January 2003 Archives

Since Chancery Lane tube station has been closed (because of last weekends derailment) I've been walking to work from Bank station. This takes me past the Old Bailey (the UK's central criminal court). Normally I'm walking past this building at about 8:30am which is long before anything starts happening there (judges like their beauty sleep).

This morning, because of a nightmare journey on the tube I was walking over an hour later. As I got within a couple of blocks of the court I started to notice large numbers of police standing on every corner. As I got closer to them I noticed that they were all carrying big guns.

That might not sound very surprising to some people, but in the UK our police don't carry guns unless there's a specific reason for it, so it's still a bit shocking when you see it. There were a lot of police and a lot of guns.

I guess there was some big terrorism case going on in the courts. I'll have to check the news and see what's going on.

I recently read Left Behind by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. It's the first in a series of books about what happens when The Rapture comes and all the "real" xtians are taken off to heaven and the rest of us are left behind to deal on our own.

It's not the kind of thing that I'd usually read but I'd seen it mentioned in a number of places so I decided to give it a go. But don't worry, I did'nt check my brain at the door at there's most certainly no chance of me becoming a "born yesterday" xtian.

I thought some people might be interested in the review I've posted at Amazon.

A tube train was derailed in a tunnel on Saturday afternoon. There were no fatalities but about 30 of the 800 passengers were treated for various levels of injury.

Current theory seems to be that a motor fell off the underside of one of the rear carriages. All of the rolling stock on that line has been taken out of stock whilst it is checked out (and, presumably, bolts are tightened). There was a lot of talk on the news about how it was over fifteen years since Kings Cross and over twenty-five years since Moorgate, but I can't help thinking that there's a major disaster just around the corner on the tube. It's been horribly underfunded for decades.

The tube station where it happened is right outside where I'm currently working. They are saying that it'll be closed for weeks. I'll have a twenty minute walk from the nearest open station.

Anyone remember Tom Robinson?

Well he's got a good page on his web site about what we can all do to protest about the forthcoming war.

I particularly like the Clone of the Attack poster.

So after six months of waiting, tonight we finally get a new episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on UK TV.

It's the first episode of season 7. Apparently it's going to be a good deal less dark than the last season. So what do we know?

• Alyson Hannigan (Willow) and Anthony Head (Giles) have been filming some scenes in the UK (out near Bath)
• Sunnydale High School has been rebuilt after being destroyed at the end of season 3 and that's where a lot of the action will take place. Not sure where Dawn has been going to school in the meantime.
• Many old friends (and enemies) will be returning
• It looks like it might be the last season of the show

I'm really looking forward to it. Anyone who phones me between 8 and 9pm tonight will be ignored.

Last night I finally got to see Michael Moore's film Bowling for Columbine. It was every bit as good as I expected. Moore looks at the huge number of people who are killed with guns in the USA annually and tries to understand what the causes are. In the process he manages to make a film which whilst covering a serious and tragic topic also manages to be very funny. He also manages to destroy any respect that I once had for Charlton Heston (yes, Charlton, it is a madhouse - but that's at least partly your fault).

It's very heartening to know that Michael Moore is over there making films and writing books. It's even more heartening to know that this film is the most successful documentary ever shown in the US - having taken more that twice as much as the previous record holder.

Everyone should see this film.

[And one small parenthetical addition. I confess to having watched this on a pirated SVCD disc. This makes me feel incredibly guilty. I'm definitely going to have to buy the DVD when it comes out. I'm not cut out for this warez-swapping lark.]

Those excellent people from Stand are at it again.

This time they are asking people to register their feelings about the proposed introduction of ID cards in the UK. The government are currently undergoing a period of public consultation on this matter and they claim that the responses they've been getting have all been very positive.

Please visit the Stand web site and help them to demonstrate that we're not all positive about the idea.

Cool. I just discovered that I'm an Amazon UK Top 1000 reviewer.

Of course, I'm still not buying from them.

Whilst browsing some old entries on Ask's blog I found an entry pointing out a very appropriate Doonesbury cartoon.

(Actually, I'm just trying out Movable Type's trackback functionality)

It's been snowing here for two days so the British transport system has fallen to pieces. It does that most years.

I hate snow. If I remember the books I was reading 30 years ago, by the 21st century we were supposed to all be living in cities that were covered by great glass domes that kept the weather out. Whatever happened to that?

A few weeks ago I wrote an entry here about my feelings of on Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The entry concentrated on the differences between the film and the original book. I expected that a few of my friends would read the item and maybe a couple of them would post comments.

But it's been a little more popular than that. That entry currently has 22 comments. That's more comments than all of the other entries on this site combined. There are people I don't know posting comments. There are people having conversations about the film.

Looking at the logs, I see what has happened. For some reason, a Google search for two towers discrepancies has my post in fourth position. I guess this is drawing in new readers.

I'm getting used to this kind of attention. Recently I discovered that an entry I'd written about the BNP some months ago in another blog was turning up on the first page of a Google search for british national party. This lead to my blog getting some interest from BNP members.

I don't know why my stuff is getting rated so highly on Google, but it's pretty cool. If you've been lead to this site from a Google link (or even some other search engine) then you're welcome. I hope you enjoy it.

Not for me you understand. I've been going into work every day except the three public holidays we get over xmas[1]. But it seems that the majority of the population of London left work on Friday 20th December and didn't return until this morning.

I first realised this when I arrived at my tube station this morning. For some reason, the entire population of London had decided that they all needed to buy a new season ticket at my local station. And they'd all turned up at the same time as me. Or at least it seemed that way. Don't these people realise that you can buy season tickets in advance. And given that it's the 21st century, you can even buy them on the internet.

Then, of course, the tubes were far busier than they've been over the holiday. I had to let three trains for by before there was even space to get on one. It ended up taking 50% longer than it normally does to get to work.

I'm going to have to reassess my journey and either set off much earlier or much later.

[1] This is simply because I only get paid for days I'm at work.

Every 10 years the literary magazine Granta publishes a list of the "Best of Young British Novelists". It's a list of what their panel of judges consider the 20 most interesting novelists of the time. By "young" they mean 40 or under and by "British" they mean having a British passwort.

In 1983 the list included people like Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Pat Barker, Rose Tremain, Graham Swift, William Boyd and Kazuo Ishiguro. In 1993 Ishiguro was still on the list and he'd been joined by names like Iain Banks, Louis de Bernieres, Alan Hollinghurst, Hanif Kureishi, Ben Okri, Will Self and Jeanette Winterson.

I can't really remember who I had heard of (much less read) when I first read the two previous lists. I do know that the 2003 list announced today contains only three authors who I've heard of (Zadie Smith, Rachel Cusk and Alan Warner) and that I've never read any of them (althought we do have copies of both of Zadie Smith's novels which I need to get round to reading).

I guess it's just evidence that I'm concentrating too much on the technical side of my life. There's more to live than being a geek.

It's also a bit galling to realise that even if I ever get a novel published, I'll be too old to be on BOYBN list.

I've just finished reading Douglas Adams' final book The Salmon of Doubt.

It's not really his last book. Or rather it's not how his last book would have been if he had been around to finish it. It's actually a dozen or so chapters from various drafts of the book that were found on his hard disk after his death. And this is the frustrating thing. You know you'll never know exactly who has been sending Dirk Gently $5000 a week. Or why. Or what DaveLand has to with any of it[1]. I guess this is as close as I'm ever going to get to knowing how Dickens fans feel about not knowing the ending of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

In order to pad the book out, the publishers have included lots of other articles and interviews that were found on the hard disks of various computers. Many of these are classic Adams. It's a really enjoyable book. Or, at least, I found it so right up until the point where the sudden ending of The Salmon of Doubt reminded me why the book will never be finished.

[1] Personally, I really liked the idea of DaveLand.

Answers to those kinds of important questions from Googlism.

Who is Dave Cross?

Who is davorg?