Archive for March, 2005
Back, again
A quick update on the back situation: the neurosurgeon reckons a microdiscectomy is the way to solve my (worsening) back problems, so I’ll have my buttocks hanging out the back of a hospital gown in 3-4 weeks time.
The book meme
I’m not a fan of “forward this” questionnaires - for several years my email address was printed in various national magazines and as a result, I seem to be on every email forwarding list in Britain - but I’ll make an exception for this one, partly because Squander Two asked me to do it, and partly because I liked it.
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey. It’s a collection of surreal one- or two-liners and makes me laugh like a drain. Plus, it’s short - which is handy given that I’d have to memorise it.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Not in books, no. But if TV counts, then… Dr Susan Lewis from ER. Smart, funny, attracted to - yes! - tall baldy speccy blokes. And she was in NYPD Blue too. Woo-hoo! And she’s in this advert!
*mind wanders*
*remembers that my wife reads this*
Of course, that was a very long time ago. Yes.
The last book you bought:
For myself? Er… The Promise of Happiness, by Justin Cartwright. Haven’t read it yet but I can tell you that it’s £3.60 in Asda.
The last book you read:
The Time Traveler’s Wife. Can’t remember who wrote it and can’t be bothered Googling. It was good quirky fun and had my wife in floods of tears at the end. This year’s Lovely Bones, apparently.
What are you currently reading?
In The Time of our Singing by Richard Powers. An epic novel that traces the lives of three mixed-race kids in America. Fantastic stuff but it’s taken me forever to get through.
Five books you would take to a desert island
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, because if i’m trapped on a desert island I might be able to finish the damn thing.
Does “everything Kurt Vonnegut has ever written” count as one selection? It should.
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. Only kidding.
James Ellroy’s LA Quartet (LA Confidential, etc). Vicious, hypnotic and utterly addictive.
Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole novels, because they make me laugh.
And something by Tim Dorsey, for the same reason.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
I’m not going to pass it to anyone, because of my antipathy towards such things. But if I was the sort of person who did forward such things, I’d mail it to Gusto, Ms.Mac and Prof. Batty.
Hold your breath
Hold your breath is a site about Glasgow’s Clyde Tunnel (it takes its name from the popular kids’ game of trying to hold your breath from the beginning to the end of the tunnel). As the tunnel begins a year’s worth of refitting, the site is asking people for their ideas on transforming one of Glasgow’s ugliest landmarks.
I reckon we should go with this design for the tunnel’s interior, which was created by Raymond (11).
Things I love about Scotland
Prompted by Ms Mac’s Things I Love about Switzerland, I thought I’d do the same thing about Scotland.
1. Space.
We’ve got lots of leg room in Scotland: we’ve around half the population of London, and an entire country to spread out in. As a result we tend to have fairly roomy towns and streets, and while there are certainly a few ugly bits we don’t really suffer from the urban sprawl you find elsewhere. I tend to feel quite claustrophobic when I’m in some bits of England, and I’ve noticed that the places in the UK and Ireland I tend to like are the ones with Georgian architecture - which is all about space and status, rather than the industrial revolution “let’s cram a thousand people into a few terraces” red-brick that to me typifies a lot of English towns.
2. Scale
We call them cities, but the rest of the world would call them towns.
3. Architecture
Not all of Scots architecture is attractive, but almost all of it’s interesting. A quick wander round Glasgow demonstrates that: impossibly detailed Victorian buildings, giant sandstone mansions, 1930s housing with strong art deco influences, some brutal tower blocks and identikit glass and chrome office blocks. In the space of two or three streets you can explore two centuries of styles, and while it’s a cliche if you’re ever in the centre of Glasgow you should look up: you’ll see all kinds of mad things, from gargoyles to ridiculous flourishes. Thanks to rising house prices there are a lot more indentikit commuter boxes springing up in gap sites (and the waterfront is starting to resemble any other city’s riverside), but there’s still plenty to feast your eyes on.
4. Scenery
It’s something we tend to take for granted, but no matter where you live in Scotland you’re never more than half an hour away from some jaw-dropping scenery, whether it’s the rolling hills of the borders or the alien landscapes of parts of the highlands.
5. Tourists
Well, tourists unless they’re in front of me when I’m driving somewhere in a hurry. Although this also ties in with one of the things I hate about Scotland: our tendency to screw tourists out of as much cash as possible, whether it’s excessive admission prices to tatty tourist attractions or silly money for a cup of tea in a nearby cafe.
6. Attitude
We’re funny buggers in Scotland: there’s a definite dour, fatalistic side to us, but it’s laced with the sort of dark humour that means everyone’s a comedian. Which ties in with…
7. William McGonagall
McGonagall was a poet, although I use the term loosely: he was rubbish - do a google for his Tay Bridge Disaster poem for some terrifying proof. Naturally, his very rubbishness made him something of a national hero. “Fans” used to organise readings for the sheer pleasure of taking the piss out of him, and as Billy Connolly points out, he was deeply eccentric: for example, he hated publicans on the grounds that “the first man to hit me in the face with a plate of peas was a publican”. Not “a publican hit me in the face with a plate of peas”, but a publican was the first to do it. Which of course suggests that hitting McGonagall in the face with a plate of peas was a pastime for many Scots.
8. Cost of living
It’s a cheap place to live. Even the bits of Scotland that seem desperately expensive - bits of Glasgow, most of Edinburgh - pale into insignificance when you look at the price of a house or the price of a pint in southern England.
9. The Tom Morton show
Tom Morton broadcasts weekday afternoons on BBC Radio Scotland, and he’s a national treasure: his show plays anything and everything, whether it’s musty old rock or electro-pop from up-and-coming Scots bands. Imagine a Scots John Peel with a less abrasive taste in music and you’ll get the idea. He’s all the more remarkable when you flick through the dial and realise that Scots commercial radio stations (with the honourable exception of Beat 106 when Jim Gellatly’s on) are even worse than their English counterparts.
10. Folk music
Good folk music, that is: there’s plenty of maudlin crap and jiggy nonsense. But decent Scots traditional music is fantastic stuff, especially when it’s performed by a bunch of drunks to an audience consisting of a bunch of drunks.
Let’s bomb Germany
From today’s press release pile:
German club meisters ‘Bass Bumpers’ have taken the Jamster Crazy Frog ringtone and merged it seamlessly with Axel F - the tune that uniquely represents 80s movies, the Hollywood dream and Eddie Murphy. Axel F, Harold Faltermeyer’s theme tune from Beverley Hills Cop, provides the perfect foil for the ‘annoying thing’ and is set to have fans hopping on dance floors across Europe.
Crazy Frog ‘Axel F’ is the spawn of Reinhard Raith and Wolfgang Boss. Reinhard is one part of the ‘Bass Bumpers’ - who also produced Angel City, Despina Vandi, VooDoo & Serano, CJ Stone and Resource. They are the hottest dance production team in Germany.
Reinhard: “The Crazy Frog ringtone was huge in Germany and I believed it would make a great dance record. It needed a melody, something to get the hands in the air, and Wolfgang suggested the Axel F record which is one of the best “hands up” tunes ever made.”
The result is Axel F like you’ve never heard it before!
Crazy Frog uses the original vocals and image from the Jamster ringtone advert It will be supported by a full length animation video starring the crazy amphibian himself.
MGM vs Grokster
The US Supreme Court is currently pondering the MGM vs Grokster case, where Hollywood is going after one of the file sharing firms (there’s an ongoing case against Kazaa’s parent company in Australia, too). If MGM is successful, the court might reverse the Sony judgement, which held that video recorders shouldn’t be banned just because people *might* misuse them. Of course, not long after the Sony case - during which Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America compared the video recorder to the Boston Strangler - the home video boom arrived, making stacks of money for the movie industry.
If the Sony judgement is reversed, the effects could be dramatic: the judgement established a precedent that just because something *might* be used for dodgy deeds, that wasn’t enough of a justification for making the device illegal. So while MGM is going after a specific P2P application, the court’s verdict could affect all kinds of technology. After all, iPods can be used for illegal music. CD burners can be used to make illegal copies. External hard disks can be used to duplicate music illegally. And so on.
Writing in Salon, Andrew Leonard points out that the entertainment industry rarely has our best interests at heart:
I’m not a particularly paranoid person. But the entertainment industry did do everything it could to stop me from owning VCRs and MP3 players. It drives record company executives nuts that I can plug a newly purchased compact disc into my computer and rip the music on it to my hard drive in seconds. They are constantly experimenting with ways to stop that, and a ruling in their favor in MGM vs. Grokster, even if ostensibly aimed at P2P networks, could give them the legal authority to be even more aggressive than they already are.
…If the entertainment studios had their way, every time a format changed, you’d have to buy all your records all over again. In their ideal world, we would hold restricted licenses to our content, not ownership. Digital rights management would cripple our all-powerful computers, creating backups would be impossible, and the basic human impulse to share the wealth of information that helps define who we are would be beset with obstacles. This is not paranoia. At every step of the way, intellectual-property-right holders have resisted technological innovations that give ordinary people more scope to enjoy and consume music, television, movies or any other content.
Leonard is, of course, absolutely correct. So why is the technology industry - which is much bigger than the music and movie industries combined - so quiet on the matter? As Ashlee Vance writes in The Register:
Are these companies that produce the life blood of our economy really going to be pushed around by a stuffed mouse with buttons and helium balloon shoved down his throat? Only one company had an opinion all its own on the matter? Shame.
It’s not even just lack of voice in the briefs that is depressing. The big whig vendor brass has been silent on the matter. No one has had the guts to call out Hollywood for the ancients they are. No major company been smart enough to take a strong, public stand on P2P. That McNealy guy at Sun usually has a lot to say. Instead, they’ve twiddled their thumbs as the RIAA sued your children, grandparents and naval cadets.
If the media moguls - the pigopolists - win, then the tech vendors should tuck their tales between their assess and waddle off without a sound. No sense whimpering on the way out if you didn’t roar on the way in.
Lucky for the vendors, the pigopolists can’t win this one in the long run. The digital age started too many years ago to bottle it up now.
Let’s see how Apple likes it though when iPod sales are halted for a few years as the courts decide how legitimate the device really is. Bite your tongue, Steve.
Lack of updates
Sorry. I’ve been dealing with, y’know, stuff. Back shortly.
On a completely different note: Eels are on tour this spring! With strings! Woo-hoo!
Every doctor dreads the word “internet”
The advent of the internet has been a disaster for doctors, whose waiting rooms are packed with people who’ve read incomplete, inaccurate or flat-out nuts medical information on the Internet. However, there are some useful resources out there that can make you better informed without filling your head with nonsense.
One of the best I’ve seen is Clinical Evidence, which comes from the British Medical Journal. It’s written by medical experts for medical experts, and it provides a summary of the clinical trials of various forms of treatment. Crucially it’s organised by category, so for example you can search for a herniated lumbar disc and then see the effectiveness, risks and potential benefits of surgical, non-surgical and drug treatments.
As I’ve posted before, I have a vested interest in this: I’ve got two herniated discs and in a few weeks time it’ll be a year since I knackered my back, and I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. The current treatment regime is non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which I don’t feel make any difference, and chiropractic treatment, which addresses the knock-on postural problems you get from having a duff back but which doesn’t address the slipped discs themselves.
On careful reading of the various reports, it seems that I’m not being overly pessimistic: in trials, the drugs I’m taking (and the other drugs I’ve taken over the last year) are no more effective than a placebo, and while chiropractic treatment and physiotherapy do have an effect it tends to be in the early stages of back pain; generally when a problem becomes chronic (ie. more than 12 weeks in duration) they’re of little benefit. Surgery, on the other hand, is generally very successful: success rates of between 80% and 87%, with relatively low rates of disasters (death on the operating table, post-op infection, surgical mistakes etc). As a result of reading that data (and of checking out similar sites for GPs and other health professionals) I think I’m a reasonably well-informed patient, and I’m making an appointment to see a neurosurgeon to discuss the options once again.
On a related note, you can also find out other interesting things from sites aimed at doctors. For example, various Glasgow hospitals run pain management clinics. These offer a range of treatments - physiotherapy, spinal injections and so on - that can be very beneficial to patients with injuries. If you do a bit of digging you’ll discover that these treatments (assuming your pathology is appropriate for the treatments) are generally very effective if you get treated within 12 weeks of injury, and of little benefit thereafter; unfortunately, the waiting list for an appointment with a pain management clinic in this area is rarely shorter than 16 weeks. Hmmm.
Modern life is rubbish
Zachary at Something Awful lambasts internet messageboard geeks in typically unsafe-for-work style:
The Internet has nothing to do with spreading knowledge or learning new things in order to better our lives. More often than not it’s a dick waving contest to see who can be the most insane about video games, movies, or television shows. Do you like games designed by id software? Well, there’s a guy out there who likes games designed by Valve software and he’s living a lie! It’s up to you to find that person and berate them into enjoying id software games because for all he knows he has no idea what kind of video games he likes!
He’s not exactly uncovering big secrets, but he is right. I’ve spent the last few days browsing various boards where X band is better than Y band, X political belief is better than Y one, X operating system is better than Y operating system, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that an awful lot of people really need to get out more.
It’s nice to be nice
Someone called “Friendly Chap” posted this on a music messageboard that’s famous for its negativity. I like his style.
I really do hope everyone is having a nice day. Sincerely. I am, apart from being skint - and it’s a little hot in this room I’m in - but other than that I’ve no complaints. It’s nice and sunny too which helps. Bye for now, I wish you all the best and I hope something nice happens to you all before the day is out.