaid children. Oh how we laughed.....
Wizards and witches: outside the stories of the marvellous Terry Pratchett, why are wizards considered to be venerable old men and witches seen as mad and dangerous old women? Obviously the, calm, relaxed and even handed Papal Inquisition had a lot to do with that, with the stories of 'meddling witches' becoming engrained in the public psyche of central and western europe. Never really made sense to me...
... and why the pointy hat ?
And when did bats become associated with vampires? Bats are fantastic, amazing creates, navigating through the world with sonar, which compensates massively and incredibly for their relatively poor eye sight at night. Think about the evolutionary logic of sonar at night. Eyes need light. Night is dark. So to operate at night requires larger eyes to make use of the low light levels. This is not massively efficient as large eyes require a larger head, reduce mobility because a larger body is more difficult to manoeuvre quickly. Sonar is a magnificent alternative. That is why the bats have the skies to themselves at night..... Pelicans do not fly at night......
And then there are crystal pyramids, reiki and feng shui, or, as some polo necked black jumper wearing style gurus would have you believe it is pronounced fung schwaaaaaaaaaaay. I mean come on, really. You may as well believe that astrology, really works.
And then there is the Ouija board, often thought to be of German or French mediæval origin, but is in fact a trade marked invention now owned by an American games company. Oh yes, patent law is very spooky. But there is the "séance". For those who are not utterly aware, a séance is, we are told, the ability to communicate with the dead. Oh yes. The lights must be off, there must be lots of velvet and, oh yes, we must hold hands. Astonishing.
This list could go on and on and, frankly, it almost never ending.... but this post does.
I have been here in Pointe Noire since May this year and, as regular readers recognise, I have been plodding my way, inexpertly around Africa for a touch over five years now. Libya, Madagascar, Swaziland, Zambia, South Africa, Gabon and now the Republic of Congo with a quick skip across the Congo River to the Democratic Republic of Congo, sometimes known as DRC or Congo Kinshasa.
For now, I have decided that I will keep a one month diary. And why not start now... ?
Monday is the 1st of November and here in the Republic of Congo it is a National Holiday. All Saints day. A variation, I think, of Hallo'een, which as you know, celebrates, if that is the word I want, ghouls and ghosts, witches and demons that are said to haunt the land with chilly fingers which reach out to you as you climb the wooden hill.
So, this seems like as good as time as any to start a month if idle scribbling. I'm not going to limit myself to Congo, moreover I will spend one month scribble any old inane rubbish that I can think of to fill a page or two. There maybe pictures.
So, today, or this weekend, is, er, day one. Monday may very well be day two.... We will see. So, as a taster, a brief history of the area.
First of all, the are two Congo's. To south of where I am, is the Democratic Republic of Congo, the capital being Kinshasa. Kinshasa is a city of around 10 to 12 million people; it varies depending on who is counting... It is pretty big. And busy. Oh jiminey cricket, it is busy. There are some who claim the I-'phone is an excellent mobile 'phone. They are wrong. There are those who say the French make great cheese. They too are wrong. And there are those that say that New York, America, is a 24 hour city, as intimated by Woody Allen as the credits roll at the beginning of that fantastic film, Manhattan. When compared to Kinshasa, they too, are wrong.
Kinshasa is the capital of DRC, which is E N O R M O U S. I mean, really. Enormous. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. There is no point quoting statistic because I don't have any and I can't really be bothered to look them up, but, as a comparison, DRC is the size of Europe. End to end, across the longest axis, the DRC is about the same as the straight line distance from London to St Petersburg in Russia. Quite a trip! Oh, and historically, DRC used to be known as Zaire and, astonishingly, represented about 97% of the Belgian Empire; the other 3% being a small coffee shop just north of Utrecht.
By comparison, the Republic of Congo is much more discrete, much smaller, more reserved; a country with around 4 million people, most split between the capital Brazzaville and, the location of your correspondent, Pointe Noire.
Interestingly, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, separated by the majestic Congo River, are the closest two Capital cities in the world. You can see one from the other and easiest way is to cross the river by speed boat. Actually, boat is the only way; there are no bridges.
The Republic of Congo, known as Congo B' was part of the Francophone collective along the west African coast, and includes Gabon, Benin, Togo and one or two in north east, such as Senegal and Ivory Coast.
In recent history, there was of course the civil war here, and some pretty disgusting excursions with their neighbours across the water, but these days, life in Congo B' and Pointe Noire is relaxed.
Life is driven by the oil industry, which brings in nearly all of Congo B's money. Like most countries in this part of Africa, there are noticeable oil reserves, which means significant income for the Government. Except.... there are no other exports from Congo B', which means that everything else, everything else is imported. Everything. including bottled water from our gallic cousins. Oh yes, they not only have managed to persuade the English that french bottled water is good, but they have done the same to large parts of west Africa. I mean, really, bottled water 6000 miles from the puddle it came from......
There are two or three things that stand out for me when I think about my life here in Pointe Noire. Expensive is one. Certainly. And that is because of the massive amount of import duty that the Government extort. And why not, after all it is easier to 'tax' than it is to actually do things.
The other thing that stands out for me here, as it does in some other parts of the west of this massive continent, is, how shall we say, relaxed it is. There is no hurrying anything here. There is no rushing. And very little forward planning and thinking ahead.
The airport in Pointe Noire, as you can see from the image here, typifies this for me and looks like more like a scrap yard of forgotten aeroplanes, rather than the western hub for traffic between Congo B', DRC and Gabon. There is no security, nobody guiding you to the correct 'plane, nobody making sure you do not get in the way of something, like, oh, a taxing DHL cargo 'plane; the only guide I had was a seasoned Congolese I met who agreed, yes, may be it could work a little better, but..... it does work now. This image, despite the tag, was taken in July of this year. There were three flights leaving at similar times, and, it was not until I was actually on the 'plane that I was really certain that I was actually on the correct flight.
Incidentally, the large 'plan on the left was a third hand, Russian built Libyan Gov' cargo 'plane. It deposits aid in various parts of Africa, and spreads 'development' in conjunction with LAICO, the Libyan African Investment Company, Gaddaffi's personal pension plan which includes a small hotel chain based on the Hilton model of high prices, standard rooms but a solid brand. Never really understood the lure of Hilton..... but I hate hotels anyway.
So, that wraps up my day one summary. Complaints to the usual address....
Yorkshire is a wonderful place. And the world has a lot to thank Yorkshire for. More than you will realise. But I'll come to that in a few lines.
I have to say, I love Yorkshire. It has everything. The wonderful historical city of York, the one time Roman capital for the most northerly part of their empire. Harrogate, the wonderful Spa town with it's own brand of water. Leeds, the cultural and economic hub that gave the world the made to measure suite. and clothed many an England World Cup team, including the, erm, 1966 winners! Sorry to the Scots, Irish, Welsh, Americans et al who have not won the football World Cup. I won't mention England winning the Rugby World Cup either....
There are the wonderful Yorkshire Wolds,, for which there are many great mountain bike routes, rolling from the beautiful east coast through to the heart of the country. And of course the Yorkshire Dales,.
There is the Humber Bridge, which, when it was completed at a cost too vast to even contemplate, the bridge held the world record as the longest single span suspension bridge for 17 years. Brunel would have been proud!
Then there is the beer, or, in English, ale. There is a plethora of fine English Ales, from Timothy Taylors, Little Valley, Theakstons, purveyors of Old Peculiar and XB,and of course the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham. Ok, so that is North Yorkshire, but excellent beer none the less. An exhaustive list can be found here.
One of my all time favourites places is Beck Hole, a mile and a half from Goathland. Goathland, for those of you who like the I've been there feeling in cinemas, was the film location for the railway station in the Harry Potter films, amongst other things. However, Beck Hole also has the Birch Hall Inn, whic is about a small a pub as you can get without calling in my front room! Sadly, as Beck Hole only has nine, yes nine houses, which is a magnificent home to pub ratio, the 'official' Beck Hole web site and links to the pub, seem not to be working. So, instead, here is a link to a beer guide site. Well, it is a pub after all.
It is a while since I've been, sadly, having spent the last five years in different parts of Africa, but, for a pub which is only 200 square feet, or five metres by four metres of you like it metric stylee it serves a fantastic pint of ale, and some excellent, simple food, including some excellent sandwiches. They also sell the UKs favourite crisps, Seabrooks, from Brat'fud, or Bradford if you are from the Home Counties.
This seems like a nice segue into the 'why the world is grateful for Yorkshire' section.
It seems that, if it were not for Yorkshire and all that Yorkshire has been able to give to the world, we would never have left the Dark Ages. No, really......
If you move up the coast, from Goathland, you'll get to Whitby. Whitby is, some say, home to the finest food ever created by man, fish'n'chips. Naturally, having more coast line and excellent arable land than anywhere else in England, deep frying a battered fish, traditionally cod, haddock or flounder, with deep fried thick cut potatoes was only really going to be created in such a magnificent county. France, for example, with it's oh so delicious 'boiled to death' snails could never create a feast such as fish'n'chips!
But there is more to Whitby than simply mouth watering cuisine. Charles Darwin, was the man who brought enlightenment to the world with his books 'The Voyage of the Beagle', 'The Descent of Man' and of course 'The Origin of the Species'. The first book, 'The Voyage of the Beagle' refers of course ship The Beagle, which set sail from Whitby.
Not long after, Bram Stoker published his most famous novel, Dracula in 1897. Whitby Abbey is seen as many for the inspiration of the infamous Transylvanian castle. Stoker also did most of his research in Whitby, which is all neatly summarised here.Boo!
Whitby, according to the Grauniad is also known as Britain's Spookiest Town.Anyone who has been attacked by a seagull in Whitstable may disagree. Lost some Allen Keys, try Lowestoft....
Marks and Spencer started their Penny Bazaar in Leeds, stainless steel, used by billions the world over as knives and forks, was invented in Sheffield. The razor blade was too a top tyke tool invented by a chap called Wilkinson. They also made Swords.....
James Cook, the seafarer, and John Harrison, inventor of marine chronology and the man who finally resolved the issues of longitude, were both proud Tykes.
I'm also pretty certain that both Cook and Harrison would have savoured some incredible Yorkshire Puddings, because which Sunday dinner would be complete without a Yorkshire Pudding, into which the gravy from dead cows would be poured ? Cats eyes, yes, really, are a Yorkshire invention, with Percy Shaw hailing from cosmopolitan and mildly feline Halifax [Yorkshire, rather than Halifax Nova Scotia], which is now subsumed into the delightful conurbation of Cleakhuddersfax.....
But it is not just amazing science and technology for which Yorkshire is justly famous. The Brontë sisters, despite their vaguely Germanic spelling, were from Bradford. I do not need to tell any adolescent female for which books the Brontë's were responsible. For the chaps, think Colin Firth in a ruff....
Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and one of my favourite artists, David Hockney all hail from Yorkshire.
William Wilberforce, the great social reformer, which my Kenya colleagues are rightly very proud, hailed from 'ull, or, to give it's full title, 'ull! Guy Fawkes was from York, the inventor of the toffee apple and retailer and rights holder to Guys Fawkes Night which is celebrated ever 5th of November with a huge, warming bonfire. What a nice chap!
The list of reasons for the world to be grateful for Yorkshire, frankly goes on and on and on and on.... My advices would be to take a peek here, and see for yourself the magnificence and quality of Yorkshire endeavour.
For those that like there optical nerves to be stimulated a tad, there are some very good images of Yorkshire here and another set here.
Some time ago, a good friend of mine suggested that I join Twitter. I was not part of the micro-blogging community. For those who don't know Twitter is an instant messaging services limited to 140 characters, including spaces, in which the vain and the vacuous can vent their spleen at almost anyone who is prepared to read. You can also send messages directly to people by prefixing their made up name with the “@” symbol. All very straight forward.
The rational behind my friend's reasoning was there was an election coming up in the UK and it would be a good way for me, being in the far flung wilds of central Africa, to “keep in touch” with the the pulse of nation by reading what the “twitter-ati” were saying. I was also vaguely aware that the Web 2.0 phenomena, interactive internet, was being used by the two main parties and the Lib Dems [sorry, had to get it in!] to reach the great un-washed in the Blairite fashion of the “snappy sound bite”. 140 characters or less.
So, I joined up. And, I have to say, in a frightening short space, I was pretty much hooked. I began “following” some of the movers and shakers of the British political scene as they themselves embraced Web 2.0. Or, I suspect, get their press people to embrace it and push out the bland musings of our great leaders and thinkers. Sarcasm intended.
One of these that I have been following is one David Miliband. Now, for those who neither no nor care, David Miliband is a Labour MP. He was in the cabinet. Foreign Sec' no less. There should be some choice and juicy outpouring, I thought.
Well, as you will know, Labour did not win the last election and the new Government is a hotchpotch coalition of Conservatives and Lib Dems. They are now trying to work out how to manage and reduce the £175 milliard, or billion if you like your numbers in the American vernacular, of debt. Thirteen years from having some money in the bank to £175 milliard of debt. Quite a feat.
Now, most Labour MP's, at least those who kept their jobs, have had the good grace to keep their traps shut. One, even saw a mildly ironic joke, which, in the great traditions of British humour, I thought was quite funny. Ex-Treasury secretary Liam Byrne's note to his successor read “ Sorry, there's no money left”.
The letter recalls a similar note left by Tory Reginald Maudling to his Labour successor James Callaghan in 1964:"Good luck, old cock ... Sorry to leave it in such a mess."
As I said, humour in it's blackest sense, but still funny.
Now, the young Mr Miliband is touting as a “rising star” in the Labour party and is widely tipped to be the next leader of Labour. And as such has been hitting the hustings in an unseemly and rather vulgar fashion drumming up his fan base.
He has also been hitting Twitter in a way that suggests his driver is stuck in an awful lot of traffic jams. If only there was some decent public transport, 'eh Labour ? His outpouring are relentless and reminiscent of a C List Celebrity thanking his lovies for a fabulous cup of tea at a Labour / Miliband gathering. That is half of his tweeting. The other half is a series of banal and mindless complaints about the cuts, or spending reductions that the new Government are proposing in order to deal with the mammoth debt.
As yet, I have not seen any constructive or positive from the Man Who Would be King. David Miliband is no Rudyard Kipling. The only thing that Miliband is doing is criticising, complaining, moaning and whining and whinging. Nothing, not a sausage, not a scintilla of constructive comment of positive prose. Nothing.
So, I have a challenge for David Milliband. I invite him to write a piece about how he, if he were in power, now, today, how he would manage the economy. I am not going to say 'manage the spending reductions' because I will leave the page entirely blank for the man who sees himself as Leader of Opposition. He can be as verbose and complicated as he wishes. He can be as simplistic and free-flowing as he wants. But, and this is the crucial point, he has to propose something hard, factual, tangible. A mini budget if you like. A Shadow Budget perhaps. But he must be specific. And when he is done, post the link to his favourite micro-blogging medium, Twitter.
I will copy the link from this missive to Twitter and send it to @DMiliband.
I have, as they as in England, some money burning a hole in my pocket. Not a lot of money, but a little. I also have a nibble in the back of my mind for a gadget I want to buy. I know what it is and I know what I want it to do. I want a small hand held computer that will synchronise with my large computer, will manage my email, do some minor office work and let me play a few games. Not a massive requirement. Not entirely onerous. And it must be a "hand held" device.
A UMPC, or Ultra Mobile PC, in fact. Yes, that's what I want.....
A few minutes browsing through Clusty brought me to Liliputing, a pun on Lilliput, the fictional land described by Jonathan Swift in his famous travel-log Gulliver's Travels, or, to give it the full title, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. Librivox has a very good audio book here. Free download released under the Creative Commons licence. OGG files and MP3!
It turns out that there is a slew of devices in the under seven inch category, and a bewildering array in 5.6" and 4.8" screen sizes. One of my favourites is here, a very swish Fuji. A good review herebrought to you by El Reg!.
To be honest, this was not entirely new to me; I had read about it around six months ago and it intrigued me, until I realised exactly what it was. The PsiXpda is a device that mimics what is possibly the greatest hand-held computer ever made, in the history of history! A bold claim indeed, and not a fisherman in sight.
The PsiXpda is sold by a company that was created by some engineers from a company that can be said to have invented the genre of hand-held devices. It's engineers went to work for and created the Tom Tom sat' nav' device that is ubiquitous on car windscreens the world over, one of its designers was solely responsible for saving Apple by creating the I-Pod, several years after the idea was rejected, the British firm.
Put simply, I am talking about Psion and, more specifically, the magnificent, Psion 5MX. A précis of Psion can be read here, and, if you are even vaguely interested in the history of computers and where they may be heading, I would heartily recommend a thorough read with a strong coffee.
But the device. Well, the device was magnificent. It was superb. It would synchronise with a Windows machines, for contacts, tasks and appointments. It would manage MS Office documents. It would create office documents and save them as MS Office formats or EPOC files. There were more games for the Symbian power machine than you cold shake a fairly substantial stick at. It had a touch screen, which is something that moderncomputers, some 13 years later, are only just getting to grips with.
And it had a built in voice recorder!
It ran on an ARM chip that was designed specifically for this device; not forgetting of course all the hoo-har that is going on now about "fantastic ARM powered Android devices", and, given its amazing "low power consumption" would run for two weeks, yes two whole weekson a pair of double AA batteries. I'd like to see an Intel Atom device, or an I-pad [pah!] do that! EPOC, the operating system written, again, for the device, was an incredible piece of coding. And for those who doubt me, EPOC became the operating system for over one milliard mobile 'phones around the world, found mostly in Nokia's, but a lot of Ericsson's, some of those quirky Korean things from Samsung as well as a number of Uncle Sam's finest, to name a few.
But that was not all. It weighed next to nothing, a few ounces. Not sure what that is, try here. And it has a full "qwerty" keyboard and that amazing sliding clam-shell mechanism that allowed the 5MX it's legendary usability.. That keyboard was a masterly design that allowed the 5MX to be truly useful. It was not a toy. It was not a gimmick. It was a useful piece of equipment that was, to those of us who had them, possibly the most important thing you could have in an office, other than the chair. Or the kettle.
It would fit in a pocket and you could take it to meetings for making notes, taking minutes, rattling off a quick spreadsheet. The amount of excellent software that was available for the 5MX was staggering. Banking, plan management, accounts, astronomy, e-books [yes in 1997, the 5MX had an e-book reader!], the list goes on and on.
it also had Soccer Manager, a port from the Acorn soft game "Football Manager", possibly the best management game for any platform that has ever been written! Alas, Artemedia, the company behind the game, are, as they say, no more.
Actually, there was a bewildering array of games written for the 5MX. Some of the best were the "text adventures", a genre of gaming that has all but disappeared into the ether, with the advent of the GPU, 16meg RAM machines..... who wants to read words and, horror of horrors, think when there are graphics to enjoy! There is an entire generation of gamers out there who have simply missed the joy of the text adventure. Not if you were a 5MX user. They were part of the uniform!
I began to feel more than a little nostalgic for my small Psion 5MX. It was a truly amazing machine. And this, I am afraid, brings me to the nub of the matter.
There is a huge range of device on the market right now, from tiny little 4.8" up the 7" devices that are almost full computers. But, and this is the point, they are all the same. There is nothing unique about any of them, there is nothing that makes you think "that is what I need, that is the answer to my problems". They are, mostly, clones of each other, running some version of hideous Microsoft bloat-ware, on, generally, Intel chips, that will last a day or two, at most. In most cases, a few hours.
So, I have decided. When next I am home, I will root out my faithful Psion 5MX, find that synchronisation cable, download some EPOC / Vista and EPO/Linux drivers and get the old machine back into life..... I will not be buying a UMPC, at least for the near future. Not until there is something better than the Psion 5 MX.
And the PsiXpda ? Made by E-King. China. Very sad. [/ALIGN]
It is not very often I write about football, with Rugby being my sport of choice, but, having sat through the abysmal last sixteen game between England and Germany and the utterly abject performance by England there are more than a few thoughts going through my sometimes limited mind. I also have a feeling this is going to end up going much further than simply talking about football.
Lets look at a few basics first.
On paper, England have a fantastic team. Gerrard and Lampard are, arguably, two of the finest midfielders in the country, if not europe. Rooney, when playing for his club, is an excellent striker, and, under normal circumstances, we have a very good back four.
On paper.
In South Africa, England have looked lethargic, lack lustre, devoid of ideas and with no oomph. After the first five minutes of the first game, when England were one up against America, we have looked lazy. Trotting around the pitch like a bunch of over paid prima donnas, looking as if they somehow deserve to win games, without actually putting in the effort.
The England footballers, mostly play for the clubs in the top four of five clubs, one or two from the rest of the league. And earn massive amounts of money. Truly enormous sums.
Now, as those of you who know me will testify, I have no problem at all to people receiving large amounts of money for doing what they do. The one caveat is that they have to earn the money they receive. And for their clubs, mostly it can be argued that they do. Otherwise they would not be receiving it. Quid pro quo.
And at club level, English clubs perform very well. English clubs have won the Champions League and have featured in the semi finals for the last few years. With very few English players. A quick look down the Chelsea squad list of 27 show that only six are English. Six. And only two of them actually play first team football.
Now, if you are a Chelsea fan you will argue that Chelsea can buy any player they want, and, with the huge amount of money they have at their disposal, they can buy pretty much any player. Which is why they only have six players in the squad and two regular first team players.
The Premier League model of ownership is very different to that elsewhere and especially when compared to europe. In England, the Premier League has allowed the take over of most of the 'top' clubs by individuals, either wealthy benefactors, family concerns, such the group that controls Manchester City, or investment groups. There is also no requirement to have an academy, although most do.
In Germany the situation is different. Of all the Bundesliga's regulations, the German version of the Premier League, the recent history of English football suggests it might have benefited most from two of the most important differences.
Some time ago, the Bundesliga brought in what is knowns as the “50+1” rule. This states that members of a club must retain at least 51% ownership, so preventing any single entity taking control. Portsmouth are the most glaring example of how an outsider might potentially ruin a club – their administrator is currently searching for their fifth owner of this season. The Bundesliga recently reiterated the commitment to the rule following a challenge from Hannover 96.
The second most important difference is the academy. Ten years ago the Bundesliga and the German FA decided that to obtain a licence to play you must run an academy. The Bundesliga and second Bundesliga spend €75m a year on these camps. This is more than double the amount the Premier League spends on academy's. Germany are European champions at under-17, under-19, and under-21 level.
The Bundesliga's view is a pragmatic, long term view, growing German players for German teams, whilst the English view is to buy the best for the job now.
This is the Anglo Saxon model and, to be honest, has not been a bad model. The Anglo Saxon model permeates every facet of English life, from the economy, house buying, financial markets; the list goes on. The UK banking sector is the most important and valuable in europe. This is part of the reason for the French and German governments wanting to change the rules governing banks and banking and bring the English into line with the rest of Europe.
This is the Anglo Saxon model and, to be honest, has not been a bad model. Except that it does not always seem to work. Lets look at a non footballing parallel for a few minutes.
The Royal Mail and it's subsidiary, the Post Office has been the political football for the last few years between the left and the right. Will it be sold, either partially or in full? Will the unions go on strike, again, will they actually make a profit or should they be considered a service ? These are things that have split the political village for some time. The Anglo Saxon model it seems may win out, at least in part, as the current Government will be looking to sell of at least some of it.
Who will buy ? The usual suspect are there sniffing around, including TNT of the The Netherlands and Deutsche Post / DHL. German.
In 1995 Deutsche Post, with the help of some German legislation, started on a course of development that allowed DP to grow from a loss-making, state-run government agency to a profitable global player and ultimately the world's number one logistics company. The made massive investments in state-of-the-art logistics technology, laid off a signigficant numbers of staff, but this improved the service received. Germans were happy.
As a result, the Germans are now looking to buy what is arguably the most famous postal service in the world and add it to their portfolio. Royal Mail to be part of their portfolio? Astonishing.
This again, is the Anglo Saxon model. Jam today. Sell it tomorrow. The English Premier League is stuffing it's ample and mostly non English face with jam. Very tasty jam. Organic Fair Trade jam that we all feel good about. England lost 4-1 to Germany today.
So, which view is the right one?
That is a rather tricky one to answer and all depends which you value most : club level success, primed at winning cups and trophy’s, or, a more holistic view primed towards England actually winning something and getting rid of the 1966 monkey.
A simple list, which has been updated again.... when will I ever make up my mind!
As I said previously ""I missed from the list possibly the most [positive] influential Briton there has been for years, certainly during my life time. A man who was an inspiration to me and many others. A man who wrote possibly the great science fiction ever, a man who was a passionate atheist, or in his words a 'radical atheist', a committed conservationist and, above all else, a bloody good bloke.
I've dropped him in at number three becuase, as he says himself, being born just before Watson and Crick made their earth shattering discovery, meant that there was DNA in Oxford just a little before them.....""
I have also added a new name, at the back end; possibly the most importanr living Briton alive today. Can you think of another ?
Charles Darwin.
Elizabeth I.
Douglas N Adams
Watson and Crick
Emmeline Pankhurst
Isaac Newton
Charles Babbage
Alan Turing
William Smith geologist
Humphrey Lyttleton
Samuel Johnson / Peter Roget [I had to look up his first name!]
Not funny, well a bit.... but, very well worth listening to the man who was, as I have said before, a genius. It is a You Tube link whic is not my usual milieu...
Ok.. I am not really sure if ths is the way it is done, but I was always told, if you are going to lift something, credit them.
So, here is : Chris Hitchings, copied, verbatim, from The Slate, which, oddly enough, is the on-line presence of the Washington Post. Not the town in Northern England but, I am reliably told, from a place called Washinton in America? No me neither.Still, there you are.
So, have aread, remember where you saw it copied and enjoy yourself.....
Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On this day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour.
The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after Douglas' death on May 11, 2001.
It is not often I pilfer directly, but this is one time I will. I'm not even going to pretend.
Just read it, watch the video and ask yourself this : really, what IS the point of religion ? Blunt I know, but I often abstain from real comment. Yes, me, I know... you'd never know... On this occasion, I can just pilfer......
A good part of my life is spent travelling. Not just from one city to another, or even one region to another but more often from one continent to another, most notably from UK or europe and then on to Africa.
There was a time when the boat or ship would have been the preferred method, but now, thanks to the marvels of the jet engine, the aeroplane and therefore the airport are now the choice of the great unwashed.
The problem is, as mobility has become the norm' and more and more people are able to visit more and more exotic and far off places, the manner in which people travel has deteriorated exponentially.
Manners have disappeared. There is, no more alas, any social etiquette. No more do people hold doors open for other fellow travellers. Trolley bags are pulled along feet behind with scant disregard for the havoc the cause, getting under ones feet, tripping up fellow humans. Haversacks, or to use the American dialect, rucksacks, are casually thrown over shoulders oblivious of the face that they narrowly avoid, sometimes, making contact with.
There was a time when travelling was a joy. The art of travelling was part of the journey. Not just as a means of getting from place A to place B as quickly and as cheaply as possible, but with a certain élan, a soupçon of decorum, some style and no little grace.
Now, partly due to the advent of the low cost airline, it seems that people are prepared to forgo the niceties of common decency simply because they saved £10 by booking with we_are_flying_as_cheaply_as_we_can.com airlines. People do not seem to understand that the social niceties, manners, social decency should remain regardless of the price of the ticket. This is a sad reflection on the society that we have created for ourselves.
Over the last few weeks I have been reading a few of the excellent PG Wodehouse novels centred around the characters Jeeves and Wooster. I know most of you out there will be aware of these frankly excellent books, but, for those who have temporarily forgotten, they are set in the years between the two world wars and concern the adventures of one Bertram, or Bertie Wooster, a fop, a dim wit, an upper class English Gent' or in the words of his Aunt Agatha,a chump, and his gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves.
More often than one might think decent, Bertie is often 'on his travels' and it is usually, neigh, always conducted with a certain aplomb. Granted, the diner jacket and black tie are now no longer vogue, but, reading the chronicles of Bertie to make me pander for an age when decency and courtesy were valued above the need to push ones way to the front at the check in counter.
I know it is a utopian view in these days of must have and must have cheaply but I feel it would be nice to return to an age where a simple please and thank you were given their place back at the top table of social intercourse; where the me,me,me, me first culture of modern life would give way to 'no, please, I insist' at the check in queue; where the art of door holding regained a certain cache as a yard stick by which one should live ones life.
I know these social graces have gone, have vanished, only to be lived vicariously through the writings of long dead authors, but it would be nice to think, to hope, that they will one day return.
Sadly, I doubt it.
Foot note : how did people travel with such small suitcases ? [/ALIGN]
Today, on the Guardian's website, the liberally minded on-line version of the liberally minded British newspaper of the same name, had an article about islamaphobia in europe, and how it must not be allowed to take hold in the UK.
On the face of it, nothing too contentious there. There were / are 170 'comments' following the article, ranging from the mildly bemused, to the downright absurd. On-line news articles with a 'comments' section, or the famous 'have your say' section is usually there to allow the slow and dim witted, the mentally deranged and sometimes utterly baffled among our society they chance to 'have A say', because more often than not, these are people who's 'say' should be put away in a dark damp room and the key melted, re-cast as an ear-trumpet, because the irony would be lost on them, and then, finally, buried in deep peat and concreted over with the upcoming Heathrow expansion.
But, as this is the place where I have my say, yes, again, I am aware of the double standard, I stop this digression. As I say there were 170 comments some of whom agreed, most of whom, for various reason, thought the article was pap. It turns out the authors was / is the executive director of Muslim Women's Network UK and Muslim Voice UK.
One thing I found interesting about these rôles was the emphasis on the nomenclature muslim. I have noticed over the years how many minority organisations over emphasise their minority status by drawing un-due attention to it themselves.
Here in the UK, we have the venerable and wonderful National Trust which, I am sure you will all recall was given 4000 acres of land around Coniston Waters Renée Zellweger in the beautiful English District to stop dirty builders plonking their executive four bed detached's all over the place. And what a marvellous job she did. Really. Miss Potter might even make it on to my Greatest Britons list at some point.
When she had this visionary dream she was thinking about a small part of the Lake District, because that was what she could see, in front of her. It was not 'exclusive to the detriment of others' for any political, social or ideological reasoning, it was simply because high speed trains, the internet and Concord were still a long way off and people tended to live 'where they saw'. The National Trust was, literally, intended to be a Trust for the Nation.
So why then do also have the National Trust for Scotland, an organisation that was created in 1931 specifically to look after Scotland ? Duplication of effort, an excuse for more fund raising, a 'focus on the locality' or, perhaps, a desire to stand out from the crowd as a minority and as such exclude themselves from the main stream ? It is worth a thought.
But this activity is not restricted to either Scotland or hills and valleys and lakes. There are numerous examples of the minority nomenclature, from all aspect life. Politics is one of the most pronounced, with all three major political parties having a 'scottish' affectation. The Labour Party is the Scottish Labour Party, the Tory's and Libs both having there own versions well, here and here if you are interested.
The welsh, in denial about the fact that wales, an areas of England a little larger than the county of Yorkshire is not a country. But the welsh, like a small chap with a tall wife, does like to shout it's protestations to the extent that, not only does it have welsh only political party's, but it seeks to alienate itself even more from the rest of the world by using a dead language both for it's name and it's website.. Talk about chippy.....
But what of the article in the Guardian ? It seems to me that if any minority group, be that religious, social, political or by any other means, start using the minority identifier as the means to denote themselves, they are drawing a line around themselves through which they do not wish others to pass. They are saying to the world 'this is who we are and we are not prepared to change', which, no matter how well meaning the intentions are, the majority, i.e. everybody else are likely to feel a little miffed. This is probably why the Swiss have voted to ban minarets, why the French are debating religious clothing in public places and why the usually passive Belgians have in fact voted to make certain items of Islamic clothing illegal in the last few weeks.
It would probably help if British muslims, to use the context of the article, stopped identifying themselves as British muslims and perhaps referred to themselves as British and leave the religion at home.[/FONT][/COLOR]
Update on the 23 July..... As a foot note, there is this story here, from venerable Aunti, about two Muslim women trying to get on a bus. The first word int he headline is "muslim' as is the second in the article. The Muslin Council of Britain has also chipped in. One wonders which area of Britain they are the Council for....?
Oh and the French did pass the bill through their lower House. And there is now a call for a similar law in the UK. Will the ever increasingly religiously conservatively christian coalition Government acquiesce ?
The words of Douglas Adams have been on the head of this site since day one. It was the very first thing I did when I put this soap box together.
Douglas Adams was a genius. In every conceivable sense of the word. The man wrote what is possible the greatest piece of science fiction writing ever, both in radio scripts, books and TV. The film was shocking but that's the American's for you. Not much in the way of humour.
He was a radical atheist, an ardent conservationist, a believer in the beauty of good technology, and he was a visionary. He wrote about the internet decades before anyone had even thought that there was a need for anything webby except of course his was the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Currently, I have two regrets in my life. One being that I will never see Pink Floyd play live, given that one of them is dead and the rest don't talk any more, and the other is that I will never be able to tell DNA that it was he who inspired my love of reading and books.
For that, I thank you.
Below are a collection of quotations I have liberally pilfered from his books and various websites which have, turn, been a little pilfer happy. I hope you enjoy them. [/align] Yes, I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously. -- Douglas Adams, from an interview with American Atheists; quoted from Warren Allen Smith, editor, Celebrities in Hell (2002); excerpted by Positive Atheism (2007) Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small un-regarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED" "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (book one of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), p 50 A man didn’t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren’t there?" -- Douglas Adams, paraphrase of a parable spoofing modern creationism that Adams often told, as retold by Richard Dawkins in "Lament for Douglas" (14 May 2001) The reason why so many sects hang around airports looking for converts: they know that people there are at their most vulnerable and perplexed, and ready to accept any kind of guidance. -- Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (book two of the Dirk Gently series), p 5 (1988) What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo? -- Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (book two of the Dirk Gently series) (1988) Even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands. -- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (book one of the Dirk Gently series), p 216 If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to The Door and it wasn't there ... what then? The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board of circuits for dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was the very heart of his function. He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of belief? The Door would still be there, even if the door was not. -- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently: Holistic Detective Agency In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy I don't go to mythical places with strange men. -- Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988). Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? -- Douglas Adams, from Last Chance To See Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. -- Douglas Adams, from Last Chance To See Hitch Hiker's Guide He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an after life. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly, then?" He blinked at me as if I was stupid. "Well what do you think you do?" he said. "You die of course. That's what deadly means." -- Douglas Adams, Last Chance To See The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever. -- Douglas Adams
OK, another rant about technology and pricing. This time, an areas I don't think I have covered before which is that of Apple.
Today, Apple have released the pricing for their big I-Phone, without the 'phone bit. They call it the I-Pad. Well, here, from the Reg, is a summary of the prices you'll be expected to fork out for it. It goes from £430 up to a whopping £700, yes £700. This, let me remind you, is for a computer that does not have a keyboard, onto which you can not load software and does not support flash, making it pretty much useless for looking at most web sites.
But, actually, that last bit only matters if you are prepared to spend even more money on an actual data service to get it connected in the first place. As reported it is also not very good at WI-FI, Apples solution being, stand nearer the transmitter. Orange,a NetCo here in the UK which is merging with the T-Mobile, a network that started life as Rabbit and has gone through several brand changes in the last twenty years, also announced their tariff packages for the over priced door stopper.
Orange have said today that it will charge a minimum for £180 / year to access it's network.
To me, this all seems a lot too much to pay for a device that is not as good as a mobile 'phone for voice, as you can't use it for voice. Or a laptop / netbook, because it does not have a keyboard, nor any useful software, such as, oh, lets see now, an office package or decent browser, or half decent email client, or VOIP, such as a SIP client or Skype, does not support flash so can't view on line news feeds, where Apple control what you can and can not have on the device, the list goes on....
Why would anyone buy one ?
Oh yes, I know, because there are 'brand concious muppets' out there who will happily pay over the odds for second rate goods just because some pillock in a black polar neck uses words like 'magical' and 'revolutionary'. Yes, it is 'magical' how so many people are duped by the marketing folks in Apple.....
Don't get caught up in the hype. It is only a screen with no features. I know you won't because you are a discerning reader, with guile and intellect, partly of course because you are reading these sage words..!!
As most of you will know, I am an open minded sort of fellow and always looking for a new way to view the world. Being at a bit of a loose end this morning, I found myself at the venerable Liberal newspaper The Guardians web site, and, following series of links from various article, find myself at http://www.beliefnet.com/ where they have an homage to the late, great Douglas Adams , in the form of The Belief-o-Matic.
It seems that, with the aid of some cleverly asked questions, or, in my opinion, exceptionally biased christian questioning, the Belief-o-Matic will try and determine your ideal mythological ideology, er, sorry religion. SO, I plunder in and it is not long before I realise that I am being led, gently, but firmly, up a blind alley where, inevitably, I will end up at some sort of cross roads, or at least a cross anyway.
Still, the objective of the exercise it to learn, to explore a little and see if I am, at heart, a pagan, or a buddhist, maoist, taoist or even a seventh day adventist. I will take it's views and assessment of my answers seriously, even if, like this sample of questions, they are not exactly balanced :
Q6. Satan's presence results in much suffering.
Agree.
Disagree.
or this one :
Q7 Why is there so much suffering in the world? Choose ALL that apply :
The original disobedience of Adam and Eve caused all mankind to inherit mortality, which includes bodily imperfection, illness, and decay.
Suffering is part of God's divine will, plan, or design (to discipline, test, challenge, strengthen faith, strengthen character, promote moral growth, or for reasons that we cannot or may not know).
Suffering is a state of mind (or illusion); only our spiritual nature is real.
Spiritual or cosmic imbalance and disharmony may result in suffering.
Unwholesome thoughts and/or deeds (greed, hatred, and violence) in this or prior lives return as suffering (karma).
None of the above; human suffering has nothing to do with the supernatural or karma.
Where is the "people are stupid" answer or, "religious ideology is short-sighted, narrow minded and fundamentally opposed to any other view than it's own." Question 12 is though one of my favourites :
Q12. Choose ALL statements below that represent your beliefs.
Adhere strictly to the rites, practices, precepts, commandments, prohibitions, laws, sacraments, or ordinances of the faith to be rewarded after life.
All, even the wicked, are rewarded after life (e.g., go to heaven, merge with God) as God(s) is infinitely good and forgiving.
Extinguish all cravings, attachments, and ignorance, or rid oneself of all impurities, to become fully enlightened.
Learn all life's lessons through rebirths.
Realize your true nature as purely spirit (or soul) and not body, as one with the Absolute, Universal Soul.
Live very simply; renounce worldly goals and possessions.
Tap the power of the Ultimate (God, or the divine) through intercessory methods such as psychics, channeling [sic], tarot cards, crystals, magic.
Humankind is 'saved' through human effort rather than through religious or spiritual means.
Oh come on, you really do not me to point out the bleeding obvious here, do you ? Naaaaaa. SO, below are my results. I have trimmed the list from 27, yes, 27, to the industry standard 'top ten' along with an understanding of what they say the numbers mean.
Take a look and, as ever, I thank you.....
Your Results
The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.
Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.
How did the Belief-O-Matic do? Discuss your results on our message boards.
Secular Humanism (100%)
Unitarian Universalism (90%)
Non-theist (86%)
Theravada Buddhism (79%)
Liberal Quakers (73%)
Neo-Pagan (68%)
Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (60%)
Taoism (53%)
New Age (51%)
Reform Judaism (44%)
PS : Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? [Douglas Adams][/FONT]
I was going to start this piece by saying 'it is not often that I have a rant about.....' but, basically, even the most perfunctory look around the inane scribbles of this tome will realise that saying that would have been just a little disingenuous. Maybe even boarding on the insane!
Every now and then, I read something which I find bizarre in the extreme. Today, on the faithful BBC News site I have read an article about radio stations in Somalia being barred from playing music; because it is un-islamic.
Now, I object to this on a number of levels I have to say. The first being that the 'ruling' has not been made by a worthy and legitimate Government, but by a bunch of men with beards and guns who have threatened to kill anyone who does play music. Yes, I know, this is a very pragmatic and level headed approach. It is also another example of religion being given a disproportionatly large helping in the forced respect race: respect my views or I will kill you. My views are better than your views because my views are religious views…...
Once again, this smacks of tail wagging dog. The minority dictating to the majority what they can and can not do based on their views only. And threatening to kill them if they don't comply. Oh yes, a very 'people friendly' policy that one. Frankly, if they don't like music, don't listen to it, but stop telling everybody else what they can and can not do.
As most of you know, I am an atheist. I've spent some time thinking about it, weighing things up and have decided there is no god. However, just suppose, for the sake of an argument, there actually is a god.
Is it really plausible, probable even, that he, or she, would be 'anti music' and would be so 'anti-music' that the killing of people who in fact like music would be considered a good idea ? I doubt it. I don't even think the christian old testament gods, as dangerous as they are portrayed, would, if they actually existed, be that mental.
But there is a small group of people in Somalia who think god does object to music.
The irony is of course that by liking music, you increase your chances of meeting god first hand and finding out, from the hourses mouth, as it were, just what his / her views are Heart Break Hotel and the Dark Side of Moon.
For those of you who are regular readers of my scribbles it will come as no surprise to find that I am going to have another rant about DRM, devices and on-line advertising.
The other day, Apple released details of their latest money making scheme, an update of the Apple I-Phone operating system, v4.0. Apart from the technological catch up that Apple will be delivering with this, most notably the ability to do more than one thing at the same time, a feature that most device users have been using for years, Apple released details of I-Ad.
I-Ad is an application that will deliver advertising to I-Phone users.
I have a number of issues around this, namely that I don't want advertising delivered to my device. Think about this. Over the life of a purchase contract with an I-Phone you will pay the thick end of £1500 for the privilege of using a second rate device, with no keyboard, making email and SMS more difficult. A device that does not allow the user add and delete programmes as they want, as these are controlled by Apple. A device that has a number of over-heating issues and a device that does not manage wi-fi properly.
But now, on top of the £1500 you will pay, once the I-Ad programme is dropped onto your machine, without your consent, you will now be paying your network provider real money for the joy of them delivering advertising to you. Think about this; you are paying them to deliver advertising to your device.
The BBC have a good summary of this here, El Reg have a more interesting review here.
Something else that is worth noting is that your sim card and the device are latched, or tied together. This means, in a practical sense, you are not allowed to take the sim card out and put in another. Not without breaking the terms and conditions anyway.
The impact of this is that roaming charges are higher than they would be if you dropped in a sim card local to the country you happen to be in. Why should yo not be able to do this ? A very good question. Apples view of course is that you do not own the device, you merely rent it. They take the view that they control the user experience, that they control the software you can put on it, and more importantly, they can remove the software that they feel is not appropriate for their device.
Contrast this with most other devices. Nokia, for example, use the Symbian O/S. There is a plethora of third party software out there for Symbian devices, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, LG etc. You can down load this software and use it to your hearts content. For example, I have skype and Fring on my Nokia. Neither of these excellent bits of software are not available to those who have paid too much money for an I-Phone.
Why ? Because Apple thinks that VOIP should not be used on your device.
My advice ? Never, ever buy a device for which you do not have control of how you use this device. If you can not drop another sim in, move on. If the vendor believes they can remove software willy-nilly, step away.
And if you are paying them for the joy of them sending you advertising, run. Run like the wind and buy a proper mobile 'phone.
There are times when the art of fence sitting can be seen as pragmatic, conciliatory or mature. The art of 'not taking sides' is, and has been for some time, the sign of a relaxed and utterly satisfied civilisation. But there are times when the fence becomes uncomfortable and a side must be seized. One must leap from the fence and plants ones feet down on one or other side. There are times when fence sitting is a sign of being utterly spineless to the point where it is a wonder how some people are actually able to walk.
So, with this in mind, I am going to plump my feet down firmly on terra firma. There will be no sight of a fence anywhere for the next few minutes.
The BBC News website has written a story about the General Pharmaceutical Councils decision to allow Pharmacists to withhold Doctor prescribed drugs from patients, if the Pharmacists is offend by either the drug or the need for the drug. The rational for this is of course that the Pharmacists religious sensibilities may be impinged if they are to provide, for example, a 'family planning' prescription, or a drug whose make up may have pig based product. Strange as it may seem, pigs are used a lot, mostly for gelatine in the capsules casings of many oral drugs.
To quote from Auntie Beeb, "Under its new code, pharmacists with strong religious principles will still be able to continue to refuse to sell or prescribe products if they feel that doing so would contradict their beliefs."
From reading this report, I am astonished by a few things. One being that Doctors have had this opt out for circa 150 years. I really had no idea that Doctors simply had that latitude. But I am equally astonished that, in the same period when the Equality Bill was given another reading and the paedophile protecting pope chipped in with his 'natural law rhetoric', there is more and more reverence given to peoples religious beliefs over and above the need for a patient and therefore it is assumed somebody who is ill and actually in need of said drug.
Or maybe I am not that astonished, after Harriett Harman conceded that churches will not have to follow the same laws as everybody else, even though, perversely, it is often from the church that most people do indeed need the protection of the law. But I digress.
Allowing Pharmacists to pick and choose which prescriptions they issue, rather than leaving that particular role, to the Doctors, is a shocking turn of events.
If you were not aware, there is a General Election coming up in the UK in the next month or so, well mid May, which is six weeks away. There is a worry that this sort of 'guidance' could simply slip through the net and be missed by the next Government, who ever they may be, as they try and reconciles the UK's economy against the manifesto pledges....
A couple of years ago I pitched an entry whihc contained a clip from the BBC Radio Four programme, The Now Show.
Due to popular demand, I have re-posted this here for your delight and delectation. It is one of the funniest rants I know and day by day becomes more astute and insightful.
So here is it, a seven minute clip of Marcus Brigstocke. Equally the same can be downloaded here, in mp3 format.
I've lifted this from the South California Public Radio website, which writes that According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, an amazing 92% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit—even one in five of self-identified atheists believe in a higher power.
As most of you will know, those who know me, or those that read these scribbles, I would suggest that, although the statistics may be true, the meaning behind it is utter tosh. I mean, 92%. Really.
Was Darwin simply wasting good paper ? No of course not.....
With this in mind Sam Harris has given an interview, which is available for download.
Down load it, have a think and join the ranks of free thinking atheists.....
It is not often I pitch anything on here that is 'political' but, as there is an election looming in the UK in the next few months, you might see a little more. So lets start now.
The Libs have pitched in with their opening gambit on the green front, and, for once, it is 100% logical, utterly pragmatic and pretty well thought through. Yes, surprisingly, it is an election manifesto pledge. "Well thought through" and "manifesto pledge" and "Lib Dems" don't often go together, but as Paul Simon said 'times, they are a chagin'.'
I've copied it in the text below, hope they don't mind.....
Ok. This week some obscure on line sci-fi site has published a reader result of the top ten best sci films ever. Red the story on the Reg here. In interest of levity, here is my list of excellent sci-fi films. You will notice I have taken a small liberty with number one.
...actually more than odd. Just plain old mad. This is a copy from the BBC News site from the other day, copied from the Nigeria 'burning schools' story :
"In an interview with the BBC before he was killed, Mr Yusuf, 39, said such education "spoils the belief in one God. There are prominent Islamic preachers who have seen and understood that the present Western-style education is mixed with issues that run contrary to our beliefs in Islam," he said.
"Like rain. We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain. Like saying the world is a sphere. If it runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it. We also reject the theory of Darwinism." ".
Make your own mind up, certainly, but it has been known since circa 1550, when Copernicus published his book On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres that the earth is not only NOT the centre of the universe, but IS a sphere as well. If you really push it, Pythagoras postulated the 'round earth' theory some 2500 years ago.
And yet, there are still 'flat earth' and 'god makes rain' people out there who, rather than being benign, are a menace. Is it any wonder the world is in such an appalling state right now ?
I don't see it getting better any time soon whilst there are people with view like this....
A simple list, which has been updated again.... when will I ever make up my mind!
As I said previously ""I missed from the list possibly the most [positive] influential Briton there has been for years, certainly during my life time. A man who was an inspiration to me and many others. A man who wrote possibly the great science fiction ever, a man who was a passionate atheist, or in his words a 'radical atheist', a committed conservationist and, above all else, a bloody good bloke.
I've dropped him in at number three becuase, as he says himself, being born just before Watson and Crick made their earth shattering discovery, meant that there was DNA in Oxford just a little before them.....""
I have also added a new name, at the back end; possibly the most importanr livingBriton alive today. Can you think of another ?
Charles Darwin.
Elizabeth I.
Douglas N Adams
Watson and Crick
Emmeline Pankhurst
Isaac Newton
Charles Babbage
Alan Turing
William Smith geologist
Humphrey Lyttleton
Samuel Johnson / Peter Roget [I had to look up his first name!]
A new book, soon to be published, is Made by Mammals. This is a quotation and image from the book.
“Historians of religion recognise a progression from primitive tribal animisms through polytheisms such as those of the Greeks, Romans, and Norsemen, to monotheisms such as Judaism and its derivatives, Christianity and Islam.” Richard Dawkins
“Monotheism is in its turn doomed to subtract one more God and become atheism.”
... but feel free to upgrade to Linux anytime you wish.
Windows 7 is coming with a whole swell of money making opportunities for the boys in Redmond.
As ever, why pay a whopping great excess on new hardware for a piece of software you don't need, when you could up grade your existing hardware by dropping one of the many excellent Linux distrobutions on it.....
Distro Watch has all the info you need, but Mandriva is my choice, but Ubuntu is very popular, as is Fedora and PCLinuxOS which as the name suggests, tries to make it as easy as possible to look like an MS product, whilst still actually working.
... is the title of a web log advocating the mass deletion of the Opera browser from users computers.
Put simply, the man is a loon. A fruit cake, a delusional wombat whose arguments hold less water than a very small bucket with a very large hole.
His argument has as it's central premise that Microsoft is the victim of an unfair, un-just and irrational attack and that the act of not offering choices, restricting competition and charging far too much for substandard bloatware is something Microsoft should be proud of. As I said, the man is a loon.
A further read through the inconsequential witterings of this half baked flap jack does suggest some understanding for the absurdities he propagates. He is an ardent Redmond-phile, a lover of all things Gatesy and firmly believes that, for example, MS Office is a truly outstanding piece of software, well worth the near £600 they want for it. A bargain at twice the price, surely ?
A couple of quotations from our colonial colleague.
"Many have been saying that Microsoft has been taking advantage of its dominance of the market by bundling IE with Windows and that they are forcing it on customers. I do not see how that is true in any way. Nothing has changed in the last 15 years. Internet Explorer has been an integral and key feature of Windows ever since Windows 95, before Microsoft "dominated" the market. It's not like Microsoft only recently started bundling IE with Windows, it has been there all along." and ""But all Opera wants is a ballot screen, what's so wrong with that?" The idea of having a ballot screen as a whole is a ridiculous idea. The entire purpose of this ballot screen would be to promote competing products within Windows. Hello!!! Do I really need to explain to you how ridiculous that is?"
Well actually, yes you do need to explain it, as for any user of Windows will tell you, the lack of choice in the OS market when buying hardware, i.e. a computer, is staggering. There is none. The reason there is no Netscape any longer is that MS squeezed them out by bundling IE and then by making it exceptionally difficult to install anything else.
Opera should be applauded for their stance. It is both laudable and desirable.
And of course, the next logical step would be allow hardware vendors to put any OS on the hardware that the user wanted, not what Microsoft wants.[/FONT]
... might seem like an odd title for this page, but wooh there, steady on, everything is not as it seems. The gigantic behemoth that is the Redmond cash cow is pulling its (in)famous money management software. To see what the alternatives are, clear your mind, put away that cheque book and relax.
There are many parts of human progress that have advanced by vast orders of magnitude over that last 100 or so years. Physics, astronomy, medicine are three. Genetics, despite the enormous drag factor that is organised religion, has mapped the human genome to a point where two entire human beings have had their genetic codes mapped and recorded. This is a wondrous achievement. There have been countless inventions during the 100 years that was known as the 20th century. We have sent machines into space that have now let our own solar system. We have, despite the conspiracy theories, put members of our own species on the moon, our nearest largest satellite. These are incredible achievements indeed.
Charles Babbage invented the forerunner of the computer, and Alan Turing advanced this to such an extent that, despite being persecuted to suicide for the 'crime' of being homosexual, was immortalised on the case of many an over priced laptop and eye candy laden music player from the boffins in Cupertino.
Communications have advanced beyond belief that we can now talk, and write message, from any point on the face of the earth to any other point on our own pale blue dot. The small oblong boxes are now able to browse the interweb, write, send and receive emails, listen to music, conduct video calls and watch television, although this small feat, watching television in a small field in Wiltshire, on a screen which is far too small to actually watch television was in fact brought to market with earth shattering success by Casio. This may be part of the reason why nobody does actually watch television on their mobile 'phone.
All of these things, despite the possible dubious social benefits,are indeed progress, worthwhile or worthless. However there is one area of human endeavour, that has not moved forward one jot in the last 100 years, neigh, possibly even 200 years. And religion has done nothing, on this occasion, to hold back the advances of Man.
Personal transportation has not moved forward one step. Yes, we now have the car and yes, those cars are now fast, more economical and with far better radios than ever before, but they are, basically, still the same as they were once were when a chap called Benz rolled a carriage on wheels out of a barn to absolutely no acclaim what so ever. We have, in the last century, not worked out a way of powering this tin boxes by any other means of taking lots of black shiny liquid out of the ground, buring it and turning it into lots of black shiny clouds. Where are the ion powered cars, cars that would levitate or run on water ? Where are the cars that would drive themselves, float or become submersible ? Where are the flying cars and the cars made of paper light but iron strong materials that were promised by Raymond Baxter and the delicious Miss Philbin, amongst others? Is it possible we have been lied to for the last fifty years ?
Cars are not the only immovible force. Take the bicycle. It is, with the exception of a spring on the front wheel, almost identical to the very first velo's. They are still, when you look at them, two triangles welded together, with a circle t each end powered essentially by the consumption of large amounts of sugar. Take a look at the next bike that you see; two triangles. There may be a line missing at the back, but, the designis still two triangles. Depressing I know, but the 20th century has not moved this most personal or methods of transportation on one carbo' powered yard.
However, the greatest travesty of of the failure of man has been the advancement of flight. Not only have we failed to move forward in our desire to navigate the globe without actually touching it, we have in fact gone backwards.
In the late 1960's England and France joined forces to design and build the supersonic passenger plane. Russia developed their own independently, although there was always the question of industrial espionage by the Russians, especially as their own supersonic marvel turned out to look, at least on the surface, identical to England's greatest.
Flight, at least for the masses took a major step backwards when the Air France Concord crashed in Paris. As a result, their are now no more Concords, no more flying faster that the speed of sound. This is a sad thing. Now, the best we can do is simply to make 'planes bigger, to shove more and more people into the delights of cattle class, with nine hours of piped banality in the shape of Tom Cruise films. Last year I had the 'priveledge'of flying 11 hours from Frankfurt to Johannesburg. Not, I repeat,nota pleasant experience.
The human species is capable of some amazing achievements and some appalling deeds, but in in almost all cases they are a move forward. The future of transportation has however come to a grinding halt and, as it looks now, there is no chance of any change any time soon.....
As some of you will know, I am a bit of a bore when it comes to open source software and free software. These two things are not always the same thing, but often are. I won't go into the differences here, so, for the ease of reading, let us assume that free software isopen source software.
So, over the weekend, I happened to be in one of the countries larger computer shops. You know the sort of lace, stacked to the gills with shiny Dell's, HP'S, Alien Ware machines [HP's with a 25% premium] and of course the joy of all Jobsian fanboys, the over priced and ever restrictive Apple boxes.
I happened to overhear a conversation between a mature couple and a spotty little oik pretending to be an adult. He was trying to persuade the naïve sexagenarians to part with a large amount of money to buy Microsoft Outlook. They declined.
And left the building.
I followed them out and had a chat with them. All they want to 'do email'. Nothing clever, nothing fancy, they just wanted to 'do their email'. So, I suggested they could try Mozilla Thunderbird. They had never heard of it. Do they know about Firefox. Oh yes, they use it all the time. The 'orangey one'. Yes, that is it. Go to the same place, look for the 'blue bird' and there is a bit of software that will 'do their email'. It'll do more, far more, if they want it to, but, it will 'so their email'. When I told them it was free, like the 'orangey thing', they were very happy.
I hope they did download it and are now happy with their new found emaily freedom.But that got me thinking. Open source software. How much money could you save if you really were on a budget ? Well, think of this scenario. You have an oldish [one, two years old] laptop and want to 'do stuff' with it. Lets look at the options. The prices are taken from the MS website this very evening.
Vista Basic : £140 Outlook [stand alone] : £112 Office Home Basic : £324 includes Outlook
Or, and here is the kicker :
Linux : £00.00 Thunderbird or Evolution [stand alone] : £00.00 Open Office*: £00.00
*The current version is V2.4 is compatible with all MS office formats, except their new .x format, such as *.*docx. This is the £324 Office 2007 option. Download Open Office 3.0, currently in the final stages of testing, and it is still open source and free and does open and save in the new *.x MS Office 2007 formats.
So far so good.
But what about other things. Money management ? MS Money, $60. I happen to use GnuCash. The latter supports almost every banking download formats as well as MS Money and Quicken formats. The price : £00.00. The GIMP is just about as good as it gets for doing anything 'arty', from creating graphics and managing 'photos. Price :£ 00.00.
For Photoshop, Adobe will be asking for $700. Yep folks, $700. You can see a bit of a theme here. Don’t forget the raft of excellent astronomy software [Celestia or Stellarium] , graphics software, a stack of games and a wealth of specialist programmes for mathematics, science and education. The cost of this wealth of joys : you guessed it, nothing.
So, on a basic level £464 is the minimum saving by going to open source. This is for the operating system and an office package. For the rest, the savings are unlimited. If you are interested in more free software, take a peek at this finance website [ http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/free-office-software ] for a range of free excellent software. A peek at a link that can also be found on this site for a range of free and very good anti virus software just goes to show that you don't have to be loaded to have the very best software on the market.
What do I use : Mandrive 9, with Firefox and sometimes Konqueror, with Thunderbird with the calendar plug in. GnuCash and Stellarium. Oh and Open Office 3.0 for all my scribbling needs…….
Cost : not a vegan suasage.[/FONT][/COLOR][/ALIGN]
It has, I will admit, been some time since I scribbled any thoughts, sane or inane, on the subject of food, and more importantly food on the hoof.
For those of you who are new to this concept, food on the hoof is not just the quick 'grab and go' of the quick fix cholesterol injection, it is a culinary delight that is designed, intended to be eaten mobile, perhaps in smaller portions, sometimes with the appendages and extrusions of the upper body, sometimes with the most simple of cutlery, but always, always, without the table or a napkin, and, without exception, from the hand.
In the past I have extolled the virtues of the Germanic foods, the smoky smells of grilled würst wafting through the winter markets, the delicious and yet so easy pizza from a small Roman eatery, and Dublin.
It is well over a year since I last made comment on any of these luscious delights so now, dear reader, it is time to be enthralled once more. The last twelve months has taken me to Madagascar, Germany, briefly, Libya, South Africa, only a week, but I have a stamp in my passport to prove it, and of course, my current location, Swaziland.
As far as food is concerned, Swaziland is an interesting place. It is almost entirely a meat based diet, with the concept of 'vegetarian' being largely alien, both to menus and to people. Most people here that I have met find it odd that I am a vegetarian. Or is it just me that they find odd, I'll have to ask.
Like a lot of Africa, fruit and veg' is sold by the side of the road and is the main place to buy for the majority of people, although there is a sizeable class of consumers who shop in the local supermarkets, Spar, the vast Dutch megalith and Pick 'n' Pay, as South African outlet that pays no lips service of any description to local produce. Spar does at least carry a significant amount of local food. The Swazi' made yoghurts are a, frankly, delicious. English style runny yoghurts with lots of fruit, rather than the French style set yoghurts, often with little or no fruit.
This, saddens me as it does, is not about yoghurts. Maybe I will do a piece about the delight of fruit in milk another time. Nor is this about shopping in Swaziland. This, as I mentioned at the beginning, is about food, food on the hoof.
The sad thing is that food on the hoof here in Swaziland is almost, almost, non existent. It is not something that Swazis do, or at least not very often. In the city of Mbabane there is a single fish and chip shop, but most people seem to get them wrapped, not open. There is a single Indian take away. You'll notice neither of these are very Swazi. And before you say 'well, fish and chips, it could be...' remember Swaziland is land locked and the chippy is called London Chips with a large picture of the clock tower, in Westminster, home to the bell Big Ben. Oh yes, very Swazi'!
And for the vegetarian ? Nothing. Well almost nothing. The chips in the chippy are cooked in beef fat, with the fish, so that is of the menu and in the Indian, vegetable samosa's. Don't forget, Gujarat is a vegetarian almost vegan part of India, the choice can be a multitude of vegetarian dishes. Here, a veggie samosa.
The flip side to all of this is of course the is a staggering range of Cadbury's chocolate, so for that alone there is a big 'thumbs up', however, this does fall outside the category of food on the hoof.
Sadly then, Swaziland does fall short of most other places in the food on the hoof steeplechase, but this is minor consequence for Swaziland as a whole. I'm probably the only one who cares!
So, I've been here in Swaziland now for a few weeks so I think it is about time I provided an update on my thoughts of this place.
My initial thoughts have not really changed, only enhanced really. Swaziland ISa beautiful country. Even in winter, which we are leaving and moving in to the spring, it is beautiful. But, I think the thing that makes it for me are the people.
The people here are just some of the friendliest people I have ever met, they are wonderful. They are polite, kind, courteous, and, as far as I can tell, pretty happy with the cards they have been dealt. The usual cynicism I have about people being fundamentally 'un-trustworthy' has all but vanished here in Swaziland. The Swazi's will talk to anyone it seems about pretty much anything.
There have been a couple if incidents here recently though. There have been a couple of riots in the main city of Mbabane protesting about the Royal rule, and wanting a democracy. However, the people who organised it seemed to be, largely, non Swazis. They seemed to be, most, South Africans who feel that 'now that have sorted out Zimbabwe, they'll sort out Swaziland'. No, I am no expert, not on this at least, but there are some problems with introducing Swaziland to the concept and high ideals of democracy. The principle problem being, as it seems to be to most new democracies, one of understanding that only half the people are ever happy. Sometimes, a lot less. A lot less. Look at the UK with it's 40-45% turn out. 55-60% don't actually vote. Labour won the last election with a smaller number of votes than the ten seat majority that John Major [remember him?] had before the Conservatives were so rudely swept aside on a tissue of lies..... sorry, I'll get down from the soap box and put it away......
Back to Swaziland. In some ways, Swaziland is what South Africa would like to be, without the Royal Charter. South Africa, since the end of apartheid has had year after year of political unrest. It was only last week that Thabo Mbeki was pushed into stepping down and 14 cabinet minsters went with him. Swaziland has no such problems, clearly, but most people seem to be happy with what they have, which, if I am honest, is a country that functions pretty well.
The power system works, the 'phones work, the mobile network works magnificently [smug look], the tap water is clean and drinkable, the roads are in excellent shape and, all in all, Swazi's are pretty organised when it comes to building stuff. The road works on the main road into Mbabane from Manzini / Matsapha flow very well, despite the traffic volumes.
There is also, for me, a sense of de'ja vu whenever I see a Police woman here. I think Juliet Bravo, the early 1980's Police programme. The uniforms are identical.
Sunday mornings are also quite interesting. Walking through the city of a sunny aand fine sunday morning is to walk through a city in song. Ecverybody here it seems goes to church, and sings. Big and bouncy songs proclaiming the immpressive creations of God. I'm not really sure which particular branch of Christianity is prracticed here, but, there are billboards a plenty professing the utter joy of and the Godly delight of having chunks of 'intimate bodily protrusions' removed from the male half of the populus. Believing in God is alien enough to me as it is, but to be circumsied 'for God' is frankly, insane. Iyt simply is not going to happen.
Am I happy to be here ? Yes. Simple question, straightforward answer.
I have just learned that this year is the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Is it really, I hear you say. Yes. And to mark this 'celebration' the Economists Intelligent Life quarterly has asked a collection of eminent thinkers to list a freedom gained and a freedom lost. My invitation to rant in such an esteemed mag'has clearly been lost in the trip to the southern half of the planet,so with this in mind, I give you, here, my views.
Freedom Lost.
There have been a number of significant freedoms lost over the last decades, but, as I have not been around for all of these, I am accepting of the status quo, however, the last ten to 15 years has seen a significant shift away from the freedom to express, the freedom to articulate and right and freedom to self determination. I am not talking about the the break up of countries, such as Yugoslavia, performing acts akin to the Matryoshka dolls from which spring ever small countries, determined to offer the right of its own people to their self determination. Countries and political entities are, almost by definition, only transitional states. Even places like England or Britain or the United Kingdom or the British Isles are transitional, the boundaries of 'rule' have changed over the last thousand years or so, some times not always from the 'where' but to the 'who'. As an aside, have you ever tried to explain to somebody who is not familiar with our sceptred isle the difference between those four nomenclatures ? I did have a chat with a colleague from Johannesburg who thought that Scotland was simply a part of England, that England was the entire island. It pains me to admit, but, in the end, yes, I did correct him. I did not however bring up the West Lothian Question, to which it seems there is no answer.
No, what I am talking about are the small freedoms we have lost, the little things that can make life just a little more tolerable for The Self. For example, the freedom for an adult to go to a, sometimes private, adult only environment and participate in adult only experiences, such as smoking in pubs.
Now,I understand that there will people reading this that will say that they want the freedom to go to a pub and come home not smelling like and ash tray and yes, I do, broadly, agree. However,and this is the crux of the matter, we are adults humans, beautiful,intelligent, amazing creatures, often flawed but capable of some breath taking feats and we are all, every one of us, capable of making our own choices. Some of those choices are good, some bad, some ugly. But we are capable and as such we should be allowed to continue to make bad choices as well as good ones. We understand that some times we have to take the rough with the smooth and to this end,there may be activities that some people enjoy that others do not. Well, tough is my point. If you don't like it, don't do it.
Pubs are adult places. Alcohol has been categorised as an 'adult only experience' and pubs are intended for the consumption of these delightful malty infusions, and as such will tend to be associated with other adult only experiences. Keep the smoking inside the pub where the consenting adults have made the choice to be in the first place and do not let it spill into the street where the hoards of smokers now ply their ever increasingly illicit pass times, infusing the innocent passer by with the scent of second hand Gauloises.
Should you need any more convincing of the rights of smoking inside pubs take a walk though any small to large British or Irish city on the morning after night before and look at the amount of cigarettes ends that are strewn liberally and carelessly in the shop and pub doors ways. A few years ago these would have been indoors and our urban landscape would have been just a little more pleasant.
There are other small freedoms we have lost over the years. If the last point was flippant, and maybe it is, the freedom, neigh, the right to express oneself certainly is not. The right to express oneself is now so curtailed for fear of offending somebody else that almost every interesting subject of conversation is now, effectively off limits. The most interesting and now most dangerously taboo subjects is religion.
As most of you will know, I am an atheist. I have been for some time. I arrived at this decision after weighing up the pro's and con's of religion, and, after a period of careful consideration and looking at what is laughingly called 'the evidence' for god. I made a concious, considered and quantifiable choice and am now, firmly, in the land of 'infidel' or 'gentile'. I am happy with this choice. It works for me. I am allowed to express it.
However, I am, technically, not allowed to publicly express why or how I arrived at this position, for fear of enticing religious hatred. This rationale would be part of the series of draconian laws that have been passed in the UK in the last seven or eight years or so, in theory to counter the threat of religious extremism. Needless to say, these laws are comical and in the most spectacular ways have simply not done anything other than allow those with the most conservative of religious views to propagate their acidic ideas to the most vulnerable or stupid in society.
And yet, as an atheist, I have no right at all to question those views, I am not allowed to counter them, I am not allowed to posit a counter rational. Not least this is denying a lot of people the right to have a damn good argument, over a pint and a cigar in small pub with a good cosy fire of burning atheists smouldering nicely in the corner. And, should you think that I am exaggerating, Turkey, the denizen of pseudo secularism, the country most desperate to join the Euro' Union has banned access to a number of scientific journals and web sites, perhaps the most high profile and recent being that of Richard Dawkins. Yes, freedom of speech and thought and wonder isalive and well.
And here is the common thread that joins together both the flippant, perhaps, and the serious. The only way that we grow, intellectually, the only way that we can discover new ideas and new thoughts, the only way that we can progress, scientifically, intellectually, artistically and emotionally is to explore, to break new ground, to be allowed to express ourselves, to counter and be countered and develop extensions to those ideas, and, perhaps most importantly to challenge each other and make mistakes.
To stifle this expression, either through legislation or fear of being hit over the head with a sturdy lump of wood is simply to allow the extremist of thought but more fearfully of action to take the upper hand. And if this happens, we may very well end up living in a world that is, very much akin the the world which originally gave rise to all the crusty old books to which the religious do so love referring.
Freedom Gained.....
This, I have to admit, did take some thinking about. Quite a lot in fact. My head still hurts a little at the back. I could have written about the freedom of travelling, but that is restricted to those that can afford it, or, as I am, lucky enough to have somebody, in this case my employer, to pick up the bills. It is also curtailed by the need to get a visa to some of the more interesting places which in turn could be declined if you have previously visited some other interesting locations that are deemed unacceptable to the next country you are wanting to visit.
I could also talk about the joys of the internet and the freedom to read and learn about other views but again, this is sadly restricted by far too many elected and more often unelected regimes. I won't mention them here, but you know who they are largely because you are not restricted by those ideologies, but many, many are.
I could talk about the joys of technology and the freedom we have to watch and listen to the bland and mundane or, occasionally, interesting, as and when we want, but alas, this too is restricted. Try buying a dvd in one country and playing it in another. The copy protection added will permit the user, often, only to watch the film in the country of purchase. Region country codes were invented by the film makers and distributors to keep the prices artificially high and ripping these to hard drive to allow them to be watched 'on the road' is, technically illegal. Pah.
Even the humble mobile 'phone is coming to the attention of the multinationals; try putting some software on an Apple Iphone and see how long it lasts. Apple will remove that software at the next update. They take the view that, even after forking out several hundred pounds they still own the device and it is your privilege merely to rent the device from them. This particular issue is something I could rant on about for days, and, to the chagrin of some of my colleague, often do.
So, what, as a result of 60 years of the UN Declaration of Human Rights have we gained ? An end to wars ? Sadly, no. Anecdotally at least, there seem to be more wars and conflicts around the world than ever before. I admit that we may simply be more aware of conflict,due to the parasitical rise of the 24 hour news channels such as Sky and CNN, but the UN Declaration of Human Rights has done nothing to curb these local endeavours.
So what about the rise of equality ? Peter Tatchel, the UK gay rights campaigner, suggested this as his 'freedom gained' but this is not a universal right and is, largely, restricted to the 'developed' western world. There are many places where the concept of homosexuality is utterly alien and in many places, illegal. Tatchel is correct from a UK perspective, perhaps even a european standpoint,but not in such liberal enlightened places as Saudi Arabia, our 'big friend' in the Middle East.
So what then, has the UN Declaration of Human Rights given as a freedom gained ? Sadly, I am going to say, not a lot. Maybe the UN Declaration of Human Rights is a work in progress, maybe it needs to be bigger and more encompassing. Maybe it needs to be smaller, more lithe, quick thinking and more pointed. However, in it's current format, the UN with its 180 plus members it will never satisfy everybody, it will never deliver the big ideals for which it was, originally, and correctly, created after the second world war. There are simply too many polarised views with the UN, there are too many local interests, culturally, intellectually and religiously to satisfy all member and as each resolution takes longer to ratify,there are more and more 'op-outs', more and more exceptions to the rules.
So, as a riposte, I will leave you with this single freedom. Human beings are an incredible species. We are both clever and stupid at the same time. We are capable of the most wonderful creations and the most amazing destructions. We are capable of discovering the wondrous, and ignoring the obvious, we can create something from, seemingly,nothing and in return something into nothing. But the one thing we are all capable of is thinking. The freedom to think is perhaps the greatest freedom of all.
Imagine what we could do if we are all allowed to think and act upon those thoughts; we could explore space properly, create wonderful architecture, find a cure for James Blunt and Lilly Allen, anything.
Gordon E Moore, co founder of Intel, observed a trend that was as true in 1965 as it is today : the processing power available to users would double every two years. This has become known as Moores Law.
Broadly speaking, this trend has been proven correct for pretty much every and any two year cycle since the late 1960's and, unless something catastrophic happens, the future looks to continue this same trend.
For consumers, users, generally, this has provided a wealth of opportunities and headaches alike. There is more data created and saved and passed around than ever before. There are more methods of saving that data and more and more methods of distributing that data to the point where the average home computer has 96 million times more storage and processing power than just 20/25 years ago. You, like me, may have started out on computers like the Commodore C64. the 48k Spectrum, the Vic 20 or like me, the 16k Acorn Electron. Heady days indeed. Look at your current typical home computer, with its 3Ghz processor, 1Gb plus of RAM and 160gb plus hard drive, not to mention the terrabyte plus external hard drives, capable of passing so much information so quickly that two 'firewire' connections are now de rigueur.
There is a feeling of course that this wealth of incredible processing power does nothing more than allow the user to get to the wrong answer more quickly than ever before.
The urban and industry myth surrounding Thomas Watson, IBM Chairman in the mid 1940's suggests he said that there would be a need for no more than five computers on the entire planet. Five. He may have said this, he may not, and short of employing the finest of mediums with the blackest of cats, we may never know. However, it is the idea that is interesting, not necessarily its provenance.
The situation now is that almost every home in the developed western world has dozens of computers; from the microwave and VCR, oven and web enabled refrigerator, the plethora of chips in the average family car, controlling everything from the angle of the lights to the warmth of your bum, the house alarm, television, calculators, self moving vacuum cleaners, digital cameras that are about as close to the Box Brownies and Camera Obscura as I am as likely to want to meet Anthony Worrell-Thompson, i.e., not very; and of course the ever more complicated and complex mobile 'phone. This is all a world away from the visions of Babbage and his 'automatic counting machine', or even Alan Turing, to whom an homage is made on the front of the majority of music players and an ever increasing number of lap top computers.
It is, broadly speaking accurate, that the average 'smart 'phone' on the market today has more processing power than some of the earlier Apollo missions launched during the 1960's, not only in raw processing power but also sheer storage. I have a 2GB card plugged into my micro SD slot and is happily playing my music as I type these words. This is my mobile 'phone.
And herein lies the crux of some of the most important issues and questions the technology and communications industries are facing right now. Technology convergence and differentiation. The boundaries between a device for talking and a device for reading email, playing music, looking at the internet, getting lost and getting found once more are becoming less and less clear. A single device, with differing levels of success, is replacing more and more smaller, more specialist devices. Why carry a mobile phone and music player when the average mobile phone is a music player ? Why is a computer needed when it is perfectly possible to download content directly to storage in your mobile 'phone, to view your friends latest holiday pictures and of course to share the same with anyone else who is even vaguely interested ? Why indeed ?
Cloud Computing is advocating more and more then need for connectivity and 'single device' convergence, the 'one box does all' solution where everything is accessed to and from The Cloud. The Cloud, as advocated by the likes of Ellison and Jobs, Gates and Page and Brin suggests that mobile connectivity is the future. One small box neatly located in your pocket will bring to you all the wonders of the digital world, all kept secure safe from prying eyes where ever the user happens to be, as long as of course the user is connected to the internet via a wireless connection which will carry this vast amount of data.
So far, Mobile Network Operators have been reluctant themselves to make the investment that is needed to enable this wireless utopia envisaged by the California Visionary Society. They have, after all, had their fingers bitten, more than once, and fairly recently.
3G was seen by many as the next logical step in providing high speed wireless connectivity. Many MNO's made large investments in 3G, both in the purchasing of licences from their respective regulators, the UK for example gave the treasury £22 milliard pound [£22 billion for those versed only in American] plus a large undisclosed amount to technology supplies to actually build the networks themselves. So far, there are three old men in Weston Supermere, a fourteen year old boy in Lewisham and a chocolate machine in Hounslow which are considered active users. Returns have not yet been anywhere near enough to cover the investments and, it is likely, probably never will.
SO what of Mobile TV ? Will this not be the catalyst to a bright and rosy future of instant gratification? Surely users will be flocking to buy new devices and new services to watch the latest episode of 'Celebrity insert name of vacuous programme here' or learn how Jade Goody is currently supplementing her protein intake. Alas, no.
Consumers seem to be asking themselves two or three pretty basic questions when it comes to mobile television. The first is 'given that I have a television the size of a window at home which is piped with more channels than I could ever possibly watch for a not inconsiderable fee, why then would I pay more money to watch less channels on a two by one inch screen' and secondly, 'why not just buy a Casio portable telly, bigger screen and much, much cheaper'. This is in fact what a lot of people actually do.
Even in Korea, the southern part anyway, long seen as a test bed for emerging technologies and seen as the haven of mobile television, even here, subscriber numbers are dropping off and revenues are decreasing. It seems that, once more, suppliers and networks have misjudged the paying public's ability to have money weaned out of the wallets and into the coffers of Big Business.
It seems at the moment that the only thing that is really capturing the imagination of the user is the device, the thing that sits in their hand. The own it they feel, they can do with as they wish, it is theirs. They are in the technology world and they can feel it sitting there. And they can show their friends and bored and largely unimpressed passers by that they have grasped the proverbial bull by the large and pointy horns and will ride the Pamplona Run of Technology to the end. Or at least until they have read the 274 page manual, and forgotten all but 'press the green button'.
The end user device is becoming more and more the public focus of the driver for the technology. Small, shiny boxes, with buttons, without, with large screens, with small, with eye candy, without, qwerty keyboard, or traditional numericals, this is the current battle ground. This is where the current marketing budgets are being focused and where the black polo necks are turning and looking. There is a small but significant amount of success here, at least in shifting boxes, but the networks themselves, the service enablers are not yet seeing the returns, they are not seeing the users using and, more importantly paying for extra services. There may be a million pictures taken by thousands of mobile devices, and yet the amount of MMS traffic is, frankly, comical. Good old SMS, the tool that allows every of spotty teenager to use and abuse our glorious language, is still the back bone of Operators margins., Hardly surprising given the retail price and the cost of the SS7 link in the first place.
So, once the user has exhausted the eye candy of the device what happens next? Largely, nothing, because the networks have not fully invested in those wonderful 21st century networks, that will give unfettered access to The Cloud, in cheap, usable chunks. Which means of course the demand is small, so there is no investment, which keeps the demand low, and so, like a mitochondrial protein, this cycle is seemingly never ending.
So what happens ? This is a good question. There will, almost inevitably, be one or two companies that do make the investment to provide the sort of connectivity only thought possible in episodes of The Jetsons. But, like the early days of the railways in England and across europe, it is the pioneers who do the hard work, who have the vision, the foresight and the guts and promptly go bust and the cautious, wait and see types, how pick up the pieces, and the margins, and make the large juicy profits.
We are yet to see the start of this cycle, so it will be some time before we, as users, are granted the gift of The Cloud and the unfettered joy that streaming adverts will, undoubtedly, bring.
And what of Walton and his vision of only five computers ? He may have been correct in some ways. Lift the concept of 'computer' up from the desk top and place it higher. Elevate it to The Cloud. Consider each interconnect in the cloud as a computer, each content provider as a computer and maybe Walton will be more correct that ever he thought.
Tim Berners-Lee, when he first touted the idea of the internet when he was working in CERN, saw the opposite. He saw content and access be controlled by the people who owned the content, the user. Big Business, if it is to provide The Cloud at levels that we, the users, are prepared to pay, will have different ideas.
My Opera
For the last few years I have been using Mandriva, the French distribution. I've been using this on my netbook and I this served me very well indeed. However, in the other interesting development in the desktop environment, Ubuntu, the leading Linux distribution, certainly in terms of downloads and seeming popularity, moved away from their traditional desktop, Gnome 2, and introduced Unity. 
Music and video are fantastically well covered in the Linux. I use VLC as the main audio and video player. VLC philosophy of plays everything is something that is pretty damn hard to over look. So I have not. It is not very good at managing libraries, and this is where Banshee and Rhythmbox kick in. Both are excellent library managers and players, managing music tags and art work very nicely. This is a screen shot from my Banshee player. Yes, lots of BBC Podcasts!
The other thing you might have noticed is something called the Ubuntu One Music store. Ubuntu One is Ubuntu's online storage. The buzz words right now are cloud storage or online storage such as those you'll find here. I happen to use Drop Box which gives me two gigs of free online storage. Very useful. Apple have jumped on the band wagon with their I Cloud storage , for 15 quid a month. Oh and the Apple service does not allow pictures or music. Ubuntu gives me five gig for free. Into which I can shove anything. The two together gives me seven gig of free online storage, through which I can synchronise multiple computers. I have to say, this is fantastic. Apple charge 15 quid for which they feel they can control what you save in the space you pay for. Typical money grabbing bastards.
So what else can you do ? Money management ? Fine. Home Bank, GnuCash or Eqonomise are all free. Quicken is one of the best known proprietary programmes. $99. I use Home Bank.
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