Technical Question

Does anyone have a good idea how an AMD Athlon XP2600+ compares to a Pentium 4 at 2.4GHz in terms of performance, or where I can find some unbiased benchmarks?

Michael Jennings quote of the day

Q. What do you think is the main disadvantage of the contemporary computers, besides being slow?

A. They're full of products from Microsoft.

-- Bruce Sterling, in a Brazilian interview, getting to the core of how Bill Gates has been charging monopoly rents and generally hindering the progress of the computer revolution since 1976.

Update: My blanket anti-Microsoft sentiments have been challenged by a reader. And yes, I was being glib, to some extent. (My opinion of Microsoft is none the less not high). This is one of the occasions where I need to explain myself, the explanation is long, and I really do not have time for this right now. However, I shall do so by the end of the year.

Something worth reading

This article in Prospect on "Market dominant minorities" (ie ethnic minorities that dominate the economies of countries to which they are not indigenous - for instance Chinese in the Philippines or Indians in Kenya) and the problems they face when democracy is increased by Yale law professor Amy Chua is good. Go read.

Link via Patrick Belton, whose comments are also worth reading.

Redirection

I have a (long) piece on the finish of the rugby World Cup over at ubersportingpundit.

Update: I also have a much shorter piece on England's continuing celebrations of their victory.

Search request of the day

No. I went to the real Cambridge.

Enjoyment

After hanging around in the departure lounge at Heathrow for a couple of hours a few weeks back, I ultimately succumbed to one of the posh duty free stores in the departure lounge. In particular, I succumbed to the airport store of Berry Bros & Rudd, the poshest wine merchants in London. (By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen etc etc). This type of posh English shop (that also appeals to a certain type of American) is something I am entirely comfortable with after my years at Cambridge, but that is another story. Suffice to say that it contained some rather good drinks.

I managed to avoid paying £7500 for some stupendous aged magnum of Petrus, but I couldn't resist a (slightly cheaper) bottle of 1984 (bottled 2002) cask strength Dufftown (Speyside) single malt Scotch whisky. This cost more money than I really should have spent, but I will console myself with the fact that I saw a bottle of the same whisky for sale in a department store in Tokyo for three times as much.

Since I returned to London, the bottle has just been sitting in my cupboard, but I have just poured myself a wee dram. This is truly a stunningly good bottle of Scotch.

Another 40th anniversary

Today is the 40th anniversary of the broadcast of the first episode of Dr Who. It is a fine thing that it is coming back. It is a terrible thing that it was ever cancelled in the first place. I am in favour of abolishing the BBC. Besides the fact that the licence fee is obscene, one reason for this is that the BBC is full of the sort of self-important wankers who sneer at genre fiction, even great genre fiction.

Language shifts

David Sucher asks the question "What is genre fiction", and finds further down in his non-permalinked comments that the dictionary definition does not really fit the way in which the word is used nowadays. My thoughts are that in terms of current usage I would define "genre fiction" as fiction designed at a specific audience demographically, and not a widely diverse general audience. Certainly that is the way Hollywood uses the term. Hollywood uses the word for horror, teen comedies, "urban" films (which is code for films aimed at black audiences), certain types of thriller, certain types of animated film (ie those aimed specifically at children rather than those aimed at general audiences - so that "Finding Nemo" is not genre fiction but "The Powerfpuff Girls" is), certain types of fantasy film (By this definition "Underword" is a genre film, whereas "The Lord of the Rings" isn't) and similar.

Interestingly, what Hollywood thinks of as science fiction is (post Star Wars in 1977 at least) not "genre" but mainstream, as it is aimed at general audiences. Whereas written science fiction is very much a genre market, as only certain types of people read it.

In terms of books, I think you might say that "genre fiction" is anything that is filed in a separate section in a bookshop from the standard "fiction" section. In terms of film, it is anything with a budget under about $25 million. (If Hollywood spends more than that it needs to find a general audience in order to make its money back, so "genre films" are generally not made for more than that).

Some would say that as you quote it above, "genre" is a polite word for "ghetto". Certainly it is a term that self-important literary critics (and a certain type of self-important) reader use to snear at types of writing they don't like.

It's interesting to compare the usage of this word with "dialect", actually. Linguists will define a dialect as any specific varient of a language, so that standard American English is a dialect, and so is Glaswegian Scots, and that high German is a dialect, as is Swiss German. (None of these "dialects" can be defined all that specifically, either, as dialects tend to have further sub-varients and blend into one another and lines between them are hard to impossible to draw). However, the word "dialect" as used is often more applied to marginal and non-standard versions of the language than to standard versions.

Living in England, it is of course imperative to talk about the weather

Well, it rained in Sydney for the World Cup final, it is raining and the sky is grey here in London, and two cricket matches in Sri Lanka have been abandoned without play due to rain. Are these separate weather patterns, or is it one big patch of cloud and rain covering Europe, Asia, and Australia? (Yes, I do know the answer, and even that this speculation is silly, and in any event it is easy to check by looking at a satellite photograph or too. However, the weather is getting me down a little).

International comparisons

I watched the World Cup final in a pub in Balham, London. I had three pints of beer. These cost £1.59 each, and together they cost the equivalent of A$12. I watched the semi-final in a faux Irish pub in Shibuya. During this I had two pints of beer, each of which cost about as much as all three put together did here in London. (They were ¥800 each).

This isn't a fair comparison between Tokyo and London, of course. I know London well, and that includes knowledge of where to get a cheap beer. And although I was in a perfectly nice part of London, it was not central and not all that upmarket, whereas I watched the match in Tokyo in a neighbourhood that was both these things. If I had watched the game in a theme pub in an expensive part of London, my pints of beer would have cost about £2.80 ($A7.00) or so each, still less than Tokyo, but not by so huge a margin

My laptop is working. Yay. But I am still in the market for a new one



This looks like a sunrise or a sunset, but it isn't. It is actually mid afternoon, and the 747 is actually inside the arctic circle, so it is dark below us, but it is possible to see the light of day to the south if you are 36000 feet above the ground. In fact, the view out the plane window looked like that for three or four hours.

Observations

I have a lot on my plate at the moment, and as a consequence I am blogging short pieces about fairly lighthearted stuff. This is not so much due to time constraints as due to the fact that I don't feel like putting intense mental effort into it.

More good things

I had never flown Japan Airlines before, and I have to say I was rather impressed. On the (day) flight back from Tokyo to London, they had a "self serve corner", where passengers could just walk up and help themselves to chocolate bars, other snacks, and non-alcoholic drinks without having to ask a flight attendant.

All that said, one thing that regular fliers learn is that one should never be shy about asking cabin attendents for things. If you want another drink, just ask and they will give you one. Still, the self serve option is nice, and I have never seen it in economy class before. It was interesting to see just how fast the stuff went, too. People genuinely do seem bashful about pressing the "call flight attendant" button.

I have seen it in business class, but there it is almost redundant, as business class cabin attendants are pretty much constantly bringing you stuff without your having to ask for it. (Amongst other things, this means that getting drunk in business class requires no conscious effort).

I have never flown first class, so I can't comment on that. Presumably that will have to wait until my Hollywood career really gets going.

Apologies

A technical problem (to do with my laptop - not the camera) is preventing me from posting pictures right now. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

More Japanese details

On Monday morning I went to Shinjuku station and purchased a ticket for the bus to Narita airport. There was about ten minutes to wait before the bus left, and I put my suitcase into the care of a staff member of the bus company (who gave me a luggage receipt) and I went off to a vending machine to buy a drink. When I came back, the man in charge of my suitcase was holding a wooden mallet and he grabbed my attention, pointing to the bottom of my suitcase. My suitcase is rather old and has been handled roughly at times, and one of the little legs on the case designed to allow it to stand on its side had come partially off. This had been noticed, and my permission was being asked for him to attempt to fix it. He promptly did so, hitting the little rivet that held the leg back into its appropriate position.

Little things like this happen all the time when you are in Japan. The Japanese care about details.

Redirection

I have a piece on the rugby World Cup final over at Samizdata.

Feedback

It's always nice to actually talk to readers, and see what people get out of this blog. Comments are a help, but they only give you one side of it. Often you get a lot of comments when people disagree with something that you wrote, or in which people want to add something. Pieces on stuff that people don't know anything about will usually not get many comments, which does not mean that the post was not appreciated or liked. At the recent blogger gathering in Sydney, two people gave me nice pieces of feedback. One person commented that he liked my stuff on architecture and urban design. Another commented that he had enjoyed my writing about my visit to the Basque country earlier this year (much of which was about architecture and urban design, although he didn't say if that was the particular bit he liked). It was nice to get this feedback, as that aspect of my blogging does not usually get as many comments as some other aspects do, and because these are some of the subjects I enjoy writing about the most. So thanks.

Back in London

After a door to door journey of about 19 hours, I arrived back in London yesterday evening. Of course, my memory card was waiting for me in a package beside the door. My camera now tells me that it has space in memory for 347 pictures, which would have been useful when I was in Tokyo. Memory capacity was less of an issue in Australia, as I was able to connect to a PC and save to disk every evening. As it was, I took a fair few analogue pictures in Tokyo using the SLR, so readers may have to wait a few days for some of those. I have a few digital pictures as well, so some of those soon. The 347 pictures is for 1.2 Mpixel mode. Alternately I can have 208 pictures at 2.0 Mpixels, 138 at 3.0 Mpixels, or 69 at 4.0 Mpixels. That should be plenty, I think.

Departures

The busiest airport in Asia (by far) is Tokyo Haneda airport. This carries around the same number of passengers per year as London Heathrow, but few people who have not lived in Japan have ever heard of it. The reason for this is that it is a purely domestic airport (the one exception being that flights to Taiwan used to depart from it, although I am not sure if this is still the case). Haneda is right next to Tokyo bay, and to get to it you go on a monorail that goes along the edge of Tokyo Bay through a landscape of smelters and other industrial artifacts. And when you get there, you find that it is indeed a major airport.

If, however, you wish to fly to anywhere outside Japan, you depart from Narita airport, which in terms of passenger movements is about half the size of Haneda, which is similar to London Gatwick. (For many years attempts to expand the airport were held up by rice farmers who refused to sell the land on which the extensions were to be built. Farmers are an incredibly powerful political lobby group in Japan, probably even more so than in France). And it is an immensely long way out of the city, being about 100km north. This means that getting to and from the airport is time consuming and expensive, which is extremely annoying.

But this morning it wasn't so bad. I caught the bus from Shinjuku station to Narita, and we went along the edge of Tokyo Bay, and then across the Rainbow Bridge, and across a few other bridge and causeway connected islands from the south of central Tokyo to the north. The weather was beautiful and the bay sparkled and the city was beautiful. (Beautiful is not a word you would always connect with this city). Then we went north through the industrial landscape of Chiba - somewhat lighter industry than nearer Haneda, but not especially light in absolute terms. I suppose I could have stopped off in Chiba to get some Zeiss Ikon eyes installed, but time was short. So on to the airport, where I am now.

Tokyo is of course a maritime city and a great port, but people who visit do not always fully appreciate this. The city is an immense mass of concrete, to put it bluntly, and the major attractions do not have anything to do with the water. However, a walk along the waterfront is a fine thing to do, as everywhere. Like everywhere else, Tokyo has had waterfront redevelopment since the retreat of container shipping. (Something I promised to write about previously but have not yet gotten around to). And, perhaps amazingly, one finds a little evidence of the past on sections of the waterfront. There is even a few remnants of World War 2 if you look carefully - gun emplacements and that kind of thing.

But I have a plane to board. To London.

Unpleasantness

And yes, the atrocity in Istanbul fills me with rage. I don't think the barbarians who do things like this can be argued or reasoned with. You just have to fight.

A great afternoon

The same sorts of people who go to Camden markets in London on a Sunday afternoon go to Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon in Tokyo. The two places contain the same sorts of shops full of iconic popular culture, and the same mixture of (very) independent stores, multinationals, cool definers, and cool hunters, feeding on and spitting out something close to ground zero in street culture. This is recognised by lots of people, and one consequence of this is that you see many Japanese in Camden Town in London. Possibly the British do not recognise this in the same way - there are plenty of westerners in Harajuku on a Sunday, but they do not seem to be British dominated in the same way Asians in Camden are Japanese dominated. Or maybe they do, and Harajuku is full of Londoners but my senses are not intense.

I find this cultural ground zero quality of certain places fascinating. I am not of it myself - I am about the least cool person in existence - but as an observer I am drawn to it. I don't quite know why.

More on this, and photos, when I return to London.

Redirection

I have a piece on watching the Australian Rugby team's magnificent victory over New Zealand from Tokyo over at ubersportingpundit.

Me.....Want.....

I spent the morning in Akihabara, the section of Tokyo devoted to selling the latest products of the Japanese consumer electronics industry, many of them not available and never to be seen in the rest of the world. I am in the market for a new laptop (and my travails so far in attempting to get one would fill a small and very funny book), and I utterly fell in love with a gorgeous little widescreen model that was in my price range and had all the features I wanted. All the features, that is, except the England version of Microsoft Windows. You see, this was a Japan only model. Grrrrr.

As a place, though, Tokyo blows the mind. There is nowhere else remotely like it.

Why I love to come to Japan

I am presently in an internet cafe in a Virgin Megastore in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. Shinjuku isn't my favourite part of Tokyo (although there is nothing wrong with it - it's an entertainment and retail district, but not as much fun - and not quite as surreal - as the younger districts of Shibuya and Harajuku).

William Gibson talks about Tokyo as the place where the future happens first. People have asked him whether this is still so after the Japanese economy's disasters of the last decade, and he says that yes, it is, and yes, it is in the small details. (He outlines the position in this three year old article from the Observer, amongst other places).

But, an example. I drink a lot of Diet Coke - probably a couple of cans a day. And I stress cans. Drinks in cans stay properly cold and keep their fizz. Drinks in plastic bottles do not. (Drinks in glass bottles are fine, but these are nowadays fairly uncommon). If I buy a drink from a shop or petrol station or vending machine for immediate consumption, I want it in a can. Plastic bottles are not good enough. However, in recent years more and more shops have started selling drinks in plastic bottles instead of cans. I don't know why they do this. Perhaps they think that bottles look nicer in the refrigerator, or perhaps they are cheaper, or something. Whatever the situation, I think it is one of those situations where the people in charge do not understand the situation because they are not big fizzy drinks consumers themselves. I have certainly had peculiar conversations once or twice when I have asked for a can of Coke, have been told that there are only plastic bottles, and have then asked for something else, or nothing. It is not been understood that a plastic bottle is not to me an equivalent product. It is widely understood by consumers, however. I have certainly heard other Coke drinkers complain. (Oddly, this same state of affairs has not occurred with beer. It is widely appreciated by people both buying and selling beer that beer is ruined by bein consumed from a plastic bottle, and they are not generally sold).

Interestingly enough, I yesterday morning for some reason had a conversation about why I didn't like drinking Coke from plastic bottles, and she agreed with me. I then got on a plane, flew to Tokyo, got off the plane, and bought a Coke from a vending machine. To my initial annoyance, I discovered that it was in a bottle.

Then I picked it up from the bottom of the machine. The bottle was made of aluminium. But it is definitely a bottle, with a screw top, a neck, and a wider base below. (Photo will be provided when I have returned to London). When in Australia and England, the industry that serves me drinks seems unaware that there is a problem in this small detail of life, in Japan the problem has been recognised. And the problem has been solved. This is cool. I suppose I should prepare to see these things in the rest of the world soon.

On the other hand, in some other ways Japan is frustrating. One of the most annoying things is that their ATMs still do not generally take foreign cards. (No, I don't know why), I know from past experience (and also from the airport yesterday) that those operated by Citibank do work with foreign cards, although the one at the airport took Mastercard but not Visa. (This type of thing happens from time to time when you travel, which is why I carry a Mastercard as well as Visa and Amex). I am sure that there will be one in Shinjuku somewhere. (If not, I remember the location of one near Roppongi from my last visit). I think I will Google for the location. If I had been sensible, I would have simply got more money at the airport.

Actually, I think the Onion was rather slow to get to this, but their response is as funny as usual

Unlike this (not actually real) guy, I told my Mum about this blog from the first. In actual fact, I think it has given her a slightly more accurate picture of who I really am. In a way, I think she might almost have been relieved if she found a diary of my sexual exploits or similar. As it is, it has just confirmed her (I suspect already extant) suspicions that I am really fascinated by urban design and cheese.

Update: Blogger now has an official policy on what to do if your Mum finds out about your blog.

A great tragedy

My fortnight in Australia is just about over. Tomorrow I fly to Tokyo. I am arriving back in London Monday evening.

Today, I went to the Tyrrell's winery in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney. This winery makes wonderful pinot noir, and I tasted a recent vintage of their best pinot, which was indeed wonderful. As it happened, I had a bottle of the 1984 of the same wine that I had purchased when I was a stokbroker. The man at the winery said it was still probably nice. Therefore, when I got home I got out the bottle, and I looked carefully and noticed it was just a little sticky around the top. I immediately opened the bottle, and sadly the cork had failed completely. The wine was completely ruined. Therefore, I poured a 20 year old bottle of a wonderful wine down the sink. This was a horrible thing to have to do.



Still though, the earlier parts of the day were pretty good. Visiting vineyards is a fine thing to do.



And of course there is the tasting itself.



The latter two pictures were taken at Pepper Tree Wines in the Hunter Valley, another company whose wines I thoroughly recommend. Their cellar door operation is excellent and friendly, too. (They also were kind enough to pull a couple of "not for regular tasting" wines out from under the counter when they realised I knew my wine, too. This actually happens quite often when I go tasting wines at the cellar door, but it is always nice when it does).

Cultural Differences

In Australia we have a television station called SBS, which stands for "Special Broadcasting Service". This station has a charter of being a "multicultural broadcaster", meaning that its programming is supposed to appeal to ethnic minorities. (SBS is owned by the government, and is funded by a mixture of taxpayers money and advertising). Sometimes this is quirky - we get subtitled Argentinian soap operas, giving us an insight into an enormous pop cultural world that people in the English speaking world generally do not see. Sometimes it is things that British people might find ït curious that the "multicultural" word applies to. SBS shows enormous numbers of soccer matches. People of English ancestry in Australia tend not to play soccer, but people who belong from ethnic minorities often do. Certain things about its programing are simply good - SBS has far more international news than any other Australian television channel. And SBS also shows a better selection of foreign language movies than any other television station I have ever seen.

But these too can be quirky. For instance, I just turned on the television. SBS was the first channel that came on. As it happened, I got a Japanese movie starring Takeshi Kitano. He said something in Japanese. The subtitle (rather intriguingly) translated this as "That was my best blowfish". I didn't get the context. Was the blowfish a pet? Were they eating fugu? What exactly makes a particular blowfish the best?

I suppose I should watch the whole movie some time.

Remote controls

Brian Micklethwait comments on the number of remote controls he now has. Most of his commentary is entirely unnecessary, as the photograph of all the remote controls gets the message across instantly because we are all entirely familiar with the situation. Brian also makes an interesting comment that this is an indication of a particular time in history, and that a better solution will likely be found within a few years, and also makes some comments discussing how the number of remote controls alters the relationships between members of familes.

The issue is bigger of course and I could talk about it for hours (This is perhaps a symptom in the break down of a certain type of centralised authority that applies in much wider contexts) but I have no time. However, in my fortnight in Australia one of my jobs has been to rewire, reprogram, set up, plug in, and do goodness knows what to a whole range of electronic devices belonging to various members of my family. (Plus of course I was asked to advise on purchases). I have been asked to do this because I am good at that kind of stuff. Some would say it is because I think in the way that remote controls do (or at least in the way that the people who design remote controls do) rather than the way other people do. I fear that there may be some truth in this. Does this create a new position of authority for me? Not especially. Does it mean that lots of people buy me lunch? Yes.

Entirely gratuitous photograph of me in Sydney so that I can say I posted something today

Important redirection

I have some photos from yesterday's Sydney blogger get together over at Samizdata.

A strange thought

I have made an appointment to see a dentist on Tuesday. I have only just realised that I will be seeing the dentist at 11am on November 11. I really hope that he does not stop in the middle of the dental work for a minute's silence.

Redirection

I have a piece on the Australian test batsmen's good form in the Pura Cup prior to the series against India, particularly talking about Steve Waugh, over at ubersportingpundit.

Redirection

I have a piece on why Canberra's more liberal liquor licensing laws are better than the less liberal laws in New South Wales over at Samizdata.

Redirection

I have a piece mainly on the peculiarities of the points systems used in international cricket tournaments (and why these mean Australia have qualiified for the final of their present series) over at ubersportingpundit.

More photos

I spent the day today with my parents and my sister in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. (My sister lives in a nice house in a beautiful location up in the mountains). The mountains are extremely rugged and quite stunningly beautiful. Sydney was founded in 1788, but it was unable to expand west across the mountains into the great plains on the other side of the mountains because the mountains were found to be impassable, or so it appeared. The story Australians are taught at school is that three fine chaps named Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson bravely set out and in 1813 found a route across the mountains, and the settlement of Australia could continue.

This was pretty much true. Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson did indeed find a route across the mountains. However, these days we are uncertain that they were the first Europeans to do so. (Of course, indigenous Australians had likely been crossing the mountains for thousands of years). In fact it appears that there were two earlier explorers who (separately) manged to cross. However, one was an escaped convict and the other was French, so it is perhaps fairer to say that Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson were the first politically acceptable people to find a route through the mountains.

Soon after the three explorers found the route, Governor Lachlan Macquarie declared that a road should be built across the mountains. Australia was a penal settlement at the time, and a team of convict labourers were set about the task. A very effective incentive scheme was set up to get the road built fast. The convicts were told that they would be freed if the road was built within six months. It was built in this time and they were freed. Of course, it was a very rough road at the time. However, the highway that now crosses the mountains (which follows a single ridge across the mountains) follows almost exactly the same route. (There is another major road that follows a different ridge a little to the north).

In any event, the town of Katoomba is the largest town in the mountains, and in it is a place called Echo Point, which is famous for its beautiful views of the mountains in general and in particular of a rock formation called the three sisters. Here I am at this point earlier today.



Sadly, the way I have not tucked in my shirt properly and the way I am leaning back make the photo perhaps unflattering to me. At least, that's my story and I am sticking to it.

My mother photographed nicely, however.



Charles Darwin once visited, and his words about the view have been engraved on a rock.



Nearby, we have a gloriously kitsch relic from the earlier days of this tourist resort. It is a shelter, with bench style chairs inside for people to sit inside, made in the shape of a large rock. (You can see a person sitting in side if you look carefully).



After seeing the view, my family and I adjourned to a nice outdoor cafe in the nearby town of Leura. (Leura is smaller than Katoomba, but adjacent and full of nice houses and shops. Leura is sort of the Beverly Hills of Katoomba).



After this, we went to visit the first Krispy Kreme outside North America, which is at Penrith at the base of the mountains.





My goodness those doughnuts are sweet. My mother has been alternately cursing and eating them since we bought them. My father has just been eating them.

More beer



It's not a wheat beer, so it doesn't taste right for the glass. However, it does kind of look right.

Yes, we finally have a venue

A get together is being held in Sydney this Saturday evening to commemorate the fact, and to allow a whole lot of people who know each other electronically to actually meet one another. A wide assortment of Australian (and other) bloggers will be present. Any additional bloggers and/or readers who will be in the area and would like to come are more than welcome.

When: Saturday November 8 at 6:30 pm until probably quite late.

Where: The Three Wise Monkeys Hotel at 555 George St, Sydney.

Who: Everybody is welcome.

Any questions: Please contact me here

Fame

I think I must nominate this as "Most intriguing blog on which I have been blogrolled"

Update: I left a comment stating that I was intrigued (but not displeased) to be blogrolled from an all Japanese blog. Nobody posted a response, but I now seem to have been removed from the blogroll. Curious.

More good things about Australia

Spirited Away is out on DVD here. It only cost me the equivalent of about £8, too. As I write, my mother is watching it, and seems to be enjoying it immensely.

Update: The eight year old girl from next door also appears to be enjoying it immensely. Miyazaki is a wonderful filmmaker.

A thought

I have only been taking beer seriously for 18 months or so. Part of it has been that I have had a medical problem that means my stomach doesn't cope well with anything acidic, and beer is gentler on it than is wine. Part of it is that I have had to watch how much money I spend, and drinking beer - even good beer - is cheap compared to drinking good wine or whisky, which can be horribly expensive. Even the best beer only costs two or three pounds a bottle.

However, the nice thing is that I have discovered that the world of beer is rich and interesting.

Prior to leaving Australia, I drank beer from time to time, but didn't think about it much. I generally just drank middle of the road lagers, and more interesting beer less regularly. Although I had drunk Coopers occasionally, and it was clearly good beer, I had never thought about it much. It's much cloudier than Australian mass produced beers, and has a rather maltier taste than the lagers, although it isn't a wheat beer. It isn't ale, either, and although the bottled versions are bottle conditioned, they are much bubblier than English bottle conditioned beers.

However, over the last year I have been drinking lots of beer abroad, and I have been wondering just how the Coopers actually compares. Guides to the world's beers often list it, and say that it is very good, but my previous experience of it were prior to all the interesting beers I have consumed in the last while. However, I have still been known to bring the beer up if someone chose to knock Australian beer. "You should try this one. It's very good" is always a useful argument.

But, yesterday, I had the chance. I went to a pub in the Sydney neighbourhood of Newtown, and there was a replay of Australia beating India at cricket on the TV screen, and Coopers sparkling ale on tap. What more could I want. My memories and the beer books were correct. The beer was indeed very good. You should try it.

Redirection

I have a report on the Australian cricket team's one day victory over India, and also a cricket news roundup over at ubersportingpundit.

Only 44% ?



(Via Stephen Karlson).

Frustrations

As I may have mentioned, I recently concluded that I really needed a memory card for my digital camera, as the internal 16Mb memory is pifflingly inadequate in any situation when I want to go away from my computer for more than a day or so. However, upon getting frustrated by the absurd prices charged by British high street, I ordered a card and a card reader from an internet retailer in Jersey, which quoted me an excellent price. However, there turned out to be a catch. Which was that I was leaving for Australia. And oddly, I wanted to have the memory card to take with me to Australia.

I ordered the memory card on a Friday, and I was leaving on a Wednesday. That should have been plenty of time. I was heartened to receive an e-mail the next day (Saturday) telling me that my order had been dispached, and I therefore eagerly looked forward to being able to store 64 four megapixel pictures in the camera instead of merely 8. The e-mail also contained a brief statement that the order might be sent in more than one package due to the way their warehouse system worked. This is normal. A lot of internet retailers say that, and it was nothing to worry about.

Thus, when a package fell through the mail slot on my door on Tuesday morning. I was happy. Yay. Memory card. But of course, when I opened it up, I found it only contained the card reader. (Well, that and a complimentary pen with the URL of the retailer written on the side). Damn. They had dispached two packages. (They didn't tell me this by e-mail. Amazon for instance always do. That is one point for Amazon). And I was going to Australia the next day. Still, there was some hope. And perhaps I would get another free pen in the second package.

And hey, I had the card reader. I was able to plug it into my USB hub, and install the driver software. When I did this, a little green LED came on on the card reader. (Of course, a blue LED would have been much cooler but it would also have cost a few pence more for the manufacturer). I turned it on and off a few times. The card reader looked so cute, just sitting there beside the laptop.



But of course, there are certain problems with having a card reader and no actual cards to read. Of course, the memory card didn't come the next day either, and I departed for Australia without it. I have brought my laptop with me to Australia, so I should be able to simply download my pictures to my hard disk whenever the camera gets full. But still, it's frustrating. And of course, the memory card is probably now sitting beneath the mail slot at home in London.

Or maybe not. For all this probably actually isn't the fault of the internet retailer. Part of it may be that mail takes a day or so longer to come from Jersey than from the British mainland. Most of it, however, is that Britain is having a postal strike. (John Major wanted to privatise the Royal Mail a decade or so ago. It's a shame he didn't succeed. At that point the Royal Mail was still quite a good organisation, but it has gone badly downhill since then, due partly to the government demanding excessive dividends in the good times and due to a lack of investment). In some ways, Britain is a frustrating country.

Miscellanea

There is a certain type of really dumb movie this is if anything somehow improved by being watched on an aeroplane dubbed into Japanese.

One of the other films on the plane was Terminator 3, which was subtitled rather than dubbed. Presumably certain qualities of Governor Schwarzenegger's stilted English with an Austrian accent dialogue are not really translateable.

Annoyingly, I can only ftp to the webspace given to me by my English ISP if I am actually connected via that ISP, which means I cannot upload pictures right now. I shall very soon get some alternative webspace sorted out, hopefully.

Redirection

I have a piece on the security procedures required to use the internet cafe at Tokyo Narita airport over at White Rose.

I am now in Australia

My laptop is not in a very good way. For the first year or so of its existence, I lugged it around with me all over the place, and it got a little bit of wear and tear as a consequence of this. In fact, it eventually received a lot of wear and tear, so for the last nine months or so I have been using it simply as a desktop PC. It is now too fragile for carrying around. However, on this trip to Australia I really needed to bring it with me. Therefore I packed it very carefully amongst some of my soft clothes. I also packed a toolkit and a soldering iron just in case there was trouble. I then came to the conclusion that the fact that I am unwilling to travel with my laptop unless I have a soldering iron with me is really an indication that I need a new laptop.

The laptop is working okay, however. It didn't suffer any damage when in transit.

Being in the right place at the right time

As it happened, I was flying in a northern great circle over northern Siberia from London to Tokyo yesterday evening. This is an interesting place to be if the earth is about to be hit by the third greatest solar storm on record, because that means aurora. As it happened, most of the passengers were asleep, but I was playing an electronic game on the video screen in front of me. A stewardess came up to me, pointed out the window, and said something completely incomprehensible. I looked at her in a puzzled fashion and then she went away for a moment (presumably to ask someone else how to pronounce the word) and came back again. She then pronounced it again, and I still couldn't quite get it (Are you asking me to look at the Aral Sea? At night?). Then of course I was smart enough to actually look out the window. Oh, aurora. (The word is not an easy one to pronounce if you are Japanese, I suspect, given all the r sounds in it). I thanked her profusely, and then watched it for a while. Okay, I have never seen a major aurora before, so I have nothing to really compare it with. I doubt it was an extremely spectacular aurora as these things go, and I wouldn't describe it as quite the most spectacular thing I have ever seen, but it was certainly quite interesting. There were sort of vertical yellowy streaks covering much of the sky to the north, and there was a sort of misty yellowy reddish structure closer to the horizon. These were not espeically bright colours, but the whole thing was quite striking. It was visible in a substantial portion of the sky.

Mission not accomplished

Sadly, I was not able to find the toy in question in any of the stores I looked in. (Two of these were chain stores that were claimed to stock it, too). The British high street is a fine, fine, thing.

I'm on a mission

The five year old son of a friend of mine wants a Thunderbird 1 Electronic Playset for his birthday. These are all sold out in Australia. I received a plaintive e-mail from his father this morning, asking would I please try to buy one in England and bring it to Australia with me. My flight leaves Heathrow at 6.45pm, and I still have a little packing to do. Will I achieve this task and make a spoiled five year old happy? Tune in later to find out.

Meanwhile, back in Australia

Sasha Castel is being attacked by birds. And just think, I am going there tomorrow. (At least, I am leaving here tomorrow. I am not arriving until Friday).

On the other hand, wait until Sasha meets a plover.

Redirection

I have a piece at ubersportingpundit entitled "More thoughts on the rugby World Cup format, and will the Japanese ever play cricket?"

Update: I also have a more normal cricket update, mainly on the ultimately drawn match between Pakistan and South Africa.

An interesting afternoon

Yesterday afternoon I went on a tour of St Pancras Chambers, formerly the Grand Midland Hotel, which is essentially part of the structure of St Pancras Station, and one of the great Victorian buildings of London. I have written about St Pancras Station before, but it is an extraordinarily grand station, and the hotel was an extraordinarily grand hotel. It has been closed as a hotel since before the second World War, and for any regular use at all for 25 years or so, but you see the remnants or grandeur.



Walking through that section of London, you see this great Victorian structure, and you wonder at its magnificence, and about how rundown it is and why it is so rundown. You walk into St Pancras Station itself, and you wonder something similar. The single arch of the trainshed is the most magnificent in London (on indeed just about anywhere) but there are only a small number of platforms being used, the station looks like it could use a coat of paint, and there are a small number of trains coming and going. It is not like King's Cross station next door, which is architecturally less distinguished but absolutely bustling with people coming and going at all times. (Kings Cross has a second, even less architecturally distinguished trainshed that was built in 1875 and is usually used for suburban and short distance services to Cambridge or similar). The question "Why is this?" is one that I had asked many times, and that was one reason I went on the tour yesterday. (Talking to some of the other people on the tour this was a not uncommon reaction. Quite a few of the people on the tour were people who had walked down Euston Road and just wondered).




The magnificence of St Pancras compared to King's Cross was something that was noticed by the producers of the Harry Potter films. The mythical Hogwarts Express departs from platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross, which is supposedly located between platforms 9 and 10. Sadly, platforms 9 and 10 are in the unimpressive looking suburban section of the station. However, the second Harry Potter film uses St Pancras both for internal and External shots, presumably because a location scout went to Kings Cross, wandered around, and obseved that St Pancras was much more impressive to look at. (It seems that J.K Rowling herself did not to a location scouting exercise before writing the book. A friend once told me that she heard that Rowling was actually thinking of Euston when she wrote the book, but I haven't verified this).

And, yesterday I was able to find out. The Midland Railway had was a major operation in the Midlands, but it came to London rather late, opening its main line in 1868. By that time the Great Northern had served King's Cross since 1851 and the London & Birmingham (later absorbed into the London & Northwestern) had served Euston since 1838. Apparently the Midland wanted to really make a splash when they entered London, and one way they did this was by building a hugely impressive station and a hugely impressive building. But although St Pancras station was very grand, it was never as important or as busy as the Great Northern or the London & Northwestern. (Still, it was more busy than it is today until services from Bedford that had previously terminated at St Pancras were diverted underground to south London on the "Thameslink" line in 1988). And the hotel was a stunning building, but even when it opened it was in some ways not very modern, having no central heating (coal fires being preferred) and the rooms not having their own toilet facilities (chamberpots being used instead). If the building had been built ten years later, both of these features would have been different, and the hotel may have survived a lot longer, but as it happened it closed as a hotel in 1935. It had various other uses subsequently but it was closed to all full time use for safety reasons around 25 years ago. In some ways these "other uses" did not have the greated effects on the building, as (for instance) some of the beautiful stencil work on the ceilings and walls were covered with standard issue BR paint. Worse, it seems that there may be some quite beautiful artwork under some of the paint as well, but nobody is really sure. And why would you cover a marble column with white paint?



Oddly, enough, however, when you go inside the building, sections of it are quite familiar, as it has been used as a setting for many film, television, and fashion shoots over the years. Most notably it was used as the setting for the Spice Girls' music video for "Wannabe", in which the hotel is doubling for, well, a grand hotel. I haven't seen that video for a few years. After yesterday, I want to look at it again, now that I have seen the location firsthand. This is at least partly because that video was done entirely as a single shot, and given the physical layout of the hotel I think that may have been awkward.

In any event, the building is quite run down but interesting. The grand staircase is indeed grand, the arches of the windows and the art on the ceiling is almost religious in quality (Sir George Gilbert Scott, the architect who designed the building, was also a church architect, and you can tell).





Unfortunately, about 25 years ago, British Rail auctioned off all the furniture, despite the building's heritage listing also covering the furniture. They just did this. Therefore, the main dining room (and the coffee lounge downstairs) of the hotel are now just bare rooms.



Apparently, Oscar Wilde was once eating dinner in this room, when word arrived that the Marquess of Queensbury's men were downstairs, and were threatening to come in and trash the place if Wilde didn't leave. According to the guide, Wilde was a gentleman so he left and the place wasn't trashed.

Also, the Australian and India cricket teams stayed in the hotel in 1930. Apparently the Indian team caused all sorts of problems for the staff by practising in the corridors. I do not know if the Australian team also practised in the corridors, but somehow I hope so. Walking along the corridors, there is something appealing about the idea that Sir Donald Bradman himself may have once waved a bat just there.

The Grand Midland Hotel was one of the first buildings in London with elevators. Of course, being posh and British they weren't prepared to actually call them elevators. Some other name had to be invented.



So what now? What is happening to this grand old building?

The second stage of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link into London is presently being built through a tunnel into central London. Services are going to terminate at St Pancras, and the station (and the area around it) is being massively redeveloped. When it is all complete, there will be 13 platforms at St Pancras, and it will be receiving the trains from the Midlands it receives now, trains from Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and no doubt elsewhere in continental Europe, plus fast domestic services from various places in Kent. St Pancras will be perhaps the most important railway station in London, for the first time in its history. Apparently the roof of the train shed is going to be painted the same dark blue it was in 1868, and it is going to be even more busy than Kings Cross next door.

This has led to an opportunity to restore the old Grand Midland Hotel to something of its former glory as well. The Mariott hotel group won the contract to take it over. A modern medium budget hotel is to be built on a brownfield site behind the British library and next to St Pancras chambers, and this is to be connected to the foyer of the old building. This is presumably the major money making part of the venture. The old building itself is to be restored into a mixture of apartments and a luxury hotel. At least, that is the story. Looking at the old building, such a restoration is likely to be very expensive and time consuming. There are apparently extensive discussions going on between English Heritage and the hotel groups as to just what they will be allowed to do. (For instance, if it is to be converted back into a hotel it is going to need modern plumbing). It remains slightly up in the air as to what is going to happen.

However, inevitably, something will happen. A depressed and rather nasty area of London is going to turn into a modern, developed, and not run down at all part of the city, through this and other developments nearby. Already there is a lot of construction going on - both of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, an upgrade of the Kings Cross underground station, and other work. The British Library (foreground below) is one nice public building in the area already.



There are various other planned transport upgrades that go through the Kings Cross area. The Thameslink 2000 upgrade has an important hub just under St Pancras. The Chelsea/Hackney railway (also known as Crossrail line 2) also is planned to go through Kings Cross. If all this happens, Kings Cross becomes the most important transport hub in London. And it may take a couple of decades, but inevitably it will eventually all happen. At which point St Pancras station and St Pancras Chambers will become an interesting Victorian gothic structure in the middle of what will be one of London's key centres of modernism. Which should be as a minimum quite interesting.

Redirection

I have a piece on Britain's woefully uncompetitive high street over at Samizdata.

Redirection

Cricket update (mainly on Australia's one day loss to India) over at ubersportingpundit.

Redirection

I have a piece on what is wrong with the format of the rugby World Cup over at ubersportingpundit.

Making research easier

This new Amazon feature where you can search the entire text of a huge number of books they have online is extremely cool, in my opinion. One thing that annoys me is that I cannot grep printed books as I read them. If I remember something that happened on an earlier page and want to go back to it, I can't always find it. This is annoying. Now though, I can search for it on Amazon, find out the page number and quickly find it in the book. This is great, and gets rid of one of the major advantages electronic documents have over printed books, which is that they are easy to search.

Of course, many of my books are British editions with slightly different page numbers. This leads to an interesting search tree approach, where you go to approximately where you think what you are looking for will be, type in a few words of the British edition from that page of the book, find out the American page number from Amazon and thus the approximate offset between the two editions that far through the book, then type in the phrase you are looking for, find where it is in the American edition, subtract the offset, and bingo, you have found it in the British edition. Not perfect, but workable. Still, some better system of indexing than page numbers needs to be found or invented.

I have lots more to say on the new Amazon feature, but for now I am going drinking with some bloggers.

Update: Virginia Postrel describes the new features as "a great advance for civilization". Steven Johnson (who mainly talks about the same use I was discussing - using the tool to search within books you own already) calls it "The best search idea since Google". I shall at some point be commenting on it in more detail, but I won't have time at least until the weekend, and I shall be flying to Australia between now and then. Ultimately, I want a single database containing all human knowledge that can be searched from essentially any computer terminal in the world. (In many cases I will be happy to then pay to use the knowledge, but I want the serach itself to be free). In the long run, I don't think this is out of the question. Just think how much closer to this we are now than we were ten years ago. This development is a major step forward towards that ultimate goal.

Depressing stories

Jay Manifold is right that there are few possible headlines that are scarier than this.

There is almost no imaginable action I would not support to prevent Saudi Arabia from obtaining nuclear weapons, if it really came to that.

Redirection

I have some cricket writing at ubersportingpundit, mainly on Bangladesh's fight back in the first test against England.

(I'm not sure whether to keep linking to all my sporting stuff over there, now that I have stopped writing about cricket here. I think I will because there is no harm in it, but if anyone is finding it annoying, let me know).

Photographic thoughts

Okay, I took both the digital compact and the good old SLR to Cornwall with me, and I discovered something very important, which is that if you are taking a digital camera with you anywhere for a few days, 16 Mbytes of memory is utterly woeful. I ended up taking far fewer photos than I might have liked, and some of them were taken on too low a resolution. So, I am going to have to buy one of those memory card thingies. The camera takes cards up to 128 Mbytes, and I suspect a smart move is to go the whole hog and buy a 128 Mbyte card. Of course, if I buy a smaller one this may still be useful later, but I think I may just go the whole way. And then I suppose a should get a card reader, although this is optional, as the camera itself can perform this function.

Now let's see. The camera cost £95. I spent £10 on rechargeable batteries, and I could now spend another £40 on a memory card and £20 on a card reader, meaning that the total cost would be up to £165. And the purpose of all this was at least partly to stop spending money (on film and processing). Such is modern life. (£165 is still good value, actually).

And of course, using an SLR and a little digital compact side by side is quite enlightening. The SLR feels like a quality piece of equipment - a real camera. The digital compact still feels like something of a toy. It takes quite good pictures, but it still seems quite insubstantial. I actually do want a digital SLR, but I cannot afford one for now. Sad.



Here's me at Land's End. Obviously, taking a photo with the sun in it is quite tricky, although the person I asked to take the photo wanted to give it a try. It's much easier with an SLR where you have more control over the light levels.

Update: Looking at it some more, the light really does have a certain J M W Turner quality about it. Certainly the Cornish light has been popular with British artists for a very long time, and Turner certainly did visit.

Different Update: A little shopping around on the internet got me a 128Mbyte MMC format memory card and a universal card reader for £42 in total, including delivery and (overpriced but mandatory - this presumably partly makes up for the low prices) insurance. This compares with £70, which was the best price I could find on the high street. The British high street retail cartel is indeed appalling. Anyway, for £147 I have managed to get a four megapixel camera, rechargeable batteries plus spare set and charger, 128Mbyte memory card and card reader, which isn't bad. I am not sure if my readership are interested in my digital photography experience, but I am having fun.

Redirection

I have a piece on the Boeing 757, of which Boeing has announced that production will cease, over at Transport Blog.

Redirection:

I have a piece on recent events in non-Australian cricket at ubersportingpundit.

Update: I now have a piece on recent events in Australian cricket as well.

Problems

Hosting Matters is apparently receiving a big attack from a hacker, and as a consequence much of the blogosphere that I normally read (and write for) is not available, including Samizdata, Brian and Alice. The almighty Glenn's regular site is down, but he is posting on blogspot. The Volokhs are still up, too.

Update: The blogosphere is again alive. It is striking just how centralised the blogosphere's infrastructure seems to be, even though a fair bit of it is using a supposednly decentralised tool like Moveable Type.

American insularity

Randy Barnett will probably be entirely uninterested to learn that it is also perfectly okay for tweedy intellectuals to admit that they are interested in (or indeed obsessed by) the game of cricket. And as an added positive, cricket matches go for much longer than baseball games.

That was fun

I spent yesterday in St Ives, location of one of the branches of the Tate Gallery and also one of the few places in England that can be described as a "surfing town". It's an absolutely lovely place, too. I also did another long walk around the cliffs from St Ives to Hayle. This led to my missing the 1730 train back to London that I had intended to catch. This meant that I spent three hours in a pub in Penzance before catching the overnight train at 2200, but caused me no other harm. (I would have made the train if there had been some signs pointing out the location or Lelant railway station, but for some reason there weren't Still, though, it was well worth it. And an advantage of aiming for the second last train is that missing it is not nearly as traumatic as missing the last train). I will post some more on this later, when I am at my own PC and can post some photographs as well.

Looking out over the ocean, with nothing between me and New York, except a few lighthouses

Well, I went to Porthcurno and Land's End yesterday, and the museum was fascinating although there is not all that much else to see with respect to cable landings (I was hoping to see 150 of technical detritus, but the evidence for the importance of the place is very subtle. The cables were for fairly obvious reasons always buried. As for the fact that Porthcurno is still today a major landing point for fibre optic cables, well there is essentially no evidence at all. The cables presumably come in under the beach buried and then connect underground to a buried landline.

I also had a lovely walk along some magnificent and extremely rugged Cornish coastline (mostly) between Porthcurno and Land's End. You sort of think of England as a gently undulating place, but not this.

Nodal points of the global communications system

I am in Penzance in the far South-West corner of England. I have come to Cornwall mainly to go to the Museum of Submarine Telegraphy (which Neal Stepehenson talks about here) and also to look out from one of the furthest corners of England (and indeed Europe). I just rode down the entire length of Brunel's Great Western Railway (with the exception of the bit from Exeter to Plymoth, which is having trackwork), but I did go over the beautiful Saltash Bridge at Plymouth.

This is an overdue trip. I have been meaning to do it for 18 months, but my attempts to get friends to come too have failed. So I have now come by myself.

Needles in haystacks, or something

I am fairly certain that this afternoon I left my copy of Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James on a desk in a public library. If I had left my coat on the desk in a public library, I cannot imagine there would be a problem. I would go to the information desk next time I am in the library, ask if anyone had found a coat, and they would then get it and give it back to me. On the other hand, going to the information desk in a library and asking if anyone has found a book strikes me as somewhat more problematic. But I will see. I am sure that my book will still be in the library somewhere, but actually finding it may be hard, as it may well get thrown on the pile of books to be reshelved rather than sent to the lost property section.

In any event, it is not the end of the world. I purchased the book in a remainder book shop and it only cost me £2.50 or some similarly small amount. In any event, it is quite a well known book. The library almost certainly has a copy that I can borrow.

The annoying thing is that I have quite a long train journey tomorrow. I have been enjoying the book, and I was hoping to use the journey as an opportunity to finish it. Now I will have to read something else.

Update: The library's lost property system worked just fine, and they quickly returned my book to me when I asked about it.

Redirection

There are three test matches going on at the moment in the world of cricket. India are playing New Zealand, Australia are playing Zimbabwe, and South Africa are playing Pakistan. Updates from me on all three over at ubersportingpundit.

Update: I also have a piece on sports fandom, and why it doesn't matter.

Did Sherkaner preprepare a secret deepness just in case? I bet he did. After all, he was controlling the helicopter.

Natalie Solent is discussing the question of why there is relatively little discussion of science fiction on her blog, even though it is one of the claimed subjects in the left margin. This question might apply here, too, as I suspect I am at least as big an sf fan is she is.

Personally I think I will blame it on Vernor Vinge's slow writing speed. I know that I am probably never going to get my wish of a sequel to A Deepness in the Sky in which Sherkaner Underhill comes back to life from wherever he has gone to just as Arachna comes out of the Slow Zone, but I want it. And it if ever comes, I will definitly write about it here, assuming that the singularity has not occurred by then. At least give me something, Dr Vinge. Anything. (Yes, I know you have given me some short fiction. I thank you for it. I'm just greedy).

Personally, though, I have never put "science fiction" in the list of subjects on the left, so I do have that excuse. Thinking about the list, though, I have updated it to be more consistent with what I write about and what some people seem to think I am obsessed with. (I do think it is just Wallace who is obsessed with cheese. Gromit I think is largely oblivious).

Making Australia appear to be the pinnacle of civilization

Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee - a very great cricketer - once greeted Queen Elizabeth II with a simple "G'day". Straight to the point, and so much more stylish than this.

Of course, one of the key skills of being Queen or King of England is being able to keep a straight face when people say, do, or wear deeply bizarre things in your presence. The present incumbent is I think magnificent at not being rattled by anything. I had a short conversation with Prince Edward at a drinks party once. I can't for the life of me remember what I said, although I am fairly sure I didn't call him "Your Royal Highness", or even "Sir". Just a fairly standard "Very pleased to meet you" type introduction followed by a little light conversation, if I remember correctly.

Redirection

I have some reasonably lengthy thoughts about team selection for the Australian cricket team over at ubersportingpundit.

Redirection

I have a short update on the world of cricket over at ubersportingpundit, focusing mainly on New Zealand's very good first day in the second test against India.

China returns man to earth

The Shenzhou 5 capsule has landed successfully in inner Mongolia, and Lt Colonel Yang is safely back on earth. Well done the Chinese engineers.

What I'm listening to

The release of Lost in Translation not only made me want to see it and want to write about it, but it also made me think about Sofia Coppola's previous film, The Virgin Suicides. In a way it is a better and less realistic (and certainly less cynical) American Beauty, about suburbia, and why it may be stultifying for some people, and at the same time is also about the fragility and preciousness of love in a way the other film doesn't manage to be. There is something wonderful about the mood of the film, and something I figured out a long time ago is that there is nothing more crucial to establishing mood in a movie than getting the music right. The Virgin Suicides has a famously good soundtrack by Air.

Although I had only seen the movie once, about three years ago, the mood somehow stuck in my mind, and if I tried hard, I could almost hear the music in my head. So, I went and bought the CD of the score. And this was good. The music is a mixture of electonic and acoustic instruments. (I'm not sure if the percussion and guitars are real. They may be electronic instead. The wind instruments and the piano appear to be real). It's one of those soundtrack CDs where a couple of the tracks have dialogue (or at least voiceovers) from the movie spoken over them, but somehow this works.

It didn't matter in the end how old they had been
or that they were girls
but only they we had loved them
and they hadn't heard us calling,
still do not hear us calling them out of those rooms
where they went to be alone for all time
and where we will never find the pieces
to put them back together.

For a movie that cost $4 million dollars to make, Lost in Translation is doing wonderful business, having grossed over $18 million in the US, and still being in fairly limited release. The film is going to get Academy Award nominations - almost certainly for best actor for Bill Murray, maybe in one of the actress categories for Scarlett Johannson, almost certainly for Sofia Coppola for Best Original Screenplay, maybe for Sofia Coppola for Best Director, conceivably for Best Picture, but that depends what else comes out between now and December 31. However, this is a film that may be hurt by the ban on screener DVDs and VHS tapes. Hopefully that can be reversed. These nominations are going to mean that in the most optimistic case it could remain around its current level of business (five million or so a week) until about the end of February. It is going to gross at least $50m in the US, and possibly a good deal more. On a $4m budget this is a huge hit.

In any event, Sofia Coppola now finds herself in an enviable position. Despite the good reviews and moderate business of The Virgin Suicides, her position after that film wasn't strong enough to get her final cut over her next film if she made it with Hollywood money. However, she raised the budget by preselling foreign rights (particularly in Japan, where The Virgin Suicides was a huge hit and restricting herself to a $4m budget. Given all this, for her next movie she will be able to get a substantially larger budget with Hollywood money, and she will be able to continue to be one of those rare filmmakers with final cut. And given who her father is, she seems to no longer be in his shadow after having made only two films, which is kind of impressive.

Update: Even more than being voiceover, the words I have quoted above are verbatim from the last paragraph of the novel The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I have browsed but know more than that. I really must go and read it some time.

Neoconservative test

It says I am a realist. I can live with that.

(Link via Geoff Honnor).

Pictures of me

I upgraded the software of Brian's digital TV set top box. Brian can now get BBC4 again. Brian is happy.

China puts a man in orbit

A Long March 2F rocket today carried a one man Shenzhou 5 capsule, fairly closely based on a Russian Soyuz, into orbit, carrying military pilot Yang Liwei. The capsule is expected to remain in orbit for 14 orbits and 21 hours before re-entry and a parachute landing in inner Mongolia. The launch was not shown live on Chinese television, but was shown with a half hour delay, as the Chinese leadership feared embarassment if the launch was unsuccessful. Dale Amon at Samizdata has more to say, but as he predicted was likely, the western media does not appear to be treating it as a big story.

My compliments to the Chinese engineers here. A great achievement. May Mr Yang return safely to earth.

I agree

It would actually be awfully good of the Israelis if they would bomb it, yes.

Ferries in Marseilles, late trains, Dover, Calais, French motorway bypasses, yobs, irritating immigration procedures, and a dreamy evening in Canterbury

As I am sitting here in London thinking about the fact that I am not in Copengagen, I can at least recount the story of my not entirely successful trip to France last week, which somehow ended up being deeply satisfying anyway, except for the English yobs who I could in fact have done without, but more on them later. But first, ferries.

One thing about Europe is there are large numbers of reasonably wide bodies of water that separate pieces of land and over which substantial numbers of people wish to cross and take their cars, but which do not have bridges or tunnels. There are the Baltic, the Mediterranean, the English Channel, the Irish sea etc. (The English Channel does of course have a tunnel, but the tunnel is so incompetently run that a lot of the traffic still goes by ferry). I have been recently reading Paul Theroux's The Pillars of Hercules, in which he travels around the Mediterranean, catching enormous numbers of ferries as he (amongst other things) visits every island of significance in the sea. And I was a little jealous, partly because of the islands - none of which I have visited, and also partly because of the ferry trips, which sound like kind of fun in themselves. When I went to Marseilles, I walked into the ferry port, and saw ferries departing for Corsica, Algeria, and Tunisia.



The ferry terminal for going to Corsica was clean and modern, the terminal for ferries to Algeria and Tunisia was full of North Africans, and was run down and clearly had had no money spent on it recently. A ferry to Algiers was about to depart, and there was a long queue of enormously overloaded cars preparing to board it.

The next day, when I went out on the water to the islands off the Marseilles coast, another international ferry departed, this one to Tunisia.



While there was a certain temptation to jump onto a ferry to Tunis, I managed to resist it. But the network of huge car ferries in Europe is very extensive, and if I had driven to some of these places I would have no doubt used some of these ferries. However, I have normally travelled around Europe by train and plane, as these ways are easier for a solo traveller without a car.

Huge car ferries are largely an alien thing to Australians, as Australia has few bodies of water over which large numbers of people regularly cross. (There are car ferries between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, but that is all, and I have never been on those ferries. In nearby countries, there are lots of ferries between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. This voyage across Cook Strait and through the long sounds (technically fjords) of the northern south island is a beautiful journey in good weather and a fairly hideous one in bad weather). Australia itself does not even have any long bridges - the longest in the country is still the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is absolutely piffling by international standards. There must also be lots and lots of ferries connecting the immense number of Islands in Indonesia.

I think that such ferries are less common in America due to the fact that America contains fewer bodies of water to cross and the Americans have been more avid about actually building bridges and tunnels than have the Europeans (although the Europeans are now catching up, which was why I was going to Denmark this weekend, but I digress). There must be ferries on the great lakes, and lots of them in the Carribean, though.

As I said, I have made very few ferry journeys in Europe. A few years ago, I got a ferry from Helsinki to Tallin and back across the Baltic. Late last year I realised that I had never crossed the English channel by ferry, although I had been under it in a train, and across it by air many times, and I therefore went to Normandy and back by ferry. This involved going from Portsmouth, which was fine. However, it still wasn't the canonical England/France ferry experience, which involves sailing from Dover as you look at the white cliffs and and get all teart eyed as you contemplate

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

or similar. (I have to give it to Mr Shakespeare. The man could certainly write). I had never done this, and, somehow, thinking about it last week it seemed essential.

Now, of course, actually going on this ferry journey from where I live in Croydon in south London is not especially difficult or expensive. I can go by train to Dover, go on a very inexpensive daytrip to Calais and back, and the cat won't even know I have gone. Or such was the idea. I thought of doing it last Saturday, but to tell the truth I slept in, and in any event when I checked things on the P&O ferries website, I discovered that the ferry trip cost more on the weekend, which was annoying.

So, I thought, why not do it on a weekday. The problem with this is that the cheapest train tickets only apply from 1000 on a weekday, whereas they are available all day on weekends. Still, I could get a train just after 1000, arrive in Dover a little after midday, get the 1315 ferry to Calais at about 1530 French time, have about five hours in Calais, get the 2100 Ferry back to Dover, arrive at Dover around 2130, and get one of the last trains back to London. No problem.

Well, not exactly none. The first problem arrived pretty much the moment I arrived at the train station. Kent has some of the worst and slowest trains in the United Kingdom. The train was initially 15 minutes late.



The intention was to get a train from Croydon to Tonbridge, and then change to a train from Tonbridge to Dover. That one was late, too, a little over 30 minutes so. I did get to go on an old train line parallel to the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link (that has been open for a couple of weeks) from Ashford for a few kilometres, and I hoped to see the novel attraction of a train going through Kent at 220km/h, but sadly none came while I was watching. I ended up arriving in Dover at around 1300, and I just missed arriving at the ferry terminal in time to make the 1345 ferry.The next one was 1430, which was annoying.

Still, I hung around in the ferry terminal for a bit. It was for some reason full of Americans. I am capable of switching dialect to talk to Americans if I need to, so I did. Oddly enough, the joke phrase used to refer to trivial conversation with Americans, "How about them Cubs", actually applied, as the Chicago Cubs had won their first playoff series since the Reformation the night before. So I had a chat with a couple of American guys from Pittsburgh, about baseball, Pittsburgh, and their lightning trip to Europe. (Paris yesterday, London today, Brussels tomorrow, and then Amsterdam). That kind of thing. A very nice, friendly couple of chaps. Very typical for travelling Americans, in my experience.

So, the ferry to France. We sailed, the white cliffs receded in the distance.





This was the way in which people departing England departed England for a very long time indeed. I thought about this precious stone set in the silver sea as I drank my pint of beer in the ferry bar. Things weren't actually so bad after all.



But of course the ferry was late getting into Calais. I observed that although it is the white cliffs of Dover that are famous, there are also a few less famous white cliffs on the other side. The ferry docked in Calais. A little after five. If I was going to be back in time to check in for the 9pm ferry at 8.30pm, I was going to only have about three hours.

And well, not very much there. A French high street. Various bits of minor port stuff. A few okay restaurants. (Finding a nice little brasserie in which to have dinner was no trouble). One or two liquor stores.

However, a truly extraordinary building as the town hall. I don't know quite where this came from. (The photo is a bit fuzzy. I'm not sure if that was because I am only using 1.3 megapixels, or because the light was fading. Of course, analogue photography looks gorgeous in failing light like this).



But anyway, I was in France. However, like Le Havre and Cherbourg, the two French channel points I had seen before, Calais was really not very interesting. At least, the town itself wasn't. As people know, I am an infrastructure buff, and there is lots of interesting infrastructure things near Calais. For one thing, there is the France end of the Channel Tunnel, and all the associated works and infrastructure. And for another there are some deeply intriguing retail businesses, warped by the difference in tax rates (particularly on alcohol and tobacco) between England and France. In particular, both Sainsbury's and Tesco have stores from which English people can buy the sorts of stuff that English people about to depart France want to buy. I was quite interested to see what the combination of these factors and Sainsbury and Tesco's impressive logistics and computer systems would create.

But of course, these things had nothing to do with the actual town of Calais. The ferry port is on the north of Calais, but if you drive your car off the ferry and want to go south, you go straight onto a motorway bypass that circles the town before heading south. All the modern developments are designed with the motorist in mind, and are thus just off the motorway exits on the far side of town from the ferry terminals. They are not designed for walking from Calais at all. I knew this, but I thought I would seek them out just the same.

But is was not to be. I didn't find Sainsbury's or Tesco. I did however, get a good picture of how the motorway and related infrastructure was laid out, so this was productive anyway. Sadly I only had three hours. If I had had five, no problem.

But I used up my alloted time. I had decided to forsake the 2100 ferry and instead get the 2130 ferry. This required me to be at the ferry port by 2100. From the motorway exist on the other side of town, I found myself in a position where I was pushing it. This was fine, though. I have a great sense of direction, and I find it fun to push myself to make things like ferry departures in time, even if it looks unlikely. Therefore, I crossed Calais with a mixture of running and walking briskly for 45 minutes or so, and got back to the ferry terminal just in time. I went through check-in, and I got on the little shuttle bus that goes from the terminal to the ferry.

It was me in the bus by myself, as presumably passengers who had arrived with more time to spare had gone on an earlier trip. I sat on the bus for a couple of minutes, and then a couple of twentysomething Englishmen got on too. They said hello, observed that I was Australian, complained that they had not been able to find any "good pubs" in Calais - they were none the less drunk, and steadily started smirking as the conversation went on. After it got a little further, they observed that I was sweating a bit. I said that I had had to run a bit to make the ferry.

At that point, these two arseholes started laughing. An extremely loud, mocking, nasty bullying laugh that went on for about five minutes. I am a bit nerdy, I will admit, and this is not the first time in history that people have responded to me like this. But this was I think the genuine English yob in its natural habitat. Not nice.
Comparing with the enormously friendly and nice Americans I encountered waiting for the ferry out earlier in the day, I have to say, USA 1 - Britain 0.

I then sat on the ferry for an hour and a half, and prepared to get off. As I was walking to the shuttle bus, I somehow managed to encounter the same yobs again, and they again decided there was something hilarious about me and that they should laugh at me at the top of their lungs. Great. I like the English on the whole, but the country has the worst yobs in the world. The worst of the two of them was stopped by a ferry crewmember, who started saying something sternly to him. I didn't catch much of the conversation other than "That constitutes theft", so at least I wasn't the only person he had pissed off.

Anyway, I eventually got to immigration. I was seemingly the only non-EU national on the ferry, and I thus had to fill out a form, and answer a few questions, whereas if I had been an EU national I could just walk through. This took time, and as I walked out of the terminal, I saw the shuttle bus to the railway station heading off into the distance. As I was half an hour later than I had intended, this was the last one for the evening, and by the time I had walked to the railway station, I had missed the last train back to London. This was irritating.

There was however, a train to Canterbury. I had been to Canterbury once before, in about 1994 with some Cambridge friends, and we had seen the Cathedral and then gone to a restaurant selling crepes, where we had sat for several hours while reading the Sunday newspapers and being served by a particularly nice waitress. It was a very pleasing memory, so I hopped on the train to Canterbury. I also thought that Canterbury was my best hope of finding somewhere that would be open where I could sit inside until the first train came along the next morning.

As it happened, I was right. I arrived in Canterbury and had a walk around. It is a beautiful city, and I looked at the buildings, in the windows of interesting shops, walked along the river, and admired the gorgeous buldings. Some towns just have a nice feel about them, and Canterbury is one of them. I hadn't been too upset about the yobs, because they were so self-evidently just innately nasty people, so my mood was still fine. I found a shop selling chicken, chips, burgers and stuff that was open. I bought some chicken and sat down at about 1am. The place was open late, and I ate my chicken and stayed sitting at the table until the shop closed at about 4am. In that time, a score of customers came in and bought food too. Many seemed studenty - the University of Kent at Canterbury is a good university - some were people who had worked late - most seemed regular customers. They all walked in, had lengthy chats with the proprieters (one of who was English and the other Turkish), wished me a good evening as they were waiting and walking past. One or two of these people had had a few drinks too, but somehow they were just having a good evening.

So that was Canterbury, as nice a place as I remembered. This cheered me up considerably and I must go back sometime during the day. Eventually, I was kicked out of the chicken shop (although I walked past it again a few minutes later and the proprieter who was just locking up gave me a friendly wave) and I walked to the railway station to catch the first train back to London. Sadly, I had to pay another train fare, which more than made up for the saving I made by going to Calais on a weekday. Oh well. I had that dreamy middle of the night Canterbury experience, and somehow this was worth it. Although I could have done without the yobs.

Somehow, I managed to have a fun day despite (or perhaps because of) the various things that went wrong. And I learned enough to make sure they don't happen next time. For instance, next time I will go on a weekend, and I shall take the hovercraft, which doesn't cost much more and crosses the channel in half the time.

More search requests

I suppose this is straight to the point.

Regrets

Just think. If I had been in Los Angeles yesterday, I too could have been in the Hollywood Hills, talking to Rand Simberg about space, and talking to Mickey Kaus about Arnold, thrilling various blonde Californian women by talking to them about efficient capital markets, and annoying Adriana by taking more photos of her with my digital camera. But no. I wasn't even in Copenhagen. I was instead here in London at my computer. And Perry seems to have had the job of annoying Adriana by taking photos of her.

Update: Even the überblogger himself (who, unlike Hitler, is not a native of Austria) wishes he was there.

Redirection

I have a piece on the Australian team for the second test at Zimbabwe over at Ubersportingpundit. I have been too lazy to cover the week's cricket blow by blow, but Scott Wickstein has done a good job. Basically, Australia beat Zimbabwe easily although rain took the game to a fifth day, India were held to a draw in their first test against New Zealand thanks to some good lower order batting from NZ, and South Africa came back from 0-2 down to win their one day series against Pakistan 3-2. They will see this as encouraging going into the tests, I think.