abnib 6.0

Looking Back

On this day in 2003 I wrote a short blog post about a very important event in the lives of two of my friends. This was the end of the week during which Fiona came down to visit us in Aberystwyth: the week where she first met Kit in person. And the week where they became a couple.

In my blog post at the time that it had been a long time since I’d seen Kit so happy. Normally a reasonably controlled and sedate young man, his mood this week could be better described as “bouncing off the walls”. He’d had a hard few months of unemployment, and the contrast in his mood was spectacular. I also noted at the time that I’d never seen Kit so loved-up: the closest I’ve ever seen him to that sickening lovey-dovey phase that many new couples go through was at about that time.

Kit wrote about the event, too, in his usual charming style; almost downplaying the significance of this awesome event by starting the post with a deadpan explanation,“Well its been an interesting few days. Somewhat busy too – which explains at least partially the lack of posts.”

Looking Forward

Kit & Fiona married in October 2004, and the same folks who’d been around when they first got together made a spectacular road trip all the way to the North of Scotland for the wedding. They still live in Scotland, and we see a lot less of them than we would like. They came down to Aberystwyth early this year, though, and introduced us all to geocaching, for which nobody has yet forgiven them.

This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone by.

I shan’t be at BiCon this year, but I thought I’d share with you all something that tickled me today. Last year, at a Naked Lunch, I ended up chatting to several geeks about Interactive Fiction, and I through out a few ideas for a BiCon-themed piece of Interactive Fiction. Little did I know that this idea had sunk in, and cogs had begun to turn…

Rach has just released BiCon 2010: The Game, and it fully embodies everything that’s fabulous about BiCon. It’s also a really good bit of IF, for a first full adventure, and involves some fascinating hacking of the gender pronouns system for Inform. I tip my hat to the author.

(there’s some discussion going on about the game on the BiCon LiveJournal community)

Spoiler alert: this blog post contains significant spoilers about WALL-E, and contains minor spoilers about Salt (although these shouldn’t be spoilers to anybody who’s ever seen an action film before).

The Bechdel Test

I’ve talked to some of you already about my thoughts on the Bechdel Test, which aims to illustrate the under-representation of women in contemporary film. I first became aware of the test when I saw this video by YouTube blogger “feministfrequency”, earlier this year. If you can’t be bothered to watch the video, here’s a summary:

Alison Bechdel is the author of a long-running comic strip, Dykes To Watch Out For. In 1985, one of the characters in the strip states that she only watches a movie if it meets the following requirements:

1. It has at least two women in it, (some later versions of the test require that the women be named characters)
2. Who talk to teach other,
3. About something besides a man.

feministfrequency goes on to show that the problem is endemic by flicking rapidly through a list of films that “fail” the test (she skips over the part of her argument where she demonstrates that this is a problem, presumably because she feels that this is obvious and, besides, YouTube’s consumers will often have too short an attention span to take in a proper argument anyway).

In the snapshot above, we can see her explaining how WALL-E fails the test.

Whoah, hang on a minute. WALL-E? Are we sure?

The Problem with The Bechdel Test

Let’s have a look at WALL-E. Here’s a summary of the plot, in case you’ve been in a coma for the last few years and the first thing you chose to do when you came around was to read my blog:

• Runaway consumerism and lack of ecological foresight results in Earth being too polluted to live on.
• The humans all evacuate to space, leaving behind an army of trash compactor robots, “Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth class”.
• After centuries, only one of these survives, and has achieved sentience.
• A robotic probe sent down by the humans, an “Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator” (EVE) probe and the surviving WALL-E unit form an emotional bond.
• The EVE is called back to the mothership with evidence that Earth is becoming livable again. The WALL-E comes aboard as a stowaway.
• Meanwhile, on the spaceship, the human captain (male) is in conflict with the ship’s computer, which hides evidence of Earth’s livability in order to keep the lazy, dis-focused space-dwelling humans under its authority.
• Through a series of scrapes and adventures, the WALL-E unit and the EVE manage to survive the ship’s computer’s attempt to kill them and present the evidence that Earth is becoming habitable to the humans, who land the ship.
• Finally, in a heartbreaking moment, the WALL-E appears to have been reset to its factory configuration, losing its intelligence and self-awareness, until an electrical spark passed during a “kiss” from the EVE causes the WALL-E to jump-start back into being its usual, quirky, self.

So there’s WALL-E. Does it pass the Bechdel Test? No. Well, I guess I’m wrong, then.

But the problem is: I only feel that a failure to the Bechdel Test is in any way significant if the film would pass its male-centric analog. After all, we can all say that the world is unfair because we haven’t personally passed the “Lottery Jackpot Test” – winning millions of pounds – but if only a handful of people ever do pass that test, then it’s not fair to say that I personally am unlucky: I’m pretty much just as unlucky as everybody else.

I propose a male-centric analog to the Bechdel Test. To pass this test, a film must have at least two male characters (ideally named), who talk to one another about something other than a woman. It may seem like I’m being facetious – after all, virtually all movies will pass this test – but I don’t feel that it’s appropriate to comment on the fact that a movie fails the Bechdel Test unless it also passes the male analog, for the same reason that I don’t feel it’s fair to use the fact that any given person has failed the “Lottery Jackpot Test” as evidence of anything in particular either.

So, here’s my Revised Bechdel Test. To pass this test, a movie must:

1. It has at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to teach other,
3. About something besides a man.
4. AND it can not fail the test unless it has at least two men in it who talk to one another about something besides a woman.

So does WALL-E fail the Revised Bechdel Test (i.e. fails the Bechdel Test, but passes the male analog): I don’t think it does, but it depends, perhaps, on how you choose to define gender. Many audience members will choose to identify the protagonist WALL-E unit as male, for example, despite the fact that it is clearly a robot manufactured in a way that makes gender irrelevant. They choose to do this because of their conditioning:

• Lead characters in films are frequently male, so – in the absence of any evidence to the contrary – an audience will associate masculinity to a genderless character presented to them.
• WALL-E units are dirty, engaged in manual labour, and with “rugged” square corners; these are characteristics that audiences will readily assume to be masculine traits because of the stereotypes within our society.
• The WALL-E unit engages in a romantic relationship with a robot that – for similar stereotype-based reasons – the audience will often designate as being female. Our culture of heteronormativity means that when we discover that a character of a suspected gender forms a romantic relationship, that the subject of that relationship must be of the opposite gender.

Here are the options, then:

• We assume that all robots in the film are genderless. If this is the case, the film fails the Bechdel Test, but passes my Revised Bechdel Test. Note that the same would be true of March Of The Penguins (this also fails the Bechdel Test, but I doubt that any feminist could rightly claim that women are under-represented in it).
• We assume that all the robots in the film are of the same gender that their voice actor (please note that I don’t feel that this is a fair way to assign gender to characters: at least six of the recurring male characters in The Simpsons are voiced by voice actress Nancy Cartwright), with the exception of the ship’s computer, which – voiced by a synthetic algorithm called MacInTalk – remains genderless. In this case, the film still fails the Bechdel Test, and still passes my Revised Bechdel Test.
• We assign arbitrary genders to the robots in order to make our argument fit. Only in this case can we pass the Bechdel Test or can we fail my Revised Bechdel Test.

The Revised Bechdel Test I propose solves the greatest fundamental problem with the Bechdel Test: that it discriminates unfairly against films where gender is not an issue. In most films involving nonhuman characters, the Bechdel test doesn’t provide sufficient granularity to tell the difference between “women being underrepresented” and “gender being irrelevant to the story”. Note that “nonhuman characters” is still an ambiguous term, for there exist characters with sufficient anthropomorphism that they can be treated as human analogies, like the stars of the original Toy Story, which fails both the Bechdel Test and my revised test, and rightly so.

The Problem with The Revised Bechdel Test

I’m not claiming to have fixed the Bechdel Test completely, though, as a measure of the representation of women in films. Last night, I watched Salt.

I first became aware of this new film when I saw a trailer for it at the cinema when watching Inception (doesn’t pass either the Bechdel Test nor my Revised Bechdel Test, although this isn’t a measure of how good a film is, and Inception is fantastic). Salt is a very typical modern action flick in many ways. Here are some of the common tropes of a modern action film, that Salt also has:

• The lead character is a secret agent, spy, assassin, detective, mercenary, or similar “cool” profession that entitles them to carry a gun.
• The lead character exhibits an almost-superhuman ability to withstand pain and torture, fight with a variety of weapons or barehand, learn multiple languages, pick locks, hack computers, and so on.
• The organisation for which the lead character primarily works is of dubious trustworthiness.
• The lead character is betrayed by somebody once trusted to them, and is on at least one occasion described as “rogue”.
• A major motivation of the lead character is the liberation of their primary love interest.
• The whole movie is full of badass fight scenes and explosions.

You get it? I could be describing almost any James Bond film, the Mission: Impossible series, Minority Report, Robocop, the Bourne film series; even The A-Team! But in this case, I’m describing Salt. And there’s one particular thing that Salt does that none of these other films did: the lead character is a woman.

From a point of gender equality, this film does a really, really good job. It would be perfectly possible to change the gender of any of the major characters and still have movie which remained perfectly intact. The lead character’s femininity is part of the plot, certainly, but not in a way that makes mockery of it or belittles her for her gender. Not once does the lead female require the lead male to come and “rescue” her, or she is disadvantaged by her gender. Even the scene in which she disguises herself as a man is done not because a man would have been required but because it was the most effective disguise that she could have used, at the time: one that completely changed her appearance.

But guess what: this fantastic (and undeniably-feminist) film… doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. It doesn’t even pass my Revised Test! Why? Because despite the fact that it represents women equally and counters the culture of male leads to action films (without making a point of doing so – gender is not a factor)… it doesn’t have a second named female character for the lead female to talk to (about something other than a man). Men talk together during the film about something other than a woman (although not much – a lot of their discussion is about the lead female, but they do on occasion talk about other things during the set-up), but it’s somehow a failure in the Bechdel Test simply because the film spends most of the time, without dialogue, watching the protagonist be a awesome gun-toting badass.

The Bechdel Test is too coarse. My Revised Bechdel Test improves its biggest failure, but still fails to detect films like Salt as being a good representation of women in movies. And if anybody’s got any suggestions about how we could refine the test any further, I’d love to hear them.

I’ve recently reformatted and reinstalled, and that means that – briefly – I ended up seeing advertisements on the Internet again, until I had my ad-blocker reinstalled. And so I came to see an advertisement that promised to let me see “amateur lesbians”.

Now you and I both know perfectly well what they mean, but I’ve always been amused by the term. It somehow carries the implication that there are “professional lesbians”, who aren’t just hobbyists or weekend-homosexuals. I get the image of a conversation along these lines:

A: “So, what do you do for a living?”

B: “Oh, I’m a lesbian.”

If there is such a thing as a professional lesbian, I wonder if it’s one of those careers that is protected from gender discrimination laws, so that it’s allowed to disallow men from applying. And I wonder if you can get a vocational qualification in the field: you know, a BTEC in Lesbianism or something. I also wonder if there are any perks to the job – I mean apart from the obvious: do you get a company car? Do you have to pay for your own uniform?

I wonder, sometimes, if I wonder about things a little too much.

The phone rings. It’s clear to me by the sound it makes and by the image on it’s display that this is a business call.

“Good morning, SmartData; Dan speaking,” I say.

The caller identifies themselves, and asks to speak to Alex, another SmartData employee. I look to my right to see if Alex available (presumably if he was, he’d have answered the call before it had been forwarded to me). This is possible because of the two-way webcam feed on the monitor beside me.

“I’m afraid Alex isn’t in yet,” I begin, bringing up my co-worker’s schedule on the screen in front of me, to determine what he’s up to, “He’ll be in at about 10:30 this morning. Can I get him to call you back?”

Not for a second did it occur to the caller that I wasn’t sat right there in the office, looking over at Alex’s chair and a physical calendar. Of course, I’m actually hundreds of miles away, in my study in Oxford. Most of our clients – even those whom I deal with directly – don’t know that I’m no longer based out of SmartData’s marina-side offices. Why would they need to? Just about everything I can do from the office I can do from my own home. Aside from sorting the mail on a morning and taking part in the occasional fire drill, everything I’d regularly do from Aberystwyth I can do from here.

Back when I was young, I remember reading a book once which talked about advances in technology and had wonderful pictures of what life would be like in the future. This wasn’t a dreamland of silver jumpsuits and jetpacks; everything they talked about in this book was rooted in the trends that we were already beginning to see. Published in the early 80s, it predicted a microcomputer in every home and portable communicators that everybody would have that could be used to send messages or talk to anybody else, all before the 21st century. Give or take, that’s all come to pass. I forget what the title of the book was, but I remember enjoying it as a child because it seemed so believable, so real. I guess it inspired a hopeful futurism in me.

But it also made another prediction: that with this rise in telecommunications technologies and modern microcomputers (remember when we still routinely called them that?), we’d see a greap leap in the scope for teleworking: office workers no longer going to a place of work, but remotely “dialling in” to a server farm in a distant telecentre. Later, it predicted, with advances in robotics, specialist workers like surgeons would be able to operate remotely too: eventually, through mechanisation of factories, even manual labourers would begun to be replaced by work-at-home operators sat behind dumb terminals.

To play on a clich: where’s my damn flying car?

By now, I thought that about a quarter of us would be working from home full-time or most of the time, with many more – especially in my field, where technology comes naturally – working from home occasionally. Instead, what have we got? Somewhere in the region of one in fifty, and that includes the idiots who’ve fallen for the “Make working from home” scams that do the rounds every once in a while and haven’t yet realised that they’re not going to make any , let alone .

At first, I thought that this was due to all of the traditionally-cited reasons: companies that don’t trust their employees, managers who can’t think about results-based assessment rather than presence-based assessment, old-school thinking, and not wanting to be accused of favouritism by allowing some parts of their work force to telework while others can’t. In some parts of the world, and some fields, we’ve actually seen a decrease in teleworking over recent years: what’s all that about?

I’m sure that the concerns listed above are still critical factors for many companies, but I’ve realised that there could be another, more-recent fear that’s now preventing the uptake of teleworking in many companies. That fear is one that affects everybody – both the teleworkers and their comrades in the offices, and it’s something that more and more managers are becoming aware of: the fear of outsourcing.

After all, if a company’s employees can do their work from home, then they can do it from anywhere. With a little extra work on technical infrastructure and a liberal attitude to meetings, the managers can work from anywhere, too. So why stop at working from home? Once you’ve demonstrated that your area of work can be done without coming in to the office, then you’re half-way to demonstrating that it can be done from Mumbai or Chennai, for a fraction of the price… and that’s something that’s a growing fear for many kinds of technical workers in the Western world.

Our offices are a security blanket: we’re clinging on to them because we like to pretend that they’ll protect us; that they’re something special and magical that we can offer our clients that the “New World” call centres and software houses in India and China can’t offer them. I’m not sure that a security blanket that allows us to say “we have a local presence” will mean as much in ten years time as it does today.

In the meantime, I’m still enjoying working from home. It’s a little lonely, sometimes – on days when JTA isn’t around, which are going to become more common when he starts his new job – but the instant messenger and Internet telephony tools we use make it feel a little like I’m actually in the office, and that’s a pretty good trade-off in exchange for being able to turn up at work in my underwear, if I like.

Coming to an Arkham Horror game near you… never.

Click for large-o-vision. You know, I think that having this guy on the team might just make the game winnable. Maybe.

Just when I think that I’ve gotten the hang of humans, they do something even stranger than ever before.

There’s a new fragrance for men that’s about to be hitting perfume counters around Europe: Vulva Original [NSFW]. Just… click the link, and watch the video that appears. Your first thought will almost certainly be: “They’re selling a perfume… that smells like sweaty vagina?”

Continue to explore into the site and you’ll see that this isexactly what this product is.

I agree with Alex Day: unlike every other fragrance ever marketed at men, this perfumeisn’t about trying to attract women (well duh: I’m pretty sure that walking around smelling like a vagoo will only attract a particular kind of woman, and it’s not the kind that’ll be interested in you as a man)… this product can only be targeted at men who just want to be able to sniff the back of their hand in a crowded elevator and pretend that they’re nose-deep in pussy.

That’s probably a fetish in itself.

The Old

Back in 2006, I ordered a new mouse for my computer. Previously, I’d been using a series of mid-to-high-end five-button optical mice, like Microsoft’s IntelliMouse series: when you’re doing a lot of coding, websurfing, and video gaming, “extra” buttons make a big difference, and the IntelliMouse is fast and responsive and usable in either hand: a perfectly good all-rounder mouse. But when I destroyed my last mouse with a littletoo much overenthusiasm in an Unreal Tournament 2004 deathmatch, I thought it might be time to look for something a little… sturdier.

Relatively new to the European market at that time was Logitech’s new MX1000: the world’s first generally-available laser mouse: instead of using a little red LED, these mice use an invisible laser to track movements, which apparently makes them far more sensitive and accurate on a wider range of surfaces. As an ultra high-end premium mouse, the MX1000 also came with a wheel that was not only clickable but “rockable” for sideways scrolling and five other buttons (aside from the wheel and the usual three), but it was wireless and used it’s own special “cradle” to recharge. I bought one, and for years I’ve described it as the best mouse I’ve ever owned.

This mouse was so good, in fact, that I’d always planned that when it finally kicked the bucket, I’d replace it withanother one exactly the same. When I said that this was the best mouse I’d ever owned, I wasn’t kidding. It fit my palm in a way that I’d never experienced before (I have pretty big hands, and I find that those piddly little mice that are so popular to be just useless for me, leaving me with my wrist dragging around on the desk like a beaver’s tail). I genuinely like the quirky bonus selling points of this mouse, like its unusual “thumb rest” and its wonderful little LED gauge that tells you when it needs recharging.

My MX1000 is still going strong, despite years of heavy (ab)use. I use my mouse for hours a day, every day, and it needs to not only feel great but be rugged and durable, too. But the time comes in the life of every mouse when it’s time to be retired to less-intensive duties. Here’s the underside of my MX1000 today:

See how scuffed and worn it is from the hundreds of miles it’s travelled back and forth across my desk? Even the non-slip teflon pads are beginning to wear down! And the two little copper contacts on the right, there, are tarnished – sometimes it takes a couple of attempts, these days, to get the pins to make a connection when dropping it into the charging cradle. It’s time that this little mouse was put out to pasture.

But my plan – my plan to replace it with another one just the same – can’t come to pass: Logitech no longer manufacture the fabulous MX1000! Oh noes! I know it’s still possible to buy old stock or unopened second-hand ones on eBay, but this feels to me more like the universe’s way of telling me that it’s time to look for something new.

The New

So I’ve gotten myself the successor to the MX1000: a Logitech Performance MX.

And here are my observations after using it for a few days:

In short, the verdict is that the Performance MX is a worthwhile successor to the MX1000, and a great replacement when the time comes. And if you’re still using an LED or even a wired mouse (trust me, when you go wireless and lose the “tug” of the cable pulling your mouse back, you never want to go back), perhaps now is the time to upgrade.

Looking Back

On this day in 2006 I’d just come to the end of a long weekend of coding and socialising. The code project was, of course, Three Rings, and Bryn and Gareth were helping out with the big push to make the initial release Three Rings 2 a success.

Three Rings is, of course, a project to streamline the administration of helpline services (like Samaritans) by making it easier for them to manage their rota and volunteer resources. I kicked the project off back in 2002 (based on an idea that Kit and I had discussed as early as 2000), initially only for Aberystwyth Nightline – with whom I was then a volunteer – but it quickly spread and within a few years had become the de facto system for Nightlines everywhere. Later, my work with expanding and enhancing Three Rings comprised a part of my University dissertation.

Among the problems with that early version of Three Rings, though, was that it had never been designed to scale, and so eventually the time came to throw it out and develop a new one, from scratch, in the then up-and-coming Ruby on Rails framework. Gareth was a huge help in the early development, and Bryn got burdened with the task of coming up with a means to convert the data between the old system and the new system, migrating our users across: a horrendous task, because the two systems used completely incompatible data storage mechanisms, and the old system was riddled with quirks and workarounds. This weekend, back in 2006, was the cumulation of that work: Bryn hacking away on hisProject: Rosetta system, a stack of Perl programs to translate the data… while Gareth and I made progress on redeveloping features for the new system.

It wasn’t all work, though: we also all took a trip up to nearby Ynyslas, a little way North of Aberystwyth, for a barbeque on the sweeping sand dunes there. As my blog post for that weekend reveals, this involved a fantastic prank in which Claire and I “hid” Jimmy by burying him under the sand, covering his face with an upturned cardboard box, and then frightening the shit out of Gareth when he – having been told that Jimmy hadn’t come – lifted the box to find Jimmy’s disembodied head staring back at him.

Looking Forward

Since that day, Three Rings has continued to grow and expand – it’s now used by a number of charities nationwide, and exists as a company in it’s own right. Gareth and Bryn are no longer directly involved with the project, but parts of their code live on in the system, ticking away in the background.

Ruth now plays a major part in the development of the system, and it actually formed part of her dissertation, too, meaning that my dissertation (which Bryn still has, after he borrowed it to help him writeRosetta) was actually cited as a reference in another document: something which pleased meinordinately.

Claire and Jimmy got together a year and a bit ago, and they’re now living together, still in Aberystwyth (not that you’d know from reading either of their blogs, slackers that they are).

And we haven’t had a barbeque yet since moving to Earth, but weather-permitting, the plan is to do so this week!

This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone by.

I’ve recently undergone an ordeal with Easily, with whom a number of my domain names are registered, that involved a process so painful and convoluted that I couldn’t help but share it with you. All I wanted to do was to change the WHOIS data on some of my domains, because they were horribly out of date. Here’s the process that seems to be standard at Easily:

1. I log in to the Easily web site to change my WHOIS information. If this were any of the other domain name registrars I deal with, this would be the only step in the process, but Easily don’t seem to think that their customers want this functionality, and so they don’t provide it.
2. I use the contact form to send requests that they change the WHOIS information, providing all of the information necessary to facilitate the change.
3. Easily e-mail me, informing me that requests have to be made by fax or postal mail. Muttering under my breath about this being a little like the dark ages, I send them a letter spelling out my request. The letter also includes three characters from my password, which apparently is all it takes to impress upon them that I am who I claim to be.
4. Easily e-mail me, thanking me for my fax (it was a letter), and informing me that a change of ownership of a domain requires that a 15 fee is paid. I reply to point out that no change of ownership has occurred; although my name and my address have changed, and I can supply proof of both if required.
5. Proof of these things isn’t required: my word as a gentleman is good enough, it seems. Easily change the WHOIS information, but mis-spell the name of my street.
6. I e-mail Easily to inform them of their mistake. Several days later, they e-mail me back to say that they’ve corrected the typo, along with a terse apology.
7. It turns out that they’ve corrected the typo, but somehow managed to introduce an even more significant one: now the house number is incorrect. I double-check my letter and all of my e-mails so far to ensure that this mistake couldn’t possibly be my fault, and it’s not. I e-mail Easily back and request that they have another go at typing my address correctly).
8. A week passes. With no response, I wonder if I shall have to write another letter. Don’t forget that this is an Internet-based company selling Internet services. I send another e-mail, asking whether the previous e-mail is going to be handled any time soon.
9. Easily reply, with no apology this time, stating that the typo has been corrected. I check the WHOIS records: it turns out that they’ve only corrected their (second) typo on one of my domain names, and not on all of them. I write back to ask when they’re planning to correct the others, and list them.

We’re coming up on one month since this ordeal started. For reference, when I used GoDaddy to do the same operation, I had it done within five minutes, and I could do it all online.

Easily have really, really gone down in my estimation.

My dad… is in Aberystwyth. And I’m not. That’s a little unusual.

He’s mid-way through a cycle tour of Wales, and sat in Wetherspoons to avoid the rain. If you happen to see him, cheer him on for me.

Earlier this week, Ruth and JTA were away, and evidently Ruth thought that I wouldn’t be able to look after myself (usually she’d just leave out large bowls of kibble and water), because on Tuesday lunchtime I heard a knock at the door. When I answered, a deliveryman gave me a large parcel clearly labelled to say that I should be near a freezer before I open it.

Once I’d gotten past the “WTF?” of this unexpected delivery, I opened the box, and – within the insulated polystyrene box within, found a “heat and eat” gourmet meal from Banquet In A Box.

Each item was clearly labelled with it’s cooking instructions (or defrosting instructions, in the case of the cake). The meal it eventually produced was surprisingly good, although everything took about 25% longer to heat than was estimated on the packaging.

I skim over all of that – cool though it was – because the real treat was that the box was chock full of slabs of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide). It being years since I’d last had the chance to play with dry ice, I immediately started messing about with it: making fog, bubbles, a small and unsuccessful bomb (I didn’t really have a suitable container and had to improvise), and noise… and also keeping my drinks cool and awesome-looking for the rest of the day. If you can’t see my video, below, you can view it on YouTube.

As if we hadn’t been busy enough the weekend before last and the one before that, there’s more that I’m only just getting around to blogging! It was only when I thought about writing this up that I realised how much I’d neglected to write about already (and had promised people would be “coming soon”). So, without further ado; here’s what Ruth, JTA and I got up tolast weekend.

Aside from our two attempts to conquer the Dunwich Horror (both attempts were failures, although the second was ever so close, ending with Ruth’s character in a one-on-one deathmatch with a Great Old One), our major event was a trip down to London on Saturday. After all, since the move to Earth, London feels like it’s pretty-much on our doorstep: so there’s no excuse not to take in a bit of culture once in a while in the heart of the capital. Of course, when we sayculture…

Ye Old Cock Tavern

We started out in Ye Old Cock Tavern on Fleet Street, because – hey – early afternoon is a perfectly good time to start drinking on a weekend. They did some pretty good chips, too, which we picked at as we drank our pints and watched a crowd gather for a wedding at the church up the road, nestled between the old newspaper buildings.

Volupt

Next up was Volupt, a burlesque club with a bi-monthly lunchtimeAfternoon Tease. We started with a few fabulously-mixed and ludicrously ornate cocktails: only the first of many. The bar staff are simply entertaining to watch

Aside from the ongoing stream of cocktails (I particularly enjoyed the Porn Star Martini – which I’m seen drinking in the picture above – I don’t even remember what was in it, except that it came with a “shot” of champagne to drink before starting it), Afternoon Tease consisted of:

• Drinking champagne and eating finger sandwiches
• A guy dressed as Elvis, spinning hula hoops in ways that I didn’t think possible, to a medley of Elvis hits.
• An extraordinarily erotic, genuinely tantalising peacock dance from a young lady going by Vicky Butterfly. She later returned for a second, different performance; not quite so arousing but equally mesmerising. That’s her in the picture, above.
• Volupt’s special take on traditional tableaux vivants -gateaux vivants: a wonderfully mischievous woman posing behind little more than suspenders and a cake (with a fabulous parody of M&S food adverts gone by).
• Scones and tea
• A Miss. Rose Thorne, performing a tribute to Doris Day; and I can honestly say that I’ve never before seen a pair of gloves removed with such… deliberate choreography. Very impressive.

By the time we staggered out into the afternoon sun, we were very entertained and quite spiffingly drunk. Volupt gains my recommendation, although I shall have to check the state of my bank account before trifling with their cocktail bar again!

The Golden Hinde

Next up, we made our way over the Thames to visit the replica of the Golden Hinde, the ship in which Sir Francis Drake completed his famous circumnavigation of the globe.

Yeah, it’s just a big boat (and not even that big). Ruth was pleased, though, but she is almost a big a fan of boats as she is for optimised road junctions. Of course, not to break the theme, we stopped for a drink in each of the two nearest bars to the vessel, as well as a snack to give us the energy for the next leg of our adventure, when we whipped out our Oyster cards and zipped down to Hammersmith for…

Penn & Teller

Yes,the Penn & Teller, during their 4-day-only visit to the UK (the first in 15 years), doing their usual mixture of magic and comedy in their in-your-face style, in a spectacular London show. If you’ve gotten this far down the post before you realised how awesome my weekend was, well, what took you so long?

I couldn’t even pick out my favourite part of the show. Perhaps it was one of these:

• Teller “drowning” at the end of the first act as part of a card trick (yes, really!) gone wrong.
• A whole series of fabulous tricks done with evidently-confused members of the audience (especially the one with the woman they had blindfolded and throwing knives towards Penn, and narrowly missing – it was all done with electromagnets, see?).
• Stunning examples of cold-reading done using jokes randomly selected from joke books, with a predictive “hot reading” twist at the end.
• The thought-provoking ending, in which Penn (between bouts of fire-eating) asks the audience to think not about how they do what they do, but why, along with some clues related to his experiences as an audience member of various shows.

Sundeep!

By remarkable coincidence, Sundeep and her partner, Ashley, were also at the Apollo to see Penn & Teller! Wandering back from the bar during the intermission we just bumped into her. As she doesn’t blog these days, for the benefit of those who might be wondering: she’s doing well, still on maternity leave and looking after Vanessa, her daughter (who’s looking quite cute in many of the billion or so pictures she carries around with her on her phone), and both are happy and healthy. Ashley – whom we hadn’t met before now – seems nice: he has a certain rugged-but-cute French look and he works for a very worthwhile charity, both of which give him good points in my estimation.

Mexican Tapas

After leaving the show, we were peckish again, so we went around the corner to a cramped but wonderful-smelling Mexican restaurant for a round of Mexican-style tapas, which was delicious. By this point, we were just about ready to settle into a bus for the long but comfortable journey home, when…

Penn & Teller, Again

…wandering back, we spotted a small crowd of people near the Apollo. Wandering over, we discovered that Penn & Teller themselves were hanging out with folks outside the theatre, signing things and answering awkward questions.
Needless to say, we hung around for a few minutes and got the chance to meet the magicians themselves.

Ruth – perhaps as evidenced by her expression in the photo, above – did her usual thing when in the company of a celebrity (as those of you who knew how she behaved around Lloyd Kaufman will know) of becoming a giggling little girl. She also managed to make a fool of herself by mumbling a question about the stage lighting to Teller, to which he didn’t have an answer (not a result of his on-stage muteness, though: he’s certainly happy to talk in person).

Meeting some of the most fabulous (and eccentric) magicians in the world is perhaps the best way to end a night out in London. But there was one more stop on our journey as we worked our way back to a Oxford Tube stop (avoiding the Circle Line, which wasn’t running):

White City

Yeah; perhaps not actually the highlight of the night, but as we were passing, Ruth insisted that we should get one more photo – for Adam‘s sake:

In case your eyes aren’t up to it, or if you’re simply unable to recognise this iconic London landmark, that’s the White City BBC Television Centre in the photo.

We got back to Oxford a full 15 hours after we’d first left: considerably more exhausted, more drunk, and merrily surfing the buzz of all the fabulous things we’d gotten up to over the course of the day. Sunday became very much a day of rest (and recovery) – we’re not as young as we used to be, as I discovered to my horror during my last party-sized jaunt into the capital. Exhaustion aside, however, this was a fantastic day out.

How’ve your weekends been? Not as legendary as mine, I’m sure.

Following up on my post about the weekend before the weekend before last – here’s what I got up to the weekend before last (i.e. the weekend after that). You can see why I’m confused:

Ruth’s Family Picnic

The weekend before last, JTA and I joined Ruth and her family at their “annual family picnic”. This family reunion really shows quite how numerous Ruth’s relatives are, and I’m pretty sure that even she had to stretch her memory to recall everybody’s names as she introduced me (and, sometimes, JTA) to them all.

This year, they’d held the picnic in a wonderful National Trust-managed country estate called Cliveden. If it weren’t for the roasting temperatures, it could have been better still, but the sheer heat made it exhausting just to be sitting down, never mind walking around and climbing trees. Nonetheless, we got the chance for a good explore of the grounds, found the Secret Garden (their mistake was putting signs to it), and clambered around on the remains on the Canning Oak, a tree that lived hundreds of years and was a favourite spot for former Prime Minister George Canning… but which had been felled in 2004 after its roots threatened the structure of the slope on which it stood.

Apart from the ludicrous temperatures – suffered mostly during the journey in the sauna that is the car – it was a fun little trip. There was only one moment of awkwardness at the revelation thatboth of the men Ruth had brought with her were her partners. It’s often a difficult thing to bring up with more-distant relations, especially when you’re not sure who knows what already, and you don’t want to hide anything from anyone but there are few social norms abouthow you’re supposed to say, “So, you know what the deal is with us three, right?”

One response, though, was particularly fantastic, and so I thought I’d publish it here: upon being introduced to JTA and I as “her fianc, and her other partner,” a particular relation of Ruth’s replied “Lucky you!” That’s a nice, positive response that I can get behind.

The weekend before the weekend before last, Ruth, JTA and I went up to Preston, for:

My Sister’s Birthday

My sister, Sarah, turned 21 at the start of this month, and we – accompanied by her friends and family – went out to a new Punjabi restaurant called East Z East. The food was fantastic (although in hindsight we probably should have adaptedthe formula as far as naan bread is concerned, at least – each naan bread was about three feet long!), but the restaurant was a little full! Perhaps be better on a midweek night.

And…

Hoghton Tower

As has become traditional (see blog entries for 2009, 2005, 2003), the next stop was Hoghton Tower for their annual concert and fireworks display. As usual, this event began with the erection of a gazebo in which to have our picnic.

The instructions for the gazebo clearly stated that it was to be constructed by two adults, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to help Ruth and JTA building it, except in a supervisory capacity. I helpfully assembled the first deckchair and sat in it, drinking a beer and overseeing the process.

My management skills paid off, and soon we had a gazebo, tables, and a (huge) picnic.

Some of my sister Becky‘s friends had brought face paints and brushes with them, so we formed a line of people, each painting the face of the next. My mum painted mine: she asked what I wanted, so I told her that I wanted a narwhal, breaching the water and leaping for the sky. I think she did a pretty good job:

Then came my turn. I was to paint Ruth, but she didn’t know what she wanted. The suggestion came that I should paint a rubber duck on her forehead, and so long as you don’t mind ducks that look like they’re from canary heritage:

The concert itself was even better than normal – the arsenal of fireworks was even huger than we were used to, and was supplemented by the addition of a laser show, too! I was slightly disappointed that God Save The Queen wasn’t performed (not for any patriotic reason, I’m sure you understand – I’m justused to them playing it!). Still, a great night, and a fabulous excuse for me to re-educate Ruth in how to count to three (in order to waltz, you see: it’s incredibly difficult to dance when one participant is counting to three and the other is counting to two).

The Metro have a fabulous article about this board game:

Yes, it’s a game about drilling for oil using offshore digs. With a remarkable picture on the front of a rig in distinctly stormy seas. And look – there’s BP’s logo on it: yes, Offshore Oil Strike got their official endorsement when it was released in the 1970s, but it’s coming back to haunt them now as board game collectors dig out their old copies and give it one last go (apparently it never sold very well, not least because it’s a dull and uninspiring game).

I was particularly amused by the card which reads “Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1 million.” – one of the worst cards to draw as a player. A whole million dollars?

That diversion aside, there’s more fun and games here on Earth:

• The other night, we got the chance to try Fat Boyz Pizza, our second-nearest local pizza place (after the Pizza Hut Express just around the corner). I was reasonably impressed: good-sized pizza at a reasonable price, very tasty, and onlyslightly too greasy (we’re talking a little bit too much grease, not Hollywood Pizza – from whom we ordered for many, many years back in Aberystwyth – here).
• We have a green woodpecker who visits our garden. I’ve never seen a woodpecker in an urban environment before, but this one certainly seems keen. We speculate that his appearance right after we overturned a couple of ants’ nests while digging the garden is not a coincidence, though, but rather a tasty treat.
• We’ve started planting! Only herbs and flowers, so far – and we’re probably too late in the year to kick off many vegetables – but it’s a start. Our garden still has a long way to go.

~$ sudo gem install kitty
Successfully installed kitty-0.0.2
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for kitty-0.0.2...
Installing RDoc documentation for kitty-0.0.2...

~$ kitty
     ____
    (.   \
      \  |
       \ |___(\--/)
     __/    (  . . )
    "'._.    '-.O.'
         '-.  \ "|\
            '.,,/'.,,

~$ kitty
         /\_/\
    /\  / o o \
   //\\ \~(*)~/
   `  \/   ^ /
      | \|| ||
      \ '|| ||
       \)()-())

Kitty. That is all.

After moving to Earth, one of the things I thought might be fun was to use the excuse of being in a new place to try out some new things. A quick Google around the area uncovered OxDisc, the local Disc Golf society, who meet once or twice a week in a park less than half an hour’s walk from my house. Given that all I knew about disc golf I learned from the summary at the top of the Wikipedia page for the sport, I knew… well, basically nothing except that it was like golf, only with a frisbee and target rather than a ball and cup.

Accompanied by Ruth and JTA, who I’d somehow persuaded to join me, I set out to try to meet some strangers in a park. Having only spoken to anybody associated with the group online (all of whom subsequently turned out to be on holiday or otherwise unavailable), all we knew was vauguely where we were headed and that we were looking for a guy called George: sure, no problem – how hard can that be?

Luckily, it turned out to be reasonably easy to find our contact: once we were in the vicinity, all we had to do was look for the guy carrying a bag full of frisbees. Here came my first surprise: players don’t use just one disc. Three is pretty much a minimum – a long-range, high-speed “driver”, an easier to control but still pretty fast “approach disc” (or “mid-range”), and a slow “putter”. Only the putter looked like any kind of frisbee I’d ever thrown before: the others looked more like a rubber discus that had been given a lip to make it throwable in the same way as a frisbee is. George lent us each a set of three discs, explaining some of the differences between them. Professional players can be found carrying a variety of different drivers with different weights (and weight distributions) to make them tend towards understability or overstability or be more or less suitable for hyzer, anhyzer, forehand, elevator, and other varieties of throw. Yes, they have their own lingo: and I thought that this would be like throwing a frisbee around a park.

We teed off on the first hole of one of the courses that the group sometimes take around the park: markers like a protruding tree root or a gap between a path and a tree marked the tees, and the targets were all particular trees. Some of the courses were set up such that it was actually impossible to see the target from the tee as a result of the intervening trees, and so – without a profound knowledge of the course nor the sport – I had to fall back on a strategy of “throwing it sort-of in the right direction” as best I could and hoping.

Needless to say, my very first throw was a disaster. Unfamiliar with the unusual weight balance of the faster discs (some of which were “overbalanced”; that is, if you throw backhand using your right arm, as most people normally throw a frisbee, it will tend towards the left given an even spin and a level takeoff… are you following all of this? I certainly wasn’t), I was doomed to balls up my first throw… it rocketed forwards and then suddenly flew off to the left, diving deep into a forest of waist-high nettles. About 30 seconds later, I began to really regret choosing to wear shorts for this particular adventure, as my lower legs were rapidly becoming a mass of nettle stings.

Some of the other folks were obviously far, far more accomplished than any of us. Several times, we saw frisbees thrown end-on, like darts, flicked into the air where somehow they’d magically stabilise at exactly the right height to clear a particular obstacle. On a few ocassions, the other players would fing their discs in physics-bending ways, turning right to avoid an obstacle then slowing down and turning left to clear the other side of it. Once, I even got to watch a guy deliberately throw his frisbee upside-down in order to “skim” it under a bush and right up to the target tree!

I was pleased with myself that by the end, I could generally throw the mid-range approach disc in a vaugely straight line, some of the time, and that once, I managed to pull off a hook shot up and over (and around) an inconveniently-placed copse, landing the frisbee almost exactly where I wanted it. But just the once, mind.

JTA seemed to pick up the sport pretty quickly, and on the long straight sections easily outperformed me (although I think I had more accurate “putting” ability). Ruth had somewhat more difficulty: the difficulties with her wrists left her unable to “snap” the disc out of her hand, which resulted in far slower throws. Nonetheless, we all had a good time and we’re talking about going along again… right as soon as we’ve had the chance to get a bit of practice in, so we don’t look like quite such wallies!

At the end of the evening, we were surprisingly more well-exercised than we expected (considering that it’s a sport of 5% throwing, 95% walking), and enjoyed the opportunity to calorie-up on ale and crisps at a nearby pub before making the trek home in the sticky warmth of the low sun.

I was hacking away towards a deadline, this afternoon, when I heard a knock at the door. It’s not so unusual at the moment – we’ve had a lot of packages delivered to our new house over the last week or so – but what was a little strange was that today’s visitor was a County Court bailiff here on behalf of Her Majesty (okay, not her personally, I assume, but her courts at least).

Thankfully, it didn’t take much persuasion to get him to see that I wasn’t Mr. Parakesh, and he went on his merry way. And so, we learn a little more about the last occupiers of this house.

Ruth, JTA and I – later joined by Matt P – went to Jen & Nick’s wedding over in Belfast this weekend, and it was awesome. They’re an amazing couple and it was great to get to be part of their celebrations, to meet the fabulous folks they’re related to, and to drink ourselves under the table. Ruth has already written a little about it, so I’ll just point you in the direction of her blog.

Jen & Nick's Wonderful Wedding Cake - each of the four layers is a different cake, including a layer that's gluten-free and a layer that's suitable for vegans. The sunflower theme was carried through the entire wedding.

In other news, I’ve been exploring OS maps and it turns out that the garden here on Earth is actually about 20-24 feet longer than we’d previously believed! There’s a fence at the “end” of our garden with a concealed mystery gate, behind which is land overgrown and bramble-filled… but a little research indicates that this, too, is our garden, and we’re now preparing to mount an expedition (with machetes!) to explore and conquer this new land. And then turn it into a vegetable plot.

The end of our garden, inset with some of the annoted maps I've been using to find the boundries of the property.

Right: time for lunch and to register with a local GP.

This morning, I left Earth to go to nearby Headington. This trip was primarily to put money into the back, register with a GP, and get some keys cut for the new lock in the garage door. However, I also took the excuse to re-assemble my bike since the move and get out and about because it occured to me that, through working from home (as I now do), I hadn’t actually been outside at all in several days, and I’d be at risk of some kind of cabin fever if I didn’t get some sunlight once in a while.

Headington’s perfectly nice, and an easy 10-minute cycle away from Earth: there’s an uphill section which I was ashamed to see other cyclists pushing their bikes up, but having spent the last ten years in a hilly Welsh town, there was no such nonesense from me. It’s nice to be living somewhere with cycle lanes pretty much everywhere, and motorists who pay attention to the bicycles that weave amongst them: having cycled along the unlit A44 at night and narrowly avoided being cut down by the speeding lorries that frequent that road, it’s a relief to be somewhere where cyclists are better-protected.

While running my various errands, I also took the time to visit the Headington Shark.

Yes, I now live a short walk away from one of Britain’s most unusual art pieces: a 25-foot fibreglass shark stuck head-first through the roof of a small terraced house in Oxfordshire. It’s supposed to be some kind of protest against nuclear proliferation, and it first appeared on the 41st anniversary of the atomic boming of Nagasaki, but I’m not sure that I “get it”. It is kind-of awesome, though.

In other news: this weekend Ruth, JTA and I will attempt to go to Jen & Nick’s wedding, in Belfast. I say “attempt” because we’ve not had a lot of luck with weddings, recently. Last year, Ruth managed to upset the bride at a wedding that she and I went to. Then, this year, the three of us failed to get to Andy & Sin‘s wedding when we had a series of car-related problems, and then the bride and groom didn’t make it to Adam & Emma’s wedding reception, after they got stuck in the USA when an inconsiderate volcano caused their flight to be cancelled. We’re hopeful that we’re not going to bring our string of bad luck to this wedding, too!

Just thought I’d briefly share all of the different ways I’ve been saying goodbye to Aberystwyth and the people there, along with some photos:

Goodbye Friends

I’d hoped to make a proper blog post about the barbeque/bonfire we’d had to “see of” JTA and I (and later Paul, who’s leaving later this year, and sort-of Ruth, who’ll now be visiting far less-frequently), but I decided to wait until Rory got around to uploading the photos he’d taken. He still hadn’t done so by the time I left town, so, you’re stuck with the handful of pictures that I took.

Sam, both Rorys, Gareth, Jimmy and Claire

You can even see Rory on the right of that first photo, taking pictures, the swine. As usual for our beach barbeques there was no shortage of food nor booze, and a copious quantity of firewood. Also a huge amount of paper and cardboard which needed disposing of before the move, which lead to one of the most violently spectacular beach fires we’ve ever had – perhaps second only to the time that Kit, Claire and I found large parts of a bar (as in, one that you serve drinks over at a pub) and ignited it , many years ago.

Satoko and Paul

As the light grew dim I recited a poem that I’d thrown together earlier that evening, for the ocassion, expressing my fondness for this place where I’ve spent the last decade or so. I’d promised that I’d put it online, so here it is:

MEMORIES OF AN OLD FRIEND AND FORMER LOVER

In nineteen hundred and eighty five,
When I was – ooh – nay high. [with gesture sadly absent when recited over Internet]
I first set eyes on this Welsh town,
It’s mountains, sea and sky.

And beach (sans sand) and shops
(now closed), and pier (missing an end).
And thought myself, “This place, perhaps,
Could someday be my friend.”

Thirteen years passed – lucky for some -
And found me here again
In search of a place to come and learn
[I had a line here about how long it takes to get here by train, but I've lost it!]

My open day was sunny (aren’t they all?
how do they make it so?)
As I visited the campus and
The quaint town down below

That day, as I sat on that hill, [again with the gestures! - this was Consti, of course] looked down,
And saw a pair of dolphins play
I realised I’d found a friend: this town
And loved her, in a way.

My love and I were something sweet.
My friends; they envied me,
As she and I would come back, merry,
With a traffic cone or three.

Ten years I gave her of my life,
And treasure every one.
A decade’s love and hope and dreams under
Wales’ (intermittent) sun.

But this was young love: first love, p’rhaps
And wasn’t built to last,
And so the time draws swiftly near
That it becomes: the past.

The friend I’ll think of, as I chew
A slice of Bara Brith
She’ll always be here, in my heart,
Beautiful Aberystwyth.

In other news, you have no idea how hard it is to find fitting rhymes for “Aberystwyth”.

JTA

Goodbye Samaritans

Of course, I’d hoped to say goodbye to the Samaritans branch where I’d volunteered for the last few years, and I’d hoped to do so at an upcoming curry night that had been organised at the branch. Little did I know that more than just an excuse to say goodbye, this little party had been geared up almost entirely to see off Ruth, JTA and I. There were tears in our eyes as we saw some of the adaptations to the training room.

The Training Room at Aberystwyth Samaritans

The meal was spectacular, the beer and wine flowed freely, and we each left with a special gift showing how much the branch cared for each of us. I still have no idea how they managed to orchestrate so much of this without any of us having a clue that we were letting ourselves in for more than just a curry and a pint or two.

As I left the branch for the last time, I passed the reminder sign that reads “Have you signed up for your next shift?” and thought, with a little sadness – no, no I haven’t.

Goodbye SmartData

As if there weren’t enough curry in my diet, the lads from SmartData and I went out to the Light of Asia for a meal and a few drinks (during, before, and after) to “see me off”. This felt strange, because I’m not leaving SmartData – at least not for the forseeable future – but continuing to work for them remotely in my office on Earth that I’ve taken to calling “SmartData’s Oxford branch”. But this does mark the end of me seeing them (at least in person) on a day-to-day basis, and it was also an excuse to catch up with former co-worker Gareth, who came along too.

I should have thought to take a picture.

Goodbye Claire

I couldn’t have felt like I’d said goodbye to my life in Aberystwyth without saying goodbye to Claire, who’s been a huge part of it for, well, almost eight years. She and I got together one evening in my final week, there, to break apart the QFrames (the picture frames full of mementoes from QParty). It was a somewhat emotionally heavy time, but – I suppose – an important part of getting some closure on our break-up, last year: if there was ever going to be a part of me that was perpetually tied to Aberystwyth, it’d be the half-dozen picture frames full of photos and letters and gifts that represented “us” that I was lugging around. Now, I’ve got to find something new with which to furnish the walls of Earth, and my housemates seem keen to help with this mission.

It’s been a long process – saying goodbye to everybody – but at least that’s the Aberystwyth chapter complete. Right: what’s next?