Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2007

  • Bruce Goff

    When I was about 12 years old, I came across a book in the public library that had a few pictures of the strangest house I had ever seen. It was the Bavinger House, designed by Bruce Goff in 1950 and completed in 1955. I instantly fell in love with it, and dreamt of being able to live in a house like that. I thought about it again today when I saw lots of pictures on Flickr of another Goff design: the Duncan House. Apparently, the Duncan House is now a Bed and Breakfast, so, who knows, one day I might even get to stay (even if for just one night) in a Goff house.

  • Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

    I see that Mark Vernon is delighted by Antony Flew’s There Is A God. Probably because Flew aims a few verbal punches at Dawkins et al. Unfortunately, judging by the content of Flew’s arguments as described by Vernon, the punches seem to be very wide of the mark. The comments on Vernon’s piece point out many of the holes in Flew’s arguments, and the reasons why Flew in his "last will and testament" is a philosopher, but no scientist, and certainly no biologist or cosmologist.
     
    I’m almost tempted to buy the book for its curiousity value, but I’ll wait for a few more dissections of its arguments before deciding whether that would be a waste of money or not.
     
    Update 4 November 2007: Oh dear, Jean Kavez points out that the book may not be all that it appears to be. Flew apparently had ghostwriters. Not good; not good at all. If this is true, then that just about wraps it up for Flew… as Douglas Adams might have said.
     
    Update 8 November 2007: Robert Carrier carries a devastating analysis of the background to the Flew book. It seems pretty conclusive that Flew had very little to do with it, he is an old man being exploited by a bunch of unpleasant people.

  • Windows Home Server

    Now that Microsoft has released the Windows Home Server product, I went ahead and bought the OEM version to install on the computer that I use as a server in our home network. Overall, I’m fairly pleased with it, it does (mostly) what it says on the tin with a minimum of fuss. However, there’s one thing that continues to irk me: Microsoft’s marketing claims do not tell the whole story, they are being economical with the truth.

    Microsoft claims that you can remote access “any home computer” using the product. For example, see this screenshot of the welcome page when I remotely log into my home server:

    WHS Remote Access 3

    Even on Microsoft’s product pages, their FAQ says that: “Windows Home Server … also allows you to connect remotely and use your home computers as if you were sitting in front of them”. See:

    WHS Remote Access 2

    Unfortunately, when Microsoft says “any home computer”, they don’t actually mean “any”. What they mean is their top-end operating systems: Windows XP Professional, Vista Business or Vista Ultimate. Those of us with Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium cannot remotely access their home PCs running those operating systems:

    WHS - Remote Access

    I really find this ridiculous. I’ve blogged about this before – I came across it while I was beta-testing the product. I had hoped that Microsoft would have remedied this with the final release of the product. But no, so I can reprise my rant:

    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 notice that none of the glowing reviews of Windows Home Server that I’ve seen (with the honourable exception of Paul Thurrott) has actually picked up on this shortcoming. Clearly, they’re all a bunch of geeks running Vista Ultimate, so this product hole goes straight over their heads. The rest of us mere mortals just fall straight into it.

  • Comet 17P/Holmes

    At last I’ve managed to see Comet 17P/Holmes. Last night was the first night of clear skies since the announcement (on October 24) that the comet had suddenly increased in brightness. It’s currently in the constellation of Perseus. It looks just like a star to the naked eye (well, to my naked eye, at least), but a pair of binoculars clearly show it up as a fuzzy ball of light. Lovely! 

  • Sherwin Nuland

    Look. Don’t just click away to the next attraction that the internet has to offer. Watch this personal testimony from Sherwin Nuland, a human phoenix. A wondrous affirmation of the human spirit.
     
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  • Truth Matters

    But obviously not to the Society of Homeopaths. I can’t say that I am surprised.

  • Shared Values

    I think Mr. Eugenides has nailed it. Shared Values? Steve Bell also has a pertinent comment and Peter Tatchell gives chapter and verse.

  • Doom and Gloom

    George Monbiot contributes a thoughtful, but depressing, column to today’s Guardian. It’s on the subject of the worrying environmental trends laid out in the UN’s latest Global Environmental Outlook report, published last week.
     
    His sense of depression is deepened by the fact that he’s been reading Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian novel, The Road. I can’t say I blame him, it’s easy to have feelings of the inevitability of disaster when you mix a potent cocktail of the GEO report and dystopian novels. Ingredients such as Oryx and Crake or The Sheep Look Up when combined with the cold hard facts of GEO4 have a powerful effect on me as well. I become convinced that a pessimist is merely an optimist who is in full possession of the facts. As Monbiot says:
    Civilisation is just a russeting on the skin of the biosphere, never immune from being rubbed against the sleeve of environmental change. 

  • Hop-Tu-Naa

    Growing up in the Isle of Man, we had our own version of Halloween, and ours predated the American version. Hop-Tu-Naa involved carving turnips into lanterns; a much more difficult task than all this effete pumpkin rubbish. More background here, although I am truly saddened by the lacklustre attempts of the children to sing Hop Tu Naa. I don’t even recognise the tune, so badly do they do it. That’s the trouble with the children of today, no sense of tradition…

  • The Robotic Moment

    David Smith ("Ludens") has a thought-provoking piece on his Preoccupations blog. It’s about Sherry Turkle and her views on what she calls "the Robotic Moment" – how the growing encounters that we humans have with cybernetic devices are changing our worldview.
     
    Smith kicks off the piece with an extract from Turkle’s 2006 article for Edge. I remember it well; she has a knack of being able to point to something that is simultaneously simple and profound. I have a copy of Turkle’s book Life on the Screen in my library, and it is stll very good, even though it is now 10 years since it was published. As the blurb says, she explores not only what the computer does for us, but what it does to us. Methinks I should put her new book Evocative Objects onto the wish-list. 
     
    While I’m on the subject of human-computer interaction (HCI), I should perhaps just mention an even older book by Brenda Laurel: Computers as Theatre, published in 1991. Laurel introduced the idea that effective HCI design should be like effective theatre and drama, engaging the user directly in an experience involving both thought and emotion. At the time, her ideas seemed way out, but now, technology and HCI design has caught up with her.

  • The Origami Tradition

    A short Japanese film on the tradition of origami.
     
     
     
    (hat tip to Paper Forest)

  • Anthropomorphism

    Rob posts a useful Anthropomorphism Checklist for those of us curious to see where on the spectrum they might lie.

  • Changing Habits

    Orac points out how much attitudes have changed to cigarette smoking. I find it interesting to watch old films and see how taken for granted smoking was. The contrast with today’s attitudes is very striking. The zeitgeist moves on…

  • The Godfather?

    Somehow, I didn’t expect this as a result; and I went for the full 45 questions as well…
     

  • More Tosh

    I see Mark Vernon has been cranking out tosh again. Not content with this, he’s now come out with another column that leaves me pounding my head on the table. He seems to be saying that awe arising from ignorance is better than awe arising from knowledge. Bizarre. And he quotes with approval Stephen Jay Gould’s hoary old NOMA – Non-Overlapping MAgisteria; a particularly pernicious way of allowing religion to erect "Keep Out" signs around questions of meaning and purpose. 
     
    I see that Jean Kazez has also raised her eyebrows at his column, and Vernon replies in the comments with more waffle. Sometimes I wonder if Vernon secretly hankers for the days when he was a priest. 

  • Songs of Mass Destruction

    It arrived in today’s post. The latest CD from Annie Lennox: Songs of Mass Destruction. It’s playing as I write. Whoo-Hoo – Marvellous! Wonderful! More!
     
    Simply magnificent.

  • What’s Good About Religion?

    I do like Pat Condell’s riffs on religion… I just wish I shared his optimism.
    Update: August 2013. I’ve long stopped watching Condell’s videos. It seems to me he has crossed the line into prejudiced argument. Avicenna puts his finger on it.

  • More Books on the Isle of Man

    I mentioned in the last entry that I’d stumbled across a 1909 book on the Isle of Man that had been scanned in by the University of California. Curious, I’ve just done a search of the Internet Archive, and it’s returned (as of the time of writing) 21 results.
     
    The wonderful thing is that, so far as I’ve checked, a number of them are books belonging to the University of California, and all date from around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
     
    The mystery was explained when I looked at the first book in the list: The Isle of Man, by Joseph E. Morris, published in 1911. The flyleaf has an ex libris sticker that bears the legend The Library of the University of California Riverside; in memory of Professor Henry J. Quayle, presented by Mrs. Fannie Q. Paul, Mrs. Annie Q. Hadley and Mrs. Elizabeth Q. Flowers. I’m delighted to say that I have a copy of this in my own library, although I note that the cover is different from the version owned by Professor Quayle.
     
    So my guess is that Professor Quayle (and that is a really Manx name) taught at UCAL, and then after his death, his three daughters presented some of his Manx books to the library… Judging by the fact that one of the other books is devoted to Trout Fishing, my guess would also be that the good professor enjoyed fishing in his spare time…
     
    And then there is Edward Callow’s Phynodderee, dating from 1882, and held in the New York Public Library. More Manx Folklore! I’m a happy bunny.

  • Isle of Man Guide

    I see that the University of California has scanned a copy of a book originally published in 1909: The Isle of Man, written by Agnes Herbert and illustrated by Donald Maxwell.
     
    Isle of Man 1909 cover 
     
    It’s a fascinating read. Miss Herbert lived on the Island, at least for a time, so she describes the society and customs of the times with probably a greater degree of accuracy than many. She has a rather dry wit as well: 
    A young man introducing a new-found ladye to the man with whom he is holidaying shrouds the presentation in the mystery of, "My friend – my friend." If they are not friends, they are "fiongsays." It is one of the compensations of the lower orders that an engaged couple can go away for a summer holiday together without appreciably disturbing Mrs. Grundy. If this beneficient arrangement could be extended, a much greater knowledge of one’s "fiongsay" could be arrived at, and the dangers of the matrimonial precipice reduced to a minimum. This by the way.
    Inevitably, she has a chapter on Manx Folklore, which, even in my day, was still strong. Nonetheless, it was but a pale shadow of what it must have been like in 1909, but even then, Agnes Hebert detects the waning:
    Every Manx boy and girl of to-day who is born into this world alive starts with a belief in fairies, but nowadays the faith is crushed in early youth. There is nothing to foster it. Romance and lodging-house keeping do not run together. There is no connexion between a seaside landlady and romance. She is quite the most realistic thing in Nature.
    …
     
    I know from personal experience that in the more remote corners of the Isle of Man many of the cottagers believed in fairies and spirits generally, up to twenty years ago. At that time, as a child, I saw much of the natives, and chatted with many old and middle-aged and young who did not doubt the existence of the "little people," ot the "good people," in the least. The word "fairies" was always ostentatiously avoided, as the small sprites were supposed to dislike the use of it exceedingly.
    She translates the Manx word Phynnodderee as troll, but mentions that in Cregeen’s Manx Dictionary, he gives the meaning as "satyr" (which he does, I checked). I can’t help feeling that she is closer to the mark, given the Scandanavian influences that lie deep-rooted in the Island.
     
    All in all, this is a terrific book. Thank goodness for the internet!
     

  • Microsoft and Flickr – Part II

    Recently, I blogged about the facility that Windows Live Photo Gallery has to upload photos into Flickr. This is just a heads up to those of us who care about image metadata (“the truth is in the file”) that not everything is smooth about the upload process. WLPG makes a mapping decision that I find bizarre. I’ve updated the original blog post with the details.