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Apple and Bare Bones Software seem to have conspired to make the return to work after the Bank Holiday (UK only!) a bit more bearable: there’s the new G5 iMac and BBEdit 8.0. My feelings are slightly mixed about the new iMac. I think I like it, but it doesn’t grab me like the old flat-screen iMacs did. They immediately struck me as cute and cool, and whenever I see one ‘in the flesh’ I can’t resist grabbing the screen and moving it around a bit. It’s that kind of machine. I don’t dislike the new design, but I agree with blech that there’s too much blank space beneath the screen itself. I thought that there must be speakers there, but I see from the specs that they are mounted on the bottom edge and fire downwards to:

[…] bounce sound waves off your desk, counter or table into your ears.

You could have someone’s eye out like that… If I was responsible for designing the new iMac—and it’s a good thing for everyone that I’m not—I would be tempted to put something useful in that space, like a reasonably sized monochrome LCD display to display the currently playing track in iTunes. Still, the specs are pretty good, and a G5 in a ‘home’ Mac is a very nice thing to see.

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When A Mighty Wind came out last year, it received a rather lukewarm response from the critics. I was really disappointed because I had enjoyed Christopher Guest’s previous film (Best in Show) enormously. I didn’t go to see it at the cinema, but since we subscribed to LOVEFiLM we’ve been catching up on a lot of films that we missed when when they came out. I have to say that the critics were talking utter tosh. A Mighty Wind is a wonderful film. It’s true that there aren’t quite as many ‘laugh out loud’ moments as Best in Show, but it’s still very funny, acutely observed and unexpectedly touching.

The film is a mock documentary about a reunion folk concert held in memory of a recently-deceased folk impresario. The details of the costumes, old album covers and album titles are so perfectly judged that you start thinking that they must be real. The semi-improvised dialogue works brilliantly, and there are some fabulous moments when a character comes out with something completely bizarre or outrageous. The part that worked best for me was the tender relationship between Mitch (completely dazed after his recent release from a mental institution) and Mickey (his one-time musical and romantic partner, until they had a huge row). Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara judge their performance perfectly, as Mitch and Mickey tentatively get to know one another again. It’s a bonus that the music is actually pretty good, and I even found myself humming Mitch and Mickey’s slightly sickly hits for a while after watching the film.

Needless Alley 2, originally uploaded by bsag.

“Continuing the story of death and disillusionment in a dystopian urban future. Did you see ‘Needless Alley 1’?”

“No.”

“Pity - it’s much better than the sequel.”

I have no idea when (or if) it will be shown in my backward bit of the galaxy, but there’s a new four-hour Farscape mini-series being shown on the Sci Fi Channel on 17th October. You can see the excellent trailer on Apple’s trailer page. The Save Farscape community should get huge kudos for their persistence in trying to persuade Sci Fi that there would be a big audience for more Farscape shows—it has finally paid off. Sci Fi pulled the series abruptly about a year ago, leaving a major (and truly cliff-hang-ery) plot thread dangling.

I’m pretty excited about this. I was/am a huge fan of the series; I can’t think of another science fiction TV series which has been more innovative, better written or funnier. Like any sad and obsessed fan, I have a lot of the DVDs, and find that they bear a lot of repeated viewings, as there are always subtle plot details or jokes you miss the first (or tenth) time around. If you haven’t seen it before and watch the trailer, do bear in mind that they have emphasised the action and explosions—the whole thing is generally much more subtle, sad and funny. And if you get the Sci Fi Channel, I would be eternally and undyingly grateful for a recording of some kind.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been playing around with posting images from my Treo 600 via Flickr. I used to occasionally post things via email on the phone using mfop2, back in the days when I used Movable Type. I got out of the habit because I dropped the GPRS package; I just wasn’t using it enough to justify the cost. But I missed taking spontaneous photographs—the camera on the Treo is pretty bad, but at least I carry it around all the time. However, another slight snag prevented me from taking more pictures with it, apart from the dodgy quality. With Palm Desktop on a Mac, there was no easy way (apart from emailing them) to get the images off to the phone and on to my Mac. That piece of the puzzle has been solved now, as I’ve got Missing Sync 4.0, which lets you mount the SD card of the phone on the desktop, and then just drag files on and off it in the usual way.

Seredipitously, this coincided with finding out about Flickr—an online gallery space in which you can share your photos with others. Flickr also lets you upload photos by email and/or post them to your blog, which is what I was attempting to do yesterday (more on that later).

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I’m having another go to see if I can get the title working.

Snowy tree, originally uploaded by bsag.

I’m trying out flickr to see if I can post images from my Treo’s camera again.

Whose bright idea was it, I wonder, to install a TV system on the commuter trains through Birmingham? This system serves up reheated (and consequently somewhat dried up) news, public service adverts (the importance of literacy and numeracy for children and adults) and out of date weather reports. The other evening—after it had been pouring down with rain all day—I got a weather report compiled in the morning telling us that we were going to have showers that would clear up towards evening. Very helpful.

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Peter Smith emailed me to tell me that he has written a simpler, getting-started guide to using beamer.cls—the LaTeX presentation programme I have raved about here. Peter’s guide is really excellent, and much less intimidating than the huge (though very informative) manual that comes with beamer. If you’ve been meaning to play with beamer, but didn’t quite know where to start, give the Simple Beamer guide a read.

It also contains a fantastic quote attributed to the philosopher Stephanie Lewis, and apparently stage-whispered during someone else’s presentation:

Power corrupts: PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Peter advocates making transparencies with beamer rather than showing the presentation with a data projector. I do sympathise with his reasons (the most compelling of which is that you can waste oodles of time tinkering with colour schemes and so on), but I now always make projected presentations rather than transparencies for three main reasons:

1. Transparencies are actually quite expensive, and become even more costly when you manage to make a hash of printing them, or find a typo.
2. I’m always altering my presentation right up until the last moment. Often, those last-minute edits improve it greatly. Yes, I should probably be more organised, but sometimes you need the adrenaline rush to think about what you really want to say.
3. I almost always show at least one movie in my lectures and presentations. Movies don’t work well unless you flip the transparencies really fast.

Alongside regional accents, derelict railway stations, and genuine Green Men, one of the other unique things Brum has to offer is a regional delicacy: the oatcake. Strictly speaking, the oatcake is a Staffordshire speciality, but they are also widely available and enthusiastically consumed in Birmingham too. These oatcakes are nothing like the Scottish variety. I’ve always found those dry biscuits to have all the flavour and texture of shredded cardboard. Staffordshire oatcakes are more like a pancake or crépe,—made with oatmeal rather than wheat flour—and are totally delicious. I’m sure that they are best eaten freshly made, but even the packaged oatcakes sold in supermarkets are wonderful if you warm them under a grill for a few minutes.

Oatcakes are versatile, and equally happy filled with sweet or savoury stuff. Mr. Bsag—who likes to have his cake and eat it—has taken to having one oatcake spread with Marmite and one spread with jam in the morning. I like a little cheese sprinkled on mine before it goes under the grill—it makes a wonderful warming lunch in our superb, balmy English summer¹. The oatcake has all of the goodness of porridge as a breakfast food, without any of the associated burnt-pan difficulties or the unpleasantly leaden feeling that a bowl of porridge can leave you with. In fact, the oatcake is pretty much perfect. They are even good for commuting, because you can fold one up into a neat little package to consume on the run, without getting jam all over your fingers. Unfortunately, for those of you not lucky enough to live in the Midlands, you might have to make a long trip to experience it.

¹ Heavy sarcasm should be added here.

My new PowerBook came pre-loaded with the iLife suite, including GarageBand, which I’ve never investigated before. I didn’t think it would be of much interest to me, as I’m better at listening to music that making it. But I idly fired it up to see what all the fuss was about, and before I knew it, I had spent a couple of hours intently noodling around with some reggae loops. It’s a very addictive bit of software. First, the loops and samples provided are very high quality, and fairly diverse in style. I was pleased to discover some world music sounds like the tabla, the oud and some gamelan loops. I then got very excited and searched for a hurdy-gurdy, but unfortunately they don’t have my favourite instrument. Second, GarageBand is exceptionally easy and intuitive to use. You discover pretty quickly that it does take a fair bit of talent and skill to produce a track that isn’t repetitive and progresses in a musical way (the first 12 bars are easy, then you wonder where the heck to go from there), but even without any talent, it’s possible to produce something that sounds fairly decent. I’m even starting to think that I might dust off my old electric guitar and get a cable of some kind to plug it into the PowerBook. I’m curious to know what the guitar amp simulations are like.

Adding instruments to the mix one by one reminded me a lot of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells; perhaps the fact the the default instrument in a new mix is the Grand Piano is a subtle tribute to him¹. Well, if he can record more or less the same album—what is it, three times now?—it would probably not be impossible for somebody to come up with a big hit using GarageBand. However, I think it’s more useful as a tool to create background and incidental music for movies and slideshows, or just to while away a few hours creatively when the Great British Summer is in full flood.

¹ Before you look, there is also no Tubular Bells loop. It’s probably just as well.

One of the highlights of my new daily commute is passing through Duddeston Station. The station was once an important terminus, but now only two platforms are in use, and the sheds are bricked up. The wonderful part for me is that they haven’t dismantled any of the other platforms, rails or gantries, but just allowed nature to creep back in. I’m sure that this is probably a lack of money and/or laziness on the part of the authorities, rather than any act of charity towards the wildlife, but the end result is what matters.

At this time of year, the unused platforms are a riot of buddleia, goldenrod, silver birch and willow. The flowers and trees crowd the platform, as if waiting for ghost trains that never arrive, clouds of white and yellow butterflies billowing above them like locomotive smoke. I love the green anarchy of it, and the sense that the plants are reclaiming the land. If the train stopped for longer at the station, I’m sure I would see rabbits, foxes and birds foraging around on the platforms and rails, and around the old sidings. On particularly trying journeys, I fantasise that the plants will spread along the tracks, forming a green and scented tunnel, through which the sunlight would flicker and dapple the interior of the carriages. At stations, you would have to push your way through the vegetation to get off the train, and you would emerge covered in petals and golden pollen, with butterflies tangled in your hair.

I went to fetch Mr. Bsag from our old flat on Saturday, where he has been finishing off some work. So now everything is cleared out of our old place, and our new house really feels like a home. Great though the new house is, I knew that something was missing—my husband! We cooked a great meal tonight (listening to Bach’s Mass in B minor on Radio 3), then sat there looking at all the space we have and grinning like cats who have got the cream. To continue the cat analogy, we seem to have landed on our feet at long last.

Burglar alarms are nothing but trouble. At 1 am on Thursday, I was woken by a piercing siren; the burglar alarm on the front of the house was shrieking away. This was a bit perplexing because I have never actually set the alarm, since we’ve had builders in and out the whole time. I got dressed and went out into the rain to check that it really was our alarm, and found to my consternation that it was. There’s nothing quite like making a good impression on the neighbours as soon as you move in—they must all want to kill me. I looked at the keypad to try to disable it, but there was no power going to it at all—no lights on and no-one home. In desperation—and not thinking too clearly that early in the morning—I tried shutting off the power at the fuse box. Of course, if it was that easy to silence an alarm, burglars would do it all the time. Duh.

Plan B was to phone our landlord, but the answer machine was on (not unreasonably at that hour). And so, on to Plan C. I phoned the police to let them know that if anyone phoned in about the alarm, they were not to break the door down to apprehend the non-existent burglar. It was obviously a busy night, and I had to wait in a phone queue for some time before speaking to someone on the help-desk. I burbled on in a tired, tale-of-malfunctioning-alarm stream of consciousness for some time, ending with, “…so is there anything else I can do?” There was a slight pause and the officer on the line said dryly, “I was just waiting for you to finish that sentence.” Unfortunately, he told me what I had suspected—I was just going to have to wait until the backup battery in the siren ran down. Now, the batteries in torches run down the minute you need them, but that backup battery had real staying power. At 5am it was still warbling away merrily, and I had still only had an hour and a half of sleep. Nothing but trouble…

If you happen to have a fairly long and dull walk to the train station in the morning, can I recommend a track that will put a groove in your step? ‘Zig Zag Wanderer’ by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band (from the album Safe As Milk) is just such a track. The funky bass riff in the middle will make you play air-bass and will undoubtedly get you some funny looks from other Beefheartless commuters, but it’s worth it for the smile that will be on your face for a few hours.