Malenfant

Ghosts On Every Street Corner

2003-02-08T02:06:57Z

Tonight was the night of meeting people from my past.

It was just a quiet night in town with Gary and Toby, but I kept running into people I knew years ago. There was Rachel, the girl from secondary school that everyone was in love with. She did english and drama and bohemian-cool. Sometimes people look completely different when you see them after several years, but she looked just the same. Conversation was strictly limited to banal pleasantries; it's not like we'd been friends, or anything, but you feel obliged to say something when you just bump into someone like that.

Then there was Sarah. I didn't recognise her, she recognised me: We were at primary school together. I had only the vaguest recollections, but she reeled off teachers and anecdotes that rang bells in my head, and we ended up having a long, involved conversation. She's moving to Spain to be a beautician, apparently, and has been going out with a guy who looks astoundingly like Bill and Ted-era Keanu Reeves for the past seven years. I liked her. She was fun.

Then there was the guy in the kebab shop. I don't know his name, but I recognised his face: I know he used to bowl in the same league I did. Every saturday morning for three years, you'd think I'd remember his name, but apparently not. It was a slightly awkward exchange.

All of which made for a quite interesting night. The final surrealist touch was the two guys playing big tribal-type drums (drums, drums in the street...) on the high street at 11pm, studiously ignored by the drunks ambling about (although there are older and fouler things than drunks in the dark places of Maidenhead...)

Sometime in the past few years, I started thinking of Oxford as home; Maidenhead was just somewhere I came back to visit now and then. Well, I've been back here for about eight months, now, and when I have an evening like this, it reminds me - this town may not be my home any more, but I still have a lot of history here, lying around in the corners.

malenfant @ 2003-02-07T16:24:00

2003-02-07T16:28:21Z

Today I have been updating a big list of psychiatric societies, and gaining a significant amout of respect for Google's translation capabilities. I just wish it could do Japanese...

Limits

2003-02-06T10:35:02Z

For those who may not have seen it:

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For those who may not have seen it: <a href = "http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=news&itemid=63413@ target="external">There will be posting limits from now on.</a>

I can't get that upset about it, though. Partly because I'm already a paid user and therefore still get more posts than I could need, but mostly just because even with the limits, the free service is pretty good.

Chicago

2003-02-04T23:36:57Z

Well, that was fun, and deliciously cynical. It's hard to beat a couple hours of showtunes for entertainment value.

One thing, though - Nick and I were talking on the way out, and it struck me that it doesn't really take advantage of the fact that it's a film. Indeed, for all the musical numbers they put a fair bit of effort into what I assume is a reasonable recreation of the stage show. It's very different to the outrageously fantastic Moulin Rouge, which could only ever have existed as a film; Chicago is deliberately showing off its roots. There's no denying that it's effective, and impressive, but as much as anything else I was left wanting to go and see the original, if only for comparative purposes.

Not that that's a bad thing, you understand...

\o/

2003-02-04T12:32:47Z

So I've discovered that [ctrl]-[up arrow] and [ctrl]-[down-arrow] are the equivalents of 'home' and 'end', respectively. That makes life so much easier.

On the downside, the man who came to install the company database discovered that I've ended up with the most poweful computer in the company. Not sure how this happened, but they're going to take it away and use it for production design instead. I'm just praying they leave this lovely huge monitor...

Weekender

2003-02-04T00:32:52Z

I'm going to have to start being organised. I made a mental list of all the things I needed to get done this evening, and I don't think I've done half of them.

So instead of doing more things on the list, I'm going to write a long and rambling post about what I got up to at the weekend. What to say? It was a good weekend. SF films, SF books, SF fans in the form of greengolux and snowking (not forgetting the special guest appearance by Tom): It helped to fill the OUSFG-shaped hole in my life. Plus, it's always nice when representatives of two of my friend-groups meet and seem to get on with each other.

First up on friday evening was Cube 2: Hypercube. The first hour or so is great, drawing on the strengths of the original but promising a new perspective. Unfortunately, things gradually fall apart over the course of the second hour. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the most significant is the excess of explanation. One of the best things about Cube was the sense of mystery, that you were never quite given any definitive answers. That's not the case with the sequel, and although on balance I enjoyed the film (on reflection, for instance, I think there's a case to be made that several of the more out-there plot developments are a deliberate reflection of the chaotic state of the system), I can't deny that it was a disappointment.

Next was a late-night screening of Plan 9 From Outer Space. If you've seen it, then you know. If you haven't...well, it's an experience. Truly, famously, ludicrously bad, it lurches from plot point to plot point with little rhyme or reason. But at least I can say I've seen it, now.

One pit-stop at snowking's trendy abode later and it was saturday morning, time for the Douglas Adams memorial debate: "Does Sci-Fi Predict the Future?" The panel was composed of not-even-a-little-bit-famous and not-terribly-articulate author Steve Aylett, some guy described by Richard Dawkins as 'in need of psychiatric help', an american who recommended electrifying your bloodstream to cure HIV, and Dave Green of NTK fame. The latter was easily the most interesting of the four, although it was a little disappointing to discover that he'd never read True Names.

That afternoon we managed to resist the charms of Incubus (Kirk in black and white, speaking Esperanto) and instead trawled the bookshops of Charing Cross road and elsewhere. I came away with a cheap hardback of Cordwainer Smith's The Rediscovery of Man, John Barnes' short story/essay collection Apostrophes and Apocalypses, two John Wyndham novels I'd not come across before (Web and The Outward Urge), a copy of Cory Doctorow's internet-published novella Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, and two Ian McDonald books - Chaga, and Speaking In Tongues, a short story collection.

Yes, those were all justifiable purchases.

I'm not even half-way through the weekend, and I already think this post is too long. It would certainly be too long if I discussed all twelve of saturday evening's short films extravaganza (undoubted highlight being the somewhere-between-Lynch-and-Gaiman 'The Cat With Hands'), or the trip snowking and I made to the British Museum on sunday. And yesterday evening saw me in a different part of London altogether, catching up with Marie and our mutual friend Sam, over from the states to attend a conference at UCL.

You know it's been a good weekend when you have too much to write about.

On the way home, I finished off Philip Reeve's Smarties Gold Prize-award-winning Mortal Engines. I thought it was fun - not the most demanding read in the world, but pacy and interesting and not afraid of facing the consequences of the plot points it introduces. That said, the central hook - great travelling steampunk-esque cities wandering the globe, preying on each other to survive - is so arresting, so vivid, that I think I'd have enjoyed the book even if that had been all there was to it.

Angel 4x10

2003-02-03T21:42:58Z

Oh, man. That was a thing of beauty, it really was. I would write a review, but I'd only be echoing every single word of thebratqueen's review. So you should go and read that, instead.

Copies will be posted, um, when I go somewhere near a post office. I'm not sure if there's one anywhere in the vicinity of the office.

Niall Gets Political

2003-02-03T20:07:28Z

Not very political, admittedly. As a general rule, I don't tend to have strong feelings about political matters - certainly not compared to some people I know. I can go for three or four days without really reading or watching or listening to a significant amount of news.

I do make an effort to read the sunday papers, though; it's like my token attempt to be informed. In particular, I like the column John Humphrys writes for the Sunday Times; I think he speaks a lot of sense. This week he says:

Consider the consequences of the United States backing down now.

The most obvious is that the prestige of Saddam Hussein would be enormously enhanced. He would be the man who had defied the mightiest superpower the world had ever seen. [...] Beyond his own borders Saddam would claim the leadership of the Arab world. And who would deny him? [...] On the other side of the world George Bush would sit in the Oval Office for the next 18 months and wait for the teeth of his political opponents to sink into his neck and drag him down at the election in 2004. I have spoken to several senior politicians on Capitol Hill in the past few days. Not one of them thinks Bush could contemplate going into that election with Saddam Hussein still in power.

[...]

Both sides know they are right. The hawks know that Saddam cannot be trusted. If he is left in power he will continue to develop his weapons of mass destruction until he is in a position not only to dominate the Middle East but to threaten the West. He has had twelve years to abide by UN resolutions and he has laughed in their face. If we do not deal with him, then ultimately he will deal with us - either directly or through his terrorist buddies.

The doves know that war would be a grossly immoral act. They point to a report by a UN taskforce leaked a few days ago which estimates that an attack on Iraq could kill up to 80,000 tropps and even more civilians. Half a million people would be injured or sick from diseases caused by the destruction of water and sewage services and the disruption of food supplies. There would be 2m displaced people inside Iraq and another 900,000 refugees would flee aross the borders.

[...]

The arguments will continue - and so they should. But increasingly it looks as though they are being conducted for the benefit of the historians. President Bush knows that returning is not an option.

Now to me, that seems pretty much unarguable. We have passed the point of no return: the political consequences of backing down, both on a personal and a global scale, are too great for any of the parties involved to seriously consider it. And whilst the idea of war is terrible and wrong, I am deeply uncomfortable with the thought of leaving Saddam where he is. It's an impossible decision, an irresistable force versus immovable object situation: You just have to roll a die and see which one is more compelling today.

Mac Frustration

2003-01-31T14:47:31Z

They use Macs here. They're a pain. What kind of crazy keyboard is designed without 'home' and 'end' keys? Or without an obvious '#' key? And why is there no keyboard shortcut for opening, say, the File menu?

On the other hand, the lack of a right mouse button isn't annoying me as much as I thought it would. Be thankful for small mercies, I guess...

malenfant @ 2003-01-30T02:14:00

2003-01-30T02:17:18Z

So I was at Panic with Dave and Tom and Pilly, and this song comes on. The riff sounds like something we should recognise, but it doesn't quite click for any of us. We're standing there on the dancefloor, a little nonplussed, wondering whether to give it a go anyway, when into our midst bounds Hot Indie Chick. "It's Queens Of The Stone Age!" she screams, waving her arms in the air. "I love Queens Of The Stone Age!"

It was a beautiful thing, really it was.

(First day? Not quite information overload, but getting there. There are a lot of procedures and databases and piles of client information to learn...)

Hmm.

2003-01-27T18:05:58Z

So I thought it was about time I upgraded to a paid account. I selected 'twelve months', entered all the necessary credit card details, and hit 'pay', taking note of the instruction to press once and wait.

Ten seconds later, I get a 'this page is not available' notice. Not a problem, I thought, I'll just go round again. Same result. This time, though, I happened to hit 'back' afterwards, and noticed a little note next to the order: "This order has been checked out. Create new order?"

No receipt email has shown up, though. And there's been no change in the status of my account...

Operation Cleanup

2003-01-27T17:01:54Z

I have decided to use these few days in limbo constructively, and clean up my room. Phase One is now complete. Phase One involved (a) collating all the mounds of detritus that have accumulated over the past couple of months into one giant uber-mound, and (b) sorting the uber-mound into two piles, one to throw away and one to keep.

There now follows the somewhat more complicated Phase Two, which involves filing all the things I've decided I need to keep. This may take some time.

What D&D Character Are You?

2003-01-26T22:54:00Z

Purloined from tinyjo. Go here.

Alignment:
Chaotic Good characters are independent types with a strong belief in the value of goodness. They have little use for governments and other forces of order, and will generally do their own things, without heed to such groups.

Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.

Primary Class:
Thieves are the most roguish of the classes. They are sneaky and nimble-fingered, and have skills with traps and locks. While not all use these skills for burglary, that is a common occupation of this class.

Secondary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

Deity:
Tymora is the Chaotic Good goddess of luck and good fortune. She is also known as Lady Luck, and also Tyche's fair-tressed daughter. Followers of Tymora believe in the tenent that, 'Fortune Favors the Bold,' and will throw caution to the wind and trust to luck to work things out for the best. Tymora's symbol is an unmarked silver disk.

Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Lawful Good ----- XXXXX (5)
Neutral Good ---- XXXXXX (6)
Chaotic Good ---- XXXXXXX (7)
Lawful Neutral -- XXXX (4)
True Neutral ---- XXXXXX (6)
Chaotic Neutral - (0)
Lawful Evil ----- (0)
Neutral Evil ---- X (1)
Chaotic Evil ---- (0)

Race:
Human ---- (-4)
Half-Elf - XXXXXXXX (8)
Elf ------ XXXXXXXXX (9)
Halfling - (-2)
Dwarf ---- XXXX (4)
Half-Orc - (-5)
Gnome ---- XXXXXX (6)

Class:
Fighter - (-6)
Ranger -- XXX (3)
Paladin - (-8)
Cleric -- (-2)
Mage ---- XXXX (4)
Druid --- (-2)
Thief --- XXXXXX (6)
Bard ---- XXXXX (5)
Monk ---- XXX (3)

Thief? I'm a thief? Hmph.

LJ posts currently floating in my head: Thoughts on leaving Hammicks, thoughts on the new job, thoughts on Light, and thoughts on The Death Of Grass. Some of them may even make it to the page in the next couple of days...

malenfant @ 2003-01-24T23:27:00

2003-01-24T23:26:33Z

Well, look at that. This year's Magdalen Ball is on the night of my birthday...

malenfant @ 2003-01-24T18:52:00

2003-01-24T18:51:19Z

Adam Roberts discusses Stephen Baxter's Evolution.

Spontaneity

2003-01-23T01:15:34Z

The other thing I did today was decide to go and see a film. Specifically, City of God. After a month of enthusing by brassyn, Geneva's review was the final straw...

It proved somewhat harder than expected to find a screening, though. The Guardian website film section has a handy toy which allows you to put in your postcode and see what cinemas near you are showing. The nearest cinema to Maidenhead showing City of God turned out to be the Phoenix Picture House. In Oxford. And it's only on until tomorrow evening. And I'm busy tomorrow evening.

Still, what is having your own car about if not for things like this? On the off-chance, I called Tom to see if he and Victoria wanted to see it, and they did, so I picked them up on the way past. I felt a little guilty about being in Oxford on a wednesday and not going to the ousfg discussion meeting, more so because it was a meeting hosted by e_pepys and those tend to be good, and even more so because I was taking Tom away from the meeting as well. Still, needs must.

The film itself turned out to be...not as good as everyone said it was. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but I didn't think it was mind-blowingly wonderful. Eye-candy, certainly; filmed all (or almost all) on location, the film was stunning to look at, and only enhanced by the various directorial tricks on display. It was also involving; whilst the basic plot is not hugely original, it is executed with a great deal of style and verve. But when all was said and done, there was just something missing. That extra component, that magic ingredient; whatever it was, it was missing.

Mind you, I'd still encourage people to see it, if only as a contrast to Gangs of New York.

Excess

2003-01-23T00:38:36Z

Here are the books I bought today:

- 'Grass', by Sheri Tepper
- 'Flowers For Algernon', by Daniel Keyes
- 'Cities In Flight', by James Blish
- 'Man In The High Castle', by Philip K Dick
- 'Desolation Road', by Ian McDonald
- 'The Stone Raft', by Jose Saramago
- 'All The Names', by Jose Saramago
- 'Mortal Engines', by Philip Reeve
- 'The History Of The World In 10 And A Half Chapters', by Julian Barnes
- 'England, England', by Julian Barnes
- 'Life Of Pi', by Yann Martel
- 'Salamander', by Thomas Wharton
- 'Ghostwritten', by David Mitchell
- 'Worldmakers: SF adventures in terraforming ', edited by Gardner Dozois
- 'Supermen: Tales of the posthuman future', edited by Gardner Dozois
- 'The Mammoth Book Of Best New SF 15', edited by Gardner Dozois

....Plus street atlases for Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. And 'Light' the other day. And I need to buy at least one Jasper Fforde book before I leave...

Total cost: £114.70. That lot should keep me off the streets for a while, at least.

Clarke Shortlist Thoughts

2003-01-19T17:50:58Z

The shortlist for this year's Arthur C Clarke award has been announced. The nominees (in alphabetical order) are:

Kil'n People, by David Brin

Light, by M John Harrison

The Scar, by China Mieville

The Separation, by Christopher Priest

Speed Of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon

The Years Of Rice And Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Of those, I own two, am intending to buy another, and have read, um, one. Whoops. I'm surprised Engine City didn't make the cut (especially since Cosmonaut Keep did, a couple of years back), and disappointed about the absence of Baxter's Evolution. Greg Egan has also been overlooked again - will he ever get nominated? Genre-wise, the stories break down as two weighty alternate histories (the Robinson and the Priest), one weighty fantasy (Mieville), and three science fiction novels of varying hardness (Brin, Harrison and Moon). I'm intrigued that the Brin and the Moon made the list; I don't much rate Brin, and I know nothing about Moon besides the fact that we have half of a shelf of an ongoing space opera series by her.

My prediction for the winner has to be Light. The amount of fuss made about this book has been phenomenal (best quote on the inside cover: "Finally, M. John Harrison tackles quantum physics!" - Stephen Baxter), and everyone I know who's actually read the thing speaks highly of it. Besides, the past two years have gone to fantasy novels, and Paul McAuley's one of the judges this year. It all adds up!

(The Prestige is probably the other main contender; Priest has been nominated three or four times by now, and never won. I don't see Mieville winning twice in two novels, and whilst The Years Of Rice And Salt is good, it's not up there with the Mars books.)

Blindness

2003-01-16T23:02:24Z

Without warning, a driver waiting at traffic lights goes blind.

A good samaritan takes pity on him, and drives him home to his wife. The next morning, the wife takes her husband to see an optician, who is baffled.

That afternoon, the wife goes blind. So does the samaritan. The following morning, the doctor goes blind. Later that day, one by one, the doctor's patients go blind. The contagion spreads through the city.

Panicked, the government sets up internment camps, and rounds up the blind. The camps are undermanned and underprovisioned. Thereafter, the situation deteriorates.

Standard SF plot, right? Reminiscent of John Wyndham, in fact: total breakdown of society in the face of inexorable disaster. Except the novel I'm describing is Blindness, written by Jose Saramago, 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I first saw Blindness mentioned a couple of years ago, in one of Robert Silverberg's columns for Asimov's. I meant to get hold of a copy - Nobel Prize-winning speculative fiction seeming too good a chance to pass up - but somehow forgot and it was only when a customer came in before christmas to request a copy that I remembered it.

There's something more, though, something I haven't told you about the novel. It's the writing style. Saramago uses only commas and periods to punctuate his sentences. That means no hyphens, no semicolons - and no quotation marks, either. Speech runs on in a sprawling mess, How does that work, By separating each statement with a comma and a capital, Oh I see, It takes a while to get used to. I initially thought it was clever; none of the characters are named, either, merely referred to by their position - the first man, the doctor's wife, the man with the black eye-patch, and so on - and the combination of the two is intensely claustrophobic. You never quite feel you can see what's going on, you feel that your viewpoint is constrained - in fact, you feel partially blind. I was somewhat disappointed when I opened one of Saramago's other novels to find exactly the same style; apparently, his books are experiments in timbre and rhythm and pace, and he merely feels that punctuation gets in the way.

That aside, the novel is very good, both as a novel and as science fiction. The breakdown of order, the process of the progression of the blindness - the inevitability of it - is the main thrust of the novel, with the characters doing what they must to survive. In places, the novel is bleak, and brutal; in places, as you might expect from a novel employing a metaphor of such grand power and conception, it is genuinely enlightening. It is never boring, though, even when Saramago is describing the minutiae of life in one of the blind camps, and even when you're struggling through a particularly dense page of exposition and authorial asides directed squarely at the reader. Recommended.

Completely Different

2003-01-15T23:07:03Z

Damn, it was cathartic to get all that out.

And now, something completely trivial. Thieved from tafka and brassyn, etc, etc.

(Based on what you know of me...)
Please recommend to me:

1. A book
2. An author
3. A song
4. A movie
5. An artist/band
6. A CD
7. A website
8. A new LJ friend

malenfant @ 2003-01-12T23:21:00

2003-01-12T23:20:32Z

Well, next weekend I'm going to a last-get-together-before-Eliot-leaves party (he's going gallavanting around the world); the weekend after that is my last day at Hammicks, so I suspect I'll be doing something with that lot; and the weekend after that, I have just decided, will be spent here. If I can work out how much it costs.

I'm not quite sure how I've ended up being organised for my next three weekends. It's a nice feeling, though.

Livejournal Analysis

2003-01-12T23:04:06Z

Via thevoicewithin, and tizzle_b, and brassyn:

Your Livejournal Analysis

Your Livejournal's Age

According to the information you provided, your Livejournal was created on 2002-07-24, meaning that your journal has been around for 171 days. What does this mean?

Being in the 1-6 month range means that you've likely settled into a routine as far as your posting habits are concerned. By now you probably have most of the functions figured out, though you might still learn a trick or two along the way. You probably still add friends on a regular basis, though that's not always the case. You are still something of a youngin in the LJ community, but at least you are not a newbie.

Your Livejournal Friends

Now let's talk about your friends list. You indicated that you have 37 LJ friends. A good, considerable number of friends. You've collected quite a few of them in the relatively short time that you've had your journal. Perhaps you gleefully added a bunch of people you found with similar interests, or simply added everyone that you remotely know. Not that it's a bad thing, mind you.

You also have been listed as a friend by 29 users. That's a decent amount of people paying attention to your journal. Given the fact that your journal is still young, you've done a fairly good job of advertising yourself. Probably got all your friends to add you, maybe joined a few LJ communities to meet some new folks. All in all, a large list for the time you've been around.

Finally in this category, you have a friends to friends-of ratio of 1.275. This is a relatively high ratio, meaning you add quite a few more people than have added you to their friends list. This may be a sign that you tend to add people fairly randomly to your list, although there is also a good chance that you simply do not advertise your own journal much, and don't expect too many people to be adding you back.

Your Posting Habits

You have indicated that to date, you have made 170 entries into your Livejournal. This gives us an average post rate of 0.994 posts per day. With this kind of post rate, you are updating at least once every other day, sometimes once a day. This seems to indicate that you like to keep your friends (or simply your journal) updated on the day to day progress of your life, no matter how boring or exciting. There are days when you simply have nothing to say, and on those days you simply say nothing, although you make a good effort to update when you can.

Your Commenting Habits

According to your information, you have posted 512 comments and have recieved 1208 of them over the lifetime of your journal. Let's see what this information can mean.

First of all, this indicates that you have been getting an average of 7.105 comments for every Livejournal entry that you make. With an average of at least 2 comments per post or greater, you enjoy a healthy dialogue with your friends and get a lot of response to what you have to say. You might also be posting those silly web quizzes, or making entries that are so interesting or so unusual that people can't help but to comment. Either that, or you just have a buttload of friends.

A more fair measure of how many comments you get might be your average number of comments per post per friend, which is 0.192. This may seem low to you, especially if you have lots of friends.

The final statistic is the ratio of your comments to comments you get. Your ratio is 0.424. The higher the ratio, the more talkative you are compared to your friends, comment-wise.

Obtain your own analysis here. But beware of the bad spelling.

Nemesis

2003-01-07T00:48:50Z

On the upside, it's not a bad film. It depends what you want out of your Trek, of course, but from where I'm sitting it had fun continuity references, an intriguing bad guy, and a cool space battle.

On the downside, it's The Wrath Of Khan. Now, I'd heard this said before I went to see it, but I hadn't realised quite how true it was. The traitorous crewmember, the evil alter ego, the battle of wits inside a nebula, the climactic death of a main character (with an obvious "ah, but he's not really dead, d'you see?" in both cases)...it's all there.

There's a joke to be made about whether Nemesis is itself the evil twin of The Wrath Of Khan, but I can't quite find it...

Belatedly

2003-01-05T23:40:34Z

From thevoicewithin:

I'm an Atheist!

Which Enemy of the Christian Church Are You?

Take More of Robert & Tim's Quizzes
Watch Robert & Tim's Cartoons

How come atheists look like characters from The Matrix? I'm not complaining, just observing.

malenfant @ 2003-01-05T18:26:00

2003-01-05T18:26:29Z

The master would never hurt us!

(Spoilers for The Two Towers)