The Beckham Trail

At what point does admiration for a popular hero turn into idolatry? Quite possibly when the London Borough of Waltham Forest try to jump on the bandwagon by introducing a heritage trail devoted to his youth, with such fascinating locations as where David worked as a �10 a night glass collector.

posted @ 11:05 AM -

No comment

I'm fed up and so is the rabbit - the hutch hasn't even got wheels.

posted @ 10:40 AM -

A sadly familiar story

The headline reads Violation of Building Codes Responsible for Most of Algeria�s Quake Damage. It gives me a very strong sense of déja vu.

About 5 years ago (1997 I think) Istanbul was hit by a hugely destructive earthquake. As it happens, I flew via Istanbul the day after (on the way from southern Turkey back to London), and the view from the air was very striking. While earthquake intensity must decay in a more or less even way (I'm assuming it would follow the inverse square law, as sound does) in proportion with increasing distance from the epicentre, there was no discernable pattern to the damage caused. Instead, individual buildings on the same block were either mostly intact or entirely collapsed. The determinant of whether a building would be destroyed was clearly not a systematic effect of location, but something to do with the buildings themselves.

It was no surprise at that time when stories came out shortly afterwards about how a large proportion of the collapsed buildings should never have been approved for habitation in the first place, and it is no surprise to hear the same about Algeria. While earthquakes can not be avoided, and will always have some casualties, it is deeply sad that many of the people who died this week died as a result of other peoples' negligence.

posted @ 9:05 AM -

Raging Against the Machines

This is less an apology than an explanation.

The lightness of posting last week reflected my being very busy. Pleasantly busy - although I still haven't seen half of the people I was looking forward to seeing when I got back to London, I have managed to see a number of important people individually, which has the advantage that we can catch up much more meaningfully, but the drawback of taking a lot of time while there are still too many of people I haven't met up with at all.

This week has been different. The weekend felt a little more like normality, so I started the week with very good intentions of spending the days in some sense at work, and going out a couple of evenings but also spending some time with my parents, and making time to make some long chatty phone calls to people outside London. I haven't been very successful because a large share of my time, and an even larger share of my energy have been eaten up by trying to get a wireless network up and running in the house. It ought to be so easy....

I won't go into the technical details of what's going wrong, but there are two reasons why this is driving me much more mad than technical troubles usually do. On the one hand there is my almost boundless enthusiasm for what this technology will make possible, when it is accessible to people who don't have several days to spare getting it running and a large base of computer knowledge to draw on (more on this in a subsequent post once I have it working and can write in my room). On the other is the manner of the troubles. If I am stuck with something that simply doesn't work, but responds systematically to changes in my approach, I get frustrated but ultimately I can deal with it. In this instance, I have several times thought I had the network fixed, gone and made myself a cup of tea (not just any old tea; more on that later too), started to use the network (and it is great when the damn thing works), and then something has gone wrong. I can usually see what the trigger was - it tends to be one or other of the computers being rebooted - but I have as yet to work out what changes in this situation, and how to put it right. In practical terms it means that each time it fails I have to waste an unpredictable (and usually considerable) amount of time tinkering aimlessly until it miraculously works again. Emotionally it's how I imagine working with very young children to be like - no matter how hard I try these machines just don't respond predictably or do what I want them to.

posted @ 7:06 PM -

The routineness of this event is horrible

There was a bomb in Ankara a few hours ago. I know nothing more about it than the sketchy details in the linked article, but I'm sure over the course of the afternoon more will come out.

It's not yet clear who's behind this. Although it fits the pattern of attacks elsewhere in the world it's worth remembering that Turkey has had its own domestic terrorist problems in the not too distant past. At this stage I'd say it probably is al-qaeda organised, but that some doubt must be admitted.

If it is any sort of Muslim fundamentalists, then a question is begged, one which I thought was also begged by the attacks in Morroco: what the fuck do they think they're doing?. An islamist party governs Turkey. While it is very far from being a theocracy (for all his faults, the world should be much more grateful to Attaturk for that than it is), it is a muslim country in which the influence of islam over government has been growing. I really don't understand what these people could hope to acheive by attacking such a country, just as it is moving in the direction they would appear to want it to move in.

posted @ 9:28 AM -

Why I love the British

While obviously being much harder than me, Pen Haddow is also a man after my own heart. After acheiving an exceptional feat - walking unaided to the North Pole from the nearest land, 478 miles away - there was no highfalutin quotable quote about eagles landing or great steps for manking, just erm... I've done it. Conveying all the necessary information, with only one surplus word: erm, for which I think we must forgive him. After all, reception must have been terrible out there.

He is also quite unmistakably British. I say this for two reasons; firstly there is his motivation - he promised he'd do this, therefore he had to - and then there's another absolutely priceless quote: You can't just collapse when you get to the pole and put the tent up. You have responsibilities.

Thanks Pen, I'll bear that in mind when I next drop by.

posted @ 4:32 AM -