nickbarnes' Journal

11:36am: Cake porn
As promised:

and the cake porn movie:

More cake porn may follow, if any more friends contribute their photos.

4:34pm: Party
House duly warmed, by several splendid neighbours and esteemed friends from hither and thither. Those who didn't come missed a good one.

There are pictures on various cameras, which will appear here in due course, including some cake porn (and, I believe, at least one cake porn movie). I know my public. Three cakes: strawberry sponge, chocolate fudge, lemon.

Now: sleepy.

11:47am: Cakes
Sixteen year-5 girls,

seven hours,

three cakes,

one adult. W000t!

[Edited to add: the recipes are in the comments.]

3:38pm: Isle of Wight
It was luvverly. The sun shone, the waves lapped at the shore, the sandcastles arose and were washed away.

ETA: added link to Flickr set.

12:01pm: Obama's Cairo speech
This man is incredible. We haven't had a president as smart, as eloquent, or as bold during my lifetime.

7:06pm: Spaceships versus horses
Time to enlarge on this comment I made in my last post, as a criticism of Firefly/Serenity:

no effort to rationalize the different technology levels. Spaceships versus horses. This can be done in several different and interesting ways, none of which have, I think, ever been done on TV or in the movies. They're just not trying.

The essential problem here is as follows: any culture which builds and uses interplanetary or interstellar craft - certainly anything as fancy as Serenity - has the knack of generating, controlling, and safely using huge amounts of energy in quite small spaces. Serenity's engines are generating and directing many gigawatts of power. The same team of engineers who designed her engines could also build, say, a hand-gun with self-propelled rounds which could destroy a small town, or a hand-grenade which would dismantle a space station. And yet the crew are using 19th century guns, or their close equivalent, and get into O.K. Corral style gunfights. Why?

I think the problem (which applies to almost all TV/movie SF, and is certainly not limited to Firefly/Serenity) arises because the writers of TV/movie SF don't know or care about scale, technology, science, or anything much beyond plot and character. They don't give a toss. Serenity is just a wagon train to them. My view is that they should be honest about that and write a drama in which all the technology fits together. Like Little House on the Prairie, or the Waltons. Because there are some really interesting questions which come up when different technologies interact, and the writers are completely failing to engage with those questions, probably because the questions involve ideas which are too difficult for their teeny tiny imaginations.

So: if you want to have spaceships versus horses, how do you do it? Off the top of my head, here are a few ways, many of which would make more interesting TV than the usual dodging-the-question.

- spaceships belong to a long-dead alien civilization; people can (with some effort and at great risk) pilot them, but don't have a clue how they work. Attempts to take them apart are always fatal. Pohl did this in his Heechee books, which IMO started well and deteriorated.

- spaceships belong to some sort of extant aliens, who are not interested in our petty squabbles. Or maybe enjoy provoking them. Or maybe are entirely unaware of and indifferent to us. Or maybe we can't tell. Or maybe they prohibit all technology more advanced than a Colt-45, under penalty of planetary space-time edit.

- spaceships belong to themselves. AI. Blake's Seven, but more sassy and less subservient. They know damn well how they work and aren't interested in telling us. Some of them are cool with humans and tag along with our little adventures. Maybe sometimes one of them can be persuaded to deploy her unimaginably powerful gadgets to save the day.

- spaceships and other high technology is tightly policed by the Federation, or by the Church.

More suggestions for this welcome.

12:13pm: Firefly and Serenity
How grumpy am I allowed to be about SF on TV and in the movies, after having stayed up late catching up on the end of Firefly and then watching Serenity?

Pros:
- fun characters;
- snappy script, sometimes very funny and/or insightful;
- some interesting new takes on old stories;
- shiny shiny effects. See the shiny. Lick the shiny;
- (Serenity) lovely lovely lighting and camera work, (maybe a bit too much glow filter);
- hot cast. Where do I sign up to crew this ship? Man.

Cons [ETA: these are, for me, outweighed by the pros, but still]:
- absolutely no sense of scale whatsoever, drives me completely nuts; slightly better in Serenity than Firefly but still. A planet is considerably larger than a village. It's even larger than the drive down to Starbucks. It's likely to have more than a few dozen people living on it, more than one marketplace, more than one port, more than one sleazy bar. Oddly enough, a solar system is very much larger than a planet, and a galaxy is way way bigger than a solar system. To get around one of these places in any reasonable timescale requires you to be going rather a lot quicker than, say, a jet plane. Stupid stupid writers with their crappy liberal-arts degrees and their teeny tiny imaginations.

- also, space does in fact have three dimensions, and is near-as-damnit completely empty. When travelling from A to B, you are considerably more likely to win the interplanetary lottery, even though it's rigged by the Federation, than you are to accidentally bump into something, or somebody. Especially if it's somebody or something you are trying to avoid. These writers failed arithmetic as well as physics.

- no effort to rationalize the different technology levels. Spaceships versus horses. This can be done in several different and interesting ways, none of which have, I think, ever been done on TV or in the movies. They're just not trying.

- some very very stupid plots. Off the top of my head: Someone is smuggling fancy-pants organs from A to B inside his body. At B, his own organs will be put back in. So how exactly are his own organs being transported from A to B? At least the plot of Serenity was better.

In short: if you wanted to make Little House on the Prairie, make goddamn Little House on the Prairie. If you're going to bother making SF, please put in a little bit of effort and make some actual SF. And hire at least one writer who can count past 10 without taking off his or her shoes.

1:50am: The charnel pits below the city on the hill
Read them and weep, and walk away from Omelas.

9:13am: Matthias Rath, villain
Ben Goldacre has published the missing chapter of "Bad Science" on his blog. Read it.

8:15pm: Joined-up government
So the economy is in crisis, the governments of the world need to increase public spending to combat unemployment and stimulate demand. Common sense and received wisdom is to take the opportunity to invest in infrastructure projects, especially ones which have long-term positive effects on national productivity.

Like building and refurbishing further education colleges, for instance. A few years ago the UK government announced a huge capital spending program to repair and replace the decaying buildings of our further education system. All the colleges were told to identify, plan, and schedule ambitious building improvements. They went off and did this, found construction contractors, and in some cases actually demolished their existing buildings to clear sites for the new build. These projects are as "shovel-ready" as they get.

But no, sorry, we've spent seventeen kajillion squid buying off city fat cats, so we can't afford to go ahead with these long-planned and much-heralded refurbishments. Back to the leaky portakabin, chaps. Hope that's OK?

What?!

6:14pm: Normandy
Spent the weekend in Normandy, helping emmabovary and zwell celebrate their joint birthday, along with far_gone and about 20 others. Just what I needed; arrived back in Staines last night reinvigorated - despite 1000km of driving - and ready to really crack on with work and with settling into my new house and new life.

9:13pm: Go lightly
You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

2:49pm: Selling out
Sky have a special offer on their HD+ recorder boxes this month. And my house doesn't have a TV aerial. Hmm.

2:48pm: Watchmen
Were the comics really this violent?

Yes, they probably were. But it's more shocking on the big screen.

10:42am: So AAA stands for Absolutely Appalling Assets?
Some AAA CDOs are apparently only worth 5%.

1:50pm: Moved
I have moved. A mad unpacking weekend with my wonderful sister got all the furniture in place and emptied the first 70 boxes. A diminishing-returns effect has now set in: I'll probably get 20 more boxes done this week, and the remaining dozen might take a month.

The new house turns out to be just fine, a bit smaller than the old one (the craziest part of unpacking was probably planing 5mm off the guest bed frame to make it fit), but perfectly comfortable. I might be here for quite a while.

Back to Manchester for a day or two next week, for the last part of a root canal treatment and to make sure the empty house is clean and tidy.

10:01am: Moving
I am moving, to Staines in Surrey-well-Middlesex-well-Surrey-really, on 20th February. Friends should have received my new postal address already (get in touch if you didn't). Here's a map.

This wasn't my idea. I love living in Manchester: the city, the people, the neighbours, the locality, the convenience for the Peak District, and most of all my fabulous house, perfect for myself and the kids. But my ex has new work, in Egham down in Surrey, and has moved. The last two years of co-parenting have gone tolerably well, and I feel it's very important for the children to continue it. So I'm going to (try to) let out my house, and I'm renting down there, leaving open the possibility of returning in future. Property prices, and overheads - management charges, tax, etc - being what they are, I can only afford an average-sized 3/4-bedroom semi-detached house (particulars here). As I pack up my Manchester home I am wondering how on earth I'm going to fit everything in to that smaller space.

There are clear positive sides: it's much closer to various friends, to my sister, and to Cambridge (90 minutes by car, two hours by train: close enough that commuting both ways in one day is completely plausible). My ex's new job is apparently much better, more rewarding, with better prospects. The schools are similar or better.

It's also very handy for Heathrow airport - ten minutes' drive. Anyone passing through, do stop by.

10:01am: This land is your land
Seeger singing Guthrie, on the Lincoln Memorial, to a black president. I couldn't make this up.

12:34pm: joints
Sprained joints, that is. Fell over dancing last night, sprained my right wrist. Ice pack, support bandage, ibuprofen. Happy New Year!

12:45pm: Xbox 360 game recommendations sought
J (13) is getting an Xbox 360. His money, his choice. He's trying to choose a bundled game: the top three options seem to be "Fable 2", "Gears of War 2" and "Halo 3".

The idea is that one console will live here and the other one at his mother's.

His favourite game at the moment is "Quantum of Solace" on the Wii, especially the online play. But he is also enjoying "Animal Crossing" on the Wii.

He's becoming a fairly typical 13-year-old, but is still very averse to horror/gore. Keen on Heroes, but turns away from the scene where Claire Bennett puts her hand in the waste disposal. Shooting characters in the head is fine. Wading through their brains is less good. Zombies and/or huge drooling insectoid monsters are probably not ideal.

Recommendations? I'd also like recommendations for other XBox 360 games/accessories, especially anything that's going to work well for/with his little sister E (9). Kung Fu Panda? Lego Indy? Banjo Kazooie?

8:42pm: Perks of the job
A mince pie
A satsuma
A carrot for the reindeer
and a wee dram of Laphroaig Quarter Cask.
It's a cold night, and a tough job,
but Someone's got to do it.

8:34pm: Wii Sing It
Wii Sing It utterly rocks. Anyone with kids, buy it. (You have a Wii already, right? If not, go hang around outside a game shop until they beg you to take one away).

This is the most fun I've had with electronics since, well, um.

11:41am: Christmas letter
Barnes family annual letter 2008, here.

10:07am: Half-way
We're half-way from the collapse of Lehman Brothers to the Obama inauguration.

1:24pm: Another place
Cast out of unthinking matter, we cooled.
flesh became, bone became, brain became, heart.
Frozen we stand here, less fooling than fooled.
Imperfect images, expressions, art.

Cast on the beach, on the sea-rippled sand,
left by the water we wait for the tide
coming to cover us, take us in hand,
Claim us by storm or by silent slow glide.

Cast in the sea like a stone, without fuss.
Knowing the future, accepting our fate:
life overwhelms us, for that's what it does.
Eyes on the rising horizon, we wait.