Men and their urge to fiddle with cars and/or computers, and more discussion of my own computer needs

When I was a kid, there was a certain sort of young man who you would see with his car on his driveway, and he would have the bonnet up (or he would be underneath the car) and he would be constantly fiddling with the endine, or he would have much of the engine disassembled next to the car. In those days cars were relatively simple devices, and it was possible to figure out how they worked, do their own maintenance, and tweak their performance largely by doing so. And of course there was lots of empty space under the bonnet. It was possible to actually reach in and get at the components of your engine.

Improvements in engineering and the computer revolution have largely killed this. Cars are now full of complicated electronics and sealed box components. Many simple devices (eg a carburetor), have been replaced by more complicated equivalents (fuel injection). There is little empty space, and everything is pushed so close together that it is hard to take apart and put together again. While men still love their cars, car maintenance has become a far more specialised task.

However, something else has come into being, which is the standardisation and compatibility of computer parts. Many men now are frequently to be found with the side of their computer's case open, fiddling with the insides, changing boards and cards, and in extreme cases doing things live overclocking the CPU to tweak it and make it run better. Once again, the insides of desktop computers have lots of open spaces, and lots of places where it is possible to fiddle.

This attitude seems very similar to the old fiddling with the engine of your car business. There is something very male about it. I am not sure if it is the same people who would once have done one who now do the other, however. I would have never bothered with car engines and the like - they are just too dirty and require too much physical effort - but the urge to fiddle around inside computers is for me a strong one.

But perhaps this is going away, too. The percentage of computers sold that are laptops is increasing. Whereas they were once largely just a business tool, they are becoming a major consumer product as well. The growth in readily available wireless networking is making them more attractive as a product too, even if you don't take them out of your house. (Being able to take your computer out the back garden with you is more valuable than you realise until you try it). And laptops are like modern cars. The parts are squashed very close together and there is no space. There are fewer parts that are interchangeable between different brands. You can't get inside and fiddle.

As regular readers know, my only computer is a laptop, and I like this and find it tremendously useful. Fiddling inside computers is largely something I do to the computers of my friends. There is a certain risk in this (for 20 minutes or so last week, this computer would not boot and it was my fault because I had bumped an IDE cable while removing a PCI card. Fortunately, it was easily fixed) but one does also earn kudos after fixing something that does not work. When I have a larger place to live and more money, I think I will build myself a desktop machine from scratch so that I have something to play with / run my entertainment system, and I can use the laptop after that mainly for portability purposes. But the desktop machine will be largely an indulgence. The present laptop on steroids does satisfy all my computing needs for now.

The thing that is a minor irritant is the amount of plugging in that is necessary when I place my laptop on my desk. Power, USB devices (via a single cable that goes into a hub), speakers, Firewire devices (if I had any) all have to be plugged in. Connecting printers, speakers and the like via WiFi is still a nuisance and quite expensive, although it can be done. Wireless USB is thought of but not quite there. Bluetooth has been promised a lot, but Bluetooth devices are not ubiquitous. What I want is wireless of some sort to more or less come as standard with all hardware, so I never have to plug anything in except to the power. We are not there yet, but we are tantalisingly close.

Update: I have just been playing around on my old laptop not on steroids, which was my only computer until December. It has an 550 MHz Intel Celeron, an 800x600 screen, 64Mbytes of RAM, a 5GByte hard disk, CD-ROM only, no ethernet or wireless (although I did run a USB ADSL modem off it, so a fast internet connection was something I did have, although only 64Mbytes of RAM meant that the computer was constantly swapping stuff in and out of RAM and the connection thus was not optimised, shall we say). How did I ever live with this? The new machine has a 1.4GHz Pentium M, a 1920x1200 screen, 512MBytes of RAM, a 60GByte hard disk, a DVD-ROM/CR-RW combo drive, 10/100 ethernet, and 802.11b/g wireless, amongst other things. I continue to be deeply happy with the new machine.

This is a crumby photo.....

but I bet George Orwell didn't anticipate this.



Hmmm. I'm not quite sure what Orwell would make of there being downloadable for free copyright violating versions of his books available from websites in Russia, either.

Reiteration

It's not a new observation, but Norman Borlaug is an extraordinarily great man. That the bulk of the so called "green movement" hates his achievements and the green revolution in general makes their colours very clear I think. Here is one more. They are luddites and romantics, and I do not mean the second word as a compliment. None the less, I think the number of people who understand Borlaug's achievement (and perhaps more importantly who appreciate his mindset, which is if anything a greater thing that what he has achieved with it) is steadily getting greater. Here is Here is one more, anyway.

(Link via Jackie D)

It is a small world after all

Yesterday evening, for slightly peculiar reasons I missed a train at Stockport railway station. I blogged about it, and via the miracle of comments I discovered that one of my readers was on the same railway station at the same time.

I'm in Manchester

So, blogging may be a little light, depending on WiFi availability and whether I feel like it. Meanwhile, I have a tiny piece on an exciting cricket match between New Zealand and South Africa over at ubersportingpundit.

Redirection

My overview of the end of year movie releases and the ensuing Oscar season is up at Samizdata.

Update: I also have a funny photograph I took at East Croydon station this morning up at Transport Blog.

Someone offer me a job in London soon

I need a beige iPod.

Interesting reading

It has been commented on elsewhere in the blogosphere and it is quite long, but this Nicholas Eberstadt piece from Policy Review on the demographics of Europe and Asia is pretty much compulsory reading. The basic issue is that fertility has dropped virtually everywhere, the UN medium variant overstates population and the UN low variant might be a better estimate, and that almost everywhere we have dramatically dropping fertility and rapidly aging populations. Japan is much commented on and although Japan is certainly not going to take over the world with its demographics as they are, Japan is so rich that it probably can cope. (Also, Japan is such an advanced economy that it is reasonable for people to work longer, because its economy isn't terribly labour intensive). On the other hand, the one child policy in China was a huge mistake, and the demographic consequences could be catastrophic. China's population is aging faster than anything else, and when China hits its demographic crisis it will not be rich, and will have no developed pension system and it will be harder for people to stay in the workforce because jobs in China will be more labour intensive. India faces a much less dramatic demographic precipice, but the same issues do ultimately come up there too. What China and India have in common is their sex ratios are unbalanced, due to a strong preference for boys and the presence of the technology to allow sex determination and abortions. The consequences of this may not be nice either.

What is extraordinary though is the demographic dynamism of the United States. The combination of immigration and higher fertility means that its population is going to actually grow faster than that of almost anywhere else in Eurasia, including India, China and Indonesia. It's place as the third most populous country in the world is in no danger, and in fact it is pulling away. What do we deduce from this? For one thing, don't look for the economic and political power of the US to decline any time soon. This is one little indicator suggesting that when the Americans say they are exceptional, they are right.

But go read the whole thing. It is fascinating, although it doesn't discuss the demographics of the Middle East or of Africa. Much of the Middle East continues to grow like crazy in population terms, but seems to lake the other cultural features needed to do anything useful with the extra population (Human capital is the best thing you can possibly have if you can then use it. But there do seem to be some countries that, at this point in their development at least, are unable to do so. And AIDS is doing horrendous things to the demographics of Africa.

Silly search request time

Hmm, what exactly defines failure in this case?

Actually I have the Japanese special edition CD, which I bought in Tower Records Shibuya. So there.

Actually, you may have come to the right place. I hear the movie is really good, too. Shame I am going to have to wait at least six months to see it. (And Julie Delpy is very beautiful, yes).

Once in a while, yes. But I never drive as well.

Cool

I don't know about you, but I rather like being a member of a new Tocquevillean elite.

Wrecks of great historical significance

It seems that the remains of the HMS Beagle (ie the ship on which Charles Darwin travelled around the world) may have been found at the bottom of a marsh in Essex. Cool. I am not sure that it will fit properly in the Science Museum in Kensington, however. (And to tell the truth getting it through Chelsea might be a bit of a problem, too). Shame.

(Link via slashdot).

Update: A Samizdata editor also thought this was cool, so I posted a slightly expanded version of this post over there.

Blogging remains light

However, I did today manage to do my laundry and the washing up, and go and have a nice south Indian meal with a blogger from out of town.

Respect

This chasm is at its widest on the question of war and peace. Tony Blair's New Labour has taken us to war five times in the last six years, each time with calamitous consequences, such as the removal of Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban government, and Saddam Hussein, along with the humanitarian disasters which accompanied them. The bloodshed, the waste of precious economic resources, the lying and hypocrisy that have accompanied the attack on Iraq have brought many to the conclusion that they must rethink their traditional political allegiance, from one of supporting democratically elected governments to that of supporting murderous tyrants, dictators, and nutcase theocracies.

Indeed. How can I not respect the Respect Coalition

(Well done Tim Newman).

Redirection to me babbling about cricket

I have a piece on the legacy of World Series Cricket, the length of triangular tournaments, and whether Australia will play any One Day Internationals in India this year over at ubersportingpundit.

Feeble excuse for blogging

I yesterday posted a piece on Samizdata that was a recycled post from post from this blog on a little girl, a kitten, and a python.

Mmmm, beer.

Yesterday, I attended the 14th Battersea Beer Festival, on Lavender Hill in South London, organised by the local branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), a several decades old organisation devoted to promoting the production and consumption of traditional English cask conditioned beer, or real ale. Regular readers of this blog know that I have been known to enjoy a real ale or two, so I thought it might be a pleasant way to spend an evening. And my thought was pretty easily confirmed. I got there at about a quarter to five, as the admission fee was cheaper before 5pm. At that point, most of the people there were stereotypical real ale drinkers: a certain type of slightly overweight Englishman with too much facial hair comes to mind. (Such people are in my experience almost invariably really nice people). There were clear instructions as to what to do at a beer festival after an ale or six.



I mean, who hasn't made that mistake at some point?



Helpfully, they had colour coding. Yellow for bitter, blue for mild, and a sort of pinky boney colour for stout and porter. I actually really enjoy a good porter, so I tried a number of these.



I can actually think of worse jobs than this, but many of the people behind the bar were too busy serving beer (and occasionally drinking it) to actually talk about beer. Sad, that.



That is a lot of beer.



Jenny Jones, the deputy mayor of London, did actually show up, and made a little speech declaring the festival open, telling us not to drink and drive, and hoping that we were all enjoying ourselves. Not much attention was paid. People were too busy enjoying themselves.

As well as a wide selection of real ales, there was also a cider counter, and a "Foreign beer bar", which had a wide selection of both Belgian and German beers both bottled and on tap. I found myself gravitating towards this and spent quite a bit of time there.



Somehow I found I was enjoying the Belgian and German beers better than the English ones. Someone suggested I try an interesting German smoked beer, which was indeed interesting. I also made the mistake of trying a malty Belgian Trappist beer that was 11% alcohol.



Either I was enjoing a change due to the fact that I mostly drink English beer and I drink Belgian and German beer only occasionally, or there is a terrible fact I have to admit.



Much as I love English beer (and really I do) I think I have to acknowledge that the two greatest beer making countries in the world are Germany and Belgium.

Apologies

Yes, blogging has been light. Today, this perhaps owes a little to my foolish wise decision to go to the Battersea Beer Festival. (It also owes something to a rare Blue Screen of Death on Windows XP). I shall no doubt post more tomorrow.

Redirection

I have a little piece on the schedule for the ICC Champions Trophy, on the proper way of using reserve days in cricket one day matches, and on the consequences of England refusing to tour Zimbabwe over at ubersportingpundit.

The seduction of place

When Clint Eastwood was getting Mystic River into production, some of the people at Warner Bros wanted him to film the movie in Toronto, because it would be cheaper than filming it in Boston. (Making a film in Canadian or even Australian cities that is set somewhere in the US is quite a common practice these days). Eastwood's response was that the script and the book on which it was based were set in Boston and Toronto is not Boston. Therefore he filmed in Boston. (In dealing with the bean counters, Eastwood had a stronger position than most directors, because he has directed over 20 films and almost all of them have finished filming ahead of schedule and under budget. In Hollywood this is highly unusual, shall we say).

And the film is much better for being filmed in a gritty, working class Boston neighbourhood. You can feel the location and its history in a way that wouldn’t work quite as well if the film was made in Toronto but with a little added second unit work. (Hollywood glossary: "second unit work" is where a second director and film crew goes and films shots that do not require actors, while the main unit is filming the scenes that do require actors). It is not always wrong to film in a different location from the actual setting, and sometimes a different city can be evoked quite well by skilful art direction, but Eastwood is largely right. In such a visual medium, the little hints that you get from filming in the correct location can add a lot to a film.

I say this as someone who travels a lot, and who is extremely conscious of the small details of places. I go to places to look at the small details as much as the large ones, and to get the sense of mood evoked by those small details. As I was saying the other day, and as I have said a few times on this blog, I like William Gibson’s books because he evokes the small details of place in a way that is similar to the way I see them. And many of the best films can capture a place in the same way. Sometimes I have visited cities that I have seen on film because I have seen them on film and I want to see them for real and see if the mood is the same. (Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, as my ongoing discussion of Lost in Traslation explains). I love looking at interesting and clever pieces of urban design which blend well into the urban environment and somehow fit the mood of the city. And it is always fun to recognise places I know on film.

Which is why, looking the other day at a preview of a new film, I was quite taken by these photos.





Seeing the pictures of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, some of my readers will realise instantly what the film it. It is Before Sunset, Richard Linklater's sequel of sorts to Before Sunrise, made in 1995. That film belonged to the same genre as Lost in Translation, actually. A man and a woman who are a long way from home and who don't know each other at all, happen to be in the same place at the same time and spend a relatively short period of time together during which time they discover they like each other, fall under a certain spell, share each other's secrets, have a certain meeting of minds and are able to talk to each other about themselves and about life in ways they cannot talk to their normal acquaintances, a certain amount of sexual tension accumulates and is in some way resolved, and then they part at the end of the fixed amount of time they have together, possibly or probably to never see each other again. I have read a few people in recent months say that Sofia Coppola had obviously seen Before Sunrise before writing the script for Lost in Translation, and I think she probably had - this is the most famous example of this genre that people her (or indeed my) age have seen - but I am not sure you can give many points for originality to Linkater either. This is a very simple idea, and whether it works depends entirely on the chemistry of the two lead actors and on the quality of the dialogue. (Such movies are generally very dialogue heavy). And they depend very much on the place where everything happens. Like Lost in Translation, Before Sunrise has chemistry and dialogue that works, and is set in a physical location that works. In my mind the Vienna location of Before Sunrise actually works better than the Tokyo location of Lost in Translation. (The two characters, Jesse and Celine, meet on a train to Vienna, and then spend 24 hours in the city. What is different about this film is that they are both young twentysomethings, so the romantic potential of the encounter is different).

(Another similarity is that Before Sunrise also has a scene in it where humor is made of the audience's inability to to understand what is being said. In this instance the characters spend some time in one of those over-ornate Vienna coffee houses, and there is some really earnest sounding German spoken that the audience cannot understand, which adds a little to the local charm. As it happens, I saw this film with a group of Cambridge friends, one of who was a German who perhaps takes himself a little too seriously at times. He laughed and laughed at this, saying it was the exact sort of intense quasi-philosophical pofundity that you expect to hear in Vienna coffeehouses, and I think it would be amusing to hear this film with a German speaking audience. Actually, it would be interesting too see how the reaction differed in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna).

In any event, Richard Linklater has now made a sequel, in which Jesse and Celine apparently meet up again nine years later. That is about all I knew before looking at the photos above. I didn't know where or how or any of the other details at the plot. But looking at the above photos, I now know where. Because, the place where they are walking and sitting happens to be the Promenade Plantee, the disused railway viaduct in Paris that has been converted into a long narrow elevated park, and which I wrote about after visiting Paris last year. I was quite amused to see this. I looked at a couple of pictures of people walking down a path and sitting on a park bench, and I knew instantly exactly where in the world the place was. It isn't a famous landmark, but if you know places well it is the small details and the subtle details that give you the sense of place. I didn't post any pictures of that section of the Promenade Plantee last year, but I can do so now.





So if nothing else, I now know the film is set in Paris. I wonder if I would have recognised the place just from looking at the second picture of them sitting on the park bench. Would the colour and the vegetation and the shape of the surroundings have been enough? (Although to be truthful the colour of vegetation in my photos is slightly different. Perhaps it was a different time of year, or perhaps it is just a photographic effect). I doubt it, but I am not entirely sure. Clearly the giveaway in the first photo is the green arch things. It is the little details of how you recognise things that are interesting. And it is these details that only exist in the actual location. That's what Clint Eastwood understands when he decides to film in Boston. And it is what William Gibson understands when he describes 2002 London in Pattern Recognition, and Parc Guell in Count Zero.

And I suppose it is not too surprising the the thing in Paris that I blog about and the thing in Paris that Richard Linklater films and uses as a location are the same. Presumably he or a location scout did essentially what I did in Paris, which was wander around looking for visually interesting things to photograph. I thought the Prominde Plantee was a stunning piece of design, and I photographed and blogged about it at the time. So, essentially did he. I will be interested to see how the location is actually used in the film. (It would be a fabulous place for a first meeting, actually. You just catch a glimpse of someone you think you recognise vanishing up the steps that lead to it, and then you follow them down it for a minute or two before catching up with them). I will look forward to the film.

And of course, all this leads me to another thought. A few days ago I described putting a playlist together for my MP3 player as being akin to putting together the soundtrack of a movie. I now think that the way I explore cities may be akin to figuring out the locations in which a movie can be filmed. Perhaps I am thinking using the grammar of film too much. Or perhaps this is why I like the grammar of film so much.

And more importantly, why didn't I get to follow Julie Delpy down the Promenade Plantee?

Why South London is a fine place



One can get really superb South Asian food. I was going to say "Indian food", but since the restaurant is in fact a Pakistani restaurant, somebody might get upset, although I do doubt it. I can't really imagine a sudden assault on the Line of Control because of my lapse or anything.



Update: Hmmm. I posted pictures of myself having lunch to my blog. Does this mean that I am falling into cliches of blogger self-indulgence? I suppose it does at least prove that I get out of the basement from time to time. And there person who took the photo was actually a nice young woman.