European Pipe Band Championships 2012

Oh, the week I had...

A week ago last Friday, while LC and I were travelling down to my cousin's wedding (more on which later), the pipe major of the band finally decided that enough was enough, and resigned, effective immediately. To be honest, I couldn't blame him either for doing this or for his timing, nor was it at all surprising. But it did drop me in it, of course.

Over the course of the weekend, before I could get everyone together and try to start rebuilding things, it all kicked off. I guess it's the down-side of things like Facebook - people can say things will an immediacy that wasn't previously available, emails can be sent while angry, and so forth. The upshot was that by the Monday, my already-hard task of getting the band ready for the competition was suddenly that much harder.

So, I spent the week running here and there, speaking to various people, smoothing ruffled feathers, and generally getting things back to some sort of normality.

Anyway, we had two practices, and I was gratified to learn that all the band members who had signed up to go to Ireland were still intending to go to Ireland, and indeed were mostly planning to stick with the band. Unfortunately, though, quite a few people couldn't make it to practices that week - two pipers and more than half of the drum corps were missing. This would come back to bite us.

So, we got ready as best we could. And then, come Friday morning, we got on to the bus at the disgusting hour of 7am. (Which had meant getting up at 5:30, which is pretty evil.)

The journey to Ireland was then mostly uneventful. There was a blessed lack of drunkeness, and things were generally calmer than they had been the previous couple of years. I was actually a lot happier about this trip than I had been.

We arrived at the hotel about 2:30 in the afternoon, got checked in, and spent a little time wandering Belfast city centre, although we had to return to the hotel to avoid a nasty shower. Sadly, the available time wasn't quite enough to do anything meaningful with the time; LC and I will have to return to Belfast some time for a real visit. Later, several members of the band went out for the evening to grab a bite to eat, before returning to the hotel for a pint, and to watch some of the Opening Ceremony (and more on that later, too). And then, bed.

The start of the Saturday did not go well. I had made certain to tell everyone, "meet in reception at 8:45". That gave us plenty of time to get on the bus, get to the competition site, and get set up. 8:45 came and went, and a key member of the band was missing. (We later learned that he hadn't slept well, had therefore slept in, and so was running very late.) After a significant delay, we set off without him.

We got about 300 yards, just far enough to make turning back an impossibility, before we discovered that we didn't have the bus pass needed to get us into the car park. Our travel convenor wasn't on the bus (she had decided to stay in Belfast and join us later), and had forgotten to hand over the pass.

So, we made a call, and she jumped into a taxi to follow us. Meanwhile, the bus carried on, and I desperately hoped they'd let us in anyway... or at least let us unload before banishing the bus. In the event, they let us in... and the travel convenor arrived two minutes later with the now-unnecessary bus pass.

The band were given instructions to gather to get started at 10am. Meanwhile, I went to sign us in and get a programme. And things started to calm down.

We gathered, we proceeded to get ready, and things proceeded... okay. Not great, but okay. This was the point where we really started to suffer from the loss of our previous pipe major, though, because we didn't really have anyone with the expertise to set up the chanters and the drones just so. (For those who aren't experts, a single piper typically has three drones that need to be tuned to match the individual chanter, which can be set to a more-or-less arbitrary frequency; a band requires that all the chanters share the same frequency, and indeed that all the individual notes be adjusted using tape so that they all match, and then that all the drones be set to match.) And the guy who is our next-best option? He was the guy who slept in.

Oh, and of course the people who hadn't made it to the practices were quite far out from where they should have been - an inevitable consequence of missing those practices. So, there was work to be done, and nobody really with the time or expertise to do it. Damn.

About 10:20, our late-sleeping member arrived in a taxi, and started to get ready at some speed. Ten minutes later, we moved round from the bus park to the tuning field, and had our final tuning. The net result? We knew there was still a lot to be done with the pipes, but just had to go with it. But the play... I was reasonably happy with the play. Anyway, the steward came, so it was time to go on.

I remember very little after that. I remember messing up the command to halt (pipe bands, unlike the BB, don't use check-paces, which means everything I know is wrong). I remember shaking as I told the band to relax and enjoy it. And I remember being enormously relieved when it was all over. That's about it.

To be honest, I was delighted just to get on and play. So, once the band was off the competition field, I made sure to thank and congratulate everyone. And then, we waited - because that was just the qualification round, and we might have to do it all again later.

Well, no such luck. They announced the results at 12:30, and we didn't make the cut. This wasn't really a surprise - in Ireland, against all the Irish bands (who are generally very good) it was always going to be a challenge, and that was before the pipe major quit. With that, and everything else we'd been fighting against...

LC and I went for lunch at this point, and ate far too much. We also proceeded to get both rained on and sunburnt, because that was the sort of day it was.

At 2:30, they released the commentary sheets. There were thirteen bands in our qualifying heat, and we were last. We came 11th and 13th in piping, 10th in drumming, and 11th in ensemble. But, to be honest, I wasn't bothered by that in the slightest - I take the view that only the qualifying positions matter, and that the difference between 7th and last is essentially meaningless. (Incidentally, of the six qualifiers from our heat, 5 were Irish. Of the prize-winners in our grade, all six were Irish. That's not a complaint, merely an observation - as I said, the Irish bands are very good.)

What was surprisingly reassuring, though, was the commentary on the feedback sheets. Both judges put a great deal of emphasis on the pipes not really being set up correctly. Which sounds bad, but is actually a good thing - both because we knew that, and also because it's a mechanical thing which is quite easy to fix. The other thing they said was that the play was quite nervy, which is also not surprising. It is, of course, difficult to get people to relax in a situation than that... but I guess that's what we'll need to do.

But the important thing was that this was not the critical mauling that I had feared. And it gives us a platform from which to proceed. If we can get the pipes set up better for the Worlds (which should be easy enough), and if we can just get a bit of confidence into the play, that by itself will be enough for a better result.

The rest of the afternoon dragged past slowly. It would have been good at this point to gather the band back on the bus, return to the hotel, and call it a day at that. Unfortunately, we had sold a number of seats to another band, and they had qualified, so we were stuck there. (There might have been options, but we didn't explore them. Perhaps a mistake.) Still, we waited, and then we did the march past, and then we waited some more. It was somewhat heartening to see two of our local bands win the Grade 2 and Grade 1 contests. Congratulations to them.

We eventually got back to the hotel, LC and I had showers, and then we went for dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was okay. And then we went to bed.

The journey home was largely uneventful, although a few people had a few too many. Still, we got home without any fights, without any travel sickness, and without any great trouble. While on the ferry, I spoke to the committee, and said that I want to lead the band out at both the Worlds and Cowal (since I won't get another chance), but that I'm not a candidate for taking over permanently.

My current plan is to remain in position on an interim basis, until the band finds a new permanent PM. At that point, it is my intention to fade out of the band - firstly by reducing my attendance at practices and by not competing, and then later by giving up my various responsibilities altogether at the end of next year. I've come to the unfortunate realisation that the only time I've really been happy at the band recently is when the PM has been away and I've been in charge... but that I'm also not the right person to take the band forward (and don't have the time or energy besides). So, for the good of the band I have to step aside, but for the good of myself, I don't really want to work with another pipe major (whoever that may be).

There are now two competitions remaining. The Bridge of Allan Highland Games have been cancelled, and any effort to put together a band for a contest on the Saturday have failed (can't say I mind that). That leaves the World Championships in two weeks, and then the dread Cowal in four weeks. After that, the band will take several weeks off, before returning for our AGM.

There was one other really good thing that came out of the weekend: I finally finished "Clear and Present Danger"!

#24: "Clear and Present Danger", by Tom Clancy (the worst book of the year to date)
#25: "Pathfinder: The Island of Empty Eyes", by Neil Spicer
#26: "Pathfinder: The Price of Infamy", by Time Hitchcock

The Dark Knight Rises

Lady Chocolat and I went to see this on Friday, shortly before jumping in the car for a long drive down to England. The short version of my review: it's an outstanding film, and you should go and see it now.

The film is exceptionally well-made. The cast is universally excellent, the special effects are seamless, and all in all it's just about perfect. There are a couple of issues with the sound - firstly, the score is so loud that both LC and I left with headaches that took quite some time to subside; and some of the dialogue from Bane can be hard to follow at times. Which is a shame, because this Bane is very different from the one in "Batman & Robin", and actually has significant dialogue.

Some of the early reviews of this film have claimed that the film is almost incoherent. I can only presume that the reviewers weren't paying attention, or perhaps didn't realise that this was a film that actually has a plot, beyond the standard action-movie excuses for blowing things up. Either that, or they just didn't like it, but wanted to dress that up in fancy words. But actually, the film hangs together extremely well, with characters having actual motivations, with the twists being both surprising at the time and yet obvious in hindsight, and with the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

"The Dark Knight Rises" is very much a piece with "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" (such that if you didn't see those films, don't bother watching this one). It's also very definitely the conclusion of a trilogy - this film picks up dangling plot threads from the first and second film, resolves some and continues others, but it also generally comes to an end. I can see a way for them to continue the story if they so wished... but if they never do then it will remain entirely satisfying and complete.

Now, about that plot... (I'm going to avoid spoilers, so feel free to read on.)

I found the first half or so of the film almost unwatchably painful, but in a good way - the director and actors did a marvellous job in setting the scene, in gradually stripping away all the comforts that normally surround Bruce Wayne/Batman, and in generally taking things to a very, very dark place. It's rough, it's horrible, and it made me want to run screaming from the cinema. I don't think any other film has ever had quite that impact on me (even "The Descent", the only film so scary I had to pause it and take a break).

And then there's the Rise. Because, of course, this is a superhero film, and the end of a trilogy - it's just not done to drop down into Hell and then stop there (though that would be awesome). Without going into spoiler territory, I can't say much more than that, but I can say that I found the conclusion of the film to be suitably epic, to be extremely satisfying, and to make a lot of sense within the context of the film. Good stuff.

I do have three nitpicks with the plot, but I can't go into them without spoilers. So if you want to know, ask me about it some time. They are really nitpicks, though, and don't have too much impact on the whole.

The big question remains, though: is this better than "Avengers Assemble"? And the answer is yes... and no... and yes... and no. Basically, it's like asking which is better: a hammer or ice cream - they're so fundamentally different, and each so excellent in their own way, that it's really not possible to pick a winner. I enjoyed AA more... but found DKR more satisfying as a whole.

Ultimately, I'm just glad we have both. Truly, fans of superheroes have been spoiled this year.

This Weekend, I...

This weekend I finally contacted Sky and cancelled my contract. Which I feel is quite quick and efficient, given that I've only been talking about it for about three years, since "Lost" and "24" ended. The guy on the phone did try to talk me around, but he didn't try very hard - a 25% discount for 6 months really doesn't bridge a 168-hour gap in their weekly schedule. The one thing I will miss is the ability to record things - will need to look into some sort of Freeview/Freeset recorder.

This weekend I mentally checked out of band. Just as I thought things were getting better the battlelines were drawn again. And I'm not interested in fighting to make things better if I'm doing it alone. There needs to be a spirit of compromise, or there's no point. (It doesn't help that I haven't been enjoying the playing side for the couple of months since Dunbar, and I'm certainly not enjoying the administration side.) I don't really want to leave, as I feel this is as much my band as anyone's, but it's come to a point where I don't want to stay either. So, I'll give them until the end of the season, but if things don't dramatically improve, I'll be walking away at that point.

This weekend I tried to spend the gift vouchers I got for my birthday, with mixed success. The HMV gift card went on the blu-ray of the "Muppets" movie, which remains good fun. I especially enjoyed all the parody trailers on the disc, and also the previews for "Brave" and "Planes". The deleted scenes were a mixed bag, but mostly I was glad that the plot of the show was changed, leading to their removal.

However, I failed to use my Waterstone's vouchers. The store in Falkirk had one book I decided I wanted, but I decided to try the one in Glasgow and pick it up there. The store in Glasgow didn't have the book in question (typical), and while it did have a book I was kinda-sorta interested in... I decided to hold onto the vouchers and consider using them later. After all, there's no rush. (Ironically, the book I do want is "Conquerer" by Conn Iggulden, which comes out in paperback today. However, Tesco will probably have it for £3, rather than the £8 price at Waterstone's. So, no voucher there.)

This weekend I went to the Kelvingrove museum, where I had all sorts of great ideas for the next chapter of the game. Which is lucky, since I was supposed to do two hours of prep work this weekend, and utterly failed.

This weekend, Lady Chocolat and I rewatched "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight", in preparation for Batman-day. Surprisingly, I found I enjoyed the first of the two more than the second; although "The Dark Knight" is an outstanding film, and Heath Ledger in particular is brilliant, it was extremely long and actually felt quite tiring. However, I don't know what they could consider removing to improve it, since everything in the film is essential to the film. I'm also a little concerned that "The Dark Knight Rises" may be labouring under "Phantom Menace"-level expectations; between the first two films in the trilogy, and the need to beat "Avengers Assemble", it has a massive job to do.

This weekend, we also played through a significant portion of "Lego Pirates of the Caribbean". It was good fun, except for one particularly frustrating section. (Seriously, three-dimensional jumping puzzles on a two-dimensional screen, when you don't have control over the camera? Whose idea was that?) We've now made our way through "Dead Man's Chest", which managed to be better than the film, in the same manner as the first "Lego Star Wars" game.

This weekend, I got a haircut. It's funny how you don't realise how untidy it has become until it gets tidied up.

And that's pretty much it. For all that this weekend was supposed to be a really quiet one, we got an awful lot done. And it was mostly good. Mostly.

They're Building a Helipad at Roses

Okay, so I spent most of yesterday depressed, bored, and angry. You may have noticed.

Fortunately, the band had a gig yesterday at which it appeared that the clouds are beginning to lift. We even managed to find the half hour this week when it stopped raining. (Next week's break in the rain is scheduled for the Saturday...)

Anyway, LC has made me promise to make today's blog post (or posts) light-hearted and funny. So, reform of the House of Lords, then...

As for the title of this post. In Edinburgh at the moment, there are roadworks on Quality Street.

All That's Wrong? No. But Something That's Wrong...

So, a few weeks ago, the headteacher at a private girls' school described a cover of Zoo magazine featuring Kim Kardashian as "all that's wrong with society". She then went on to explain her reasoning on the Guardian's "Comment is Free" page. (To be honest, I wouldn't bother reading the article. Her premise is correct, but as with so much on the Comment is Free site, the reasoning is sloppy.)

Anyway, I considered posting a rant about it at the time, but then decided against.

However, yesterday Amy Childs (apparently of "The Only Way is Essex" 'fame') weighed into the discussion, leaping to the defence of Kardashian. And rather spectacularly managing to shoot her point in the foot by not actually understanding what she was arguing against.

See, the point that the headteacher was making was not "Kim Kardashian is all that's wrong with society", it was "this picture of Kim Kardashian is all that's wrong with society". So, in defending KK (and, by extension, other reality 'stars' like herself), she actually defended her against a charge that had not been made. (Her defence was also incorrect, but I'll get to that.)

Now, as for my original rant...

Clearly, neither Kim Kardashian nor the Zoo cover picture of the same is all that's wrong with society. There is, after all, plenty of blame to go around.

However, the wider point remains valid - Zoo's approach to rating women purely on 'sexiness', and further in boiling that quality down to a number to be rated (which in any case is nothing more than a thinly-veiled excuse for printing pictures of scantily-clad women for their readership to ogle), really is both sexist and demeaning (to all concerned).

But, of course, Zoo is far from alone in this. In fact, our society is soaked in this imagery, and the attitudes that drive it. After all, although I haven't seen Zoo's list, I can confidently predict that it amounts to the standard list of this year's pop stars, reality 'stars', actresses, and soft-porn stars. All of whom are required to do photo-shoots wearing relatively little to drive their careers - Rihanna, for example, is actually a relatively capable singer, but you'd be hard-pressed to spot it given that she's required to spend most of her act looking and acting like a stripper.

(And, of course, the poster child for this is Abi Titmuss, who gave up a career as a nurse in order to become a soft-porn star. For which she was rewarded with money, fame, and more respect than she had had previously. If that doesn't show just how fucked up our priorities are, I don't know what does.)

But let's not think this is all about men, and men's magazines, and men's entertainment. After all, Rihanna is marketed at teenage girls. "The Only Way is Essex" and "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" are made for, and overwhelmingly watched by, women.

And then there's the fashion industry, which appears to be run by men who hate women, which employs almost obscenely thin models who are then required to torture themselves for their 'art'... and which has a business model driven by women. The reason the fashion industry uses stick-thin models is that women are more likely to buy clothes modelled by thin women.

Or the cosmetics industry, which now presents women with an image of beauty that is literally impossible, invites women to recognise that they don't measure up, and then suggests that their products will 'fix' these alleged imperfections. (But then, if the model in the ad is wearing hair extensions, or eyelash inserts, or... why would people buy into these outright lies. And yet they do, which is why they do it.)

Or the diet industry, which again is largely based on lies. "Special K" is advertised to women... and does so using a scantily-clad woman who didn't get that figure simply by eating "Special K". Or, of course, there's the glossy magazines with their weekly "miracle diets" that promise painless, fast weight loss. If they work at all, they're based on deeply unhealthy habits. (Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if I saw the headline "Is the miracle diet we told you about two weeks ago killing you?" Because the answer, quite often, would be 'yes'.)

Fundamentally, these industries have based their entire business model on making women hate themselves. It's deeply unpleasant... and yet women buy into it in disturbing numbers.

(Returning to Zoo and its ilk for the moment, I'm at something of a loss as to what should be done. See, freedom of expression is really important, even speech we don't like. And nobody is being forced to do these shoots - if women choose to do so, they should have that right. So, ultimately, what needs to change is that the women involved will have to stop consenting to their own objectification. I don't like leaving it at that, but alas that's where I think I have to stand.)

Of course, men aren't exempt from attempts to make them hate themselves so they'll buy product. Take a look at the likes of "Men's Health" magazine, and you'll see much the same thing - miracle workout routines to build muscle fast (coupled with cover models who didn't get that way following those routines). And, of course, the advert with David Beckham posing in his underwear, complete with computer-enhanced 'package', is not even a little different from the "Special K" model. It's just taking longer, but we're getting there - more and more boys are developing eating disorders, seeking out cosmetic surgery, and buying all manner of 'product' - basically, falling into exactly the same self-destructive behaviours that the glossy magazine/diet/cosmetic/fashion industries have been driving women to for decades.

Now, as for Amy Childs...

A key part of her defence of Kim Kardashian was that reality stars "aren't doing anyone any harm". (Incidentally, Jordan has used the same argument in the past regarding herself.)

Except that they are. Every time a girl gets herself a boob job rather than an education, every time she aspires to be a talentless zelebrity rather than a teacher (or nurse, or scientist, or astronaut, or...), every time she throws herself at a footballer* rather than having the self-respect to want something better, she is being harmed - especially for the overhwelming majority who don't 'make it' and so don't get to live the life of the rich and famous.

* Not that there's anything wrong with footballers. It's the "throwing herself" part that's the issue.

And Kim Kardashian is particularly destructive, since to Keep Up with her you need to start immensely rich, with at least minor fame in the family. Simply putting out a sex tape isn't enough - without the money and famous name, that just makes you a porn star.

(And, of course,all the above applies equally to boys. Except perhaps the boob job. And the footballer.)

I've gone on too long. But this is an issue that really pisses me off. We've almost completely failed those even just a few years younger than myself. And it's getting worse.

The Centre Cannot Hold

Problems continue to brew at the band. Morale is at a very low ebb, several of the relationships are breaking down, and the competition season is going badly, and so failing to distract everyone from everything that's going wrong.

Still, with a bit of luck the tide is starting to turn. The reality is that we're all in this together, and nobody benefits if the band collapses. So, hopefully we can start to mend those fences before things go too far.

Of course, it would help if everyone was on the same page about how things were supposed to work...

The management of the band is really made up of two parts, neither of which can function on its own, and neither of which is truly independent. These are the playing side and the administrative side. The committee is supposed to be made up of both.

A single person can fill two or more roles on the committee and in the band. However, the committee should be at least 10 people strong, with a quorum of half the membership required for a meeting to take place. (Due to various factors, our current committee is reduced to 8, with only 5 regularly able to attend meetings. Yes, this is one of the problems we're currently facing.)

On the Playing Side

The key people on the playing side are as follows:

• The Pipe Major: The Pipe Major is in overall charge of the band. He's responsible for setting the musical direction of the band, for choosing the tunes, for teaching the band, and for generally getting the band ready for events and competitions. As a practical manner, the Pipe Major must also liase closely with every other member of the committee, as everyone will need to bounce ideas off him. The Pipe Major is elected by the band at the AGM, although this tends to be a formality as there is usually only one real choice.
• Pipe Sergent(s): In short, the Pipe Sergent steps in when the Pipe Major is unavailable. In general, the PS is in charge only on a temporary basis, so shouldn't be making any sweeping decisions! The Pipe Sergeants are appointed by the Pipe Major.
• Lead Drummer: Just as the Pipe Major selects scores and teaches the pipers, so to does the Lead Drummer select scores and teaches the drum corps. The Lead Drummer is appointed by the Pipe Major.
• The band also (officially) has a Development Band, with its own Pipe Major and Lead Drummer, although this has fallen by the wayside this year. Again, these individuals are appointed by the Pipe Major.

It should probably be noted that most of the members on the playing side are appointed, rather than elected, to maintain consistency in the musical direction of the band.

On the Administrative Side

All posts on the administrative side are elected by the band at the AGM. In the event that a member steps down, a replacement should be elected at an EGM by the band, although in some cases the committee may continue without.

• Chairperson: As the name implies, the chairperson chairs committee meetings. Essentially, that is his only job.
• Secretary: Simply put, the secretary's job is "communication". He should be dealing with all external communications, making sure that the band responds to equiries about events promptly, dealing with RSPBA registrations, competition entry fees, child-protection disclosure, and so on. Additionally, he should ensure that the band members are kept informed of what they need to know. The secretary's job is one of the biggest in the band, and probably the one that most often fails to get the recognition it deserves.
• Treasurer: Handles the money. This person should keep track of moneys in and moneys out, ensuring that the band always has the funds it needs, and making sure that we don't over-extend ourselves.
• Travel Convenor: With the band attending several competitions, including a trip to Ireland, and so requiring buses, we have a dedicated Travel Convenor. The role of this person also covers finding a venue for practices, and indeed a replacement venue if the original is closed for any reason. Quartermaster: Handles the uniforms, instruments, and other "physical assets" of the band. This person should be the go-to person for getting new members kitted out, should be the person who recovers outstanding kit from members when the leave, and should keep track of what we have and what we need to continue fielding the band. In theory, the QM should also conduct twice-annual kit inspections, and so should ensure that members are keeping kit in appropriately good condition.
• Representatives: We have a Parent's Rep as a matter of course, and also appoint Piper's and Drummer's Reps as required to bring the committee up to the required strength. As the names imply, the job of the Reps is to speak for their respective constituents, ensuring that any concerns that they have are appropriately addressed.
• Honorary President: Until April 9th of this year, the band also had an Honorary President. The Hon Pres had no particular job, but was appointed for life to reflect many years of long service. It is not expected that we will have another Hon Pres any time soon.
• Fund-raising: Additionally, we have a couple of people who are supposed to coordinate fund-raising activities. In practice, these have ended up being responsible for fund-raising activities, but that's actually not their role. After all, the entire band benefits from funds raised, and so the entire band has a responsibility in this area.

So, the way it should work:

1. A member of the committee recognises that something in their area needs to be dealt with. For example, maybe the QM recognises that we need new drums as the existing ones have become quite old.
2. The member determines specifically what needs to be done, and in what time frame. For example, "we need 6 drums, they'll cost £80 each, and we need them by the start of next season."
3. The committee member brings the issue up at the next committee meeting (or, if it's urgent, calls an immediate meeting to resolve the issue). In particular, if significant amounts of money must be spent (more than £100), this must be voted on by the committee.
4. Once the required action has been authorised, the committee member should proceed to resolve the issue. In the example, the Quartermaster would thus source the required drums, ensure that they are suitable (by speaking to the Lead Drummer), and thus proceed with the purchase. The QM should not need to return to the committee for further authorisation unless the issue turns out to be significantly different from that discussed. (For example, if it turns out we need 8 drums instead of 6, or they cost £120 each, or...)

And that, broadly speaking, is how it should work. The reality is somewhat different... (Oh, and incidentally - the example I used is just that. It doesn't reflect any issue the band is currently having, and shouldn't be read as a metaphor for anything.)

Tom Clancy

Reading "Clear and Present Danger" is an interesting experience. I've seen the film, of course, which I thought was okay but not great. However, as far as I can tell, the novel isn't about Jack Ryan - when making the film, they repurposed it to star Harrison Ford. (Interestingly, I think they did the same with "The Sum of All Fears", despite that not starring Harrison Ford. Why not just cast Ben Affleck as the character who was the actual protagonist of the novel?)

However, that's not the 'interesting' part.

What I'm finding interesting is that Clancy is very obviously a real expert in his subject matter. He clearly knows boats, and the operations of the US Coast Guard, and the nature of military life, and something of politics. There's very definitely an authority to his writing; he knows whereof he speaks.

Unfortunately, it seems that what he doesn't know is how to write.

His characters are all given long and detailed backstories... and very little by way of distinct characteristics. They tend to be defined by their jobs, and all tend to be one-of-a-kind individuals who are near-legendary in their fields. And, curiously, they all seem to have a "beautiful young wife", possibly a couple of lovely children, plus (and this is important) a selection of mistresses. Because that's an important detail - I presume that later in the novel two characters will have a conversation about their respective mistresses. (Perhaps trading them like football stickers - "got, got, need, doubler, got...")

Likewise, his descriptions of mundane events are full of all sorts of fabulous details about how things work, and how the organisations operate. Fantastic. Except that it slows the pace down to a crawl. Oh, and also, when something actually does happen, the details tend to be glossed over rather quickly - presumably because at that point he doesn't know whereof he speaks, and so can't write with the same authority.

It's frustrating - I think there is quite an entertaining story under there, once I wade through all the extraneous detail. But then, it's quite likely that this is one of those cases where the film really is better than the book.

Means Tested Benefits

In principle, all benefits should be means-tested. After all, the government raises a limited amount of money via taxation, and it's better that that goes to those who really need it. In particular, if a person over the age of 60 has not yet retired, they can probably buy their own bus pass.

In practice, if it costs more to perform the means-testing than is saved by performing that check, then it's better to just pay the money out. Call it an efficiency saving.

(It's also worth noting that if you means-test for a benefit, a lot of people will therefore refuse to apply at all, as a point of pride. They don't want to be thought of as a burden on society. However, I'm disinclined to give that argument much weight, especially given the "it costs more than it saves" argument. That said, I'm also inclined to think that people generally shouldn't have to apply for benefits - in general, they should just be sent out as soon as they're eligible. Again, as a matter of principle, although I daresay the practicalities of this make it impossible.)

Not as Good as I Remembered

For my birthday, my various siblings each got me money, which seems like a really dull present, but which actually allowed me to pool all that money and invest in the "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" blu-ray sets. Which is excellent.

Of the Harry Potter films, I've long considered "Chamber of Secrets" to be my favourite. I also like "Order of the Phoenix" and "Deathly Hallows, Part 2". The rest I generally consider quite flawed - "Philosopher's Stone" is too close to the source material, and so too long, while "Goblet of Fire" and "Half-blood Prince" each compress the story far too much, and so lose a great deal in the translation. "Deathly Hallows, Part 1" is just a waste of two and a half hours. (That leaves "Prisoner of Azkaban", which may well be the best of all, technically speaking. I just found the change in tone a bit too jarring - it wasn't what I expected after CoS, and I've never really cared for it as a result.)

On Saturday night, LC and I sat down and watched the first half of Chamber of Secrets, and I was dismayed to find that it just wasn't as good as I remembered. It's likely a result of seeing them grow up, and thus advance in their craft, but the three lead child-actors are actually quite painful to watch here. And while the story remains excellent, the film just takes too long to get to the point - by the time we gave up and went to bed, Harry had only just found Riddle's book, and by that point we'd already watched 90 minutes, with another hour to go.

It's a real shame. Still, perhaps the other films will have grown on me instead? Indeed, I'll have to give PoA another look, as the tone might fit my more cynical view better...

#23: "Snuff", by Terry Pratchett (excellent book; his best in years. Still, not the book of the year.)

The Princess and the Piper

I'm the one that looks like me.

In case you're wondering, we talked about the band's support for the Seagull Trust, and also the weather.

Three Facts

1) We have a 'moat' at work. Actually, it's a little stream, over which there are two small bridges.

2) Due to extremely heavy rains, the moat flooded today. My shoes are utterly soaked, and I've had to wash both my socks and shoes.

3) I can't post the picture that proves this, for important legal reasons.

Outlook 'help'

I'm a bit confused: what exactly is the point of a Help system that isn't automatically set up when the program is installed, that then takes an age to install when you need it (so that you can Google the answer much more quickly), and that then requires a restart of the PC before it can actually be used (thus forcing you to abandon what you were doing before it can help you do whatever it was)?

Independence Day

I would just like to note that I've been keeping careful watch, and there's been no sign of the aliens taking off from Bonnybridge. Also, Bill Pullman isn't yet president.

So the apocalyptic future so chillingly promised in the film won't be coming true. Well, not this year at least.

(Of course, that's assuming that their predictions weren't superseded by those they made in 2012. But I haven't yet heard any reports of the neutrinos having mutated, so I think we're okay.)

The British Pipe Band Championships 2012

Saturday was my birthday, and I got to spend it in an uncomfortable bus, reading the latest Terry Pratchett novel. Not exactly my ideal day, I'm afraid to say. Still, it could have been worse...

The day started at 6am, which is a totally unacceptable time to be getting up at the weekend. LC and I made ready, and then wandered down to the pick up for the bus. The bus was late, although not unbearably so. And so, we were off to Annan!

On the journey down, I finished off the latest Pathfinder and then started in on "Snuff", which turns out to be a really solid read. And then, a scant two hours later, we were in Annan. Here, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the promised rains were not in evidence, although the field was a bit of a bog.

So, we made ready, we played, and it was okay - probably our best performance of the year. Still, on hearing it played back from the video LC made, I was pretty sure it was not a prize-winning performance.

The rest of the day was the usual tedious waiting. There was one short shower, but otherwise it was a reasonable day. Still, we spent most of the day hiding in the bus and reading.

And then there was the march-past, which seemed to take an age to get started, but which was fairly brisk once we were moving. And, sure enough, the band did not win a prize. In fact, we did rather poorly: 7th and 16th in piping, 11th in drumming, and 14th in ensemble, and 15th overall, out of 17 bands in our grade. (Actually, this was comparable to last year.)

We made our way home, getting in just before 10pm. LC then headed out to get some takeaway, while I got changed. Then we watched the end of the tennis, and that was that.

All in all, a fairly disappointing day. It's also quite dispiriting, in that we're clearly not going to get anywhere this season. Fortunately, there are now only four competitions remaining: the minor at Bridge of Allan, plus the majors in Belfast, Glasgow, and Dunoon. After that, I'm going to be giving some serious thought to the question of whether I want to compete or not next year.

#22: "Pathfinder: Tempest Rising", by Matthew Goodall

Equal Pay for Women Tennis Players

Ah, good. Once again, the arguments over equal pay for women tennis players have been raised.

Now, in a sane universe, it would be simple: men and women should be paid the same money for the same work. Period.

However, in this instance there actually are some sane arguments to be made:

• Firstly, and most obviously, male players play five sets in the major tournaments, while female players play only three.
• As a direct consequence of this, female players can play a couple of additional competitions during the year, and so supplement their income.
• It's also true that tennis is actually unusual in that the female athletes typically do have higher earnings than their male counterparts - they tend to significantly supplement their income by modelling and the like.
• The prize money from the competition comes from audience attendance and TV rights. And, like it or not, the male competition is the bigger draw.

(Of course, there's another argument, which suggests that these are all hugely-paid, extremely priviledged athletes, who have fabulous non-jobs. So, really, arguments over whether they get half a million dollars or a million dollars for two weeks' 'work' are pretty disgusting. But then, it's a matter of principle, so...)

For me, here's what it comes down to: tennis is one of very few sports where the women's game enjoys a comparable profile to the men's. Most sports, if there is a women's competition at all, essentially treat it as a poor cousin - tournaments are held separately, they tend not to be televised, they don't get the same sponsorship, and so on. (Athletics is another fairly egalitarian sport, but tennis has a much higher profile.)

Since tennis is the shining example in this regard, I would argue that it really should take the opportunity to strike the blow for equality across the board.

And so, yes, female competitors should receive the same prize money as the males. That's only right. (And at all competitions, not just the major tournaments.)

But what's also right is that they should compete under the same parameters as the men - that is, best of five sets at the majors. (Alternately, have the men play best of three sets at the majors. Either works, but it should be the same.)

That negates the "they do less" argument, and it also eliminates any argument that they can equalise their earnings by playing more competitions. I don't accept the argument that the women earn more due to modelling and sponsorship as being relevant - that's a side issue (and, anyway, represents extra 'work'). And neither do I accept the "TV rights" argument, as a few years ago the men's game was in a slump (being dominated by the big servers, and so utterly dull) while it was the women's game that was interesting - so that one's swings and roundabouts.

I also don't accept the argument that the men's game is about power/endurance while the women's game is about skill. After all, the entire reason that the Williams sisters dominated women's tennis for so long was precisely because of power. And, of course, that grunting that has so destroyed the women's game is allegedly about power. (Though I suspect that's what we call a 'lie'. These days, it's almost certainly more about getting a psychological edge.)

Fundamentally, though, as long as women get lower prize money or they play fewer sets, the argument will persist from one side or the other. The only way to end it is to equalise both. Conveniently, that's also the right thing to do.

There Are Two Things Nobody Expects...

1. The Spanish Inquisition
2. Zombie Epidemic
3. Snails on the Car

Three things! There are three things nobody expects...

(Yes, this morning when I went out to the car, I found that a snail had taken up residence on one of the wheel arches. Yes, it was just as disgusting as you might imagine.)

The Best Headline Ever

File this one under "things you don't expect", along with the Spanish Inquisition:

On the front cover of the Metro free newspaper there was the ultimate headline: "Zombie Epidemic". I read on with a mixture of trepidation and delight - should I get a shotgun and Queen, or was this about a new film being produced in Scotland?

It turned out the answer was neither. Apparently, the women of Scotland are abusing tranquilisers and sedatives in large numbers.

I don't think I've ever been so disappointed that the apolcalypse isn't upon us.

Why England Will Never Win the World Cup (again)

At the outset: despite the title, this post is neither about England nor is it about football. It's actually about Britain as a whole and... education? priviledge? class? I'm not sure, but it's not about football.

The short version: the reason England will never again win the football World Cup is that they don't really want to.

Now, on the face of it, that's absurd. Go ask any Englishman who follows football at all, and he'll tell you that of course they want to win it. Ask any Englishman involved in the game, and he'll tell you that of course they want to win it. Ask any UK politician in the Tory, Labour or Lib Dems, and he'll tell you that of course they want to win it. (And by all means replace 'man' with 'woman' and 'he' with 'she'.)

But there's a difference between wanting something and wanting something, at least to the point of actually doing something about it. And England don't, and won't.

The thing is, England has a population of about 60 million people. So, even if a world class player is a one-in-a-million commodity, England should have plenty of them to make up a squad.

England have, what, two?

When assembling his side for the Euros, Roy Hodgson had a very small number of players to choose from. He could put together a somewhat decent squad. But the bulk of those who were eligible were, quite frankly, not good enough. And when those who were good enough started to drop out injured, there just wasn't any reserve to call on.

Fundamentally, something is broken at the grass-roots level - young players are not being produced in sufficient numbers and in sufficient quantity. Nothing like it, in fact. Even the "Golden Generation" were never good enough, nor were they numerous enough. Frankly, there should be two or three new players coming through every year, not the dribble currently in evidence.

But why is this? Why is it that Spain can produce seemingly-endless crops of new talent, including the best players in the world? Why does Italy, with massive economic problems, a somewhat dodgy league, and a smaller population, manage to produce where England does not?

And for the answer, look at those sports in which England do excel. And look at the schools attended by the participants. What schools did the England rugby team attend? The cricket team? Our rowers? How many of our Olympic athletes were educated either privately or in otherwise-exclusive schools?

I believe that's the crux of it. In those sports in which England genuinely is at or near the top in the world, it's because the private schools attended by the athletes provide the required training facilities. Football, being the sport of the masses, recruits youngsters who attend our state schools, which have nowhere near the same investment, and so nowhere near the same facilities or training staff.

And the same applies to Scotland, of course. You can bet that if Andy Murray was born in Govan, he wouldn't now be the world #4 in tennis - it's likely the only time he would have picked up a racquet would be to batter someone with it. You see the same thing in piping contests - all the prizes in the junior grades go to private schools. It's just that Scotland will never have any chance at the World Cup, so I don't get that emotive headline. :)

Now, having said that, I'm not convinced that anything should be done about this. After all, football is also a private enterprise. And I don't really want to see massive amounts of taxpayers' money spent on enabling a tiny minority of ill-educated young men become obscenely rich.

But if England really want to win the World Cup, they need to find a way to square the circle. Either get the private schools playing football in preference to other sports (yeah, right), or encourage and allow the big clubs to inject large amounts of money into training facilities for state schools (and supply the training staff, too). Or something.

Because the current strategy - of having kids from poor backgrounds have kick-abouts on ever-shrinking green belt land, when they aren't otherwise engaged in video games or other frivolities, occasionally organised by well-meaning amateurs (hampered, of course, by our much-needed Child Protection systems), and then massively rewarding the tiny minority that make it - yeah, the current strategy isn't working, and never will.

A Note For My Doctor

On Saturday, LC answered the phone and received an automated message from our doctor's surgery. It's rather lucky that she was the one who answered the phone that time.

Here's the thing: when I answer the phone, 90% of the time it's somebody I don't want to talk to. If it's an automated call, I will always hang up as quickly as I realise that that is what it is. And if the first words spoken are "please don't hang up..." or "this is an important message..." then I'll still hang up as quickly as I am able. The advertisers use those words in a vain attempt to persuade us to listen to their garbage, but I refuse.

What this means is that if you have an important message for me, and you must deliver it be telephone, then you must call me in person. A machine cannot do this, at all, ever. Feel free to blame the advertisers for this; personally, I think it's a disgrace. But if it's important, you'll need to recognise the reality that there is literally nothing that a machine can phone to tell me that I am interested in hearing.

And while I'm on the subject of telesales calls: no, I don't believe "Richard" from Mumbai is using his real name. (I recognise the possibility... but in this instance I don't believe it.) In which case, he's opening his call with a blatant and obvious lie - just why would I consider trusting anything he says thereafter, and why would I consider doing business with any company who won't even show me the basic respect of not lying to me in this manner?

#21: "Death of Kings", by Bernard Cornwell (excellent book - the best of the year so far by miles)

Tax Avoidance

I get really quite annoyed when the media talk about Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion as if they are the same thing. They're really not.

Here's how it works: the government of the day set a number of rules up, determining how we must all pay tax, and also how much we must all pay. And so, we proceed to pay tax by those rules.

Now, if you are rich, and therefore have access to high-powered accountants (and, let's face it, tax havens), then you get to poke around in all those rules, and thus minimise the tax that you have to pay. You're obeying all the rules, but you're avoiding any tax that the government would be quite happy to take, but don't actually require you to pay.

(In other words, if the rules say you must pay £100, then a tax avoider will make sure he pays £100, and not one penny more.)

Meanwhile, there are a second bunch of people who break the rules, and so don't pay the tax that those rules say they must. These people are evading the taxes set by the government.

(In other words, if the rules say you must pay £100, a tax evader will pay £90, or £50, or whatever.)

Those are quite different things - on one hand we have people scrupulously avoiding paying more than the rules say they must, and on the other we have people who are deliberately not paying by the rules.

It is not "morally wrong" for people to use the existing rules to avoid the government taking more money than their own rules say they can. Frankly, what's morally wrong is the government taking any more money than their tax rules say they should - if their rules say they can take £100 and they take £105, how is that not stealing, especially given that they're taking that money against our will, and backed by the threat of force?

Now, I understand that there's a strong moral argument for paying taxes. Equally, there's a strong argument that those who have more should pay more. And, further, there's a strong argument that actually, we should all be paying more. I get that.

But if that's the case, and if the government want people to pay more, then they should change the rules accordingly. If they don't want people paying accountants to find them loopholes to avoid tax, close the loopholes. If they want people to pay more tax, then change the rules so people have to pay more tax.

The government set the rules. If they find that people are using the rules in a way they don't like, they have the power to change those rules.

(Oh, and incidentally, it doesn't matter if those loopholes are "using the rules in a way the government didn't intend". This isn't some game, with polite applause for displaying good sportsmanship. What the law intends is almost entirely irrelevant next to what the law actually says. The powers-that-be really need to start doing a better job writing good laws, and actually reading them before they pass them into law.)

Euro 2012

I've watched very little of Euro 2012, mostly because I've always had something more important to do with my time. And I have no comment on England's performances, since I only saw part of their match against France, in which the French had plenty of possession but didn't seem to have any great ability to apply real pressure on the English goal.

(If I had to guess, I would say that England will probably go out against Italy; they might progress one further step, but I don't see them getting to the Final. Oh, and also, I don't accept the received wisdom that reaching the last 8 amounts to a success, at least at the Euros. If you're serious about being contenders, as England should be, then consistently getting to the semis should be the target. They may have done better than expected, but that's not the same as doing well.)

However, the thing that really bugs me about the Euros, and it's something I'm sure I've mentioned before: why do we persist in letting ITV cover them? They're awful! Between an unfunny host who sounds bored, a panel of 'experts' who are anything but, and commentators who try to walk that fine line between absurd arrogance and outright xenophobia (with intermittent success), watching is just not fun.

And it is specifically ITV that are really poor. The BBC are consistently better. Hell, for coverage of football generally, Sky are leagues ahead.

Please, can we get rid of ITV's coverage in time for the World Cup? Just give it to the BBC in its entirety.

(Of course, now that "Harry Hill's TV Burp" is gone, removing the football from ITV would remove the last reason for ever watching it. But then, is it truly worth having a channel just to watch mind-bogglingly awful coverage of football?)

The first domino topples

At this point, it's largely irrelevant what happens with Rangers on the 4th of July. Whether their newco are admitted to the SPL, or they get demoted to the third division and work their way up, the reality is that they're going to have to spend several years rebuilding. Frankly, if there's any prospect of them winning the league in the next five years, then that's a damning indictment on the level of competition.

There's also little need for Rangers to be punished further. Yes, they've been guilty of grotesque financial mismanagement, and it certainly looks like they've been guilty of other significant wrongdoing... but surely the mess they're in now is adequate punishment - after all, they've lost 140 years of history, they have a club in tatters, and they're facing a very long road back. Is there really a need now to strip them of titles, impose further financial penalties, or dock them points?

Of course, if I'm really honest, I don't really care what happens to Rangers. I have an interest, yes, but it has been a very long time since I have called myself a fan in any sense. And if there has been wrongdoing, as seems likely, then it is right that they suffer as a consequence.

But what concerns me more is that I suspect this is just the first domino to fall. Most of the clubs in the SPL were already under financial pressure, or operating on wafer-thin profits. A less interesting league almost certainly means reduced gate receipts, and while Sky have said they won't walk away, they would be mad not to take this opportunity to renegotiate their deal - after all, who really wants to watch a league with only one contender?

Whether or not Rangers are returned to the SPL next season, I doubt they will be the last club to fall.

This Far, No Further!

I find myself extremely troubled.

I am absolutely convinced that one of the organisations of which I am a member, and some of the finest people that I know (including some I care for very deeply), are on the wrong side of a particular issue. What's more, I feel that I really should be speaking up publicly about the issue (as a matter of principle), but when I got the appropriate post written and ready to go... I just couldn't bear to post it.

There's a storm coming. And I really don't like the look of those clouds.

Prometheus

If you don't want any spoilers, then there are two things you need to know about "Prometheus":

1. It's a prequel, albeit an "indirect prequel".
2. Prequels suck.

Now, in fairness, this second isn't an absolute rule - "X-Men: First Class" was actually very decent. But it holds far more often than not, to the extent that I'm even rather concerned for the fate of "The Hobbit" - sure, the books were published in the other order, but they sure seem to be prequel-ising it, by shoehorning in material and characters from LotR, imposing a similar feel on a very dissimilar tale, and so forth. We'll see, but I'm concerned.

Anyway, "Prometheus" is a very well-made film. It's visually stunning, and if you're determined to see it, go see it on the biggest screen you can. But it's also rubbish - the plot and the characters just aren't there. And I don't mean that they're "not there" in the way that they were pretty basic in "Avatar" (to say the least) - they're "not there" in that if you think about them at all then you'll realise how utterly stupid they are. "Avatar" holds together as a story, in addition to being visually stunning; "Prometheus" does not.

(It's the comparison between Sharapova and Kournikova - both tennis players who make/made more money from modelling than from tennis, but one of them can actually play as well.)

Avoid.

Okay, anyone who doesn't want spoilers should skip down to the next post at this stage.

Still here?

I think what I found most objectionable about the film was just how utterly stupid the characters were. When going into an unknown site on an alien planet, you do not leave the weapons behind, even if it is a "scientific expedition". Even if your atmospheric sensors say the air is breathable, you do not remove your helmet - there may well be airborne pathogens your suit cannot detect. No matter how creepy the dead body is, you do not split the party unnecessarily - now, instead of running around in the creepy dark, you're now running around in the creepy dark alone. To maintain quarantine procedures on the ship, do not open the airlock and then tell people they can't come on board - just tell them they can't come on board!

And it really didn't help that one of the characters, David, does something truly horrible (which is fine), but he does it for no apparent reason whatsoever. It would be fine if the company had a secret agenda to infect the crew and thus gain access to bioweapons (except, of course, that both "Alien" and "Aliens" did that plot). But that wasn't his plan. Basically, he infected the crew for shits and giggles. Good plan!

The problem is, once the characters are so utterly idiotic, it doesn't matter how scary the monsters are - at worst, if they wipe out the crew they're doing the gene pool a favour! Frankly, it's just a shame that there were any survivors at all!

(Speaking of survivors - clearly, the female doctor was supposed to be some sort of Ripley-esque character. But what makes Ripley one of the best female protagonists in sci-fi is that she is a strong, smart character. When presented with awful circumstances, she first survives them, and then in the sequel turns to face her fears head-on. The protagonist in "Prometheus" is only hurt by the comparison - I actually can't remember her name, and can't be bothered Googling it. I think it was Elizabeth something.)

Yeah, this film was 2 hours wasted. And it's a real shame - the trailers looked very promising, and there's clearly the germ of a really good film in amongst all the awfulness. I guess it's just one more film to add to the list of follow-ups they never made to "Aliens".

Oh, Thank Goodness!

Yesterday I finished "The Second Book of Lankhmar", by Fritz Leiber. I had been reading it basically since we got back from honeymoon, and while it was very good in places, I really didn't enjoy the whole.

"The Second Book of Lankhmar" was a compilation of three earlier books, the excellent "The Swords of Lankhmar", "Swords and Ice Magic", and "The Knight and Knave of Swords". These latter two were themselves compilations of short stories and novellas, of distinctly mixed quality.

For the most part, this was just a case of being a series that had gone on too long, and beyond the author's ability to sustain it. However, it was also true that as the series went on, the author really started indulging in... a different kind of fantasy.

Indeed, there were sections of the very last story that were really quite pornographic. (And by that, I don't mean "includes a sex scene", I mean "includes a sex scene that serves no purpose in the plot beyond having a sex scene" - "A Game of Thrones" contains material that is far worse in content, but which is essential to the plot, and so I find it less objectionable. This was just inappropriate... and it was poorly written pornography, to boot.)

Unfortunately, by the time I got to that point I was more than 400 pages into a 694-page book - I wasn't going to be beaten by it!

Anyway, I've now finished, and moved on to something that is (hopefully) a lot better - Bernard Cornwell's latest paperback.

As for Leiber - I recommend reading some of his stories. But don't be tricked into reading all of them, or even all of either of the two "Books" - read some reviews first, and pick out a subset to read from there. He's worth reading... but only in part.

#20: "The Second Book of Lankhmar", by Fritz Leiber

Books to Read

On Tuesday, I printed out a copy of The List, and proceeded to check the books Lady Chocolat has brought with her against this copy. The motive for this should be obvious.

Surprisingly, it turns out that LC brought with her only thirteen books from The List, one of which is "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" (and another of which is actually "Hamlet" - both as part of the above and as a separate book!). Although, I haven't gone through the two Norton Anthologies, so it's possible that a few more entries from The List hide therein.

The other thing that's quite nice is that as a consequence of reading some of these books, I'll then have a couple of additional options opened up. Once I've made it through "Sense and Sensibility", for example, I can then read the parody "... and Sea Monsters" (and likewise for "Jane Slayer").

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that I now have the next several months' reading sorted out.

#19: "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide", by Rodney Thompson, Sterling Hershey, John Jackson Miller, and Abel G. Peña

A Mug Anecdote

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I have a variety of mugs from my many travels. Lady Chocolat despairs, but it is my contention that this is a good thing - it means that when people come to the flat and drink coffee (or, if they're wrong, tea), I can regale them with the appropriate mug anecdote.

And everybody loves a good mug anecdote.

Anyway, over the weekend, LC and I were over at her parents' house, cat-sitting. This was an intensely scary prospect, as the cat is almost ninja-like in her stealth, and prone to pouncing at the slightest provocation.

And yesterday, I travelled to work directly from the house, without going back home first. This meant that everything that I needed had to be taken with me on Saturday.

The key problem, though, is that I have a particular mug that I use for my coffee at work, and it went into the dishwasher on Friday, the dishwasher didn't go on until Saturday, and it wasn't finished in time.

Yes, it's true. At work yesterday, I had to use the wrong mug! And, consequently, my mug anecdotes were out of alignment - I had to tell the tale of Brittany, rather than the tale of Stuttgart. Horrors!

Fortunately, I went home last night and recovered the correct mug. And so, the world is now back in alignment. Ish.

(Admittedly, this story isn't as sad as the "jelly and ice cream" story CJ told me at the weekend, but it's the best I have.)

Advanced Higher Computing

Lady Chocolat's brother had his last ever school exam yesterday, which was Advanced Higher Computing (bet you couldn't have guessed that!). We were over there last night, and I had a read through of the exam paper.

And, bloody hell - I don't think I would have passed that exam!

The paper was split into two sections, with section two further split into three sub-sections of which you had to complete one.

So, I read through the first section before dinner, and it seemed nice and easy. I would probably have gotten near-maximum marks on that one. (Although there was one question that I'm sure didn't actually have an answer, but I'll say no more, just in case.)

But the second section was a beast - there were detailed questions on three computing topics. None of which were all that challenging, but they all relied on specific knowledge that I just don't have to hand. I could probably have scraped up a few points... but even when put together with Section One I'm not sure that would have been a pass.

(Now, that said, if they'd asked about DECT, or intruder detection systems, or perhaps even actual HTML coding, I'd have been golden. It's also extremely likely that I'd have aced any and all coursework. I really ought to, given that that's what I do! Still, the exam was a bit of a shock.)

What I did find amusing, though, is how little the computing taught in schools seems to resemble computing as it actually is in the real world. Of course, I noticed that about univeristy-level computing when I did that - they teach software engineer as, perhaps, it should be... but the real word is a whole lot messier and less controlled. (Just like the French I learned in high school bears almost no relation to the French that is actually spoken in France.)

And of particular interest was that the test expected the student to be able to regurgitate a particular algorithm. Which is fine - I don't know the algorithm off the top of my head, but was able to quickly recreate it from first principles (because I am that good, obviously - or because it's just not that hard). But the thing is that in reality we would never write that algorithm. It's just not something we need to know - because there are well-known libraries that have already done the job for you. In other words, Google is your friend.

(Which isn't to say that they shouldn't teach those algorithms in schools - they need to do something to teach coding, and they need to teach the mindset required to solve the relevant problems. But there is no benefit in expecting students to reproduce the algorithm from memory at exam, because that's just a matter of rote learning. A better question, although a harder one to write, would be to have them develop a new algorithm of some sort, testing their actual ability to code.)

One parting thought: In a couple of months, we'll get the annual bout of the "are standards slipping" discussion, when students are issued with yet another set of record-breaking results. This exam represents at least one data point for a counter-argument. (Of course, it's also the highest-level exam in a science/engineering subject. I daresay Standard Grade Zumba might be a tad easier...)

Experimental Cookery 2012: Tomato and Pesto Tart

Lady Chocolat and I were at a barbeque on Satuday, for which we were asked to bring something for the buffet. So, LC duly looked through the various cookbooks, and picked out a number of options for things we could put together. She then told me which one we were going to do, which was convenient but perhaps rather negated the point of having options.

Anyway, the chosen food was the aforementioned Tomato and Pesto Tart, from Gordon's "Fast Food". And so, off we went to Tesco for those few ingredients we didn't have in stock. And, as an additional wrinkle in the plot, we had sufficient pastry for two tarts, and no alternate use for the leftovers, so we each made a tart...

The book certainly lived up to its promise. The tarts took about ten minutes to assemble, if that, and then a further twenty minutes in the oven. In truth, they barely counted as cooking at all, so simple was the process.

Anyway, they came out of the over and went into a box, and off to the barbeque we went. And, after that first traditional burger, it was time to try them.

Well, at least the rest of the barbeque was nice.

In truth, they were okay. But no better than okay, and certainly not living up to their promise. Lady Chocolat's effort was clearly the superior of the two (sob!), but the problem was a bit more fundamental than that - too much pesto, and not enough other flavour, coupled with it being that bit too dry. Basically, it was food, and perfectly edible, but... I don't think I would have it again.

(That said, it was noted that they would probably be more successful in bite-size form - a coin-sized circle of pastry, a blob of pesto, a little onion and tomato... That might be worth considering. Or we could just add bacon.)

#18: "Pathfinder: Raiders of the Fever Sea", by Greg A. Vaughan

Traffic Lights

Back when I was at university, we had a number of computing lectures talking about scheduler priorities. I especially remember the illustrations that were given, which were all to do with road management.

(Incidentally, I'm about to talk about these things in a UK context. If you live in one of those crazy countries where they drive on the wrong side of the road, then by all means swap 'left' for 'right' in what follows... What do you mean that that's just about everyone else?)

See, a roadabout is a good example of both blocking processes and round-robin scheduling. What happens is that every time someone turns right (actually, "not left"), they block the cars trying to come into the roundabout on the next extry along. This, in theory, allows a vehicle from the next-but-one entry to sneak in. And if they're going right, that frees up another entry, and so on.

It's actually quite interesting watching that at work. And it's really interesting seeing just how bad so many drivers are at handling this. Here's a hint, guys: You get a short window of opportunity... take it.

But more interesting than roundabouts, which are largely unstructured, are traffic lights, which have a strict ordering on them, and which therefore impose priorities on the traffic.

(The combined case, where you have traffic lights at a roundabout, are actually no different from just having the traffic lights. Here, the only reason for having the roundabout at all is that it cuts down on sharp turns, which may or may not be beneficial in itself. Unless, of course, the lights are themselves part-time.)

Which brings us to Moodiesburn.

Following the endless work (now finished) on the M80 upgrade, the powers-that-be saw fit to install a new set of lights at one of the entries to Moodiesburn. Which is good, because it's a pretty complex junction with lots of routes and lots of traffic.

I'm constantly bemused at how badly they managed to get it wrong. Not only are there long waits for the other directions to go, often when there are no other cars on any of those paths, but there is an entire section that acts as an airlock - when the light getting in is Green, the light getting out is always Red, and vice versa. It's a mess, leading to long and pointless delays.

But the best thing about the lights became apparent to me a couple of weeks ago, when I came to it from another direction. There, there were two lights, one heading left and the other right. Both were Red when I arrived. But shortly thereafter, the light for the left-most route started changing, and then the light for the right half a second later.

What this means is that somebody, probably somebody very clever indeed, sat down and went through a process of working out exactly how that junction should work in some detail. And that person went far enough to realise that there was obviously a need for the left lane to go a fraction before the right.

Somebody went to a great deal of trouble to get those lights utterly and horribly wrong.

And now, because I'm that sort of a guy, I'm going to tell you how they should have fixed it...

Firstly, they should have built proper filter lanes on both the route out of Moodiesburn and the one from the M80 Eastbound. There are small lanes, but only two cars each. Make the investment, and boost them to at least five cars each (ten or twenty would be better, of course). And then, fit filter signals to the left-turning lanes. This gives you a much greater flow of traffic, at no cost to other road users.

Secondly, fit sensors to the damn lights! Frankly, this should be standard procedure on all traffic lights these days; in fact, it should be illegal to build lights without them. That way, when I'm the only car at the entire junction, I don't need to wait several minutes for all the other lack of cars to go first!

(And, of course, when the junction is busy, you just switch to your hard-coded scheduling algorithms.)

Thirdly, get the guy who wrote this thing to go back, watch cars go through the junction for a week or so (24/7) and then rewrite the algorithms, actually getting them right this time. Bluntly, it's shocking that this hasn't been done, not least since this is the one that can be done without having to fit any more infrastructure.

(Incidentally, this brings me to my invisible point four. If we're really concerned about the environment, why do all our traffic lights run at night? That's a huge waste of energy. Switch them off at non-peak times. If they really want, they could then put sensors on them, so that they relight if a car approaches. But, honestly, in most cases they should just switch them off entirely - when there are only one or two cars about, they're generally able to sort themselves out. And those few muppets who can't are also the sorts of muppets who are liable to ignore the lights anyway.)

Anyway, that's my "traffic lights" rant... for today.

The Scottish Pipe Band Championships 2012

Saturday was cold. Very cold.

The day began at 6am, when I woke from a blessedly refreshing sleep, and proceeded to get myself ready for the competition. So, breakfast, teeth, shave, shower, dressed... I packed my bag for the day, lamenting that my plan to have "interesting lunches" for the season had already fallen by the wayside - I had two chicken sandwiches, a bananana, and some almonds for lunch, plus two yoghurts for snacks, two packets of crisps just because, and a big bottle of water. (This was later to be supplemented by chips, a Mars, and quite a lot of Irn Bru - it was a tough day.)

And then along to catch the bus. That was 7:30.

The journey to the competition was okay, if dull. I spent most of the time reading a large section of my current book, which I'm not really enjoying, although it is very interesting to see all the stuff that was, er, lovingly adapted for Discworld.

We arrived much earlier than planned, but that was probably a good thing as there is always the risk of bad traffic. So, we had time to explore the site, get a programme of events, and generally relax a bit. At this point, we found that the ground was pretty much a swamp. However, it wasn't raining, which was good, and the high winds that had so battered us last year were likewise not in evidence.

Eventually, time came to get ready, and then to perform. And it was good - a good start, a good performance throughout, and then a really good stop. We were happy with it throughout. Even the issues with tone that we had identified from the previous week were gone, due in large part to replacing all the chanters and reeds. Huzzah!

And then, the wait. Never fun, this was made worse by the cold, which wasn't quite numbing, but which just sucked. Plus, I'm extremely tired - the last two weeks have been vicious. So, I went for a little sleep, which was a mixed blessing. I ended up a little less tired, but much stiffer.

And then the march-past, which went okay, although we were one of the first bands on and got the 'enjoyment' of watching another 100+ bands parading onto the field. It seemed to take forever.

We didn't win a prize. And, that established, I was dispatched to get the results sheets. We came 12th overall, out of 21 bands in our grade. Not a great result. Worse, we came 14th and 18th in piping, which was very disappointing. Rather better, we came 10th in drumming, and 6th in ensemble.

Unfortunately, at this point I find myself wondering what the point of continuing with this season is. We're simply not going to dramatically improve, and it definitely seems that what we're offering is just not what the judges are looking for. Worse, it looks to me like we could actually do really well - all we would need to do is identify our 8 strongest pipers, drop everyone else, and we would jump up the rankings. So, if all we want to do is win, we have that option. Problem is, we really don't want to do that - we have a lot of kids in the band, and they genuinely are improving at a rapid pace. Dropping them would stop that progress. And yet, as Alex Ferguson has said, "you don't win anything with kids."

So, tough times for the band. On the other hand... two years ago, we were one of the best bands in Grade 4B. Last year, we were one of the worst bands in Grade 4A. And this year, thus far, we're around the middle of Grade 4A. Perhaps what we need to do is stop worrying about making a big 'breakthrough', and instead just carry on making incremental improvements year-on-year. Problem is, each year that passes my fingers get that little bit slower and less controlled. I don't know how many more years I can continue competing even at this level, never mind taking the step up to a higher grade, and I think I would like to see how far we can go before it's too late.

(And, just to head off the inevitable question - I'm not inclined to leave this band to go join another at a higher grade. The disappointment of competing aside, I'm generally enjoying playing with this band. More importantly, I feel I'm making a very significant contribution to the advancement of this band, and by extension to my local community. For me, the rewards of doing that outweigh any potential rewards of being able to compete at the next grade up, which is probably my limit anyway.)

So much for Fringe

I found it extremely difficult to get to sleep last night, and when I did finally nod off, it was only to wake up a little after 4. As sleep thereafter proved impossible, I eventually gave up, got up, and took the opportunity to watch the last episode of "Fringe" before starting my day.

Technically, it was only the last episode of the fourth season, but for me it appears it was the last ever - I no longer have any interest in watching further.

Throughout the fourth season, the show has been suffering that malady that I've noted in the past - by the end of the second and third (very good) seasons, the writers had used all their best ideas up. In an attempt to freshen things up, they took a dramatic step with the setting and premise of the show... and the result was a largely-incoherent mess.

It had looked like they were gradually resolving that mess, and that by the end of the season they would have not only gotten back to where they were, but the would have explained just why they messed things up in the first place. But, alas, it didn't happen.

Instead, the episode was a mess of technobabble (worse than usual!), it chickened out on both the major character cliffhangers, it ended on two utterly predictable 'setting' cliffhangers. Oh, and it has now been revealed that both versions of one of the major characters is really sloppy in one aspect of her life, while being utterly in control of every other aspect.

So, I won't be back.

And the result of this is that I now have only one show on my current 'watch' list, being "Game of Thrones" (which has also gone downhill in the second series - as one critic of the books commented, they've now killed off all the main players, so we're now basically watching the second-stringers, and they're not that interesting).

To the Imaginarium!

Just so you're aware, I have started a new blog!

But don't worry - Part Four will continue as before, so you can continue reading all about my adventures with the band, with sock conspiracies, and with experimental cookery right here.

As you know, I'm a rather big fan of RPGs, and all things related. As such, I have been occasionally posting here about the topic. However, I'm also keenly aware that virtually everyone who reads the blog (both of you) are not particularly interested in RPGs, and so if I were to just constantly post on the topic it would get really tedious (as tedious as my "Independence" posts got a couple of months ago).

Hence, new blog.

So, for anyone who is interested, you can read my pedantic witterings on the subject of RPGs over at Stephen's Imaginarium.

(Incidentally, I may well post the occasional RPG-related matter here, if I think it's of more general interest. And, indeed, I may well post the same thing in both places where appropriate. However, I'm not going to pollute this blog with 500 posts on RPGs to the exclusion of all else!)

Dunbar Highland Games 2012 - the season starts

Last week was an incredibly busy week for the band - practice on Monday and Thursday, a committee meeting on Tuesday, a gig that got cancelled as we were en route on Thursday (we had a practice instead), two nighttime events on Friday and Saturday. And, of course, the start of the competition season at Dunbar on Saturday.

The day dawned bright and hopeful. It was sunny, albeit rather cold, which was about the best weather we could have hoped for. The journey to Dunbar was therefore quite pleasant, despite our obvious tiredness from the night before.

On arrival, we spent a bit of time getting used to the place, then went through the process of tuning up. So far, so good. Then we moved down to "final tuning", where we first ran through the tunes for the competition - and they just fell apart on us.

Oh dear.

It seemed that a combination of the cold, the fact that we were playing outdoors, and the nerves of the occasion had conspired to really mess us up. The tunes weren't controlled, they weren't together, and they were far too fast.

We played a few more times, and they seemed to get a bit better. Still, not too hopeful. Indeed, I almost spoke to the Pipe Major at this point, advising him that he should probably drop the young man next to me, who was really struggling. Harsh, but...

Still, we went on with our full array of players. And we put forth our best performance of the day. It was much better than before. And, indeed, the guy next to me was absolutely fine - under pressure, some people focus while others fold; it appears that he is of the former sort.

Sadly, for being our best of the day, it still wasn't terribly good. One other player (another younger member of the band) really messed up, while a second sounded his pipe chanter earlier, which is a major no-no.

The end result is that we weren't happy with the performance. We know we can play better. Much better, in fact.

The final result matched up with our expectations - we came 10th overall, out of 12 bands in our grade, scoring 11th and 10th for piping, 4th for drumming, and 10th for ensemble. Dear, oh dear.

The only two positives from the day were that we knew we could, and should, have played better, which means there is reason to be hopeful next week; and we now have a guide as to some specific areas that we should work on. In theory, this should mean we're much better placed to do well next week at the Scottish Championships. Well, I guess we'll see.

On the plus side, we won't be quite so knackered next week, what with not having a performance at 11pm the night before!

Experimental Cookery 2012: Minted Peas

The epic dinner that I reference in my previous post was mostly not experimental. While extremely nice, the roast chicken, roast potatoes, and baked carrots were all things that I had done before. That this was the first roast dinner I had cooked in the apartment, and also the first roast dinner that LC and I had shared since we moved in, made it marginally experimental, but that's hardly blog-worthy. (Now, if we were talking about Twitter here...)

But the thing that was experimental was the other vegetable. (Because, of course, you have to have two. That's practically a rule.) And that other vegetable was peas.

Now to date my adventures with peas have been rather limited. (Because, after all, they're peas - just how adventurous can you really expect to be. In fact, even writing "my adventures with peas" leads me to question just how absurd a concept that might be.) Basically, it has been my policy to stick them in a pot with some water, and apply heat for a few minutes. As a consequence of which, yep, they taste like peas.

But I did find myself rather intrigued by the notion of minted peas, and last night proved to be the opportunity for which I had been waiting. And so, I drew forth "Jamie's Ministry of Food", and turned to one of the few pages I hadn't faced before...

It turned out that preparing the peas was dead easy, but pretty tedious. Suddenly, my exciting two-step process had become a full paragraph of text, and involved onions, lettuce, and even flour.

And the result? Well, actually, it was not at all appetising - a slimy mush was the result. Somewhere in there, there just wasn't enough liquid in the method, or too much heat, or something. So, that needed fixed.

Anyway, that done, the peas once again looked more or less like they should, albeit considerably less impressive than the carrots. They were served, tried, and they were... okay.

Ultimately, the minted peas were just too much effort relative to the result. They were nice enough, but I think I preferred my peas unadorned. A shame, really - I quite like peas, but they were very definitely the weakest link in the epic dinner.

Infamy and Betrayal!

Lament with me, gentle readers, for the inevitable has happened...

With the arrival of Lady Chocolat, life in the Apartment of Mirth has seen a great many changes, many of them trivial and others far more significant. One that seemed trivial was LC's quite unreasonable assertion that my policy of doing my washing on a Thursday was totally unacceptable. (It's not like I have a shortage of clothes, you understand - I had a suitable abundance of socks that I could last a whole month if pressed to it.)

Anyway, I managed to get away with it for the first week. LC was distracted with the task of moving in and finding homes for most of her stuff, and so I was able to merrily postpone the weekly wash until Thursday. And all was well with the world... for a while.

It couldn't last, of course. I had to return to work last week, and so was not able to stand guard any longer. And, as we all know, the price of not having your t-shirts ironed is eternal vigilance...

And so, yesterday while I was busy cooking an epic dinner, LC stealthily hijacked the living room and did a whole bunch of ironing, quite in defiance of the "no housework at weekends" policy. Truly, it was a horror!

But worse was to come later, when I found myself confronted with a pile of t-shirts, all of them carefully ironed and folded! I mean, what was I to make of this new infamy? Clearly, t-shirts are not meant for such things - they should be washed, hung, and any remaining creases left to fall out when subjected to body heat. That's the rule, and if it leaves them a bit scruffy-looking, well, that's just part of my Han Solo-esque charm. (!)

Well, it turned out that even that was not the full extent of the horrors to come. In fact, the ironed t-shirts were nothing more than a cunningly-placed distraction, because when I turned to the pile of socks...

No, I can't go on. It's too painful.

...

...

sob

...

When I turned to the pile of socks, one of them was missing!

Yes, it's true. After more than a decade of doing my own washing, and never once losing a single sock, and then less than a week after letting my guard down, the sock conspiracy have struck!

(And this after LC spent months, months denying the very existence of the conspiracy, and becoming quite indignant that I persisted in my scepticism! Oh perfidious sex! Oh, sweetest betrayal! And to think that my poor socks must pay the price!)

(Oh, ridiculous hyperbole?)

Lament with me, gentle readers. The inevitable has happened...

(Incidentally, if I can find a way to tie this in to EU recycling targets and the end of the Mayan calendar, I might just have the plot for my bestselling novel - "The Sock Conspiracy", an hilarious parody of a Dan Brown novel in which our hero, a professor of sockology unveils an horrific secret...)

What to do about Shakespeare?

As you probably know, I have The List - a list of books that were voted as being particularly good by a bunch of people, and that I've been gradually reading through. The List is actually a composite of two "Top 100" lists, one each from the UK and the US. Once the overlap of the two was eliminated, this left about 150 entries to read through, of which I have 103 remaining.

Actually, I'm starting to think that the list may be unduly influenced by Oprah and/or Richard & Judy, both of whom have "book clubs" in which they recommend novels. (Feel free to insert a cynical rant here about whether they actually read and enjoy the novels themselves...) I just started to notice that WH Smiths periodically do sales of the "book club" novels, and the overlap is pretty obvious, at least as soon as you move beyond the obvious 'classics'.

But that's not actually all that important right now. One of the other issues with The List is the question of what to do about Shakespeare. See, both "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" and "Hamlet" appear on The List (actually, both appear on the BBC-compiled part of The List... I didn't make it up). However, it has long been my contention that Shakespeare's plays, being plays, are not really meant to be read; they're meant to be seen performed. And, actually, there's an argument that the sonnets shouldn't really be read, either, but rather that because much of their effect will come from hearing them (that same argument would apply to "Ulysses" too, of course).

Of course, the odds of being able to find performances of all of the plays, and especially finding performances using the entire and unedited text, are pretty slim. "Hamlet" is easy, of course, but the same is not true of the rest.

So, what to do?

(The answer, for now at least, is to leave Shakespeare for the time being. Lady Chocolat brought with her a copy of the Complete Works, so reading them is an option... but she also brought many other books with her that I can just as readily read first.)

Incidentally, for anyone who's interested, here's the rest of The List. Note that this includes only those entries that I have not already read. Note also that the numbers given here are not the same numbers from the two original lists; Jane Eyre, for example, was actually #3 on one of the lists, and much lower on the other.

1. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
2. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
3. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
4. Anne of Green Gables (LM Montgomery)
5. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
6. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
7. Little Women (Louisa M Alcott)
8. Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
9. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
10. Complete Works of Shakespeare
11. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
12. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
13. The Stand (Stephen King)
14. Middlemarch (George Eliot)
15. The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald)
16. Bleak House (Charles Dickens)
17. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
18. Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)
19. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
20. Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
21. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
22. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
23. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
24. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
25. Dune (Frank Herbert)
26. David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
27. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
28. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
29. Emma (Jane Austen)
30. Persuasion (Jane Austen)
31. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
32. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
33. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
34. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis De Bernieres)
35. I know this much is true (Wally Lamb)
36. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
37. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
38. Winnie the Pooh (AA Milne)
39. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M Auel)
40. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
41. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
42. The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
43. Far From The Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)
44. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
45. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
46. Atonement (Ian McEwan)
47. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
48. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
49. Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons)
50. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
51. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
52. A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth)
53. The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
54. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
55. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
56. Love In The Time Of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
57. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
58. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
59. The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
60. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
61. On The Road (Jack Kerouac)
62. Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy)
63. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
64. Bridget Jones' Diary (Helen Fielding)
65. Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
66. Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
67. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
68. Shogun (James Clavell)
69. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
70. Notes From A Small Island (Bill Bryson)
71. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
72. Ulysses (James Joyce)
73. The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
74. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
75. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
76. Swallows and Amazons (Arthur Ransome)
77. Germinal (Emile Zola)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray)
81. Possession (AS Byatt)
82. A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
83. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
84. The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
85. The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
86. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)
87. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. The Faraway Tree Collection (Enid Blyton)
92. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
93. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
94. The Good Earth (Pearl S Buck)
95. The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks)
96. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
97. A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)
98. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
99. The Outsiders (SE Hinton)
100. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
101. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
102. Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
103. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

Active and Passive Characters in Literature

When I read "Rebecca" a couple of years ago, I was less than impressed by the weakness of the lead character. She basically spent the novel being buffetted by outrageous fortune, and spends most of the novel whining about how weak and stupid she is. I felt that what was needed was a good feminist (or even a mediocre one) to stand up for herself, to declare that, no, this was not right. That it wasn't right that her husband neglected her, that it wasn't right that the house was haunted by the memory of the ex-wife, and that the household staff damn well would respect her authoritah.

The root issue here was that the lead character was reactive, rather than proactive. She utterly failed to make any decisions; indeed, she failed to realise that she had any decisions to make.

When I read the "Soldier Son" trilogy, I likewise found myself extremely annoyed. There were huge numbers of words. Endless, endless words. And most of them consisted of the main character whining. But that trilogy was even worse. See, "the magic" had selected him to perform some great task, but he hadn't been informed what that task was. And whenever he failed to act as the magic wished (whether intentionally or otherwise) he would be punished. That was bad enough, but worse was to come - later in the trilogy, the lead character literally became a passenger in his own body; he literally couldn't take any meaningful action to affect the plot.

And, actually, almost any novel that features a long journey suffers from this problem - if the author isn't careful, the character's choices reduce down to just two: keep going or turn back. Where "turn back" isn't much of an option. And so, unless the journey itself is particularly interesting (spoiler alert: it probably isn't), then every word spent detailing that time is just wasted time. Skip to the end, please - what happens when they get there?

I was reminded of this when reading "A Dance With Dragons", the latest novel in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Here, G.R.R. Martin takes his most interesting character, Tyrion, and puts him on a long journey from one court to another. Now, Tyrion was really interesting because he spent his time scheming and plotting, playing one faction against another, and generally being sarcastic. And even when he was a prisoner with, seemingly, no power at all, he was still fun because he could still find allies and weave plots.

But during this journey... well, he's on a boat. Then he's on a horse. Then he's on a boat. Oh, and now he's been diverted. Ah, now he's this close to his goal...

And we end up, somehow, with a thousand-page novel in which nothing happens. We waited five years for the fifth part of that story, or eight years for the continuation of Tyrion's part in the plot (he didn't appear in book four, due to writer's block), and we would have been better off just skipping the novel entirely and reading the plot summary on wikipedia instead.

(And even "Lord of the Rings" isn't immune to criticism here. The journey in "Fellowship..." is fine, since the characters have several choices and interesting debates ensue. But once Frodo and Sam are on their own in "The Two Towers", the story becomes much more limited. They endure, because they have little choice. When entire chapters can be boiled down to "swamp", it's maybe not for the best.)

Of course, it's possible that I'm over-sensitive to this. In RPGs, there is a concept of "railroading", where the player characters aren't given any real choices, but have to follow the pre-determined path. Of course, this is a concept that doesn't really apply to novels, since the author makes all the choices for the characters - every novel is a railroad on those terms. Still, there is a difference between a character who is active rather than passive. And just as you should write in an active rather than a passive voice (because it's more interesting), so too should authors try to write about characters who are active rather than passive, for exactly the same reason.

(Oh, and by the way, the issue with Tyrion is not the only thing that is wrong with "A Dance With Dragons", nor "A Song of Ice and Fire" as a whole. Basically, it's going exactly the same way as "Wheel of Time", with a plot that's quickly fragmenting, too many characters, and far too many words for not enough plot. My advice to people new to the series is to read the first three books, and then treat it as one of those great unfinished series.)

#15: "A Dance With Dragons: Dreams and Dust", by George R.R. Martin
#16: "A Dance With Dragons: After the Feast", by George R.R. Martin (Note that these two constitute a single novel, which was split into two volumes for the paperback release. Because of my "one cover/one book" rule, they count as two entries here.)
#17: "Pathfinder: The Wormwood Mutiny", by Richard Pett