Denniblog

I’m in the process of writing up the Greece entries. They’ll be backdated and can be found in the Greece category, for ease of navigation.

The write-up proper starts here, then follow the right-hand link above the entry to get to the next one, etc.

Hm, I see: an entry I wrote while still in Greece has not been posted. That is because of the crappy Wordpress layout. For most blogs, a highlighted ’save’ option means the entry is published. Wordpress saves it as draft. I doubt that I’ll ever get used to it, but it sure drives havoc with the order of my entries.

Then again, since this was the only entry I have written while actually on the road, it doesn’t matter. The rest of the entries will follow over the next week or so, once I’ve sorted out my pictures and whenever I get some spare time.

In other news, this blog has been hit by hundreds of spam comments. Since I get so few genuine comments I’ll just delete them all unread (being unpopular can have its advantages ). Sorry for anyone who’s posted a genuine remark.

[EDIT: comments should now be turned off. If anyone wants to contact me, you know my email, or try via my LJ.]

I write this in sympathy as, for once, we have been spared the tribulations faced by passengers going through Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 these past few weeks.

Yesterday, about 5cm of snow left hundreds of passengers stranded overnight, where they slept on thin mats and under cardboard boxes after having spent the day doing the rounds from check-in to baggage claim as their flights were cancelled at the last minute up to five times in a row.

Many papers were leading with pictures of passengers huddling under thin blankets and headlines declaring the Terminal Five shambles a national embarrassment and as bringing shame to London.

In my opinion, the shame belongs firmly in the laps of the world’s least favourite airline whose bosses are responsible for operations at the new terminal. From what I read in yesterday’s Evening Standard, nine out of ten of the thousands of lost luggage items that have accumulated may never be reunited with their owners as staff shortages and renewed glitches continue to pile up.

I read the article with incredulity, wondering what could possibly have caused these renewed delays until one Swiss family pointed out laconically: “Our flight was meant to go at 7pm but we were told it was delayed until after nine this morning. This was apparently due to the snow which had fallen in the morning.”(News, p.5)

In all fairness, I don’t remember when snow last settled in London. It may have been as long ago as 1990 when I broke my little finger in a snowball fight that escalated in Hampstead Heath. But snow and frost in April are not unprecedented and an international airport ought to be prepared for such eventualities.

Meanwhile, we had fun waking up in a winter wonderland with the sun glittering on sugared tree branches and the kids’ laughter ringing through the windows. Even the ‘hood’s cynical teenager joined in the frolics, their usual sullenness forgotten.

I had missed the news on Saturday evening as we were seeing some mates, but the snow had been forecast to a generally incredulous response.

“My son was practically bursting with excitement,” sighed one of the blokes in the pub yesterday, “so of course I promised he could drag me out of bed if it really should snow. And he did: at 7 am! But we were the first people out, all was quiet and there were no footsteps on the ground. It was magical.”

The only travelling I’m doing at the moment (aside from a short break, but more about that later) will be in my head.

Today is the start of NaNoWriMo and I have nothing to go on, except that I’m writing a SciFi romance about cetacean communication, new programming paradigms, shoaling intelligent probes sailing past the solar system and a villain who uses the protagonists’ findings to develop AI—with the best of intentions—that turns out to be the real alien.

Meanwhile, earth is threatened by a series of natural and man-made disasters which provides intreresting background material, in case I get stuck, and also powerful motivation for the inadvertent villain who wants to save humanity from itself.

I’ll be posting occasional updates on my LJ

So it turns out that the article which may have ended Watson’s career and public standing has been written by a postgraduate student at the Cold Spring Harbour Lab who seems to have a crush on him.

Not content with the damage she has already done (albeit justifiably), she goes on to gush about how ‘his’ scientists wouldn’t be able to function if it wasn’t for their Master’s encouragement, how the war against disease would be lost should Watson not hold their hands in the lab.

If you think I’m exaggerating, read the thing.

The Times Online is a respected source, otherwise I would suspect this to be a hoax. As it is, it must be the first time that I have cringed because of my science background.

Perhaps the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory should be more discerning in the selection of their postgraduate students. Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe is the proverbial elephant in a china shop. Thankfully, after a brief moment of glory, Google News has moved on.

Choice Quote (but there were many)

“Colleagues expect Watson’s conversations to be peppered with ‘un-PC’ comments. It is part of his character. He wouldn’t be the man he is and have contributed so much to science if he wasn’t a little different to everyone else.”

All I can think of is Rosalind Franklin.

It is time for the nasty old men to go away.

At the time of writing, there are 4 comments underneath the Times Online article.

Looks like 3:1 to the racists, although the first commenter may just have been confused.

EDIT: Hmm, it now stands at 16:13, pretty close to half-and-half. What is alarming is the great proportion of unashamedly racist comments and the number of commenters who are convinced that race has a genetic basis (it doesn’t). Then there are those who think that, just because a Nobel laureate scientists says something, he must be right/must have made a discovery.

Watson making a discovery? Don’t make me laugh. If this mess has shown anything then it’s that there is a time when eminent scientists should announce their retirement. Perhaps they ought to be tested for senility, like old people having to retake their driving tests.

Anyway, in case you thought racism was rare, read the next entry.

I want to resume my Japan travelogue, but I want to do it properly, and right now it’s getting in the way of a deadline and two outstanding story crits.

Meanwhile, I’m battling with the October blues while the rain is pouring down from leaden skies and the brook in front of the house is swelling dangerously. They’ve cleared it up since the summer flood. But nobody has reckoned with autumn leaf fall.

Does our letting agent know something that our neighbours don’t? While we still live with exposed floorboards and bare concrete downstairs, they have almost completed their renovation work.

(cross-posted to LJ)

I’ve ranted about Google’s intent at world domination before, and now Cory Doctorow has written a story about it (CC licenced, natch). It’s called ‘Scroogled’, and I quite like it, because it’s written from an insider perspective rather than being a paranoid account of Geek-Mages Conspiring To Do Evil, which I would probably have ended up writing.

In his Wall Street interview, Cory is defensive about Google, and he has a point. It’s difficult not to love them. Or as he put it succinctly: “I think one of the most heartbreaking things that any of us can live through is for an institution that we love to change in a way that makes us hate it…”.

There is no mention of China in that interview (although there is in the story). Of course Google are far from the only offenders in this regard. But they are the most heartbreaking.

Anyway, this wasn’t meant to be just another review of the story. Through one of my blogs’ referrer trackers, I’ve come across a site which is now the new homepage for my browser. You see, the name ‘Scroogle’ is real. Scroogle allows you to search Google anonymously, by taking cookies into their own servers, trashing them and deleting logs within 48 hours.

I’ve already set my browser to delete cookies after each session, but not only is that inconvenient, it’s probably not enough. So initiatives like Scroogle are to be welcomed.

Naturally, Microsoft doesn’t like it. So get Firefox or—better still—install Ubuntu on your machine (I’m due for an upgrade soon).

Google didn’t like it either at first (2003). But Scroogle seems to have resurfaced unscathed and is attracting quite a bit of attention this year. Just try Scroogling Scroogle for Google

Virtual communities have been touted since the early nineties, but I expected that they went out with the VR hype back then. Not so. A sort-of hybrid virtual ‘world’, Second Life, has braved it out since 2003 and its popularity is about to explode. SL has been in the headlines lately, because its currency is exchangable with US$—a real economy in a virtual world—and it is the setting not just for real businesses and jobs, but also for real scams. Besides, a lot of real-life companies set up shop there, including IBM with its secret island headquarters to name but one example.

In short, everyone’s doing it and as one SF writer put it: ‘go there—it’s where you find your audience now’. So I did, assuming the ridiculous name of Kila Kovacs (in my defense: Kila’s a character in ‘The Centuries Summer’ and Kovacs is one from a limited list of surnames on offer). But am I a citizen of Second Life now? Hell, no.

In a throwback almost to the nineties, the site insists on installing software on my computer. As if that is not bad enough (I mean, how do I play on the road/by mobile phone, eh? Riddle me that! It’s the twenty-first century, people), the thing then promptly throws a fit because I don’t have 32 bit screen colour and shuts itself down.

How come that I can watch the promotional videos and high res graphics just fine, but when it comes to playing, it’s a no-no?

Right now, they like me to have at least an 800Hz processor and 256 MB RAM, which I do, but only just. This machine (upgraded) is 3-4 years old, the computer next to it (our old Linux box) 8 or 9. Some of the internet café machines I saw in Asia were older. Our (landlord’s) washing machine dates from 1990 and has just been fixed. I believe in making things last. With the speed with which these people upgrade their software, would I need a new computer by Christmas? And how is that ‘democratic’? Can only the rich kids play? Plus see above: I’d like to play on-line and on the road, please.

So, SL is a non-starter and the virtual universe currently only exists in my head. But at least I can have sleek blue-black fur, swim with the dolphins or float in a castle made of clouds whenever I want. And, come to think of it, one life is enough. I still prefer feeling the sun on my skin to imagining it.

So there.

This is a cross-posting from my LJ writer’s blog

You may have noted that I tend to write ‘café’, rather than
‘cafe’. Writing HTML or TeX documents with accents or umlaute is a
pain, but there’s a handy list of special characters
and you’ll find that it’s amazingly easy, once you get used to it.

But some people don’t see why they should get used to it.

I can see the point with regard to fully anglicised words. A
coffeeshop is now known as a cafe, and why should it have a French
accent? But I still write ‘café’, maybe because my own
language has taught me the use of proper accents and umlaute.

However, this isn’t all. There are increasing cases of outright
language fascism where words are written without the right
spelling—which can change their meaning and does change the way they
sound. Recently, a member of the rasfic group asked for a
German translation of a word and then ranted that she never bothers
with umlaute. Charles Stross has written at least one book (’The
Iron Sunrise’) which omits umlaute for his deliciously OTT
‘Über’ villains—a book, which I presume has passed across the
desk of an editor, and which I’m almost certain will be translated
into German. Not that editors are immune from language fascism or
that ignorance is a valid excuse. The editor of the 2004 ‘Waitrose
Food Illustrated’ Christmas edition (which is part of my foodie
magazine collection) clearly struggled with his conscience before
deciding to allow the ‘ø’ into ‘Stykkishølmur’ in a
feature about the Icelandic town. He dedicated his entire editorial
to it (’…where the hell do you find it on the keyboard? I have to admit that I was flummoxed and called for Technical Support.’ Oh, purleeze. Is it a wonder nobody wants to man
the helpdesks?) Not satisfied with that, he continued to rant that
he didn’t have a clue about how to pronounce it. Is it helpful if I
say that ø sound a little but like ö?

Out with language fascism. It should be a requirement for all
English speakers to learn at least one foreign language from
primary school. Perhaps, that way they would also learn respect
for other languages

(Only 877 words yesterday, but on the Zaurus on a crowded train!)