Movies

I finally caught "The Aviator" over the weekend, and my good friend Jonathan Pearce is right: I really enjoyed it and it is a really good movie. Certainly it is Scorsese's best film since at least "Goodfellas".

I wonder how historically accurate it is. Fairly accurate, I suspect, but I am not sure quite how precise the details are. (The Spruce Goose did fly for longer at the end of the movie than it did in real life. It does boggle the mind that someone built an aircraft that large out of wood. It is still in a hangar in Los Angeles, and I must go and look at it next time I am in that city). The historical stuff about how the airline industry evolved is quite interesting, and fits in with what I know happened later. I know the history from the dawn of the jet age reasonably well, but didn't know much about what happened before that. Pan Am boss Juan Trippe is famous for later essentially making a bet with then Boeing boss Bill Allen on a yearly fishing trip that the two men took. The conversation supposedly went "If you build it, I'll buy it.". "If you buy it, I'll build it." and as a consequence Boeing built the 747 and almost sent both Boeing and Pan Am bankrupt by doing so.

In the movie, Howard Hughes is seen fighting for the airline TWA (which he owned) to be allowed to compete with Pan Am on major international routes, despite the fierce lobbying and dirty tricks of Pan Am and Pan Am boss Juan Trippe to prevent TWA from doing so. In the end he wins the argument, and TWA starts flying to Europe. It is quite refreshing to see a businessman being portrayed positively demanding the right to compete.

In reality, though, after the events of the film Pan Am and TWA were actually granted legal duopolies. Whether these came at the request of foreign airlines, Pan Am, TWA, or who I don't know, but it might be that Howard Hughes was not interested in more general competition, but was quite happy with a protected market as long as he was part of it. And of course in many instances the duopolies are still with us, although neither Pan Am or TWA exists as a company any more. (Pan Am's routes were bought by United and Delta before the company went into liquidation, and TWA's routes were bought by (mostly) American before the rump of the company was ultimately fully acquired by American).

Whatever may be said for Juan Trippe, one thing he had in common with Howard Hughes was that he had an enormous love for aeroplanes. When you see him in the film saying "We will force you to sell your airline and we will paint all those beautiful Connies in blue", you can see the two men understanding just how painful it would be to lose a fleet of aircraft like that. The Constellation (and the later and larger Super-Constellation) is regarded by a lot of people as one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. Australian airline Qantas has one painted in their 1950s livery that they keep in airworthy condition to fly to air shows and use for other publicity purposes. I have seen it fly once or twice and it is indeed a thing of beauty.

How to reveal you are an idiot - part one of a series

The other day I was in a computer shop in Tottenham Court Road, and I overheard a customer explaining things about laptop screens to a person who he was shopping with.

"This one has an LCD screen, and this one has a TFT screen. See the difference?"

It is actually true that the terms "TFT" and "LCD" mean different things.

LCD means "Liquid Crystal Display", meaning that the each pixel works by having a voltage applied across a liquid crystal element, the opacity of the element varies in accordance with the voltage, and when a light is shone through it it appears light or dark depending on the voltage. (Colour displays work by having three crystal elements per pixel, each with a different coloured filter - one red, one green, one blue).

TFT means "Thin Film Transistor", meaning that there is a transistor attached to the back of each crystal element, which controls the voltage applied to that element. TFT is synonymous with "active matrix" when applied to LCD displays. TFT screens are sharper than old kinds of passive matrix LCD screen, and as a consequence passive matrix screens are no longer available on laptops.

Now it is also possible for Thin Film Transistors to be used to control other kinds of display besides LCDs. Some people are quite optimistic about a new display technology called Optical Electroluminescence (OEL), and prototype OEL displays generally do have the pixels controlled by Thin Film Transistors.

So, it is therefore technically true that not all LCD displays are TFTs, and also that not all TFTs are LCDs, but for practical purposes the two terms are synonymous, particularly when referring to laptop screens. So the person in the computer shop was doing a fine effort at demonstrating that he did not know anything.

Why 5.1 channel audio is good

When I was assembling my present Athlon 64 based PC, I initially couldn't get anything to appear on the screen. The motherboard would boot, the fans would spin, and then nothing would appear on the screen. (In the end, the solution was an extreme case of needing to kick myself for missing something obvious - socket 754 motherboards have a second 4 pin 12V power connector that provides power to the CPU and that needs to be plugged in in addition to the main 20 pin ATX connector, and the socket A motherboards I had previously assembled do not. And I didn't have the 12V connector connected). I am not a gamer, and as a consequence I didn't bother upgrading the graphics card, although most of the rest of the computer was new. As it happened though, bad case design had meant that I had had a little difficulty removing the graphics card from the previous machine, and I had forced it a little more than I would have liked in order to get it out. As a consequence, when the new machine did not work, I assumed that the problem was with the graphics card.

So, eager to get my new computer to start, I purchased a new graphics card. I did something I wouldn't normally do, and bought the card from my local retail park PC World, a branch of the evil Dixons group. (Okay, not actually evil, just clueless and stocked with a far too limited selection of seriously overpriced product. The description of the Vogons from The Hithhikers Guide to the Galaxy as "not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters" comes to mind, actually). I got some kind of 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600 that had been returned by somebody else for about £60 if I recall correctly.

Anyway, as I said, the graphics card turned out to not be the problem. Once I had the machine working on the original graphics card, I took the new card I had bought back to PC World in the condition they had sold it to me. Perfectly reasonably (given there was nothing wrong with the product they had sold me) they were not willing to give me a refund, but they were willing to allow me to exchange it for something else from the store. (So they perhaps weren't evil). However, the issue of the store being overpriced and badly stocked came up, and it took me a while to find anything I wanted. Eventually, I found a set of Creative 5.1 speakers for about the right right amount of money, and I bought them and took them home. Plugging them into the computer, I found two problems. Firstly, the OEM copy of Cyberlink PowerDVD that came with the DVD drive turned out to only support 2 channel audio. In order to listen to my DVDs with full six channel audio, I needed to get some extra audio codecs. (Does Windows XP media center edition come with extra audio codecs built in? Even if it does, it doesn't greatly matter because I have XP Home). Cyberlink had a variety of packages available. The cheapest including Dolby Digital 5.1 cost $20, but I went for the "every codec under the sun" package for $25 (mainly because I wanted to be able to listen to DTS soundtracks on those DVDs that have them). Okay, great.

Still, though, there was one problem. I did not bother buying a separate sound card for the PC, on the (ultimately correct) assumption that the on board 5.1 audio would be fine. The speaker system is connected to the computer via three 1/8th inch two channel audio connectors (mini-headphone jacks, basically) on the back panel. For some inexplicable reason, there are two conventions for the third connector (which handles the centre speaker and the sub-woofer) in such cases. Because the nature of these audio channels and the way they are amplified is so different, you can't simply reverse the speakers, as you could if there was any such confusion for any of the other channels. And the driver that came with the motherboard (and later versions on the VIA website) didn't allow the channels to be reversed in software. So rather than getting the dialogue out of the centre speaker (as is normal with most movies), I got a very garbled version of the dialogue out of the sub-woofer.

However, there was finally a solution. A bit of googling located a different set of drivers for the on-board audio system, which did allow me to properly reverse the audio channels. Finally I could listen to DVD soundtracks the way that god intended.

And what can I say? The audio is just beautiful. I have the full cinema soundtrack in all its surround sound, multichannel and low frequency effects glory to listen to when I am watchind DVDs on my lovely 19 inch Sony DVI display. The difference is noticeable and is immensely better than with lesser sound systems. (Many people use astonishingly crap speakers on their computers - this doesn't matter if you are only using the speakers for dignostic purposes, but if you are going to listen to music or watch movies you need better). I have a set of two channel speakers that are fine for music but not as good for movies, and I probably would have used these for the new computer if it were not for the fact that I had store credit to spent at PC World. While I am not happy that it took me as much effort as it did to get the computer to work, the end consequence was good, as it led me to buy a set of speakers that I would have bought had I known how good it would be to have them.

Oh the Humanity

Something terrible is going on in Australia prior to and on our national day. Sausages are being recalled. How will we the nation cope?

The foibles of the modern technological world

When I went from England to France on Saturday morning, the time was adjusted automatically from Greenwich Mean Time to Central European Time. (This was slightly confusing to me, as I was not expecting it. Presumably the GSM mobile phone standard or one of the additions that were made to it later allows the network to send a time signal, and my phone (a quad band GSM/GPRS Motorola v500) supports this feature. Presumably also one of the French networks that I connected to is transmitting such information, so the phone's time was adjusted. (I am permitted to roam to any of the three French networks, and I would have been connected to all three at various times, so it is only necessary for one network to be doing this).

However, when I came back to England, nothing happened. My phone is still set to French time. Presumably my home network - the Orange network in the UK - does not transmit time signal information. Therefore I have to reset the clock manually. It is normal for phones to be allowed to connect to any network when roaming in foreign countries, but only to their home network in their home country. Therefore whereas it is only necessary for one French network to be broadcasting a time signal for my clock to be adjusted when I go there, it is necessary for one specific network (Orange) to be broadcasting a time signal for my phone to be adjusted when I come back.

This is the worst of all possible worlds of course. If you use your mobile phone as a timepiece, you want its behaviour to be predictable. You want to know that either that it will reset itself automatically or it won't. A situation where it will reset itself sometimes but not at other times is not ideal.

And it must be a complete pain in the arse for people who (say) work in cross channel ferries and whose phones are constantly switching from English to French networks and back again.

Still in Paris

It is a little after four on Sunday afternoon. I am in a faux-English brew pub near the French national library. The beer is good. The WiFi is free. I could go and explore a little more of the more remote bits of Paris, as I intended to when I arrived, or I could have a couple more pints, continue typing away, and watch Newcastle United play Arsenal on the big screen.

Life is hard.

I am in Paris

Well, strictly speaking I am presently in the inner Parisian suburb of Clichy rather than the city itself. I am planning on spending the weekend mostly pottering around in the suburbs. More later.

Observation of the day

My mother's Pecan Pie recipe is a dangerous weapon. I should use it with care.

(Of course, as a cook, I generally take it as a compliment if the dishes from which I served the food are completely empty at the end of the evening).

Low cost airline update

It seems that Ryanair has recently added or is about to add flights not just to Porto from London but also to Santander and Santiago de Compostela. It looks like I visited that north and north western section of Iberia during its last summer of being largely free of Anglophones. (Do I mind this? Not really. I did really like the place, and it is now easy for me to visit bits of it (even for a weekend) without having to make absurd long distance journeys).

Redirection

I have a piece on visiting a strange and wonderful little piece of Japan that exists in north London over at Samizdata.

I suppose I am not a nerd king god for nothing

For undisclosed reasons I was in a really shocking mood yesterday, and I managed to be rude to a couple of people at work, before going home reasonably early. I had intended to do some blogging for Samizdata - I have a piece on Japanese food and how this relates to the interactions between the cultures of Tokyo and London to write - but somehow couldn't motivate myself to write it. Instead I sat down and repartitioned my hard drive and installed a 64 bit version of Linux on a new partition. (I will install the beta of the 64 bit version of Windows XP on another partition in due course).

Somehow this was very relaxing.

Michael Jennings quote of the day


Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still question'd me the story of my life,
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it;
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field
Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels' history:
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven
It was my hint to speak,--such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house-affairs would draw her thence:
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
She'd come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse: which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively: I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange,
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:
Here comes the lady; let her witness it.


Othello, explaining how he won Desdemona, in Act I of Othello, by William Shakespeare. (It ended badly, of course).

Redirection

I have a piece on being an expatriate, having other expatriates link to you, and in some sense on the differing electrical plugs of the world over at Samizdata.

Ye Gods.





Thanks (if that is the right word) to Jackie

Happy New Year, Everybody

I am very deliberately going to answer the same questions I answered a year ago, and a year before that, even though some of them are perhaps not quite the same questions I would ask of myself twelve months later, and some are questions to which I don't really have answers. New questions will be answered wherever they feel appropriate. Just browsing through, it is interesting how many things mentioned in the questions that I didn't get around to doing this year. Despite that, it feels like it was an extraordinarily event filled year.

Countries I visited in 2004
United Kingdom, Spain (twice), Australia, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark. (* Methodological note on this question at the end)

Countries I visited in 2004 that I had not visited before
Denmark and Sweden

Greatest product I discovered while travelling to one of these countries
How can it be anything other than the Princess Mary doll?



(Oops. Couldn't think of a serious answer)

Greatest product I discovered in a country I had visited before
I think the curiously Italian milky coffee they call galao in Portugal just about qualifies.

Total number of countries visisted in my life
35 (Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China, USA, Canada, UK, France, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Kenya, Tanzania, Portugal, Spain, Monaco, Italy, Japan, Ireland, Thailand, Nepal, Macau, Finland, Estonia, South Africa, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Belgium, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark).

Number of these countries that no longer exist
3 (Czechoslovakia, Macau and Hong Kong, although you can argue both that Hong Kong and Macau are still countries or that they never were).

Best theatrical production I saw this year
I didn't see a single theatre production on stage this year. (For the second year in a row. Pathetic. Must do better. Actually, there are two plays that I have plans to see already this year, so I will do better).

Movies I most enjoyed in 2004
The Barbarian Invasions, The Incredibles, Before Sunset, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (It has been an oddly good year for movies).

Most over the top (and very Japanese) movie I saw this year
The Grudge is about the best I can do, and that was made in English for the American market, although set in Japan and made by a Japanese director and crew. I need to see more original J-Horror though, and possibly even K-Horror.

Japanese animated film that I am most glad that I finally caught on DVD
Kiki's Delivery Service

Books that I most enjoyed reading in 2004
The Confusion by Neal Stephenson (hard to get into, but worth it when I did), Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling (which I read a decade before, but which now seems astonishingly prescient).

Musical acts that I would have liked to have seen, and that I could have seen in London in 2002 if I had bought tickets in time, but didn't
Travis. (I really now should see more live music, given that I now have plenty of money and I live in London, which is a great city for it).

Favourite television program of 2004
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is gone, and the world is a much worse place for its absense. I haven't watched much television this year, other than a couple of seasons of "24" on DVD, and although that was fun it somehow isn't good enough to belong here. I should have got the DVDs of Firefly amd watched that, at some point, but I haven't. And I shall get the Wonderfalls DVDs when they come out, and I am told that J.J. Abrams' Lost is great, although I haven't seem any of it yet.

Live sporting events I saw in 2004
England v West Indies, second test, day five. Lord's. Chelsea v Manchester United. Stamford Bridge. Real Club Deportivo La Coruna v Shelbourne. Riazor Sadium, la Coruna. Chelsea v Aston Villa, Stamford Bridge.

Most stunning place I visited in 2004
Has to be Porto, although I did a wonderful walk along the Asturian coast near Gijon that definitely sticks in the memory.

Place I visited where I felt most like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes, he spied the Pacific, and all his men looked at each other, wild with surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien
The places I visited this year were a little too tame and cut-lunchy for this. I suppose looking out at the Bay of Biscay, and imagining fishing vessels arriving there full of cod in the late 15th century from places kept deeply secret was one thing. And Santiago de Compostela had a certain historial cross cultural frisson about it I suppose.

Great bridges I walked over in 2004
Again it wasn't a great year for bridges. The best I managed in terms of walking was the various bridges across the Douro in Porto, the most notable of which is the Ponte D. Luís I. I wasn't that far from a really great Bridge - The East Bridge in Denmark connecting Zealand - but I didn't quite get there. This is another of those "Must do better" situations. (As I said last year, I really need to see the Iron Bridge in Shropshire, too).

Great Bridges I travelled over in vehicles in 2004
The bridge portion of the Oresund Fixed link between Copenhagen and Malmo is about the best I can do.

Great Bridges I saw, but did not travel over in 2004
None immediately come to mind.

Great tunnels I travelled through in 2004
The tunnel portion of the Oresund Fixed Link between Copenhagen and Malmo.

Other places I visited in 2004 that are of interest to the hacker tourist
I wasn't so much of a hacker tourist this year. Reading the Stephenson novels did encourage me to walk around London looking for remnants of the scientific revolution that was going on here during the late 17th century. The Greenwich observatory is of course a hacker tourist destination par excellence, although the visit this year was not my first.

Places that are of interest to Jane Austen fans that I visited in 2004
I still haven't managed to get to Lyme Regis where Louisa Musgrove fell over in Persuasion.

Most upsetting event of the year.
One has to say the terrible earthquake and tsunami of the last fortnight.

Rawest emotional reaction of the year
My response to the Madrid bombings in March.

Moments in 2004 that most reminded me how Australian I still am
Sitting in a pub beside the Thames in Wapping after just having an (ultimately successful) job interview with Citigroup at Canary Wharf. The pub was full of Australians who worked for a Thames boat tour company on the Thames. We drank beer. We were Aussies. My ancestors lived probably a few hundred yards away before coming to Australia. So, likely, did theirs.

Most time consuming but rewarding activity I took up in 2004.
I suspect I have to say "I got a job" here.

Most surreal literary/travel experience in 2004.
I didn't quite get the literary/travel experiences right this year. I did read Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises when I went to Spain, but I couldn't get the synchronisation right. When I was in San Sebastian, the characters were in Paris. When I was in Pamplona, the characters were in San Sebastian. When I was in Gijon, the characters were in Pamplona. When I was in La Coruna, they had gone to Madrid.

Most unexpected thing that happened to me in 2004
I think I became respectable again. Not sure this is good.

(*Methodological note: To have "visited" a country, I generally consider that I must have physically left the airport. Merely changing planes does not count. However, to say I "went to Sweden" this year is perhaps pushing it, although I did strictly qualify. I flew to Malmo airport in Sweden, but then got a bus directly to Copenhagen in Denmark. At the end I got the bus directly back to Malmo airport. So I didn't really see much of Sweden except a motorway. (The stamps in my passport are Swedish, though). So I will count it.

Also, to count myself visiting a country twice, I require it to be on separate trips. If I cross the border from Spain to Portugal and then come back a couple of days later, I don't count it as two trips to Spain. This rule has changed since last year).

My missed plane story or Proving that I am the true Ponce de Leon

I have told much of the story of my trip to my trip to Spain and Portugal in August on various blogs already. However, the story of the last 36 hours of so of the trip is one I have not told until now. Perhaps I have not done this because I busy, or perhaps because I was a little embarassed by the fact that the story of the last 36 hours was almost entirely about my missing a plane. But now it is Christmas, my mood is good and I have just had a fine glass of single match Scotch.

I had been thinking of taking a trip across the top of Spain and down to Porto for a year or so, but this particular trip had to be booked in an instant. I had been offered a job, I had a couple of weeks before starting, and I had to go at once. Ideally I would have booked a flight into Bilbao or Santander and a return flight out of Porto, but at the time no discount airlines flew to Porto, and flights on full service airlines in August booked with very little notice were quite expensive. And in any event, it might be interesting to make my way back to Bilbao via an inland route rather than the coastal route that I was going on in the forward direction. So I didn't think about it too much, and I booked a return flight to Bilbao.

However, as I flew into Bilbao on the 17th of August, I looked out the plane window. Two weeks later I would realise this was a mistake. For out the window I saw the city of San Sebastian (known in Basque as Donostia), which looked simply gorgeous. I had been to San Sebastian before, and I knew in August the city would be full of bars, full of tourists, full of partying - not to mention full of Australians. I was struck by the immediate desire to go there and I had something to celebrate, so I went to San Sebastian for the evening. I did indeed find tourists, partying, beer, wonderful Basque food (the best in Spain) and Australians, so I had a fine evening. But I was a day into my trip, and I had gone a few miles in entirely the wrong direction to where I was headed. I compounded this by just following my vague wishes for a couple more days. A year before I had seen road signs pointing to "Iruna", and at the time I had not realised that this was the Basque name for Pamplona, famous for the running of the bulls. So this time I went there. Wonderful place. Must try to go there for the Siesta some time. Then the next day I went to Vitoria, administrative capital of the Basque region. (Waste of time, although the bars and food continued to be good. Never go to anywhere in which "administrative capital" is in the first sentence of the appropriate guide book entry).

Which was all fine. (I particularly don't regret going to Pamplona). But it meant that I found myself passing through Bilbao on the way to Santander three days after I had originally intended to go to Santander. Which meant that I was in a slightly greater rush to get to Porto than I had originally intended.

As I got to La Coruna, to Santiago de Compostela, past the beautiful estuaries of Galicia, I considered whether it would be better to leave Porto to another time, and to make my way back to Bilbao in plenty of time. But I checked those big yellow departure posters that one sees on continental European railway platforms, and there was an overnight train from Vigo near the Portuguese border to Barcelona. A quick check of additional train times in an internet cafe confirmed that I could get an evening train on the 29th of August (or even a morning train on the 30th) from Porto to Vigo, then the overnight Barcelona bound train from Vigo on the 30th, then I could get off this train in Burgos and spend a couple of hours at the railway station in Burgos before catching the overnight train from Madrid to Bilbao as it passed through, and be in Bilbao at 7am on the 31st, well in time for my flight back to London at 11am. Easy. Now a sane person would have bought a ticket in advance, but I find attempting to buy train and bus tickets in Spain to be a trial, as I speak very little Spanish and the person on the other side of the window seldom speaks any English at all. And anyway, virtually all British and European overnight trains that I have encountered in the past have sleepers that require reservations and a second class seating section that does not. I might have to spend the night in a seat on a train. I have done this many times before. No problem. So I put it off. Silly me.

So I went to Porto, and had a wonderful time. I walked my legs off in Porto, and got into Vigo, exhausted, at about 10pm on the 29th. I had some idea that I might go on a boat trip to the Islas Cies before getting the overnight train.

But I slept and slept, eventually getting up at what I thought was about 10am. But I had forgotten about the one hour time difference between Spain and Portugal. So it was 11am. No chance of a trip to the Islands. Still, fine. I would have a long leisurely lunch in a restaurant in Vigo, would wander around town a bit, perhaps look at the port, and then head for Bilbao. But first to the station to buy a ticket.

But once I had communicated (with difficulty) what I wanted to the people at the ticket office, things changed. No, it was not possible to book a ticket on that evening's train to Burgos. The train was entirely sleepers - no seats - and no tickets were available on overnight trains for three days. (As to whether this actually served the customers of the Spanish railways well, I guess they don't ask that question much. Such are the joys of state owned railways). The gentleman behind the counter did not laugh and was (as far as I could tell) sympathetic, but there was nothing that could be done. There were plenty of seats on trains to Madrid, but this didn't help.

Now my situation was not necessarily terrible. The distance to Bilbao was maybe ten hours travel. I had to be in Bilbao in about 22 hours. If I could find a series of transport options that could keep me on the road or on a train for a fair portion of that time, I could probably still make it. There would likely be a period overnight where travel would not be possible unless I was on a portion of a long distance train or bus. Local day transport in most places would probably start at 6am or 7am the next morning, so if I could get to somewhere close enough to Bilbao that the first bus or train to Bilbao in the morning would get me there in time to make my flight. That meant Burgos, or (on the coast) maybe Santander.

Rather than attempting to get a train some of the way, I went to the bus station to check whether there was a long distance bus going in the right direction. Bad move. Nobody at the bus station seemed to speak any English, and few timetables were posted. It was possible to get a bus to Ourense - which was in approximately the right direction. There were also plenty of buses to Madrid. Vigo was one of those cities where the bus station has been built a long way from the centre of the city to make it hard for people to use (or something) - so I didn't go back to the train station and just got on the bus to Ourense.

Having a couple of hours later got to the bus station in Ourense, I looked at timetables there. There did appear to be an overnight bus to Bilbao, but the woman behind the ticket counter was extremely unhelpful to people who did not speak Spanish, and eventually appeared to be indicating either that the bus no longer ran or that there were no seats. So no good. (There were however lots of buses to Madrid). I went to the railway station and there was a train to Leon a couple of hours later, as well as a train to Madrid. So I went to a cafe, had some lunch and perhaps a beer and a coffee, and then got the train to Leon.

On the train I encountered a couple of Americans. One was a college student who was spending a semester at a university in Oviedo, and the other was her boyfriend, with who she had been travelling prior to her starting her studies, and who was flying back to the US in a couple of days. I dicovered that they had also come up from Porto the previous evening, and had intended to get an earlier train to Ponferrada and Leon. However, they had forgotten about the time difference between Portugal and Spain and had missed the morning train, and were thus on the afternoon one.

Now discovering that there had been an earlier train was slightly annoying to me, as if I had got up and had got that one, I would have got to Leon in the mid afternoon, and there would have been no difficulty whatsoever getting to Burgos or Santander - or perhaps even all the way to Bilbao - by the evening. But as it was I would get into Leon at about eight in the evening, probably too late to get any further transport that evening.

But I had a nice chat on the train with the Americans, as in my experience one does with Americans.

And in any event, I had a slightly odd urge to visit Leon. My reason for this may or may not have been almost entirely stupid. When reading history a few years ago, I discovered that the first European to visit North America was traditionally considered to be someone named "Ponce de Leon", who visited Florida in 1513. (An episode of Seinfeld a few years back made fun of the name, merely because I think they thought it was an amusing name). The suggestion that he was the first European to North America is entirely ridiculous, as a great many Vikings, Basque fishermen, merchants from Bristol, etc etc got there first, but he probably was the first European to get to North America via the Carribean.

My immediate assumption from knowing this was that "Ponce" was a title of nobility and that this particular gentlaman came from somewhere near Leon, a place I found on a map of Spain and otherwise knew nothing whatsoever about. So I sort of had an idea that it might be fun to visit Leon. Also, on this trip I had been (quite deliberately) travelling through the ethnic and cultural fringes of Spain, and Leon was quite obviously in Castille. This was part of the ruling culture of Spain.

So when I had planned to come back overland by a more leisurely route, I had thought that I might stop in Leon and have a look around. This had left my schedule when I had got distracted earlier, but now I found myself in Leon at about half past eight in the evening, not knowing quite what I was doing. I first went to the ticket office and attempted to see if I could get a train ticket to Burgos overnight. There was only one train to Burgos, and this was the same train to Barcelona that I had been unable to get a ticket for in Vigo, so unsurprisingly I was still unable to get a ticket to it. I could get a ticket to Palencia (halfway to Burgos) or Valladolid (a bigger town, but closer to Madrid than Bilbao) on an overnight train to Madrid fom La Coruna that left Leon at about half past four in the morning, however. (And of course, if I wanted to get the train all the way to Madrid, there would be no problem).

I was at this point exhausted and hungry. I saw a McDonald's in the distance and went and ate, after which I felt much better. This delay may have cost me the chance to get somewhere useful on a bus, but I needed to sit down for a few minutes. I then went to the bus station. There were only a few overnight buses still to leave. As always, I could go to Madrid, and there appeared to be a bus to Santander.

Hurrah, I thought. Rather than deal with the woman behind the ticket counter, I attempted to check availability on a computerised ticket machine with an "English" option. After 20 minutes of sending me in circles the machine announced that it was out of order. I then spent 20 minutes in a queue, after which the woman behind the counter basically laughed at me when I said I wanted to go to Santander on the bus that was leaving in by that time about five minutes. So it was the train to Palancia in the morning.

Thus I had about six hours to fill in in Leon. So I went for a walk. Leon turned out to be beautiful, with walkways and parks beside the Rio Bernesga, and a cathedral and public buildings in a more pompous but somehow much more Castilian style. I was no longer in the cultural fringes of Spain, and it was obvious just from walking around in the night. Leon had nightlife, and the bars and restaurants were open. I found myself a fine Belgian beer bar, and had some Belgian beer. I sat in another bar, and had a little food. At around two I disvovered that bars had switched off their espresso machines prior to closing and that I could not buy coffee, although I could still have beer or wine. I went back to the station, where the cafe was still open and still serving coffee. (Imagine trying to buy a cup of coffee or a beer in a British railway station at half past two in the morning). The television in the bar was showing a bizarre Spanish game show in which women in bikinis were attempting to push contestants off conveyor belts with long poles, which was certainly intriguing, if nothing else. At 4.30am I caught the train to Palencia, where I arrived an hour later.

It was obvious upon getting there that I had made a bad choice. Palencia was a small town, and there were no early buses to Burgos or Bilbao. Perhaps there would have been from Valladolid, but the distance was such that they still might have been early enough. I attempted to catch the first train to Burgos at about 8am, but although it appeared on the timetable it never appeared on the electronic departure boards or in reality. I got the first bus to Burgos at about 9am. I then got a bus to Bilbao at about 10.30, and got into Bilbao at around 12.30 pm. My flight had left an hour and a half before. I had failed.

There was only one thing to do, which was to play the check-in desk game at Bilbao airport. My ticket was on Easyjet, a budget airline. The rules stated that if I missed my flight I would lose my seat and would have to buy another ticket. Which is fine. In the end it was my fault.

However, check in agents always have a little bit of discretion. In a genuine emergency they can waive the rules. (On the one and only occasion that I genuinely was prevented from making a flight by a natural disaster, getting onto a later flight really wasn't a problem). Even in lesser circumstances, airlines don't really want to piss off their customers, so come up with a good excuse and they might be nice to you. One thing which has a big impact on this is the period of time by which you miss your flight. Show up five minutes late and they may put you on the next flight for free. Show up a day late and you have no hope. I was going to show up two hours late at best. I wasn't hopeful but I had some chance. (I was helped by the fact that I was on Easyjet, who are more sympathetic in such instances than are Ryanair, at least in my experience). So even though I had missed my flight by two hours, time was still of the essence.

So I rushed for a taxi. The Bilbao bus station appeared to be surrounded by taxis on all sides, and finding precisely which taxi was at the front of the peculiar circular queue took some time, but I eventually found it

"Taxi?"
"Si"
"Airport?"
"Si"

Twenty minutes later I was in the quite attractive Santiago Calatrava designed terminal at Bilbao airport. Calatrava is famous for his bridges, and his airport terminal looks a bit like one of his bridges, but I digress. I went to the Easyjet ticket counter. I explained that I had missed my flight by two hours. The woman behind the counter told me I would have to buy another ticket. I gave her my best beleagured and exhausted look, not hard as I actually was both those things. I asked her what I had to do to buy another one, giving her my best "Oh this is terrible - "I am completely exhausted and am having a really bad day, but I suppose I am resigned to paying extra, but I know you are only doing your job so give me the bad news" look, and told her that I was late because a train was cancelled. (This was as far as I know true, although I almost certainly would have still missed the flight if it had not been cancelled). She asked me where. I said in Palencia. She corrected my pronunciation - adding a lisp to make it "Palenthia", took the piece of paper with my flight details and typed something into her computer. She looked on her screen and told me that she could in fact save my reservation and put me on the next flight to London, although there would be a €30 fee. The flight was even to Gatwick Airport whereas the original flight had been to Stansted, and I live much closer to Gatwick. Easyjet fly London-Bilbao three times a day, so I would only have to wait a couple of hours. As the journey home from the airport in London would be much shorter, I would probably be home at about the same time I would have been had I caught the earlier flight.

This was far, far better than the worst case scenario (which could have meant paying something like five times that for a new ticket). The woman had used what powers of discretion she had and had been nice to me. I thanked her very warmly, pulled out my credit card and paid the €30. I headed for the bar, where I had another couple of beers and some Basque food before boarding the flight to London for my new job that was starting two days later.

And the lesson I learned from this? Well, Spain has a hub and spoke transport system. It is always easy to get to Madrid. If I had booked my return flight from Madrid rather than Bilbao (which I could have done) there would have been no trouble making my flight, regardless of how many trains I missed or failed to buy a ticket for. In future I will remember this.

And the other way in which the world is improving? Ryanair is about to start discount flights from London to Porto. If I were to do this next year I wouldn't have to get back to my starting point anyway. I am not going to do this next year, but I think I might perhaps go for a drive to some of the vinyards of the upper Douro, where the grapes from which port are made are grown. That sounds nice.

Some random thoughts on bridges

Brian Micklethwait made a post on his blog about the new, magnificent Millau viaduct over the Tarn River in southern France. Various people made further comments about it (which can be read if you scroll down the post). In particular Michael Blowhard made an observation that amounts to the fact that he doesn't like modern cable stayed bridges compared to more classical suspension bridges. I started writing a comment which got a little out of control, so I ended up deciding to post it here. I recommend you read the original post/comments first. It would also probably be better with pictures, but I don't have time to draw them.

There is actually nothing impractical in terms of physics with what Michael Blowhard suggests. You could build a viaduct with multiple suspension spans, just as the Millau viaduct has been built with multiple cable stayed spans. Each end tower would be anchored to the ground on one side, and would have one end of the cable catenary (not a parabola) from which the deck is suspended hanging from the other side. The non-end towers would have a catenary hanging from each side. This is in fact probably the way the bridge would have been built prior to the invention about 20 years ago of the materials that made long span cable stayed bridges practical. However, it wasn't done because it would have been too expensive. (There are also perhaps issues with safety. A catastrophic failure of a multiple span suspension bridge would be more likely to cascade from one span to another than is the case with a multiple span suspension structure).

Or perhaps Michael is saying that he would prefer a single span suspension bridge. Once again there is absolutely no physical reason why this couldn't be done across the Tarn at Millau, other than the cost of it. One possibility would be to actually build the two towers on the banks of the valley - that is have a bridge which does not touch the floor of the valley anywhere. This would lead to an extremely long span (2.5km) which would be the longest in the world, but not by a huge margin (the largest is presently 1.991 km long). Or you could anchor the towers on the floor of the valley and have a shorter main span. This would require pretty immensely thick towers, but again there is no reason why it couldn't be done. Other than the expense.

The reason why we now have lots of cable stayed bridges nowadays is of course simply cost. (cable stayed = the cables connect the tower to the deck directly but at a non-vertical angle. suspension bridge = there are catenaries between the two towers to which the deck is connected by vertical cables). In around 1980 new materials were invented that were strong enough to allow large cable stayed bridges to be constructed. As these dispense with an entire aspect of the design of suspension bridges (the suspended catenaries) the total mass of such bridges is much smaller, and the total cost of much lower.

But, this only hold up to span lengths up to about 1km. For lengths above this the lateral stresses on the deck are so great the the modern materials cannot cope with them, and a classical suspension bridge is still the only possible way to go. So, simultaneously with the construction of a great many cable stayed bridges around the world (This one in Normandy being one of the largest) the last decade has also been a great time for the advancement of the art of the classical suspension bridge. However, this is perhaps not noticeable to the casual observer, as while there have been a huge number of new cable stayed bridges build with span lengths of (say) 500m to 1000m, there have been fewer than ten new and immense suspension bridges. (List here). But, these small number of bridges have been particularly great. The longest is this great structure connecting Kobe in Honshu to the Island of Shikoku in Japan. (Unlike the Millau viaduct, this one is pretty genuinely a white elephant).

But all that have been built so far pale in comparison next to the bridge the Italians are planning on building across the Straits of Messina connecting mainland Italy and Sicily. This will have a main span of 3.3km, which will be by far the longest span ever built, massively further than the distance across the Tarn Valley for instance.

Unlike the Millau viaduct, this one will indeed be a colossal white elephant (and a lot of the money to pay for it will end up in the hands of dubious people, as happens in southern Italy). But somehow I just want to see it, and to walk across it. For white elephant or not it will certainly be magnificent.

Redirection

I have a piece on visiting Christiana (basically a hippie colony close to central Copenhagen) over at Samizdata.

Michael Jennings poem of the day

Love in a Life.

I

Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time, herself!-not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,-
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.

II

Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune-
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,-who cares?
But 'tis twilight, you see,-with such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

Robert Browning (1812-1889).

Redirection

I have a lengthy piece telling some more stories about my August trip to Spain and Portugal over at Samizdata.

The decline of England

I now work in the office development at Canary Wharf in East London. The easiest way for me to get home from work near Selhurst station just north of Croydon is to catch an underground train on the Jubilee line to London Bridge, and to then catch a mainline train (there is one every half hour at 19 and 49 minutes past the hour) to Selhurst. When I started the job I found that I would leave work approximately on the hour or half hour. This would allow me to make the connection with the minimum possible time to change trains at London Bridge.

Inevitably, though, I did not always make the connection quite right. And on those occasions where I have missed my train, my subsequent behaviour has turned out to be eminently predictable. Like many railway stations, London Bridge has a bar. I have discovered a tendency on my own part to adjourn to this bar. Once last week I did something horrendous, which was stay in the bar rather than catch the next train after the one I had missed.

I find, sadly, that my aim is now to arrive at London Bridge about 15 minutes before (or alternately, after, depending on how you look at it) my train is due. I then go to the bar and have a pint before heading home. It is becoming one of the highlights of my day.

Sad really.

I think, though, that the railway station bar is an important thing, and while it is not threatened at major London stations like London Bridge, it is elsewhere. On a recent trip to Cambridge I discovered somthing horrendous. The bar in Cambridge station had been taken away, and replaced with a Marks & Spencer food store. The story about how Marks & Spencer's food business is strong while their clothing business is completely stuffed belongs somewhere else, but they are getting quite good at putting little food stores in relatively small locations.

But in a way I think it is sad. I can no longer stop for an alcoholic drink in a bar when delayed at Cambridge railway station, something I have done a few times over the years. The rather dirty and unimpressive little pub in the station is no more. Which is kind of sad. This is the place where Douglas Adams had the famous biscuit incident (as told in "So Long, and thanks for All the Fish"), which he always insisted really happened to him and which he did not steal from Jeffrey Archer). And an English tradition is being taken away and replaced by a store selling ready to heat and/or cook preprepared meals for stressed people like me who work hours that are too long.

Normally I would approve of such progress, but somehow here it is slightly jarring.

(This isn't a dead blog. But, sadly, it is now an occasional blog).

Favourite fictional word

Guess which word I voted for?

This is a blog post, albeit a trivial one

The other day, I was in the supermarket and I noticed some "Australian mature cheddar" cheese for sale. In Australia, the vast majority of the cheese that one eats is local (and in a lot of subcategories of cheese it is hard to buy an imported product, just as it is hard to buy imported wine). However, one doesn't see it very often over here.

As a consequence, I bought a piece. I have just tried it, and it is mighty fine cheese. Whatever maty be said about my native land, the agricultural products are outstandingly good.

Things I discovered at work today

I am still quite proficient in Visual Basic, despite the fact that it is three or four years since I last used it. I'm not sure if this is good.

Redirection

I have a piece on the finances of international cricket and the present ICC Champions Trophy over at ubersportingpundit.

Doing things other than blogging

Yesterday, I succumbed and bought the DVD of Kiki's Delivery Service that I have been eyeing for months but hadn't bought because it was a little on the pricey side. I have said it before, but Miyazaki is a god. His films are simply so beautiful, and they have a lovely sense of humor, and such delightful characters. (For some reason the main character is usually a child not far from adulthood).

But I haven't finished watching it yet.

I love London

This evening I went to see the Pet Shop Boys and a full symphony orchestra play an original musical accompaniment to Sergei Eisenstein's great silent movie Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square. The film was being projected onto a large screen above the musicians, where was either attached or adjacent to Nelson's Column. Despite a little bit of a drizzle, a large audience showed up to watch this, and some members of the audience were quite creative in their choice of vantage point. (The authorities were quite tolerant of this, too). I have particular admiration for the people who waded through the square's water feature and watched the movie and musicians from the top of the fountain in its centre. The view must have been excellent, but I do wonder how long these people took to dry.

I was also struck by how much Russian (and/or other Slavic languages: I can't really tell them apart) I heard spoken by people in the crowd. London today is quite a Slavic place.

Sorry for the lack of bloggage

But I am horrendously busy, and to be honest I was pretty blogged out even before I became horrendously busy. I will post a piece on the future (or not) of this blog and of my blogging at the weekend when I may (or alternately may not) have some time.

Brief Observation

The person sitting at the desk next to mine at my new job is Indian, and is as fantatical a cricket fan is is typical for people of that nationality. This is going to be fun. (Where can I obtaining a large poster of Ricky Ponting batting? If the picture was of him hitting one of those sixes in last year's World Cup final, that would be great).

Back in London

Quite tired, as I spent most of last night crossing Spain before flying back today. I had a lovely holiday though.

Irritants, and a good lunch

Portugal is a "closed Sundays" sort of country, which is a little irritating on Sundays. For one things it means that the internet cafe with the beautiful woman is today closed, so I have had to go elsewhere. Also, it means that the port lodge where I think I left one of my possessions (nothing important) after a long and alcoholic lunch with an American physicist and his wife (who now live in Provence) and during which I somehow managed to discuss the various approaches to solving the Navier Stokes equations is today closed. No matter. I will send them an e-mail and see if I can get it back that way.

And I am now going to look at the Crystal Palace, which is in a park on a hill. Unlike the one in south London, this one did not burn down in the 1920s.

Three good things about Porto

1 - The city is extremely beautiful.

2 - Everything in the city is extremely cheap.

3 - port.

Now in Porto

All the ways I learned to order coffee in Spanish are no longer any good, and I need to start again. (For some reason Portuguese coffee seems to resemble Italian coffee more than Spanish coffee - I don't know why this is).

I have hard that the Douro valley is beautiful and I have seem photographs of it, but I have to say it really was splendid to come out of the Porto suburbs and then onto a railway line coming downstream on the side of the valley in the morning mist, into a tunnel and then finally into the main Porto railway station (which is quite spectacular, with the lines terminating at one end of a large metal trainshed, and the lines going straight into tunnels at the other end of the platform).

From a couple of hours, Porto is an interesting and rather magnificent city. Crumbling imperial grandeur, still the poorest country in western Europe, but with twenty years of solid growth starting to uncrumble things. (And of course there is all that EU money that has paid for infrastructure that Portugal by itself might not be able to afford for a few more years. A couple of nice modern bridges over the Douro beside a classical high deck steel arch. A large public works project working on beautification of the main square, but which makes it ugly and awkward to get around from now. Possibly some of the most traditional food markets in Europe, but also a couple of shopping malls that are modern and architecturally rather better than the equivalents in England. (I don't know whether to blame planning laws or what, but shopping malls in England are generally dreadful in this regard).

And the internet cafe I am in is perhaps an example. It is in the same street as the nice shopping malls. Rather than crappy four year old computers running Windows 98 and without properly updated software (as was the case in Santiago yesterday), the computers here are small form factor (ie Shuttle like), quite new, have Athlon XP2600+ CPUs, 480MB of RAM, Windows XP Pro, really nice Sony LCD displays (17" with 1280x1024 resolutions). And the person running the cafe is not a hard core geek, but a rather beautiful young woman. She is wearing glasses and looks a little studious and appears able to help people with their tech problems. I am not sure of her overall level of tech competence, but it can't be too bad.

I wonder if she will marry me if I ask nicely.

Tourists in Santiago de Compostella, and toasted ham sandwiches in Spanish bars

The interesting thing about travelling through the places I have been on this trip is that I have been off the package holiday and backpacker circuit. Bilbao now gets people visiting to see the Guggenheim, but these are more older independent travellers. San Sebastian is very much on the backpacker circuit, and Pamplona is on the tourist circuit during its fiesta and the running of the bulls, but less so at other times. But head west of Bilbao and you leave the English speakers behind, although many of these places attract Spanish holidaymakers. La Coruña is famous for its football team, but there are not many Anglophones around unless there is a big football game on. (I was of course there for a medium sized football game, which did mean I bumped into a few Irishmen. It must be interesting when Machester United come to town though).

Which is why arriving in Santiago de Compostella is a little bit of a shock. Santiago is the destination of a famous Christian pilgrimage, to the place where the body of St James was supposedly buried in 44AD. Santiago is a beautiful medieval city, and there are a huge number of people in town, some of them pilgrims who have actually walked one of the various routes to Santiago for religious reasons, some of who have walked one of the routes as they are famous walks, and some who have (like me) come to the city because it is a famous destination. In any event, you arrive in town and you are back on the tourist circuit. There are lots of shops selling souvenirs. There are lots of foreigners on the streets. There are lots of restaurants catering to tourists, the prices of which are more expensive than those in La Coruña (although still not very expensive compared to London). The first news stand I came to in town yesterday had that day's Telegraph for sale, which was nice. (I prefer to read the Times, but the Telegraph would do in the circumstances). The receptionist in the hotel I checked into spoke English. I attended a beautiful sung mass in the cathedral yesterday, and it was standing room only. (Somewhat sadly, security guards checked my bag before letting me in. In the first half of the second millennium the pilgrimage to Santiago was amongst other things a form of Christian solidarity against the Muslim occupation of Spain, and such a site is the sort of thing that the fanatics who now plague our world might target).

Of course, one can leave the medieval centre of town, and one then finds a modern town not containing so many tourists. The bars there charge prices that are about what one pays in La Coruña once more. Yesterday evening around 10pm I found myself wandering outside the medieval city. Whereas most bars have been showing the Olympics on their televisions during the day time, by that time of the evening every television had been switched to football - mostly to the Champions League qualifier between Real Madrid and Wisla Krakow. I found a fairly ordinary looking bar and ordered a beer.

In Latin countries I am never quite sure when a cafe is going to charge me extra for sitting at a table rather than at the bar. Often cafes in city centres will, but those in the provinces won't. (This seems particularly the case in France). Also, those catering to tourists are more likely to charge extra than those catering to locals. (This may be a way of charging extra to tourists given that they are more likely to sit at tables). In any event, as a non speaker of the local languages I find it easier to order at the bar. I can point at the beer tap to make it clear that I want draught beer, or I can point to the tapas in the case on the bar to make it clear I would like some of that. If I want to sit at a table, I sometimes sit at the table after this and take my beer to the table. As long as I do this before paying, the barman can charge me extra for a table if he likes, so an argument in Spanish is hopefully avoided.

And I did this last night, as I wanted to watch the Real Madrid match and there was a better view of the television from one of the vacant tables. The barman responded to this by putting a bowl of peanuts and a plate of crisps on my table. I had consumed a large meal a couple of hours earlier so I did not really want peanuts or crisps, but I appreciated the thought. However, I wasn't sure what to make of the next event, which was that the barman a couple of minutes later placed a toasted ham sandwich on my table. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. Had I somehow made a random gesture that had been interpreted as ordering a ham sandwich? Do they provide ham sandwiches gratis to drinkers like peanuts in this part of Spain? Are ham sandwiches a way of asserting the modern Christian dominance of Spain?

In any event, it looked a nice ham sandwich, so I ate it. I am a London based equities analyst for a large international bank. I can afford a ham sandwich even if I am charged an extra Euro for it.

However, as I sat there for a little longer I realised something, which is that the mood of Spanish bars changes as the evening goes on. Whereas they are fairly commercial establishments in the daytime, later in the evening they can sort of evolve into more quiet establishments where a few regulars sit and argue about football as the evening goes on. The staff of the bar themselves get some food from the kitchen and sit down at the tables and eat their own meals, all the while chatting with customers and friends and watching football. While the bar is certainly still open and if a customer comes in and orders a beer or a cup of coffee they will certainly serve him, business is not fundamentally what it is about at this time of day. The customers made a point of not ordering anything when the barman was eating, for instance. They clearly did not want to disturb his meal. And I could see that at this hour the little courtesies went in both directions, such as the ham sandwich for me. When the football match was finished and the barman had finished his meal, most of the customers slowly got up, went to the bar, and paid for what they had consumed. I was just charged the cost of a beer. I walked out and headed to the university quarter where I had another beer in a student bar, before heading off to bed. It was a nice evening.

Civilization

In Spain, English language movies are dubbed into Spanish. In Portugal, they are subtitled into Portuguese. This means that when I get to Porto tomorrow I can if I wish go to the movies. I may or may not do so (although knowing me I probably will) but it is nice to know that I can.

Redirection

I have a post discussing my trip to the football over at ubersportingpundit.

Still in La Coruña.

I'm feeling perfectly fine today. I went to bed at 7.30pm and got up at 9am, and after a croissant and a couple of cups of coffee I now feel just great. I am going to go see the second leg of the UEFA Champions league qualifier between Deportivo and Shelbourn (of Ireland) at the Riazor stadium this evening. Should be fun. I will try to blog something on ubersportingpundit after the event. I wonder how many Irish fans will be here? Not all that many I suspect, as getting here from Ireland is not all that easy, and at this time of year not especially cheap.

Oh yes. By the way, do any of my readers speak Spanish? If so, could someone tell me what the phrase "I paid for the first night when I checked in" would be translated into Spanish? This might be needed, as I had a little trouble communicating with a hotel receptionist this morning.

Now in La Coruña

However, my day has been completely wiped out by a migraine. In my case these are usually instense but fairly short lasting - a few hours only - so I should be okay tomorrow. But for now, I am going for a little lie down.

I continue to move west

I'm presently in Gijon. Between them, the two nearby cities of Gijon and Oviedo have about half a million people. I didn't realise that big an agglomeration was here, which is why of course it is a good idea to travel. I am by this point well off the normal Anglophone tourist circuit. We will see if it resumes when I get further along. Given that the second leg of a Champions League qualifier between Deportivo and Shelbourne will be played in A Coruna on Tuesday night, it is possible I will arrive in a city full of Irishmen. (And I suspect there will be tourists from further afield in Santiego de Compostela, and certainly in Porto). There are tourists here, but they are mainly Spanish. Still, nice beaches. Beautiful rugged country you come through to get here. Well worth a visit.

This truly does take the cake for "coddled students".

One day these people will get out into the cold harsh world and discover that it is not like this.

(Link via slashdot).

Update: Non-freshmen are resentful

Moving west

I am now in Santander in Cantabria. This is a seaside town which looks like it had ambitions a century ago to become the Cannes of the Atlantic coast of Spain. Clearly it didn't quite work out, and the town went into a bit of a decline. The interesting thing though is that this has now obviously reversed. The town still has a rundown decayed look in some ways, but the prosperity of the last 20 years in Spain has clearly had an impact, and although it is not the Cote de Azur, prosperous people clearly now come here. Interestingly enough, discount airline Ryanair are commencing flights here next month, so that will mean it will be in easy and inexpensive reach of 20 million people in the south east of England. If I was running a hotel here that would certainly make me happy.

Note to Ros

You really need to see more of Asia. Going to South America is good, though. I have never quite managed it.

Distractions

The plan on this trip was actually to fly into Bilbao, and to go west along the Galician coast, eventually ending up in Porto in Portugal. As it happens, none of the discount airlines fly out of anywhere between Bilbao and Faro along the coast, so the options were either to buy a ridiculously expensive one way fare on British Airways or to come back to Bilbao. Thus I have a return flight out of Bilbao in two weeks time.

Also, as I was planning the trip, I found myself slightly annoyed by a failing of mine last year. On that occasion, I saw lots of road signs leading pointing to Iruña, but did not realise that that is the Basque name for the city that is known in Spanish and to the world as Pamplona. Added to the fact that Pamplona is in Navarra, which (besides being famous for its wines) is traditionally Basque speaking but has a quite different history the country a little to the west (and is thus not part of the semi-autonomous Basque region today) and I could find a few good reasons for making a little detour east before going west.

On top of all that, the plane flew over San Sebastian on the way into Bilbao, and the beaches and islands and steep hills of that city looked so beautiful that I got an odd urge to go there. Therefore I spent yesterday afternoon in San Sebastian, the evening in the bars and restaurants of the city, and this morning came to Pamplona. San Sebastian is a gorgeous and glorious beach town, but in August that makes it something of a circus. Pamplona received an enormous influx of tourists in July for the running of the bulls, but is slightly saner in August. So I have been wandering around the city this morning. It looks culturally different, too. Whereas the Spanish national flag is not to be seen in Bilbao or San Sebastian, it is more visible in Pamplona. Here it is more a case of the Navarra, Spanish, and EU flags side by side. And I haven't seen the ikurriña, the Basque nationalist flag, although they are everywhere in the other two cities. One feels that although Navarra is certainly part of the larger territory that Basque nationalists feel should form a greater Basqueland, the Navarrans themselves are a little more ambivalent about it.

And I forgot to pack my power adaptor to allow me to charge my iPod, phone, and camera using European mains sockets. I put it on my pile of things to pack, but it seems it didn't go in my backpack. A helpful woman at the tourist office this morning suggested I try one shop. They didn't have adaptors, but they suggested another shop that did. So all is well.

Watching sport in a foreign country

There is something deeply surreal about sitting in a bar in Bilbao and watching Australian equestrians compete in the Olympics with the commentary in Spanish (or was it Basque). The downside is that there is a nasty tendency for people in bars to switch the television to uninteresting basketball games between Spain and Argentina when what you really want to watch is the swimming finals.

Well, it's a good thing I have the remains of an old Thinkpad to put it on



Okay, so I now get the point of the dock. You sit the iPod on it when you get home, and it simultaneously charges and pumps the music through the speakers of your sound system. Clever. Although it is a shame it comes with such a short power cable.

Update: While I was wandering around London this evening my iPod suddenly stopped playing music. I initially thought that the switch that locks the key pad was not working, but after looking at it carefully for a couple of minutes I discovered that the problem was actually that the software had crashed and the iPod was frozen. I knew there would be some way to reboot it but it wasn't obvious, and as it has an internally sealed battery there was no obvious way to simply disconnect the power. I therefore had to wait until I got home and then consult the manual. I then found out which combination of keys to hold down to reboot it, and once I had done this the iPod was fine.

But this was all a little declasse somehow. Crashing software is so, well, Microsoft. Apple have a classier reputation, somehow. (Which is not to say I haven't had Macintoshes crash on me at inopportune moments. I have of course).

Things change so fast

In my recent sabbatical / period of unemployment, I have often found myself in central Croydon in the day time. Wanting to either check my e-mail, blog something, or surf the web without going home, I have gone to the public library, that provides free internet access. However, the normal thing has happened that happens when you provide a "free" service: rather than being apportioned by price, the internet access has been apportioned by queueing. Normally you have to wait for ten minutes or so for your hour's internet access. This is in irritant, but I have genuinely not minded very much.

However, this afternoon I received a telephone call from the head of Smith Barney Citigroup's quantitative equity research team, offering me the job that I have mentioned obliquely in this blog that I have been interviewing for. Rather than being completely broke, I suddenly find myself with a sizeable income once again. My future boss told me that he would be e-mailing me some information, and I therefore needed to check my e-mail. I walked to the public library, and looked at the queue. Whereas thirty minutes earlier my response to the queue would not have been especially negative, I looked at a prospective ten to fifteen minute wait and the thought that went through my mind was essentially "fuck that". I walked a couple of blocks and went into a pay internet cafe for which I did not have to queue, which is where I am now. (Working for a large investment bank does that for you, I guess).

Once I have sorted a flight out, I am going to Spain and Portugal for a couple of weeks, where I intend to drink a lot of crianza. I am then starting the job at the start of September. I don't presently know what effect this will have on my blogging, although I suspect the volume will decline.

I will have to confess that I am relieved.

Update: I just impulse bought a 40Gb iPod that I can't can easily afford. I never impulse buy anything, but I am allowing myself an exception for this. (Except that it isn't really an exception, as I have been telling myself for months that I will get an iPod when I get a good job).

Security

As I thought might be the case, it has been confirmed that British SAS and SBS Special Forces troops are in Athens. There have been various comments from Greek and British government sources that they are there in a "consulting" capacity, and that they are providing "advice", although they are apparently there with a full complement of weapons and equipment. Why do I get the impression that if (heaven forbid) there is a terrorist attack on the Olympic Games in Athens, the "advice" might well consist of "Please get out of the way".

I am very pleased to hear that these guys are in Athens. The British SAS genuinely are the best in the world at this kind of thing, and I have no faith in the Greek army. I wonder where the nearest American aircraft carrier is to Greece right now? Perhaps quite nearby with a SEAL team and a substantial number of Marines handy?

When the olympics took place in Sydney four years ago, it was taken as a given that the Australian SAS where poised and ready for action. I was comfortable with this, becausee the Australian SAS are very good indeed. The Australian troops have essentially the same training as the British equivalent (and people move backwards and forwards between the two, I think) and they are troops I have great faith in when it comes to the crunch. (I believe that the Australian SAS excelled themselves in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and they have had fairly recent business in East Timor and the Solomon Islands, too). But the Greek equivalent, not so much.

The taste of childhood

I mentioned a couple of days ago that at least a portion of Australian expatriates in London essentially make up an "economically successful minority". We are basically talking professionals who live and work in London and probably make three or four times as much money as they could make at home. (Such are the rewards of living in a genuine world city). But of course if you grew up in Australia in certain ways, including at some times gut feeling, London never becomes home.

When one travels from one country to another life changes. And the little details of life change in unexpected ways. When you are in a place that is not the place that you grew up things like tastes and smells are different, and this always means that in some ways the place you are now is a little alien.

And part of this is the things that you find in the shops. Often they are almost the same, but not quite the same. This is especially the case for food items, and I think very especially the case with food items when you compare between Australia and anywhere else. Australia is a big place. The country features several climate zones. All manner of things are grown and made locally, and due to the tyranny of distance importing things is often more trouble than it is worth. In a lot of cases why really would you want to? The quality of the local product is usually extremely high.

When one lives in London one normally just gets used to it. There are subtle differences between the ingredients you use to cook food in London and the ingredients you use to cook food in Australia. You could slightly different food. It may be a little different but it isn't worse. It may once have been, but British supermarkets are now full of high quality ingredients.

But you still miss things. More than anything you miss the distinctive and most intense tastes of things that you regularly ate during your childhood. Often, this is the tastes of confectionary you ate when you were a child. And as there are in most places, there are particular types of chocolate bar and sandwich spread and other like things that are distinctive to Australia.

The Harvey Nichols department store in Knightsbridge has a certain noveau riche quality about it. I don't think it on the whole sells terribly interesting products (although there is plenty of good stuff sold there), but it has a certain catchet, and its management know how to cater to a certain clientele.



It is the sort of place that you expect to find footballers wives, hosts of reality television shows, and people who work in the public relations business, thinking that it is the height of sophistication to shop there. (Large portions of the television show "Absolutely Fabulous", were filmed in the store). I get the impression that newly rich expatriates might shop there for a while due to receiving recomendations from their secretaries, before moving somewhere a little more understated after being in London for a few years. (Harvey Nichols is certainly a place where actual Londoners shop, unlike nearby Harrods, which has been transformed into little more than a tourist attaction at this point). Selfridges is a much better store than either of them if you ask me. Being in Oxford Street possibly helps, as this is where normal people shop and they don't so much in Kinghtsbridge.

In any event, on the top floor there is a bar, a coffee bar, a kaiten-zushi restaurant, some other kind of restaurant the details of which I can't remember, and a wine shop (selling some very good stuff, including an excellent selection of Australian wines) and a food hall. Besides selling fresh and high quality meat, seafood, and fruit and vegetables, this also contains shelves of immaculately arranged packaged foodstuffs, most of them imported from interesting places and of high quality. Look at what it includes.



(Sorry about the variable quality photographs. The light was so-so, and I took the photos surreptitiously and quickly, as the proprietors of many stores do not like people taking photographs inside. As it happened nobody hassled me about it though).

And there's this:



(On previous occasions they had Mint Patties in the place that is half-heartedly filled with chocolate truffles. Disappointingly there weren't any today. I would prefer a Mint Pattie to a chocolate truffle any time).

And of course it is marvelous what a difference Milo makes (even if it is a crappy photo).



But despite all this, these are all peripheral to the key way in which Harvey Nick's sustains Australian expatriates in need.



All non-Australian readers in London with Australian friends should appreciate a key fact. If your friend is suicidal or just needs cheering up, the way to solve the problem is to go to Knightsbridge, and buy a packet of Tim Tams (even for £3.35), and give them to your friend. This will solve the problem immediately. Judging by the size of the Tim Tams section, I suspect that this is a major money making venture.



Amusingly, while I was there a young woman walked down that aisle, looked at the Tim Tams, looked at the price, and then took one packet off the shelf. She then looked like she was about to move away but the though "What the heck?" clearly went through her mind and she took a second packet off the shelf before heading to the cashier.

Oddly, though, I am not a huge fan of chocolate or sweet stuff, and although I will eat Tim Tams, they are not quite as effective on me as on most Australians.

What I would really like is a packet of Twisties. (They're the number one extruded snack, after all).

London today

The interview for the job for which I was learning the S+ went very well, and there is therefore a good chance that I will shortly be going to work in a quantitiative team in the equity research division of on of the world's largest banks. (Although one never knows, of course). The London based team I would be joining presently consists of a Greek, an Indian, a Romanian, a New Zealander, a Frenchwoman and (yes, really) and Englishman. I would be the only Australian in the team, but one of many working in financial markets in London. In fact, if things work out there will be two people I worked closely with in my last job in Sydney with who I will be working with occasionally, although they will be on different teams to me.

This is finance in London today. It has long been the case that the city is full of colonials from the ex-dominions, and for a few years the IT departments have been full of Indians, and we are now seeing the Indians spread to other parts of the businesses as well. And we are just beginning to see a few eastern Europeans. London is full twenty year olds with slavic accents working in basic service jobs, most who will probably be well paid professionals in a decade's time, and these are just starting to move up too. There have been eastern Europeans in IT departments for a while, too, although they are not as pervasive as Indians. They tend to be of type "guru" though, being concentrated amongst UNIX system administrators and things like that. The UNIX administrator who knows things about the operating system that no mere mortal should not know about, who is probably named Piotr or some variation thereof, and who has an accent that makes him sound like Count Dracula is something of a cliche in computer circles, and has been for a while. (The User Friendly comic stip parodies this cliche endlessly).

In any event, though, this is a sign of a broader trend, I think. Very international cities like London attract ambitious individuals from lots of places. The "economically successful minorities" from poorer countries tend to come in large numbers, too. Sometimes they do this because things get bad in the country they previously lived. Sometimes, though, I think they just come because it is simply less of a hassle to be a member of an economically successful group in a country where there are many economically successful groups (and where there is no poor majority group. And in a way there seems to be relatively little difference from groups who come from countries where they are an economically successful minority and those who come from somewhere like Australia, who come from countries with large middle classes and good educations systems, and who demonstrate a certain amount of initiative by self-selecting themselves and choosing to come in the first place. There is quite a distinct (and definitely prosperous) minority of Australians in London, who have, for instance, a reputation for being hard working. Getting responses like "Oh, he's an Aussie. That means he'll work hard" is definitely a good thing.

Redirection

I have a piece on a trip to a Cambridge pub, and a slightly surreal phone call over at Samizdata. Oh well. At least I know the frequency was 1800MHz.

Oooh

Roger Ebert has published another of my e-mails in his letters column. I have lost count how many times he has done this, but it is at least seven or eight I think. This time he only published to first part of the e-mail. I added some stories about buying Thunderbirds toys for children of friends of mine in Japan, but he doesn't appear to have had the space to print that.

Wednesday evening song lyrics

I never liked George Michael much
although they say he was the talented one.
Andrew Ridgley drew the map
that rescued me, took me to paradise

I was brought up to the sound of the synthesizer
I learned to dance to the beat of electronic drums
I came alive to the smouldering fire in your eyes
I love you now and I will till the day that I die

I had a tooth pulled as a child
I put it underneath my pillow
and when I looked the very next morning
There was a ten pound note

I took it to the nearest record shop
and put it down upon the counter
I've got to tell you what I know to be true
I bought my first record because of you

I was brought up to the sound of the synthesizer
I learned to dance to the beat of electronic drums
I came alive to the smouldering fire in your eyes
I love you now and I will till the day that I die

I loved everything
I loved to be around money
a daughter of negative equity
a child of Black Wednesday)

This is Sarah Nixey talking
Midi'd up and into the groove
I've got to tell you
what I know to be true

I didn't do too well at school
they said I couldn't concentrate
The day you flew off into the sunset
was the day my education was saved

then years later on Kensington High Street
I saw you drive a white convertible Golf GTI
carefully edging out into the traffic
just like a real live human being

I was brought up to the sound of the synthesizer
I learned to dance to the beat of electronic drums
I came alive to the smouldering fire in your eyes
I love you now and I will till the day that I die

Daddy lost everything
Our beautiful house
His beautiful sports car
His beautiful wife
I held his hand and told him
everything will be all right

This is Sarah Nixey talking
Midi'd up and into the groove
I've got to tell you
what I know to be true

I was brought up to the sound of the synthesizer
I learned to dance to the beat of electronic drums
I came alive to the smouldering fire in your eyes
I love you now and I will till the day that I die

I was brought up to the sound of the synthesizer
I learned to dance to the beat of electronic drums
I came alive to the smouldering fire in your eyes
I love you now and I will till the day that I die

-- Andrew Ridgley, from Black Box Recorder's third album Passionoia (2003). (Actually I think it is more Luke Haines speaking). And yes, I also remember 1992.

Redirection:

I have a Samizdata quote of the day on John Kerry. No time for any more blogging than that today.

Efficiency

At the request of a potential employer, I have been giving myself a crash course in the programming language S (the most common variants of which are named S+ and R, just to confuse people). I am an old C programmer, mainly, and this language is much higher level than that. Plus it is object oriented and more more function based than what I am used to. Still, this is quite impressive, and very easy to code.

qsort=function(a) if (length(a)<=1) a else c(qsort(a[a<a[1]]),a[1],qsort(a[a>a[1]]))

That's right, one line. Works for an array of any data type for which the logical comparison a<b makes sense, too.

Civilization

A new continental (or, more properly, just Belgian I think) style bar named the "Beer Circus" has recently opened in Croydon. It has around 15 Czech, Belgian,English (ie real ale) beers on tap, and over 150 bottled beers (mostly Belgian, but also a good selection of German and a few from other places).

Truly, a fine innovation. I asked the proprieter how long the bar had been open, and he said a couple of months, and that the business was doing very well.

Of course, it would be impossible for me to open such a bar in Sydney, as I would have to have a pub licence and these are finite in number and sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars each (thus meaning that if you have one, you have to open a huge soulless establishment also containing lots of slot machines to make a decent return on it). There would be no problem whatsoever if I wanted to open such an establishment in Melbourne, as former premier Jeff Kennett (who, whatever might be said for the man, didn't take any shit from anyone) reformed the laws a few years back.

No problem except for the logistical difficulties of importing the beer, anyway. If you want to run such a bar in London, you can stock it by driving a van to Belgium every now and then, filling it up with beer, and driving back. (Plus you have to then do some paperwork to make sure the appropriate taxes are paid). Doing that from Australia is a little harder.

Annoyances

Until recently, instant messaging has been dominated by programs such as MSN Messenger and Yahoo Instant Messaging. Until about a year ago I didn't bother with such programs, believing that real mean use IRC, or possibly the UNIX "talk" program. However, about a year ago, I gave in and started using these programs. (For anyone who is interested, I can be reached as "mjj12@btopenworld.com" on MSN Messenger, and "mjj122" on Yahoo instant Messenger).

Both these programs are based on centralised servers. There is a centralised database of information about you, and this centralised information also includes a contact list. When you log on from any computer in the world, your contact list is loaded onto your computer and appears on your screen. The downside is that the owner of the system has a centralised database of information about you, and that if something goes wrong with the server, you are screwed. Also, for high bandwidth communication such as voice (which these instant messaging programs also offer) going through a central server is perhaps not ideal from an efficiency point of view.

Which is why people on the internet have taken to Skype in a big was recently. Skpe is sold as principally a voice communication tool, with instant messaging as a secondary feature whereas earlier services have sold it the other way round, but I think a better way of looking at it is that Skype is the same sort of application with two things changed: firstly it uses a far better audio codec so the quality of voice communication is much better; secondly it is not centralised but is instead peer to peer; (thirdly it is also encrypted end to end, and this is good, but I think it is less important as a selling point).

The peer to peer part is good from the point of efficiency and privacy, but it causes one little foible. Because there is no central server, your contacts list can only be stored locally on your hard disk. (Also because there is no central server, the information that you have gone on or off line takes longer to reach all your contacts, as it has to propagate around the network to them via a non-direct route, too. Again, this is important but less of an issue than the first). This means that if you log on to Skype from a computer other than your usual one, you do not have your contacts list with you. Personally I have thre Skype installations in this room with me now: one on a laptop, one on the Windows partition of my desktop, and a third on the Linux partition of my desktop. (Another good thing about Skype is that the people behind it have done a Linux version, for which they have my sincere thanks). These have contacts lists consisting of different subsets of my actual list of contacts. I am slightly concerned about logging onto each and adding the same set of contacts again, because I think it may annoy my friends if they are asked repeatedly if I may add them as a contact. (Actually, if Skype is well designed then they will not be asked again, but I am not sure if it is in this regard).

The Skype people claim they are working on a solution to this type of problem. Hopefully this does not involve going back to the whole idea of a central server, but I fear it may. Thems the breaks, I guess.

Observation of the day

Cheap wine from Spain is often much better than cheap wine from France. Maybe this is due to the fact that when you visit Spain, Spanish people seem to start drinking red wine at breakfast time and then keep going all day, whereas in this day and age French people don't so much. I suspect that they did a century ago, however. If they did, does this mean that there has been a decline in French low end winemaking over the last century? Or is the relatively low quality of cheap French wine why they stopped?

Australia on the other hand doesn't really do cheap wine, or at least Australia does not export cheap wine. Australia does mid market wine, and has great quality control. (Australia also occasionally does fine wine, but only to a fairly small extent compared to the French or the Italians). The Australian wine industry's great triumph over the last 20 years is to have put its mid market wines on the British market (and to a lesser extent other markets such as Germany, Scandinavia and the United States) and to have moved people who were drinking low end French wine (or who weren't drinking wine at all) to mid market Australian wines.

And when I have more money (very soon, I hope) I may move back to mid market wines. But for now I am drinking a bottle of DOC Navarra 2002 for which I paid about £3.50. This is no great sacrifice, because it is really quite pleasant.