Prometheus had gotten pretty good reviews, so we decided go see it. Oh, but were we let down… So the special effects were pretty good and the 3D wasn’t too awful, but talk about plot holes you can drive spaceships through.
The main problem was that absolutely nothing seemed to have any consequences whatsoever: A discovery that overturns absolutely everything we know of history and biology? No matter, that won’t change measurement methods, technology or anything. You need a crack scientific team to explore a hugely important issue? Just gather random people with all the discrimination of a charter trip to Mallorca. You’re travelling through the galaxy, space and supplies at such a premium that people have to be put into hypersleep? Well, once they wake up, they’ll have all the amenities of a five-star spa hotel. Somebody tries to lock you up, so you had to beat them up and steal the use of expensive and prohibited equipment, leaving it all bloody and infested with parasites? No worries, nobody cares a whit. You have just have major abdominal surgery? No worries, a couple of painkillers will keep the wound from ripping open even if you keep hitting your tummy with every available object on the planet.
Still, the most egregious problem is the lack of understanding of biology. I forget how many films I’ve seen where they analyse the “DNA” of alien creatures. How likely is it that alien life should be DNA-based to begin with? Somehow people seem to have the idea that life is necessarily based on DNA, and once you have DNA, yeah, well, obviously you can combine it any way you see fit to make human-alien hybrids. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the proposal that alien life would come to Earth and start making jellyfish-alien hybrids, or fern-alien hybrids, though that would make at least as much sense, for some infinitesimal value of sense.
There is also a bizarre scene where the archaeologist protagonist starts inserting electrodes into a magically preserved alien head in order to…well, turn it alive again, as far as we can tell. She does it as a routine matter, which makes one wonder how archaeology is performed in the future. I would presume there would be even more protests from indigenous populations not only having their graves robbed but their ancestors turned into reanimated zombies. She then proceeds to put “50 amps” into the head. 50 A! No wonder it explodes.
In the end one was left wondering whether the positive reviews were simply due to Noomi Rapace being in the film, which seems a bit unfair.
2012-06-06
2012-06-03
Nor glom of nit
The weather didn’t look very promising, so I thought it best to call J and check:
“Are you on?”
“Of course I am!”
Well then! Soon we were on the train to Linköping, J nodding off and I reading. As we arrived in Linköpingand looked for our bus, we were greeted by staff from the local public transport who showed us to the bus to Malmslätt and quickly instructed us how to buy SMS tickets. The entrance to the airfield was through the museum (where I had to briefly stop to photograph the Tp 85 that had appeared outside the museum since our last visit). And there it was: The Swedish Armed Forces Air Show 2012.
The weather had gotten worse, which not only affected the aerial displays, some of which—like paradrops and replica pioneer aircraft—had to be cancelled due to the high winds. I realised exactly how inadequately I had dressed as a horizontal rain started. J calmly dug out a wind- and water-proof ski suit for himself from his bat pack. He offered me an umbrella, but it threatened to be shredded by the wind, so back it went into the pack. Instead he took out a plastic bag for me to cover my camera with, as he was concerned it wouldn’t take well to the rain. At least my hearing protectors doubled nicely as ear muffs.
The Saab Historic Flight, Gripen leading, followed by Sk 60 (which has never had a proper name), Tunnan and Lansen, finally flanked by Viggen and Draken. Teared eyes all over the airfield.
The flight on the ground, augmented by a Hunter.
I’ve always been fond of the MU-2, here in a target tug version.
No airshow is complete without a Spitfire.
But well, an airshow is an airshow, so even though my teeth occasionally chattered, we had a good time. We threaded a weaving path about the airfield, as I tend to be mostly interested in the static displays, where you actually have a chance to see the aircraft close up, whereas J didn’t want to miss any of the aerial displays, so wanted to be close to the flightline. I for my part tend to be a bit blasé about aerobatics and wasn’t all that impressed until the performance by the Baltic Bees, which had the right components for an aerial display: fast jets and a well-trained group. They had been preceded by the Swiss PC-7 team, which, while doing a nice display, had a speaker who had me groaning as he repeated for every manœuvre that it was executed with Swiss precision (well yes, but we got it the first time) and managed to mention the team’s web site probably eight times during the display.
Then of course, it was this was a PR event for the Armed Forces and the speakers, while knowledgeable about their subject (not necessarily a requirement at some Swedish air days I have been to), underscored what a great job it was to be a military pilot, or military anything, really, especially as you got to protect Freedom, Democracy, and all that in faraway countries. I did not appreciate the demonstration of a helicopter-supported attack on a terrorist holdout, heavy machine guns rattling off blanks into the audience during the entire display. (Yeah, I know, but we’ve talked about the cognitive dissonance thing before.)
Finally the day wound down and I decided it was time to have a look at the stand selling model kits. As I stood there going through the stacks (eventually going for RS Model’s brand new D-3800) the Saab Historic Flight started their engines one by one in the enclosure I was standing next to, in preparation for leaving. Hot exhaust washed over me. I was warmed in all respects though grateful I still had my ear protectors on. And then, with great roars they returned to their lair, and so did we.
The people from the bus company were standing by the bus stop, requesting extra busses according to need. I chatted a bit with the guy, who demonstrated that Linköping indeed is Air City, as he had initiated comments not only on the day’s display but also of aviation in the city in his youth. He also had some acerbic comments about Saab putting on a big show, but not having the courtesy of hiring coaches, instead letting the bus company cover the bill for that.
“Are you on?”
“Of course I am!”
Well then! Soon we were on the train to Linköping, J nodding off and I reading. As we arrived in Linköpingand looked for our bus, we were greeted by staff from the local public transport who showed us to the bus to Malmslätt and quickly instructed us how to buy SMS tickets. The entrance to the airfield was through the museum (where I had to briefly stop to photograph the Tp 85 that had appeared outside the museum since our last visit). And there it was: The Swedish Armed Forces Air Show 2012.
The weather had gotten worse, which not only affected the aerial displays, some of which—like paradrops and replica pioneer aircraft—had to be cancelled due to the high winds. I realised exactly how inadequately I had dressed as a horizontal rain started. J calmly dug out a wind- and water-proof ski suit for himself from his bat pack. He offered me an umbrella, but it threatened to be shredded by the wind, so back it went into the pack. Instead he took out a plastic bag for me to cover my camera with, as he was concerned it wouldn’t take well to the rain. At least my hearing protectors doubled nicely as ear muffs.
The Saab Historic Flight, Gripen leading, followed by Sk 60 (which has never had a proper name), Tunnan and Lansen, finally flanked by Viggen and Draken. Teared eyes all over the airfield.
The flight on the ground, augmented by a Hunter.
I’ve always been fond of the MU-2, here in a target tug version.
No airshow is complete without a Spitfire.But well, an airshow is an airshow, so even though my teeth occasionally chattered, we had a good time. We threaded a weaving path about the airfield, as I tend to be mostly interested in the static displays, where you actually have a chance to see the aircraft close up, whereas J didn’t want to miss any of the aerial displays, so wanted to be close to the flightline. I for my part tend to be a bit blasé about aerobatics and wasn’t all that impressed until the performance by the Baltic Bees, which had the right components for an aerial display: fast jets and a well-trained group. They had been preceded by the Swiss PC-7 team, which, while doing a nice display, had a speaker who had me groaning as he repeated for every manœuvre that it was executed with Swiss precision (well yes, but we got it the first time) and managed to mention the team’s web site probably eight times during the display.
Then of course, it was this was a PR event for the Armed Forces and the speakers, while knowledgeable about their subject (not necessarily a requirement at some Swedish air days I have been to), underscored what a great job it was to be a military pilot, or military anything, really, especially as you got to protect Freedom, Democracy, and all that in faraway countries. I did not appreciate the demonstration of a helicopter-supported attack on a terrorist holdout, heavy machine guns rattling off blanks into the audience during the entire display. (Yeah, I know, but we’ve talked about the cognitive dissonance thing before.)
Finally the day wound down and I decided it was time to have a look at the stand selling model kits. As I stood there going through the stacks (eventually going for RS Model’s brand new D-3800) the Saab Historic Flight started their engines one by one in the enclosure I was standing next to, in preparation for leaving. Hot exhaust washed over me. I was warmed in all respects though grateful I still had my ear protectors on. And then, with great roars they returned to their lair, and so did we.
The people from the bus company were standing by the bus stop, requesting extra busses according to need. I chatted a bit with the guy, who demonstrated that Linköping indeed is Air City, as he had initiated comments not only on the day’s display but also of aviation in the city in his youth. He also had some acerbic comments about Saab putting on a big show, but not having the courtesy of hiring coaches, instead letting the bus company cover the bill for that.
2012-05-21
Swiss precision
When I was a kid, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo was rebroadcast in an edited version on Swedish Television and I watched it religiously. I have been fond of bagpipes ever since. Now, I haven’t seen it for many years, but then this YouTube clip turned up. No bagpipes, but good enough. Watch it to the end!
2012-05-20
A certain amount of vacuum
The School of Computer Science and Engineering has produced some extremely well-done spexes, but it’s been almost a decade since last. So I was quite happy to see that they’d now joined forces with the School of Media Technology and produced an all-new spex. Clearly I had to go see it.
So, this Friday I found myself in one of the off-S:t Eriksplan cellar theatres with an excited crowd of what apparently was mainly friends and parents. The audience was very pleased with the show, but, alas, I must say this must have been the same kind of pleasure proud parents feel at Lucia shows at day care.
The actors certainly knew their lines, but they completely lacked in timing on stage. Then again, the dialogue was wooden enough that it really didn’t make much of a difference. With delicious irony, the finale was a version of “With a little help from my friends” and the actors certainly could have needed a bit of help trying not to sing out of key.
That said, it was not all bad. Actually, I’d say that the choreography made up for much of the other deficits and there was a “One office and five drummers” that was quite excellent. There were a few clever restarts as well, one involving doing “bullet time” dodging—live on stage.
Still, I found myself thinking back to the glory days of D spexes. I hope a new generation of witty and creative script writers will soon be born.
So, this Friday I found myself in one of the off-S:t Eriksplan cellar theatres with an excited crowd of what apparently was mainly friends and parents. The audience was very pleased with the show, but, alas, I must say this must have been the same kind of pleasure proud parents feel at Lucia shows at day care.
The actors certainly knew their lines, but they completely lacked in timing on stage. Then again, the dialogue was wooden enough that it really didn’t make much of a difference. With delicious irony, the finale was a version of “With a little help from my friends” and the actors certainly could have needed a bit of help trying not to sing out of key.
That said, it was not all bad. Actually, I’d say that the choreography made up for much of the other deficits and there was a “One office and five drummers” that was quite excellent. There were a few clever restarts as well, one involving doing “bullet time” dodging—live on stage.
Still, I found myself thinking back to the glory days of D spexes. I hope a new generation of witty and creative script writers will soon be born.
2012-05-19
A matter of perspective
Anders J Thor recently passed away. I found out from an obituary written by members of the home-owners’ association to which he belonged. They mentioned in passing that he had worked at KTH as well as ISO, but clearly the main part of his life had been spent tirelessly working for the home-owners’ association. I struggle to draw a moral from this.
Muslims love their children too
“Russians” is my favourite example of Sting’s ability to put cerebral lyrics to music. The Cold War may be over, but the message “we are all humans” remains as important to remember as ever.
2012-05-18
Arrangements
In preparation for the sale of my flat, a photographer has been booked to take selling pictures of it. Home photographers are infamous, but hopefully this won’t turn my home into a Catalog Living horror.
H/t Charger.
H/t Charger.
2012-05-17
We band of brothers
Some ambitious fellows had arranged for a modelling weekend at the Swedish Military Vehicle Museum. I haven't built an armour model for surely 35 years, but a weekend devoted to modelling is to be cherished.
I carefully packed my kit on Friday evening, so that I wouldn’t have to panic-pack in the morning. I decided to take along Italeri’s Sd.Kfz. 234/2 Puma, Airfix’ R.A.F. Refuelling set, and Tamiya’s Porsche 911 GT2. (The latter aren’t exactly armour, but at least surface vehicles.)
I got to the train just in time and as the early Saturday tour was quite uncrowded I managed to get a nice seat on the top floor. With Svealandsbanan, the trip to Strängnäs doesn’t even take an hour, but I’d have to wait about as long again for the bus to take me the last bit to the museum. At least it was sunny. I had but sat down at the bus stop as I heard an ”Oi!” from behind. There was Olle in his car. “I thought I’d find you here, let’s go.” An anonymous sign pointed at the “VEHICLE MUSEUM”, a functional-looking barn. We were greeted by the guys who’d arrived the day before and had already laid out the tables, lights, compressors and such on the mezzanine floor, with an excellent view of the exhibits.
The museum had a very special smell of oil and metal, many of the exhibits are kept in running shape, so now and then the public are given the full experience of 50 Mg chunks of roaring, clanking, smoking (though not firing) metal rolling about on the meadow outside the museum.
More modellers arrived from all corners of Sweden, until we were some 20+, laying out our models and gear on the tables. Ordinary museum visitors also turned up, some curiously asking us about our esoteric activities, and receiving enthusiastic explanations.
I started on the Puma, though didn’t get that far before it was seminar time.
Later in the afternoon we were invited to a private showing of the museum exhibits. After a while the curator got a bit concerned we wouldn’t get through them all before nightfall, what with the constant barrage of questions and comments from both people with deep knowledge about the subject and the rest of us, while not very knowledgeable, still intensely interested. We weren’t in any hurry, though and the curator indulged us. I have discussed the authenticity of preserved aircraft before, and the curator was happy to point out that many of the exhibits were not in original shape, having been modified, and then possibly unmodified again, repainted in whatever paints had been around at various points in their history, and that some simply were one-shot test examples that were unrepresentive of their type. “Photographs show what things looked like at one point, but there’s no telling what happened ten minutes before, or ten minutes after.”
When we had gone through the exhibition, now long after closing time, a question was timidly put forward: “Could I sit in the Trabant, just for a bit?” “Uh well, OK, but don’t hurt yourself.” The dams broke: People scattered like dropped marbles and were soon crawling all over the vehicles, cameras clicking away; everywhere was happy laughter and smiling heads poking out of hatches, guns were traversed and every bolt, pin, and attachment point scrutinised and documented. Most congregated around the celebrities: T-34, Marder, Sherman, but some connoiseurs preferred to explore Soviet amphibians or, as noted, East German bucket cars. (You will notice that I haven’t made any mention of Swedish vehicles so far—they tend to be fairly uncharismatic, possibly with the exception of the ”S” tank, and were accordingly mostly ignored.) The curator watched the proceedings with a beatific smile, most pleased with visitors who really appreciated the museum.
Finally I felt that I, too, had to try something and clambered into the driver’s seat of a Universal Carrier. I found it utterly lacking in any comfort or human factors thinking. The steering wheel was mere centimetres from my sternum, the brake pedal was located where it was quite convenient for the passenger to reach, I found a set of instruments on a panel by my right shoulder where my aging eyes couldn’t even focus on them and the front armour extended just to my eyebrows. I presume any road accident would have lead to instant death or major injury.
Eventually people felt that it started to get late and we profusely thanked the museum staff for their forebearance. Then a car convoy took off for Strängnäs and the pizza place that had been recommended as the most priceworthy by the locals. The quiet Saturday evening was suddenly shattered by laughing, talking, and hungry modellers. After dinner we continued to the youth hostel where some of us were staying the night. Others decided to keep us company for a while before they returned to their sleeping places. I realised I was but an amateur as everybody else pulled out modelling gear and started working in the kitchen. For my part I loaded a documentary on strategic bombing in my laptop. So the evening proceeded in happy intercourse. I decided to withdraw to bed before midnight and feel contentedly asleep to the sound of peals of laughter in the kitchen.
Next morning. An early rise and quick ablutions before we returned to the museum from where a new convoy took off and soon turned onto a small gravel road, at the end of which was the former mobilisation stores where the museum now kept the items they did not have on current display. ”Some 3–400 vehicles, depending on how you count.” Obviously we could not study them all, but we got extensive samples. The sheds were packed with armour, trucks, engines, guns, bicycles, but also more unexpectedly cradles, looms, sleds and a mysterious object that looked like a huge champagne cork in fabric. As densely as they were stored, it was soon obvious that the easiest way of moving about was to mount a tank and then proceed stepping from one to the next. The air was filled with joyous laughter as discoveries were made and people tried to seat themselves in the vehicles. My attempts confirmed that tanks evidently are made for short, very short, and thin people, and even they should expect to have their craniums banged about by various corners and edges. I dare not imagine the noise from shooting with large-calibre guns in those enclosed spaces.
Eventually we returned to the museum for more seminars, or should I say, intensely interactive discussions between skilled modellers. Towards the end of the day I set up for painting some Porsche parts. The Humbrol metallic colours are pretty temperamental when airbrushed and have a tendency to clog the nozzle. High pressure is indicated. This was really my only opportunity for aggravation during the entire weekend.
Cleaning up was quickly done with all hands on deck and then we all went our separate ways with happy smiles, new friendships having been forged and promises of future events exchanged.
I carefully packed my kit on Friday evening, so that I wouldn’t have to panic-pack in the morning. I decided to take along Italeri’s Sd.Kfz. 234/2 Puma, Airfix’ R.A.F. Refuelling set, and Tamiya’s Porsche 911 GT2. (The latter aren’t exactly armour, but at least surface vehicles.)
I got to the train just in time and as the early Saturday tour was quite uncrowded I managed to get a nice seat on the top floor. With Svealandsbanan, the trip to Strängnäs doesn’t even take an hour, but I’d have to wait about as long again for the bus to take me the last bit to the museum. At least it was sunny. I had but sat down at the bus stop as I heard an ”Oi!” from behind. There was Olle in his car. “I thought I’d find you here, let’s go.” An anonymous sign pointed at the “VEHICLE MUSEUM”, a functional-looking barn. We were greeted by the guys who’d arrived the day before and had already laid out the tables, lights, compressors and such on the mezzanine floor, with an excellent view of the exhibits.
The museum had a very special smell of oil and metal, many of the exhibits are kept in running shape, so now and then the public are given the full experience of 50 Mg chunks of roaring, clanking, smoking (though not firing) metal rolling about on the meadow outside the museum.
More modellers arrived from all corners of Sweden, until we were some 20+, laying out our models and gear on the tables. Ordinary museum visitors also turned up, some curiously asking us about our esoteric activities, and receiving enthusiastic explanations.
I started on the Puma, though didn’t get that far before it was seminar time.
Later in the afternoon we were invited to a private showing of the museum exhibits. After a while the curator got a bit concerned we wouldn’t get through them all before nightfall, what with the constant barrage of questions and comments from both people with deep knowledge about the subject and the rest of us, while not very knowledgeable, still intensely interested. We weren’t in any hurry, though and the curator indulged us. I have discussed the authenticity of preserved aircraft before, and the curator was happy to point out that many of the exhibits were not in original shape, having been modified, and then possibly unmodified again, repainted in whatever paints had been around at various points in their history, and that some simply were one-shot test examples that were unrepresentive of their type. “Photographs show what things looked like at one point, but there’s no telling what happened ten minutes before, or ten minutes after.”
When we had gone through the exhibition, now long after closing time, a question was timidly put forward: “Could I sit in the Trabant, just for a bit?” “Uh well, OK, but don’t hurt yourself.” The dams broke: People scattered like dropped marbles and were soon crawling all over the vehicles, cameras clicking away; everywhere was happy laughter and smiling heads poking out of hatches, guns were traversed and every bolt, pin, and attachment point scrutinised and documented. Most congregated around the celebrities: T-34, Marder, Sherman, but some connoiseurs preferred to explore Soviet amphibians or, as noted, East German bucket cars. (You will notice that I haven’t made any mention of Swedish vehicles so far—they tend to be fairly uncharismatic, possibly with the exception of the ”S” tank, and were accordingly mostly ignored.) The curator watched the proceedings with a beatific smile, most pleased with visitors who really appreciated the museum.
 A view from the mezzanine onto early WWII Swedish armour. |  Some armour of my own. |
 Down the hatch! |  The driver’s seat in a Universal Carrier. A particularly nice touch is the bolt in the middle of the steering wheel—just made for crushing your sternum. Note also the footprint on the shelf where I stepped to get into the vehicle. |
Finally I felt that I, too, had to try something and clambered into the driver’s seat of a Universal Carrier. I found it utterly lacking in any comfort or human factors thinking. The steering wheel was mere centimetres from my sternum, the brake pedal was located where it was quite convenient for the passenger to reach, I found a set of instruments on a panel by my right shoulder where my aging eyes couldn’t even focus on them and the front armour extended just to my eyebrows. I presume any road accident would have lead to instant death or major injury.
Eventually people felt that it started to get late and we profusely thanked the museum staff for their forebearance. Then a car convoy took off for Strängnäs and the pizza place that had been recommended as the most priceworthy by the locals. The quiet Saturday evening was suddenly shattered by laughing, talking, and hungry modellers. After dinner we continued to the youth hostel where some of us were staying the night. Others decided to keep us company for a while before they returned to their sleeping places. I realised I was but an amateur as everybody else pulled out modelling gear and started working in the kitchen. For my part I loaded a documentary on strategic bombing in my laptop. So the evening proceeded in happy intercourse. I decided to withdraw to bed before midnight and feel contentedly asleep to the sound of peals of laughter in the kitchen.
Next morning. An early rise and quick ablutions before we returned to the museum from where a new convoy took off and soon turned onto a small gravel road, at the end of which was the former mobilisation stores where the museum now kept the items they did not have on current display. ”Some 3–400 vehicles, depending on how you count.” Obviously we could not study them all, but we got extensive samples. The sheds were packed with armour, trucks, engines, guns, bicycles, but also more unexpectedly cradles, looms, sleds and a mysterious object that looked like a huge champagne cork in fabric. As densely as they were stored, it was soon obvious that the easiest way of moving about was to mount a tank and then proceed stepping from one to the next. The air was filled with joyous laughter as discoveries were made and people tried to seat themselves in the vehicles. My attempts confirmed that tanks evidently are made for short, very short, and thin people, and even they should expect to have their craniums banged about by various corners and edges. I dare not imagine the noise from shooting with large-calibre guns in those enclosed spaces.
 A nondescript façade. |  More camouflagey things to crawl about on. |
 The thing with amphibious vehicles is that you can only get in at the top and for some reason they never have ladders. |  A very realistically weathered lorry. |
Eventually we returned to the museum for more seminars, or should I say, intensely interactive discussions between skilled modellers. Towards the end of the day I set up for painting some Porsche parts. The Humbrol metallic colours are pretty temperamental when airbrushed and have a tendency to clog the nozzle. High pressure is indicated. This was really my only opportunity for aggravation during the entire weekend.
Cleaning up was quickly done with all hands on deck and then we all went our separate ways with happy smiles, new friendships having been forged and promises of future events exchanged.
2012-05-12
Entourage on tour
We had decided early on to repeat last year’s trip; to the Helsinki Model-Expo. Honeybuns couldn’t come along because she had to go on a job trip—to Helsinki. Still, an expectant band gathered up by the harbour and off we went.
We had booked the cheapest cabins. What really should not have been a surprise was that they were also preferred by youngsters, saving them money they could spend on booze. While not being exactly rowdy, a couple dozen kids spent the night talking quite loudly in the corridor. Round 05:30 our neighbour snapped and rushed out of his cabin to give them several pieces of his mind, which however they just ignored so eventually a call to ship security was required to put the young to bed.
Still, a fresh new day awaited us. We bundled into our rented car and drove out to the Exhibition centre. The modelling exhibition was in the all-new hall, sharing it with the crafts exhibition (not very far-fetched a combination). The competitors lined up their entries and then we dispersed in the halls to see what we could find.
We had vaguely thought about riding out to Suomenlinna, but the exhibits proved plentiful enough that we realised we wouldn’t have time for that. Still, eyes bleeding and brain full I eventually decided I’d had enough for the day and headed back into town on my own. As I got to Pasila station, the train pulled in, I ran for it and got on just in time. There were big signs in every car giving the ticket prices and carefully noting the fines for failing to buy a ticket. Yet I could nowhere find any instructions on the actual mechanics of purchase and found myself at Helsinki Central before realising I could simply have asked a fellow passenger. (Talking to commuters, what a bizarre idea! I probably could have gotten thrown off the train for that, too.)
The weather was sunny, though rather too windy to be warm, so I was quite impressed by the boys I saw playing icehockey in their shirtsleeves as I strolled out to Hietaniemi to tend to the family grave.
Back in the city centre I found myself in the middle of a little open-air rock concert, the final set just starting with The Death of Gagarin. The stage was quite small, but the band did their best to look as if they were playing at Woodstock. The lead guitar jumped around and kicked at the loudspeaker stack, but as they weren’t exactly the heaviest Marshall speakers, they rocked (too) in danger of falling over. For a fraction of a second the guitarist looked as if to reflexively put out a hand to steady the stack, but immediately realising that that wouldn’t look ultracool, so he just stared fixedly at the stack until it was steady again. A couple of minutes later his toddler child crawled up on stage:
“Not now, sweetie, Daddy’s supposed to be playing a solo.”
Finally the rest of the gang returned from a full day at the fair and we set out to find something to eat. “There’s a pretty good Spanish restaurant just around the corner here. Oh, looks like they’ve closed.” ”But the one we were to last year, the one with the knockout waitress? That was…over there somewhere?” [zig, zag] ”Look, there it is!” “Sorry, we are fully booked. Sorry, no, we won’t toss out the little ladies over there even if they look harmless. May we recommend the restaurant around the block?” [trudge] “Table for six…? Uh, yes, there’s a company just leaving, give us a minute to clean up.” It was Asparagus Week, but we didn’t have to eat the slimy asparagus (except for those who wanted to) and were quite satisfied as we walked back to our hotel.
The next morning we headed out to the aviation museum. This was a classic aviation museum in the style of “We have x m² hangar space, let’s pile in as many aircraft as we can.” Nothing wrong with that.
Having had our fill of the museum, we headed back to the expo, picked up our prizes, did some (additional) last minute shopping (good SEK/EUR rates) and then headed to our ship home. No drunk kids on this trip and when we returned, it was spring in Stockholm.
We had booked the cheapest cabins. What really should not have been a surprise was that they were also preferred by youngsters, saving them money they could spend on booze. While not being exactly rowdy, a couple dozen kids spent the night talking quite loudly in the corridor. Round 05:30 our neighbour snapped and rushed out of his cabin to give them several pieces of his mind, which however they just ignored so eventually a call to ship security was required to put the young to bed.
Still, a fresh new day awaited us. We bundled into our rented car and drove out to the Exhibition centre. The modelling exhibition was in the all-new hall, sharing it with the crafts exhibition (not very far-fetched a combination). The competitors lined up their entries and then we dispersed in the halls to see what we could find.
 When introducing a new R/C plane kit, of course you need to bring it to the flight area accompanied by mood(y) music, soap bubbles and uniformed men looking very emo. |  An utterly delightful kajak vignette. |
 Horror models: a tiny organ. |  Over at the pet fair: little kitties sleeping despite the surrounding din. |
We had vaguely thought about riding out to Suomenlinna, but the exhibits proved plentiful enough that we realised we wouldn’t have time for that. Still, eyes bleeding and brain full I eventually decided I’d had enough for the day and headed back into town on my own. As I got to Pasila station, the train pulled in, I ran for it and got on just in time. There were big signs in every car giving the ticket prices and carefully noting the fines for failing to buy a ticket. Yet I could nowhere find any instructions on the actual mechanics of purchase and found myself at Helsinki Central before realising I could simply have asked a fellow passenger. (Talking to commuters, what a bizarre idea! I probably could have gotten thrown off the train for that, too.)
The weather was sunny, though rather too windy to be warm, so I was quite impressed by the boys I saw playing icehockey in their shirtsleeves as I strolled out to Hietaniemi to tend to the family grave.
Back in the city centre I found myself in the middle of a little open-air rock concert, the final set just starting with The Death of Gagarin. The stage was quite small, but the band did their best to look as if they were playing at Woodstock. The lead guitar jumped around and kicked at the loudspeaker stack, but as they weren’t exactly the heaviest Marshall speakers, they rocked (too) in danger of falling over. For a fraction of a second the guitarist looked as if to reflexively put out a hand to steady the stack, but immediately realising that that wouldn’t look ultracool, so he just stared fixedly at the stack until it was steady again. A couple of minutes later his toddler child crawled up on stage:
“Not now, sweetie, Daddy’s supposed to be playing a solo.”Finally the rest of the gang returned from a full day at the fair and we set out to find something to eat. “There’s a pretty good Spanish restaurant just around the corner here. Oh, looks like they’ve closed.” ”But the one we were to last year, the one with the knockout waitress? That was…over there somewhere?” [zig, zag] ”Look, there it is!” “Sorry, we are fully booked. Sorry, no, we won’t toss out the little ladies over there even if they look harmless. May we recommend the restaurant around the block?” [trudge] “Table for six…? Uh, yes, there’s a company just leaving, give us a minute to clean up.” It was Asparagus Week, but we didn’t have to eat the slimy asparagus (except for those who wanted to) and were quite satisfied as we walked back to our hotel.
The next morning we headed out to the aviation museum. This was a classic aviation museum in the style of “We have x m² hangar space, let’s pile in as many aircraft as we can.” Nothing wrong with that.
 I did a careful photographic walk-around of the Mi-1 for an upcoming modelling project. Here are the rotor blades: note that they are canvas over a steel and wood structure, just like any WWI aircraft. | |
 This really knocked my socks off: 40 hand-carved wooden 1:100 models of world speed record holders. Here the Macchi M.C.72. |  From the collection of all Finnish air force aircraft types in 1:72: the SPAD VII. Compare this with my rendition. |
Having had our fill of the museum, we headed back to the expo, picked up our prizes, did some (additional) last minute shopping (good SEK/EUR rates) and then headed to our ship home. No drunk kids on this trip and when we returned, it was spring in Stockholm.
2012-05-11
Word of the week: pronounciation
“Verbing weirds language”, as famously noted by Calvin and indeed there’s every year a new proliferation of new nouns to be verbed. However, other word classes tend to be quite hide-bound. Now there’s been a small amount of pronounciation going on in the creation of genderless pronouns, such as “E” and “Xe”. In Swedish the suggestion of ”hen” as a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun has created some amount of debate and indeed ridicule. It has however been pointed out that the gendered third person plural pronouns were dropped already in mediæval Swedish, so that the depronounciation process started a long time ago.
2012-05-01
Wait for me!
I just got a congratulatory message from eBay for having been a customer for twelve years. Wait, what? Twelve years? Didn’t they come up with this cool World Wide Web thing just recently?
2012-04-30
Pronounciation
A thing that annoys me in most dictionaries is that they give the pronounciation of people’s last names, but never of their first names, even if they may be a lot trickier. As for example Evelyn Waugh. The other day I suddenly realised that even though I’ve always pronounced the first name [ˈevlɪn], maybe that’s just my Finnish accent, and probably the real pronounciation is [ˈiːvlɪn]. Of course even Wikipedia only bothers to give the pronounciation of his last name ([ˈwɔː]), which wasn’t that hard to figure out anyway.
Googling about I found Forvo, which contains audio pronounciation samples of about a million words in a few hundred languages. Yay! So, what about Evelyn then? Well, four samples give four different pronounciations, including both above, so apparently native speakers don’t know either.
Googling about I found Forvo, which contains audio pronounciation samples of about a million words in a few hundred languages. Yay! So, what about Evelyn then? Well, four samples give four different pronounciations, including both above, so apparently native speakers don’t know either.
Another place to go
Here is another aviation-related museum I intend to visit as soon as I have figured out where it is located: The Sci-Fi Airshow.
H/t Thnidu.
H/t Thnidu.
2012-04-27
2012-04-22
Construction proceeding
This is the current state of our future home:
Its twin is somewhat further along:
Seeing the place in reality made it seem so much smaller than on the blueprints. Will my bookshelves fit?
Its twin is somewhat further along:
Seeing the place in reality made it seem so much smaller than on the blueprints. Will my bookshelves fit?
2012-04-20
Getting the worm
I had the morning off, so decided I should do some long-needed purchases. This meant I found myself in the city shops on a weekday, just as they opened. This in turn meant they were all but empty, so I suddenly was in the care of relaxed shop assistants who were more than willing to spend their time finding me the perfect trekking shoes, kitchen fans and ill-defined packing paper needs. I shall have to remember this time slot.
2012-04-17
Ordnung muss sein
I once was demonstrating some VR hardware to a class. They were too many to go all at once so I split them into three groups and decreed:
“You are group 1, you are group B, and you are group Red.”
When I had ran the demo for the first group I yelled:
“OK, time for group B!”
They stepped up and primly declared:
“We are group 2.”
Conventions are practical, but they’re not mandatory.
“You are group 1, you are group B, and you are group Red.”
When I had ran the demo for the first group I yelled:
“OK, time for group B!”
They stepped up and primly declared:
“We are group 2.”
Conventions are practical, but they’re not mandatory.
2012-04-14
Replacement
The fair itself was enjoyable, but seemed to be much smaller than previous years, only one hall instead of two, and not very densely filled at that. We couldn’t quite pinpoint what had gone missing this year. Honeybuns picked up bulbs of various kinds and I stared in awe at some football-sized bulbs (jättelökar!) and tried to imagine the size of the flower that will sprout from those.
Then trudging home through the slush, waiting for spring proper to arrive.
2012-04-13
Word of the week: rockcoaches
Even though Fame was placed in a music school in New York, I never noticed that they had any rockcoaches.
2012-04-10
Situational illiteracy
I’ve often wondered over the phenomenon that error messages apparently instantly remove the ability to read from the person viewing them.
“Aaah, my program crashed! Now I'll have to randomly click icons until the problem goes away!”
“This popup says ‘Connection lost, please check your Ethernet cable’. Would it be this cable that’s fallen to the floor?”
sigh OK, that’s enough smug superiority for now. There are of course reasons for this behaviour. Too much software generates too many useless error messages:
“Aaah, my program crashed! Now I'll have to randomly click icons until the problem goes away!”
“This popup says ‘Connection lost, please check your Ethernet cable’. Would it be this cable that’s fallen to the floor?”
sigh OK, that’s enough smug superiority for now. There are of course reasons for this behaviour. Too much software generates too many useless error messages:
- A common method is by not catching the error at all and instead getting a stack dump from the underlying runtime system, which may be useful to a debugging programmer, but not to a working user.
- Or, if the programmer has bothered to trap the error, the error message is still mostly intended for debugging (“Stack overflow in function getResCompFlow().”) and does not suggest to the user either how to avoid it or how to proceed from a bad state.
- And then we have the opposites: the too brief message (“Syntax error”) vs dozens of long lines of information, with the possibly useful message hidden in the middle.
- Many error messages do a very bad job of analysing the problem situation and either suggest something very vague (“Error, please retry”), or something completely incorrect. (“Couldn’t connect, please check your Ethernet cable.” Actually I mistyped my password.)
- And so on…
2012-04-09
2012-04-08
2012-04-07
On a spring roll
We’ve had April weather since March. Yesterday it was snowing big wet flakes all day, but when we got up this morning the sun shone from a bright blue sky and we decided to make use of our Skansen cards.
It was still rather chilly outdoors, but as long as one kept to the sunny side of the street, it was OK. After all the fuss about getting the tram to Sergels torg last summer, Hamngatan was closed off for street works until May, so we had to go the old end stop at Norrmalmstorg.
At Skansen we got into the VIP lane ready to nonchalantly breeze in, waving our cards, but were pushed aside by a huge group of American tourists, and then a Spanish couple who inquired about lots of things at the till, but finally we could pass the gate. By now we were pretty hungry, so we started with lunch at Gubbhyllan. Even so, when we then got up to the town quarters, the smells of freshly-baked bread that wafted out of the bakery almost floored us. As we peeked into the yards we found the saddler’s workshop, where the friendly saddler showed us some original 16th Century saddles and cleverly-shaped replica leather snuffboxes he’d just finished. We continued round some other shops and then went up to the Easter market. Perhaps we should have skipped the indoors lunch in favour of outdoors eating in the sun, but that will have to be for some other time. We still bought some bread and jam to take home and then continued to the newly-renovated petting zoo. Like our bag, this was also jam-packed, but at least we managed to look at the pigs and goats for a while.
Eventually we continued to Aquaria to look at fish. The crawlspace through the big aquarium with the sharks and moray had been closed up for some reason, which also shut off much of the view of the tank, which was a pity. In one of the smaller aquaria I watched a little fish rest on a leaf that gently swayed in the current, I have to presume it found this enjoyable.
Finally we boarded the ferry to Slussen and then home.
It was still rather chilly outdoors, but as long as one kept to the sunny side of the street, it was OK. After all the fuss about getting the tram to Sergels torg last summer, Hamngatan was closed off for street works until May, so we had to go the old end stop at Norrmalmstorg.
At Skansen we got into the VIP lane ready to nonchalantly breeze in, waving our cards, but were pushed aside by a huge group of American tourists, and then a Spanish couple who inquired about lots of things at the till, but finally we could pass the gate. By now we were pretty hungry, so we started with lunch at Gubbhyllan. Even so, when we then got up to the town quarters, the smells of freshly-baked bread that wafted out of the bakery almost floored us. As we peeked into the yards we found the saddler’s workshop, where the friendly saddler showed us some original 16th Century saddles and cleverly-shaped replica leather snuffboxes he’d just finished. We continued round some other shops and then went up to the Easter market. Perhaps we should have skipped the indoors lunch in favour of outdoors eating in the sun, but that will have to be for some other time. We still bought some bread and jam to take home and then continued to the newly-renovated petting zoo. Like our bag, this was also jam-packed, but at least we managed to look at the pigs and goats for a while.
Eventually we continued to Aquaria to look at fish. The crawlspace through the big aquarium with the sharks and moray had been closed up for some reason, which also shut off much of the view of the tank, which was a pity. In one of the smaller aquaria I watched a little fish rest on a leaf that gently swayed in the current, I have to presume it found this enjoyable.
Finally we boarded the ferry to Slussen and then home.
2012-04-06
2012-04-01
A controlled crowd
The new iPad had just been released and as I passed the computer shop just by the Tube exit I saw that they had prepared for the onslaught: A bolshy guard stood and glared at the queue of prospective buyers. All five of them.
2012-03-30
Veckans ord: skurgummor
Stammens regndanser utfördes av högutbildade kvinnliga specialister, s k skurgummor.
2012-03-28
Currently a bit spartan
Honeybuns and I went to see what our future home looks like at the moment. Well, there’s a bottom floor there:
2012-03-27
Late to work
What with various appointments, my flex-time bank has been shrinking a lot lately, so time to put in some long workdays. However, on the way to work the train stopped between stations. A very soft-spoken driver announced to straining ears that the overhead line had been pulled down; technical staff were on their way, but in the meantime we were under no circumstances to try to exit the train. Well-tried commuters didn’t bother getting upset, but just picked up their phones and laptops and started informing their various appointments that they would be late. The network was so saturated it took me four tries to get my own text message transmitted. And then we waited. Luckily I had a thick book with me. Occasionally we would have to shush loud telephone speakers as we got new quiet assurances that help was on its way and admonishments not to try to get out of the train.
About an hour after the stop we saw guards in day-glo vests outside the train and soon two doughty fellows entered the car and broke out the escape ladders. Evacuation proceeded smoothly, but I noticed as we got out that our car was the only one being emptied—apparently they were still worried about masses of people running around without control, so they let only one car-ful of passengers out at a time. The next thing I noticed was that we were in fact only a hundred meters or so from Norrviken station where a fresh train just arrived, so a few quick steps got me on that and to a rather late arrival in the office.
About an hour after the stop we saw guards in day-glo vests outside the train and soon two doughty fellows entered the car and broke out the escape ladders. Evacuation proceeded smoothly, but I noticed as we got out that our car was the only one being emptied—apparently they were still worried about masses of people running around without control, so they let only one car-ful of passengers out at a time. The next thing I noticed was that we were in fact only a hundred meters or so from Norrviken station where a fresh train just arrived, so a few quick steps got me on that and to a rather late arrival in the office.
2012-03-23
2012-03-21
Back to square 1
I got the results from the latest biopsies. No abnormalities found, so clearly no cœliac disease, no indication of anything else either. The physician explained that most of the time Irritable Bowel Syndrome does not have any identifiable explanation, so there we are.
2012-03-17
Showing off
I was sitting with Carl when I noticed a bag with plastic parts on the table.
Whose is this?
“I don’t know, they were just lying here. [expectantly] Can you tell what they are?”
Uuh, looks like floats.
“But for which aircraft?”
Oh, ah, Junkers F.13 I’d say.
”Yes, yes they are. Oh, hi, Stieg, can you see what these are?”
Oh, looks like floats…, for a Junkers F.13.
Carl looks a bit put off. Rick comes by, sees the bag.
“Oh, who’s left all these Junkers F.13 floats here?”
Carl is dejected:
“What’s a man gotta do to show off around here!?”
Whose is this?
“I don’t know, they were just lying here. [expectantly] Can you tell what they are?”
Uuh, looks like floats.
“But for which aircraft?”
Oh, ah, Junkers F.13 I’d say.
”Yes, yes they are. Oh, hi, Stieg, can you see what these are?”
Oh, looks like floats…, for a Junkers F.13.
Carl looks a bit put off. Rick comes by, sees the bag.
“Oh, who’s left all these Junkers F.13 floats here?”
Carl is dejected:
“What’s a man gotta do to show off around here!?”
No sale
A phone number I didn’t recognise called me. It turned to be so-and-so from my ISP calling me.
“Do you have a minute?”
Depends, are you trying to sell me something?
“Eh, no, no, I’m, eh, doing a survey.”
Well, OK.
“So, have you heard of the new TV channels we carry, ch…”
[bluntly] I don’t watch TV.
“Er, uh, you have a TV set, but don’t watch it?”
Have no TV at all.
[baffled] “Why?”
Nothing interesting to watch.
[rallying] “But these new channels…”
No.
“Ah, uh, right, I see that I’m calling you on a mobile phone. What about your home phone?”
This is it.
“Oh, ah. It looked like a mobile on…”
Correct, I have no landline. This is my home phone.
“Oh. Uh, how much do you pay for it a month?”
About a 100 SEK.
“Uh, so you don’t call a lot…”
No, I don’t.
“Ah, uh, well, thank you for help then.”
“Do you have a minute?”
Depends, are you trying to sell me something?
“Eh, no, no, I’m, eh, doing a survey.”
Well, OK.
“So, have you heard of the new TV channels we carry, ch…”
[bluntly] I don’t watch TV.
“Er, uh, you have a TV set, but don’t watch it?”
Have no TV at all.
[baffled] “Why?”
Nothing interesting to watch.
[rallying] “But these new channels…”
No.
“Ah, uh, right, I see that I’m calling you on a mobile phone. What about your home phone?”
This is it.
“Oh, ah. It looked like a mobile on…”
Correct, I have no landline. This is my home phone.
“Oh. Uh, how much do you pay for it a month?”
About a 100 SEK.
“Uh, so you don’t call a lot…”
No, I don’t.
“Ah, uh, well, thank you for help then.”
2012-03-03
Cultural transfer
Among the things that once confused me in the advertising in Byte and other US magazines was that some companies had telephone “numbers” that contained letters, and I wondered what US telephones might look like. An article in Dr. Dobb’s Journal gave away that there apparently were letters associated with the digits on the dial. Very strange, but eventually, as mobile phones appared, they also had letters on the handset, but they were used for texting, not phone numbers. Until now. This is the first occurrence of alphabetic phone numbers I’ve seen in Sweden, has anyone else seen them earlier?
2012-02-26
I det militära
Mycket ung officer – blöjtnant.
Officer i Musikkåren – flöjtnant.
Maskerad officer – slöjtnant.
Lat officer – lojtnant.
Bonde och reservofficer – plöjtnant.
Skojfrisk officer – plojtnant.
Tramsig ung officer – blajtnant.
Officer i Musikkåren – flöjtnant.
Maskerad officer – slöjtnant.
Lat officer – lojtnant.
Bonde och reservofficer – plöjtnant.
Skojfrisk officer – plojtnant.
Tramsig ung officer – blajtnant.
2012-02-22
Finished model 2012-I
Ulf thought I needed to build more ships, so donated me the Fujimi 1/700 waterline model of USS Saratoga. I’ve been struggling with it for quite a while, but now I decided to call it finished even though I’m not exactly happy with it. One of the difficulties I encountered was that I really don’t have a very good feeling for what’s what on a ship, so I couldn’t always tell if parts were misshapen or were actually supposed to be like that. But the absolutely worst obstacle was Fujumi’s building instructions. I have later been able to compare with their other ship models and they consistently suggest constructing the kit in exactly the opposite order of what would make best sense, i e they suggest first making the fiddly bits, then putting them together with all the superstructure and only in the final step adding them to the hull. This in fact makes it almost impossible to paint the ship with any success and almost guarantees that masts and the like will get broken in the process. (And no, it’s not that I can’t read Japanese instructions—I will at least for the moment assume that even the Japanese count from 1 and upwards.)
What I should have done is:
Paint all parts on the sprue.
Assemble the hull with flight deck, putty and paint as needed. (It’s a waterline model, i e, there’s a huge seam all along the bottom which is well-nigh impossible to get right.)
Assemble the superstructure, paint each level before adding the next.
Finally, add masts, aerials, guns and aircraft.
Anyway, the model is painted as Saratoga would have looked c 1943, in Measure 21. (The US Navy seems to have spent considerable time during the war repainting their ships in ever new camouflage systems.)
There is a small assortment of aircraft included, Wildcats, Dauntlesses and Avengers. They are moulded in clear plastic with the idea that with proper masking you will automatically get a clear canopy. Alas, I haven’t figured out how to effectively mask such a small nubbin. I tried with Maskol, but as usual found it to be useless. There were decals supplied for national insignia in pre- and post-1942 styles. They seemed to me to be too few, but eventually I realised there were exactly as many stars as would be carried on the wing topsides; underside and fuselage insignia had been skipped. In the event, these decals turned out to be the absolutely worst I’ve ever tried: they refused to leave the backing paper, and usually ended up shattering into little flakes, thus being available for even fewer aircraft.
So, in the end I was rather unhappy with the results, but I have now built an aircraft carrier and have a little better idea of how to attack a ship should I try to do another one.
2012-02-21
Drained and inspected
As mentioned earlier, I was due for a proper medical diagnosis of my suspected cœliac disease. To my confused delight, six weeks of eating gluten again had rather improved the state of my stomach. Now, being enteroscoped introduced some other restrictions: starting a week before the examination date I had to go on a low-fibre diet and fast completely the last day, combined with a “gut flushing” powder. Well, a lot of flushing was involved… I was also forbidden to even drink anything for several hours before the examination. The reason for this was made clear as I found myself desperately retching with a gastroscopy tube down my throat—there was nothing to throw up no matter how much my reflexes wanted to. Thankfully the gastro-enterologist was skilled and had his biopsy done in a few minutes. The coloscopy was a rather longer procedure but nowhere as painful. Nothing obvious was visible to the naked eye, but in another month we shall have the lab results back and consider where to go from here.
2012-02-18
Vi spadar
The breakfast eaters look like a herd of strangely-patterned zebras as they throng around norimaki, croissants and scrambled eggs. Yasuragi Hasseludden encourage their guests to wear the signature navy-and-white yukata at all times, but whether this does confuse any hunting lions hiding behind the string curtains is unclear.
We had arrived the afternoon before, and as is our habit, we drop on the beds and sleep until dinnertime, when we don our yukata uniforms and find our way to Restaurant Tokyo where a cheery waitress, not dressed in yukata, takes our orders. Neither risotto nor reindeer fillet feels very Japanese, but it’s all very good and dessert is absolutely divine—Honeybuns orders the sampler plate with one of each offering. There are several other parties having dinner at the same time as we, but, whether thanks to the bathrobes or the string curtains hanging here and there, the place never becomes noisy.
Finally we head for the pools. It is no longer as cold as it was the week before, but we shiver when we step outside and quickly dive into the hot water. Steam rises from the water surface and obscures the other bathers sitting just a few metres away, creating private presence bubbles. We half-float in the water and watch the stars—the sparse lighting by the pool is still enough to blot out all but the brightest stars. Honeybuns tells how Stjärnhuset made her fear the violent Orion. Clearly not all childhood trauma is Staffan Westerberg’s fault.
Next morning after breakfast we return to the outdoor pool. Considerably more people are up and about now than the evening before, but somehow the pool never gets crowded. Hot water soothes all that ails me, though Honeybuns grows impatient while I with placid interest watch a sheet of ice slowly sliding down a glass pane.
Thanks Mom for the excellent present.
We had arrived the afternoon before, and as is our habit, we drop on the beds and sleep until dinnertime, when we don our yukata uniforms and find our way to Restaurant Tokyo where a cheery waitress, not dressed in yukata, takes our orders. Neither risotto nor reindeer fillet feels very Japanese, but it’s all very good and dessert is absolutely divine—Honeybuns orders the sampler plate with one of each offering. There are several other parties having dinner at the same time as we, but, whether thanks to the bathrobes or the string curtains hanging here and there, the place never becomes noisy.
Finally we head for the pools. It is no longer as cold as it was the week before, but we shiver when we step outside and quickly dive into the hot water. Steam rises from the water surface and obscures the other bathers sitting just a few metres away, creating private presence bubbles. We half-float in the water and watch the stars—the sparse lighting by the pool is still enough to blot out all but the brightest stars. Honeybuns tells how Stjärnhuset made her fear the violent Orion. Clearly not all childhood trauma is Staffan Westerberg’s fault.
Next morning after breakfast we return to the outdoor pool. Considerably more people are up and about now than the evening before, but somehow the pool never gets crowded. Hot water soothes all that ails me, though Honeybuns grows impatient while I with placid interest watch a sheet of ice slowly sliding down a glass pane.
Thanks Mom for the excellent present.
2012-02-13
2012-02-10
Word of the week: irrelephant
Even if there is a large animal nearby it might not be of immediate interest to you—it’s irrelephant.
Angry and disgusted
I’ve been tangentially involved in consumer aspects on what’s known as the Internet of Things, so when SICS announced the Internet of Things Day 2012 I thought it was interesting enough that I took the day off to attend the presentations.
Professor Kia Höök, whom I otherwise much respect, argued in her introductory presentation that applications for the Internet of Things need to be emotionally attractive and to function in everyday life. However, “everyday life” turned out to specifically mean “leisure activities of affluent Westerners”. At some point I’ve had it deeply embedded in me that my task as an engineer is to make the world a better place and at the end of the day I don’t think computer games are a high priority in that respect. In fact, as far as I could tell, the proposed applications were explicitly geared towards increased consumption, probably with the assumption that Expanding the Economy is a Good Thing.
Interestingly enough, the more technical presentations in the afternoon session did demonstrate e g environment-monitoring applications, but the wrap-up presentation introduced a training aid for the Swedish national ski team and it was obvious that a corresponding body posture monitoring program for, say, cleaning staff, hospital orderlies, or garbage collectors had never been and would never be even reflected on even though it would affect a lot more people who would be more likely to get longer-term benefits from such help.
Back in the day, when the students’ union was still organised along party lines, Socialistisk Kårfront (the Socialist Student Front) had a slogan like “Technical development for the working class”. I thought it was rather silly sloganeering at the time, but technical development that automatically excludes the working class is never going to be user-centred in my mind.
Professor Höök also spoke about making “desirable” applications, which I find even more insidious. One of the keynotes was delivered by a Chinese official and I reflected that while dictatorships may use various means in order to coerce desired behaviour on part of the population, it is usually clear that this is imposed from the outside, whereas marketers manipulating our emotions make us believe that it is we ourselves that want to behave in the prescribed manner, making it that much harder to break free.
Professor Kia Höök, whom I otherwise much respect, argued in her introductory presentation that applications for the Internet of Things need to be emotionally attractive and to function in everyday life. However, “everyday life” turned out to specifically mean “leisure activities of affluent Westerners”. At some point I’ve had it deeply embedded in me that my task as an engineer is to make the world a better place and at the end of the day I don’t think computer games are a high priority in that respect. In fact, as far as I could tell, the proposed applications were explicitly geared towards increased consumption, probably with the assumption that Expanding the Economy is a Good Thing.
Interestingly enough, the more technical presentations in the afternoon session did demonstrate e g environment-monitoring applications, but the wrap-up presentation introduced a training aid for the Swedish national ski team and it was obvious that a corresponding body posture monitoring program for, say, cleaning staff, hospital orderlies, or garbage collectors had never been and would never be even reflected on even though it would affect a lot more people who would be more likely to get longer-term benefits from such help.
Back in the day, when the students’ union was still organised along party lines, Socialistisk Kårfront (the Socialist Student Front) had a slogan like “Technical development for the working class”. I thought it was rather silly sloganeering at the time, but technical development that automatically excludes the working class is never going to be user-centred in my mind.
Professor Höök also spoke about making “desirable” applications, which I find even more insidious. One of the keynotes was delivered by a Chinese official and I reflected that while dictatorships may use various means in order to coerce desired behaviour on part of the population, it is usually clear that this is imposed from the outside, whereas marketers manipulating our emotions make us believe that it is we ourselves that want to behave in the prescribed manner, making it that much harder to break free.
2012-02-08
2012-02-03
2012-01-29
Useful maps
Jon Griffiths is not a very prolific blogger, but he has made a nifty Google map of locations Biggles visited during WW I.
2012-01-28
Getting around to it
The other day I decided to pick it up again and see what I’d missed out on. One thing was clear: I might have been able to do the exercises when I was a first-year student, but by now most of my calculus was just hazy memories. And indeed, in contrast with most of my other literature on the subject, this was a book about proper maths, rather than computer graphics, and spent most of its space on proving various theorems about seemingly simple functions, but which exhibited chaotic behaviour. Still, even if my understanding is patchy these days, I’ve been going through the book, picking up concepts and ideas.
In the book was still the receipt from when I bought it and as I was reading on the train home the other day I listened with half an ear to the two girls sitting next to me talking about their studies. The one just next to me turned out to be a first-year student at my alma mater and the continued conversation revealed she had been born just a couple of days after I bought the book I was finally reading. It’s so hard to keep up.
2012-01-27
2012-01-25
Conundrum solved
I have had occasion to refer to the ground-breaking research of Anders Sandberg and now I found his quantum-mechanical analysis of angels dancing on a needle point.
2012-01-24
3D rendering
Riusuke Fukahori creates his 3D fish not by embedding fish models in resin, but by painting them, layer by layer, in the resin as it is poured.
2012-01-23
Rule 34
Bookshelves, be they sparse wooden frames, stern steel cabinets on rollers, trendy String shelves, or carved floor-to-ceiling giants of tropical hardwood, are all promises of excitement and knowledge. The more of them, the better. Even though they are off to a side, my bookcases are still the mental centre of my sitting-room, creating at least a little nook where one can hide from noise and commotion. I tend them, sort them when new books arrive and occasionally grudgingly cull books that are just too awful to keep.
It heartens me that others feel the same about their bookshelves and care enough to have created a site for Bookshelf porn.
It heartens me that others feel the same about their bookshelves and care enough to have created a site for Bookshelf porn.
2012-01-22
Aquarium, with a few fishes as well
As it had been a long time since for both of us, Honeybuns and I went to the Skansen Aquarium, a somewhat misleading name as most of the space is taken up by primate cages. Just inside the entrance we found a two-toed sloth hanging by its feet, munching cucumber pieces with gusto. (They had been placed on a tray, I presume that means they were betrayed.) It seemed all alone, but after ten minutes or so we suddenly noticed the other sloth, well hidden against another tree stem. In the meantime I had spotted small lizards rushing about. These turned out to be pygmy marmosets, so primates, but the way they kept their tail flat along the surface and their legs splayed out was utterly reptilian. Honeybuns and an iguana attracted each others’ attentions and watched each other through the glass.
Then outside to get to the next building. The baboons and lemurs were indoors somewhere, but there were several meerkats about in their enclosure, even though they were shivering with cold. I presumed they felt the necessity to keep watch of their territory, even though it was freezing cold.
Inside: Snakes, snakes. And frogs. It’s fascinating how tropical frogs manage to look completely artificial, as if made of wax or porcelain, sitting perfectly still on a branch or on the ground. (Some of them were at least visibly breathing, so they must have been alive.) I was a bit incensed on behalf of the Gila monster, who really hasn’t done anything to deserve such a name—even its scientific name is Heloderma suspectum.
Further in, a rain forest. I noted with surprise how much easier it was to breathe the humid air, Stockholm climate doesn’t really agree with me. So I just stood for a while breathing in and out, while monkeys clambered around the branches above me. I took the little rainforest tour, guided by a four-year-old who in rapid sequence showed me her new dress, the skellington in a corner, the monkey up in a tree, a puddle on the floor and so on.
Now we got to the aquariums proper. Rays and sharks swam around in a big pool, another aquarium turned out to contain three unimaginably huge alligator snapping turtles. We looked for a while at the crocodiles. The juveniles, kept in a separate terrarium, were constantly on the move, but the adults lay dead still. Honeybuns remembered how her grandfather once, doubting they were even alive, had knocked on the glass and been rewarded by a crocodile lunging at him. That time the glass had held, but there were prominent signs to stay away from the glass surfaces and that any objects thrown into the enclosure would have to be retrieved by the thrower.
One terrarium held naked mole rats, but they had to make do with pre-prepared perspex tubes, rather than getting to dig on their own. I thought that probably must feel strange to them.
The final room contained the spiders and scorpions, but most of them managed to hide quite effectively, so one couldn’t see much of them. I wonder if they consciously stayed away from the front of their cages.
We exited through the shop. It was very child-oriented, containing huge amounts of cuddly snakes, animal stickers, all kinds of plastic animals, etc, etc, but nothing in the way of books or DVDs, which disappointed me, surely a learning opportunity such as this should be made the most of?
By now we were quite hungry, so we went up to Stora Gungan for a late lunch. They had locked their doors and were just ushering out their last guests. Gubbhyllan then? Sorry, the kitchen had closed. Hm. Let’s leave Skansen then. What about Lilla Hasselbacken? Ah, maybe a tad too fancy for our current needs. We continue to Blå Porten. Do they offer hot food? The staff look a bit uncertain. Eventually it transpires that they had just had a fire in the kitchen extinguished and the fire brigade has forbidden them to even go in there right now. But would we like some tea and cookies? We decide to move further into town. BarCelona, our usual backup site? Completely full. Ah, but what about Grace Tea House just across the street? Yes, they’re open, even if we seem to interrupt the staff in their own lunch. What about dumplings? Ah, they're fresh out of vegetarian dumplings. Honeybuns settles for a Szechuan soup. It turns out to be spicy enough to give her a nosebleed, but at least we finally got fed.
Then we return home for weekend cleaning.
Then outside to get to the next building. The baboons and lemurs were indoors somewhere, but there were several meerkats about in their enclosure, even though they were shivering with cold. I presumed they felt the necessity to keep watch of their territory, even though it was freezing cold.
Inside: Snakes, snakes. And frogs. It’s fascinating how tropical frogs manage to look completely artificial, as if made of wax or porcelain, sitting perfectly still on a branch or on the ground. (Some of them were at least visibly breathing, so they must have been alive.) I was a bit incensed on behalf of the Gila monster, who really hasn’t done anything to deserve such a name—even its scientific name is Heloderma suspectum.
Further in, a rain forest. I noted with surprise how much easier it was to breathe the humid air, Stockholm climate doesn’t really agree with me. So I just stood for a while breathing in and out, while monkeys clambered around the branches above me. I took the little rainforest tour, guided by a four-year-old who in rapid sequence showed me her new dress, the skellington in a corner, the monkey up in a tree, a puddle on the floor and so on.
Now we got to the aquariums proper. Rays and sharks swam around in a big pool, another aquarium turned out to contain three unimaginably huge alligator snapping turtles. We looked for a while at the crocodiles. The juveniles, kept in a separate terrarium, were constantly on the move, but the adults lay dead still. Honeybuns remembered how her grandfather once, doubting they were even alive, had knocked on the glass and been rewarded by a crocodile lunging at him. That time the glass had held, but there were prominent signs to stay away from the glass surfaces and that any objects thrown into the enclosure would have to be retrieved by the thrower.
One terrarium held naked mole rats, but they had to make do with pre-prepared perspex tubes, rather than getting to dig on their own. I thought that probably must feel strange to them.
The final room contained the spiders and scorpions, but most of them managed to hide quite effectively, so one couldn’t see much of them. I wonder if they consciously stayed away from the front of their cages.
We exited through the shop. It was very child-oriented, containing huge amounts of cuddly snakes, animal stickers, all kinds of plastic animals, etc, etc, but nothing in the way of books or DVDs, which disappointed me, surely a learning opportunity such as this should be made the most of?
By now we were quite hungry, so we went up to Stora Gungan for a late lunch. They had locked their doors and were just ushering out their last guests. Gubbhyllan then? Sorry, the kitchen had closed. Hm. Let’s leave Skansen then. What about Lilla Hasselbacken? Ah, maybe a tad too fancy for our current needs. We continue to Blå Porten. Do they offer hot food? The staff look a bit uncertain. Eventually it transpires that they had just had a fire in the kitchen extinguished and the fire brigade has forbidden them to even go in there right now. But would we like some tea and cookies? We decide to move further into town. BarCelona, our usual backup site? Completely full. Ah, but what about Grace Tea House just across the street? Yes, they’re open, even if we seem to interrupt the staff in their own lunch. What about dumplings? Ah, they're fresh out of vegetarian dumplings. Honeybuns settles for a Szechuan soup. It turns out to be spicy enough to give her a nosebleed, but at least we finally got fed.
Then we return home for weekend cleaning.
2012-01-20
2012-01-13
Veckans ord: fiskfjäll
Inte nog med smörberget i EU, nu har man fångat så mycket fisk i Lappland att man sitter med ett fiskfjäll.
2012-01-11
Terrorist
Clearly the authorities look in the completely wrong direction. (I guess this is also an example of the male gaze.)
2012-01-10
Enjoy it while you can
Today I had an appointment with a gastroenterologist, to see what modern medical science can do about my recurring tummy problems. As a starter I will get a full course of anal probing and biopsies (and we all, or at least I, remember my experiences with those) in about six weeks. BUT, until then, I am to eat gluten in order to provoke the suspected inflammation into clear showing. So, leaving the hospital I walked through a lightly snowy Stockholm, realising that what with living in two suburbs and working in a third, I don’t see much of the city proper these days. There was construction work going on, new shops had appeared and when I arrived at my target, Hötorgshallen, they were renovating (way overdue!), but still had their full complement of shops. I looked over the bakery desk for a long while and eventually decided on a rounded crisp Italian loaf. And then some Milanese salami to go with it.
2012-01-06
Veckans ord: villområde
En gång i min ungdom hamnade jag av misstag i Långsjö. Jag hade svårt att hitta hem, för jag gick vill. Det är ett villområde.
2012-01-05
2012-01-03
Kauniita sanoja
Jostain syystä juuri mekaniikan alan sanat ovat minusta erittäin kiehtovat ja kauniit. Nyt satuin löytää Eero Aulan Englanti-suomi tekniikan sanasto. Omaperäistä on että kyseessäoleva tekniikka näyttää olevan metsäkoneisiin liittyvä ja ehkä sen takia löytyy ei ainoastaan sanoja kuten ”lattakaapeliliitin” ja ”tehonsiirtoketju” mutta myös ”kangassillihapero” ja ”variksenmarja”.
2012-01-02
Ask The Pilot
A frequently referred-to, but now obsolete, volume in my bookshelf is Titta, vi flyger!, the Swedish edition of The Flier’s Handbook, which covers most of what you need to know as an airline passenger. Now I found an excellent replacement, replete with opinions and anecdotes: Ask The Pilot. Do not miss the story about the exploding toilet.
2012-01-01
Strange machinery
Brower Propulsion Laboratory is like an aerospace version of Bonk Business, making machines whose mere existence is more important than their absence of functionality. However, what caught my eye was this beautiful water colour of what seems to be a J-7.
H/t thnidu.
H/t thnidu.
2011-12-30
Veckans ord: uttrycksförmåga
När jag var på examensresa i USA bodde vi i Boston i studentrum som var tomma över sommaren. Studenthemmet var ombyggda gamla patricierhus, där jag, den Enfödde Sonen och hans mor fick ett rum som uppenbarligen en gång varit stora salongen. Följdaktligen hade det en rejäl öppen spis och säkert fyra meter i takhöjd. Vi fick veta att rummet tidigare bebotts av “a bunch of really wild girls”. Som spår efter dem hittade vi rejäla staplar med spritflaskor i spisen. Vi kunde också se mystiska vita kluttar i taket. Vi funderade över vad de kunde vara tills vi insåg att flickorna tävlat i vem som kunde trycka ut tandkräm ur tuben så kraftfullt att det sprutade upp i taket och fastnade där. Vi var mycket imponerade av deras uttrycksförmåga.
2011-12-27
2011-12-25
Knowledge online
A well-thumbed copy of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has long stood in a prominent place on my book shelf. Now it seems it will also have a prominent place in my web bookmarks: it’s going online. H/t Ny Teknik.
2011-12-24
Little kids and Christmas go together, especially with an apple in their mouths
I’m ridiculously fond of this little ditty and it being Christmas and all.
2011-12-23
Word of the week: meltimudia
Some YouTube clips are based on badly transferred analog videos, with bad contrast and blurred colours making everything flow together: meltimudia.
2011-12-22
2011-12-21
2011-12-20
Туполев Ту-144
Before the arthritis got too bad my mother constantly knitted and usually asked me to design the patterns for my own sweaters. For one of these I copied a picture of the Tupolev Tu-144, with the appropriate Cyrillic caption. It caused some consternation at school when they couldn’t read the text.
Since then I’ve been to and in the Concordes at Duxford and Yeovilton, but have not had the opportunity to see the Tu-144 IRL. However, I just found they have one at Sinsheim. I consider a pilgrimage there, but I’m somewhat put off by the realisation that even the Tu-144 uses the mandatory hideous Soviet cockpit turqoise. I don’t understand why the designer of that particular shade wasn’t executed as a Western saboteur or something.
Since then I’ve been to and in the Concordes at Duxford and Yeovilton, but have not had the opportunity to see the Tu-144 IRL. However, I just found they have one at Sinsheim. I consider a pilgrimage there, but I’m somewhat put off by the realisation that even the Tu-144 uses the mandatory hideous Soviet cockpit turqoise. I don’t understand why the designer of that particular shade wasn’t executed as a Western saboteur or something.
2011-12-19
2011-12-18
Seriously geeky comics
You really have to know your maths to get the jokes over at Spiked math, but you can always get hints in the comments section.
2011-12-17
The Male Gaze
[I don’t know if this is an example of male self-pity or of how gender inequality hurts all. Maybe it’s a generational issue. Judge as you will.]
The prevalence of the male gaze in media has the corollary that men are seldom depicted as desirable. Is then a longterm consequence of that that men in general come to see themselves as fundamentally non-desirable? What does that mean for female-male relations, when one is desirable, the other not? It would then suggest that hetero-sexual relations are unbalanced; as women clearly cannot desire (sex with) men, they must be bribed with something they do desire, such as security, offspring, or glittery gifts. Alternatively, sex must be taken by force or duplicity.
Maybe there might eventually come something good from teenage werewolves running around without their shirts.
The prevalence of the male gaze in media has the corollary that men are seldom depicted as desirable. Is then a longterm consequence of that that men in general come to see themselves as fundamentally non-desirable? What does that mean for female-male relations, when one is desirable, the other not? It would then suggest that hetero-sexual relations are unbalanced; as women clearly cannot desire (sex with) men, they must be bribed with something they do desire, such as security, offspring, or glittery gifts. Alternatively, sex must be taken by force or duplicity.
Maybe there might eventually come something good from teenage werewolves running around without their shirts.
2011-12-12
So much unspoken
Even when I had access to TV, I apparently didn’t watch it all that much—there are several programmes I must only have seen bits and pieces of. One of these is Brideshead Revisited, but Martin R kindly donated the DVD box to us so Honeybuns and I have been watching it.
It’s something like 11 hours in total, so there is room for many themes to be touched on.
An occupational hazard, but I reacted to the video quality—there was a constant fuzz in the image. Presumably this was the quality you would get on video in the late 1970s and nobody thought about it then, but today, used to the razor-sharp images of professional digital video cameras, it felt odd.
The actors have been well-deservedly lauded for their performances, but since many of the actors were in their 30s, even as their characters were much younger, they seemed all the more immature. Cordelia Flyte, I eventually realised, should have been around ten years old or so in the first episodes, but played by an adult actress she came across as a half-wit.
The beginning of the story is the love affair between Charles and Sebastian. Neither of them speak of it in those terms, and the Flyte family do not allude to it either—except for Rex Mottram, who in passing mentions the Swiss doctor who is good at “sexual problems”, the character of which is not further discussed. At the time, their relation would have been illegal, so one imagines that nobody was very interested in raising the subject. It hurt to see a unhappy Sebastian weep forlornly, Charles unable to comfort him. I wanted to yell: “Hold him, you dolt!” Later on, safely in a heterosexual relation, Charles speaks disparagingly of “pansies”—so at least outwards he does not self-identify as homo-/bisexual. Interestingly enough, the narrative itself adds to the ambiguity—the most open display of affection Charles and Sebastian show is a sideways hug a few times, whereas the beginning of Charles and Julia’s relation is shown in a sex scene giving us ample view of Diana Quick’s nipples. It is as if the camera itself shies back from peeking into the closet.
I wonder whether the Oxford barbers who are so fond of Sebastian and the university porter who proudly declares he has no wife are implied to be homosexual. I’ve gotten the impression that at least in university settings homosexuality was accepted—as long as it was not explicitly mentioned, and apparently that’s why the openly gay Antoine Blanche is “sent down” (expelled). It is unclear to what extent Sebastian’s discomfort with his family is due to repression of his sexuality, rather than the general oppression by the Catholic Church so important to the family. He describes the dangerous charm of his mother, but she mostly comes across as fairly stiff and repressed—a pivotal castigation of Charles is done in measured and unemotional tones even though she would have been furious.
Charles also has family issues, while these are not made as much of. His father seems not to care much for him and treats him as mostly a nuisance when he turns up in the Ryder home. In adulthood Charles continues the family tradition in his complete neglect of his own children and I had absolutely no sympathy for him when he after his divorce whinges about having lost the right the see his son grow up.
As Sebastian sinks deeper into alcoholism, Charles is a very active enabler, keeping him with booze. At first I thought that perhaps he thought his love would reform Sebastian, but eventually I came to the conclusion that he just couldn‘t say no to Sebastian. At the same time, the rest of the company seem unable to cope with the situation, alcohol apparently so important to all of them that they just can’t imagine how to do without. (On top of that, all chain-smoke like chimneys, but that is not seen as a problem at all.)
Another theme, which is just presented and not discussed at all, is that of class warfare. For some reason the blurb on the Swedish DVD implies Charles is a Man of The People, but it is obvious that he is in fact quite well-off and only in comparison to Lord Sebastian Flyte could he be considered slightly further down the social ladder. If anything, Charles comes across as rather more snobbish than Sebastian and seems to agree with Lord Marchmain that the most disgusting thing one can be, is middle-class. The upwardly-mobile Rex Mottram is one of these despicable beings, being described as an incomplete person. What this incompleteness consists in is unclear, since the person we see is ambitious and competent and goes considerably out of his way to help the Flytes.
The working class is not considered at all, the numerous servants are just names to be thanked when they bring yet another drink on a tray. (In general it is a source of amazement to me that Britain doesn’t more regularly erupt in bloody popular uprisings.) When workers demand fair pay Charles joins a gang of truncheon-equipped and helmeted upper-class strike breakers to beat down the strikers.
Then the issue of religion. Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism and the book is intended to describe Charles Ryder’s path from agnosticism to the One True Faith, yet the religion is not really described as anything positive, and it destroys the lives of basically all the protagonists. This is somehow A Good Thing.
There is some excellent, yet possibly unintentional, comedy when religion is discussed. When Charles first meets Lady Marchmain, she immediately sets out to convert him. Teasingly he then asks her how she can expect to get to Heaven, as it is easier for a camel to get through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter Paradise. She serenely replies that God works miracles. How terribly convenient for her… Rex Mottram’s earnest attempts to figure out Catholic dogma is wonderful satire.
Finally, when the long-ago converted, then lapsed, Lord Marchmain is dying, the family pulls out all the stops in order to have the last rites performed. Charles opposes this on the grounds that it would be disrespectful of the Lord’s wishes and tries to find out what the exact purpose of the rites is. Nobody is actually able to answer him, but all are very adamant that they Have To Be Done. At this point Honeybuns got quite annoyed with Charles’ interference, why did he have to be such a dick about it? Then when the sacrament was administered and both Julia and Charles immediately become born again and decided to forswear happiness for the rest of their lives in order to please God her face fell. And then the series ended with Charles contentedly understanding that God’s purpose with the Second World War was that the briefly shut Roman Catholic chapel at Brideshead could be reopened, which was of course an all-important Good Thing.
Honeybuns was horribly down-cast after this and demanded that we immediately watch a more up-lifting film. I glanced at the shelf: six Shakespeare tragedies, a documentary on strategic bombing, more aviation-themed features, etc, but nothing in the way of comedy. “What kind of a person are you!? You watch sad films, you listen to sad music and you read sad books! You…you!” Well yes, that’s me.
It’s something like 11 hours in total, so there is room for many themes to be touched on.
An occupational hazard, but I reacted to the video quality—there was a constant fuzz in the image. Presumably this was the quality you would get on video in the late 1970s and nobody thought about it then, but today, used to the razor-sharp images of professional digital video cameras, it felt odd.
The actors have been well-deservedly lauded for their performances, but since many of the actors were in their 30s, even as their characters were much younger, they seemed all the more immature. Cordelia Flyte, I eventually realised, should have been around ten years old or so in the first episodes, but played by an adult actress she came across as a half-wit.
The beginning of the story is the love affair between Charles and Sebastian. Neither of them speak of it in those terms, and the Flyte family do not allude to it either—except for Rex Mottram, who in passing mentions the Swiss doctor who is good at “sexual problems”, the character of which is not further discussed. At the time, their relation would have been illegal, so one imagines that nobody was very interested in raising the subject. It hurt to see a unhappy Sebastian weep forlornly, Charles unable to comfort him. I wanted to yell: “Hold him, you dolt!” Later on, safely in a heterosexual relation, Charles speaks disparagingly of “pansies”—so at least outwards he does not self-identify as homo-/bisexual. Interestingly enough, the narrative itself adds to the ambiguity—the most open display of affection Charles and Sebastian show is a sideways hug a few times, whereas the beginning of Charles and Julia’s relation is shown in a sex scene giving us ample view of Diana Quick’s nipples. It is as if the camera itself shies back from peeking into the closet.
I wonder whether the Oxford barbers who are so fond of Sebastian and the university porter who proudly declares he has no wife are implied to be homosexual. I’ve gotten the impression that at least in university settings homosexuality was accepted—as long as it was not explicitly mentioned, and apparently that’s why the openly gay Antoine Blanche is “sent down” (expelled). It is unclear to what extent Sebastian’s discomfort with his family is due to repression of his sexuality, rather than the general oppression by the Catholic Church so important to the family. He describes the dangerous charm of his mother, but she mostly comes across as fairly stiff and repressed—a pivotal castigation of Charles is done in measured and unemotional tones even though she would have been furious.
Charles also has family issues, while these are not made as much of. His father seems not to care much for him and treats him as mostly a nuisance when he turns up in the Ryder home. In adulthood Charles continues the family tradition in his complete neglect of his own children and I had absolutely no sympathy for him when he after his divorce whinges about having lost the right the see his son grow up.
As Sebastian sinks deeper into alcoholism, Charles is a very active enabler, keeping him with booze. At first I thought that perhaps he thought his love would reform Sebastian, but eventually I came to the conclusion that he just couldn‘t say no to Sebastian. At the same time, the rest of the company seem unable to cope with the situation, alcohol apparently so important to all of them that they just can’t imagine how to do without. (On top of that, all chain-smoke like chimneys, but that is not seen as a problem at all.)
Another theme, which is just presented and not discussed at all, is that of class warfare. For some reason the blurb on the Swedish DVD implies Charles is a Man of The People, but it is obvious that he is in fact quite well-off and only in comparison to Lord Sebastian Flyte could he be considered slightly further down the social ladder. If anything, Charles comes across as rather more snobbish than Sebastian and seems to agree with Lord Marchmain that the most disgusting thing one can be, is middle-class. The upwardly-mobile Rex Mottram is one of these despicable beings, being described as an incomplete person. What this incompleteness consists in is unclear, since the person we see is ambitious and competent and goes considerably out of his way to help the Flytes.
The working class is not considered at all, the numerous servants are just names to be thanked when they bring yet another drink on a tray. (In general it is a source of amazement to me that Britain doesn’t more regularly erupt in bloody popular uprisings.) When workers demand fair pay Charles joins a gang of truncheon-equipped and helmeted upper-class strike breakers to beat down the strikers.
Then the issue of religion. Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism and the book is intended to describe Charles Ryder’s path from agnosticism to the One True Faith, yet the religion is not really described as anything positive, and it destroys the lives of basically all the protagonists. This is somehow A Good Thing.
There is some excellent, yet possibly unintentional, comedy when religion is discussed. When Charles first meets Lady Marchmain, she immediately sets out to convert him. Teasingly he then asks her how she can expect to get to Heaven, as it is easier for a camel to get through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter Paradise. She serenely replies that God works miracles. How terribly convenient for her… Rex Mottram’s earnest attempts to figure out Catholic dogma is wonderful satire.
Finally, when the long-ago converted, then lapsed, Lord Marchmain is dying, the family pulls out all the stops in order to have the last rites performed. Charles opposes this on the grounds that it would be disrespectful of the Lord’s wishes and tries to find out what the exact purpose of the rites is. Nobody is actually able to answer him, but all are very adamant that they Have To Be Done. At this point Honeybuns got quite annoyed with Charles’ interference, why did he have to be such a dick about it? Then when the sacrament was administered and both Julia and Charles immediately become born again and decided to forswear happiness for the rest of their lives in order to please God her face fell. And then the series ended with Charles contentedly understanding that God’s purpose with the Second World War was that the briefly shut Roman Catholic chapel at Brideshead could be reopened, which was of course an all-important Good Thing.
Honeybuns was horribly down-cast after this and demanded that we immediately watch a more up-lifting film. I glanced at the shelf: six Shakespeare tragedies, a documentary on strategic bombing, more aviation-themed features, etc, but nothing in the way of comedy. “What kind of a person are you!? You watch sad films, you listen to sad music and you read sad books! You…you!” Well yes, that’s me.
2011-12-02
Wort der Woche: dementsprechend
Wegen seines Alzheimer-Krankheit war seine Rede verwirrt, er war dementsprechend.
2011-11-25
2011-11-18
Veckans ord: nykturist
På diverse gruppresor jag deltagit i har en vanlig höjdpunkt varit en utflykt till whiskydestilleri, vingård, el dyl, där avsmakning ingår. Eftersom jag är en nykturist har jag fått tillräcklig avsmak redan vid tanken och brukar istället gå på en egen promenad runt stadens olika hobbybutiker – inte för att shoppa egentligen, men för att man ofta hamnar på intressanta bakgator.
2011-11-17
Memorial Flight
In spite of the name, Memorial Flight is a French organisation dedicated to the preservation of World War I aircraft, and in spite of that they have beautifully restored a Dassault Flamant.
2011-11-11
2011-11-10
2011-11-04
Veckans ord: mährisk
Den Enfödde Sonen och jag har som hobby att titta på östeuropeisk film. Kvalitén varierar naturligvis, så när vi ser på tjeckisk film tar vi alltid en mährisk.
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