Where Worlds Collide

Back in the elder days, when Men were Men, beer was one-and-six a pint, and everyone only had metered dialup internet access, internet discussions revolved around mailing lists. (Yes, I know that before that, there was Usenet, but..) . Then as unmetered access became the norm, people moved to web forums, and mailing list traffic slowly dwindled, and once busy lists became shadows of their former selves.

Now I wonder if web forums themselves are dying. I’m on a lot of web forums, and while a few of them still have some sporadic traffic, more and more once-busy sites seem to have been taken over by tumbleweed. It appears that everybody’s on Facebook instead.

Only the really big forums, like RMWeb seem to be thriving. Perhaps it’s because it’s membership is large enough that it has enough of a critical mass to be able to compete with places like Facebook. It’s noticable that the recent site redesign has made things look a little more like a social networking site than a plain web forum. Also noticable that we seem to get more mentions on some bands on a thread in the off-topic area than some of those bands have posts on their official forums.

Science fiction writer Charlie Stross explains why he hates Star Trek

At his recent keynote speech at the New York Television Festival, former Star Trek writer and creator of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore revealed the secret formula to writing for Trek.

He described how the writers would just insert “tech” into the scripts whenever they needed to resolve a story or plot line, then they’d have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later.

“It became the solution to so many plot lines and so many stories,” Moore said. “It was so mechanical that we had science consultants who would just come up with the words for us and we’d just write ‘tech’ in the script. You know, Picard would say ‘Commander La Forge, tech the tech to the warp drive.’ I’m serious. If you look at those scripts, you’ll see that.”

Moore then went on to describe how a typical script might read before the science consultants did their thing:

La Forge: “Captain, the tech is overteching.”

Picard: “Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge.”

La Forge: “No, Captain. Captain, I’ve tried to tech the tech, and it won’t work.”

Picard: “Well, then we’re doomed.”

“And then Data pops up and says, ‘Captain, there is a theory that if you tech the other tech … ‘” Moore said. “It’s a rhythm and it’s a structure, and the words are meaningless. It’s not about anything except just sort of going through this dance of how they tech their way out of it.”

Stross compares it with the way he goes about creating written SF.

I start by trying to draw a cognitive map of a culture, and then establish a handful of characters who are products of (and producers of) that culture. The culture in question differs from our own: there will be knowledge or techniques or tools that we don’t have, and these have social effects and the social effects have second order effects — much as integrated circuits are useful and allow the mobile phone industry to exist and to add cheap camera chips to phones: and cheap camera chips in phones lead to happy slapping or sexting and other forms of behaviour that, thirty years ago, would have sounded science fictional. And then I have to work with characters who arise naturally from this culture and take this stuff for granted, and try and think myself inside their heads. Then I start looking for a source of conflict, and work out what cognitive or technological tools my protagonists will likely turn to to deal with it.

Star Trek and its ilk are approaching the dramatic stage from the opposite direction: the situation is irrelevant, it’s background for a story which is all about the interpersonal relationships among the cast. You could strip out the 25th century tech in Star Trek and replace it with 18th century tech — make the Enterprise a man o’war (with a particularly eccentric crew) at large upon the seven seas during the age of sail — without changing the scripts significantly. (The only casualty would be the eyeball candy — big gunpowder explosions be damned, modern audiences want squids in space, with added lasers!)

That’s right on the money for me. But I read an awful lot of written SF, and I’m not a big fan of franchise TV science fiction at all.

The way Charlie Stross writes science fiction produces the sort of science fiction I like to read. The “tech the tech” approach all too often results in the sort of contrived dea-ex-machina endings which will be very familiar to viewers of Russell T Davies’ writing in Dr Who and Torchwood. Look at the ending of “Children of Earth”, for example. Very powerful human drama, yes. Coherent science-fiction, no way.

I remember a quote from a few years back that SF Cinema was a generation behind written SF, and TV was a generation behind that. I also get the impression that most franchise science fiction TV is written by people with no understanding or interest in science, so it’s not surprising we all-too often end up with something that resembles a soap opera with a few SF props as window-dressing.

Fine if you like that sort of thing, but it’s a pity that ‘real SF’ never makes it to the small screen. In order to justify the special effects budgets, they have to hook in an audience far broader than SF fans, and that audience tends to want soap opera.

I’ve even run into that attitude from within the SF world. I remember the sysop of the Compuserve SFLIT forum years ago patronisingly repeating the mantra “If you care about the characters, nothing else matters; if you don’t care about the characters, nothing else matters” when I took exception to her dismissing Frank Herbert’s classic “Dune” in favour of the latest Big Fat Fantasy epic which read too much like an American daytime soap opera for me to stomach.

Twitter has hit the headlines twice this week, and the collective power of Twitter uses has delivered decisive smackdowns to two very different forces of evil.

The first was delivered to sleazy oil company Trafigura, accused of the illegal fly-tipping of toxic waste in The Ivory Coast, suspected of causing more than a dozen deaths and making tens of thousands ill, then spending vast sums on expensive lawyers to try and cover the whole thing up. What bought matters to a head was when their bullying lawyers got an injunction preventing The Guardian from reporting on questions being asked in The House of Commons about the matter. This alarming comment appeared on The Guardian’s website.

“The commons order paper contained a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found”.

Since the commons order paper was available online on the official Parliament website, it didn’t take long for a few bloggers work out what this question was. Then it started spreading across Twitter. By Tuesday morning, “Trafigura” was the top trending topic, and far more people knew about the true nature of this rather unpleasant company that would ever have do so had their lawyers not tried to gag the press. The term for this is “Epic Fail”

If the first Twitter storm was about freedom of the press, the next one was about responsibility of the press. On Friday, a toxic little squit of a Daily Mail journalist wrote an disgustingly bigotted article about the death of Boyzone singer Steven Gately, on the eve of his funeral. Within hours, Twitter went nuclear again. “Jan Moir” and “Daily Mail” became top trending topics. Major advertisers including Marks and Spencer started withdrawing advertising from The Daily Mail in response.

A few hours later the hack gave a mealy-mouthed non-apology which claimed she’d been subject to an orchestrated campaign, and that her vile article “was not intended to cause offence”. This stupid woman was clearly so wrapped up in her little Daily Mail bigot-bubble that it didn’t occur to her than this was a spontaneous reaction by tens of thousands of ordinary people who were simply disgusted at what they read.

While we’ve seen two examples in the past week of the collective power of Twitter users for good, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the same thing gets used for evil.

By the way, I’m Kalyr on Twitter. You can probably find a few of my contributions to both of those smackdowns.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been to quite a few gigs, and have been most remiss in reviewing them. This post is an attempt to rectify that.

Kim Serviour of Touchstone

First up was Touchstone, promoted by the Classic Rock Society in The Wesley Centre in Maltby, just outside Rotherham, the latest of my “lets stay in a cheap B&B to see a great prog band play a small town in the middle of nowhere”,weekends. The venue is a quite small but modern hall; standing at the front, tiered seating at the back, with a capacity of I guess about 150 people. Wasn’t full, but the CRS are better at pulling in the punters than one or two other ‘promoters’, so there was a decent crowd.

Support was six-piece Dee Expus, who I’m managed to miss on one of the smaller stages at the Cambridge Rock Festival, but who played a great set of modern-sounding streamlined guitar prog. Hats off to their bassist for doing the gig despite suffering from a hernia (did he try to lift a Mellotron?).

A couple of months before they’d rocked the Cambridge Rock Festival main stage, and tonight Touchstone gave another demonstration of just how much they’ve improved since I first saw them support The Reasoning two years ago. Kim Seviour has matured from a shy girl who was little more than a backing singer to a self-confident frontwoman who dominates the stage. Their blend of melodic hard rock and prog manages just the right combination of tightness and energy level; their instrumental virtuosity sufficiently restrained that solos never outstay they welcome. With a headline-length set they played almost all of Wintercoast plus a few highlights from their debut, lovely to hear songs like Kim’s very moving ‘Solace’ played live. They ended with a prog-disco version of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. On the evidence of this, they’re well on the road to world domination; in a year’s time I’m sure they’ll be playing far bigger venues than this one.

After all this prog, The Bad Shepherds on Wednesday night at the newly-reopened Band On The Wall are a bit of a change of pace. I’d had tickets for a couple of dates on their tour this time last year, with Mostly Autumn supporting. But that all went pear-shaped when the promoter ran off with more than just the money days before the start of the tour, leaving those who’s purchased tickets with no refunds.

The Band On The Wall is another new venue for me, since I’d never been before it closed for refurbishment a couple of years ago. Even though everything is new and shiny it’s got a character that featureless boxes like Manchester Academy can never hope to emulate.

The Bad Shepherds play celtic folk arrangements of 70s punk and new wave songs. They’re made up from former Young One Ade Edmundson on lead vocals and “Thrash Mandolin”, Troy Donockley on Uilleann pipes and various other celtic instruments with funny names, and Andy Dinan on fiddle. The original limeup also had Fairport Convention’s Maartin Allcock on bass, but too many other commitments forced him to drop out, to be replaced on this tour by Brad Lang.

After a short but sweet set from Ade Edmondson’s daughter Ella, The Bad Shepherds hit the stage with “I Fought the Law, and the Law Won”. Much of the set came from their album Yan, Tyan, Tethera, Methera!; their covers of standards by the likes of The Clash, The Jam and The Stanglers were often unrecognisable until the vocals started, and sound quite different with added fiddle solos. Highlight was probably Kraftwerk’s “The Model” played on Uilleann pipes. A hugely entertaining live band, even if you don’t particularly like the original songs.

Three days later it’s over to The Met Theater in Bury to see neo-prog veterans IQ.

IQ play old-fashioned prog. It’s all swirling keyboards, liquid guitar solos and strange time signatures you can’t dance to, and they may wear some influences on their sleeves, particularly Peter Gabriel era Genesis. But their distinct approach to melody and composition sets then well apart from just about any of their competitors.

It’s almost three years since I last saw IQ live, and I’d forgotten just how good they are. They’re both intense and impeccably tight, the complexities of the albums reproduced perfectly, the virtuosity of the band providing the perfect foil to Peter Nicholls’ theatrical delivery as frontman. It typical prog fashion, they started by playing the latest album, “Frequency” in it’s entirety, followed by just four older songs taking up the second half of the set, ending with the 20-minute epic “Narrow Margin” from their 1997 album “Subterranea“. Two encores, ending with a superb rendition of “The Wake” took the show to two and a half hours, playing (I think) exactly one song from every album featuring Peter Nicholls.

IQ don’t gig very often, but when they do, they’re well worth seeing.

The following Wednesday saw me return to The Band on the Wall for yet more prog, this time from legends The Enid, a band I hadn’t seen since The Reading Festival in 1982(!). They’ve gone through many, many lineup changes over the years, but the central figure has always been the charismatic Robert John Godfrey.

With so many years since I last saw them live, I had no real idea of what to expect, but The Enid proved they can still very much cut it live. Ably supported by a band including a bass player doubling up on Timpani, Robert John Godfrey entertained us with an hour and a half of what can best be described as classical music played on rock instrumentation, interspersed with a lot of banter between songs. Not owning much of their back catalogue I couldn’t name many of the pieces they played, although I did recognise “In the Region of the Summer Stars” quite early on. Sadly they no longer play things like “The Dambusters March” or “Land of Hope and Glory”; as Robert John Godfrey say, he doesn’t want to be mistaken for a Tory nowadays. While most their largely instrumental orchestral pomp isn’t really rock and roll, the powerful groove of last number of the main set rocked an absolute bastard. Naturally they got called back for several encores, RJG responding to someone’s shout of “Play some Chopin” by playing some Chopin, and they ended with “Something Wicked The Way Comes”.

With Progressive Nation 2009 two days later, that makes five gigs in thirteen days.

I’ve previously described America’s “Conservative Movement” as the bastard offspring of Cyrus Schofield and Ayn Rand; The religious right in particular has basically become a mix of small-town prejudice and political ideology that has little or nothing to do with the Gospels. It’s nothing more than a rather totalitarian political ideology with a few bits of Christian language and imagery glued on for flavour.

I suppose The Conservative Bible Project is the logical end-point of this. It’s a project to ‘re-translate’ The Bible to remove centuries of ‘liberal bias’. For example, it gives these goals.

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.
Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

Now, I know this reads like a parody, but reliable sources say this is for real. There is no response to things like this other than mockery.

Some excellent commentary on this from Slacktivist, a blogger I’ve reading for several years, who always has something to say about the idiocies of the religious right.

Plenty of other recent posts of his are well worth reading - especially the one on the significance of the Book of Jonah, which explains why the fundamentalists go on about the whale, and ignore the rest of the story, and the reason Vampires hate crosses.

The Progressive Nation tour is an ambitious package tour highlighting the best of prog-metal. Effectively a double headliner of Opeth and Dream Theater, plus two support bands, doors opened at 5:30, with the music starting just after six, making it a real marathon if you were standing. And the early start meant it was straight to the gig from work, without having time to have anything to eat. The things I do for rock and roll. Or rather prog.

Openers Unexpect were a completely bonkers female-fronted seven-piece including a fiddle player. While they played with high level of energy, unfortunately poor sound meant a lot of the intricacies of their music were lost; the vocals especially being lost in the mix. Such is the fate of opening acts in large venues, but they still impressed enough for me to buy their album,

Four-piece BigElf took the stage with a Hammond organ, a Mellotron and an analogue synth centre-stage. They played a sort of psychedelic stoner-prog, very reminiscent of Atomic Rooster with elements of early Uriah Heep. Impressive live band despite poor sound. Top-hatted lead singer Damon Fox playing the Hammond in one hand and the Mellotron in the other had to be the image of the evening.

The sound improved dramatically when Swedish death-metal/prog crossovers Opeth took the stage. Tonight they emphasised the ‘progressive’ emphasis of the evening by opening with “Windowpane” from their decidedly un-metal “Damnation” album. The six-song hour-long set mixed their progressive and metal sides, which a powerful rendition of “Deliverance” one of the metallic standouts. “Harlequin Forest”, not played live in Britain before, was stunningly beautiful, the highlight of the entire evening. Only downer was the constant buzz of background talking from Dream Theater fans that was audible throughout the quiet bits.

It’s seven or eight years since I’ve seen Dream Theater live. Love them or hate them, Dream Theater have more or less defined the genre of muso prog metal, playing insanely complex music in wierd time signatures with plenty of extended solos. Bassist John Myung in particular is as interesting to watch as to listen to, his fingers flying up and down the fretboard as if he’s playing lead guitar, and John Pettruci and Jordan Rudess played enormous numbers of notes. Only vocalist James LaBrie let the side down in places, and I have to say too much of his singing is rather ordinary. The setlist drew heavily from the new album “Black Clouds and Silver Linings”, opening with “A Nightmare to Remember” and “A Rite of Passage”. They also played quite a bit from their superb “Scenes From a Memory” including the completely over-the-top instrumental workout “The Dance of Eternity”, and 80s-style power ballad “The Spirit Carries On”, complete with a sea of lighters in the air. They encored with a stunning rendition of the epic “The Count of Tuscany”.

Gig of the year? It’s definitely a candidate.

On the way back from Touchstone’s CRS Gig at Maltby (for which I really need to write a review), I decided to break the journey at Edale. I’ve travelled the Hope Valley line many, many times over the past few years, and seen this beautiful line in all seasons, from spring green to autumn colours to snow-covered, but I’d never taken the local stopping train and got off at one of the intermediate stations.

You don’t get much freight on a Sunday, so I was surprised when the signals went off without a passenger train being due, and this came into view.

I’ve read bad reviews of the Sony Alpha 75-300mm Lens. But when I get results like this, I’m not going to complain.

By the end of the week I’d had my fill of narra-gauge kettles, and it was time for some proper trains again. I’d had Rugeley recommended as a good place for main line photography a few months back. It’s a local station on the four-track section of the Trent Valley line. As well as the procession of Virgin Trains Pendolinos, it sees a lot of freight; mostly intermodal from DB Schenker (Née EWS), Freightliner and DRS. And there’s a nice pub just outside the station supplying food (and real ales) when you get tired of watching trains.

Compared with Newport, where it’s all EWS 66s, Rugeley seems a variety of traction. This southbound Freightliner working has a pair veteran class 86s, still hard at work after 40 years. Other trains had DBS dual-voltage 92s, Freightliner 90s, and Freightliner and DRS 66s. One has to question why so much freight on this electrified route runs behind diesel traction.

The final weekend took me to my old home town of Slough, where my parents celebrated their Golden Wedding. This photo is from Saturday lunchtime, when the immediate family went to The House on the Bridge at Eton. There was a big party the following day at the church.

I don’t always stop to think how lucky I am that both my parents are still with is; especially when I think of the number of friends I have who are decades younger than me, but have lost one or both parents.

This last picture is one of those times when you see a good picture and just happen to have your camera with you. It’s the Thames at Windsor, where a huge gathering of swans had surrounded someone feeding them bread.

The second part of my holiday took me to from South Wales to the north of the country.

The first day was spent on the Welsh Highland Railway. I’d ridden the line three years ago, when it was open as far as Rhyd-Ddu, just short of the summit of the line. It’s now extended beyond Beddgelert through the famous Aberglaslyn pass to Hafod-y-Llyn, just a few miles short of the ultimate destination of Porthmadog.

The climb from Waunfawr up to Rhyd-Dhu is spectacular enough, but the descent down to Beddgelert is even more spectacular, as the line twists and turns Swiss-fashion to lose height. The final section is the most spectacular of all, as the line heads through the steep-sided valley of Aberglaslyn pass, with it’s unlined rock tunnels. Decades ago, on a wet family holiday, we walked along this route, though the long-abandoned tunnels. Amazing to ride through them on a train.

The WHR has come in for some criticism for not making any attempt to recreate this spirit of the original undercapitalised Colonel Stevens line, instead building a modern tourist railway suitable for the needs of the 21st century, using powerful ex-South African Garrett locomotives rather than the underpowed tank engines of the original line. But I think what they’ve built is a magnificent achievement.

There’s no forward connection from Hafod-y-Llyn, which is a temporary terminus in the middle of nowhere. So you have to ride the train back through Aberglaslyn pass to Beddgelert, where there’s quite a long wait for the bus for Porthmadog. Still, there are far worse places to spend a couple of hours, in the midst of some spectacular scenery.

Next morning, after a hearty breakfast at the Queen’s Hotel, I headed off for Harbour Station for a ride on the famous Ffestiniog railway. This is one of the longest established preserved railways, celebrating more than 50 years in this form. The locomotive for the day was double Fairlie David Lloyd George, not technically a preserved locomotive at all, since it was built as recently as 1979, albeit to a 19th century design.

Then it was the scenic Conwy Valley line to Llandudno Junction. This is one of the most scenic routes on the National Rail network, and really deserves to promoted better as such. I’d love to see a timetable that makes sensible connections with the Ffestiniog at Blaunau, using heritage rolling stock with windows that open. Not neccessily using steam; I think some first generation diesels would do just as well.

Breaking the journey at Bettws-y-Coed was probably a mistake. It’s a beautiful setting, but the place is an appalling tourist trap, full of tacky gift shops selling nothing but tat, and restaurants serving chips with everything. It’s the sort of tasteless commercialism of which I’m sure that Ayn Rand would have approved.

If you’re based in the north-west, this makes an excellent two-day trip - although it I was doing it again I’d probably stay overnight in Beddgelert and get the bus to Porthmadog in the morning, then take a later train on the Ffestiniog.

Been a while since I’ve blogged about anything much - been too busy doing things rather than blogging about them. So we’ll go back a few weeks to my week’s holiday in mid-September.

The week started with a gig, Panic Room at their home town in Swansea. On the previous tour I’d managed to get to several of the shows, but other commitments meant that this one was the only one of their short tour I could get to.

The Milkwood Jam is a funny venue, a sort of glass box on the top of the building. The band were as tight as ever, with great performances from all five members, and the sound was as good as can be expected for a smallish club venue.

With their new album Satellite written and recorded, new songs made up the bulk of the set, interspersed with a few favourites from the debut album. When I say new songs, quite a few of them have been in the set for a while, with the likes of “Sandstorms”, “Black Noise”, “Go” and “Yasumi” already becoming live favourites. The band are moving more in the direction of shorter, more direct songs rather than sprawling prog epics, and this material comes over very well live.

I took quite a few photos, but the lighting, with low levels and all the light coming from the side of the stage, meant the results were disappointing.

Monday was trains day, and a chance to use my new Sony 50mm Lens for action photography in full sun. I’d bought it for use in low light, especially for situations like Panic Room’s gig in Swansea. In full sun you don’t need to stop the lens right down to f1.4, and I was amazed by the sharpness of the images I was getting - completely blows away the kit zoom.

Newport doesn’t quite have the volume of freight traffic I remembered from previous visits in the 80s and 90s, but there was still quite a bit of steel traffic. EWS class 66s seem to be ubiquitous nowadays; there weren’t any 60s to be seen. There were, though, a couple of loco-hauled passenger trains; an FGW Cardiff-Taunton top-and-tailed by a pair of 67s, and Arriva Wales Cardiff-Holyhead, complete with first class and a dining car, allegedly subsidised by the expense accounts of members of the Welsh Assembly (me, cynical?)

As with the Panic Room gig, I’ve uploaded some of the photos to my fotopic site.