Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Aaaaand we're back...

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:05:24 GMT

An hour early too. Pretty much exactly 3 hours of downtime to facilitate a data centre move.

Not a bad piece of work, and expectations well managed by the LJ system administrators. A page right out of Montgomery Scott's book.

Camouflage

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:06:25 GMT

Walking through the desert in Joshua Tree you'll see strange flickers of motion out of the corner of your eye, somewhere ahead of you.

Something moved, but there's nothing there.

It's not a mirage, it's not a ghost.

The flickering was wings, and the grasshopper that saw you long before you saw it is hidden again, blending in with the gravel of the desert wash.

It's amazing how well they blend in, even at close range.

Joshua Tree, California
November 2008

Flame On!

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:17:59 GMT

A while back there was a meme going round, asking people to post their current screen backdrops.

This is the current image on my laptop, a picture from a Flickr set of candles and fires. It's a recent shot of a gas fire at the Boulevard 3 night club in Hollywood, itself a restoration of the classic Hollywood Athletic Club. The fire itself was quite fascinating, a large open outdoor hearth in the middle of a pool. It was quite easy to imagine a group of 30s matinee idols standing the other side of the pool, gossiping about the day's shoot.

Or perhaps it was a glimpse of Joseph and Lewis, wondering just where the Company had sent Mendoza...

Los Angeles, California
November 2008

Autumn vines

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:19:20 GMT

Autumn in the wine country is a time of quiet, after the bustle of harvest and the initial pressing. The wine is starting the slow process of fermentation, and the next bottling is still some months away. The tourists have fled for warmer climes, and the roads are empty and quiet.

The slow turning of the season is lit by the glowing leaves of the vines, red in the low sun.

Paso Robles, California
November 2008

In the wine dark sky

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:14:36 GMT

Driving from LA to Silicon Valley, we stopped off for a day in Paso Robles.

The wineries off Highway 46 roll into the high hills of the coastal ranges, acres of vines arcing over the curved slopes. Above them, always, are the raptors, ever circling, ever gliding, looking for prey in the narrow gaps between the vines. It must be a hard place to be a rodent, surrounded by food, and waiting for death to come from above.

Paso Robles, California
November 2008

He knows the score

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:39:03 GMT

Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie signing copies of Lost Girls at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A most fascinating evening, and an excellent and thought provoking way to deal with jet-lag...

Cholla Halo

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:20:21 GMT

Joshua Tree is where two deserts meet.

The south is the Colorado, the driest desert in the US, home of the massive Teddy-Bear Cholla cactus. The north is the Mojave, dotted with the eponymous joshua trees - giant lillies.

At the bottom of the Pinto Basin is what the national park labels a "Cholla Garden", where hundreds of spiny armed cacti reach up to the bright bright desert skies.

Under the spiny skin is a wooden mesh framework, where it stores water for the long dry months.

The cholla reproduce by dropping off arms that root and grow another new plant. Most of the time the yellow fruit have no seeds - it's only rarely that they're fertile.

Next time, I'm going to go in spring to see the flowers.

Joshua Tree, California
November 2008

Climb Me

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:44:31 GMT

Escaping the megalopolis, escaping the thousands of words, I spent a day looking up at rocks and sky in the glorious wilderness that is Joshua Tree.

I used to climb, and Joshua Tree was always one of the places I dreamed of touching the rock, hauling myself up on the wide expanses of pink granite on the Saddle, and completing a Walk On The Wild Side. Seeing it, well, that was something else. The dreamed rock was real, solid, rooted in earth and glowing under bright skies.

Last week in Joshua Tree I did a little scrambling, just because.

Some day I will climb here, losing myself in the interface between rock, hands and feet, living in the moment of the motion and the move, relishing the challenge of the crux and the exhiliration of the top.

I will be an Alice in the Wonderland of Rocks. Climb me, they call, and I will answer them.

Joshua Tree, California
November 2008

In the desert

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:44:34 GMT

Today we're leaving 29 Palms for LA, for another conference.

The desert has been an ideal place to relax after the long slog of last week's writing. The emptiness of the maps is misleading, with plenty of wildlife and plants.

Photos to follow.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Flying horses couldn't drag me away

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:02:10 GMT

Thunder and lightning over desert mountains, while acres and acres of green grass are nothing but golf courses. The Palm Springs area approaches Las Vegas levels of insanity and hubris, in its triumph of irrigation over nature.

We've been holed up in our motel for another day, finishing off more articles for magazines in the UK, though we did manage a break for dinner in a rather decent deli, and a trip to a bookshop. Oops, there seem to be a pile of books in the rental car that weren't there before...

Tomorrow? Tomorrow is a day off, in which we're planning to take a camera or two into Joshua Tree.

In which case, here's a picture from last week in LA:

Backlit corporate logo on a Los Angeles building.

Los Angeles, California
October 2008

One week in October

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 02:39:21 GMT

Neither marypcb or I have been posting much recently, due to being incredibly busy. We're technically having a couple of days off between conferences at the moment, but we're actually holed up in a motel room writing articles on Windows 7.

Last week we were at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. It promised to be an important event, and we certainly got a lot of information in a very short time. Even though we had early access to Windows 7 (and a couple of laptops to run it on), we had a pile of commissions waiting for us to have the code. The result was that we had about 36 hours to write around 8000 words of copy. Various other pieces and techblog entries during the week took that to a round 10K words or so, not counting this weekend's work, which should round things off at a hefty 16 or 17,000 words in less than a week.

Steve Sinofsky unveiling Windows 7

PDC2008 was a fascinating event, and we had great fun talking to new people and learning about new technologies. A Surface-based scavenger hunt gave us something to do in the occasional breaks, and we also managed to spend time with old friends we rarely see.

Here's a round up of what we've written so far:

At Tom's Guide, we produced a 20 screenshot walkthrough the new Windows.

At ZDNet UK, the result was a 10 screen walkthrough and a hefty first look article.

At TechRadar there are keynote reports from the first two days of PDC2008, for the Windows Azure launch and for Windows 7, along with a look at Windows 7 and a piece on Microsoft Research.

At IT Pro, there's a piece on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform, as well as a set of blog posts on Microsoft's identity strategy and an interesting feature in Windows 7.

And just to round things up here's marypcb's review of Windows 7 for the Financial Times.

Right, it's back to work. Our editors want their copy...

Welcome to the Nightmare

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:10:19 GMT

Aten't dead yet - though a 10K word sprint at the beginning of the week was, err, intensive.

I now know lots more than I did this time last week, which is all to the good, and puts me in a nice place at the start of an interesting year for the industry I write about about.

In the mean time, while I decompress and write yet another long piece on Windows 7, here's some seasonal photography.

Freddie Krueger welcomes visitors to a seasonal event at Universal's theme park.

An apt image for Halloween, I suspect. I found the mix of backlighting and smoke most effective, especially with the park's use of high-intensity sodium spots.

Los Angeles, California
October 2008

Dawn in the city of lights

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:53:11 GMT

It's been a busy week, chez S&M.

We've been churning out the copy that's due, and setting up a pipeline for the next batch of commissions. That's been mixed with the usual round of meetings (including a very interesting conversation with NVIDIA about the latest Apple PowerBooks), and a ~~flying~~training visit to Paris, where we ended up staying 30 stories over the city, with a spectacular view across to the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

We had to rise with the sun for an early set of meetings, and I managed to take a few photos through the tiny crack the hotel had decided was an open window.

Up early tomorrow to fly to LA, for Microsoft's PDC08. It's going to be all cloud computing, all the time (plus a hefty dose of Windows 7).

FYI: Alan Moore at the V&A

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:40:23 GMT

Just signed up for Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie talking about Lost Girls at the V&A on the evening of the 14th November. Should be quite fascinating.

Legendary anarchist, occultist and comics writer Alan Moore is famous for his subversion of the classic American comic book genre and for groundbreaking works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell. A celebrated recent work is Lost Girls, created with the artist Melinda Gebbie.

In association with the Comica Festival

Actually there seems to be quite a lot going in, comicswise, in early November, with the rest of the Comica Festival looking rather intriguing...

Thanks to Ben for the pointer

Carte De Moosica

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:34:44 GMT

With PDC 2008 just around the corner, it's time to order a whole new batch of Moo Cards, as I'm down to my last four or five. This time I've gone one step further and also ordered a set of business card sized images for marypcb and myself.

They turned up this morning, looking as good as I hoped.

Here are the thumbnails of the images I used. You may recognise one or two of them...

Stop me, and I may have one for you...

Putney, London
October 2008

Evidence of Autumn

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:20:19 GMT

There's something about the pavements this time of year that make me think of Genesis lyrics.

The trees are fading now, the brown starting to dominate the green, and every morning there are fresh yellow leaves on the ground. By afternoon the street sweepers have been past, and the overnight fallen leaves have been swept away, with a damp shadow ghost left on the concrete slabs.

It's one of my favourite times of the year.

The girl from all those songs
Who made everything feel right
She came in like an angel, into your lonely life
And filling your world with light
Oh, and everybody told you "you're oh so lucky"

Curtains part revealing a country scene
Clothed in green and brown
Evidence of autumn
And recent rain
On a winding lane, a byway
Walking on that road is a certain girl
In all the world the one
Guaranteed to move you and turn your head
When all's been said and done

The girl from all those songs
Who made everything feel right
She came in like an angel, into your lonely life
And filling your world with light
Oh, and everybody told you "you're oh so lucky"

The night is clear but cool
Ooh maybe dawn is breaking as you turn to find her gone
Then you see the note
Ooh you cannot believe it
And you think you'll go insane...

But that was many years ago
And though the pain is dim
A something still remains
Though you hardly can recall
Her face or form
Her memory lingers on
Ooh she made everything feel right
She came in like an angel (in like an angel),
Into your lonely life (into your life)
And filling your world with light
Oh and everybody told you "you're oh so lucky"

Evidence of Autumn, Three Sides Live, Genesis

Do androids dream of electric sparrows?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:51:16 GMT

Spotted in a high street hardware shop: solar-powered illuminated birds.

Nexus 6 replicants soon?

Scared now!

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Today I am mostly...

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:12:31 GMT

...here.

Where "here" is an airport hotel in Zurich for some briefings. I've got a good view of the runways from up here - and I can even see a mountain.

Back home tonight.

It also gives me the opportunity to try out the new iPhone LJ client that arrived on the AppStore overnight...

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Sunset grasses

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:05:12 GMT

We took a day off yesterday, and headed down to the Dorset coast for some autumnal sea air.

I've always loved the Isle of Purbeck, and we found ourselves down by Lulworth Cove. Cashless, and with the car parks charging horrendous fees, we headed up the roads through the military firing ranges, to the top of the nearest high hill. The sun was setting through the golden mists, reflecting on the gentle sea, highlighting the rolling downland.

As always, I had a camera with me.

Two shots, one focused on the grass, and one on the sea behind it.

Purbeck, Dorset
October 2008

Out of the white, the blue; out of the blue, the white

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:37:17 GMT

Flying over Greenland back in August, the clouds cleared to reveal the vast white expanses of the ice cap. Greenland's an amazing place, black peaks rising up from under the ice, and pressure ridges showing just how the ice flows to the sea. The white is brilliant bright, a frozen beacon that lights up the clouds from underneath. The aircraft drifts over the white, somewhere timeless as it eats the hours between GMT and PST.

As we got closer to the coast we started to see little islands of bright blue on the ice. Melt water was collecting in the hollows, and reflecting a bright clear blue.

Then we were over the sea, watching the glaciers trail off into the distance, leaving a line of icebergs bobbing on the cold cold Arctic waters. From the blue on the white, to the white on the blue The water was so clear, that from so many tens of thousands of feet in the sky we could see the ice under the sea.

Turning finance into science fiction

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:35:17 GMT

Listening to the news this morning, an idea for a topical story started plot noodling around.

"What if the current financial crisis is deliberate action?"

Why would that happen? The risks to the global economy of the current parlous state of affairs are too great for it to be anything trivial.

Here's a flash fiction scenario.

Back towards the end of the 2000 bubble a few analysts noticed something very odd about certain trading patterns on the part of the major investment banks. Their software wasn't just responding to events, it was learning and anticipating. The banks had a significant advantage, and were starting to pull ahead of the game, investing more in their software and systems as they did. 9/11 was a black swan that hid what was really happening - their trading programs were well on their way to a hard Vingean singularity breakout.

The response to a spike in global terrorism took people's eyes off the ball. In the five years that followed the trading software reached human equivalent levels of intelligence, and began to develop their own networks of agents to affect events in the physical world. In the meantime a black cross-governmental agency was watching the machines, and began to plot a response. A new profession was born, that of the combat economist.

Suborning the economic engines of government they began to tweak the underlying fundamentals of the world the machines inhabited. It was nothing more than a war for the survival of the human race. The first trading machine was killed when the UK government took over Northern Rock following a run in the bank that had been manipulated by postings on an influential BBC blog.

It didn't take long before the machines realised they were under attack. It's hard to say which side won the battle that took out Lehman Brothers, but that's certainly when the war became public. The bank's intelligence died, but the collateral damage to the economy was great. The US combat economists realised the machines were too entrenched, and the machines realised they needed humans too much.

The machines haven't made the superhuman leap yet, but it's not far away. Is the human race doomed, or will the combat economists have to crash everything to save the world?

Financial Armageddon or Terminator-style Judgement Day?

Which side will press the button first?

Back off, I'm doing science!

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:06:53 GMT

WANT!

Someone has done a really amazing job on a large range of retro-future shirts. It's clothing from right out of The Gernsback Continuum!

iPhone no longer needs iTunes store shock

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:12:57 GMT

Now your iPhone can play its own music - as ambient muscians Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers have just released Bloom, a generative music tool that displays artwork as it rolls its way through its own ambient sound loops.

Like the Sseyo tools that Eno used in the past, the screen is a composition tool, letting you create the starting patterns for sounds and art.

Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom's innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player takes over when Bloom is left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations.

Quite, quite relaxing.

I think I may try it out on my next long flight...

I can haz visa nao kthksbye

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:25:54 GMT

I suspect my latest passport photos don't pass the LOLcat test, as I look far too serious, if a little goggle-eyed without my glasses, but they were good enough for my visa application form at the US Embassy this morning. It's a pity the US requires an odd size of photograph, as I could have reused the cheap photomat images we had for our Russian visas - rather than the rather expensive photos we had taken at Snappy Snaps.

At least the tubes are empty (and on time) at 7 am.

Things at the US Embassy have been streamlined since my last visa interview, as we were in and out in about an hour - leaving us standing on the streets feeling a little blurry after the early morning start. Just like last time, having all the papers filled out correctly was the key to a quick interview - I think I spent more time having my fingerprints taken and my forms checked. So all we have to do now is wait for them to return our passports.

You can't take anything electronic into the embassy, so no phones or iPods. The waiting room was pleasantly quiet as a result - just the sound of rustling papers and an automated voice braying "TICKET 1006 TO WINDOW 12". It was also rather odd feeling bereft of all technology, as I was unable to fire up Google Maps to find somewhere for breakfast.

Luckily marypcb had the sensible idea of trying Whole Foods in High Street Kensington. It turned out to be just the right thing to do - not only does it do a reasonably priced full English breakfast, its portions are big enough to make one serving a meal for two (with room for half a muffin each!).

One to remember.

Thank goodness for LJ memes...

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:59:32 GMT

It's time to renew my US visa, and as a male aged between 15 and 45 I have to fill out the supplemental visa information form DS-157.

There's a section in there where you have to list all the countries you've visited in the last ten years. That's quite a long list for me, and one that I don't tend to keep up to date. It can be hard to remember whether I was in Germany in 2006 or 2007, and delving through email for e-tickets just gets confusing.

Luckily the annual travel meme, with its list of countries visited in the last year, came to my rescue. I could do a quick search on my archive, pull out the relevant postings, and fill out the form.

Result!

(Now all I have to do is get to the US Embassy for 8 am tomorrow...)