…here’s a whosit

I just came out from watching Hellboy 2 (which, by the way, I felt wasn’t as good as the first one). This however, is not a review but is instead a semblance of a mini-essay, or a rant, or a collection of semi-coherent and hopefully linked observations.

As I watched the final act of the movie, it became more clear to me that there’s a fusion of technique and narrative devices (and the types of stories being told) between the following media: television, comic books and graphic novels, and  movies. All are inherently visual and all are increasing being used to tell and retell speculative fiction, and the same stories are increasingly being re-framed in each medium (although primarily the transition is from comic to movie-screen).

Less this seem a more trite observation than I mean it to be, it not just my assertion that the stories are being recycled (to the detriment of new narratives, that have to prove themselves against the established ones). Its also that there’s a melding of narrative form within the overall plot.

In one instance, there’s the idea of serialisation. Television - for instance, Doctor Who or Buffy - uses an on-going set of stories, from which we can be fairly certain that, once the current plot-line is resolved, new adventures will ensue. Based on that, the audience has certain expectations, and accepts that certain elements of plot may be left unresolved from episode to episode.

Movies now take on that device; we can accept (and have accepted for some time) that characters will walk off into the sunset before the closing credits with unfinished business, expecting to see them again in a sequel. Given, however, that movies are multi-million dollar affairs - orders of magnitude more expensive than any television series or comic series, we accept this premise at our peril. We have no guarantee that we will ever see the unfinished threads woven together.

Writers do their best to plan for this: each season of Buffy was concluded as if it would not have a following one; Joss moved medium from television to the big-screen to comics in an attempt to keep the narrative thread of Firefly alive, and moved from television to comic book for both Buffy and Angel. Doctor Who was kept alive (or resurrected) by moving from television to book and audio forms. However, it requires great effort and skill to adapt  successfully and we have to accept that not all stories will survive.The writer needs to ensure that the current story can suffice on its own. While I felt that the first Hellboy did, this one left me less sure of that; it felt more like a single tale abstracted from a voluminous collection of them; more like the comic than a movie.

Another big idea is the increasing sophistication of the audience and how to please them. How do writers capture the attention of a jaded audience who have seen the same basic fight scene or space battle or plot in a hundred previous stories? It’s a problem worse for serialised stories than for (sort-of) one-off tales like Star Wars.

Of course, we all know that George Lucas is a talentless hack who hates actors, and who pinched the story of the original movie from Kurosawa, and we’ve seen how the series has devolved into farce. However, we all walked out of that first film knowing that, while we’d seen something that was a recycled story based upon classic themes, it was one solid piece of fiction and it worked. Bring back those characters again, however, and you can’t just have them fly spaceships, shoot things and save the heroines. They have to grow into people - into real characters rather than cardboard cut-outs that are a vehicle for a Jungian archetype (or what have you).

The first of the new series of Doctor Who  (which I’m re-watching with much enjoyment), was able to capture the attention of the audience for more than being Doctor Who. The idea of the time-travelling hero and his companion is fun, but it did get a bit “monster of the week”, and to have brought it back in that form alone would have killed it, in my opinion.The brilliance of Russell T. Davies was that he made it “domestic”; the companion became a character in her own right, rather than a narrative foil. More interesting and realistic stories result from this change. The stories are more sophisticated, complex and more engaging, and audiences can be challenged to engage with them again.

Of course, comics and SF movies benefit from this evolution. Richer and deeper veins of human experience can flow into the stories told via these media as well. More cross-fertilisation between genres can occur, as sit-com meets horror, meets fantasy, meets science fiction, meets drama meets crime meets… The only criterion is that the writing must be good. Does the narrative appear “genuine”? Do we feel satisfied with the dramatic ebb and flow? Are these real people on screen, regardless of how many heads they have, or the locations in which act?

Of course, it’s harder to make successful SF now, if it isn’t just “monster of the week”, or “young hero saves damsel in distress” anymore. A story can turn into an emotional morass, or into a cliché. Each genre has its pitfalls and tricks of the trade. Not all stories work effectively on all levels. I like the idea of a primary creative mind - Russell T. Davies or Joss Whedon - employing a team of writers (guests or regulars) who may each be proficient in differing styles, as a solution to this. Given a solid basis of characterisation, the whole can be stronger than the parts, and more enduring - more worthy of being added to the canon.

It’s wonderful that we now have literature in several forms, none of which (at its best) can be said to be defective. We have added to the breadth and depth of human story telling, by taking the elements of disparate forms and combining them in new ways. I can’t wait to see where we go next.

We all know media and politics engender mass hypocrisy. We probably expect it and therefore put up with more than we should. Once again, it’s the razor sharp mind of humorists that are good for exposing this.

John Stewart is one of the best in this area, and he’s come up with a piece of reporting that needs to be more widely seen:

Crooks and Liars » Jon Stewart exposes Rove, Hannity, Morris, Palin hypocrisy

By the way, on a personal level, I think that Sarah Palin exemplifies the worst in the American character. The more I read about her, and the political and personal machinations surrounding her, the more I feel that America is spiralling almost out of control into an abyss.

Update: I came across another nice commentary, which details the way that the media has been castigated by Republicans for doing their job… Why the media should apologize

Technorati Tags: media, politics, hypocrisy, John Stewart

I just finished Blazing Saddles, and it’s an interesting read (although way too brief). The author, Matt Rendell, mentions that he is involved with the English translation of L’Equipe’s  Tour anniversary book and perhaps that would be a more comprehensive follow-up.

The book skims the main facts of each stage, concentrating on the main battle, or the new features introduced. For instance, the entry for 1910 concentrates on the introduction of the Pyrenees (described as a family-sized dollop of criminal negligence). Some entries are less than a page in length, and some go to six. The book is sectioned into groupings like the Hinault years, the Merx years etc. and is a nice way of getting some idea of how masochistic and sadistic the riders and the organisers were, respectively.

I think that I must have started watching the tour in about 1992, as I don’t remember much about Pedro Delgado, but the Indurain moments that are mentioned ring a bell. The book does contain a lot of stuff that I didn’t know at the time - like Pantani going back to the team car 3 times in 1994 (up the Col de Madelaine) asking for permission to abandon after a nasty crash and being refused. Of course there are innumerable small moments that aren’t mentioned but there’s also more that I’d forgotten about, such as  Djamolidine Abdoujaparov - the “Tashkent Terror”.

The problem with any book focussing on one event is that there’s a distorted view on the overall abilities of rider. Since there’s only peripheral mention of the Tour of Italy and less so of other events, the real worth of  some riders seems lost - for instance Fausto Coppi. Obviously anyone who won even once (and Coppi won twice), is at the top of the sport, but there’s a lot more between the lines than on the page in this book.

I’d also like to see more in-depth mention of the rise of the commercialisation and the caravan; the way that the amateur status of the early riders gave way to the  professionally sponsored teams; the way that technology changed the event and how it was resisted;  and more photos. The book has some wonderful old photos of riders slogging up muddy goat tracks through the middle of nowhere, and you get drawn back and back to these depictions of immense hardship in the early years.

There’s a lot of great quotes from various riders, but I guess that the winning quote for me has to come  from Coppi: When asked if he’d taken drugs he replied “only when necessary”. When asked how often that was, he replied “nearly always”. Reading this book gave me a much better handle on how immensely difficult the Tour is, and a much better appreciation for the riders - even a bit more sympathy for the drug cheats who are forced by the pressure of the event to cheat in which ever way they can, to get through it. The drugs of choice during the early days of the Tour were pain killing drugs such as opiates or alcohol. These days, of course, the technology has moved on to  performance enhancement, and that is less defensible in my opinion.

No more noisy machine (unless I’ve missed something).

Hopefully everything will be working, but if there’s any problems with the site, or with emailing me on the wamble.net address, let me know (by other means obviously )

The Australian has published an article based on the press release from SAGE-AU:

 Over-blocking access to Internet sites even three percent of the time will impose “significant” costs on service providers, the System Administrators Guild of Australia”(SAGE-AU) has warned.

Unfortunately they don’t publish a link to the actual release, which mentions more issues like deployment costs, and security concerns. It’s still good to see that the technical voice has been heard.

I’m replacing an old noisy machine with a new, smaller, quiter, faster one. In the process, I am reorganising my site, with this blog moving to the address http://whosit.wamble.net/. It’s not in place yet, but I hope that it’ll be there in the next day.

Four Horsemen, originally uploaded by wamblicious.

This is my latest art purchase. It was done by a student of Ecole Nationale Superieure Beaux-Arts, in Paris. The school allows excelling 3rd year students to travel and show off their creations, getting some deal from Air France, and this painting was his winning entry from a school competition and part of the reason he was in Sydney knocking doors.

I think he said that they had come over with a few hundred pieces, and he had twenty or so on him - half his own work. While some were definitely more student pieces, there were some that exhibited real talent. This one, while supposed to be of the Melbourne Cup (taken from a photo), looks more like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to me.

According to the Australian, Stephen Conroy has been presented with, and endorsed, a report into the feasibility of internet filtering, which claims success.  So now we’re a go for real world trials.

The actual report is here (PDF), and it makes interesting reading in a sad way. It’s being pulled apart on the SAGE mailing lists at the moment, and an actual media statement may come from the organisation. Hopefully the public also trust systems administrators to better understand the issues and know the problems with filtering technology than ACMA.

Basic points easily noted from the report:

• The trial did not include products designed only to filter illegal content
• Most of the products introduced “network degradation” of 22-30%
• None of the products can filter content delivered over most non-web protocols (file sharing, IM, etc) without blocking them completely
• The filters block content that should not be blocked at a rate of 1-8%
• The load testing seems to have simulated a maximum of 30 users accessing the “Internet” which was a single low powered web server
• Does not seem to address the ease of circumvention of these filters

If trials do go ahead, I hope that they target the systems that connect politicians to the Internet - then we’ll probably see more of the anguish exhibited by them when the computers in Parliament House were filtered. It’s one thing for plain ordinary people to be subject to restrictions on their actions, but how the pollies panic when subject to the same restraints It’s almost as if they thought that they were better than us.

Today, a mail came through on the Marrickville BUG mailing list, detailing a meeting between a representative of Macquarie BUG and BNSW. There’s more detail here, but the following points (with my comments interspersed) were discussed:

• BNSW will not put any resources (by which I mean funds or paid staff) into supporting BUGs - Andrew Dodds, who runs the BUGs Council does so as a volunteer and if I wish to support Andrew, I would be welcome, but also as a volunteer.
• Any improvements that BUG members would like to see must be implemented by the BUGs themselves through Andrew Dodds or amongst the volunteer BUG members themselves.

Great! The state-level bicycling advocacy group isn’t interested in grass-roots cycling advocacy, nor the people cycling within the state. It’s almost as if BNSW sees the BUGs as competition. Also, it’s all about the money. BNSW will graciously accept the hard work and time that others donate - you should all feel lucky to be working for such a glorious organisation, and for such a worthwhile cause.

•  BNSW wishes to restrict its dealings to implementing the 2007-2010 Strategic Plan, as presented at the 2007 AGM.

The plan is available here. It reads like something out of The Hollowmen, last Wednesday on the ABC (more goodness from the old Frontline team): “Set the vision for policymakers for infrastructure; Communicate role of BNSW, clarify and document relationships with stakeholders; Seek and undertake initiatives that can be carried out with stakeholders that produce a mutually beneficial outcome - more people cycling more often; Focus on delivering behavioural change programs; Leverage partnerships to allow scale economies and other mutual benefit”.

Admittedly, I did a bit of picking and choosing… there is mention of working with BUGs, but I read it as top-down - imposing the will of BNSW in a Father Knows Best way. They’ve got a good slogan “More People Cycling More Often” - that’s the important thing, not actually getting more people on bikes.

• BNSW sees itself as operating at the Federal and State levels and will not put any resources into local or regional projects.

Following on from the previous point, BNSW is too important (too up itself) to bother with the mundane work of doing actual work, when there are important policy statements to be made.  No need to do things when you can be seen to be “doing things”.

• The only events that BNSW are interested in allocating resources to are the Spring Cycle, Gear-up Girl and as co-hosts of the Ride to work and Ride to School programs with Bike Victoria.

No more Big Ride; the ‘Gong ride can take care of itself. Still, I got mail from the MS Society, about ‘Gong early registration, so I guess they have it all in hand.

• The stated policy of BNSW is to get “more people cycling more often”, which does not mean they will place resources into building the membership numbers of BNSW as people can ride bikes without being members.

So why doesn’t BNSW expect me to cease being a member, and stop paying them membership? There is the public liability and personal accident insurance, that comes with membership, but it might be time to look for other places offering cycling insurance. It seems strange that BNSW doesn’t want to promote membership and increase the awareness of itself, getting more people involved - more membership fees, for a start.

• BNSW employ a “Volunteer and Operations Coordinator” (currently Michelle Herbert), who is the contact person for all Volunteers who wish to communicate with BNSW.

They don’t want to pay people for the work done - they want it all done for free.

• BNSW have no intention of running a NSW Big Ride in the future, but both Alex and Jenny said if I was interested in doing so, then that would be great.  However, BNSW will not provide any resources (as above - funds or paid staff).  All Big Ride equipment has been sold.

No more Big Ride… I know it’s always been expensive, but it was one of the flagship events - something that created a sense of camaraderie, and of shared experiences. Something of which you could ask “Did you go on the last Big Ride? Wasn’t it fun? Didn’t we see some interesting places?” How else could you spend time exploring the state, being an ambassador for cycling and for a charity (well, at least some of us), in relative safety… cyclists in collaboration with the RTA and the police, proving that we could all come together in an event that showed harmonious road use?

The state cycling bodies of all three eastern states have had big rides for some time now. Is BNSW’s decision a sign of the times, where Bike Victoria and BQ will go, or is it just Alex Unwin’s inept leadership that is the problem? Note again, that BNSW are happy to see someone else run the Big Ride, and for BNSW to benefit from it. Obviously someone out there with deep pockets should feel obligated and privileged to take over real work, so that state cycling can benefit, and BNSW can claim the credit.

Maybe the new management saved BNSW from bankruptcy a  few years ago, but they ripped out its heart and soul in the process…

Technorati Tags: BUG, BNSW, cycling, NSW, Big Ride, bureaucracy, management, advocacy, bullshit, ineptitude

Julian Morrow, from The Chaser - obviously one of the main targets of the new law, along with Broken Rites and similar groups, has an opinion piece in the SMH, today. It’s a funny read, and spot on:

One easy way to identify a bad law, other than simply reading it, is to think about what types of conduct might fall foul of it. And it’s fun, too.

First, “inconvenience”. My preliminary list of things that could cause inconvenience to participants at World Youth Day includes being ahead of them in a toilet queue, obscuring their view of the Pope, or maybe just situating your convenience store too far away. Ironically enough, excessive security checks can also be a major source of inconvenience, as the citizens of Sydney may recall from the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit last year.

It’s also inconvenient for participants to have to pay for things, or obey traffic laws or to have to rug up in cold weather. While solutions to the first couple are obvious - hand over your money and no-one gets hurt, and get out of my way as I speed away from the scene - the last is not so easily answered. Perhaps Morris Iemma and John Watkins want us all to walk around with giant heat-lamps making sure that the WYD participants aren’t cold because otherwise, you know, we’d be causing them inconvenience by letting them suffer like the rest of us

And while there’s some attempt to downplay the laws, with church officials saying that people shouldn’t be told what to wear, that’s exactly what happened to victims of abuse by the church; they’re being abused all over again - this time by the government.

Victims’ groups who met police in Melbourne on Tuesday were told they would not be allowed to protest in 40 designated areas, and that they must apply seven days ahead to hold a demonstration and their banners and T-shirts would be vetted.

Of course, it’s easy for such groups to make a come-back at police and the government:  “We’re not anti-Catholic. We’re anti-abuse […] Who’s not anti-abuse?” Obviously Morris Iemma.

I’ve sent a couple of letters to the SMH, but they probably won’t get published in the flood of correspondence they’re getting on the topic, so it’s good I have a blog to toot my own horn

For starters:

Dear Sir,

If the Catholic Church is not behind the legislation, and is not concerned with “annoying behaviour”, perhaps it can do the Christian thing and publically pledge to pay all fines levied by the State Government under this stupid law.

How about:

John Howard only wanted to take us back to the ’50s; Morris wants to get all medieval on our asses. Perhaps we can now say that no-one expects the Iemma’ish Inquisition.

Something  I haven’t sent in, is along the lines that the conversion rate on payment for behaviour that is arguable annoying to Catholics is that 30 pieces of silver equals $5,500 AUD. However, I just couldn’t get something that felt right, so feel free to rework it and use it yourselves.

Now that the NSW government has promulgated a new law to punish people for annoying Catholics during World Youth Day, I suggest that we all create and circulate the best put-downs we can think up. here’s one to start:

If I said that Catholics were in good taste, I’d be lion.

So far, I’ve not seen a list of exact locations in which the law is in force, not what exactly constitutes an”annoyance”. As several legal representatives have already stated, as well as a police spokesman, it’s all highly subjective. How about “Chris died for my sins”, as featured in Weeds? How about a heavy metal t-shirt? How about the Darwin-fish bumper sticker? Would you get fined for having these slogans or objects visible?

I guess we’ll all be lucky if we can say that “We survived World Youth Day without being converted”

Now that the NSW government has promulgated a new law to punish people for annoying Catholics during World Youth Day, I suggest that we all create and circulate the best put-downs we can think up. here’s one to start:

If I said that Catholics were in good taste, I’d be lion.

So far, I’ve not seen a list of exact locations in which the law is in force, not what exactly constitutes an”annoyance”. As several legal representatives have already stated, as well as a police spokesman, it’s all highly subjective. How about “Chris died for my sins”, as featured in Weeds? How about a heavy metal t-shirt? How about the Darwin-fish bumper sticker? Would you get fined for having these slogans or objects visible?

I guess we’ll all be lucky if we can say that “We survived World Youth Day without being converted”

According to the Herald, Virgin Blue may be following the lead of Qantas/JetStar in dropping services on unprofitable domestic routes, including to Sydney to the Gold Coast. Since the trains only run as close as Casino, I may have little choice but to cycle the rest of the way at least (or move to using coaches and learn to live with the motion sickness).

I expect a lot more people heading in that direction will have to drive - maybe from Brisbane, or maybe all the way up the coast. Welcome to Hell on the Highway I pity the people who can’t afford such an option, due to the price of petrol. Still, that’s why air services are drying up: the companies are unwilling to spend their obscene profits on subsidising passengers for the cost of the fuel, as it spirals away from affordability.

Banksy CCTV, originally uploaded by kipricephotography.

By now, everyone’s probably seen some version or other of the Banksy CCTV mural. This one has that nice “small thing being surveilled” angle.

Now there’s a new twist. A band that was too poor to afford a music video clip, performed in front of CCTV cameras and then demanded the footage using Britain’s Data Protection Act. It’s a wonderfully subversive action, and a great way to make a name for themselves. I just hope that there are no negative repercussions when the Government learns that its technology has been used in such a way. The more pranking of the Nanny State, the better, I say.

Of course, the pro-CCTV fundies will point to this as evidence that the technology is at least harmless, and even beneficial to society. Sure - if you call subsidising unsigned bands to make video clips from the public purse a good idea. And that’s about the only good thing to come from a system that costs millions world-wide, and has been shown in several studies not to cut crime.

Edge 705, originally uploaded by wamblicious.

The new Edge 705 is available in Australia, finally. While it’s not perfect, it’s much better than the old 305. You can see the map screen, with the OzTopo Roads map being shown. I got it bundled with the maps from GPSOz, so I wouldn’t have to depend on the crappy default maps that Garmin supply.

The unit has a MicroSD card, and both it and the card show as USB storage devices, so you can copy maps and ride data to and from the unit. That’s so much better than the old unit which needed special handling to communicate as serial over USB. The next trick is to get the open source OSM maps loaded.

The 705 has had much done in the way of interface redesign. The menu screen has been separated from the ride data screens, and the new menu button and a thumb toggle button make menu navigation so much easier. The device is larger, so there’s slightly more screen room, and the method of entering text and numbers into date/name fields has been much improved (selection data can now be navigated sideways, not simply as one long list).

The GPS receiver is supposed to be much more sensitive, so I shouldn’t see so much in the way of signal drop outs. I’ll have to do some more riding with it to see if that’s true. So far, I’ve only ridden twice with it.

I don’t know how much use maps will be on the road. Maybe if I go more places that I don’t know it might be of some use, but I know the commute to and from work quite well by now - no need to check where I am along the way

Technorati Tags: Edge 705, Garmin, GPS

From the nation that appears to lead the rest of the world in stupidity, here is another example…

Ignoring any shred of common sense, a person described as “a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant” has staged pray-ins at a petrol station in Washington DC, in San Francisco and Oakland, asking God for lower petrol prices. Hey! good luck with that

Of course, it’s no use asking for God to make more oil, or anything like that, because - according to this article - “ production of oil is being constrained by several forces, none of them due to God’s failure to put enough of the black gold under our feet”.

While we’re discussing prayer, maybe we could organise people to pray for flying cars that don’t need carbon-based combustion systems. That’d solve our problem as well

The blog article says that its rideable. I guess that’s strictly true, but it’s certainly not useable as a real bike.

This (linked from Neil Gaiman’s blog), is a collection of very disturbing playgrounds. A lot are from soviet Europe, but a lot are not. It’s hard to choose between so much badness, but I find the following image captures the overall weirdness.

This (linked from Neil Gaiman’s blog), is a collection of very disturbing playgrounds. A lot are from soviet Europe, but a lot are not. It’s hard to choose between so much badness, but I find the following image captures the overall weirdness.