A glimpse of the holodeck?

The Third and the Seventh : a short film made entirely using CGI.



The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Advice: Click through to Vimeo and watch in full-screen, HD.

Of course doing this in 3D would be a whole order of magnitude(s) harder, and aren't people hard to do in CGI?  But still, it's remarkable.

(HT Robin Hanson)

Parents Evening

old classroom (Mie Prefectural Normal School) by shuichiro

"You're so rude", said Mrs Botogol under her breath, "You sat at that table with the Johnsons and you acted for all the world as if you didn't recognise them"

"well...ummm"

It was parents evening. So many parent evenings, so many parents. It wasn't that I hadn't recognised the Johnsons, I hadn't recognised them yet.

The school has an unusal system: the teachers ask to see you if they think they need to. Fourteen teachers considered that they needed to see us. The trains were running slowly and I received two "absents" and a "late".

And four "please pay attention"s and one "if that message on your android phone is so interesting Mr Botogol, perhaps you could share it with the rest of us"

I don't think I'd like to be back in school. It's a bit too much like work.

Twitter

I am Twittering a bit. You can follow my travails, wry remarks and routine humiliations here http://twitter.com/botogol

Nothing about what I had for breakfast.

I was at the Iraq Inquiry watching Alastair Campbell

In the very moment before Sky News started their interview with me I snatched off my hat.

"It was an odd thing for me to do", I mused to Mrs Botogol later that evening, over a glass of red wine. "Well, not that odd", she said "when you consider the hat."

All is Vanity.

"Will I be on the telly?", I had asked the reporter when she approached me "Not necessarily", she said, "We're chatting to a few of you in the queue; it depends what you say, really".
 She asked me why I had been prepared to stand in the cold three hours waiting to watch Alastair Campbell.
"I like Alastair Campbell"
"Oh, yes", she said, "you'll definitely be on the telly"

Unfashionably enough: I do like Alastair Campbell. He's a person whom it's acceptable for the public to hate (he has that in common with Mrs Thatcher) but he's also a man who shows great resilience and purpose, and who commands a tremendous personal loyalty from friends and colleagues: intriguing and valuable qualities, and not to be underestimated. I have a lot of time for him, and I certainly don't blame him for sticking up for himself and his boss yesterday.

I will admit that I overestimated his public appeal though: with only sixty seats available to the punters at 9am  I judged it necessary to be there at 6:30, at which time I was comfortably the first in the queue. By 7am there were two of us, and a sympathetic receptionist took pity and let us into the warm foyer. By 8am there were still only seven when we were thrown back out on to the street by an unsympathetic security guard and told to form a proper queue, already, why don't we? And who let us inside anyway?"

For while the Iraq Public Inquiry makes the public welcome, but it doesn't like to let them get too comfortable.

The tiny Hearing Room was crazily organised such so that the person we had actually come to see was the least visible: In fact Alastair Campbell was practically invisible, seated with his back to the audience, his face displayed on a corner TV monitor, on which video and audio were unsynchronised.

It was no compensation at all that we had an excellent view of bored Benny Hill look-alike John Chilcott and the miscellaneous Bufton-Tuftons on his panel (from the position of the furniture someone glancing casually in might have gathered that they were the stars of the show..)

Note to organisers: change the layout of the room so that the panel and witness sit sideways across the front, so that the public can see them all.

Campbell actually looked nervous when he entered the room, grasping a large blue folder of notes and reminders, and he focused hard on the opening questions, but as the panel wasted no less than an hour to establish merely that he was one of Blair's inner circle and, yes, he had access to everything, Campbell relaxed and grew more ebullient, combative and sure of himself even correcting chronological mis-statements from the panel.

The questioners had a go at probing but Campbell reckoned he was better at this game than they were; and clearly he was right: they wasted so much of the morning session on protocols and procedures that Campbell ended up mentioning the dossier before they did.

The cached thought you'll read in the press is the panel needs a lawyer, but when Campbell made his "I don't read the headlines" claim it was a snorting Jeremy Paxman who might have made a real difference.

But if Campbell didn't think much of the panel, neither did the panel think much of his evidence "I think we're coming from a different direction from that", observed Lawrence Freedman at one point drily, and portentously. Just as Campbell had prepared his answers in advance of the questions so, I suspect, have the Inquiry worded their report in advance of his evidence.

Campbell's key messages were two:

• John Scarlett was completely in control of the contents of the dossier, and the forward. He could make any changes he liked and all the changes he wanted were actioned. He held the pen. [Translation: if anything in the document is wrong it's not my fault]
• The Intelligence Services are hardly innocents when it comes to the world of spin. Three times Campbell told us that they alone of all the departments 'got' the new media world. [Translation: even if the dossier was sexed up, it wasn't him what did it]

By 11:15 when a short break was announced, I had been at the QE2 Conference Centre for five hours neither eating or drinking and I asked the staff if there was anywhere where I could get a coffee. [Now, pause for thought here: I was in a Conference Centre…at 11:15… asking for coffee, clearly such a substance was availaible]

"No...  I am afraid not", said the staff member, evenly... but not quite smoothly: a tiny hesititation giving away a flicker of conscience.
"In that case", I said, "can you tell me on which floor is the Technology Conference"
"It's Third floor", he said mechanically…but why..  oops"... and  I ran for the lifts and made it to the mingle room where I had three cups of coffee and eleven biscuits"

I bet the Panel get a cup of coffee in the breaks. And the witness. And the press. Just not the public.


About 10 years ago I worked on a dossier. I was a consultant and it was a proposal for large bank, we had to prepare a detailed statement of qualification. We had two weeks to write it and on the seventh day, just 48hrs before the deadline, two previously unseen senior partners arrived in the war room (yes, blush, we called it the war room) to take charge of the 'presentation' of the document, and they rewrote it all.

The thing is: they did make it better. A fresh eye, especially an experienced and wise one, does add value and although we cursed as we cut and amplified, and toned down and sexed up, we were also caught up by the transformation of the stodgy inventory we had prepared into the selling document it became.

At just one point did I object to a claim I thought particularly egregious and the partner put down his red pen and he asked me "Alibert, of course there can be nothing factually incorrect here. If you are telling me it's wrong, well then I'll change it.. Is it actually wrong?"
"Well no, but..." '
"Good"

I was only a Junior Consultant, and still it stings to tell the tale; but you couldn't bully a head of the Joint Intelligence Committee like that, could you?

In the second phase of the Inquiry they will call Scarlett back to the stand, and he's going to be in a tricky position:
- "The dossier was dodgy, but I didn't object" sounds feeble
- "I said it was wrong, but they wouldn't let me change it" feebler still.
- but "I agreed with dossier" ..well, that's not so bad, is it.
Choose one from three. I know where my money is.
All is Vanity.

Back at Work...

... after the holidays. I should have more time to blog now.



(This is one of my favourite Dilbert cartoons.
Seeing inverted commas around the word 'Powerpoint' makes me feel old)

Trend Hunting

Hunted by kaibara87

1 - In 2010 real people who you know, not geeks, will switch their family and personal calendars out of that that blasted book in the kitchen (you-think-you're-going-out-do-you?-well-its-not-written-in-the-diary) and on to their iphones and blackberries. Calendars belong in the cloud. Before the end of this year you'll be inviting your friends for a beer electronically.

2 - Before the year is over you'll discover one of your friends is taking a smart-drug like Modafinil and Adderral or Ritalin. Unless you already have. Or perhaps you already do. And if your friend is buying it off-prescription then congratulations: they've joined the war on the drugs. On the dark side.

3 - At some point between now and the General Election you will come across the Pirate Party somewhere other than on my blog.

4 - Just starting up in 2010 public opinion will almost imperceptibly start to shift against cats, in a few short years time it will come to seem incredible that we tolerated such carnage amongst small animals, and put up with so much cat mess in our flower beds. It wasn't so long ago that we shrugged at dog mess in our parks and pavements.. once that tide turned it didn't take long

5 - During 2010 it will become possible, in polite society, to criticise the values of Islam.

6 - If you are not on Facebook already then you will join it in 2010, which is ironic as in rerospect 2010 will be recognised as Facebook's zenith, the last year of unstoppable ascendancy. Before the end of 2010 doubts will appear.



Your task is to rank these predictions in order of likelihood.

a change of climate

9 Lessons and Carols for the Godless, Robin Ince's annual atheistic shindig at the Bloomsbury Theatre, demonstrated last night (just in case there is any lingering any doubt about the matter) that themed comedy doesn't really work.

The brief for the comics *was* a hard one: tell us some jokes about science; poke fun at religion, but DON'T be rude; be funny and only Dara O Briain really managed it, although respect to Josie Long who bravely snuck an anti Dawkins joke into an otherwise clumsy routine ("If this doesn't work I don't want any of you blogging about it, OK?" Oops.)

Q: What do you call themed comedy that is actually funny?
A: Comedy

The unexpected fall guy for the evening was Johnny Ball, erstwhile star of 1970s kids' TV and father of Zoë. He died on his backside out there with "get off!" lights flashing in his eyes, hisses of "Stop" clearly audible from the wings, and slow hand-claps, whistles and boos from a riled audience.

His unforgivable crime? An agonisingly childish routine with arrows drawn on a piece of cardboard "Now it points left, but now it points right - oh no! Left again, and now its pointing up!" A trick with which I have delighted four year olds at three different birthday parties. For that he would have deserved 'the treatment' but no, the audience sat dutifully silent, no doubt lost in the mist of nostalgia.

What did trigger the audience's protest - eventually - was a sustained AGW-denial riff, that started with a childish song, followed by a ten minute rant descending to a incoherent ramble. Doubting that the tiny proportions of CO2 in the atmosphere can cause global warming at all, and doubting still more that the tiny amount of CO2 from man-made emissions makes any difference Ball was on dangerous territory: the audience had signed up for an attack on the old religions, not the new one and feet shuffled, and people murmured.

Mrs Botogol fell asleep.

The crunch came when Johnny rather clumsily invoked the discredited CRU scientists at UEA to his cause. A cry of "shame" from the audience broke the dam, the boos started and a perplexed and shaken-looking Ball was finally forced from the stage.

"We weren't telling him to get to get off because of what he was saying", reassured the hapless Ince when he finally regained control of the stage, but because he went 13 minutes over his time"

Yeah, Robin, that might have been why *you* were booing.

Ball lost his skirmish last night - but significantly he was heard out for a full 12 minutes before a counter-attack came. Since the UEA fiasco broke two weeks ago the climate of the debate at least has changed, AGW deniers have gained much heart, and they are on the front foot now.

I think that in the months to come we're going to see more and more dissent like Ball's brave, but misguided, speech last night.

the sound of guffaws

Off to watch the Varsity match last week I searched everywhere for some old college regalia.

rugby_match by Jim Grady

My old rugby shirt? Nope: borrowed by a member of the 3rd XV for the infamous '85 tour of Wales and never seen again.  College scarf? cufflinks? umbrella?. all lost.  I gave up and then I suddenly realised I still have my gown!

It's kept in the dressing up box; it's commonly known as the Harry Potter Outfit.

"Don't be silly", I told myself a few minutes later, inspecting my crumpled appearance in the mirror: "you can't possibly go to Varsity match in your gown"

I took it off but impetuously stuffed it into my rucksack anyway (well, you never know). Then I headed out and followed the sound of guffaws to the stadium. Were we like that when we were students?

The first time I went to Varsity Match I was a student. It was 1982 and 60,000 people were there. We stood in the wooden West Stand and cheered the three members of my college who had made the team.  Nowadays only 30,000 turn out and all the team are from Hughes Hall and St Edmunds  (the undergraduates play in a U21 curtain raiser). Perhaps those things are connected.

This time I was sat in a corporate box and there were eight of us -  with food for 12 as the party from our supplier's other client had failed to pitch. Beef Wellington, a glass and a half (cough) of claret, Bakewell tart and meat pies for tea, and afterwards there was a sea eagle to scare the pigeons!

What's that? Oh yes, Cambridge won.

Walking home, happily, later that evening I found myself alongside a group of girls from my old college. They were wearing their red boat club fleeces and college scarves, and laughing and joking with some rugby players from the college next door.. I felt an insane urge to approach them -  "Hey, I used to go to St John's as well!"

I restrained myself - obviously they wouldn't believe me, and would no doubt take me for some random, drunk and sad, middle-aged wierdo.  If only I had had my cufflinks to prove my bona fides.

And then I remembered my gown...

Rye Christmas

More Rye Yule, really.  There seems to be something, something old, something sinister, something pagan perhaps about the Rye Christmas Parade that stirs the Gods: for each year they send rain. Perhaps they are tipped off by prayers from the Kindly Ones

At the front of the parade strode the town cryer, stern faced under an umbrella, looking quite unlike the familiar, welcoming soul who announces the wedding party to thrilled tourists on a Saturday morning.

Following him: giant puppets of wire and papier-mache glowing with inner light, each accompanied by shadowy black-clad children peering out from rain-sodden hoods, and no little donkeys, oxen nor sheep neither: but bright, ungainly mermaids, centaurs, gryphons, orcs and chimeras,

And then at the heart of the procession: the Rye Drummers , blown in the sea wind, dressed in black and red, faces painted, drums adorned with skull and cross-bones, they hunched into a circle, backs to rain and the crowd, hat brims dripping, in their midst a sweating soloist as, red-faced, black-faced, grim-faced they sounded out the rythms of Saxon Rye when the sea pounded at the land-gate causeway, and the French raided and stole the church bells, when Old Winchelsea stood, still, in Rye Bay.

And it wasn't about the children, either: even as Father Christmas approached, waving and hohohoing from an ersatz american limousine, the Rolf Harris-sound-alike MC, in a gold lame jacket made sure to puncture the spirit of Santa, slurring suggestions of his half-pint too many. Beside me a mother gripped her daughter's hand tightly, a whistle blew and the drums restarted.

Afterwards Mrs Botogol and I retired to the steamed-up Apothocary, its drawers with hand-lettered promises of Hemlock, Foxglove, Monkshood and Laburnum
"Well, they need to sort it out", opined a local shopkeeper, warming his hands on an espresso, "is it supposed to be late night shopping or not? We need to be organised".

Reunions

Every year on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo the Duke of Wellington would hold a banquet at Apsley House.

For the first few years the meal was in the 'small' dining room and it was limited to thirty-five or so officers who had actually commanded at the battle. In later years the Duke built the Waterloo Gallery and the guest list became slightly less exclusive and as many as a hundred of the great and good might be invited, the dinner attracting great crowds to the pavement, eager for a glimpse of the great and good - a bit like the big brother house.

Here's a painting of the sumptuous 1836 event

Wellington was son of the Earl of Mornington and brother of the Governor General of India. He was nothing if not an establishment figure and his annual dinner was a triumph of the values of tradition privilege and patronage

Even while Wellington was fighting the Battle of Salamanca in July 1812 the Grande Armee was marching on Moscow in the ill fated Russian campaign. The French army, composed of conscripts, peasants, foreigners lived through the most unimaginable conditions. Men froze in their boots standing in the cold, cut meat from their horses and stole clothes from their prisoners' backs. Only 50,000 men came home from Russia and Sergeant Bourgorgne recounted in his memoirs that whenever veterans met, years after, their talk always turned to Moscow, and Borodino, and the crossing of the Berezina.

French veterans were not recognised until 1857; they did not have banquets in Apsley house.

Which type of reunion would you be proudest to attend?