Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2007

  • Not On My List

    A film that is definitely not on my list of films to see is 300. Despite the high coefficient of male beefcake (at least amongst the Spartans, apparently), that in itself does not tip the scales in its favour when the whole raison d’etre of the film appears to be simply an exercise in exquisitely choreographed ultraviolence. Scaryduck has more.

  • The Lonely Robot

    That was the subtitle of the second part of Adam Curtis’ new series on BBC2. Another hour of exposition of theory illuminated (mostly) by a dense weave of archive footage. This second part struck me as being somewhat easier to grasp than the first, but it’s still tough going for me. Still, I shouldn’t complain at having something on the telly that deserves to be well-chewed and savoured. It makes a welcome change from the usual diet of pap.
     
    There were some good moments in it. I screamed an obscenity at the point in the interview with James Buchanan, when Curtis poses the question to him on whether some politicians could act out of idealism. Buchanan’s point of view is that politicians and bureaucrats are self-serving and that public duty is a myth – it is impossible for them to interpret and express the general will of the people. Buchanan’s reply to Curtis was one of puzzlement and denial that idealism could ever exist – a "it does not compute" reaction. My scream was powered by the certain and personal knowledge of one politician – my father – who certainly was never self-serving, and went into politics out of a sense of duty. He may well have been a rare bird, and perhaps these days his breed is even rarer, but for Buchanan to deny even the possibility of the existence of such a species was too much for me. 
     
    Not Saussure and Fixed Point have more, much more, in-depth analysis on The Lonely Robot. Recommended reading.

  • Forward to the Dark Ages

    I see the leaders of Poland are determined to turn the clock back. They want to introduce a law to ban discussions on homosexuality in schools and educational institutions across the country, with teachers facing the sack, fines or imprisonment.
     
    It’s only a few years since the pernicious Section 28 law was at last repealed in the UK, and now another EU country wants to go back down that road. And as proof that being a leader of a country is no obstacle to being barking mad, we have President Lech Kaczynski, the twin brother of the prime minister, supporting the law, claiming that:
    the future of the human race is dependent on discrediting homosexuality in the classroom. During a visit to Ireland last month, he said: "If that kind of approach to sexual life were to be promoted on a grand scale, the human race would disappear."
    Er, Lech, fat chance. Life doesn’t work that way. But then, rational thought clearly doesn’t seem to be his strong point.

  • The Workaround

    Well, after that rant about stupid packaging decisions for Windows Home Server, it comes as something of a relief to be able to say that I had one piece of good luck today. You know that conflict between the Windows Home Server client software and CA’s Anti-Virus 2007 product that I’ve been banging on about? Well, I discovered that there’s a workaround…
     
    I was watching a video podcast by Ian Dixon on TheDigitalLifestyle.com when I noticed something curious. He was demonstrating how to restore an individual file from a Windows Home Server backup, and he right-clicked on the file. I spotted that in the pop-up menu there was an entry for CA’s Anti-Virus. Hang on, thought I, how has he got that running on his machine, when he has also got the Windows Home Server client software running as well?
     
    An exchange of emails brought the answer… and for those of you wanting to have the workaround, here it is…
    1. Change the startup of the “Windows Home Server Connection Service” service [sic] from “Automatic” to “Manual”
    2. Remove the Windows Home Server tray application (WHStray.exe) from the list of programs that are started when Vista boots up. You can do this from the Software Explorer in Windows Defender or, alternatively, just delete the link to the application in C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStartMenuProgramsStartup.

    Then you should find that Vista will boot normally. Once you’re up and running, then starting the Windows Home Server console will start both the connection servce and the tray application for you. There you have it…

     
     

  • Windows Home Server Packaging

    While I’m still waiting for Microsoft to come up with a fix for the conflict between their software and CA’s anti-virus product, I thought I’d mention another oddity about the Windows Home Server software.

    Microsoft are saying that one of the selling points for this product will be the fact that your home computers and your Windows Home Server will be remotely accessible from anywhere on the internet. They’ve gone on record with this. Indeed, when I connect to my Windows Home Server over the internet, once I’ve logged in, this is the welcome screen that I see:

    Windows Home Server screenshot 2

    See those “Connect remotely to any of the computers in your home” and the “Access any home computer” claims? Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Just one slight problem. It’s not true…

    What happens when you click on the “Computers” tab in the welcome screen is that you’ll get a screen rather like this:

    Windows Home Server screenshot 3

    Look carefully – you’ll see that the computer called Monet has two entries – one when it’s running Windows XP Professional, and one when it’s running Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. And look, the Vista Home Premium Edition entry is marked as “Not Supported”. What’s that all about? Well, let’s click the helpful text just below that reads: Why can’t I connect to some computers? Then this screen will pop up:

    Windows Home Server screenshot 4

    Er, hello? Microsoft are telling me that the only operating systems that support Remote Access via Windows Home Server are Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate, Vista Business or Vista Enterprise?

    Let me get this straight, the Windows Home Server product, the one that is supposed to be for ordinary mortals, not geeks, the one that is supposed to give you remote access to any computer in your home, won’t actually do this if you have Windows XP Home, Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium installed on your home computers? You actually have to have XP Professional, Vista Ultimate, Vista Business or, gawd help us, Vista Enterprise installed on your goddam home computers?

    I’ve heard some nonsense in my time, but this takes some beating. The whole raison d’etre of Windows Home Server is being torpedoed by a product packaging decision… how stupid is that?

    Well, of course most homes will have XP Home, Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium. Only geeks buy XP Professional or Vista Ultimate… What really irritates me is that I had Windows XP Professional at home on all our systems, but wanted to move to Vista Home Premium in an attempt to be less geeky. More fool me, I suppose.

    I should just add, taking a deep breath after this rant, that I’m not the only beta-tester of Windows Home Server who has gone “What?” at this packaging decision. I see that this issue is now marked as “Closed(Postponed)” on the feedback site, and it could just be that the final version of Windows Home Server will emerge with Remote Access to all your home computers enabled – just as Microsoft is currently claiming, when you don’t read the fine print, that is. Let’s hope so, otherwise Windows Home Server starts to lose a lot of its attraction for me.

    Update, November 2007: Well, the final release still doesn’t support remote access to “any home computer”, despite Microsoft still seeming to imply this (unless you read the fine print). I’m not impressed.

  • Eurovision Beckons…

    The season of Eurovision is upon us. Last Saturday, the UK chose its "song for Europe". There were some real stinkers in the line-up, but I’m pleased to say that camp won through, with Scooch and Flying the Flag (for you).
     
    Is it just me, or did this song and the act remind anyone else of the brilliant Scottish sitcom The High Life?

  • Add Your Own Caption…

    Although Monkey Fluids has a pretty good one to begin with…
     
    (hat tip to Pharyngula for the link)

  • Not Me, Guv…

    Things I have never done – number one in an occasional series.

  • Viva del Toro!

    Last Thursday, the postman brought a package. It was the Guillermo del Toro Collection – the DVDs of three of del Toro’s films: Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). A veritable feast!
     
    Cronos is like the eponymous mechanism at its heart – golden, intricate and deadly. It brings a whole new twist to the myth of the vampire. It’s also the touching story of the love between a kindly old man and his granddaughter. I was struck by the fact that the granddaughter often wears a red plastic mac, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a deliberate reference to the great Nic Roeg film: Don’t Look Now?
     
    Now, I should have watched The Devil’s Backbone next. That’s the chronology, and also the sequence recommended by the good doctor. However, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the DVD of Pan’s Labyrinth to be released, so that went into the player on Friday night.
     
    It is simply a masterpiece. It draws on the deep wells of folklore with the characters of the faun, the fairy princess in mortal form, and introduces the spectacular "pale man". The stories too are recognisable ur-tales: the toad with the golden key at the root of the tree, the fairy banquet. But the monsters in the labyrinth are nothing compared to the monster above: Capitán Vidal. The film has heart-stopping moments of terror, horror and beauty. I look forward to watching its companion-piece, the Devil’s backbone, but I think that I have just seen del Toro’s best work to date.
     
    One thing that niggles, however. The original Spanish title of Pan’s Labyrinth is El Laberinto del Fauno (the labyrinth of the Faun). I expect it was some ignorant dork in Hollywood who gave it the English title. It should have been literally translated to The Labyrinth of the Faun. Because I don’t think the faun in the film is Pan, it’s just a faun…
     
    For lovers of trivia, the faun and the pale man are both marvellously played by Doug Jones, who also played the aquatic Abe Sapien in Hellboy (another del Toro film that I enjoyed enormously), and Hellboy himself was played by Ron Perlman, who was also the sadistic nephew in Cronos. I look forward to further films from Guillermo del Toro.

  • Safe Haven

    And yet another story from today’s Observer – this time about a row that appears to have erupted over the Isle of Man and its status as a tax haven. As a native of the island, I can’t say that I’m totally surprised that perchance in some instances tax avoidance has shaded into tax evasion. Nonetheless, what really caught my eye were a couple of elementary mistakes in the article in the opening two paragraphs.
     
    The story refers to the population of the island as being 26,000. Erm, what happened to the other 54,000 people then? Have they all just disappeared? And then in the second paragraph, the Common Purse Agreement is referred to as the Common Pure Agreement. Sloppy.

  • The Half-Bitten Peach

    Elsewhere in today’s Observer, Victoria Coren dreams of combining the UK’s Department of Education’s latest whizzo schemes. Apparently one scheme is that primary schools should teach compulsory languages, including Mandarin; while another is to introduce children’s books with gay themes into the primary schools. You can, of course, guess which of the two the usual suspects (i.e. the Daily Mail tabloid and fundamentalist "family" groups) have been fulminating about the most. 
     
    But real life has already got there ahead of Victoria. For centuries in China, the terms "half-bitten peach" and the "cut-sleeve" have been metaphors for homosexual intimacy. The first dates from the Zhou period. Let Adrian Carton, in an excellent chapter in the equally excellent Gay Life and Culture – a World History, take up the story:
    The politics of personal favouritism are explored through the infatuation of Wei, Duke Ling (534 – 493 BCE), for the court official Mizi Xia. At the imperial court, making use of the ruler’s carriage for personal errands was deemed a serious offence, attracting the penalty of foot amputation. When his mother fell ill, Mizi Xia used the carriage in order to visit her; instead of punishing him, the duke praised his protégé’s filial duty and respect. Another scene depicts Mizi Xia and the duke walking through an orchard; the favoured official gives the ruler a half-eaten peach to eat, inspiring the duke to contemplate Mizi’s sense of devotion and self-sacrifice. Such was the influence of this fable that the name ‘Mizi Xia’ and the metaphor of the ‘love of the shared peach’ (fen tao zhi ai) evoked the phenomenon of homosexual intimacy for generations to come.
    And for the second example, from the time of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE):
    Ban Gu supplies perhaps the most famous example of male intimacy which became a synonym for homosexual desire in China. The tale of Emperor Ai and his favourite, Dong Xian, speaks of an affectionate tenderness that seems universal. The couple were sleeping, with Dong Xian stretched out across the sleeve of the emperor. Not wanting to disturb his companion, the ruler cut off the sleeve of his own robe so that he could rise and resume his duties. The metaphor of the ‘cut sleeve’ (duan xiu) thus became a recognized euphemism for homosexuality, it reflected the extent to which homosexual intimacy had permeated the culture of upper-class Chinese life, but it also conveyed enduring noble qualities of loyalty, respect and filial attachment intrinsic to the Confucian moral univers. 

  • McKellen’s Lear

    Good article in today’s Observer on Sir Ian McKellen as he prepares to take on the role of King Lear this week. I’m sorry that the closest I’ll get to seeing it will be reading the reviews.

  • Let It Out…

    … and Vote.
     
    Apparently, some kind soul has nominated my blog to the Let It Out campaign run by Kleenex. You can even vote for my blog, should you feel particularly kindly disposed to do so. I feel rather like Groucho Marx, who famously said that he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member… However, I have no shame. So vote for me…

  • Twiddling Thumbs Again

    Last month, I mentioned in Do I Need Windows Vista? that a number of my hardware devices would either never have software drivers for Vista, or that the manufacturers were still working on them. Six weeks later, what’s the current situation?
     
    My soundcards – I have two, one is a Creative Technology Audigy 2, the other is an E-MU 1820M professional audio and MIDI interface. Currently, the Audigy sort of works – it can handle stereo playback, but the 5.1 surround sound capability continues not to function, and the Creative control panel application falls over on a continual basis. Last month, Creative only had Beta drivers released for Vista, but now their "final" drivers have been released (version 2.12.0002), with no discernable improvement whatsoever that I can see. I wrote last month that Creative’s customer discussion forum for Vista issues was glowing white-hot, being filled with angry comments from dissatisfied customers. It’s currently rapidly heading towards total meltdown as far as I can see. Really, Creative’s software quality is a total joke, and judging from the reactions of the forum moderators, they clearly haven’t a clue about customer service either.
     
    Turning away for the moment from that disaster, what’s happening on the E-MU front? Well, there’s still no sign of Vista drivers, but at least E-MU has now posted an expected delivery schedule for their software drivers and applications. I see that I can expect to wait a further month for beta versions of the software, and until Q3 for the final versions. Given that early versions of Vista were available to hardware and software developers over a year ago, and that the final version was available three months ago, to see that my E-MU hardware won’t have final software until nearly a year after Vista was released is disappointing to say the least. I’m also disappointed to see that one of my predictions of last month has come true: E-MU will not be releasing Vista versions of their Emulator-X application, I will have to upgrade to Emulator-X2 if I want to get a Vista version. Sigh.
     
    The one little ray of sunshine is that, while Steinberg have discontinued their Midex 8 interface, it does appear to work using the Windows XP drivers on the 32-bit version of Vista. It does not work on the 64-bit version of Vista, apparently, so that’s a road that I can’t go down in the future. 
     
    So now I twiddle my thumbs until E-MU release beta versions of their software. I have to say that I’m also not particularly confident that the beta software will work to any degree. You see, E-MU is now part of the Creative Technology company, and I’ve noticed that the quality of the software seems commensurate with that. Aren’t computers fun?

  • The Blair Farewell Tour

    And while we’re on the subject of satire coming uncomfortably close to reality, here’s news of a proposed reality that has already crossed over into satire: retail jails. The ever-dependable Marina Hyde is on hand to give it, and the progenitor of this idea, the blasting that they both richly deserve. 

  • “The Law Is A Ass”

    Mr. Bumble would have undoubtedly repeated his famous line at the news, reported in The Guardian today, that the UK Law Lords have:
    decided, by a four-one majority, that the pair, who spent more than 12 years in jail for a murder they did not commit, must pay the "living expenses" they incurred in prison and which have been deducted from their compensation package. The law lords said the deduction, which amounted to around £50,000 each, should not be seen as board and lodging, but as expenses they would have had to pay from their earnings if they had been free. 
    Absurd doesn’t even begin to describe this. As one commenter in the Guardian notes, and as I’ve said before, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil increasingly looks like less of a satire and more of a prescient factual documentary of today’s society.

  • Catch ‘Em Young…

    These little beauties make me feel quite queasy:
     
     
    Shudder. I’m really pleased that I grew up instead with the Brothers Grimm, Shahrazad (Scheherazade) and Rupert Bear.
     
    The author, Hans Wilhelm, writes other books for children too. Here’s one: The Boy Who Wasn’t There. It opens with a foreword that reads:
    When I first heard this story for the first time many years ago I didn’t believe it. I thought it was too strange too unusual to be true. I only accepted that which was reasonable and logical.
    But now I’m not so certain anymore. As a matter of fact the older I get, the more I begin to trust the things which cannot always be explained.
    And there – the older I get, the more I begin to trust the things which cannot always be explained – I think is the key difference between Wilhelm and myself. As far as I am concerned, it’s patent nonsense. The day I begin to "trust the things which cannot always be explained" is the day I begin to slip into senile dementia.

  • The Clerical Error

    Mr. deity and Lucy discover that a clerical error has been made…
     
     

  • Did You Know?

    Entertaining little presentation of facts and figures. While some of the implications and interpretations are somewhat questionable, I do like the punchline. However, the assertion that we live in exponential times is very misleading. We have always lived in exponential times, it’s just that now the rate of change is becoming very apparent.
     
     
    (hat tip to Crunch Notes)

  • Planet of Slums

    That’s the title of a book by Mike Davis. There’s an interesting interview with him over on BLDBLOG about some of the themes of the book. While it has certainly piqued my interest in reading the book, I see that Amazon reviewers have given it a mixed blessing; for example: Relentless, Nihilistic, Compelling… Hmm, not a cheery fireside read, then, I take it?