Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2008

  • Following Procedure

    Not unexpectedly, Ama Sumani has died. As Udo Schuklenk writes, free care to medical migrants who make it to our shores seems a small price to pay for the asset-stripping that we do to the talent of the developing world.

  • Vista SP1 Hiccups

    Microsoft released the first Service Pack (SP1) for the Vista family of operating systems a couple of days back. There are two machines running Vista in our house; one reported that SP1 was available to install, the other did not. It turns out that the machine that did not react is behaving perfectly correctly. I have a Logitech webcam installed on that machine, and there is a known conflict between a Logitech driver file and one of the files in SP1. The update process checks for the presence of files that can cause problems on target machines, and does not proceed if it finds a potential problem. I’ll just have to wait until Microsoft resolves this issue.
     
    That’s fine, but what I found disconcerting was the experience I had with the other machine, the one that flagged that it was OK to install SP1.
     
    I gave the OK to install SP1, and the process began. While it lasted a while (about 45 minutes, I think) and included a reboot, that was acceptable. What I don’t think is acceptable is that when the machine was finally up and running, it was clear that, even though a successful upgrade had been reported, something was not right. It turned out that:
     
    • the screen resolution was set to 800 x 600, and could not be set to the proper resolution of 1280 x 800
    • there was no sound
    Both of these were caused because the upgrade process did not use the required specific hardware drivers, but used default drivers from Microsoft. Now, because I’m a geek, I was able to use Vista’s device manager to diagnose and correct the problems by reinstalling the NVIDIA and RealTek drivers for the display and sound hardware respectively. But for the non-geeks amongst us, this would simply be a disaster.
     
    Even more alarming, Windows Update started reporting that it had one more important update to install, but every time it attempted to install it, the process failed with an error code 80070103. Vista’s Help and Support system suggested reinstalling the update (it was an new software driver for the touchpad), but this didn’t help – the process simply reported that the latest software driver was already installed, and meanwhile Windows Update kept on insisting that there was an important update to install. In the end, I had to completely uninstall the touchpad driver manually, and then let Windows Update take over to install the new driver. Once again, I can’t see that non-computer folks would be comfortable about doing this.

  • No Right Answer

    For the geeks amongst us, Joel Spolsky has a terrific post explaining precisely why Microsoft’s IE8 team are damned if they do or damned if they don’t.

  • RIP Arthur

    Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died. Alas, he didn’t live to see his 90th birthday wish granted: seeing evidence of extraterrestial life in his lifetime.
     
    Update: This reminiscence of Arthur from Michael Moorcock strikes me as being a truer appreciation than those other po-faced pieces that I’ve read this last week. Thank god for Moorcock.
     
    Update 2: Timothy Kincaid, over at Box Turtle Bulletin, also publishes an appreciation of Arthur that acknowledges more about the man than more of his "official" obituaries did. I’m only sorry that I’ll be long dead before Clarke’s private papers are revealed to the world in 2058.

  • Pennies From Heaven

    Recently I saw, to my delight, that the DVDs of the 1978 BBC TV series Pennies From Heaven were once again available. I immediately invested, via Amazon, and they duly arrived last week.
     
    I’ve spent the last three nights reliving the glories of Dennis Potter’s creation, which was given magnificent life by the cast of Bob Hoskins, Cheryl Campbell, Gemma Craven, Kenneth Colley, Freddie Jones, Hywel Bennett and many others.
     
    The story lasts over seven hours – something that probably wouldn’t be commissioned in these days of short attention spans – but is worth every moment.
    "It’s looking for the blue, innit, and the gold… The patch of blue sky and the bleeding gold dawn, and the light in somebody’s eyes."
    Close your eyes, stand on one leg, and count to ten, very, very slowly… Perfect in every way.
     
    Oh, and I can’t resist a bit of trivia: the exterior scenes of where Eileen comes to stay in London were shot in Bristol Gardens. The row of shops seen in the film are on one side of the street, and the house where Eileen stands in the window is on the other. The Royal George pub is at the bottom of the street. In Pennies From Heaven, the street is frequented by prostitutes, and I learned later that this was indeed the case in the 1930s when the drama was set.
     
    This was the street where I lived during the late 1970s. At the time, it was very run down. I, and my best friend, put in an offer to buy an old terraced house in the street from the council. Many of the houses had been squatted. We paid the enormous sum for us at the time of £55,000 for a practically derelict house. I hear that a house in the same street recently changed hands for £5 million. How times change, but of course, some things never do.

  • Art For Art’s Sake

    As 10cc once sang: Art for Art’s sake, money for God’s sake…
     
    Alistair mentions, amongst other things, the retrospective of Derek Jarman’s art, and is touched by the passion of the amateur/auteur. I agree, even though I have not seen the retrospective, but simply carry the ever-present memories of Jarman’s art in my head.
     
    Alistair also points to the the foul review by Waldemar Januszczak of Jarman’s retrospective:
    As my 13-year-old daughter muttered harshly as she fled a show that offered her absolutely nothing in the way of shared experiences: “Okay, you’re gay. Now move on.”
    That Januszczak boldly uses this as an excuse for his own shortcomings to understand Jarman is bad enough, but as Alistair perceptively states, it says more about Waldemar Januszczak’s parenting than his daughter’s aesthetic taste.

  • Typefaces

    I see that Typographica has chosen their equivalent of the Oscars: their 25 favourite typefaces of 2007.

  • James Barry

    James Barry was a 19th century surgeon, a legendary duellist and a celebrated social figure. He was also a woman.
     
    This week’s New Scientist has an article that throws new light onto an old mystery. I also highly recommend Patricia Duncker’s novel James Miranda Barry, which takes the bare threads of the known facts and weaves a very satisfying tale out of it.

  • The World’s Oldest Animation…

    … is apparently 5,200 years old. It’s a goat leaping to eat leaves from a tree.

  • Slavery

    It’s the 21st Century. Slavery is alive and well. I despair.

  • A Stroke of Insight

    Jill Bolte Taylor relives the time when she had a stroke, and what happened as a result. Powerful stuff.
     

  • Planet LaLa

    Over at Obscene Desserts, the Wife shakes her head at humanity’s foibles and its cockeyed sense of priorities. Spot on.

  • Cogito, Ergo Sum

    This month’s National Geographic has a, erm, thought-provoking article on the minds of animals. We are not alone.

  • Mehdi Kazemi – Update

    The news is not good.
     
    Further Update: The UK’s home secretary, Jacqui Smith, is to review the case. I’m hoping that this is the light at the end of the tunnel for Kazemi, and not merely the headlights of the oncoming train.

  • The Dark Side

    Delia Smith has been cooking for 39 years. Her cookery programmes have influenced millions, and caused stampedes on ingredients. Last night, her latest series began on BBC2. But what’s this? She’s using convenience foods; opening packets of frozen mashed potato and, horror of horrors, tinned mince. Sam Wollaston sums up the ghastliness of the whole affair in today’s Guardian pretty well.
     
    Delia’s gone over to the Dark Side…
     
    Update: So what does this stuff actually taste like? These folks are not impressed. I don’t think I’ll bother with any of these recipes, thank you very much.

  • Filling the Gaps

    Aphra Behn asks us to mind the gap. I find the topic of cognitive science a fascinating one, even though it often makes my brain hurt.

  • Condensed Films

    Having mentioned one of my all-time favourite films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, over the weekend, I thought you might be interested in this. It’s 2001 condensed down to five seconds, for the benefit of those with an impaired attention span…
     
       
     
    The trouble is, it only really makes sense if you’ve seen the original…
    (hat tip to Phil, over at Bad Astronomer)

  • Knowing Your Death Day

    Now here’s an interesting proposition: would you be willing to take a one-way trip to Mars? I agree with Jim Downey, the one true thing is that we will all die, so, if you could advance the sum of human knowledge by volunteering for a one-way trip to Mars – would you do it?
     
    I’m not sure that I would have the courage to do this, but one thing is for sure, I would not stand in the way of anyone who, in the cold light of day, wanted to do this. I might even, on behalf of our fellow primates, salute them.

  • Craig Venter’s Modest Goals

    Here’s an absolutely fascinating talk given by Craig Venter at last month’s TED conference. This is important work offering great potential.
     
    However, I felt that he ducked one of the implications during the discussion after his presentation. The analogy used by the questioner was to suggest that just as the introduction of Pagemaker in 1985 sparked the revolution in desktop publishing, so Venter’s technology would eventually end up as affordable and available to a wide group of people. Venter was somewhat dismissive of bio-hacking, and seemed to be claiming that what his company does is not something that will end up as DIY genetics. My bet is that he will be proven wrong. 
     

  • City Life

    When I was young, I loved living in cities; the ten years I spent living in London in the 1970s gave me a great buzz. But now, I crave the quiet life. Visiting cities these days makes me feel like a country mouse wanting to scurry back to the open fields, the quiet woods, and the fresh air at the earliest opportunity. Then again, the megacities of today are utterly different from the London I knew thirty years ago.

    It’s also the case that at some point this year, the human race will pass some sort of threshold – for the first time in its history, there will be more people living in cities than not. I find that quite staggering – up along with the statistic that, since I was born, the world’s population has almost trebled from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 6.7 billion last month.

    I’m reminded of this by reading an article in today’s Observer. Deyan Sudjic writes about the current state of the city, and speculates about its future. As well as some positive data points, it also has some sobering passages:

    Cities bring out a lurking paranoia in some people. They see this explosive growth as a tide of slums engulfing the world. Certainly there is plenty to be worried about.

    Half of the 12 million people in Mumbai live in illegal shacks, 200,000 of them on the pavement. Every day, at least two people are killed falling off overcrowded suburban trains. In Mexico City, fewer than four workers in 10 have formal jobs, public transport is largely in the form of mafia-controlled minibuses, and taxis. The last mayor’s response was to build a second tier on the elevated motorway, to allow the rich to speed up their commuting time.

    Johannesburg, with its horrifying levels of violent crime, has seen the affluent quit the city centre for fortified enclaves on its boundaries. As a result, South Africa is leading the world in developing new security techniques for gated housing, built appropriately enough in the style of Tuscan hill towns. Private security is also a divisive a topic in north London where I live where the clatter of police helicopters has become routine. My neighbourhood divides between those who want to install barriers and gates to cut us off from the world outside and those who see such measures as the ultimate negation of what life in a city should be. Despite our anxieties, London is a safe city by world standards. The murder rate is 2.1 for every 100,000 inhabitants. In Johannesburg, it is nine times that figure and you are eight times as likely to be killed in a car crash there. 

    Of course, the article is also a puff-piece for the book that he co-edited being published next week: The Endless City. I’m definitely tempted to get it; perhaps it might shine a few rays of hope on my current feelings about city life. They seem to be closer to the views expressed by Mike Davis in his Planet of Slums.