The other evening, I was woken (yes, I was asleep at 6pm, might blog about why that was on a later date) by a man from one of the energy companies trying to get me to consider changing
my gas supply to them. I’m not keen on door-to-door sales at the best of times, which, coupled with my why-have-you-woken-me-up attitude and a hint of my mischievousness, lead to a
conversation that I’m sure he won’t soon forget.
Gas Man:
Hi, I’m from [name of energy company – he was keen to show off his shiny ID badge] and… oh; I’m sorry, have I just woken you up? Is this a bad time?
Dan:
/yawning/ Yeah, but I’m up now. What can I do for you?
Gas Man:
I might be able to save you money on your gas bill. Can I ask who you’re with now?
Dan:
I’m with [name of my energy company].
Gas Man:
Right, and do you pay quarterly or monthly?
Dan:
Monthly, by direct debit.
Gas Man:
Okay. Do you know how much you spend per month on gas?
Dan:
Hey, do you have any samples?
Gas Man:
What? Umm… I’ve got a leaflet if you’d like…
Dan:
No: samples. Of the gas your company provides.
Gas Man:
/laughing it off as a joke/ Ha! No… so do you know how much your average bill…
Dan:
/completely serious face/ I’m afraid I’d have to smell your gas before I could make any kind of decision.
Gas Man: /stunned silence/
Dan:
I’ve been with a few different gas companies over the years. When I first moved in I was with [name of energy company]. Their gas smelled like walnuts, and I
don’t like walnuts, so I switched to [name of another energy company], and their gas used to smell like cottage cheese, which was fine, but eventually it started smelling
like it had gone off which means it probably was actual cottage cheese: which is great, but you can’t just put cottage cheese in your pipe and never replace it, can you? So that’s
when I switched to [name of my energy company], about three months ago. Their gas smells like watermelons, which is perfectly good. I like watermelons.
/pause/
So you see; I couldn’t possibly buy your company’s gas unless I could smell it first.
/I continue staring at him with wide, “I inhale flammable gases for fun” look/
Gas Man:
Umm. All the gas is the same. It doesn’t matter which company supplies it: it’s all the same gas.
Dan:
Oh.
/puzzled look/
Then I guess I’ll stick with the gas I’ve got, if yours is no different. Goodbye.
/closes door/
(I assumed he’d already have head of this, of course)
I’ve just got myself a new mobile phone, and I thought I’d spend a moment to gloat about some of it’s more awesome features (and mutter under my breath about a few of the things that
are less-fabulous about it).
So, my new phone is a Nokia N900. You’re not likely to have seen many of these
floating around, yet, because they’re new to the UK and they’re currently in somewhat short supply, but thanks to some careful negotiation I’ve gotten my clammy mits on one just a
little ahead of the curve.
I’m now loathe to say what I was initially inclined to about it – that it’s quite a remarkable phone – because it’s not really a phone (although it is quite remarkable). As somebody who
has always gone for smartphones with heaps of geeky features, I’ve often gone through conversations like the one in the comic, above: where somebody has said “but can it make calls?”
These comments tend to come from people who want a phone that makes calls, maybe sends texts, and little else, and often this “purist” view of mobile telephony somebody gives them a
strange superiority complex (or perhaps it’s just a backlash against the feature-creep of modern portable devices: who knows). As for me, I don’t care – I want all of those
extra features. I couldn’t imagine any more owning a phone without – at least – a fully-featured web browser, camera, bluetooth, wifi, and the capability for me to install (and ideally
develop) my own applications onto it, such as connectivity tools, an instant messenger, and so on.
A Nokia N900 on a phone call
However, the Nokia N900 is the first communicator – yes, that’s the word I’m going to use, instead – where I’ve honestly felt that the telephony features “come second”. I suppose it’s
the result of the natural progression of Nokia’s Nxxx range of
PDAs that this should be the case – the N900 is the first in the series to actually support use of a mobile phone network at all; at least directly. In the device’s default
configuration, out-of-the-box, supposing you wanted to make a cellular call, you’d need to:
Switch desktops (by “swiping” one desktop along) or access the applications menu (by tapping the on-screen button for that purpose).
Tap the “Phone” icon, which by default sits in 6th place on the list. Yes, 6th.
Dial the number you wanted to call.
That’s about 66% steps more than just about any other phone ever made. (okay, there’s actually a faster way, but supposing you wanted to exclusively use the touch-screen interface, the
above instructions are correct) I know a lot of people who would be put off by that, but I’m not one of them: I’m well past the point where phone calls are the primary thing I
use my phone for!
There’s a few things that make the Nokia N900 remarkable by comparison to the phones I’ve had before:
Touchscreen (& hidden keyboard)
Superficially, the major change to my previous phones is the addition of a touchscreen, which seems to be The Thing if you want to make a smartphone these days, thanks to Apple’s
innovations in that area. Unusually, the N900 also has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The slide-out keyboard takes some getting used to, because it’s best operated by your
thumbs, which isn’t the way I’m used to using a keyboad. It also makes the phone almost twice as thick as the iPhone and slightly thicker than the HTC
Magic, which may be a turn-off to those who like their devices skinny (again, not something that’s ever been a concern to me).
I’m quite pleased with the touchscreen. There’s a stylus embedded in the edge of the case (this is a resistive touchscreen, not a capacitative one like the iPhone, so a stylus can be
used), which can be good for clicking tiny links on web pages without zooming in, sketching, and so on, but mostly I’ve just been using my big chunky fingers and that’s worked fine.
While the hardware’s multitouch-capable, the factory-installed software isn’t (more on that later), presumably to avoid a lawsuit (there are a lot of complicated patents in
that area right now), but having never owned a multitouch-capable phone I don’t miss it. Instead, there’s a good deal of standardised gestures – for example, drawing a spiral in a
clockwise or anticlockwise direction can be used to zoom in and out.
The keyboard noticibly lacks a tab key, norkies (angle-brackets), and a few other uncommon pieces of punctuation, which is slightly disappointing (for a geek phone!), because acessing
these using the alternate method is just slightly slower than would be ideal. Perhaps these could have been supplied as “special” characters on some of the keys which have no alternate
function (e.g. the cursor keys): still, it should be reasonably easy to write this kind of functionality.
Operating System & architecture
Maemo OS screenshot
A particularly unusual feature of the Nokia N900 is it’s choice of operating system. It’s not that Linux-based smartphones are particularly rare per se – after all, Google Android is Linux-powered and the iPhone OS is based on a BSD kernel – but the thinking that’s behind the N900 that is unusual. You see, the N900 gives you root as-standard.
If you want to install a different Linux distribution or completely change the one that comes with the device, you can – without “jailbreaking” the device or invalidating your warranty.
The standard operating system for the N900, Maemo 5, is based on Debian Linux but with Matchbox
and Hildon providing the GUI. This means that the entire operating system is open-source and virtually free of patents and restrictions, and the community support is quite significant.
Plus, there’s something distinctly sexy about opening up a terminal on your new phone and typing “sudo apt-get install dosbox” onto it, and a few minutes later having a fully-functional
DOS emulator running in your pocket.
I suppose you have to be my kind of geek to truly appreciate that.
Fresh from the factory, the N900 comes with the usual selection of tools – phone, SMS (Nokia have finally improved their stone-age predictive text system to a modern one with
support for word-completion, Markov chains, and so on), address book, web browser
(based on Mozilla Firefox, and with Flash 9.6 support – there’s nothing quite
like watching Flash videos on your mobile, stutter-free), etc. There’s quite a lot more reliance on the community than on other devices: for example, despite the inlusion of an FM tuner
in the hardware, there’s no software to support it unless you install it yourself. As a Linux geek, that suits me down to the ground, but this isn’t a phone for everybody – it’ll never
be popular and it won’t hit the mainstream in the way that the iPhone and Android-powered phones have.
Want support for Ogg Vorbis in your media player (damn right you do): just install a community-supported codec package. Same goes for video formats, whatever applications or games you
want, and so on. There’s a package to readily allow plain old Debian repo packages to “just work” on it, too, without recompilation, so there’s an immense number of applications already
available without even having to go near the Ovi Store, Nokia’s answer to the Android Marketplace and the Apple App Store.
The hardware
Nokia N900 with keybord extended
If you’re the kind of geek who cares, the hardware for this device is really quite spectacular. But if you’re that kind of geek, you already know where to look it up… and if you’re not,
you don’t need me to repeat it. Suffice to say that the N900 is nippy and responsive even when performing intensive tasks (like simultaneously restoring archives from parity files while
listening to radio repeats on iPlayer and playing 3D-accelerated video games), thanks to a generous amount of RAM and a good seperation of responsibilities between the three (yes,
three) individual processor cores.
This is a geek’s device, and it comes with all kinds of surprising extras for developers to tap into. As well as Bluetooth, the tilt sensors and accelerometers (some idiot has already
written an app that detects how high you can throw your N900 based on what planet you’re on and the accelerometer readings – sounds like a quick way to break your new toy, to me!), two
cameras (one a 5MP one, like the high-end Nseries phones), it’s even got an infared transmitter, so you’re only a copy of LIRC away from a universal remote, too.
Thanks to last year’s industry standards
agreement, the N900 uses the new “standardised” mobile phone charger, so at least you shouldn’t have to throw out your charger ever again (at least, until mobile phones start
charging by induction, as standard), and you’ll always be able to charge from USB. But in a genuine bit of Nokia care, the N900 box also contains an adapter that can be used to convert
any old-style or even old-old-style Nokia charger into the new standard format, which is a world of awesome (what else was I going to do with my collection of Nokia chargers?). Thanks
for thinking of us, Nokia. Oh: and the environment, I guess.
And now, the things I don’t like
It’s not all rainbows and kittens, though. There’s a few things about the N900 that haven’t won all of my praise and support just yet:
Why do virtually all of the default apps run exclusively in either “portrait” or “landscape” mode? Some applications will automatically switch when you rotate the phone, but not all
of them: personally, I like to be able to browse the web in “portrait” from time to time! I’m sure it’ll be patched soon enough, but it’s a minor annoyance for now.
It would have been nice to have a physical “Task Manager” button on the device, for when a full-screen application has made the standard one inaccessible (this isn’t the iPhone –
this is a true multitasking machine – so being able to switch apps “fast” would be nice, like we could on Symbian). On the other hand, there’s an app for that.
There’s no native A2DP support, so
those “next track”/”previous track” buttons on your Bluetooth headset are officially useless. Would this really have been so hard to have in the standard package? Can somebody write it,
please?
There are a few teething bugs in the first release of the Mail For Exchange package, which I use to synchronise my address book and calendar with my online accounts, resulting in
some synchronisations simply failing (although failing-safely, of course: no data was damaged). Considering that Nokia have had working code to do this for several years now, porting it
and then testing the port really shouldn’t have been so difficult.
So there we have it
An official thumbs-up from me, so long as you’re a geek and don’t mind the fact that this phone is – for the next month or two, I suspect – going have have the kinds of teething
problems I’ve listed above. I’ll reiterate that this isn’t a phone for a regular Joe: if you’re not going to appreciate the freedom you’ve got with a device like this, you’d be better
to save your money and get a HTC Nexus One or iPhone 3GS, or hold on for a couple
of months and check out the spectacular-looking Sony
Ericcson XPERIA X10.
The N900 is a phone for people with balls and a passion for the most open of open-source. And it’s awesome.
Normal blogging will resume shortly, but I just wanted to quickly take advantage of a period of strong mobile signal as I sit on this Thames Travel bus (oh yeah: I’m in Oxford for a few
days) to share with you a feeling of warm fuzziness I experienced earlier today. (note: this blog post took a few days to get “finished”: I’m now stuck in a small town outside
Oxford by heavy snow)
In her latest blog post, my sister Becky writes about achieving a couple of things on her “to-do before I die” list. And when I
read about her revelations about the nature of domestic abuse and her selfless willingness to go out of her way to help her fellow man, I was filled with an immense sense of
pride.
I’ll remind you that, unlike about a fifth of the regular readers of this blog, my sister has no formal training or experience in active listening or counselling skills. She’s never
been taught how to listen without prejudice, how to build rapport, or how to show empathy. She knows that this certainly isn’t part of her job description. What we’re looking at there
is plain old, genuine human compassion. And it makes me proud not only of her – as my sister – but also of humankind in general, that this kind of caring for one another still exists,
even for a stranger, within the general population. That’s simply awesome.
In other not-dissimilar human-compassion related news, Ruth and I were offered a lift – saving us a
two-mile walk through the snow, after midnight – by two complete strangers the other night, after our bus was cancelled. It’s been a good week for stories of people being nice to one
another, both in my immediate experience and in the news. I like it.
On the other hand: here the snow is thick and heavy! Paul and I made it to Preston in the end, after a series of train journeys
along an unusual route (but, remarkably, virtually all running on time). From Aberystwyth, it’s genuinely challenging to appreciate how significantly the recent snowfall has impacted on
the rest of the UK. By Dyfi Junction the train staff were warning about the conditions on the unploughed platforms, and at Manchester, unused platform ends lay heavy with slush piled up
around the tracks.
Snow piles up in my dad’s garden – still several inches thick despite a damp night
The major roads are swept, but the side roads are piled high with drifts and it’s hard to see (or even feel) the speed bumps in the residential estates. Apparently, the other night one
of my sisters – Becky – had to drive into town to collect the other – Sarah – as she couldn’t get a
taxi home after a night out… because the taxi drivers were refusing to drive through the snow that littered my mum’s estate.
A cat’s footprints winding their way across my dad’s garden
It’s quite remarkable to see this much snow here – the most I’ve seen anywhere in England in about fourteen years. We may well be having a white Christmas yet!
Aberystwyth this morning. Not a patch of snow to be seen, not even on the hills.
This year, my plan was that my friend Paul and I would head up to Preston to spend Christmas with my family there. My
sisters even kindly offered to drive down and pick us up, which is nice , because the alternative for moving the presents I’ve got boxed up in my living room would be to strap them onto
a sled and find some livestock to tow them up North. I’m not sure where I’d find animals around here capable of running a sleigh: how many sheep do you think it takes to pull a grown
man, his clothes for a week, and a stack of gifts?
When I received a text this morning saying that Preston was, functionally-speaking, snowed-in, I was at least a little surprised. I opened the curtains: here in Aber it’s reasonably
warm, mild, and sunny, with not even a hint of snow – not even on the distant mountains. It’s hard to believe that from only a hundred or so miles away the snow is so thick that it’s
having to be ploughed off the road, and that in the South-East, drivers have had to spend the nights in their cars after roads became unusable.
So… I might make it out of Aber by Christmas. If anybody can tell me where the nearest magic reindeer farm with lax security is, it’d be appreciated.
(transitive) to cause an observer to interpret meaning where none exists
“The beauty of the sunset pudds me into believing that it was put there specifically for me to enjoy.”
“Interpreting the lyrics pudded Dan with ideas far beyond those intended by the songwriter.”
(intransitive) to interpret meaning (esp. into the meaningless)
“Though I don’t understand your grunting, I pudd that you are angry about something.” “Despite the emptiness of her life, Mary was pudding.”
The meaning or purpose of something, as understood through individual interpretation, without specific indication any such meaning exists.
“His pudd is that life is for having fun while it lasts.”
“Pudds are easy to find when you’re looking for them.”
You know how in How I Met Your Mother season 5, episode 3
(Robin 101), Ted says “Anything sounds weird
if you say it a hundred times,” and proceeds to say the word “bowl” over and over until it begins to lose all significance for him, becoming a meaningless vocalisation? The phenomenon
is called semantic satiation, and the other day I experienced something
a little like it, and then – as is my way – went one step further.
For some reason – perhaps saturation of the word in my brain that mirrored the saturation of the food in my stomach at and following last weekend’s feast – I lost the meaning to the
word “pudding”. I’d stare at it, but it didn’t make any sense – it was just a collection of letters. I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar at some point in your life.
But then an unusual thing happened: my brain began to see it in a different way, almost adding meaning to it. My imagination whirred. The part of my brain responsible for
recognising the components of language, which has recently been spoiled by the regularity and predictability of Esperanto, began to see the word “pudding” as the present participle form of a verb, “to pudd”. I pudd, you pudded, we’re pudding, everybody
pudds.
There’s no English verb, “to pudd”, that I’m aware of, so I’ve invented one. The definition is based on the experience that lead me to inventing it, and as a result it is at least a
little bit recursive. The definition is as above. I’ve invented an accompanying derivative noun, too. I anticipate that the intransitive verb form is the most useful of the three
definitions: in fact, I’ll be using it in this very article.
I don’t pudd that I was somehow supposed to do this; that my temporary inability to comprehend a word was destined to have me invent one: and if you’re
pudding that right now, you’re mistaken. But if you must find pudd in this whole jolly story, perhaps you can just settle on that I am a fan of
language, and at least a little bit eccentric. Isn’t that enough?
The week before last, I received an unusual package at work. It contained a single-serving packet of organic hot chocolate, which I later consumed (and it was delicious).
There is, however, a mystery: from whom did this care package originate. The postmark is unclear, so I’m not sure which post office handled it, but it’s hard to imagine somebody who
lived in Aberystwyth spending 69p to have this delivered to me when they could have just dropped it in themselves.
The back of the envelope may be considered a clue, too:
It looks like the envelope has been re-used, which suggests that the sender was the recipient of the original package, which seems to have come from Toronto, Canada, back in March 2009.
Aside from that, all we know is that the mystery sender’s handwriting is a little sloppy.
If it’s you that sent it: thanks! But who the hell are you?
I believe that it is ethically wrong to lie to children about the existence of Santa
Claus. And, as it’s a topical time of year – and because I know that this view brings me into conflict with the views of many others (I’ve certainly had more than a couple of
arguments about this before) – I thought that I’d explain my thinking.
"I'm not real... but don't tell anyone!"
Bias of background
I probably ought to come clean, first, about my own background. There’s a certain bias that people can have towards their own upbringing: the implicit assumption that the way one was
brought up is somehow the best or the most-correct way. I’d like to think that I’m speaking from a position of rationality as well as morality, but I can’t deny that my judgment
may be clouded by my own childhood.
I never believed that Santa was real, and was never encouraged to. My family played out a whole variety of modern, secular Christmas traditions, such as leaving out a mince pie for
Santa, hanging stockings, and decorating a tree. But these were always understood to be what they actually were. There was never an illusion that the mince pie wasn’t being eaten by my
dad just minutes after he’d checked that I’d finally managed to curb my excitement get to sleep (even without a belief in the patently mythological, Christmas can still be an
exciting time for a child).
What’s the harm?
When I was growing up, I came into contact with many children for whom the Father Christmas myth was very real. I gather that they’re still remarkably common… and who can blame parents:
perpetuating the Santa lie can provide a very easy and pervasive way to control the behaviour of their children!
For the vast majority of these children, the revelation of the lie was a harmless experience: over time, they developed doubts, from the childish (“We don’t have a chimney? How can
Santa slide down radiators?”), to the logical (“Reindeer can’t fly! And how big is a sleigh that can carry presents for every good child on Earth?”), to the profound (“Why does Santa
give the children of rich parents more expensive gifts than the children of poor parents?”). They’d hear stories from other children about the falsehood of the Christmas stories when
they spoke to other children or, often, older siblings. Many would eventually challenge their parents on these lies, and most of these parents would then come clean, correctly judging
that the lie had run it’s course. So what’s the harm?
There are some children who didn’t come off so well. I’ve seen children bullied at school and in social settings as a result of clinging to their belief in Santa. One kid I knew –
bolstered by his mother’s ongoing lies (she would later claim that she thought he knew, but was just “playing along”) – genuinely believed in Santa until he was 14 years old, defying
all argument to the contrary, and suffered so much that he ceased to gain any enjoyment at all from the festival for years to come.
I’ve spoken to parents who have attempted to justify their decision to lie to their children by dismissing it as only “a white lie”, something which does more good than harm, and I can
see their argument. But for some children, as we’ve seen, this lie can spiral out of control, and even if this were to happen with only one in a thousand children, I wouldn’t personally
want to take the risk that it was a child of mine.
One of Santa's biggest benefits is that he has a list of where all the naughty girls live.
That Magical Christmas Feeling™
A common response to my claim that lying to children about Santa is ethically wrong is that there is something particularly special (or “magical”, it is often said) about being able to
believe in Santa. Those who make this claim invariably come from a background in which they were encouraged to believe in him, and they frequently talk of wanting their children to be
able to have the same experience as them. (I would speculate that there’s a large crossover between this group of people and the group of people who would rather their children were
brought up with their religious beliefs, or lack thereof, than be given the opportunity to make their own choices, too).
Having experienced life as an a-santaist, I can say that there never for a moment felt like there was something missing from my childhood Christmases. Children have a rich and beautiful
imagination and a way of looking at the world which will find wonder and magic, if they want it, regardless of the untruths they’re told. Imposing false beliefs as truths on healthy
young minds does not result in a net addition of “magic”. At best, all that is achieved is that the child fantasies about a specific lie, perhaps one that the child’s caregivers can
relate to. We’ve discussed a couple of the worth cases already, and these aren’t isolated incidents.
Christmas can be a magical time anyway. There’s time away from school (for children of schoolgoing age), a chance to see distant relatives, the giving and receiving of presents (how can
I have left this until third in the list!), following unusual and exciting traditions, eating special food, the potential for snow (at least in this hemisphere), and a time for telling
special stories and singing special songs. Special events are magical, and that’s true whether or not you subscribe to any particular religious or secular holidays. For a
child, birthdays are magical, bonfire night is magical (ooh! fireworks!), the summer solstice is magical: whatever you’ve got can be magical when you’ve got a child’s imagination.
Think back to whatever family traditions you had as a child, especially the ones you had to wait a whole year for. They’re all special, all by themselves. You can enjoy eating
delicious chocolate eggs without believing in either a magical rabbit with a confusing reproductive system, the crucifixion of the embodiment of a deity, or spring coming forth thanks
to the earned favour of the fertility gods. Sorry, what were you saying? I was still thinking about chocolate.
Santana - a full 100% more real, but only 95% less magical - than Santa
So, no Santa at all, then?
If you were paying attention, you’ll have seen that I said “telling special stories and singing special songs”. My childhood was a secular one, certainly, but that doesn’t mean that it
wasn’t full of stories of a jolly red man, songs about cervines with nasal photoluminescence, and so on. I enjoyed stories about a gift-giving magical man, just like I enjoyed stories
about anthropomorphic talking animals: and it’s okay to understand these things for just what they are: stories! There’s perhaps something a little special in stories about Father
Christmas in that they’re told pretty-much exclusively at Christmas time (and, perhaps, a little much – how many Christmas-themed movies are scheduled for television broadcast
this winter?), but we don’t have to treat them as if they’re real.
My rules are pretty simple. If you (a) know something to be false and (b) teach it to a child to be real with (c) the intent for them to believe it wholeheartedly and for an extended
period of time, you’re abusing the position of trust in which that child has placed you. (a) provides an exception for religious upbringing, (b) provides an exception for relationships
in which there is not a disparity of power, and (c) provides an exception for whatever so-called “white lies” you feel that you need: that’s a pretty hefty lump of exceptions, if you
need them – but still people raise objections.
Here’s what Santa means to me. To me, “Santa” is, and has always been, the embodiment of anonymous gift-giving: the genuine “spirit of Christmas”, if you like. And given my way, that
would be what I’d want to teach my children, too. I’m not for a moment denying anybody the magic of the season, I’m just saying that there’s a big difference between Santa as an
abstract concept (like a storm “wanting” to break) and Santa as a real, albeit magical, being (like Poseidon sending the storm†).
It’s a matter of trust
For me, this all comes down to trust. I don’t want to lie to my children. It’s not a difficult concept to understand: the only difference between me and a large number of other
people is that they choose a different definition of “lie”. For the virtually all children who discover that they’ve been deceived about Santa, their trust in their parents remains
fundamentally unharmed. For some, it’s dented for a short while but then comes back. But this still doesn’t make it right.
I want to be somebody who my children will always know that they can trust. I want them to know that I will not lie to them or deceive them. I want to be somebody who they can turn to
for advice. I want to be somebody who they know will put them first, even in spite of tradition and convention.
That’s where I stand. Let’s here what you guys think.
Now this is the kind of Santa that I can get behind.
But first, there’s one more argument…
…that I’ve heard recently. I’ve heard it put that it’s beneficial to lie to children about Santa because it teaches them not to trust everything they hear, teaches them to be critical
thinkers, etc.. That being taught a lie will toughen them against other lies that they will be given to them later in the big, wide, and cruel world.
This argument holds no weight with me. Do these same parents like to beat up their children “just a little” so that if they get into a fight at school, it won’t be so bad? Do they lock
up and abuse their kids so that if they’re kidnapped and raped that it isn’t so hard on them?
In my mind, a lie that you keep up for years on end is no longer a harmless lie. When I want to teach my kids about deceit, I’ll perform magic tricks for them. The first time you
perform a magic trick for a child, they genuinely believe it – how did he make that coin appear from behind my ear? Leave it for a minute or so (a minute can be an eternity
when you’re a kid). Then I’ll show them how it’s done. I’ll teach them to do the trick themselves, and they’ll see for themselves that magic is an illusion. Plus, they’ll have learned a
cool trick.
The world is full of many very clever illusions and tricks, and often you can’t see how they’re done, but that doesn’t mean that they’re magic. There’s no shame in not knowing all the
answers, but looking for answers is a noble and beautiful thing. I want to foster in my children a natural suspicion of magic, so that they’re better-able to avoid being conned by those
who would do them harm. And I can achieve this without lying to them for more than a few minutes at a time. Shove that in your stocking, Santa.
DISCLAIMER: THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT THE NATURE OF SANTA CLAUS. IF YOU BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS, PERHAPS YOU
SHOULDN’T HAVE READ IT.
† No offence intended to those who genuinely believe that Poseidon is the master of storms, naturally.
Absolutely spectacular: it’s amazing that this over-60-year-old man can spend a couple of hours singing and dancing and leaping around and being executed – I was tired just watching
him.
Great to hear a setlist with a good mix of his older material as well as stuff from his latest album. Vengeance Is Mine was particularly brilliant to see performed live.
Wedding of my old college friend Richard to his wife Kathryn.
He works as a tax inspector these days, and we found ourselves sat at a table of his tax inspector buddies and their (bored-looking, during a brief period in which they were
“talking shop”) partners.
Think we managed to upset the bride quite a lot (although, to be fair, we were only the messengers): after picking up a slice of wedding cake and returning to the table we presently
shared with the bride and groom, Ruth turned to the bride and said “We must have missed you cutting the cake?” She replied, “We… we didn’t cut the cake, yet!” Whoops.
Turns out that the hotel staff got the wrong end of the stick somewhere and sliced the cake for them!
Ruth with a large cone of ice cream, at about midnight.
Preston
Was nice to see my family. Sarah and Ruth seem to be getting along a lot better than they used to, as well.
Preston has a late-night ice cream parlour! How cool is that? (I know perfectly well that it sounds like slang for a drug dealer, as in, “I’m going to the late-night ice cream
parlour: want some tutti frutti?”, or perhaps a brothel)
Dan:(eating a kiwi fruit) So why are kiwis hairy?
Gareth: To give insects something to cling onto?
Dan: Like “kiwi headlice”? But to what purpose? How does that benefit the plant?
Gareth: Well, then maybe it’s to make them look even more like gonads.
Dan: Heh. But again, to what purpose?
Gareth: To attract homosexual male humans to it, perhaps.
Dan: Which gives it an evolutionary advantage how?
Gareth: Well, homosexual men are better at disseminating seed.
I’d just like to take a moment to say how amazing my friends are. It’s likely to be a little sappy: for those of you who like your blog posts on the other side of the wall, please
switch off your eyes now.
Earlier this month, I blogged about Claire and I’s break-up. For many of the people I know, this will have been the very first they’ll have heard about it. Over the 36 hours or so that followed, I was
completely swamped by consolations and concern: by comment, text message, Facebook,
instant message, e-mail and phone – as well as in person from those I’ve seen in the meantime. Every single one of those messages is appreciated so very much. Thank you all.
And that’s not even mentioning the check-ins that people have made in the weeks since. It’s so kind of you all. I hope that Claire’s feeling as supported as I’ve been lucky enough to
feel.
So how’s it going? That’s what everybody asks. Well…
…it’s still difficult. I’m not sure why I might have expected anything else: Claire and I were together for a quarter of my life so far. I still cry quite a lot, especially when
Grooveshark Radio conspires against me and decides to queue up a whole series of songs that remind me of her. I
don’t see as much of her as I used to, and I miss her, but when we’re together I often find it quite painfully awkward: even just down to little things, like the times that I realise
that for the last few minutes I’d forgotten we aren’t a couple. I’m intensely keen on us being friends, and at least salvaging the awesome friendship we’ve shared for most of the
millenium, but it’s not as comfortable as I’d like.
As I’ve said to a handful of people, now: without Claire, there’s no compelling reason for me to stay in Aberystwyth, so in the New Year, I’ll be aiming to leave town. I’m not sure
where I’ll go, yet, or what I’ll do, but I’ve got some ideas. Today, I told my boss about my situation and that I’d like to start taking steps to make sure that the company can do
without me: the joy of small-team development, eh?
When I first came to town, I promised myself that I wouldn’t get caught in the trap of being “stuck” here. I realised that Aberystwyth was a place that I could really fall in love with,
and I promised myself that I wouldn’t stay more than ten years.
That was ten years and two months ago. I think it’s time to leave my love behind.
Apologies to those who’ve been waiting to see the photographs. Since my last
blog post I’ve been kind of distracted and not had the chance to blog properly.
On Friday 31st October, Ruth hosted another of her fabulous murder mystery nights in Paul‘s end of The Uberflat. The major difference with this one to all of the previous ones, though, was that instead of opening
and playing a “kit”, this murder mystery was written by me.
And wow; it turns out that writing a murder mystery night is actually quite a lot of work. It’s like writing ten separate stories at the same time, which must all be
internally-consistent with one another, but simultaneously must all neglect information that is known to one another in a dynamic and engaging way. After a few months of it (on and off)
and a week or two of it (every spare waking hour) I felt like I had an understanding of the characters I’d invented so intimate that even their own imaginary mothers would be put to
shame by my encyclopedic knowledge of them.
Adam as Mr. Gerry Knuckles
In order to minimise the risk that I would simply write the plot such that Paul would be the murderer (we’ve an ongoing joke about Paul always being the murderer, after he was
for a couple of murder mysteries in a row), I didn’t choose who would play which character. Instead, I wrote a number of different characters and left it up to Ruth to match them up
with guests.
This also had the added benefit, in my mind, that the characters were not written to match the people who would play them: and as a result, I was pleasantly surprised to see my
creations brought to life through the improvisation of my friends, interpreting the characters as they saw fit.
I was remarkably nervous about whether or not I’d “got it right”: had I given enough detail about the characters that the guests would feel comfortable performing them, but not so much
detail that they would feel stifled and unable to add their own flair to them? Had I given enough clues as to who the murderer was, but not so many as to make it obvious? Had I written
enough dialogue for the time planned? Was the plot sufficiently gripping that the guests would actually care about defending their characters to the bitter end?
Dr. Manatee and his daughter, Lucie; as played by JTA and by Ruth's mother
My fears weren’t helped by the fact that I had to make a number of last-minute changes to the script to accommodate the fact that Rory – one of the guests – had a family emergency and had to drop out. By the time I’d finished (re-)writing the last of the dialogue, I still hadn’t
had a chance to read through all of the script and make sure that all the loose ends were tied up: and, in fact, they weren’t, as I discovered to my horror some way through the night.
Mlle. Plosh and Mr. John Basterd; played by Claire and Matt P
The evening kicked off reasonably well. There was a little awkwardness, as usual, as people tried to fit into the shells of their characters, but – again, as usual – the guests’
reservations turned out to be soluble in alcohol, and by the time everybody had gotten a drink inside them, things began to pick up steam. A second cause of difficulty at the beginning
of the night is that nobody knew who they were supposed to be in relation to everybody else. I had expected that Ruth (who had told everybody who they were) had sent the full character
list to everybody who was coming, but owing to a mis-communication between the pair of us she’d only sent everybody their own character description. As a result, we had whole
families of characters who were not aware that they were supposed to already know one another. Thankfully I’d reprinted this information on the inside cover of the sourcebooks, and
handed these out as people came in through the door, which resolved the issue.
Re-branded wine. Who brought this? I don't remember.
Yet again, Ruth produced a fantastic and wonderfully theme-fitting meal, with a variety of French-themed, freshly-made courses. Paul, again as usual, put together a playlist of music of
the period. Everybody’s costumes were superb, right down to the detail of Dr. Manatee’s eccentric quirks (JTA brought
a spoon which he constantly fiddled with and refused to let anybody else touch) and Sir. Percy Blubbery’s wonderfully accurate English aristocrat’s clothes (Paul had sent me a text a
week or so before the event in which he’d derided my costume suggestion for him and proposed his own, based on his research into the period).
A remarkable number of people, and particularly Ruth’s mother and Matt P, spoke a remarkable amount of French,
which caused endless confusion for poor old me, who hadn’t spoken any, really, since high school. Had I thought about it, I might have tried to put a little more effort into ensuring
that the grammar and spelling of what little French I’d put into the script was more correct.
There were only two fuck-ups worthy of note:
After I’d hastily removed Rory’s (absent) character from the script, I’d neglected to add back to the dialogue an important point that he makes, early on: a fact about a particular
door in the inn being creaky, which, combined with other information from the other characters, could be used to conclusively demonstrate the whereabouts of the murderer at the time of
the murder.
Worse yet, another part of the same evidence tree, to be delivered by Mrs. Marguerite Blubbery – played by Ruth – had also been broken by my sloppy last-minute editing. In her
sourcebook, I’d given Ruth two conflicting pieces of information, and she’d opted to interpret the first one as being correct and the second one as being false.
In other words, fewer things “went wrong” than they have with a number of the professionally-made kits that we’ve bought over the years, which have, from time to time, had plotholes so
big that youcould park a plane in them, or even mis-prints which have resulted in clues being revealed in the wrong order!
The guests point the Finger Of Blame at the murderer!
Nonetheless, a strong motive (to those who noticed it) and a weak alibi allowed about half the guests to correctly identify the murderer, which suggests to me that the mystery might
have been slightly too easy (had I correctly implemented the two clues, above, everybody would probably have guessed). Still, it turned out okay as a result of my mistakes!
Unlike playing murder mystery “kits”, as we have before, having one of us write the story gave us the benefit that one of us – in this case, me – knew the entire plot from the start. I
played a narrator/investigator role, therefore, similar to that played by audio CDs, DVDs, and paper-trail clues in many of the kits that we’ve used, and this actually turned out to
work really well: I was able, for example, to keep the flow of conversation moving, to make sure that no crucial clues were completely missed, and to generally “host” the mystery part
of the evening.
I’ve also learned a lot about how to write this kind of mystery, and I know what I’d do differently next time. In fact, I’ve already started work on a new mystery which I’m hoping we’ll
be able to run late in January: Murder… In Space! Hopefully I’ll see some of you there!
Finally: if you want to see all the photos I took on the night, here they are.
We’ve had several rough months, and several even rougher weeks, and this seemed to be the best solution to a variety of difficulties we’ve faced recently. It’s hard to answer the
question as to whether the split could be described as mutual, but it can certainly be described as amicable, if that’s enough. If not, then perhaps it might help to understand that
we’re both, little doubt, unhappy, but that it’s better to end things now in a friendly way than, say, in six months time in an unfriendly way.
I’m sure that neither of us want to go in depth into the issues behind this break-up in the public forum, but I’m sure that those of you who are our friends are more than welcome to ask
privately, “what happened?” I apologise to everybody for whom this comes as a shock (i.e. most of you, from what I gather).
I’ve no doubt that Claire and I will continue to be close friends and will kick arse in all the fabulous ways that you’re used to, whether in one another’s company or apart. And I
expect I speak for both of us when I say that there’s a slap on the wrist waiting for anybody we catch “taking sides”: there are no sides to be taken.
Virgil wrote that omnia vincit amor – love conquers all – but he was
wrong. Despite our love for one another, if Claire and I had carried on the way we were, people would have ended up hurt. I’m feeling drained and miserable, but it’ll pass, and all will
be well again. For a quarter of my life thus far I’ve been Claire’s, and she’s been mine, and through one another we’ve done so much. For the last seven and a half years I’ve been
thankful for the great richness of experience that my relationship with Claire has brought. There will always be a special place in my heart for her.
Thanks for reading. I think I shall go and sit quietly for a while, now.
As those of you who use my Feed Proxy service to get your
LiveJournal friends’ blogs (including friends-only posts) into Google
Reader or a similar service know, the service hasn’t been working for the last few days.
I made all of the changes that LiveJournal’s bot policy required of me. I e-mailed them; no response.
I e-mailed again; no response. I e-mailed to ask were they receiving my e-mails – yes, they were, but the person responsible for unblocking the bot “wasn’t in” at the moment.
I e-mailed again: yet again, no response.
I’ve been finding it harder to keep up with my LiveJournal friends because of this, and I know that a lot of you are pissed off, too. But it looks like LiveJournal aren’t going to be
cooperative any time soon. So it’s time to switch services.
I’m moving my authenticated feeds over to FreeMyFeed. FreeMyFeed provides many of the same services at Feed Proxy did, although
it also works for a wider variety of web applications (for example, you can also use it for Twitter, if you’re one of the dozen or so
people who still uses Twitter).
If you’re already a Feed Proxy user:
Within the next few hours, each LiveJournal friend you’re subscribed to through Feed Proxy will produce a post explaining how you can convert their feed over to FreeMyFeed with about
two clicks. I suggest that you mark that post as “read” and then click the link, and the rest of the work is mostly done for you. You’ll see some “read” posts all over again (boo!) and
FreeMyFeed doesn’t convert LJ “moods” and “comment counts” for you automatically, but apart from that it should serve you well.
If you’re not using Feed Proxy or FreeMyFeed yet, or you’ve deleted your Feed Proxy-powered feeds from Google Reader:
Google Reader’s a great way to keep up-to-date with all your friends’ blogs – as well as with news, comics, and more – both in and out of LiveJournal. To subscribe to a LiveJournal blog
in Google Reader or a similar service, friends-only posts and all, go to the FreeMyFeed website and enter into the boxes:
feed url: http://username.livejournal.com/data/rss?auth=digest
(replace username with the LiveJournal username of the person whose LiveJournal you’re subscribing to)
user: your LiveJournal username
pass: your LiveJournal password
Thanks for all of the support you LiveJournalers have given me over the years, both for Feed Proxy and for it’s predecessor, LiveJournal-To-Google Reader. It’s been fun.
