Howdooit (Part 2)
Feel free to skip this post, if you're not interested in murder mysteries, or my slightly long musings on their puzzles.
There is the obligatory salacious footnote: I came up with all this walking around town for an hour after being stood up for a conjugal appointment. So there.
How many murder mystery puzzles are there? And why can't I think of one that hasn't been done hundreds of times before?
And while we're thinking about it, is there some way I can map out the puzzles in a way that'll let me explore the less-used outer reaches, or come up with one by throwing a few dice?
I reckon the basic structure of the puzzle is: Death X is disguised as Death Y by action Z. For instance:
- Murder of A is disguised as Murder of B by C switching the bodies.
- Murder of A is disguised as suicide by C placing a pistol in the hand.
- Suicide of A is disguised as death by natural causes by C faking the medical history.
Now, I think there are six basic types of death, one for each side of the (appropriately named) die. Here's descriptions and examples.
1) Murder - one person deliberately killing another, or through inaction allowing them to die.
- Shooting someone who's about to shoot you. Justifiable homicide or self defence.
- Not telling someone that a third party has poisoned their food.
- A doctor deliberately injecting so much pain medication that it stops a terminally ill patient breathing. Mercy killing.
2) Manslaughter - one person accidentally killing another.
- Punching someone in the jaw, leading to subddural heamatoma.
- Inducing a heart attack by taking someone on a fairground ride.
- A pharmacist providing the wrong pills.
3) Suicide - someone deliberately killing themselves, or letting themselves die.
- Wristcutting in a hot bath.
- A patient refusing blood transfusions on religious grounds, knowing it'll kill them.
- A prisoner on hunger strike for too long.
4) Suislaughter - someone accidentally killing themselves. I haven't been able to find a single word for this, so I invented a portmanteau for it - if you can think of a better one, please tell me.
- Making two drinks, one poisoned, to drink with the victim, then getting confused and drinking the wrong one. This is attempted murder, gone wrong.
- Overdosing on a recreational drug.
- Falling from a roof.
5) Biology - death from natural causes, inside the victim's own body.
- Death from illness
- Old age
- Heart attack
6) Nature - death from natural causes external to the victim.
- Struck by lightning
- Avalanche
- An out of control plane crashing into your place of work.
This list is not the only alternative, nor does it cover every possibility.
Feeding alcohol to an alcoholic until it kills them could be considered murder, manslaughter through reckless negligence, or even assisted accidental suicide. Eating poisonous wild mushrooms could be Suislaughter, Nature or Biology.
The Biology and Nature categories could be merged, and you might chose to disregard the deliberate/accidental distinction. Russian roulette could justifiably be placed in four of the six categories, killing an unborn child to save the mother would technically be considered murder here, and war crimes are different again.
However, I'm not trying to create a perfect classification of death, just a working method for generating detective mystery puzzles.
In a murder mystery, the manner and/or cause of death is disguised. Some examples:
- Murder disguised as Suislaughter. The tightrope of a daredevil walker is made wet and slippery.
- Suislaughter disguised as Murder or induced Suicide. After someone dies is a housefire caused by their smoking in bed, someone else claims to have found a stack of poison pen letters that drove the victim to kill themselves.
- Biology disguised as Murder. Following a natural heart attack, the victim is injected with belladonna and the syringe "hidden" where it will be found. A convenient death is used to frame a third party for murder.
- One Murder disguised as another. C framing D for a murder committed by E, in the mistaken belief that F is the killer.
- One Suicide disguised as another. Changing a suicide note to suggest a different motive.
- Suicide disguised as Suislaughter. A husband and wife run a swingers club. She comes home to find he's hanged himself. She changes the scene to make it look like auto-erotic asphyxiation, to avoid damaging the business.
The above gives a six-by-six grid of possibilities. But there's a third factor - the act of disguising.
1) The victim, deliberately.
- Someone arranges their own suicide to implicate an enemy.
2) The victim, accidentally.
- The murderee misidentifies their masked killer, and scratches the name on a desk before dying.
3) The killer, deliberately.
- The killer, a nonsmoker, leaves behind a half smoked cigar, implicating a cigar-smoker.
4) The killer, accidentally.
- The killer fakes a suicide note. The fraud is easily detected, but his misspells several words, leading suspicion to fall on a dyslexic person.
6) A third party, accidentally.
- The group of ramblers who discover the body destroy the killer's footprints with their own.
5) A third party, deliberately.
- The ramblers destroy the footprints, but the one who suggested the route did so deliberately to protect the killer.
- False confession from a mentally disturbed resident.
7) Biology
- The victim's hemophilia gives a wrong time of death. This could in principle also apply to the victim accidentally obscuring the facts, if you prefer.
8) Nature
- A corpse has been buried on one kind of soil for thirty years. The killer digs it up a reburies it in different soil, in the garden of the person who's just accused them of the old murder. The differences in soil confuse the forensics.
Obviously in the case of Suicide and Suislaugher, the killer and the victim are the same person - unless the killer has driven the victim to suicide.
The third party isn't just innocent bystanders or someone protecting the killer - it could be the police, the forensics team, or the detective themselves.
Now, I've got these eight categories, some rather esoteric (eg. the victim conspiring to cover up the circumstances of their own murder) and some overlapping (Biology and Nature blur together where corpses are concerned). And what I really want is six categories. Just so they can be selected by rolling dice. Yeah, alright.
So here's the shoehorned version:
1) Victim accidentally.
2) Victim deliberately, or their biology.
3) Killer deliberately
4) Killer accidentally, or a natural event or fact.
5) Third party deliberately
6) Third party accidentally.
If you want inspiration for the basic structure of a murder mystery, roll a die three times, and there it is.
Of course, none of this says anything about clues, motives or processes of detection. That's for another time.
100 Things about Kapitano, Part 1: Food and Drink
Inspired by Leah, I've decided to tell you 100 things about me. In installments, and with annotations.
So, here's part one.
1) I'm overweight, because I'm something of a glutton. I try not to be, but I don't try very hard.
I find it very easy to not start eating. But once I've started, I just want to keep on doing it.
I think it would be great if a person's whole body had tastebuds, inside and out. I could taste food as it goes down, and the enhanced sense of touch would be astonishing.
2) I'm very good at sauces and pastry, and completely useless at cooking anything else.
I like cooking curries, but my parents hate the smell.
3) I didn't get drunk till age 24. This was on vodka, provide by some obliging Polish students. The event is on videotape, including the bit where I lay on the floor yelling "sit on my face".
I prefer red wine to white, don't like beer, drink guinness when I need to drink slowly, and like spirits - which get me drunk very quickly.
4) I'm not sure I actually like tea - it's just sort of comforting to have a cup of it there. I definitely don't like liqouriche or raw tomatoes.
I've a theory that when you eat a whole bar of chocolate one piece at a time, with each piece you're trying to recapture the first, but it's never as good, so you try again till it's all gone, and then feel disapponinted.
5) I've got so used to watching TV while eating, that each feels incomplete without the other.
Excuses, Excuses
"UNSAFE SEXUAL PRACTICES IS BEYOND EVIL"
- Troll "Austrev" responding to me on Nightcharm
I can now reveal that my sometime employer has four hundred and nineteen cassette tapes. They took five hours to catalog and seven pages to list - not counting the twenty with absolutely nothing written on them.
I don't think I'm cut out to be a novelist. I'm a short story writer. Or maybe a flasher.
But not a slasher. And there's no way I'm het.
What? Oh stop it. You people see double meanings in everything.
Anyway, I wonder if I could try that old trick of bundling together a set of short stories with overlapping events and characters...and calling it a novel. Might work.
My dystopian detective story/surreal romance/Beckett-Gibson-Christie mashup...has foundered on the rocks of being too bloody complicated. And probably a bit pretentious.
Pavement wit:
In answer to the question, "What kind of man do you like?", answer "Geekiness is my weakiness".
The next time someone asks me about my taste in men...I shall recall only that I'd previously thought of a witty answer, but not what it was.
What's the best way to lose weight?
Let me rephrase that. Given that starvation doesn't work, liposuction is expensive, amphetamines are hard to get and emigration to Mozambique might be considered overkill...how can a man in his thirties, with a low boredom threshold and not much money, become slimmer in a way that isn't painful or crushingly dull?
Cycling's good - though there's nowhere I need to cycle to. Jogging maybe - I know a daily jogger...in the, um, biblical sense. Dancing's good, though I have at least three left feet.
I don't suppose a reduction in chocolate consumption would help? Hmm. How much is liposuction?
Balance in All Things
"He shitting! Shitting all time! Tell him stop!"
- Student mispronouncing "Cheating"
Good News: I've been in demand at work - full time all week.
Bad News: They don't actually want me there, but there's no one else available with the computer skills.
There's been an inspection coming for the last three months, so like all organised businesses everywhere, they waited till the week before the inspectors arrive to start getting things...inspectable.
In my case that means two days painting the walls to make them look less cracked, and three cataloguing four hundred or so textbooks - so the inspectors can spend five seconds flicking through the database and tick the appropriate box.
Good News: With all this work, I'm racking up the wages.
Bad News: They haven't got around to paying me for last week, nevermind this one.
Good News: There's even more paid work to be done.
Bad News: It has to be done on Sunday.
Good News: Someone wants to give me a blowjob at midnight.
Bad News: I've got a stubborn headache from a week of staring at a screen. So not feeling especially sexy.
Good News: Someone wants to give me a deep, long, wet blowjob at midnight!
Bad News: He's just cancelled.
Good news: Should be meeting C tomorrow, for a day of romantic strolls, sinful food and camp banter.
Bad News: ...actually, none.
Rainbow
"Why you like Obama? Him black and you white."
- Politically astute student.
Monday. I'm depressed.
Well, I'm annoyed, pissed off, irritated, preoccupied, unhappy, hopeless, listless, hurt, resentful and bored. But mostly, depressed.
Someone once said "Depression is anger without enthusiasm" - perhaps in the same way as chatter is communication without information, psychoanalysis is friendship without obligation, romance is seduction without harassment...and blogging is journalism without circulation. I reckon they were right.
Am I depressed because one single student doesn't like me? Or because the boss is a bit of knob sometimes? Because the plot of my NaNoWriMo turns out to be unfeasibly complicated and possibly doesn't make sense?
Because I'm a fat old queen approaching 40, I'm stuck in this armpit of a town that at every point in it's history "used to be a good place", and all the good things worth fighting for seem hopeless causes?
Or is it just these things are getting to me now because the weather is cold, grey and rainy?
Probably the latter.
Every subject is interesting until it's your livelihood. Or to put it another way, as someone else once said, "We can do any amount of work, so long as it's not the work we're supposed to be doing."
Tuesday. I'm covered in paint.
After being called in to substitute for a teacher who turned out not to need substituting for, I was asked to help out in school redecoration.
So I painted the stairs magnolia, and then I painted the coffee room magnolia, and then I started to paint the kitchen magnolia. Tomorrow I continue to paint the kitchen magnolia, and then, if there's time, paint the staff room magnolia.
The Saudi students were amazed - in Saudi Arabia teaching is only done by highly paid professionals, and painting only by starving Indian immigrants who get beaten up on the street.
Oh, I also answered the phones for an hour. I'm not sure who does that in Saudi, but judging from the Embassy, no one does.
Out and Out
"You touch me now?"
- Student, mispronouncing "teach"
I'm being sidelined at work and I find it difficult to care.
I met my replacement today - not that she's being called that. There's just somehow not enough work to employ me more than two hours a week, but enough to employ someone else for eight. She's a nice person - as were the other three who were dumped when I joined.
Actually I do care, but only about the money.
I'm feeling ill and headachy - not so ill and headachy that I can't do stuff, just so ill and headachy that I can't so it well enough to be worth doing. If you see what I mean.
And that's my excuse for not writing. Everyone needs an excuse, but no one needs a good one.
Oh, I had sex again. In a garage again.
Just thought I'd mention it, again.
Sat with mother watching Victor/Victoria. She chuckled through it, enjoying the gay jokes - and I cringed a little every time she did it.
Exactly why it should be uncomfortable that mother no longer hates my being gay, I'm not sure. But, for whatever twisted reasons, it is.
It was so much easier years ago, when she was screeching idiocies and trying to make me admit it was all a mistake. Possibly because when she argued about it I could always win.
It was okay when she pathologically avoided any TV show or magazine article or topic of conversation that hinted at the existence of gay people - because it was just like the screeching, but silent.
Now, I'm the one who avoids the shows and topics. Like I say, twisted reasons.
Still, nevermind. At least my father's still an idiot.
Great Dark Man
The President of the world's greatest power is a black man, the sky is exploding, and my youth is in ashes.
The three actually have nothing to do with each other, but nevermind.
Barack Obama won the American elections by a landslide - or if you prefer, the whackjobs, morons and hate addicts who took over the Republican party have pissed off the voters big time.
Odd how Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell weren't civil rights victories. Soon we'll see whether the "change you can believe in" is more about change or belief.
The results happened to be announced on the day the UK celebrates a past attempt to remove a hated and corrupt government by blowing it up - hence the fireworks and exploding sky outside my window.
Actually, we're supposed to celebrate the fact that the attempt failed and the plotters executed, but somehow that detail isn't what captures our imagination.
We light big bonfires to mark the anniversary - though our own hated and corrupt government has chosen to protect our safety by outlawing bonfires on public highways. Perhaps they think someone somewhere will dump a ton of twigs on a road and set fire to it, as part of a terrorist plot, I don't know.
Anyway, there's a bonfire in my parent's garden, where thousands (and thousands) of works I created in my youth are being incinerated. We used to run a graphic design company (just before the last time the economy imploded around 1992) and with their destruction my posthumous reputation as a great artist is assured - because no one will see how utterly tasteless it all was.
Speaking of tasteless, I had sex in a garage last night.
Just thought I'd mention it.
On the one hand, my "occasional" job is close to full time this week, because two of the three permanant teachers are off sick. On the other hand, the management frelled up the accounting so I haven't been paid for two weeks.
And on the two and a halfth hand, there's been no time to write my glorious novel. But on the flipside of the two and a halfth hand, I'm still stuck with the plot anyway.
I Want to be a Paperback Writer
6027 words and the beginnings of a plot. Unfortunately the NaNoWriMo site won't let me log on to post some of it. So, here's the passage I've just written.
Morden sprinted up the stairs to his office, pushed open the door and stopped.
There was a tall, slim woman - about sixty, with a wrinkled face and severely straight white hair - sitting in his chair, calmly reading a report, with her feet crossed on his desk.
She didn't register his entrance, her eyes continuing to flit rapidly from one line to the next. For some seconds Morden was lost for something to say, caught between astonishment and outrage. Eventually he found his voice.
"Your feet are on my desk."
"Yes, I put them there. You do realise Jacob White's girlfriend - what was her name? Claudia Mannheim - she stood to benefit from Roger White's death too. We've only got her word for it Jacob came home at all that night, and she provides him with a nice detailed alibi for the next day as well.
"It could have been her visited the White's home while Jacob was out getting drunk. They liked her more than their son, so perhaps she went there on the pretext of pleading on his behalf, perhaps took an interest in the father's chemistry experiments with toxic compounds, had him whip up some cyanide and slipped some into his coffee.
She'd have plenty of time to write the two notes, and even plant the third for the wife to find later. It's more plausible she did all that in an hour than her drunken moron of a man did it all in ten minutes."
The woman had a fruity, rich voice, like a black-and-white movie star who played sophisticated, wise and cynical man users. Morden considered before responding.
"Jake confessed at the weekend."
The woman looked up and him and smiled broadly, the lines on her face deepening. "He could be protecting her. Why don't you ask her?"
"Because we've got no evidence. Just the guesswork of a strange old woman who's feet are on my desk. Who are you?"
"Anna Gray. Sergeant Anna Gray. I'm your new sidekick."
"I already have a...sidekick. He's called George."
"I'm afraid Sergeant Locke has accepted promotion - and transfer. You did know he'd applied and been accepted, and you knew the arrangement was he'd finish his current case before moving on."
"Yes but...I expected he'd hang around for a few days to clear up the paperwork. And to say goodbye."
But he had said goodbye. 'Goodbye sir', not 'Goodnight sir'. The old woman didn't speak.
"Alright, but I wasn't consulted. I expect some say in who works under me - as a courtesy if nothing else - and I don't appreciate someone being parachuted in without even telling me. Especially someone who...who..."
"Especially someone who's a rude old bat, old enough to be your mother. Someone who's spent her entire working life in the police but never made it above Sergeant. Someone who's close to retirement, far too good at annoying her superiors, and is being farmed out to whoever will put up with her."
Morden took a long deep breath. "You're the one who said it."
"And you're the one who thought it. But we've been talking for five minutes and my feet are still on your desk. You haven't shouted at me or tried to slap me back into place. You haven't gone storming to your boss and you haven't got me thrown out of the building. I think you like me."
The World is My Cloister
4500 words, and still no plot.
Who said life never imitates art?
The British economy is sinking into quicksand. I have a career that could take me anywhere in the world. Where should I go to escape and wait out recession?
Western Europe? That's like leaving the Lusitania for the Titanic. It hasn't sunk yet, but it's about to. Plus it's probably the only place where there's already too many EFL teachers.
Eastern Europe? Less Titanic, more Mary Celeste.
China? Perhaps the Electra (Amelia Erhardt's plane) is appropriate here. There are predictions that the expanding Chinese economy will bail out the Western economy - which is odd, as the expansion of the Chinese economy was largely a product of outsourcing from the West. It's like Atlas holding up the world, then trying use it as a hot air balloon.
Asia? Something similar, I think.
Africa? Um, no. Maybe it's just a coincidence the only places rich enough for decent English language schools are mostly English speaking already. Less Area 51, more Bermuda Triangle.
America? Ah, can I escape the earthquake by heading for it's epicenter? Maybe we're talking Atlantis here.
No, I just don't know.
If anyone can suggest a plot, I'd be most obliged.
In the meantime, I'll be reading the last chapter of twenty one Margery Allingham Ebooks, looking for inspiration.
Boo!
"So many ways to lose your skin in it,
The number of ways to die is infinite."
- The World is a Very Scary Place, Magnetic Fields
Happy Halloween. The time of year when we like to scare ourselves with things that can't hurt us because they don't exist. So we can briefly forget about the things that really are scary and can hurt us.
You know. AIDS. Cancer. The planet becoming uninhabitable for profit. Poverty. Fascism. The words "President McCain". The words "President Palin". People who want to blow us up because our government bombed them to stop them wanting to blow us up. Even though they didn't.
How much nicer to be scared of bird flu, rap lyrics, and other people.
Have you ever wondered why the term "Wanker" is used as an insult? I mean, there's two kinds of people in the world - those who masturbate, and those who lie about it.
Everyone does it. Even your parents - unless your dad's spent a night with Kapitano, in which case...yeah, well ANYWAY.
But "Breather" isn't an insult (though "Mouthbreather" is). You'd never call someone a lousy stinker "Eater" (even when they're a "Bottom Feeder"). "Breeder" only applies to someone who thinks their heterosexuality makes them a higher being. Someone like your dad in fact.
But now I think I understand. Watch these wankers and see what you think.
NaNoWriMo is about to start.
Could you write a 50,000 word novel in a month? Or at least the first draft of one? Could you just plunge ahead and write 2000 words a day with the minimum of planning and plotting, just to prove you really do have that book in you?
I'm kind of tempted to find out. With three hours to go till midnight and "Day 1", and the barest outline of a story in my head...well, I've got three hours to decide.
That's scary too, in it's way.
A Nark in the UK
Which LolCat are you? The test is here. I am:
Your result for The Which Lolcat Are You? Test...
Sad Cookie Cat
You are the classic Shakespearean tragedy of the lolcat universe. The sad story of a baking a cookie, succumbing to gluttony, and in turn consuming the very cookie that was to be offered. Bad grammar ensues.
To see all possible results, checka dis.
To see all possible results, checka dis.
Take The Which Lolcat Are You? Test at HelloQuizzy
I was teaching today. Which is to say, I was sitting in a classroom quite a lot.
First Lesson: I have eleven students on paper - and one turned up.
Second Lesson: My one student needs to go somewhere else, so I have a gloriously empty class.
Fortunately - or not - the school library (or "Resource Center") needs sorting out. So I spend a fascinating ninety minutes cataloging it. Really, really fascinating.
Third Lesson: On paper, five. In the room, one. Sitting an exam.
Fourth Lesson: He bunks off.
More cataloging.
Elsewhere on the testing site, there are reputedly eight kinds of intelligence. And I'm:
Your result for Howard Gardner's Eight Types of Intelligence Test...
Intrapersonal
"This area has to do with introspective and self-reflective capacities. Those who are strongest in this intelligence are typically introverts and prefer to work alone. They are usually highly self-aware and capable of understanding their own emotions, goals and motivations. They often have an affinity for thought-based pursuits such as philosophy. They learn best when allowed to concentrate on the subject by themselves. There is often a high level of perfectionism associated with this intelligence.
Careers which suit those with this intelligence include philosophers, psychologists, theologians, writers and scientists." (Wikipedia)
Take Howard Gardner's Eight Types of Intelligence Test at HelloQuizzy
8% Logical
24% Spatial
35% Linguistic
63% Intrapersonal
16% Interpersonal
45% Musical
14% Kinesthetic
22% Naturalistic (Instinctive)
One of these is used by psychologists and supposedly by modern teachers. The other's a silly bit of fun. You decide which tells you more about me.
Johnny Rotten is appearing in an advert. The product is butter. The advert is nationalistic.
Let me put this another way. The man whose career is built on his absolute refusal to sell out, is a sellout. The rebel who hated family values, is letting himself be used in a family friendly campaign. The boy who got into the Sex Pistols because he was wearing an "I Hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt, has fallen into self-mockery.
The face of danger is now safe. The pottymouth you couldn't dismiss is now trivial. The laughing harlequin is a laughingstock. The sneering spitting rebel has spat on his own rebellion.
The enfant terrible who got Bill Grundy sacked by saying "Fuck" on live TV...will probably soon be hosting a live daytime chatshow.
Most of the punks were knobs, truth be told, however much we cheered their jabs against complacency. This one turns out to be a knob of butter.
Sex!
Yes, there's a theme to this post.
There's a whining dog on my bed.
The reason he's on my bed is to keep him separate from the bitch downstairs, who's in heat and sending out pheromones like a perfume factory.
The reason he's whining is...he's being kept separate etc.
Sadie, the shady lady in question, is seven months old, and timidly baffled by all the bounding and barking attention she's suddenly getting from the boy dogs.
Estrus is the period of two to six weeks when a female dog wafts out lots of sexy chemicals from her rear end. The same word is used to refer to her period of fertility. And it's also used to refer to the period when all she can think about is chasing the boys.
Unfortunately, these three periods are not the same thing. They're only approximately synchronised, and of variable lengths. Result: Up to six weeks of whining frantic mutts and bitches that may - or may not - suddenly go the same way.
The thing about breeding dogs isn't how to get them to do it. It's how to live with them when you won't let them.
On Friday night I had sex. We lay on the floor for an hour till we both got jawache - standard stuff.
On Saturday night he sent me a cheery message - and a picture of his pecker. No, I'm not going to show you. If you want smutty pictures, scroll down to the next section.
The gist of the message was, "My willy's got these weird red splotches on it. Isn't that funny? LOL!"
Oh Christ, thinks me. Just what I really frelling need. Either he's given me something red and nasty in my mouth, or my mouth's given it to him, and he doesn't even realise.
And the moral of the story is: Don't suck off morons. Only give gobjobs to knobs of smart yobs.
Well, it turned out not to be VD - just good old fashioned friction burns and nothing to do with me at all. Which was...erm, nice.
I
I know what you're thinking. Kapitano's all talk and no action. Show us some sex!
Okay, I will. Here's a selection of stills from the 1981 erotic historical flick - and I do mean flick - The Centurians of Rome. With annotations. And I hope you're ready.
Can't you just taste the high production values?
This isn't just a video to wank to. It's got emotional depth. It's got plot. It's got a ten minute opening scene of ancient Britons telling each other how hard (fnarr) life is since the Romans came (fnarr) and invaded (fnarr).
See? Romans.
The imperialist pigs kidnap our hero, to sell him into a life of hellish slavery.
But there's two sides to every story. The Romans brought civilisation you know. And the art of ten minutes conversations about it.
Sometimes the pleasure is just in looking. And looking.
Local colour at the (meat) market.
The public don't know a bargain when they see one.
I'm getting an intertextual flavour of religions symbolism. Not sure why.
Did you ever see Caligula?
Let's talk about politics.
I need to talk about how I feel about being in this movie.
Yes! I'm an effete and corrupt Roman with a pervy taste for manflesh! Mmmm! Yes, I saw John Hurt in I, Claudius too!
What's a really good freeze-frame to end the movie on?
Rong iz Rit
Curried cheese on toast.
Lightly toasted bread, spread with butter and layered with mature chedder, topped with a sprinkling of mild curry powder, and put under the grill for two minutes. A good idea? An interesting culinary experience? A blasphemous abomination? A wonderful discovery? A disgusting mistake?
Having been seized with a desire to find out this evening, I can report my findings as follows:
1) It is possible to turn your toaster on it's side and use it as a grill. Just remember to set the ejection timer to maximum and eject manually - or else it'll fire a hot splashy projectile at you after an unpredictable interval. Just remember that napalm, like melted cheese, is hot and oily.
2) Melted things that fall off your toast into the toaster can burn and smoke for up to three minutes.
3) Yellow cheese does indeed stain orange.
4) The result tastes of cheese on toast and raw curry powder. The tastes, while not exactly in conflict, fail to coalesce. You know those weddings where the two families ignore each other? Imagine one of those in your mouth.
5) An hour later, I still feel a little sick.
Last week I asked: Which is more boring - teaching graph reading for two hours or being taught graph reading for two hours.
I can now reveal the answer is:
1) If the student has no need for the lesson at all because they're an expert on statistics and a science teacher, they'll enjoy teaching the others.
2) If the student has never met words like "incline" and "trend" before, they'll bunk off halfway through.
3) If the teacher is Kapitano, he'll discover a nerdish delight in talking maths.
Have you ever noticed, people proud of their impeccable spelling write nothing worth reading?
Two interviews today. One with my boss about how my teaching would be a whole lot better if I talked less...and one for a job at a different school. Synchronicity?
Oh, and apparently I flap my hands around too much.
I am quite certain that I do not.
It's The Real Thing
How much music is a guilty pleasure for you?
How often does one half of your mind get into the groove and throw it's hands in the air, while the other half points out how naff the noise is. Unoriginal, derivative, limited, badly written, badly mixed, badly produced, pretentious, silly, pseudo-profound, and actually a little bit embarrassing to like.
Remember Tatu, the fake lesbian schoolgirls from Russia? Stiltskin, the equally fake rock band formed around a jeans commercial? Boney M? 2 Unlimited? Queen? All been guilty listens for me. And I'm sure you've got a list too. Quite probably with ELO in it.
The latest for me is Autokratz. Synth sounds and lines that must be the result of ten second doodles. Meaningless lyrics that are only there so they can be processed to have a disjointed cutup feel. And an odd strutting self-mockery in live performance.
Yes they're in my ears right now.
How would you describe one of these?
Yes, it's a graph. Three graphs and a yellow histogram. But if you had to describe the shape of the lines as though you cared about whatever they represent? Then you've got words like "rise", "fall", "sink" and "plummet", plus collocations like "steady increment", "underlying upward trend" and "sharp knee".
Now which is more boring - two solid hours of learning this stuff, or two of teaching it? I'll know next week,
If you're in America, here's two reasons to vote for Obama.
1) What's on the board.
2) That it was put there by McCain supporters.
Thanks to the miracle that is Google, you can now make it harder to send email - for your own good.
Mail Goggles will challenge you do do maths before it'll let you send emails. So if you're too drunk to do basic maths, you must be too drunk to write sensible emails, so your late night drunken rants won't embarrass you later.
Coming soon, BearAware (the software that checks your Body Mass Index before it lets you do a striptease on webcam), FundieNot (which checks your blog posts for spurious logic, biblical misquotes and racism, and if you're at "Whackjob" level, won't let you send) and MythAway (which listens for urban myths in your conversation, and mechanically forces your mouth closed if you start repeating one).
I'm not good at people. I've only got two real skills:
1) Getting people to talk about themselves - not the most difficult thing in the world.
2) Spotting a fake.
It took two minutes of reading this fellow to go from 5% suspicion to 95% certainty that he's a 100% full-on bullshitter. That's "Augean Stable" on the bullshitometer. Just above "Lobsang Rampa". It's the combination of airy generalities (some inaccurate) and defensive tone that does it for me.
But then, he's talking about Windows 7, where just about everything you read is uninformed guesswork dressed up as top secret leaks.
Which only leaves the question of why some people need so much to give impressions of their own importance that the construct elaborate, time-expensive fantasies - and then try to live in them. It's probably obvious to you, but like I say, I'm no good at people.
I'm writing this on a minimal XP distro (call it XP3), running on a virtual machine (VM1), running on the the same distro as host (XP2), running as second OS on a dual boot (on XP1).
XP3 is running a virtualisation procedure on free software downloaded under XP1, while XP2...plays the greatest hits of Adam Ant.
This is so I can run a portable version of the program under XP1, using it to put together a virtual synthesiser that will use a mathematical model of vibrating membranes to simulate the sound of real drums. Which I can play on a virtual recreation of a drum machine that hasn't been manufactured since 1983.
So, keep it virtually real.
Lingo Dancing
My bent is academic, apparently.
The positive upshot of this is that, one day a week for the next two months or so, I'll be teaching "Academic English". The downside is that "Academic English" is the kind of tedious noncommunication used in academic papers.
Specifically I'm teaching IELTS. No one can remember what it stands for, but it's both a syllabus and a system of grading student's ability in the English they'll need for university education. There's nine levels, from 1 (barely able to communicate) to 9 (better than most native speakers).
To get into an anglophone university you'll need at least a 5 - or 7 if it's a posh one.
Considering that today's class gleefully produced sentences like "When will the television have been being watched by you tomorrow night?" - but had never come across "Debit Card" or "Traffic Jam" before - it may not be a difficult assignment.
I ought to take an IELTS test myself. To determine what actual level I needed to come top of the class in two degrees. I might scrape a 4.
In the meantime, if you look to the column of delicious links to the left, you might see five different programs and two scripting languages for creating new - and new kinds of - soundmaking software. And seeing as I don't know which, if any of them, is best for the slightly unusual projects I have in mind, I'm having to look at all of them.
The trouble with trying to invent something no one's tried before is, you don't know what the suitable tools are. I wonder how many materials were tried for silicon chips before someone hit on silicon?
I just started to write that I'd be seeing C tomorrow. Then there was an exchange of txts casting doubt on this and postponing the meet. Then after I deleted the sentence, more txts to the effect that we can meet tomorrow after all.
Have I mentioned my frequent suspicion that as soon as you write something on your blog, it ceases to be true?
Ship of Fools
Tomorrow morning I have to teach two students for three hours. I have no idea exactly what I'm supposed to teach them - I'll be told half an hour beforehand.
Now, one student is passionately interested in history and politics, enjoys grammar, wants to learn English for business and learns best when lessons are skewed this way. The other doesn't seem to be passionate about anything, and isn't clear on why he's learning English at all. Nice fellow, bad student.
So, problem 1: How am I supposed to teach both simultaneously?
I'll be observed for this lesson, by a senior teacher with, shall we say, well formed ideas about what's good teaching and what's bad. Specifically:
* Good teaching always involves the students talking as much as possible and the teacher as little.
* All interesting topics (eg, history and politics) are forbidden, because someone might get offended.
* Never teach grammar, always teach "functions" - ie. set phrases, ie. what the profession calls "chunks", ie. mindless cliches that people in real life never use.
So, problem 2: How am I supposed to teach anything at all?
The observer will be my boss, with who I attended a teaching workshop at the weekend. After which the guy presenting it...asked me to write an article for the magazine he edits.
Which rather annoyed the boss, who's got twenty years experience over my six months, a load of qualifications, and nothing published.
So, problem 3: How can I find a new school where only the first of these problems is likely to crop up?
Flicking through news channels I had a thought.
Sarah Palin. Why is she popular? She's corrupt (misusing public funds), a hypocrite (illegitimate granddaughter), a bully (the Monegan affair), a wingnut (on creationism and abortion) but most of all she's an idiot - as shown on even the tiny number of softball interviews she's been allowed to give.
So is she popular in spite of her idiocy...or because of it? I've no doubt a few of her supporters genuinely believe all the press bullshit about her being "fresh" and "dynamic", despite the lack of corroboration. But perhaps the majority want someone who appears to be one of them.
I don't mean Republican voters think of themselves as idiots - or indeed are. I mean they hold the usual vague broth of contradictory views on "America", "Foreigners", "Terror", "Guns", "Taxes", "God" and of course "Sex", and are reassured by a leader who's as cloudy as they are.
And seeing as she's got to match the cloudiness of many demographic groups, that's real cloudy.
Obama's equally vague talk of "Change" works the same way. When the public wants an impossible blend of greatness and mediocrity, competence and blankness, fuzzy is the only way to go.
Personally I'd want to be led in a field by someone who knows it better than I do - otherwise there'd be no point in being led. But that's just me.
Regan knew nothing and had exactly one talent - he could fake sincerity. Bush Sr was complacent where Regan was paranoid, but had the same non-grasp of the issues. And it's easy to see why an ignorant nominal leader is useful to advisors a few rungs down.
But it can't be as simple as that. Dan Quale and Gerald Ford were both famously dumb, and it didn't exactly win them admirers. JFK and Clinton were both famously smart, but it didn't count against them, and the founding fathers are revered as immensely able.
I'm not sure. I just know "President Palin" is slightly more terrifying than "President McCain", because the promises may be a fog, but the intentions are not.
I am attempting to delve into the innards of Max. They go quite deep.
It had to happen eventually. Someone turns up unannounced on my doorstep, clutching a nonfunctional laptop, asking that I fix it there and then.
While finishing my lunch with one hand.
And could I do it quickly please, 'cos they've got to go in five minutes.
And Wi-Fi is the same thing as broadcom wireless, right? No it didn't come with any software for the drivers. My dad's got a dongle and it works perfectly.
Yes, I'm sure it does. Sometimes I'm so diplomatic it hurts.
Remember
A short story about the near future.
- Chou Takamuri, Identity and Time
I remember my first implant, though it seems a strange thing to say.
I was ten years old, an American boy who'd never left Chicago until then. I'd been flown to a Chinese city whose name I couldn't pronounce, then left to lie on a table in a bare white room, listening to the sounds of the doctors getting ready.
When I woke up I didn't feel any different. I was still confused, and I was still a frightened boy in a foreign country. Then within an hour I knew I had been a Korean teenage girl. I'd been a child prodigy in mathematics, spending each day studying field equations, chaos and string theory, learning each thoroughly under pressure from my family and my own fear of failure.
Calculus, Maxwell's equations, Schroedinger, Born and Plank, they were all in my head, all so beautiful and obvious, all fitting together so neatly.
But there was more, and there was also less. There was the time my mother cut her hand preparing an evening meal of rice and soup, and the time I came home bubbling with excitement about my exam results, only to be told my grandfather had died while I was taking it.
I'd had a crush on a movie star, and when I confessed it to a friend he'd laughed and told me his secret love, much more scandalous than mine. One time I'd got separated on a shopping trip and ran around panicking until a man with a deformed face took me to the manager.
But before the age of seven, nothing. And after signing the consent forms to be used for implanting, nothing. It was as though I'd been one person till a specific day at the age of seven, then two till fifteen, and now I was...one and a half, and still only ten.
I wanted to meet my parents - that is, the girl's parents - to show them how well I'd done, but the doctors wouldn't allow it.
I stayed in the clinic for several weeks, watched closely by ever-changing staff in identical blue robes, and crying every night. I wanted to go home, but home was two different places. I wanted my comic books, but I hated comic books and wanted the science books that I'd read in a language I didn't understand.
Gradually it became easier, and after returning "home" I could enjoy basketball and quadratic equations in their own ways. Baseball statistics I could appreciate from both sides.
I found I could understand most Korean and a little Chinese, but I couldn't speak them, because I remembered using the languages, but I'd never been through the process of learning them.
I was told I'd be able to separate my American self from my Korean self, but that never happened. I had, and still have, conflicting sets of memories - plus attitudes, aspirations and even religious beliefs. I can't reconcile them, but the truth is I don't need to.
My psychologist once asked me who I really was. I replied that I was myself, and it didn't matter what we called it. I thought that was quite good for an American/Korean boy/girl of 12/17.
- Tanith Wolf, Whose Me?
I remember my first implant, and now so do a hundred others.
The girl's name was Chan-Sook. I never met her, but I first met another Chan-Sook implant when I was seventeen. She was Canadian, and I met her on the internet, as we all did in those days.
Personal contact between co-implants was strictly forbidden, simply because no one knew what would happen. Would we go mad? Fall in love? How would an already fractured mind cope with seeing itself in a mirror that talked back?
But we were young, we were clever - because that was the the point of implanting - and we were determined. And so, as a minor celebrity and teacher of higher mathematics, I got myself booked into a conference in Canada.
Sally was nineteen. Overweight and sexy, talkative and with a wild sense of humour, she was nothing like me, and we instantly liked each other. We'd been reminiscing about our childhood for half an hour before we realised, with astonishment, that we'd been remembering the same childhood. Chan-Sook was with us both.
I think it was at that moment that we both understood what it really is to be an implant.
Do you recall what they used to say about identical twins raised apart? How they live their lives in subtle parallel, make the same decisions, share an almost telepathic bond? How, when they find each other, it's like the refusing of two halves of one soul?
It was largely media hype about twins. But it's true about us. I didn't fall in love with Sally, she didn't feel threatened by our partially shared identity, and neither of us went mad. But we were like distorting mirrors of each other.
I now have hundreds of sisters - male and female - like Sally, all over the world. We are different, we are independent, but to me, they are my family.
- Aimee X, Multilife
I remember my second implant.
I was one of the first multiple implants, and all the paranoid media speculation of the first was repeated about it. With three or more persons "blended", would the "real" person get lost? Etc, etc.
It's true that Ramon and I were quite different - much more so than I and Chan-Sook. He was fifty years old, a world-class engineer, and I was twenty eight, a theoretical physicist. He was white and I was black. He was homosexual, whereas I was not. He was also dying of cancer, and volunteering to be an implant template was his way of continuing to work.
He'd spent twelve years - longer than anyone at the time- having his memory formation recorded. He was also one of the very few adults being recorded.
I actually had the pleasure of meeting Ramon, shortly before his record was copied into me, so I have two versions of our conversation. I was nervous and a little in awe of him. He thought I was tired but charming.
When Ramon died his family asked me to speak at his funeral. A surprising request, but quite flattering in its way. I think they wanted confirmation that he lived on in me, even to the extent that he could deliver a eulogy for himself.
I had to tell them it wasn't quite like that, but I could tell them how much they meant to him, and they were quite satisfied with that.
Emotional attachments can get tricky with implants. I heard about one case where a woman tried to adopt the girl who'd been implanted with her dead husband. Fortunately she was turned down, but society is still adjusting to the technology after four decades.
- Sam Revok, Reflection/Reflexion
Every implant module placed in the brain is also a recorder, which means the interactions between the template and the host are recorded, as are subsequent implantations, and can themselves be implanted.
I myself have five facets, including my original self. Others have as many as thirteen, and people are now starting to record entire lifespans for later implantation.
It is no longer just the most eminent who get preserved, or the richest. There are families which plan to implant each whole generation in the next. If you work for a major corporation, you may be asked to receive your predecessor's memories, and to have yours placed in your successors when you leave.
Technology never gives us what it promises, but it always gives something unexpected. The IT revolution didn't increase productivity, but it did change the kind of work people do. The atom bomb didn't make peace, but it turned war cold.
Implantation has not created a master-race of schizophrenic multi-geniuses, nor a sub-species of incomprehensible freaks, nor an army of mental clones. It hasn't drawn the peoples of the world together, or pushed them further apart. It may have made people less afraid of each other, but governments still thrive on fear.
I - or should it be "We" - can't tell you what will happen. Perhaps those who inherit me/us through my/our memories will see more clearly.
Not a Rant
I was going to post a rant about, you know, politics an' stuff. But you know what's wrong with the world as well as I do, so instead, here's the song I just wrote. Maybe you'll like it.
Broken Hearts
VERSE 1:
So
There we were
In a bus stop, in the midnight
Rain again
Holding hands
You said something, and I nodded
Now and then
So
There we sat
Got a secret, and the secret's
Yours to tell, you
Turn and smile
With a question, and I thought
What the hell
Chorus:
You like
Songs about broken hearts, and
You remember
Words from the forgotten past, and
You read
Books about being happy, you know
Nothing about me
Nothing about me
VERSE 2:
So
There we stayed
In a shelter, with the early
Morning sky
Squeeze my hand
You say you love me, and I tell
One more lie
So
There we were
Making big plans, for our future
All that stuff, I'll
Run away
Go tomorrow, 'cos I'm not
Strong enough
It's Oh So Quiet
My ears are full of cooking oil.
There is a perfectly good reason for this. We don't have any eardrops.
Yesterday I was trying to design a sound like the synth-strings at the start of Shine on You Crazy Diamond, but no matter what I did, it sounded muffled and crap.
After an hour I took a break and put on some music. Which also sounded muffled and crap. The little grey cells told me there might be a connection, and after sluicing out my ears with warm water - which turned a notably darker shade - my Crazy Diamonds regained some of their shine.
So with luck tomorrow I'll be able to hear a pin drop on a fur rug in a thunderstorm in Saskatchewan. But in the meantime you'll have to shout.
I said...You'll Have To Shout!
I read in other blogs that the secret to blogging success is to post little but often. Lots of short, snappy articles, and a new one at least every day.
Of course, I read this in blogs that don't have many readers, but maybe I should give it a go. Just not today.
I've had my 12,000th visit. But I don't know who the visitor was.
They were in Brighton in the UK on September 27th. They're running Opera 9.52 under XP with Javascript 1.4, running a monitor with a resolution of 1024x768 and 32-bit colour depth. Their ISP is Easynet, and they were looking for info on the Dillfrog Rhymer - a sadly defunct rhyme-finding tool for songwriters, which I helped design three years ago.
Who were you, mystery man?
Question from a student on Tuesday:
Itch
It's been one of those weeks where nothing comes easily.
I decided that I'd like to make a little piece of music based on scratching. Turntablism. Vinyl abuse. Dragging a record backwards and forwards under a needle with the speakers switched on.
To scratch a record you need:
(1) A turntable - or deck as they're known to people who actually use them. It should have
* a slipmat instead of the rubber plate you find on domestic record players
* a continuous-run motor so the record won't spend a few painful seconds gathering speed when you release it
* top quality needles (probably made by by the Shure company) mounted on a heavy "head", and
* a rock solid build. A second-hand deck mounted on your kitchen table won't make anything except a squeaky table.
(2) A high quality vinyl pressing, probably with the "fresh" sample that absolutely all turntablists seem to love. I think it's from a Grandmaster Flash B-side, but don't quote me on that.
(3) About five years of constant practice.
(4) Lots of time for the practice.
(5) Lots of money for everything else.
(6) A birthdate sometime in the last fifteen years.
(7) A posse with similar birthdates.
You can get equipment which works just like a scratching deck, but which connects to your computer, instructing it to manipulate a sound file as though you were scratching it. For this you don't need the first two above.
The common alternative to having a deck on your desk...is to scratch with your mouse, and there's lots of cheap (and free) software to do this.
I've tried DyScratcher, MouseScratcher, Turntablist Pro, Sxratch, Vinyl Boy, and Fruity Scratcher. And I can confidently reveal they're all about as crap as each other. Mice are just not good scratching tools.
If your laptop has a touchpad, they're a bit easier. In the sense that it's easier to prepare a banquet with one hand tied behind your back than two.
So, what about software that lets you program scratches off-line, then play them in real time?
There's Scratcher, which works pretty well but is limited to four bar sequences and is IMO rather unintuitive. The same programmer is working on Turntable Surgeon, which should be astounding...when it's finished.
There's also Fruity WaveTraveller, which impressed me so much I've just spent three days figuring out why it won't quite do what I want.
The thing is, I know exactly what I want. I want a piano-roll sequencer that lets me arrange scratches by note pitch and duration, with controls for crossfader, skipback, transform, and the other tools in the scratcher's box.
Such a beast does not exist.
So what do you do when something you need doesn't exist? You invent it!
Invent it how, exactly?
I could program a VST in C++. But my programming skills are buried under fifteen years of rust, and I was never much good at C++.
There's SynthMaker, which creates VSTs from graphical modules...and can't make sequencers. There's SynthEdit, with less flourishes and more support...which can't do sequencers eithers.
MAX is a language while lets you design practically anything musical from the ground up...if you have a degree in algebra and a year to spare.
Tassman can probably do it, but last time I tried to use it, there was a distinct feeling of building a modest house one brick at a time...firing each brick individually.
Reaktor can definitely do it, and may not even need the algebra degree. Though it probably needs the year. And it's godsmackingly expensive.
There's is one other possibility which occurs to my awkward mind. Find a sample, feed it into Stomper, let it mangle the sound in the dozen most common ways used by scratchers, and assign each scratch to one note on a midi keyboard.
It should only take about three hours before I can start using it. The earliest synthesisers could take even longer to set up.
So, welcome to the world of digital music, where you can make sound any way you want, and innovate in any way your imagination desires - provided you want to recreate an old way on a computer.
Defenestration
"I bought some batteries but they weren't included."
- Steven Wright
Odd how one thing leads to another. For example:
Kapitano wants to make some music. He's got the software, but only a rather run down and obsolete laptop to run it on. However, he knows lots of tricks for speeding up Windows - probably the most important of which is to cut out all the unnecessary junk.
The problem with cutting out junk is, sometimes you're not sure whether something's really junk. You might need it later, or it might look useless but be vital in some oblique way for some task.
For instance, although everything needed for USB devices seemed to be left in, any USB storage device caused a crash whenever it was plugged in. A rather frustrating mystery.
Now, one way to neaten up and streamline Windows is to have largely self-contained programs - or self-contained versions of programs which usually aren't. In other words, portable applications.
Some you can download, but there's also software for taking an ordinary application and making it portable. It does this by taking a snapshot of your system before installation, and one after, then finding the differences and bundling them all into one file.
Sounds good. Unfortunately it only works reliably when installing onto a clean operating system. So you can either reinstall Windows every time you want to make a portable application...
...or you can use a virtual machine. This is a simulation of one computer, running on another computer. And yes, you can run a simulation on the simulation if you really want to.
You set up your virtual machine, install Windows and the portablising software on it, and install your application with it running. Then copy the resulting program onto your real computer and reset the virtual one to convert another program.
However, this is done in a slightly clunky and one-size-fits-all way. The better way to do it is to compare the two snapshots, work out for yourself the best method, and design an installer program to do it - for which you need to learn the scripting language.
This is the point I'd got to before discovering why USB devices crashed the laptop. It wasn't anything I'd cut out, it was the driver for the USB camera. It messed up all the others. Gah.
However I reckon there is a way to make it work. I just need to set up a virtual machine and make a self contained version - so it'll only mess everything else up when I'm running it.
And then I can make some music.
Fenestration
"I can levitate birds but no one cares."
- Steven Wright
There is a theme to this post.
I've spent the last month cutting up my OS.
Windows XP is around 650MB on the installation CD, expanding to about 1.3GB when you install it on your hard disk - and that's before you install any software. But the core of XP is 85MB expanding to around 200. Approximately two thirds is useless most of the time, and if you can work out which bits of that two thirds is useful to you...you can cut out the junk and get a small, fast, efficient, asesthetically designed and useful system.
If you can work out which bits you need for your software. That's the difficult bit. That's the bit you need six spare days a week for a month for.
I spent most of Saturday installing Windows for someone else.
I get to work generally one day a week, filling in for teachers who are absent/sick/on holiday/doing something better/teaching somewhere else, which suits me just fine. I get just enough to live on, and plenty of free time for things like...um...well, see above.
Like all modern schools, it has computers. And like all schools, it has students who enjoy messing them up. Engineering students don't generally spend their mental effort working out ways to mess up the lathe, veterinary students don't think it's cool to induce seizures in dogs, but students of everything like to see how they can fuck up other people's computers.
Computing students are no exception. They're just better at it.
So, every year after the summer rush, the school computers get sluiced out, reformatted and renewed with reinstalled Windows. This year it was slightly different in that:
(a) It took a day instead of a week
(b) It was done properly by some one who knew what they were doing, and
(c) I put some security in this time
It seems no one had previously thought of using passwords.
So, having spent seven hours (one for each computer) installing Windows 2000, Windows XP and (hack, spit) Windows Vista...I could happily spend the rest of my life never again seeing a yellow bar creeping across a blue screen.
People have never put their laptops on their laps. Laps were designed for dogs, not computers.
Occasionally they put them on tables on trains, or on conveniently raised rocks doing work "in the field" (in fields, anyway), or on the ends of beds, but mostly laptops go on desks. They were originally meant to be portable adjuncts to desktop PCs, but they wound up replacing them.
Nowadays if you're a serious user, you have one laptop on your desk for work, a smaller one in your bedroom for internet and games, and an even smaller one for going on the road. Palmtops, they're sometimes called. Except they don't go on palms either.
And you transfer data between them using USB memory sticks. Everyone's got several memory sticks - one lost under the bed, one lost in a drawer somewhere, one left in a taxi, and the one on your keychain you haven't lost yet.
You can also run software from a memory stick. There are "portable" versions of many (perhaps most) popular programs, designed to be small and self-contained. And this has had one rather surprising but extremely welcome effect....
Because although Windows looks superficially neat and modular, with different separate programs plugged into the operating system, it isn't. Each program is densely intertwined with the Windows core, and the various "extras" you need for the more advanced software - things like DotNet, Visual BASIC, Visual C++, Java, DirectX, Network drivers, sound and video drivers, codecs, QuickTime etc etc.
In other words, it's a tangled mesh of overlaps and interdependencies which no amount of pruning and housekeeping entirely unwinds. In other words, it's a freaking mess.
But portable software isn't messy. You plug it in, run it, and unplug when you're finished. It's clean, simple and sensible. It's what Windows should have been.
And there's absolutely no reason why you can't install it permanently on your hard disk. So that's what I've done.
With a cut down 300MB Windows installation - half of it just for networking - and the same again for DotNet, Visual C++ etc etc, and 2GB of portable-but-permanent software, my antiquated laptop is now a recording studio, video edit suite, graphic design lab, office and browser...and it runs twice as fast as desktop PCs that are supposed to be twice the speed.
Now I've just got to remember what I wanted to do with it.
Watch the Skies
Making a timelapse film of the clouds. How hard can it be? Just point a webcam out of the window, attach it to a laptop that's not needed for anything else, and press "Go".
That's after you've spent two nights failing to the laptop to recognise the webcam, and your mother has spent an afternoon and some powers of lateral thinking after you've given up. And after all that, you find the sky is not so much cloudy as a uniform wash of pale grey.
Last week I did one day of teaching, covering for a sick colleague. This week another day for another one. In both cases after two hours of sleep following a night of drunken debauchery. But hey, that's what Sundays are for.
Actually I'm not sure my colleagues are ill that often - I think they're off trying to find work somewhere better. Either that or they had fun Sundays too.
In any case, I had a very pleasant one-to-one with a cute Swiss lad who plays electric blues guitar. Which meant I gave a lesson in music theory and American blues icons masquerading as one on vocabulary.
Oh, and the school have come up with a cost-efficient solution to the problem of students putting viruses on the classroom computers. If a teacher is ill one day, they call up their friendly neighbourhood substitute teacher, and if the entire class bunks off - which they often do - he spends the lesson reinstalling Windows and putting in security.
There's a piece of laminated paper blutacked to each classroom door, informing us that if any student is more than ten minutes late, we're to send them to the "student room" for quiet study. It's next to the notices telling students they must speak English at all times, and put the chairs on the tables at lesson's end.
If we followed the instructions, we'd have nothing but empty classes and I'd fix the computers in no time.
Tony recognised me, for the first time ever. He was being "moved on" from outside a shop by the manager. Earlier the police had done the same from the beach - and given him a piece of paper to prove they'd done it.
I gave him the coins in my pocket, but what he really wanted was company for half an hour, so I sat and listened while he drank his cider.
He'd spent eight years in the army, eventually serving in Basra - "cleaning up the mess left by the yanks". He says he tried to avoid shooting people if he could. Soon after he was posted, four fellow soldiers were killed when an American helicopter fired a missile on their jeep by mistake. He doesn't like Americans much now.
When detoxing he gets flashbacks to that time - the noise of gunfire, the fear of mines and the whole sense of hopelessness. Eventually he snapped and started shouting at a superior - "What are we doing here? What's this for?". He was put in solitary confinement ("The Greenhouse") for two months and discharged.
Now he's afraid he's going mad, but insists (correctly) that he still has self-respect and people who care about him.
Snappy
Okay. On the one hand I'm back online (fingers crossed) after a week of stressed late nights and disgruntled early mornings. I've finally got this dratted computer working perfectly (fingers and toes crossed).
On the other hand I'm so sick of the sight of it I don't want to go near it for a week.
So...I've found another challenge. A few years ago my mother found a laptop in a skip. It has a 3GB hard drive, 128MB of RAM, and runs (I think) around 250MHz. So you can see why it was in a skip. But mother nursed it back to health, and now it's just waiting to perform some task that only a hopelessly obsolete computer can do.
A few years before that, Mother invested a whole UKP20 in a digital camera. It has space for 26 "high resolution" pictures - 320x240, the same resolution as YouTube, only dimmer and granier. It's chief selling point was that you could carry it in your top pocket.
Yesterday I stumbled upon a tiny program that took snapshots from your webcam - every second, 5 minutes, day, or whatever. And you can see where this is going can't you?
The challenge is therefore:
* To find a version of Windows that'll take up, say, 200MB instead of the usual 1.3GBs. Luckily, I spent the last week developing one.
* Put it on the "skip machine", with the "pencam".
* Find something to take a timelapse film of!
Update: After two nights of (very slowly) installing various flavours of Windows and trying to coax the USB port into life...I think I'll use the other spare laptop instead. The one with 768MB of RAM and the 2GHz processor. The one that works.
One of the Windows flavours was my own reduced version of 2000 - reduced from 360MB to 60. Sixty megabytes will give you a fully functional operating system with no software and no internet.
Compare and contrast with DSL - which I've mentioned before and which Aimee reminded me about. 50MB, giving you internet access, browsers, wordprocessors, a spreadsheet, image editing and more. Hmmm.
So I'm going to give it a go. Watch me as I take a deep breath, hold my nose, screw shut my eyes and dive in.
Still here, just having network problems
...quite a lot of them. And other computer-related troubles.
So I'm mostly offline at the moment. Enjoy the silence.
Eyes and Ears
I'm not going to go blind after all.
Yes, today was my checkup at the eye clinic. Last year it was "You have a severe astigmatism that'll only get worse and probably cause glaucoma which'll likely blind you by the time you're fifty and there's no way to stop it."
Now it's "Your eyes are exactly the same as last year so there's no new degeneration so if you do develop glaucoma it'll start when you're eighty. So we don't need to see you again. Bye."
My right eye is still a bit rubbish, but (a) it hasn't got any more rubbish and (b) my left eye is wonderful! So that's nice.
New Scientist. A weekly magazine of popular science that I read avidly as a teenager. It introduced me to virology, set theory, chaos theory, and some really weird cool stuff about using quantum physics to make unbreakable cyphers.
Now I get to peruse it again, ever since Mother switched her subscription from Time Magazine - on the grounds that Time had become full of neocon cheerleading instead of actual news.
Unfortunately, New Scientist is also now full of drivel. Recently there was a front page article on why the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe - an intriguing notion, until you ask what it means. There is a pretty rigorous definition of complexity in biology, and another quite different one from information theory that could (perhaps, in principle) be applied to the universe. But probably not.
It's a little like saying "Chocolate cake is rich, and so is the Hilton Hotel, so the chocolatiest cake in the hotel is a multibillionaire".
This week, there's a brief article on why men with wide faces are violent. Read that again before going on, just to make sure you got it right.
Testosterone in puberty causes the facial bones to widen, and men to become aggressive - the more testosterone, the wider the face and the more aggression. Aggressive people are violent, so...yeah.
And the fact that the researchers saw some stocky teens "aggressively" playing video games confirms it. Yes, they said that.
They also say it applies to short and small men too - though presumably accept the line that testosterone increases height and muscle mass.
Still, nevermind. Testosterone also increases testicle size (except when it does the opposite, as a sports supplement), deepens the voice (though that's actually more a matter of cartilage structure in the neck), and increases sex drive, which is why men with squeaky voices don't commit adultery. So I've read.
Oh, small detail: If you're going to talk about aggression as a measurable trait in psychology, try not confusing it with the colloquial connotations of the word. That way, you might not talk complete gibberish.
I have now sat up for four nights in a row listening to science fiction podcasts. I've redescovered Ted Chiang (who writes excellent short stories once in a blue moon) and John Varley (who wrote one of the best and three of the worst novels of my childhood) on StarShipSofa. Plus Mike Resnick (who makes sensitive types cry) and Charles Finlay (who makes dumb types nod sagely) on Escape Pod.
I once read that there are now so many Star Trek episodes, films, books, and audios around that someone could literally spend their entire life watching, reading and hearing Star Trek. And given the uncounted thousands of fan-written stories on the net - divided into gen, het, slash, HC, PWP and other impenetrably named subgenres - there's enough for the afterlife too.
I'm not sure I could fill my whole life with the horror of Pseudopod, the various genres of Varient Frequencies or the complete books of Podiobooks...but I'm happy to have a rich supply of bedtime stories. Before I have breakfast and go to bed.
I'll start making tea tomorrow.
It Makes Me Sick
I've had no voice for the last few days. That's why you couldn't see any new blog posts - I was whispering them.
As for why I had no voice, my throat was burned by stomach acid carried by food in a great hurry to reach the toilet bowl, without having to go through all that tedious digestion first.
Yes, I spent half of monday night sicking up monday's lunch - and the other half getting hot and cold flushes. So either I had a little food poisoning...or I'm pregnant.
Considering the recent spate of sex the probability of pregnancy is admittedly raised, but something tells me that's not it.
Tonight, a man slouched against a wall asked if I had any spare change. He said he was a hopeless alcoholic, slowly dying and just waiting for the end. He didn't care about living anymore - just wished it wouldn't take so long to finally die.
I smiled and said, "Hello Tony".
He stared at me in astonishment. How could I know his name?
He never remembers me. Each time he falls back into the cider bottle and onto the street, it's like his memory is wiped clean.
He told me again about how the wife he'd met at a detox clinic threw him out when he relapsed, and how he hoped he could patch things up with his son before the end. He wanted to know why Jesus was letting him go through life like this, if there wasn't some grand purpose that would make it all make sense.
There was a tumor on the side of his head that hadn't been there before - though strangely he looked healthier. There were no cold sweats, DT tremours or numb limbs this time, plus he'd put on some healthy pounds.
He refused to take the coins in my pocket, so I slipped them into the cap by his side, and he pretended not to notice. That's how dignity is maintained. He said he'd buy a bottle of vodka as a treat and sleep on the soft grass of the common tonight.
He's probably there as I'm typing this.
There's a school for adults opening nearby. It goes by the promising name of Worker's Educational Association. I dropped 'round to sniff out the possibilities of employment.
So, I ask, do you run courses in EFL/ESL/ESOL/whatever-it's-calling-itself-this-month? Oh yes. Well, probably. Dunno really, we're just starting up.
How many students do you expect to have? Dunno yet. We'll see who turns up. How many teachers do you have? I couldn't really say - someone around here might know. And what sort of wages do you expect to pay? Dunno really, we're just starting up, you see.
Sigh. So how do I apply? Simple! Just fill out these ten pages of stupid questions and we'll add you to the list of teachers we might interview at some point. When we know what we need.
And finally, a brief lesson on how computers work.
Adobe Reader aka Adobe Acrobat is a program you probably have on your computer that lets you read PDF files. PDF is a way of formatting text in a book-like way, so you can read what look like books on your computer - complete with numbered pages, headings and subheadings, embedded pictures and indeed watermarks and page creases. Very useful.
Now, Adobe Reader takes up 157 megabytes, is slow, awkward to configure, and not exactly neat in terms of how is works behind the scenes with your system. Sumatra, on the other hand, reads PDFs, is 1.33 megabytes, fast, easy to configure, and clean to install.
Like most such admirable programs, it was developed by one person working alone to solve a problem simply because it needed solving. Sometimes such people work illegally, and occasionally go to jail for undoing the mess made by the professionals.
Anyway, I want to deinstall Reader and install Sumatra. But I can't deinstall Reader because the 'helper' program Windows Installer isn't working. Normally I'd solve this by finding the uninstaller program provided by Adobe as a matter of basic professionalism, and run it. Except I can't because Reader doesn't have one. This is like manufacturing a door without a handle, or a car without brakes, but the good people of Adobe presumably had some good reason.
Hmmm, I think. Maybe Reader was misinstalled in such a way that it can't activate or communicate with Windows Installer? So if I reinstall Reader, over the top of itself, it might install correctly and fix the problem so I can deinstall it. Good idea, yes? Didn't work.
So I try reinstalling Windows Installer, thinking the problem may be there. But Windows won't let me reinstall it...because I've already got the latest version installed, so it can't see there's any need to install it. Gah!
Ah, but wait a minute. Installer isn't just a program - it's a Service. A Service is a little program that sits on your computer, always running, taking up space and RAM but doing absolutely nothing most of the time until it's needed. Like now. Which is why, six months ago, I configured it to only start running when it was needed. Well, it wasn't.
So. Deep breath. I configure Installer to run all the time, reboot, deinstall Reader, install Sumatra, reconfigure Installer to not run all the time anymore...and reboot again.
And that, gentle reader, is how you work with computers.
4 and Sore
How do you celebrate your blogiversary? Starting at midnight?
How about long, slow and mutual gustatory carnal pleasuring with a man you've just met? In an actual bed, no less - a step up in the world from your parent's back garden.
Followed by tea (because we're British), biscuits (because there's nothing like Hob-Knobs after Gobbling-Knobs), more love'n'shove (because we can), and sleep (because we're knackered).
Then in the morning, more long, slow etc. etc., followed by more tea, more biscuits, and the swapping of phone number so we can do it again soon.
And on the way home, blinking in the early light, a call from another bloke who's "free for fun" around midnight. The straight-but-prefers-the-way-men-give-blowjobs type.
Friday was my last day at work - also the last for most of the teachers and almost all the students. So you can imagine how serious and earnest the lessons were.
Nothing to do except clear up the remains of two leaving parties, drink tea (because, well....), and hold a particularly ill-tempered meeting - before going off to look for a new job.
You'd think someone who's spent their life running language schools would know better than to say, "The English don't speak English properly". That's a bit like saying "Swans don't swim properly. They should do it like the book says they do".
Spent the evening watching rather too many episodes of Star Trek, while eating lentil soup (because I'm trying to stay on a high fibre diet) followed by chocolate biscuits (because I'm not trying very hard) and then, before you know it...
...it's midnight, and there's time for one more nice surprise.
He's late, which is neither nice nor a surprise, but he's horny as a goat on horny goat weed, and feeling experimental.
Bloke: How can I turn you on, Kapitano?
Kap: Um, well you could try sucking my cock?
Bloke: Okay, let's try that!
So he tentatively tries it, and finds that, really, he likes it. Let me rephrase that. He tries it, and an hour later decides he really really likes it.
And an hour after that, although I'm very pleased for him that he's discovered a new source of joy, I'm dropping hints that it's cold and I'll need to sleep soon. That and I've got stubble burn on my scrotum and love bites on my inner thigh.
Oh just another five minutes, please, he says. So another forty minutes later I finally take his new toy away from him, because it's just a bit sore.
Oh just one more minute, please. Honestly, I am such a sucker. Um, yes.
So this is Kapitano, marking four years of blogging, with tea, chocolate biscuits, a new friend with old skills, and old friend with new skills, no job, no immediate plans, and several red patches...signing off. Till tomorrow.
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