John's Essays

Tumbld

2009-02-12T18:12:00.002Z

I'm trying out a new routine over at a nice clean looking tumble blog I've just started. Things may be a bit slower / dead over here depending on what I feel like. Certainly, Tumblr wins on user interface and functionality for me. This way my inane links can escape the surly bonds of private email. Perhaps real writing too.

25

2009-01-24T19:34:00.004Z

It’s twenty five years to the day since the Macintosh was introduced. The event was a masterpiece of Steve Jobs salesmanship at its best, promising the world and very almost delivering it. A quarter of a century of windows, icons, menus and mouse pointers for the masses. The ideas at its heart came from diverse inspirations, from Doug Engelbart to Alan Kay. (Indeed, you can read all about it at crucial Mac software architect Andy Hertzfeld's brilliant Folklore.) If you happened to visit the geek nirvana of Xerox PARC in the 70’s, you could have seen them in action before the rest of the world. As so often in the history of computing, it took Steve Jobs taking just such a tour to lead to this technology’s exposure. Technology we are still very much wedded to even now.

My parents happened to have a couple of old Macs in their kitchen just the other day, stopping on their way from storage to the Museum of Communication in Fife. One was a 512k and the other a Plus. Both of them sprang into life when I switched them on, although we had no software to try them with, and the Plus soon burst a capacitor! I used the opportunity to show some friends the monochrome face of the computer dynasty each and all of us use to this day. Quaint, yet immediately recognisable.

Along with this anniversary, there’s some chatter over whether the Mac will still exist in another 25 years time. January 24th, 2034? I expect it will. The little computer’s history until now has been anything but safe at times, but it’s in fine form these days and I still see a place for the machines, suited as always to the needs of their users. It may even still be WIMP. But I’m not at all so sure that the mouse pointer paradigm will still rule computing by then.

Fittingly enough, it’s Apple again who have the lead again in the next obvious technology. The iPhone and its intriguing API – which keeps me busy for the moment – has every potential moving ahead. We’ve been using touch-screens large and small in fiction for years, but it seemed to take this long for it to become reality, and be truly well thought out. When picturing the future, it is customary to always mention 3D displays and holograms as soon as the next step after this. I can certainly imagine how those might work, given the lead exposed by the iPhone today and the Mac a quarter of a century ago.

Anyway, I think I’ll leave the last word to Steve:

“I don’t think about that,” he said. “When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, ‘Get it away!’ and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed. You have to look forward.”

Oh? Well … bugger!

Regarding the Incoming President

2009-01-16T15:31:00.001Z

At what is a pretty dark moment in the grander scheme of things, with economic tumult seeming to give way to economic slump, there is at least one profoundly positive event about to occur. This inauguration will do America a whole lot of good. Even the outgoing president seems to be relieved about it, or so he said in a typically confusing farewell speech which pointed out once again where his view of the world comes from. (One day of madness seven Septembers ago, inevitably.) It’s also widely thought that the rest of the world will be relieved to see someone – anyone – the like of Obama taking charge. But will it? As always, the likeliest outcome is a whole lot more complex.

As I wrote before the election, the biggest issue for the next president is the economy. Not Gaza, not Iran, not Iraq, not healing frayed ties with Europe or anyone else. Obama’s already given a clear signal about this by appointing Hillary Clinton as his diplomat at large. You don’t want to be stepping on your star appointment’s toes. He’s not planning to, as far as I can tell, though it will be interesting to see just how well they can keep it up. So far she’s been thoroughly on message. But we’re not even at day one yet.

A quick run through of the foreign policy challenges America and its new president face, and well, it’s enough to dismay anyone who’s been following this long enough. Rising tensions between the powers. The whole global warming thing. Violent Islamism apparently unabated. And all in the context of a dark patch in the global economy too, weakening those so very necessary soft powers and sweet promises.

First up though is, as always, a Middle East once more in foment, with Israel this time instead of America at the heart of it. An Israel engaged in one of that country’s occasional episodes of all-too indiscriminate retribution, right before an election too. I’m definitely in the camp which views the current war in Gaza as the product of critical timing. Such an action is as good a way as any to test the mettle of a brand new president of the United States. Just as much as it is a way to campaign for the chaotic election now so near in Israel itself. What we’re witnessing is as dramatic a vying for position as the modern world often has us see. What’s being fought over is old hawk Ariel Sharon’s legacy, sadly, instead of that far brighter and more necessary one belonging to Yitzhak Rabin. As absurd as it sounds when said: the real battle is in the ballot box. The bombing of Gaza will cease in time for that, if not Barack Obama, as Israel’s battling cabinet tries to resolve who really won the inevitable ceasefire.

Will Obama be on a diplomatic offensive, scoring those history-making shots with the world’s varied leaders, with proselytising talk for them in an attempt to win support for his global global vision? Or will that be Hillary Clinton’s purview for the moment? Who’s going to talk to Hamas, I wonder? Where will we be seeing the pair of them: always apart?

It’s hard to know what the new administration is going to do regarding the world at large. Some appointments signal continued staunch support for Israel, while much of the campaign had to do with reappraisal of American influence in the Middle East. Just by virtue of who he is, I expect Obama to have an opportunity unseen since the weeks after 9/11 to turn things around. A lot does depend though on the details of how he decides to take it. I wasn’t exactly delighted to hear that he’d gone with Clinton for Secretary of State, but the idea has certainly grown on me. Perhaps she will be an inspired choice. It feels right now that we all need nothing less!

This is a hard world to face right now. Could it be that historical continuity returns and those men and women who take on the task simply must grow into their roles? And do?

Philler

2009-01-06T15:49:00.007Z

Uh oh! The Last Macworld of All Time is upon us. I'd best make my predictions now before it's too late to be proven wrong.

Phil Schiller

Steve Jobs finally came out yesterday about why Phil's getting this one. Speculation last month had been there might just not be much of note to announce. Especially Stevenote. A look to the past however verifies that this hasn't stopped them before!

I reckon, with an ear to recent rumours, that Phil will have a busy morning. And it won't just be fending off angry attendees! The list of options and their closely associated wishes and pines is just coming up.

First though, I'll just note my interest in how well Phil may pull this one off. We all know he's no Steve Jobs, and neither are we! I'll be keeping an eye out for which and how many fellow execs he dragoons for the show; and whether the charmingly robotic Serlet, the no nonsense Cook, the young pretender and Mr. Pink-like Forstall and of course perennial crowd favourite, the bashful Ive; are brought into play.

How about a word of comfort from voice of the board and the environment, Al Gore? While I'm at it, might Obama want to show up??

No! Right. Good. On to the rumours!

Mini

Simply everybody is talking about the new Mac mini. Which is a first! I'm something of a mini afficionado myself so reports of its rescue from demise are all good to me. The Intel mini I picked up this time two years ago has been truly Mac-like in its lack of nonsense. They are quite simply wonderful little machines if you're looking for quiet running, reliable, OS X based home servers and occasional iPhone compilation. I've a terabyte drive in a MiniStack hooked up to mine, next to an AirPort Extreme, and altogether they make a fine workhorse.

One vision, inspired by the unibody MacBooks unveiled in the autumn, is of a slab metal mini. Shorter than it is now, and more like the shape of an AirPort Extreme, or indeed AppleTV. I like the sound of the rumours which state that the optical drive will be optional. I surely use mine but more choice is a good thing right here. Could they shave off some bulk by kicking the disc drive outside as they did with the MacBook Air?

Multiple video outputs sound just right. DisplayPort itself is multi screen capable on the one connection, according to the standard; though I'm not sure if that's being done yet. DVI, mini or not, is essential for comparability with common displays, as is the mini's forte. And how about an AppleTV style HDMI? An easy win for the AppleTV+ point.

The Nvidia graphics as supplied by their chipset, well, say no more! The Mini's Intel supplied Achilles Heel is removed right there. And all without sacrificing its greatest hardware strength: the able Core processor, also of course supplied by Intel.

Well, I hope they're not going Atom anyway! The Air didn't, so fingers crossed. All I've heard from that chip yet is "wait until 2.0, then you'll see."

iMac

Speed bumps, sure. Nvidia chipsets, great. 28 inch screens? Whoah!

I'd love to see that happen. The iMac has come a long way since its first 4 years stuck at 15 inches. 17, 20, 24. The pattern is obviously clear enough. Sometime, 20 is going the way of its elders. Looking at the fact that Apple's first and so far only LED Cinema Display is 24 inches just gives me the idea that it's the way they're headed. 28 or some other new top size makes a lot of intuitive sense. We're right in the middle of an age of screen size inflation after all, with the obvious comparison to HDTV.

A new top size of iMac hasn't tended to mean a new design for the whole series in the past. Quite the opposite. iPhone style glass and metal it stays then, though maybe with more of the cold stuff round back. Heat dissipation from a new choice of four core processors could well trigger that.

The Big MacBook Pro

Supersizers again rejoice: the 17 inch unibody MacBook Pro is surely near and worthy of an announcement. Tales of its integrated battery are amusing, if not instantly convincing. Who knows: maybe the hull could use the reinforcement? One thing not to expect: Blu-Ray. Also: dual screens.

Ugh, ugh, ugh!

How about an even larger MacBook Pro though? I know it's been a pipe-dream for years, but so too were new Cinema Duspkays until recently! The 17 inch portable Mac appeared at the same Macworld - six years ago - as my 12 inch PowerBook. Is that long enough at last? And could it, maybe, explain the rumoured need to rethink the large unibody, instead of let's say a mere 17 inches?

Uninformed speculation alert! It's in place for this whole post, but that last bit especially.

Cinema Displays

Speaking of screen size, it is indeed time for some more of the shiny. New 30 inch ACD's, please? I know they've been the butt of so many a keynote bingo joke, but Siracusa isn't doing one this year! It's safe now!

Something bigger than 30 would be deliciously bold.

AppleTV

Yeah, sure, why not. New hardware is nice, but like last year: essentially not the point. What with the "down with DRM" talk running rife today, the iTunes store and its ecosystem is going to be getting some coverage. AppleTV is all about the ecosystem.

iTunes

The end of DRM music? That's down to the majors. Apple made it clear where it stands on the issue long ago, courtesy of Steve Jobs directly. There may well be a narrative including moves on DRM and other less than user friendly third party restrictions - like no HD movie purchasing even though you can rent it - and it will surely start off with just what a blockbuster of a Christmas iTunes has doubltessly had. Don't they always?

App Store

Relentlessly upwards pointing graphs. Emphasis on just how young iPhone 2.x still happens to be, and how all the more remarkable therefore is the success.

Talk of iPhone 3.0? Oh! Well ... I wouldn't count on it. But Gruber has an interesting speculation. Push, push, push!

iWork, iLife, MobileMe

Phil's back in his safe zone with MobileMe. Walking it through and showing off the iPhone's enterprise features have been among his chief duties lately as Apple's longstanding Vice President of Demos.

MobileMe could gain a lot with compatibility with and built in support from the iLife and iWork apps. I'm pretty sure it will. And it may as well be today.

What I don't expect to see is the whole thing wrapped in SproutCore and taken to the web, full stop. Greater web integration makes a lot of sense. Outright displacement does not. Let Apple's skills at native development shine.

Snow Leopard

A touch of the white stuff falls just as I'm writing this, oddly enough. Another elusive sight is likely to make its first appearance of the year at this keynote. It could be anything from a mere name-drop "it's on time, catch it in summer", to some face time with the new iCal, Mail and Address Book with their Microsoft Exchange support. It certainly won't be an announcement of iminent release though. There's just not been the betas. I'd also be astonished if they spilled the beans on a major new interface theme such as "marble" as described by John Gruber. I think 10.5 got as big a visual change as we can expect until the next user-facing "major version", namely 10.7. That is unless the "no major new features" line on Snow Leopard was just PowerPC pacifying bullshit. Hope not. Transitioning to Cocoa, OpenCL and Grand Central are substantial enough.

What you won't see

New iPhones. No way! New sub-17 inch portables. Including "netbooks". New iPods. Flying saucers. New CEO's.

Anyway, that's enough of all that. I'll be following it at Crazy Apple Rumors since it'll surely be the last. Administer your own craziness accordingly.

Sent from my iPod

An Essay on Time

2008-12-31T20:02:00.002Z

Introduction

It should come as no conceivable surprise that one who keeps a diary should bear an obsession for the passing of time. I do, so there. I like to think that it's not a morbid thing, as I do very honestly all but never think of my own death. It's an arbitrary event after all which won't turn any better by wasting a lot of time over it. Yet I do waste time. I seem marvellously predisposed to just that! My thoughts and jumbled states of preoccupation are on the past and present and future, in the abstract often enough and the ephemeral moment when it comes to me. It's all a part of this inability not to try to understand things from the inside out, I suppose. A writhing, ceaseless, endlessly distracting and subversive trait inside me I haven't the slightest idea how to control. That said, it's all too grand. Think more of the image of a tiresome brat who doesn't know any better and you'll have the better sum of me. A pain, but in some essential way I'd rather have than not.

Time is the animator of everything else. Time is the difference between pristine pasts and faded futures. And time is the ever opening realm into which the new things spread which make the present always overwhelm us. How could I not be fascinated by it? That vital force so natural to our minds but which we never hold.

So here it is then. "Now", in latest 2008, a little something on this intrigue of infinities.

Memory

We remember. It's impossible not to. It's how we, our minds, work. It's the bedrock of the difference between thought and oblivion. Memory is who we are.

It's hard to even imagine what life would be without recollection. There's so much more to it than merely reminiscing. Without memory we cannot learn, because there is no past experience. Without memory we cannot tell that something's changed, or even know just what it is. We cannot progress from place to place, because we are forever nowhere. Memory is an essential product of any mind. That we humans bear so much of it is a testament to the aeons of evolutionary gain by which our prodigious powers came about.

Yet I encountered something else this year. In October when I awoke from a bump on the head and a presumable bike crash, I had my first adult experience of amnesia. It's a curious thing. Naturally, my earliest childhood is shrouded by an absence of memories too; as it is for all of us. So I get what amnesia is. It's something else though to taste it in the middle of your waken days. An uncanny snap in the continuity of adult experience.

In my case it's nothing much: less than a single minute of riding time from the last thing I can remember; followed by something like thirty minutes of unconsciousness on the ground. The unconsciousness was just like sleep from what I pieced together on coming to. It wasn't such a mystery. What was, however, all laid in the few hundred metres I had travelled without a trace of memory, topped off by the forgotten incident itself.

There's something to be said for extruding time over distance. As I was moving when my accident occurred, there's a place for every moment; and a physical landscape I can journey back to, wondering at what must have been. There's the spot I last remember anything – looking over my shoulder before a junction – and then along the way is the place where I was picked up. Between them lies the intrigue for me. This slice of time I experienced yet lost. The one part of my entire adult life which is a stranger's secret.

It wasn't much of a crash and I'm really not trying to make it out to be. People lose consciousness in bumps and scrapes all the time. It was just a first for me.

My body tells me I still existed during that mysterious minute one Friday evening a few months back. Someone crashed after all, and it looks like it was me! But my mind has perfect nothingness for the event. It was all a future and a past without a present. It was an experience without a memory. What other definition for amnesia?

What interests me the most from the event is that I lost not only the impact itself, but a minute or so of thoughts and awareness leading up to it. By the fact I was still on my bike for that long, it's unlikely that I blacked out for the entire period when it happened. Instead, I had memories which were already formed actually destroyed shortly after in the incident. When thinking about it later that night I explained them as "memories in-flight" as everyone, naturally, was asking about how my crash had happened. I had lost the memories which were still forming as I rode in that minute leading up to the fall. Apparently they need a while to set, as it were, to be remembered for the long haul. These ones hadn't graduated by the time the moment came.

Think about that here and now if you would, as I'm sure it applies to you just as much as me. What you're seeing, what you're hearing, what you're feeling and what you're thinking this very moment is only half way to being memory proper. You could forget it entirely. Though it's more likely if you happen to be riding a bike while you’re reading this! I surely hope not.

Change

Someone who's just woken up and is gathering their thoughts is not a good candidate as judge for time's achievements. This applies to hypothetical time travellers clambering from their inscrutable machines just as much as to those waking up from lengthy comas. Interstitial time is overlooked but hugely important. Leaping from place to place is itself so unsettling, disorienting and unnatural, that it will be in the foreground of any report our time-farer makes, fogging their precious hope for insight. Time is not just a number or a year or season or a day, isolated for all eternity. Time is flow. Time is flux. As is experience.

It just so happens that 2008 is a year which in retrospect will be likely set aside as the rise of a presidential hopeful who, among other things, ran on change. It's only natural to run on change in fact. A little delving into contemporary reports and memorabilia shows that practically everyone does it. Obama in particular embodied it of course, and speaking from this historically strange moment of post-election 2008, has yet to enter office and prove himself. Economic politic steals the headlines and sends a far reaching frost around a world so used of late to Chinese summer. A new White House story is waiting to be told, all in good time, yet, from here, never soon enough.

Age

The most human preoccupation with time is the way it alters us. Babes in arms to fiery adolescents in next to nothing, then on ever more into biology's rather unimaginative downward roller-coaster, ending as we all know. Time is synonymous with mortality in the public mind. Graveyards are our people's pasts, yet our private future! Decline into chilly twilight years is the very nature of being alive after a point, such that we'd really rather not think about it. Ah yes, the dismal side of time. Why do you not seem to bother me?

Perhaps it does and I'm just too faithful to my devious lies! If so, I wish it could last for my own small slice of forever. Whatever, it's far from truly bad!

A part of it is that I have not really achieved much yet. I live in a rather adolescent way in a rather adolescent age. Or one which was until recently, perhaps. The grand tasks of securing a profession, finding lasting love and raising a not entirely disastrous family are still in the future for me. The future which therefore is the larger half of life. The procrastinator's epic creation!

Yule

It's this time of year that we pat each other on the back and raise a glass to solace, for what has been and what hope still lives to be. It's a wise pick, as only the depth of winter with its dazzlingly short days filled with bleakness and collective self-pity could rightly send off every new year! Imagine if we'd started the calendar with spring, like Persia, or fallen for the showy height of summer, as the southern half of the world of course does. What would we in the sullen north have in winter to distract us then? Winter, that great introspection which is neither promise nor reward but merely and profoundly just there!

For me, I get to weigh my 2008 against its ancestors, and my private hopes for that widely dreaded 2009. I always like to think that I'm getting somewhere, knowing more now than before and able to make the big decisions every life demands with wisdom only finally reached. The "always" is the part which tells me it's a merry delusion! It's my optimism kicking in where cold-hearted weighing scales would perhaps be the better. It's my way of escaping the fact that with every year of meagre achievements, there is less time for me to make my way through all the rest of them. A very wintery thought!

Future

So, here we are on the icy verge of a positively chilling prospect I hear we’re going to call 2009. Austere in the light of its ancestor’s excesses, sobering in the knowledge that for now at least there’s more down below than up above. Another slice of life pie. Eat up!

For me at least, well I’m looking forward to it would you believe. The unlikely optimist that I am, given all my knowingly dark fascinations! This is the sort of promise which entices me the most. The scene, the year, the environment where others may well not all be doing quite so nicely; yet wherein still lies the kernel of opportunity, if you’ve chance enough to find yourself grabbing it. A recession – and not only of the mind indeed – need not all be grim. I’ll try not mistaking the collective spirit for my own private way. Not that I’ve tended to need much reminding.

Anyway, that’s it 2008. Off with you! Into that chasm of history you go. Before we each and all dive in, sooner or later, to join you, It was illuminating while it lasted. Farewell.

Notbooks

2008-12-17T00:56:00.005Z

Netbooks are one of the leading subjects among tech blowhards and "wouldn't it be nice if…" curmudgeons of 2008. Especially those running Linux or rigged as Hackintoshes. But I don't buy into the idea that they are the future. There's this little thing called the iPhone, have you heard of it? A Netbook is but a laptop by a funny name. Laptops have been and may always be just my kind of thing, but truly ubiquitous? And all downsized? Et tu Apple? No.

Gruber writes along similar lines with Apple ‘Netbooks’, Eh? at Daring Fireball. He's right about the definition 'netbook'. I'd have gone on a bit about how if it weren't for the trouble with Vista, there would be no such label as otherwise they are just cheap, small, cheap, low end, cheap laptops; which are cheap.

Others indeed agree:

“There are some customers which we chose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve. And there’s a lot of them.”

As for the other Apple news of the day, the first I heard about it was at Crazy Apple Rumors. Seems entirely apt. Can't say that I get it.

The Rise and Fall of Die Vox Populi

2008-12-05T23:30:00.000Z

Origins

A crowd gathers in the Scottish frost, waiting for the band. It’s Saturday night, winter, and the fans huddle in the cold outside an Edinburgh mall. When asked how they were feeling, one voice stood out and said in a cloud of breath: “Stoked!” Good job. Believe me: it was Baltic.

It’s hard to say just what exactly is the draw to Die Vox Populi. They’re a strange band. Formed in San Francisco not so many years ago – no one seems to know exactly when – and reformed with an entirely different line-up in Seattle sometime later, it’s something of a travelling circus. Or a musical commune perhaps. Or just a brand more than a band. Though just what is unclear. From all reports, they’re a pretty traditional rock quartet who stick to the mainstream. They don’t compose; everything is a cover. Their singers – various ones at different gigs – all seem to share a knack for impersonation. From what anyone can tell, Die Vox Populi haven’t added anything to music. Yet the fans still come.

Some at any rate.

“Far as I’m concerned, the name says it all. We’re the voice of the people.” Says Günter Mikron, middle aged roadie and founding member, on bass. “Yeah, I’ve been on the road most my life. Hauling gear for Deep Purple, Creedence, even Alice Cooper for a time. And of course, The Dead.” Ah yes, The Grateful Dead, truly inescapable at any gig. “The Populi, well, we started the band just for kicks. Simple songs played by honest folks.” Mikron is the first to admit that he’s not particularly skilled. “Oh I know that I suck. No pretensions about that.”

Speaking at a bar the afternoon before concert, Mikron casts a bizarre figure. Rough features hide behind yellow wraparound K-12 shades, jarringly golden locks swing around his every move, and he seems comfortable enough in his stage dress Highland ruffles while sipping a quiet midday pint. Just whatever the pub’s regulars thought was anyone’s guess.

“In a way, this town is our home. It was right here we came up with the name. During a pub quiz. But that was years before we first actually played. Too many.” When asked about the group’s notoriously fluid line-up, Mikron claims he can’t remember them all. “We’ve had quality players. Plenty of total strangers too! Some were almost stars. Well … last I heard of Weißmüller he was touring Germany with David Hasselhof.” According to longstanding fans, erstwhile lead guitarist Lars Weißmüller was ‘half decent’. “But then there was nearly always the kid.”

“Die Vox Populi wasn’t what I had in mind at all.” Claims boy wonder and founding front man Elii Wataanabê. “I think we would have had much more luck going avant-garde. This middle of the road rock stuff, I never did quite get it.” After a year singing for the band, Canadian born Wataanabê left to form his own decidedly more niche project: Proxymoron. “Europe has always been my preference, my creative calling if you will. The people understand my artistic edge. There’s more open-mindedness overall I think.” His keyboard, bass and mime act hit rock bottom in Manhattan just as soon as it started. No one’s really sure what he’s done since.

Die Vox Populi: The Next Generation

“Frankly, no one had heard of Die Vox Populi.” Says Finq Schlüßel, ultimately the band’s second singer. “That was just so wrong.” Schlüßel, like Mikron a San Franciscan, started out as a fan and after the group’s eventual collapse took it upon himself to pick it up where they left off. “I was just dying for something to do, you know. I’ve been doing rails for too long.” I asked him if he was a railroad man. “No, no! Ruby on Rails. I’m a web developer.” Suddenly the red haired man behind the thick, deeply nerdy glasses, began to make sense. “Die Vox Populi could never die!”

So it came to be that Die Vox Populi – a burnt out band scarcely short of obscurity – found itself re-formed this autumn in typically disinterested Seattle. Through force of fanboy will alone, Schlüßel recruited enthusiastic lead guitarist Steela Kaår. Flamboyant literally to a great many faults, Kaår performs in marigold Wellington boots and shares the same odd taste in hair colouring and eye wear as her brother in arms. Behind them at every concert of late has been an impressive figure in defiantly 80’s dress, very often masking their errors with her no-nonsense drums. “I don’t even know who she is!” Declares Kaår before leaping to the floor, resuming her session of air guitar. Schlüßel reassures me: “What can I say, we’re good people!”

The latest addition to the group comes in the form of Atlanta born bassist “The Blaze”. Full bearded and blessed with one of the largest of the many afros this reporter has ever seen, the player carries no small amount of intrigue. “He just kinda showed up one day,” tells Schlüßel. “You see that pink zebra jacket of his? He never takes it off. The shades neither. I scarcely even know what he looks like, let alone what his story is. He’s from jazz as far as I can tell. Someone said something about him playing with The Fourth Way a long time back. He’s not the kind of guy you can just ask.” A soon established crowd favourite however: “What he does do is play good bass. And I’ll take it.”

Bringing it on Home

Sooner or later Mikron and Schlüßel were going to cross paths. It turned out that the huddled crowd in the cold foyer of this suburban Scottish mall were to witness just that. This was the night of Die Vox Populi Mk.1 and 2.0.

If you’re really into that.

The actual gig consisted, inevitably, of a familiar selection of tried and tested numbers; more than a few of which originally played by the Grateful Dead. Passable renditions of rock staples staggered by; with the players seeming to take turns in fumbling the most notes yet always more or less pulling through. Until, with mic raised upside down above his head for the umpteenth time, Schlüßel called on Mikron and Wataanabê. The fans went wild. All two dozen of them.

“We were just some regular people who wanted to play a little Grateful Dead, to slam a bit of wah-wah on bass, and have fun doing it.” Says Mikron after the event. “Yep. ‘Do not question why.’” Keys in Schlüßel. The rest of the band still packing up their gear from their spot opposite Sainsburys cheer in unison: “Die Vox Populi!”

Vincent Pricke

ENEMY Magazine

President Obama

2008-11-05T16:55:00.002Z

A contemplative rain drizzles down on Edinburgh as the unseen four o’clock sun duly sets. The election was won twelve hours ago. A night and November’s brief day. Around town thousands prepare their firecracker hordes, readying for the sullen night to come. They aren’t celebrating America’s first black president though, rather the coincidence that today is Guy Fawkes.

Obama’s election is a monumental event. There’s so much to be written about it that the whole web seems lit up according to my news feeds and the late night’s tumult in Twitter. Initial jubilation from the young web’s overwhelmingly liberal faithful, reports of the night itself, and the first round of trying to figure out what next. The BBC coverage I stayed up for, above my PowerBook screen of feeds and figures, veered frequently into parallels with Kennedy. John Gruber meanwhile has an interesting extract from Hunter S. Thompson’s feature length report on the very different election of 1972. Sad it is to see Hunter’s dark prophecy proven true for the length of his lifetime, but not one election longer. Though just what the old and true maverick would have said about Obama I cannot know.

Certainly, this is a giant opportunity. In a way, the 21st century so far has consisted of just a handful of real events. The first was 9/11. It shook up the world and for a brief time it’s hard to even remember that America had the sympathy of almost every ancient foe as well as friend. That was thwarted in the worst fashion by the beat of the warring drum headed not to Afghanistan but the heart of the Middle East, unleashing Iraq’s fissure among the powers of the world which was indeed the second sizeable event so far. For as much as the much-vaunted surge has or has not achieved, what still lies in the very word “Iraq” today is the poisoned inception of the affair itself. This year’s collapse in the international finance system is arguably the third event of universal clout. Like I already said, it made Obama’s election all the more inescapable. What I wonder now is whether his taking office in the months ahead will count as a separate event with ongoing transformative consequences, or rather he might wind up as simply the recession’s president.

I admit it: I’m really pleased Obama won. He was my favourite candidate going into the primaries, and McCain only managed to repel me ever more as the months went on and his rightward metamorphosis progressed. It was only last night when McCain made his humble and very decent concession speech that he caught back my attention for a moment, and sounded if only briefly as his old self. The conservative crowd instinctively booed at Obama’s name, so McCain raised his arms and asked them to calm down. The expressions on the faces as he made his promise to work with his beloved nation’s new leader seemed to say such bitter other things. I felt more sorry for him before that crowd of “friends” than I did for losing the election he’s waited so many years to battle.

I have not however caught the Obama faith. His acceptance speech was fine and weighed with intriguing vision, but the more moving part of it were the tears in Jesse Jackson’s eyes and so many of that very different audience. You could really see Obama’s signal at work. The fact they quietened down and didn’t give McCain’s moment of Obama’s praise the same kind of mean reception that Obama’s had mere minutes before, said something. It’s easier to be gracious in victory of course, but even to my cynical ears it felt a little different to that.

The rest of the world is happy. Bush is about to be but a sticky page of history. His party and the troublesome, brash and proudly ignorant conservative cliché of America they represent are out of power for four thankful years at least. Better yet: the next president is a black man, an African, a Muslim’s son, and as well travelled and educated as his predecessor was not. The rest of the world doesn’t know Barack Obama yet, rather ironically, though it is almost without exception so very clearly in love! What the election signifies so far beyond America’s borders is all in its symbolism. The actual policy, concrete vision, and ultimate will of the president elect are all still to be discovered.

Soon he will have the only office anyone of such dreams can hope for, to make them true. The goodwill of a troubled world and the mandate of its foremost nation will be there from day one. How ever will he do? Interesting times of the first order lie ahead.

It’s Still The Economy, Stupid

2008-10-29T14:36:00.001Z

I was just reading Paul Krugman’s latest piece when I realised things could be worse. Naturally, I’m not much of a pessimist. Some might even call me a starry eyed optimist, when they momentarily misinterpret the sarcasm! It’s business as usual for me while this ongoing international financial crisis story unfolds. I do recognise it’s a big deal, I broadly back the wholesale interventionism which has been unleashed to contain it, and unlike a certain socialist friend of mine it’s not the source of daily vengeful joy! But neither is it something to wholesale obsess about. Yet. Fortunately, I was not just about to market a house…

Anyway, as it happens Paul Krugman has long been among the many feeds in my copy of NetNewsWire, which does in fact forever runneth over. The latter is due to my hoarding instinct. The former though gave me a surprise when I heard about this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics as it was the first time any of the bloggers I follow happened to score one of those! Well, “blogger” may be a bit off, but moving on. What was it about the linked piece which put a smile on my face?

This could all have been happening outside of an election year.

The Great Depression – with which current events are forever being compared – was the result of a similar crisis which was mishandled and fumbled into economic meltdown. That was 1929. Herbert Hoover had won the election a single year before. America, and indeed the world, had to wait three long years of hideous incompetence by the man and his administration until the rightful kicking the people gave him in 1932 as Franklin D. Roosevelt was swept to power. Luckily, we are not staring that particular abyss in the face today. And by the grace of blind chance alone!

Earlier on in the year, I was following the riotously competitive primary season rather enthusiastically. I quite liked Obama, but enjoyed seeing McCain pull his comeback in New Hampshire too as I had done eight years before. The first post of the year here was about a long forgotten outside runner, Mike Huckabee, who I hoped would do better not because I liked his politics but thought the absence of a flag bearer for the conservative Christian right wouldn’t bode well for the eventual election. In a way, I eventually got my wish when McCain chose his maverick’s maverick sidekick Sarah Palin; although the move was pretty much the opposite of my January intent. Given the Republican field back then, I was concerned that the general election campaign would eventually be taken over by pandering to the right from whatever centrist candidate was selected. Wouldn’t the Democrat nominee have to delve into the same? McCain still isn’t a natural for the right wing who he chose to appeal to by reaching over for Palin. It’s turned out with only a week to go, not to be a campaign about the right wing for a change anyway. Thankfully. As events have spoken louder than any stump speech’s words.

As strange as it still sounds to my political senses, I really do think America will elect its first black president in six days time. Not because he is black, or even in spite of it. What started off back in the primaries as an epic battle between the first woman and the first guy of 43 now who wasn’t white, has evolved into a straight election about economics. It would be madness for it to be about anything else right now. And that is the prime reason I think Obama will win with a fairly resounding result, just as McCain has been driving away many of his instinctively moderate base by staggering around trying to prove that he’s anything but.

I must admit one thing though: I really thought Kerry had a chance back in 2004! In fact, here’s my political map from the time, over at Dave Leip’s Atlas of Presidential Elections. I got every state right except for a slightly embarrassing swap of Ohio and Pennsylvania! Part time contrarian that I am. So beware: my political predictions, sayings of sooths, and all matters of crystal balls in general come with a health warning.

But I sure am glad that the big story is happening right here at the very peak of political prime time. Just imagine what else this could have been like.

Epic Fall

2008-10-11T14:41:00.012+01:00

Art by Ape Lad

It's been a week now since I woke up in a dream. I could remember that I'd been riding but now all there was – besides the taste and smell of dirt and blood – felt like a fantasy. At least at first. Someone was telling me I'd crashed. Someone else was looking after my two wheeled steed. And the next voices I heard were the ambulance men who helped me up a long old flight of steps in what hazily seemed like just one or two.

I was mumbling my thanks throughout to this scene of strangers, though mumble it was as my lip was torn and behind it I was only semiconscious. It took the sound of shutting doors inside the ambulance to convince my deliriousness that this was real. Wasn't I just in a dream some deep night? Continuity was the problem. This dream was more credible than my broken recollection.

It took a brace of stitches to my top lip and a few more to my shattered-glasses-shredded nose before the hospital sent me home, and the inquisitive taxi driver asked my story. The troubling part was surely that I don't remember the crash itself and so know little to prevent whatever caused it. Still, he agreed I was lucky in my good Samaritans.

So: to the couple who found an unconscious man on the old railway cyclepath in Edinburgh last Friday evening – near the bridge with Queensferry Road – my earnest thanks. You did me proud. Locking my bike up out of the way, even remembering to pull off the lights and stow them in my luggage: very nice. I was surprised when I figured out what these nameless strangers did for me. If I knew who you were, you'd have heard my thanks. Seriously: you two were a class act.

As for me: I've had a slow week, healing and really getting the best out of my iPod touch tablet, since I can't wear glasses to use another computer. It survived unscathed in my back pocket would you believe! (Not that I was listening to it at the time, as one misguided friend reckoned! There's a difference between cycling and suicide, I like to think.) I look a lot less like Halloween horror movie hell now thankfully. Next week I'm aiming for the dentist's to see my nudged teeth, as well as the opticians to replace my mangled glasses and to consider contacts, I think. I hate to visualise how close the bruises around my eyes suggest those tangled frames came to making this event truly life-changing in a bad way!

Looking outside with my fuzzy short sight, I see the autumn has been busy in my absence. I hope the colours last long enough for me to get back to usual and enjoy them. As that's the kind of epic fall I'd been waiting for.

The Aussie Touch

2008-09-26T17:53:00.004+01:00

One of my favourite little Mac outfits - iSlayer of iStat and Organized fame - have just gotten into iPhone software. And what can I say? Their stuff rocks! Easy recommendation for their well priced and simply beautiful little apps just released as their new alias: Bjango.

(Links to follow when I'm off my iPod touch!) Check.

I've long been a fan of iStat Pro (my favourite Dashboard widget of all) and started using iStat Menus a couple of years ago on my Macs. It's especially useful on the little old PowerBook so I can keep an eye on CPU drain and take action before the fan kicks in at 52ºC. Organized is a great addition and my preferred way to keep To-Do's and check my calendar.

They're good people. Just how indie software on the Mac – and now iPhone – ought to be.

That Advert

2008-09-09T19:39:00.002+01:00

Yes. That advert. RoughlyDrafted digs in here. It stinks. Suspiciously so. I'm not at all sure what to make of it.

So how about this concept:

Bill Gates, straight to camera, no props just a blank background.

Gates:

Hi. I’m Bill Gates. The guy behind Microsoft, Windows, PC’s, the internet… Well, maybe not that! Anyway, look, I hear you. People aren’t happy with where we’ve been going lately. They’re laughing at fancy Apple ads and like Google more than us too. You know: the people who made the whole thing possible! Well, maybe not. But okay. Fine. I get it. We’ll try harder. We’ve got a ways to go. But we’ve heard you. Give us a break!

Seinfeld:

Wasn’t I meant to say something about Zoons, ZoonTunes, something like that? I forget. I still get my money though right?

Seinfeld looks to camera, thumbs up!! Gates sighs.

Now that would be refreshing!

Another Week, Another Patent

2008-09-06T13:37:00.004+01:00

An update from last week's dual screen MacBook touch concept…

AppleInsider again with the ever so sweet seeming future-telling patents from Cupertino. I particularly like the left side of this picture:

Of course, the next thought experiment is how to bring haptics to an edge-to-edge glass topped multi-touchscreen based laptop. You're going to want to sense your keys and other controls without looking at them unless you have to. I anticipate intriguing developments to make this possible.

Thinking About The MacBook Touch

2008-08-30T16:25:00.003+01:00

The Autumn Collection

A teaser at RoughlyDrafted got me thinking. The Mac web is abuzz with talk of new laptops in September: Apple's entire mobile line of MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and even the MacBook Air are due a refresh. The light little Air has a new processor waiting for it, while the bigger models are speculated to see a design overhaul.

Back in February I wrote about where the MacBook Air fits in Apple's grand design. Casting the article another look, it still seems in line with expectations for the new portable line-up we are soon to see.

But I think Apple has something more spectacular up its sleeve, once other pieces fall into place.

Touching the Future

Steve Jobs famously declared that Apple had patented every corner of the iPhone. Like every major player in technology, Apple patents a lot of things and not all of them are destined to reach the market. Bearing that in mind though: just take a look at this.

The pictures show a tablet Mac. They're not the first patents Apple has filed on the matter by any means. But I'm not thinking about a tablet today. Instead, let's consider the controls described.

When Apple created the iPhone, one of the biggest challenges lied in the interface. The Mac, Windows, Linux and stylus based devices all share the same convention, called WIMP. Windows, icons, menus and pointer. You use a mouse or a stylus to move a pointer around on the screen, which you use to click buttons, drag sliders, and drop selections from one place to another. WIMP works well on large displays but becomes frustrating at small sizes like phones. You have to be consistently accurate to interact with tiny sized controls, and using systems like these for any length of time is not fun.

So Apple didn't use WIMP. The iPhone is not like a hand sized Mac: it uses multi-touch. Apple had to redesign the Cocoa software development environment, develop the appropriate tools to make new software, and most crucially of all: revisit the very principles we use to control our computers. The engineers in Cupertino pulled it off. But they weren't done.

The iPhone can only do a subset of all the things a Mac can. Once the work for the iPhone was sufficiently complete, the team responsible clearly considered the extra challenges the Mac itself would pose. The patents Apple has filed on the matter suggest that active research is ongoing. The future for Mac OS X could be multi-touch; far more fully so than we've seen so far on our trackpads.

Imagining a MacBook Touch

Picture this for a moment: you have before you a MacBook Air. The machine consists of a slender clamshell, with the screen at the top and the keyboard and trackpad covered body below. The edges are tapered and great attention has gone into every detail. Look again at the display: see how it alone dominates the upper half of the hardware? Now imagine there was a second one below!

What multi-touch could mean for the Mac is saying good bye to the keyboard and mouse. This is easiest to imagine happening to the laptops first.

Way, way back in 1991 Apple and Sony reinvented the portable computer. Before then the Macintosh Portable was representative of mainstream design. Keyboards were always at the front, so that you would rest your wrists on a table while using the machine. Trackballs – the mobile equivalent of mice in those days – were included beside the keyboard, right where you'd expect a mouse to be if you'd ever used a desktop Mac. (At least if you were right handed.) But it didn't have to be that way. Indeed: no one makes systems laid out like that now!

If multi-touch is Apple's plan for the interface of the future, it only makes sense that their portables would be the first to fully adopt it as their principal hardware controls.

So … that lower display. What is it showing? A keyboard! The usual keyboard layout you would expect, and a space below which looks like a trackpad. The difference is that they are dynamic, just like the iPhone. Press the Option key and watch as the other keys change their glyphs to what they would type when holding Option. 8 becomes a dot, single quote turns into æ, and U engages umlaut mode for typing in languages like German. (Or at least all these are true on the UK layout!) But that's just the start of it.

Run a music making app. As soon as it loads, the usual keyboard slides away and you see before you a piano keyboard instead! There are other controls too for your instrument, and if you enter another mode in the application a mixing desk appears, with all its sliders responsive to your control.

Run a drawing app and the touch-screen becomes a graphics tablet. Even a little laptop like my 12" PowerBook G4 has a wealthy area to use for that. Moving controls around on the touch screen is up to you, and what you learn in one application is true for another as the standard controls were designed in California so that other software companies are encouraged for consistency. Don't forget about the upper screen either! Every notebook this way becomes a dual display computer, giving you an enormous amount of desktop real estate in a small package.

How Soon is Now?

I know this sounds like the sort of thing you might have heard ten or twenty years ago. Just as recently as 2006 the ideas just described seemed as far off as the flying car or fusion power, which for so long were always "just around the corner"! But unlike hardware from the Jetsons, there really is a multi-touch computing platform in use today. It was made by Apple. The people who made the Macintosh, the PowerBook and the Newton. The people who make their own, industry leading, operating system. And the people who recently bought just the kind of custom chip technology to handle it. If anyone can pull it off, it's them.

But I doubt it will be quite this September!

(Footnote: the amount of times I had to edit "Apple are" in this article. English in your multi-various forms: curses!)

Georgia's Always On My Mind

2008-08-14T00:41:00.002+01:00

Well, just lately it is.

Quite what it was that Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, had in mind just before the Olympics started is quite beyond me. The idea seemed to be to seize the troublesome little region of South Ossetia while the rest of the world was distracted courtesy of China. Perhaps he and his generals thought their nemesis, good old Vladimir Putin, being far off in Beijing was some sort of tactical advantage. I frankly just don't get it. Whatever it was, has gone superbly wrong.

This is what the Caucasus looks like:

Pretty ugly, right?

Russia has been obsessed with controlling it as an imperial realm since Russia has essentially existed. These days there's even more reason: everybody's favourite resource and geopolitical three letter word simply pours out of the Caucasus. The complex ethnic and religious makeup of the region is the stuff of inevitable tragedy, as with the Balkans. Only, the Caucasus is the Balkans with oil. And Iran. And Russia.

Makes you relieved not to live there!

By nature, I should be "on Georgia's side" in this. They're the plucky little underdog, west leaning, and in comparison to Russia pretty democratic. Well, at least as much so. They did have the endearingly Rose Revolution not so long ago after all. But then with this, I just can't figure out what the hell their government really expected.

When you punch Russia on the nose, you wake up in intensive care.

South Ossetia has that name because of its neighbour inside Russia being North Ossetia. The two were only split in Soviet era machinations; Ossets have never agreed to be Georgians. The halves are likely to end up reunified now. Abkhazia is also looking permanently beyond Tbilisi's hands. As for Georgia proper, while I write: Russian troops hold on to whatever parts of it they wish. The big Russia-avoiding pipeline running through from the Caspian Sea may be of some interest to them. Tbilisi itself was under all so symbolic direct threat earlier in the day. The BBC reports that Stalin's home town and centre of affairs the last few days – Gori – had armed visitors. The Georgian military is essentially history. And most tellingly of all: we in the west are very almost as irrelevant right now.

Russia could do as it likes. They certainly won this one. They've been winning over the old world powers for years now, ever since Putin took over and Russian oil and gas became levers of strategic power, as they'd always been set to be. China will gladly keep buying Russian resources to manufacture and export back again to us, no matter what our leaders say or what our distaste for such raw imperialism has us wish for.

What a spectacularly bad move for Saakashvili. He's wrecked his country and exposed his allies at a supremely embarassing time for them. I don't know about you, but for all the distinctively brutal excess Russia is showing over this, I can't entirely disagree with them. Georgia brought it on itself.

It's a Long Way Brown

2008-07-25T19:22:00.004+01:00

Poor Gordon. It all had to wait for him. So many years in the background, playing the moody bass to young Tony's wailing lead guitar. Good years. Successful years. Painful years: when he had to bear them knowing he should never have let the lad have the crown. Teeth gnashing, fingernail chewing, angry, bitter years. And then – at the very moment of belated final stardom – it's arse over tits time.

I remember the day when Labour came to power well. It was my last day at high school before the final exams. A drunken politico of a classmate wandered in sometime late, sozzled and sleepless from the night before, gleeful that the hated Tories were booted out at last. and more than pleased that his own Liberals had shared some of Labour's scraps. I happened to be finishing off something or another on a Macintosh Classic of all things while he wandered in. A black and white 8 MHz throwback to another age, a mere decade out of place by 1997, not that I knew this was the cause of its crazed sluggishness. I'd stayed up for much of election night myself, but not out at the count or indeed the bar. If anything, the media's delight at the Tories' loss had given me a bit of sympathy for them, especially the ones like Portillo who took their slaying with a spot of dignity. That infuriating Labour campaign song Things Can Only Get Better was played incessantly in political coverage for days, entirely without irony.

Oh how times have changed!

It's been a long decade while Labour remained firmly in power. There were some wobbles, like the all but forgotten fuel protests in 2000 which briefly dented their serene lead in the polls, and of course the epic Iraq imbroglio, but throughout it all they stayed ahead and in command. Much of this was courtesy of weak and aimless opposition, as proven by the third choice Liberals having something of a renaissance throughout. Iraq was itself far less a problem than it should have been thanks to the suicidal strategy of a certain Tory leader called Iain Duncan Smith; long since forgotten. But at the heart of it, what really mattered was their own leader. A fellow by the name of Tony Blair.

By 2005, Blair was pretty unpopular. He still won the general election though. The Tories beat him in England on votes, but such minor details scarcely matter given our peculiar approximation to democracy. It was after that when the real troubles began as Brown finally got him to retire. If Blair had been stronger and more Machiavellian, he could have ousted his eternal rival years before in 2001 or so at the height of his comparative dominance. But he did not. And so, just a little over a single year ago, Brown finally took charge of Labour, the government, and the country, and all hell let loose!

I've predicted it myself many times before, but even so it's startling just how clearly the man's not a natural. Not only is his every move as Prime Minister cack handed or downright fumbled, but even his old allies are doing him a world of unintended harm. Just look at the harlequin and decidedly Edinburghian bore of a Chancellor. It was once joked that Brown of course wrote the budget anyway, no matter the identity of the man appointed to deliver. But now the obsession is with what a tainted legacy he'd handed to himself, with the last budget in his own name snowballing into an ongoing disaster. Could it be that prudence will be Brown's undoing? "No more boom and bust", say the people! As he's shown the door.

And so here we are, in a summer full of catastrophe for Brown. By election, after by election after final apocalyptic by election goes against him. Is this 1995 again? Are we but two years from a landslide? It's feeling that way.

Only there's a big difference when you're in Scotland. As 1997 was a unifying election, with Labour the winners in all regions. 2010 (as we assume it will be pushed until the final day just like Major) could be a lot more like 1979. Back then an unpopular Labour government finally fell to an English onslaught of Conservative swings after fumbling an election shot a year before. But not in Scotland. No, up here … we still went for Callaghan. Right while he had the carpet pulled from beneath him. An angry chip sat firmly on Scotland's shoulder for the subsequent 18 years.

What could the consequences of something like that be this time around? I reckon Alex Salmond has a few suggestions.

Linux as a Word Cloud

2008-07-05T23:51:00.004+01:00

Discovered a really sweet site by the name of Wordle yesterday, via Shawn Blanc. Experiences with Linux and the free-as-in scene came to mind…

Counting Open Palms

2008-06-24T22:40:00.003+01:00

Just wondering what happens if despite it all Mugabe still loses the runoff. Might may well be right when you are a shameless dictator, but he was beaten once already. I'm not saying it's the likeliest outcome, but let's keep an eye on what the troubled Zimbabwean voters say. It would have been a whole lot easier to just fake a result last time round without bothering with the crass coverup which ensued. Something's still independent in that state; if embattled.

Let's just say I don't expect a 2003 style 100.0% YES for Saddam, while the dust-clouds of invasion grew.

Evil Empires

2008-06-16T22:05:00.008+01:00

Civilization

Once upon a time, I really used to love Civilization. I got hold of the first one a few years after its release on some borrowed floppies which featured the game along with other dusty DOS titles such as Elite. Never did bother playing the others much at all. Soon enough I picked up my own legitimate copy on a still newfangled-seeming CD-ROM, and read the hefty instruction manual on a trip along the Firth of Forth the same sunny summer's day. Not the worst travel reading I've had! And it did explain a few hieroglyphs I'd had to guess before.

Civ was great. I loved rewriting history. The screen may have been full of garish green and blue with orange, yellow and white squares on it: but that was the earth itself and the citadels of vying empires. Sure, it wasn't much to look at, even at the time; but as if that counted for anything. Far more important was the concept and indeed the successful implementation of it even on the humble systems of the age. There were keyboard shortcuts for just about anything and fundamentally it was a perfectly playable mouse game. This thing was all about ideas in your head and the simplest means of interacting with them in surprisingly powerful ways.

Civ II came out in 1996 and I "shared" that purchase with a friend. It was easy enough to copy! I remember debating whether to play it in Windows 3.11 or 95, which was what passed for nerd debate at the time. Little did I know I'd still be playing it on Windows XP six or seven years later. It was a solid improvement on the original game, and best of all could behave itself nicely alongside other tasks. The scale of maniacal conquests and modified worlds I got up to with that on my meagre Pentium laptop with 16 MB of RAM still lingers in a long lost gaming corner of my mind. The game's concepts were vast but its demands were simple.

Then I kind of fell out of it. I've not been much of a gamer in this century really full stop. Civ II saw less and less action as the internet grew to become the thing to get on with when nothing else is up. Civ III didn't play nice at all, and I faced a global meltdown experience in Civ IV as the game engine dissolved into a piteous death as I launched World War Three with more nukes and tanks than my enemies had civilians. That forced an end to trying out that game right there. (If it can't handle my play and Civ I and II can what the hell is up?) I played a bit of Battlefield in the years since, but overall gaming just didn't seem to be my thing any more. Not that it's likely gaming's fault. We all change after all.

Revolution

Then, last week, I heard about Civilization Revolution. Tycho's take on it was fairly promising, and a friend who's never been into Civ at any point in the past decided to try it out on his PlayStation 3. I went around on Saturday to see what it was like … and let's say my take-away is a little mixed.

First of all, it's very visibly based on Civ IV. I pulled up a screenshot from my game of that as I'd saved back at the time to show off a mess of enclaves at the imperial fringe, and lo and behold the similarities were as clear as I thought. Fair enough. It only makes sense to reuse what you've got. Indeed, if Revolution had been more like Civ IV (minus the molasses) I'd have been happier…

Alas, it is not.

You seem to be forever zoomed right in. I urged my gaming friend to pull the view back as far as it went, and all that seemed to achieve was a glimpse of the vanishingly small game world. Uh oh. That's not the Civ I played, although I'll admit I'm unlikely a normal Civ player, as if there were such a thing for a game with this kind of vision.

Comically, I mistook the fog of war for a world covering ocean as they seem to have elected to tart up the darkness. Oops! That was a confusing first minute with a lonely settler.

Anyway, I advised him while he played it for several hours. Our Arabian Empire was doing well enough – we'd established the all important self-replicating city factory fairly early on – and the simplified tech tree was quickly being filled. The neighbours didn't like us much though. Indeed, their dazzlingly huge avatars kept barging onto screen (a handy forty-incher 1080p) and had to be silenced after a while … although not turned off per se, as that is impossible. Dang. Soon enough they were making demands at frustrating regularity, confusingly presented demands I must add which both of us had to pause to figure out more than a few times. After being told where to shove these, we had a war on two fronts to deal with. One of those fronts was the lonely city of Berlin, so it was nothing we couldn't handle.

Apparently my friend had gone through an entire game before this without really fighting much. I taught him the classic techniques of churning out mass produced armies and rallying them ready for singular onslaught. This worked against little Berlin, and the Germans could be seen scurrying away in a boat for a new beginning just before we seized their ancestral home. So then eyes were turned north, (only partly ironically) to Spain.

Civ Rev had another card up its sleeve. Fresh from easy victory over Germany, our ever increasing armed forces concentrated on the nearest Spanish town and duly pounded it. But why were we making no progress against its defenders? They didn't even have a city wall to add to their defensive score, unlike that we faced in our siege and then bombardment of Berlin. After losing a great many men (all instantly replaced by the industrial engine back at home) we moved against other Spanish city. Same story. Eventually we worked it out.

They had a wizard.

Civ Rev calls them Great Generals, if I recall. And supposedly their genesis is random. Random … oh bête noire of every strategist! This guy would wave his arms as though casting a spell during every single one of our stream of engagements, and not once did his hit-points fail. He decimated a mighty army many times his defenders' strength. He did so with the unbreakable fantasy-magic of a monumental gaming frustration.

While trying to attack around this fellow, with ever more powerful and bloodthirsty units pouring from our machine of an empire, we made our last discovery. The Spanish launched an attack on our western outpost, our conspicuously well defended outpost I should add. It mattered not. They had another wizard. Pain in the arse! Their victory was instantly ensured. The arm waving spirit summoner led his part time cadre of goat herders through the lakes of blood hitherto known as our comprehensively superior defensive lines. The city was seized, just like clockwork. And we stared into the certain knowledge that fanciful diplomatic capitulation aside, our fate was just as ended as the pitiful Germans we had suffocated an age before. It wouldn't be so horrendous if Spain were our equal. But they were not. We had four times the population and ten times the military might. What abomination! Comic, certainly, but not what you want at the peak of many hours building a meticulous creation, under the now deluded assumption that up is the opposite of down.

Metal Gear Solid 4 was the easiest disc swap away ever at that very moment…

2000 Game Essay

Eight years ago I opened up another old favourite of a game. Word 2000! I cobbled together the following as the record of my ideas for a future title of my own creation. The other night's experience reminded me of the same. Note that avatars are nowhere to be found, nor indeed shrunken miniature game worlds or the recruitment of magic sages. As it happens, a few of my ideas were independently implemented in the Civ's then yet to be. Congratulations on that. But as for the rest … ah, but to figure out how to do it and to craft the art and code. That kind of magic I can agree with.

So here it is. I leave with a blog post from before the word had been coined and free hosts like this invented…

Game – something to do with Civilization, but naturally a whole lot better.

It is a world control game where the player takes charge of one of the earth’s nations. They will have the same controls as a civilisation participant but with more depth especially inside the cities and the manners of ruling the population. In particular the game is concerned with a much larger world where instead of the civ seven powers there will be a hundred or somewhere around that area. These individual groups over time will find themselves consolidated down into a smaller number as invasions and conquests occur, but their identities shall remain in the people who live there. As the Scots may be taken over by the English the people in Scotland wont turn directly into English (or British) folk. The region after conquest would be more difficult to manage than the home part of the country where the cities have been formed and brought up under the same leadership. Conquered places are instead well aware of the fact, and keeping the population happy – and out of revolution requires more resources to be used up and other control techniques like occupying armies and the use of colonising settlers. Changing the system and layout of government (as the eventual need for democracy takes over) is also at the player’s disposal. Devolution of power, federalism, even socialism and communism are there as options. Elections and keeping the majority of people in your favour, if not just outside of actually doing anything against you, will be of increasing importance in the game: much as the overall progression of the player’s role changes from being a King into being a politician. I intend to draw up full rules for these eventualities – along with the whole array of possibilities depending on all of the circumstances. For example the difference between European colonisation of Africa and North America: in Africa the indigeonous peoples eventually recovered their independence (along with the many conflicts and crises that arose through this complex process and past) and the settlers that had moved there found themselves out of power and in a very minority position; in North America however the native peoples were swamped in population by the huge influx of european settlement and never found the opportunity to revolt or to re-gain power, instead the settlers took arms against their distant rulers and established their own power and dominance in number.

The key game concepts are as follows:
Cities / centres of population are the fundaments of each civilisation. Much as in Civilisation the cities grow and are the sources of the cash, production and the population of all involved. The game logic is carried out on a city by city basis. But I intend to have their population and social makeup calculated much more concentratedly, while also liberalising the acquisition of natural resources constraints and concepts so important and consuming of the time of a player in civ. Cities will have effects on a greater area around them – determined more by the presence of foreign neighbours or forces and the shape of the terrain than by the simple 2 city squares radius of civ. A city holds domain over the lands and further towns and farmland around it, these needn’t be constantly the business of the player but an automatic progress for each city. Production of food can be carried out at different locations to the populations needing it. Large cities can expand to a new level by the connurbation of the areas aroud them leading to metropolis cities like New York and Tokyo. The player will have optional and necessary input at various stages in this path – escpecially when the largest cities first become that and so need fully fledged transport systems to where the raw materials they need are supplied. (Inner city construction and development may be a matter for the player. Whether this is done on a civ style “x needs an aqueduct” manner or on a visual city by city one is also a matter I’m yet to solve. Perhaps the player may only need to deal with the condition of their own city – the capital. I’m not sure. The game is principally to be a world game than a town one.) Borders also will be more natural than with civ’s 2 squares around a city. Movements of units, fortifications, the natutal objects already forming the landscape, all will play a part – along with treaties where competing leaders can demand far more than money but annexation of other’s countries. The player will also have all these techniques at their disposal.
Spherical world. The game’s planet is a three dimensional sphere and can be viewed zoomed out as such. A square by square arrangement is not what I have in mind, in line with civ and so many games – as this wouldn’t work on a round planet with poles instead of arctic bands. Units have distances they can travel each move accross various different terrains, and have a strike radius where they can attack without necessarily being adjacent to their target. Gunnery will benefit from this, as other more modern weapons. This will necessitate the expansion and defence of a nation’s borders, and also with the resources this will take provide increased incentive for treaties and alliances between opponents, helping with the formation of more complicated world power structures where one nation has less and less chance of being in complete dominance. The units will be 3D models rendered from the correct angle on the sphere with lighting conditions in DirectX. Textures, models, and lighting will be in all one form with 3D hardware acceleration being made use of as the game outside of menus takes place as a scene. The lighting will be a directional beam – like the Sun but not rotating 365 times a turn! The angle of this could be dragged around by the right mouse button or somesuch at the player’s liking. City lighting and volcano effects, perhaps even aurora will be visible at night. The world itsself will be turnable as a need for seeing the far ends of it will come in time with the game, unexplored regions being shaded a blank texture until exploration or the aquisition of maps. Later in the game space exploration and colonisation will require new and parallel planets, the details of which will be dealt with separately. The colour of the Sun light changes with different planets (because of the different systems they would be in, with different stars), a stellar aging aspect could be brought in – but I think not, with the comparitive lengths of civilisations and stars!
Politics. Civ concerns the player mostly in moving units and the manipulation of their cities. Unit by unit movement is not perhaps what I want this game to be mostly about – and the appointment of generals to deal with the exact movements of distant and later units I intend to be an important aspect of the player’s leadership. Each city shall have a political makeup based on the origins of its population (previous owners of the city, settler populations of immigration, colonial population movements), these will be distinguished by the names of the various civilisations present at the beginning of the game.. no groups being allowed to exist without their own civ at one time at least. Then the political opinions the people have – the parties they follow in later democratic times – and the closeness to physical violence and revolution they are at. Pie charts, historic displays and the rest will make these stats graphic to the player. Bitter internal rivalries between different groups instead of toward the central government are to be enabled also – especially for colonial situations with migrant peoples taking over other’s lands. But apart from the civilians the military must too be kept under control. Your own armed forces (and other power’s militaries against them too) have the power to overthrow and temporarily or permanently get rid of you – dependent on how enraged they are and what external repurcussions killing you might have for them. So in other words beware the armies you make, and use them in more ways than just for outsiders. As for external politics this is also an area for much enlargement where world power is a job for much negociation between rival and friendly civilisations; international groups and alliances using this extra weight to their advantage – and with any luck a UN style international body whose status and resources are parts of yet more negociations between the real powers and at various summits. A little more than the global reputation and alliance/peace/cease-fire/war weltpolitik of the civ here, a “Newsnight” stlye game, even with peace processes.
Elections, and a parliament. Part of the politics yes, but also directly part of your government. Each city will have a number of representatives sent to the parliament once elections have been chosen to go ahead by the player. Basically the old model of despotism/monarchy/republic/democracy is the idea, but the player has a much greater say in the exact affairs of all of this, subject of course to the demands and wreckings of the population (and the military / present government and beaurocrats) themselves. Initially the player has total rule – autocratic power. But as the civilisation stretches out and the wealth of the higher citizens grows and the size of the military increases the need for this to change also becomes larger, effected particularly by revolts, local and wider-scale uprisings and by entire military coups. “New civilisations” can form inside current ones as a large enough area sharing a similar population reaches a critical level of disenchantment. These could be limited to already dead civilisations – but with new figureheads. Or alternatively could be seperate and new divisions of the still externally present groups, free to make their own paths if not to seek to join with the previous empire from which they came. Also “new” groups as in the Americans could appear – in this case being a large group of settlers now disenchanted and revolting against their own empire. A checklist of who can turn into what in this regard would be necessary though to prevent the curious events civ used to unleash occasionally when a capital city was overrun and a civilisation split into loyalist and rebel halves, such as the Babylonians splitting into still loyal Babylonians and new rebel Ancient Egyptians. Anyway, elections are the main tactic of coping with this, the exact cities and groups of the population able to vote (and even whether the system is a small choice of PR, PR by national group [Lebanese style], first past the post city by city, region by region or just constituencies inside the towns etc.) and of the number each city gets allocated – all to aid with staying comfortably in power. Complicated scenarios of knowledgeable voters, political scandals, army demands and war politics should ensue, with the occasional user glance to the all important polls to make sure they’ll still be in charge next turn. Because periods of opposition could happen – and whatever in the way of wrecked alliances and schemes the computer government would then get up to. (Quite possibly a limit to the length of opposition time would be required, to save centuries or eternities out in the cold.. this is a game of course! Coallitions could guard against this kind of thing, or be the norm under PR. But keeping partners diminishes power and causes all manner of trouble of its own. The exact depth of this aspect of the game is up for debate I’d imagine!)
Year of The Game. Time starts at year 1 and increments by 1 each turn. No silly scaling to a Civ timeline... and no fixed endgame. For fully functioning scenarios such as epoch 1700, 1945, 2000 etc the year could be set to another value for the game entry. But a one year increment is what I want.
Names. More than just the leaders of the sides having names I want for there to be a whole bunch of historic names buried in there somewhere. Such as opponents lurking in your own civilisation ready to take control against you, revolutionary types most likely to lead native and colonial uprisings, and philosophers and scientists occasionally opening up new areas. Each leader (and perhaps a group of the other named individuals at any one point) will have a long formal version of their title where every territory of note they hold (and the odd disputed zone) is listed grouped into particular titles, such as: “x Emperor of Europe and North America, King of South Africa, Lord of the Carribean and the Arabian Gulf” etc etc. But in actual fact far more particular and finnicky land and sea names than that.. as to be mentioned next.
A named world. For each world – but principally of course the starting one, most usually Earth – the player will find that the lands they explore and the seas they cross have names appear to describe them that have already been placed in at the design (or “cunningly” in a random world). Islands, deserts, mountain ranges, hill chains, rivers, great lakes, seas, volcanos (might not be known to be such until first observed erruption!) continents and oceans will have names enough to give the world a reasonable level of name detail for its size. They are free to change these but may find the other people there not so quick to adopt their latest whims. The same idea applies for revolution and recaptured cities – whose original names most likely will reappear (or new ones arise paricularly with communist uprisings like “Leningrad”), whatever the player likes of this. Of course one problem posed by this is that of name placing when the edge of something is just coming into view. Oceans for example would be given away by a sign such as “Pacific Ocean” appearing just off the coast. And having the size of signs to match the importance and size of what they are describing adds to this with big signs saying the most important things and early stumbling into these would yield an advantage. Some level of relevant hiding rules should do the job though – as such an advantage would be a pleasing extra reward for the bother of having set out to explore in the first place!

Individual Details:
Leaders are people. Have names, personalities, and mortality and so can be executed or taken out by special forces operations and wars. Rivals, usurpers and revolutionaries have the same characteristics, the details contained inside these of course differing between individuals. Terrorists can cause all sorts of trouble. There is the possibility of the player actually being killed.
The population is divided. Elections and uprisings and unemployment and rights marches have their implications. The people must be placated. And the situation observed over large distances and great divides. Winning a war and having an official end to hostilities may well be popular amongst the home population and ease political pressures there – but the treatment of foreign powers in the new order will have direct implications on the populations of these living under your control.
What effects the player must also effect their adversaries. The computer players wont have advantages and simplicities over the human, but must make their own moves in the same way. The details of this may be tricky, but it is something I want.
The world has many many more civilisations, whose descendants remain separate from their conquerors even long after the civilisation itsself is dead. (In cases like the Americans – new ‘civs’ can form and from varied bases, and long long extinct civs peoples’ re-emerging can have different names. It is just the idea of multiplicity that is important and the differences that remain between people in the game.)
The world is far far larger. And is a notable sphere. Piece movements will have to be more diverse than as a grid, and the whole thing rendered in 3D.
Places are named; islands rivers mountains continents etc. The names may be changed but to avoid Scott-isation the other peoples wont listen to these.
Battles and official Wars and Treaties are named. Summits may be held between many parties to discuss and resolve international disputes – especially when leading up to and after wars. Names (the city of the meeting, or the site of the battle or province being taken) and dates (in game years) are noted and can be looked up along with the military information on each such attack and the movements of people.
Time is expressed in “Year of the Game”. One turn = One year. No allowing for faster modern events. Just nice linearity. Game starts at Year 1. But scenarios can have an offset, and perhaps a multiple. Maybe in ‘Active’ times such as huge ground wars the turns can be packed in to a smaller number of years. But I don’t want excessive ‘End of Turn’-ing, and the boredom of the Civ loop that often occurs.

Snowed Over

2008-06-12T22:24:00.003+01:00

Right, well … I was wrong and right. Usual story. If it weren't for a MacBook Pro pipe-dream, we'd have even had a bingo. As it transpired: this was another Stevenote all about iPhone. Notice a trend?

The $199 iPhone 3G is a big deal so I can forgive that. It's even a £99 =~ $199 in Britain kind of deal, which is quite something. I've got a little something underway of my own in that regard, so actually my interests were well catered to. Except for one.

Cue RoughlyDrafted.

That sounds just the type of Grand Central I could really like. Where on Earth do you think we could be headed with all of this? My bet is on spectacular success on both fronts, but then I would say that…

Mandatory Stevenote Prematch Prognostication

2008-06-09T17:44:00.002+01:00

10.6

I'm not at all sure what to make of these rumours about Snow Leopard. Something about it doesn't sound right to me. It's not the little funeral for PowerPC, or even the curious ramblings about it being 64 bit Intel only*.

Rather: why advertise a release whose raison d'être is to fix mistakes? It sounds all too Microsoft to me, as in a service pack. Indeed, could it be that some folk are believing that Leopard is the New Vista? Give me a break.

(*I upgraded my Mac mini to a Merom Core2 some time ago. It always seemed odd that the first Intel Macs were 32 bit, especially when the iMac moved from 64 bit G5 to the new 32 bit Core Duo chip. Thankfully, the speed improvements weren't at all overstated and the new machines have all been greatly superior. But I made sure to grab the appropriate 64 bit upgrade for my old mini just as Intel were putting them out of production. It seemed to me to be something with implications rather further out than 10.6 already. I still doubt there's sensible argument to strike at all the Macs from most of 2006 with such an arcane distinction as far as customers are concerned.)

Carbon's demise seems greatly exaggerated too, though the kernel of a valid rumour seems to be there … albeit misinterpreted.

My prediction: 10.6 is talked about, graphically demoed perhaps, and the iPhone and Mac presented as one and the same thing moving together. Cocoa will overcome! But I don't think most of the buzz at the moment is accurate, not to mention the Mac clone thing!

January seems a bit of a rush too. Oh, and what's all this nonsense about 10.6 and 10.5 being parallel? I'd need Steve to hypnotise me as to the benefits of that one all right…

3G iPhone

Yes, obviously. Several models? Perhaps. Certainly, the platform thing will be key to all of this. Mac and iPhone, iPhone and Mac. That's my expectation.

New Mac hardware?

About as likely as new displays! Actually, maybe not that bad. But Intel's summer delay in Nehalem is a pain and likely to push things out a bit. Still, at least they'll be spectacular machines from the benchmarks I've seen. Might have to get one myself if PowerPC is going out of fashion as fast as it seems.

Right, well, I'd better watch the keynote!

Yesterday's News

2008-06-04T19:20:00.004+01:00

As everyone, everywhere, including those who actively do not care, know: Obama won the nomination last night.

Congratulations.

Hillary's not giving up though. It's just as I predicted with an hour still to go on Twitter:

Tonight's Hillary prediction: she still won't quit. She doesn't know how. It's going to take a Brutus.

Brutus? Bill? We’ll see. The shouts of “Denver! Denver! Denver!” were audible during her non-concession speech last night, before a too-homely-for-Obama crowd of defiantly hysterical supporters. I doubt there’d be much of a travelling party left with her come Denver in distant August, after a summer of full campaigning for the big boys and the oblivion the media will gift her once this week is done. Oh sure: it’s in some interests to keep her ghost around, haunting the golden one. But even while objectivity, verifiability, honesty and sanity are all out of vogue as ever among the press; a higher rule still stands that yesterday’s news is yesterday’s news. Americans hate losers. I think even though she has dark plans to steal whatever she can get – for concession is very likely death to part of her group’s collective mind – it will quickly cease to matter. Just as counting the last vote is always forgotten weeks after the event is done in American politics, she will be tarred with that very worst thing: passé.

There won't even be coverage of what happens once she again fails to offer Obama her concession this week. Just a little stir at the farce which will be her lot at the convention, smaller than it is now, especially among the supers. They have careers to protect.

John Edwards' strategy isn't looking too bad right now. Strange that early failure is sometimes better than lengthy closeness to success.

Apple ♥ Montenegro

2008-06-02T16:39:00.003+01:00

Gruber, the Daring Fireball, has been following the latest rumour just in time for WWDC:

New top-level domain (ostensibly from Montenegro). Apple has filed for “apple.me”, “ipod.me”, “itunes.me”, and, I presume, others. These domains are open for anyone to register starting June 6, but the actual .me top-level domain doesn’t go live until July 17. I think it’s merely a coincidence that this TLD is going live right around the same time that it appears Apple is set to launch a service called Mobile Me.

Could "me" be the new "i"?

Certainly, .me is a catchier domain than .tv or .nu or the other handful which have cropped up from some of the world's more obscure locales. And anything beats .uk to be honest, perhaps even super rare .gb … but I digress. If .Mac gets reborn into a service which actually really works, I think it could be very interesting. If it's a free one or fairly enough priced, then it'll be enough to make me try it. I've not as much as even tried the 60 day trial of .Mac in the five years I've been on the platform; knowing I'd merely miss it as soon as it was gone.

Google have proven what power there is there. Podgorica, count me in.

Out of the Archive

2008-06-02T01:07:00.002+01:00

Happened into this old prediction while searching for something else in my diaries. It's from Tuesday, 31st May 2005:

As for politics, there’s been a big story. The French referendum on the EU constitution came out a pretty clear “non”. Already Raffarin has lost his job to everyone who can remember the UN antics before the Iraq war’s favourite, Dominique de Villepan. As for Chirac, he’ll probably be alright – being able to sack your Prime Minister is a pretty neat trick to be able to pull at times like these – though it’ll probably ensure this is his last term now. Interesting that de Villepan has never stood for elected office and yet has been Foreign Minister, Home Minister and now Prime Minister of France! Wonder when we’ll have someone like that pop out of our unwritten constitution? As for politics domestic, this puts more pressure on the already active “Blair’s time has come” campaign, popular among the press. He should never have announced his future resignation the fool … kicking issues you don’t like into the long grass is all fine and well, as long as your contempt for democracy is strong enough, but kicking oneself there is purely stupid! Supposedly it was widely expected that Blair, desperate to win a reputation for himself in retirement other than Iraq, was hell-bent on leading his last charge into posterity by taking Europe by the horns and actually trying to win that vote he’d promised next spring. Some hope. Even a sturdy kicking, as can only be expected, was to have been his valiant swan song. But now … well, after the little holiday this week, the gloves may be off. Unless we’re given a renewed promise, like the other EU countries yet to hold their referenda, that the climax to his ‘masochism strategy’ is still on, then what’s to hold Brown’s lot back now?

Other, that is, than their leader’s fatal flaw, his lack of killer instinct!

Actually, Brown is an interesting enough character to have many notable flaws. And his premiership will be a troubled one, when it comes. But I’m given to thinking that day will not be too soon. Blair can say “stuff it, we’ve nothing to vote on now” and there will be no coup. Just as the junior partner in their coalition (1994 to this day, and running) called off his dogs of Stop the War and let Blair have his victory in 2003 which has caused them all so much trouble. It could have been explained as a “let him have enough to hang himself”, but it’s not exactly paid off. If Blair keeps to his word – not 100% certain anyway I’ll have you know – and Brown is dumped in the deep of it at the time Blair’s hinted he has marked out, spring 2009, then Labour can be expected to have a rough 12 months or less in office before a taxing election indeed. In Scotland, where they least need it, they’ll get a lot of votes back. People here are suckers for a Scottish candidate, just look at the Lib Dems rise after Paddy Ashdown went for Charles Kennedy. But in England, in London and Birmingham and all the places that actually count for shit, well … Brown will have a fight on his hands indeed. Think 1992 and John Major. Only, without a recent popular war in Iraq from which to parade from the gun tower.

It’s not that I don’t like Gordon Brown. I’m just critical of his personal presentation and charismatic abilities compared to Tony “second coming” Blair. That, and I don’t exactly like the Labour party or believe in social democracy. For his pains, he made the wrong decision that evening in a fancy restaurant with his hitherto junior ally. You should never be sold on promises that big where you, of course, are to go second and not first. Whether you even trust them or not, it’s just madness to think you’ll ever get your turn when there’s little matters like general elections at stake. And then to have done it apparently without a pre-arranged handover date! He’s coming from a bad position. And I foresee trouble for him. Make it double if the tories, sometime this year, pick the competent, charismatic and sellable candidate they’ve long been looking for, after years of trying!

Hot damn, was I right. It's good to know I can call them every once in a while.

Perhaps that's why the air of change in politics on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment feels so good: because only three years ago it was still the thick of the old days. The eternal Blair was still in charge – and had another two years to go – Michael "Something of the Night about him" Howard was the opposition's man, and Barack Obama was only known over here to the kind of politics junkies who stayed up to see the Democratic convention a summer earlier. Guess who!?

The particular political matter of the day I started up about is quite forgotten now of course. European treaties are the stuff of yawns the continent finds itself truly united by. "No constitution please, we're British!" And of course Blair went down as a four letter word for the history books, just like his gifted predecessor and fellow Anthony: Eden.

The latter's career path reminds me more of the current prime minister, in that both served much longer as the eminent heir than the time they finally did get to hold the top job. But one particularly glaring exception is that Eden called a snap general election once his old man retired, and won it.

It's Callaghan which comes to mind with the polls the way they are now. The caretaker who could have won his own term if he'd only struck when time was right. And the poor bastard who's in for a hammering the night before the removal van turns up, to leave political life to the knowledge that some just don't ever win elections.

Two years. Tick tock…

Objective Spring

2008-05-29T12:24:00.004+01:00

The arrival of a certain book has been keeping me busy. It's good to be getting a grip on the long postponed ambition at last. The sixth iPhone SDK downloads in the background too, indicating my intent.

Meanwhile though I should note that it's spring at last in Edinburgh. In truth it came a few weeks ago, and has crept back again today after mists and rain and all the rest. There's something about summers – more even than my allergies now ramped back up again – which I was reminded of when I found this article in the New York Times today. Interesting stuff for the politico-historians among us, especially those not even born until a decade later.

Roger Cohen's right about the chaos of ideals. Something certainly changed in the 1960's and remains so to this day; only it seemed to escape absolutely anyone's guess at the time. Also, I should point out that in my view similar things have happened several times before. The reaction – at last – to the Iraq fiasco bears great similarities with earlier American wars, and I doubt the veracity of the notion that the Cold War bore too much in common with the hottest war in history which led to it in the first place. I suspect the lessons we'll see made true again will be from different ages, intermixed. There's no doubting however that it will certainly be interesting.

When I was an impressionable and idealistic teen myself, I read and watched a lot about the supposed miracles of the sixties. Suiting my personality, the affair was actually courtesy of Hunter S. Thompson! Instead of believing too many song lyrics or the furthest reaches of idealistic old films – yet alone in the present day dross still murmured about Cuba – the good doctor's drug addled expeditions were what chimed true for me. Human nature has a habit of denying our equally natural dreams from coming anywhere near to fruition. Communism, revolution, free love (as in beer or in speech!?), and even the preoccupation with nuclear genocide … all have fizzled away back into the fantasies from which they came. Looking back on it, craning your neck to avoid the worst excesses of every involved party, you can't help but see the beauty in failed ideals. That history is littered with them is one of the lessons only age seems to bring to the mind who form them in the first place.

A blue sky gestures me to get on my bike. That I shall. Bearing in mind that it's only when we've made our mistakes we really get to learn!