Tag Archives: idle muse

The Table of Babel

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The Table with my goods upon it

As I noted in my Salute 2013 posting last week upon my return to Girvan I managed to buy some furniture which I had been after for some time.  While none of you will be interested in the three piece suite or such you might well be keen on the above.  A lovely and believe me bloody strong and heavy table.  Its not quite six feet by four but it is ideal for office work and for wargaming too.  Sitting atop its four solid wood legs is a solid wood top, weighing in at over 75kgs for the whole piece.

I know its a little egotistical to have put all of my own writing and published titles on the table along with my Flintloque miniatures but hey, its my table after all.  It will see a lot of use in times to come and it has a lot of potential for underside storage too which I think is vital for wargaming terrain and all the other needed materials therein.  The room I work in is nearing its capacity for storage of books and other materials.  ‘Table of Babel’ well a play on words but also with a more serious intent…who knows just what gaming will be created or taking place on its solid surface.  The peoples of a thousands worlds and dimensions many, creatures and robots, Dragons and Orcs.

Also before I am asked, and I will be asked, what price such a table fit for the gods of gaming?  Well….let’s say a copy of Slaughterloo is the same price.  Bargain!

GBS

North Korea – Spend an Hour with this Travel Documentary

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Following the BBC’s airing of an undercover report from North Korea last night I decided I was interested enough to look around and find out more.  Time is limited for me (when is it not!) as Salute 2013 is only a few days away now but I took an hour and found a really great video on YouTube by a film maker called ‘Etherium Sky’.  This film maker has produced an excellent, actually better than the BBC’s efforts, travel documentary of his own trip to North Korea.  I recommend that if you have any interest in what is likely to be the most secretive and paranoid nation on earth that you watch it.  It is well worth an hour of your time.

Leaving aside the ongoing and seemingly constant threats of military action and possible thermonuclear attack upon South Korea and other nations by the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) the documentary was fascinating to me.  I am a big, big fan of the works of George Orwell and to see a state that exists in close to what ‘1984’ describes was very interesting.  I will not spoil the documentary for you but a few interesting points:

  • Lack of Technology – The DPRK is almost medieval in many places.  A lot of the jobs and tasks in the video looked to me, as a student of history, the way Japan did in the 1400’s.  The typical person there has no technology of any kind on their person including a wrist watch or mobile phone.
  • Failing Electricity Grid –   It would be amusing if it was not so criminal but the power grid in the DPRK seemed to fail constantly plunging whole towns into darkness.  That is a society in touble, rule one for a modern civilisation…electricity.  You try living without it.
  • Grinding Poverty – You can find out about the famine that killed a million plus, of the food aid that China and other give the DPRK, but in watching this film you also see the hard manual labour most North Koreans must also put up with.  I don’t even think it was about full employment on farms or such just a lack of machines to achieve more with less labour.
  • Isolationism – As a pariah state North Koreans have NO information about the outside world and this is down right strange.  Never heard of the Beatles, not heard of Star Wars or seen The Eiffel Tower.  We know little about them but they really know nothing about us.
  • Child Actors – It is worth watching this film if only to see the section in the middle of it with a performance put on including dance routines, piano, violin, guitar and acting put on in PERFECTION by DPRK children aged about 4-5 years.  Yes, very young children.  Speaking as a father of three and having been to a dozen or more such performances of this age group..you can only get this level of perfection if the threat of failure is dire indeed for the kiddies.
  • Slight of Hand – A lot of the filming is out of the corner of a window or slyly from a coach or under the arm.  Why?  Well the regime wants you to see only what it wishes you to see.  Taken to the model village, the ideal factory, the perfect hospital and immaculate hotel but not the buildings next door or the stores with empty shelves.  It is awful to watch and so clueless to a modern audience from the West who are just not taken in by this attempt at slight of hand.  Indeed the idea of perfection for the regime is something from the 1970’s or 1980’s, all pre-digital.
  • The Military – Everywhere and everything.  In fact the only thing that seems to run well in North Korea.
  • The Glorious Leader Cult – Scary, scary stuff.  A mix of hacked down messianic religion and fairy tales about the current, previous and first glorious leader.  If the DPRK had any form of free media it would not be able to exist like this.  Some of the stories are really wild.
  • Ideological Failure –  The DPRK is a broken state its obvious to all watching this film.  The reasons for this are many but what interests me is the idea that extreme nations where dictatorship and military led societies ALL seem to fail; why is this?  Lack of investment, a slow down of growth and innovation, public sector meltdown for military spending and so on.  North Korea is like any number of such states in Africa ruled in much the same fashion or it can be compared to the Soviet Union of the 1990’s or the Argentina of the 1980’s.  As you will all know the more democratic a nation’s name is the less democratic it is likely to be indeed throw in a ‘democratic’ or ‘peoples’ or ‘republic’ and I will assure you the nation in question meets none of its own named qualities.

A pariah state.  A place not really of our world.  How long with North Korea remain this way…well in my opinion not as long as the glorious leader would like it to.  But then what do I know, what do any of us know.

GBS

Big Can, Little Can..Weather a Blizzard

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Its been a manic weekend here in Girvan.  Not really for me as I remained snug at home all except for Friday but more on that in a minute.   But for the rest of Girvan and indeed the whole of South West Scotland the weekend has seen some of the worst weather that the area has seen in many years and me personally since  I have moved here some eight years ago.  You can look at the news for the full story but essentially high winds from Thursday evening peaked across Friday into storm conditions and when that was combined with snowfall it led to gusting blizzards that caused no end of trouble.

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Truck Park Girvan!

Across Friday afternoon one road after another was closed and the snow fell on and on.  I decided to leave the office an hour or so early expecting I might have to deal with a bit of snow on the ten mile drive down into Girvan.  I was wrong.  It was actually the scariest drive of my life to date as a driver ( I have only been driving a year so that is not saying much but read on).   As I drove the snow got deeper until I passed a delivery van that had broken down due to stalling.  Following this the wind whipped the snow into drifts and a tundra like gale and my view of the road ahead was reduced to little more than ten feet.  A mile of this saw a small convoy of vehicles form with me at its midst.  I kid you not that about three miles out from Girvan the brakes in the car stopped working, they froze or were packed with snow.  I had to use the gears to slow and the handbrake to arrest the increasing number of slips and skids that the car underwent.  I picked up a passenger too, a driver whose vehicle had been left at the side of the road, I did not want to leave him out in that.  By the time I reached Girvan the police had closed the road to traffic and there were cars parked on the roundabout that marks the edge of the town.  I sat in the car for a while watching the weather and waiting for my hands to stop shaking before heading for my house.

I found out the next morning that virtually all of the region had been brought to a halt.  In fact Girvan was home to several packed coaches and at least a hundred HVG’s which parked where they could (see the image above).  I am pleased to report that the people of the town turned out somewhat in force with tea and hot soup for the stranded and every hotel room was filled.  Several people it seemed suffered accidents on the main road down the coast too, but I don’t know more about that.

Snowy Weather

The weather is now much improved but still windy though the BBC says it might come back again…

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Big Can, Little Can

Anyway with the nasty weather out of the way the post I was going to put up was an idle muse about smaller sized cans of fizzy drinks and if they were actually better than the larger more normal size but I can’t summon up the energy so I will keep it short for ‘ya all.  The Food and Drink Agency here in the UK back in 2010 introduced legislation trying to make companies reduce the size of their sugary drinks cans to combat obesity.  I noted this at the time and ignored it but I picked up a case of Pepsi in this size this week and it came back to mind.  You can see the two sizes above, I like diet drinks as coffee makes me feel unwell, but did the smaller can make me drink less?  The answer is a cynical no.       Typically while working I will drink two cans a day, one in the morning, one in the evening but with the third smaller can I have found this number increase to five or six.  This is not due to concious thought, just desire as I type ever onwards with email and such.  They are just too small to satisfy.  As a result, the equally expensive, but smaller, cans are consumed at three times the rate of the other ones.  As I said cynical…combat obesity or just sell more under the old three choices adage…’Reduce Size, Reduce Quantity, Increase Price‘…seems to be the first one to me.

GBS

Doctor Who’s Dalek creator Ray Cusick dies aged 84

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Doctor Who’s Dalek creator Ray Cusick dies aged 84

I learned today that the man who created the iconic shape and form of motion of TV’s most vicious foe had died from heart failure.  Ray Cusick may not have been as famous as Terry Nation or as recognisable as Tom Baker when it comes to Doctor Who but his contribution to the series went a long way to making what it was and what it has become in recent years.In a 2008 episode of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC Three, Mr Cusick explained that inspiration for the Daleks’ design came from a lunch with special effects expert Bill Roberts, who was responsible for making the creatures.

“Mr Cusick picked up a pepper pot and moved it around the table before he said: “It’s going to move like that – no visible means.” Dr Who viewers were told on the show that the Daleks had been the creation of a scientist who believed they would help him survive a war on their home planet of Skaro. But the alien race was later responsible for his death. Mr Cusick, from Horsham in West Sussex, leaves two daughters and seven grandchildren.

It is the fiftieth anniversary of the series this year and while this event will not greatly impact on the events planned it will make them a little sadder.

GBS

Richard III found!

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Is this a Skull I see before me…

Aside from a liar of a politician finally being exposed today the big news is that historians have proved beyond reasonable doubt that a skeleton found under a car park in Leicester is indeed that of King Richard III who died in 1485.  This is excellent news for me as I love the War of the Roses period of English history and this really brings it up to date and may mean some revision of books held up to this point to be correct. You can read the detail on the Guardian’s Blog but this does solve one of the big mysteries of English history and its also amazing that they found the body at all.  Really long odds against it.   Hunchback and Murderer or a victim of Elizabethan spin doctoring?  You decide.  Got to love Olivier!

GBS

Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis – Review

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A few quiet days for me online it seems, not due to me you understand but more my good lady’s visit to a high quality Spa leaving me with our three little tikes and the school run.  So I am here, not so much, but just as busy (I admire my wife, multi-tasking is a learned skill!) and you will have to to forgive me if my next few posts are shorter than normal.  I have to fit them around the routine of the house!  Right, with that out of the way where are we…a review of the novel Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis.

Above is an image of the book I have (in the middle), given to me by my dear friend Jim Brittain for Christmas but why show different covers.  The reason is one of them main factors for me in reviewing this book.  Put simply its terrible.  The middle cover does not tell the story at all, the one on the right is  a bit better but still not good and oddly the one on the left is the most accurate is somewhat uninspired.  Jim Brittain recommend I read Bitter Seeds and I was dubious at first as I am not really a world war two or fantasy fan but I tried and over the course of two days I was glad that I did.  While the cover fails to tell a tale the author is done a way, way better job of it.

Bitter Seeds as it turns out is part of a trilogy and I had no idea this was the case since I make a point of NOT reading online reviews or about the author allowing the book to stand instead on its own merit.  Here is a little tit bit of the plot:

The year is 1939. Raybould Marsh and other members of British Intelligence have gathered to watch a damaged reel of film in a darkened room.

It appears to show German troops walking through walls, bursting into flames and hurling tanks into the air from afar.

If the British are to believe their eyes, a twisted Nazi scientist has been endowing German troops with unnatural, unstoppable powers.

And Raybould will be forced to resort to dark methods to hold the impending invasion at bay.

But dealing with the occult exacts a price. And that price must be paid in blood.

The novel moves at the cracking pace and the settings of London, Berlin, England, France, Germany in the lead up to and during World War Two is excellently done.  Characters are superbly drawn and believable and the central idea of the book is original.  I do not want to spoil it but it mixes history with magic, the occult and super science too to give a brew that is potent and hold the interest very well.   There are tense moments and the action scenes are a delight to read.

Towards the end I realised that the book must be part of a series as there were several strands of the plot that went nowhere…but I assume that they will be revealed in the sequel(s).  My favourite character was Gretel, now that is a super power not to be taken lightly!  Warlocks and tapped Willpower are well matched…tough to say more without spoilers creeping in..so I won’t.  I will leave it at that.

I recommend reading this book if you are looking for something beyond the norm in science fantasy.  I might well get the next one this summer.

GBS

Gerry Anderson dies….

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Its a sad Boxing day for me.  I had not intended to post on the blog until the end of the week (with a look at some of the films and books Christmas brought me) but I have just heard that one of my favourite film makers and innovators has died.  Gerry Anderson died today aged 83 after suffering from some ill health and Alzheimer’s disease as well.  Creator of supermarionation and programmes like Thunderbirds and Stingray, including my favourite Captain Scarlet he had a big effect on my childhood and I spent many rainy weekends watching videos (yes, not DVD’s!) and also BBC2 re-runs.  Programmes that, in an age before computer animation and digital effects did things that no live action film could hope to emulate on screen.

I wish his family well and its a shame that unlike the Captain, Jerry was not indestructible.  Follow the links to learn more and have a look above if you missed the tense and often very violent Captain Scarlet.  I have used it many times to inspire wargame scenarios and the like.  Honestly to me its one of the best spy genre series ever made.

GBS

A Week Until the End of the World?

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Well we have one week to live.  The long extinct Mayan culture of South America predicted the end of the world on the 21st of December of this year.  So am I giving away my worldly goods, quitting work, running for the hills, going on a crime spree, carving out a kingdom of dirt…no.  I am sure that we will all still be here come the 22nd of the month.  What interests me more is the typically human hysteria around this even and all the other ‘end of the world’ doom sayers.  I bet few have read the theory on why the world will end and the frankly bonkers logic of the Mayans for what would cause all of our ends.  Check the link in this post if you want to know more.

Essentially it is another case of ancient papers and sacred texts being mistranslated.  An ending of the world really should read ‘a big change in mankind or in the way society functions’ but as always it finishes up being ‘look out for that ruddy big rock falling out of the sky’.  Change a word here or there and the meaning goes totally left of field without a lot of effort…I write fiction for a living trust me on this.  I have all the books that Erich von Daniken wrote and they are excellent works of fiction (awesome for wargaming potential by the way!) but they are not real, just a sideways look at history.  I put this event into the same category.

I could end on a crass little comment about predicting the future and not seeing the arrival of the Spanish but hey…I am not one to anger the gods.  See you in a week!

GBS

End of Movember and beginning of December

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Tashe and Tree

This day of the year sees the end of my month of aiding in the Movember charity movement to find a cure for Prostrate and Testicular Cancer both here in the UK and around the world.  As you can see from the photo above I grew a nice hairy and thick moustache over four weeks.  As it was my first time doing Movember (I recommend going to the link and reading up on it) I did not attempt to raise money but instead I donated one hundred pounds to Prostrate Cancer UK on the first day so that if I failed I would not fail those counting on my efforts.

So did I enjoy it?  The short answer is yes.  There are a few fellows in Girvan also doing the charity thing and we exchanged glances and even on two occasions hand shakes of mutual self congratulation.   It is fair to say that facial hair of this kind is now not fashionable in Scotland and that most ladies have a strong feeling on it one way or the other (being called names in the street by strangers or having phone numbers pressed into the palm…nothing in between!).  After the initial week of growth it was quite comfortable but I did need to shave every day to keep it in shape.

Movember is a great idea and my thanks to Jim Brittain and Pete McLean for introducing it to me.  It will do a lot of good for many men.

Will I do it again…yes!  Perhaps next year a full ruddy beard!

GBS

p.s.  It was my idea to tie in the Christmas Tree saying to my Good Lady that it was for ‘continuity’ from one season to the next.  But really I wanted to show this nine foot monster to you all. It took my wife several hours to put it up and I am very proud of her for it.  Not easy…I will not even try!

Rain Stops Play – November 2012

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Well no work at the office for me today.  Having started off on my normal journey the weather during the night, high wind and heavy rain,  became more apparent with fallen branches and debris and puddles on the road.  But I was not prepared for what came next.  Up in the hills outside Girvan the puddles got deeper and larger and then…well it stopped being funny.  The river that runs near the road had burst its banks and I was forced to turn back!

As you can see in the images (sorry no picture of the blocked bridge that actually stopped me as I had to turn about for the big truck and other cars to turn about too) the sheer volume of water was huge.  I hope to return to work upon the morrow.  Bad weather is nothing new for Ayrshire and we do get way more than our share of rain but this was rather more than normal even for the winter.  Especially since it only began at 8pm last night.

Anyhow.  I shall work on at home but it does mean that the two dozen or so of you who are waiting for emails and calls from the ‘official email and phone’ will have to wait…since I cannot get to them!  Sorry!

Rain Stops Play

GBS