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Christmas 2008

Sat, 2009-01-03 00:02 — elliot

Great Christmas holiday. Shame it's over.

Enjoyed watching lots of films through Sky+. Jonathon Creek, Gavin and Stacey, and Wallace and Gromit were good. Got the broadband working (though Sky's DNS servers are knackered at the moment).

Joel started eating solid food: he's starting to get the hang of it. Chloe and Ian came for Christmas day and we spent most of the time playing on the Wii and eating.

Presents I got:

  1. Mario Karts Wii plus extra steering wheel
  2. Made to Stick book
  3. Everything is Miscellaneous book
  4. Hello Young Lovers by Sparks
  5. Missiles by The Dears
  6. The Thirteenth Floor DVD
  7. Hot Shots (I and II) DVD
  8. The Apple Source Book
  9. A garden fork
  10. A bag for holding string
  11. A puzzle book (I realised I love puzzles while on holiday)
  12. A planetarium
  13. Spy pens
  14. Shut the Box game

Back to work Monday. Also need to stop eating so much crap, as I think I've put a few pounds on over Christmas.

And yes, Happy New Year and all that.

Time, like an ever flowing stream

Wed, 2008-12-17 23:41 — elliot

Seems to be passing more and more quickly.

We got Sky+ last weekend. The best thing about it for me, at the moment, is that it's great being able to watch a different comedy film every night. I am still in the "bewildered by choice" phase of engagement, but gradually working out where stuff is.

I feel quite unprepared for Christmas. I've done most (all?) of my shopping, but I need an audit to decide whether I need to get more stuff.

Joel is getting to the point where he recognises me when I come home, and he's all smiles. Lovely. Makes up for him waking up at 5.30 some mornings: after which he ends up on the lying on bathroom floor while I'm having a shower, so Nicola can get some rest. He goes onto solid food next week, having breakfast with me and Madeleine.

Madeleine is getting on well with her reading (can read most short words), likes doing number squares and crosswords, still does drawing every morning when she gets up. She's growing up fast. For her birthday she got several games, so we've been playing Junior Monopoly a few times.

I haven't been doing much. I've played with Google App Engine a couple of evenings, but apart from that, haven't been coding outside work. Too tired. Went to see John Shuttleworth live at the weekend: well worth seeing.

Another year nearly over. Personal achievements have been thin on the ground (far fewer extra-curricular activities). I've read about the same number of books I do every year; still not managed my goal of one per week. 34 to be precise. Here's the list:

Just realised, I don't think I read The Sword and the Stallion, the last Corum book by Michael Moorcock. Might just check...

Yeah, that one too.

In a self-referential response to myself

Wed, 2008-12-10 20:56 — elliot

Paul responded in a comment to this post. He pointed out that the small thing we may have lost (the ability to concentrate hard on "slow" pleasures) is more than compensated for by what we've gained: almost unlimited horizons, the wealth of the world at our fingertips, i.e. the internet. He's right. I was just being an old curmudgeon. Must have been a downer of a day.

Have we lost something?

Mon, 2008-11-24 23:18 — elliot

Last night I watched The Rolf Harris Show (the link is to the episode on iPlayer), originally broadcast in 1969. I've always been a bit of a fan of Rolf (mainly because of his Cartoon Time series when I was growing up), but I hadn't seen his variety show before.

What was interesting to me about this show were its expectations about the audience's attention span. After Rolf's intro, we were treated to Ivan Rebroff's rendition of Kalinka. Ivan sang in Russian for 4 or 5 minutes (across 4.5 octaves), standing alone on stage, dressed like a cossack. There is no way you'd get something like this on prime time family television in 2008. There was also an over-long, godawful, but in its way charming, skit on Robin Hood (starring Rolf and Barbara Windsor); an overwrought (but quite entertaining) song by Vince Hill; Val Doonican incongruously singing The Answer (is Blowing in the Wind) and one other; plus The Young Generation doing a dance number called The Continental (here they are dancing to something else).

In some ways, it's a good thing that we no longer have to suffer some of this tedium. But when I found my own fingers itching and my attention drifting, it made me ask myself whether I (and people more generally) have lost something: the ability to enjoy simple pleasures, like a person singing alone onstage. I know that's what BBC 4 and Radio 4 are about, and I know there are plenty of people who appreciate culture in that way. But perhaps the difference is that it's no longer a general feature of the population. TV was much simpler, naive, and dull when I was growing up. Life was much more dull, to be honest. Partly because I grew up in a tiny market town, but largely because everyone was poorer, at least where I lived. By comparison, life today seems to be accelerating, getting bigger, brighter; we get more and more stuff; we endlessly throw things away, change things; and our attention spans narrow, flitting from the old to the new. (I know this isn't an original insight, but Rolf's show brought the issue vividly to my attention.)

My daughter has never had to wait until a particular time of day to watch children's TV; she's always had access to computers, where you can watch virtually any event on YouTube (bees making honey, the moon landing etc.); she's got her own CD player in her room (no TV, for as long as we can prevent it); she gets to go out to lots of parks, museums, the cinema etc.. Thankfully, she loves drawing and writing, and will spend hours making pictures for friends and family, so she can entertain herself. But she has endless opportunities and a wealth of "stuff" which just wasn't the norm when I was growing up in the 70s. Everything is just there, all the time. We try really hard to make sure she appreciates what she's got, and realises how lucky she is. (Though it's hard to instill those values when she earns two or three rewards of pencils, keyrings, stickers, badges etc. for good behaviour at school every week. When I was at school the reward was a book, once a year, for pupils who'd done really well.)

I also watched Survivors last night. Fairly bleak dystopian sf (perhaps the credit crunch is to blame), and I thought reasonably realistic. It made me think along similar lines to watching Rolf: as well as moving further and further into the unreal realm of the media (the hyperreal simulation of the media, even, as Monsieur Baudrillard would have it), we have also moved further and further from our hunter gatherer origins. I thought this show reflected that pretty accurately. The characters in Survivors, faced with a world decimated by a virus, react in a variety of ways: denial, bewilderment, displacement activity, land grabbing. Mostly, though, they hope it will all go away, carry on arguing with each other, blunder around blowing up petrol stations, and don't really know what to do without the infrastructure that modern society relies on. I think I'd be the same in their situation, without my computer and TV and electricity, which makes me a bit sad. Though I can grow vegetables.

One last thing: talking about dystopias always reminds me of what I consider the dystopia par excellence: The Genocides by Thomas Disch. I don't think you can get it in the UK at the moment, but you can probably get it second hand (here it is on Amazon US). The basic story is that aliens have planted crops on the whole of the earth, gradually killing off all the native life except for people. People end up living in the stalks and roots of their gigantic plants, like field mice. The characterisation is fantastic (as with all Disch's work), but what I liked in particular was how the impending extinction of humankind did nothing to dampen their bickering and infighting. I'm sure that's how the world would end.

The Home of Metal

Mon, 2008-11-24 22:45 — elliot

The West Midlands is the Home of Metal. I hadn't really grasped this until I read this blog entry and had a browse around the Home of Metal site. I'm not particularly a fan of metal (except maybe some of the tracks by Scorn by ex Napalm Death chap Mick Harris, and despite the best efforts of Jono); but it would be good if the West Midlands and Birmingham got more recognition for the good stuff it's brought to the world. You can have a look at Famous Birmingham People for starters (though Arthur Conan Doyle is a bit of stretch: wasn't born here, he just lived here a while). Most notable for me:

  • George Cadbury (the chocolate man)
  • Tony Hancock
  • JRR Tolkein (not born here, but lived here when young; I've visited Sarehole Mill in Birmingham a couple of times, where he surely must have got some inspiration for The Lord of the Rings)
  • David Lodge (who taught English at University of Birmingham; I went to a talk he did in the Computer Science department while I was studying there, around the time he wrote Thinks...)

I've lived here since 1994 and feel very defensive of and proud of the region: great people, great places to go, great atmosphere. It's a fine place to live, and I'm glad my children are growing up here.

Gardening post-mortem

Wed, 2008-11-05 20:02 — elliot

So, the main growing season is largely over. Obviously you can grow some winter salads, plant bulbs and the like, but the garden is less active than it was a few weeks back. It was a fairly decent season for first-time vegetable growers (me and Madeleine); here's a summary:

  • We started out with lettuce, rocket and spinach, sown into paper pots, then planted into the ground when big enough. All were a complete failure and totally ravaged by slugs and snails. No crops.
  • We also grew some miniature sweetcorn which got to about 4 feet. The plants were healthy, but the yield was pitiful (6 cobs off 6 plants - delicious, but not enough). Should have started them earlier, or maybe fed them more, or given them better ground to grow in. Small success.
  • We tried pumpkins, which were again completely demolished by snails and slugs. They stayed fairly small for a long time, then around the start of September went demented and grew about 6 feet over the next 8 weeks. A few pumpkins started, but got chewed. Failure.
  • Radishes: we planted these out directly in the ground, and managed to crop a few. Not many though. I think the squirrels had them or something. Moderate success.
  • Salads growing in troughs hanging from the fence: the major success of the year. The troughs are attached about half-way up the fence around the patio, so they're warm and out of the way of slugs. I also put some wire mesh over the top to stop the squirrels and birds digging in them, then sowed through the mesh (so the plants grew through it). We had plenty of delicious crops from this, including mustard, spicy salad mix (rocket, leaf radish, etc.), lettuce, spinach, and endive. Endive is a great crop, by the way: everyone says it's bitter, and it consequently seems less attractive to wildlife; and the young leaves are at least as good as lettuce (I'd say tastier). Big success.

For the rest of this year, I think I'll carry on planting salads, some in the greenhouse. Next year, I think we'll do sweetcorn again, plenty of salads, radishes and peas outside; then try squashes, courgettes, aubergines and tomatoes in the greenhouse. Just need to get my seed order sent off.

Translation error

Mon, 2008-11-03 20:53 — elliot

I thought this blog entry was hilarious.

Flight of the Conchords

Thu, 2008-10-30 23:50 — elliot

I came late to the Conchords, and didn't realise what I'd been missing. (My sister's been a fan for a while, of course.)

I defy anyone not to find If You're Into It funny (not work safe):

And Business Time:

Currently their first series is being repeated on BBC Four on Tuesdays.

Films I've watched: 3 word reviews

Thu, 2008-10-30 23:38 — elliot
  • Cloverfield: bleak, gripping, relentless
  • Cube: metaphorical, atmospheric, tense
  • Nightwatch: perplexing, disjointed, disappointing
  • 10000 BC: rubbish, rubbish, avoid

Beauty

Mon, 2008-09-22 21:36 — elliot

"Beware of that which is breathtakingly beautiful, for at any moment the telephone may ring or the airplane come down in a vacant lot." (John Cage)

Nicola and I had this at our wedding:

Now I'm getting all nostalgic. We had this during the wedding ceremony too:

We are quite soppy, as you might have guessed.

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