mjharper

Education and technological incompetence

2012-01-20T12:17:00.001+01:00

A couple of years back, I completed my Masters degree. It was principally concerned with open, online and distance learning; in short, educational technology in the modern learning environment. Now, while I never really expected to be able to apply all those ideas in my job, since our learning institutions are still very much based around classrooms and traditional structures, I did at least think that it would be generally accepted that, as the information age moves into the digital age, the importance of such technology would be basically unquestioned. The internet, portable computing, and constant connectivity are increasingly ubiquitous. Denying that is like Cnut trying to hold back the tide.

Some six years before that, I worked for an institution which was integrating the internet and computing into examinations. Instead of pen-and-paper exams for each separate discipline, we were beginning to do combined, networked exams. Students would begin in the morning, have a number of tasks to complete over the next few hours, had full access to computers and the internet, and took breaks when they wanted. The general idea was to make the examination as 'realistic' as possible, essentially reflecting a day at work, along with the resources and skills required to deal with it.

By no means was the procedure perfect, but it nevertheless embodied the principle that education and examinations should adapt to the actual way the world works. Educational institutes do not exist in a bubble; they should prepare students in a way which is relevant to society and the work environment into which they will be thrust upon graduation. Even if not all institutes could or should be consistently cutting edge, surely all must be informed by the realities of the world outside.

When I began teaching in the late 90's, I purchased a briefcase which ultimately broke under the weight of the stuff I had to carry around in it: textbooks, dictionaries, cassette players and so on. I quickly lightened the load by purchasing an electronic dictionary, which was soon supplemented with and ultimately replaced by a Palm handheld. Nowadays I have only a MacBook Air, a set of USB speakers, and the occasional textbook. The university has a wireless network which, even if a bit flaky, covers the whole campus. Beyond that, smart phones have expanded internet connectivity to the point that essentially all my students are online at all times. Not being able to access the internet is the exception, rather than the rule.

Textbooks are next for the chopping block, as Apple's keynote yesterday indicates. As mobile computing becomes increasingly powerful, yet also more lightweight and affordable, and as the digital publishing becomes easier, lugging heaps of textbooks to lectures will become a thing of the past. I'm not fantasizing here, nor jumping on the 'Apple will revolutionize education' bandwagon; this is just the way the world is now. This semester, for the first time, I have students using iPads to write academic papers. Between exams today, most students pulled out their smart phones and checked Facebook or whatever. In many ways the important point is that this technology is not brought into the classroom by teachers, but by the students themselves.

In this context, I would argue that it is largely anachronistic that my students today are writing an exam with pen and paper. After all, the only time in their lives that they will actually do such a thing is in an examination. But I accept, with qualifications, that our institution does not have the resources or confidence to administer the kind of networked examination that I described above.

Worse, in my view, is the professor who says, amidst sexist jokes, that universities should be the same today as they were 60 years ago.

But what I truly cannot stomach, and the reason for my post today, is the recent decision by my department to ban the use of electronic dictionaries from examinations. We only permit paper dictionaries. Let me make this clear: a year ago, electronic dictionaries were allowed. Now they are not. And I'm not talking about smart phones, or iPads, or something with an internet connection, but a technology that I would consider two generations out of date (electronic dictionaries to PDAs to smart phones). Why? Because some of my colleagues, by their own admission, are unable to tell the difference between an electronic dictionary and a smart phone, and are unable to tell whether the student using one might have an internet connection and be cheating; and because these same colleagues think that, because you can find words more quickly using an electronic dictionary, it gives the student an unfair advantage over those who don't have one.

These 'arguments' are so vacuous that I refuse to dignify them with a direct response. I do not expect everyone to be as much of a geek as I am, but people whose job it is to offer instruction to the youth of today should have a basic level of technological competence and understanding. Without that, how can you possibly stand in front of a classroom and offer your students relevant instruction in an appropriate manner?

Though it may seem harsh, I simply cannot believe that anyone with such an attitude has the right to call themselves a 'teacher'.

Scaremongering

2011-08-26T11:23:00.001+02:00

Today's Bild headline: 'Wasp swarm: how to protect yourself from stings.' Odd, I haven't seen a single wasp this year. Maybe they're all hiding behind that cloud, waiting to launch a precision strike?

Gratuitous Censorship, or Why the German Censors should be Censored.

2011-06-05T12:50:00.001+02:00

gratuitous (adjective): uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted [OED]

In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied Powers (naturally enough) eliminated Nazi ideology from Germany's educational curriculum. But they went a step further: in 1949, the constitution of West Germany divided educational authority between the various federal states, to all intents and purposes abandoning a centralised system. The rationale behind this was to ensure that, should an objectionable party rise to national power again, it would be much harder for it to indoctrinate school children.

This devolution of educational responsibility has led to any number of problems for the German school system, not least that some states do not recognise the qualifications of others (meaning that, for example, someone who has trained as a teacher in one state may have to go back to university if they wish to teach in another). But for the purposes of this post that is beside the point. What's important is this: that in the matter of education, one group of elected officials acts a buffer to the potential excesses of another group of elected officials. Effectively a system of checks and balances, the constitution does not trust elected politicians to act in the best interests of the people.

So why is it that unelected German censors are able, without any opposition whatsoever, to dictate what is appropriate for me to see?

German censorship was always a bit idiosyncratic. As if uncomfortable with the farcical association of the erotic and the macabre, Woody Allen's 1975 film Love and Death had its title changed to The Last Night of Boris Gruschenko. Perhaps for a similar reason, Peter Jackson's 1996 film The Frighteners was awarded an 18 age rating in Germany, in contrast to its 15 in Britain (that's really the only reason I can think of here). Most ridiculously, however, is the fact that the 1963 film version of Tom Jones is still rated an 18. It is, and as far as I know always has been, a PG in Britain. The mind boggles.

But the German censors are having a field day with computer games. And no, I'm not just talking about highly controversial games like Postal or Grand Theft Auto. No. I'm talking about Portal. [Spoilers follow]

If you're not aware what Portal is about, I'd advise reading the wikipedia article I linked to, or picking it up on Steam for €9. In short, it's a physics based puzzle game in which you have to escape from an experimental complex run by a rogue AI. The player acquires a 'portal gun' which may be fired at two surfaces (floors, ceilings, and so on) in a room, thus creating an 'entrance' and an 'exit' and letting you reach otherwise unattainable areas. Falling through a portal allows the player to gather momentum and so 'throw' yourself across greater distances. The graphic on the right (taken from wikipedia) explains this mechanism a bit more.

The point is simply that this is what the game is about. It isn't about shooting old ladies or dismembering aliens. It isn't about stealing cars or fuelling gang warfare. It's a extremely well-scripted and inventive game which demands some actual thought to complete. To be sure, we're not talking about the puzzle complexity of Riven or the Rhem series, but Portal succeeds because it gradually introduces the player to a few simple mechanics and challenges him or her to combine them in interesting ways.

But surely, for it to fall foul of German censorship, there must be some of the more stereotypically gratuitous elements of computer games involved? Well, there aren't. There is no nudity or swearing. The player does not have access to a weapon of any kind; to defeat enemy gun turrets (which crop up on only a handful of levels) the player must knock them over by, for example, opening a portal underneath them. The rocket launchers encountered on the last level are indestructible, but can but used to destroy obstacles (and the final boss) by forcing them to fire through portals.

So, if there is no nudity, no swearing, and no actual violence in the game, what exactly was censored?

Well, there's some blood on the walls, as can be seen in the image below:

And here is what the censored version looks like: (both images taken from schnittberichte.com)

Now, I played through Portal yesterday before being aware of the extent of the censorship, and you know what? I thought those marks on the walls were mud or dirt. I honestly have no idea how prevalent they are in the game, because I hardly noticed them at all. At one point I found myself in a corridor with what looked like sewage on the floor; I am guessing that it was actually supposed to be blood.

An apologist might ask whether the blood was really necessary. After all, haven't I just been talking about how surprisingly cerebral the game is, especially for such an unexpected hit? The answer is that yes, the blood is necessary. Because there is this thing called narrative.

For example, in that corridor which I thought was covered in sewage, what passed through my mind was, 'Ooh, stinky.' What should have been passing through my mind was, 'Ooh, danger'. Instead of a warning about what might be waiting for me at the end of the corridor (a room full of gun turrets), I thought it an unnecessarily crude environmental detail.

The blood on the wall is the same. As mudstains they are just ambient dirt; as bloodstains they serve to increase tension as you progress through the game. There was meant to be a contrast between the computerised voice promising to reward me with cake at the end of the test, the increasing danger, and the suspicion that not all is as it seems.

As I played, I found myself wondering when the 'story' would begin. It already had; but as the game designers had chosen to give visual hints, and because many of these hints were subsequently gutted by the censors, I didn't notice. All I saw was mud.

The irony of this whole situation is that the proponents of censorship, who would claim that computer games are just exercises in sleazy violence and sex, are cutting off the nose to spite the face. Portal is exactly the kind of game which they seem to think doesn't exist: a clever, inventive game in which there is little or no objectionable content, and yet became extremely successful. Yes, there is some blood; but it is used as a narrative device rather than as a gratuitous gimmick. Rather than neutering Portal, the censors should have used it as proof that they are not opposed to computer games in general, but only those mired in excess.

They could even have acknowledged it as having educational value, not only in the problem solving skills, but also as an illustration of there idea of 'Show, don't tell'. They could have used it to help young players to be able to recognise precisely when a game—or a film, or a song, or a book—is being gratuitous, and when it is not.

Of course, that would never happen. Computer games are the but the latest scapegoat of the narrow-minded. When it was published in 1749, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones was blamed for a number of earthquakes (which helps to put Boobquake in context). We don't blame books anymore; Charlotte Roche's Feuchtgebiete was the best selling novel in the world in March 2008, and few people even batted an eyelid. In the 1950's, Elvis was condemned for his 'black' music and 'erotic' hip gyrations; today, few people care about the pseudo soft-porn videos which usually accompany the 'songs' of the latest pop starlet. But some blood in a computer game? Too much, too much.

In the end, it would be easy to conclude that 'dumb censorship is dumb'. Yet I feel the issue goes deeper than that. Though computer games were blamed for the Erfurt massacre in 2002, the educational system of Thuringia left the perpetrator with few job prospects. The educational structure is broken in part because of the distrust of elected officials, and a constitutional safety measure to prevent them from imposing an ideological agenda. But that is exactly what these censors are doing to the population of Germany. They have decided what is good, and what is proper, and what we are allowed to see, and what we are not. By what right do they make these judgements? On whose authority? They were not elected, and they are not answerable to the public. The system does not trust publically-elected officials to do their jobs without prejudice; so why should the system allow those who are not even elected to be beyond question?

The gratuitous censors, I think, are the ones who need to be censored.

Journalism in Der Spiegel #2: The apocalypse in anime and manga

2011-05-22T15:46:00.005+02:00

The second of two articles lambasting journalism in Der Spiegel.

__________

While we're on the subject of poor journalism from Der Spiegel, I'd like to point to this recent article, published in the wake of the March 11 earthquake Japan. The basic idea here is that things like anime and manga, for all their weirdness to Western audiences, have now proven themselves to be a prediction of the future.

Let's take a look at what the article has to say about this picture, which it gives (my translation) the title Tsunami-Victim in Natori: As if lifted from a manga:

There is a photograph that a photographer took after the earthquake in the town of Natori. Before the earthquake some 70,000 people lived there; today the town has been reduced to rubble. In the picture, a girl cowers at the side of a road. She's perhaps 20 years old; hair dyed red, wearing a black jacket and hugging her naked legs, it looks as if the girl is freezing and she herself is the only thing she has left to hold on to. Next to her are a pair of wine-red Wellington boots, behind her the remains of civilization. As if Godzilla had trampled through the town.

To me, this is dreadful in several ways.

First of all, in an article which claims to be about the artificially of culture, the only way it seems able to view the suffering of this girl is through the lens of popular entertainment. Saying that it looks like something out of a comic book does not suggest much empathy.

Secondly, I'm quite sure that the photo looks the way it does because of that. The photographer, or editor, wanted to create an image which made you think of manga / anime. In that sense, the fault is not entirely with Der Spiegel, although they should have noticed the implicit manipulation.

But more importantly, the argument that Japanese popular culture is a prediction of such disasters is, to put it midly, completely arse-about-face. Yes, the geographical situation of Japan leaves it particularly susceptible to natural disasters, and the Japanese have always been aware of the fragility of their existence. But those recurring images of destruction in anime and manga? They're about something far more specific that has already happened.

Yes, you've guessed it: the two atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the USA at the end of the Second World War. Such manga, anime, and movies like Godzilla are not haunted by destruction because of an apocalypse that might happen, but because of the apocalypse that already has.

I find it completely unfathomable that the author of the Spiegel article does not feel it necessary to mention this: the bombs are mentioned in passing, almost like inconvenient details which to not fit into the argument of the article. To be sure, some (recent) manga and anime do specifically predict what might happen in the event of an big earthquake in Japan, such as Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 or 51 Ways to Save Her. But these are really the exceptions; works like Akira , Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind, and Neon Genesis Evangelion are far more representative, and in all of those the apocalypse has already happened. Talk about a hint.

This should be so obvious that it doesn't need pointing out. Yet despite discussing Nausicaä, it still doesn't occur to the author of the Spiegel article. But perhaps it explains why they find Japanese culture quite so weird.

Journalism in Der Spiegel #1: The school teacher in Penthouse

2011-05-22T14:56:00.009+02:00

The first of two articles complaining about journalistic standards in Der Spiegel.

__________

This week, the German weekly Der Spiegel published an article entitled 'Not fit for school: Why a teacher is fighting for her right to undress' (my translation). Unfortunately, it isn't available on the Spiegel website, so I can't provide a link; the week before did contain a summary of the news, without commentary.

The story is this: Rachel Whitwell, a New Zealand school teacher, and girlfriend of one of the country's biggest porn kings, decided to pose nude in the Australian edition of Penthouse. The New Zealand educational authority found out, decided to investigate, and ultimately revoked her license to teach. The original photos caused a minor scandal two years ago; then she posed again a year later; and the educational authority's recent verdict is now causing a much bigger scandal. As the title of the Spiegel article indicates, it isn't really about a teacher who strips before the camera, it's about one woman's fight for freedom.

Or not. Der Spiegel goes out of its way to tell us a story about a young woman who wants to be a good mother and spend more time with her daughter, so decides to supplement her teaching job with better-paying nude modelling. Which is such a shame, as she's clearly an exemplary teacher:

She taught five and six year-old children from socially disadvantaged families. She taught them reading, writing and arithmetic, and tried to encourage them. She says she wanted to bring them up to be free thinkers.

As a teacher myself, I'm not convinced that's such a big deal. She taught the kids The Three R's. She did her job. Incredible.

Worse, Spiegel seems to have got its facts wrong concerning the original motivation for her to strip. Just to prove how lame Der Spiegel's research is in this article, here's how I found out.

The summary article I linked to above refers to a publication called the 'Sunday Times', in which the Ms Whitwell said she saw no reason why posing nude should affect her job as a teacher. Curious about what such an august publication as that had to say about this topic, I googled 'Sunday Times Rachel Whitwell'. In fact, the publication is actually called the Sunday Star Times and refers to itself as 'Sunday News' (article here). Excellent use of sources, Spiegel. Anyway, right above the google link to that article is another from the New Zealand Daily Telegraph in 2009 which contains a little more information from around the time of the original photo shoot. And it turns out that she originally posed nude, not spend time with her daughter, but to get back at her pornographer boyfriend. Half his age, she had decided to test him by anonymously flirting with him on facebook; he organised a rendezvous; she confronted him and sent the photos to Penthouse in revenge.

See any mention of the caring mother in there? Nor me. Sounds more like a retcon.

The latest Spiegel article also fails to mention, as the summary one admittedly does, that Ms Whitwell had previously had erotic stories published in adult magazines, and has her own table-dance studio. I suppose such omissions are understandable when you're trying to make the case for a struggling single mother who accidentally becomes embroiled in a fight for truth. Oh wait, that was Erin Brockovich.

Indeed, the Spiegel article reads as if its attempting to answer the call of another article by the Sunday Star Times which bemoans that, with regard to this case, no feminists are coming forward to demand that a woman's body is her own. Let's think for a moment why that might be.

First of all, no one has said that she isn't allowed to strip before the camera if she wants. She's not being prohibited from posing in Penthouse. The NZ education authority has just decided that she's not allowed to do that and teach children. That may or may not have to do with the conservatism of the authority; but given the erotic stories, the table-dancing, the pornographer boyfriend, and then the photos and subsequent interviews, you can't exactly say that she's making it easy for them to be open-minded. Challenging them at every opportunity, more like.

Secondly, Ms Whitwell hardly went out of her way to be anonymous. Claiming, as she does here, that she had no idea that anyone in New Zealand would see the original photos is naive beyond belief. There's this thing called the internet, see? And Australia? It happens to be this huge mass of land not far (relatively speaking) from New Zealand. Penthouse? That's hardly an obscure magazine. And actually posing as a teacher in the photos and on the cover of the magazine? Very tasteful.

Thirdly, this isn't about women's rights, because a male teacher would be treated no differently, and probably worse. Indeed, that fact that Ms Whitwell is a woman probably made the whole posing in Penthouse thing more acceptable, despite the authority's verdict. I'm quite sure they would have come down on a male teacher posing in Penthouse like a tonne of bricks, and I can easily imagine suspicions of paedophilia flying around too.

Finally, the key question, and one which Spiegel conspicuously fails to ask, is whether you would want such a woman (or man) teaching your children. For most people, the answer is surely, 'No'. Spiegel almost suggests that this is hypocrisy, since no-one bats an eyelid about a fireman posing in a nude calendar. But firemen and women aren't responsible for children in the same way that a teacher is. And as I said before, Ms Whitwell hasn't exactly been discreet about this whole issue.

What I'm really getting at, though, is Spiegel's botched attempt to make this about freedom and women's rights. It isn't at all: it's about responsibility. If Ms Whitwell wants to pose nude, let her. But she should take responsibility for the consequences. If she taught at a university, she would have to deal with students and teachers who are capable of googling her name; if she worked in an office, she'd have to deal with colleagues and customers who do so; as a primary school teacher, she has to deal with parents. That's part and parcel of the choice she made by posing nude in the first place.

The women's rights movement was always about choice and equality: the right to choose the same things as men. It was never about freedom to do anything you want without concern for the consequences. That's a form of anarchy. The fact that Spiegel, which is supposed to be 'good' journalism, can't tell the difference, is disappointing.

Starcraft II: A half review of disappointment

2010-08-01T14:57:00.003+02:00

A day after release, I picked up the Starcraft II collector's edition. Last night I completed the single player campaign. These are my thoughts about the game. Spoilers indicated.

Mac Land / Performance

[No spoliers]

As usual, Blizzard remain committed to the Mac platform like no other major developer. The standard release of Starcraft II contains native versions of the game for both Windows and Mac on a single disc. Even as more stores are stocking Mac games because of increasing market share, it's still rare for a company to develop their own port and release it in the same package. Witness the two games I've played recently: The Witcher was never ported to Mac at all, and Dragon Age: Origins was fobbed off with a prompt, performance-challenged, and seemingly unsupported Cider port. But despite this, all is not well in Starcraft II Mac land.

First of all, a niggling issue that bugged me. The collector's edition contains a somewhat heavy usb flash disc which replicates the dog-tags seen in the game. It come with both the original Starcraft and the Broodwar expansion pre-installed; but only for Windows. Thankfully, the registration key can be used on the battle.net site to register the game and you can then download a Mac version in whatever language you like. Unfortunately, you need to launch the Windows installer to find out what that key is.

Much more important is the performance of the game, which is terrible. My Macbook is pretty new (late 2009) even if it is not the most powerful. But it easily meets the requirements for the Starcraft II. Nevertheless, the game has to be set to the lowest possible settings to be playable; and then it looks little better than Warcraft III. On the same machine under Windows 7, I can boot the settings up on everything at least a notch, which makes a considerable difference. And it seems from the forums that this is more-or-less a universal problem for Macs of all capabilities, because of drivers and broken shaders / lighting. Hopefully this will be fixed soon (and knowing Blizzard it probably will be), but at the moment Starcraft II is only just playable on Macs, if at all.

Battle.net / DRM

[No spoliers]

Next up is battle.net integration. To register Starcraft II, you have to log on to battle.net; after that, whenever you boot up the game you'll be asked to sign on with you battle.net account. This allows a number of cool features, such as achievements and online saves. This latter is quite sweet: when I installed the game on Windows today and logged on for the first time, I was able to pick up my single player game from where I left it. However, the implementation is a little clunky: Starcraft II will remember my account name but not my password (Dragon Age remembers both), meaning I had to change my password to something a lot simpler and less secure so I could type it in every time I boot the game.

If this sounds suspiciously like a form of DRM which requires you to have an internet connection at all times, you wouldn't be far wrong. Starcraft II does have an offline mode, which means that if no internet connection is detected you should be informed and can play anyway (so long as you've registered once). Sounds fine; except for many people it isn't working, and anything you do during this offline phase will not be recorded or synced with battle.net next time you reconnect.

This is what happened to me. I was playing along, completing missions and picking up achievements, when all of a sudden all my save games had gone. It turns out that I had been disconnected from battle.net while playing, and so everything I did after this was automatically saved as a new, unidentified user. I no longer had access the the old files. But with no huge pop-up explaining the problem I had no idea what was going on and soldiered on. In fact, several hours later, I completed the game, let the credits role, and only then was notified that I'd been disconnected. The problem is that when I reconnected, all of that recent gameplay vanished – as it belonged to an unidentified user rather than my battle.net account. As far as Starcraft II was concerned, I hadn't completed any of those missions, nor the game as a whole. I'm sure that if I disconnected again, those saves and missions would be available – but none of the preceding ones the would be. And there is currently no way to merge the two sets of files.

To put it simply, this sucks. Being set back several hours because of a weak internet connection is dreadful service. And what if, for example, I want to visit my girlfriend's parent's, where I don't have access to the internet. If I'm lucky I can play, I can even continue the game, but it won't be acknowledged in anyway.

Many games require an internet connection nowadays – Dragon Age does. But not having one will not negatively affect gameplay. I remind you that this concerns the single player campaign, not multiplayer: I'm playing against the computer. The internet is not required at all for this. But Blizzard have integrated the save game system into battle.net in such a way that it is easier for me to carry on from where I left of when I install the game on a new computer, than when the internet drops out for a couple of minutes. That's crazy.

Knowing that I have to replay those final missions just to get an achievement to say that I've done so put a serious dampener on my enthusiasm for the game.

Story mode

[Minor spoilers]

On to the starship environment which forms you base of operations. Starcraft II definitely boasts a much improved 'story mode'. Where the original game simply loaded the next mission, Starcraft II allows you move to four different locations on your ship (armoury, bridge, canteen, lab) and talk to various crew members about the last mission, or buy upgrades for units. There's far more interaction with NPCs than ever before, and it looks much better than the cut-scenes in Warcraft III, for example. But improved as it is, I wanted more. The locations you can visit are static, with an occasional NPC wandering about. So you get one view of the bridge, and that's it. Interaction with NPCs and objects is just as limited: click on an object, trigger the cut-scene, move on. There's no scope for dialogue options at all.

An example: at one point you pick up a female scientist whose planet is under attack. You evacuate her colonists, relocate them, and kick her off the ship. All well and good. While she's on board, you have a handful of brief dialogues, and as she leaves, she kisses you on the cheek having developed some feelings for you. All well and good. But because of the limited interaction, she's utterly undeveloped as a character. Just take a look on her character profile on battle.net – obviously enough, she's got an entire life history. Can you find out any of this in the game? No. Is there any indication of any of it in the game? No. On battle.net, she's a fully fleshed out character. In the game, she's more-or-less a hitch-hiker. You pick her up and take her to her destination. That's it.

True, I may have been spoilt by games like Dragon Age, in which you can actually talk to your group of NPCs and they will either grow to like you or hate you depending on what you say to them. In the end, these starship sequences are good, but feel so much like a missed opportunity. There's only three members of the crew who have anything like realised characters, and that's Jim Raynor (your character), Tychus Findlay (more on him below), and arguably Matt Horner (ship's captain).

Part one of three

[Minor spoilers]

Now we come to the hub of the problem with Starcraft II: the story. The first thing to mention is that the game I've been calling Starcraft II is really Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. It's the first part of a trilogy of games, and single player campaign has 29 missions focussed on the Terran (human) forces. There's a brief section in which you can play Protoss, and at no point do you play as Zerg. Where the original game (and Warcraft III) had three 'chapters' – one for each race – of some 10 missions each, Blizzard decided this time to spend almost the same amount on one race at a time. We'll get round to campaigns focussed on the other races in the sequels.

I have, in principle, no problem with this. Twenty-nine missions allows greater involvement with the Terrans than before. Theoretically it allows for a more gradual build-up of the story-line; and indeed, for the first few missions you really are just bumming around raiding and pirating. But... Many of the missions are really side quests (I'm curious how many could be avoided altogether). The afore-mentioned scientist has a series of missions which have absolutely no bearing on the main 'plot'. There's a renegade wraith (an enhanced ghost) whose missions are exactly the same.

Now, the advertising for Starcraft II boasts that your actions will affect the development of the game, and indeed they do, but strictly speaking only in three cases are you actually given a choice. Once is at the end of the game, when you can choose to cripple either the ground forces or their air forces of the Zerg before the final battle. The other two cases are in the side quests mentioned above: you may choose to support the renegade wraith, or betray him; and you may choose to support or abandon the scientist when her colonists are about the be purged for Zerg infestation by the Protoss. The choices have an impact on the individual story-lines, but since these story-lines are effectively isolated from the main plot, so are the choices. In the end, the only real choices which have any effect on the campaign are the order in you complete the missions, which determines what units you have available at a given point, and what upgrades to research or purchase. That's fine, but given the extent to which recent RPG games (again taking Dragon Age and The Witcher as examples) allow you to affect scenarios, this has to be chalked up as another missed opportunity.

The Betrayal

[Major spoilers]

On to the story proper. I have to say, this was the first time I've been disappointed with a Blizzard story (I haven't played the first two Warcraft games, nor World of Warcraft). First of all, we have Tychus Findlay, an old buddy of Raynor's who's being blackmailed into betraying him. That's the plot twist. The problem is that from the very start of the game it is clear that Tychus is going to betray Raynor in some way. From the fact it's his face on the cover, to the opening cinematic, to his unwillingness to discuss his escape from prison, to hints dropped by all and sundry. The only thing we don't really know is how he'll betray Raynor, and who he's working for.

Who is obvious enough, in fact: Arcturus Mengsk, who betrayed Raynor in the first game by sacrificing an entire planet in order to take power in the region. Mengsk has been the villain since the end of the first chapter (of six, counting the expansion) of the original game. So no surprise there. What is surprising is that, while working undercover for Mengsk, Tychus enthusiastically works against Mengsk, along with Raynor. At no point is there any indication that he's trying to sabotage Raynor's operations, even when Raynor gets hold of a recording of Mengsk issuing the order to lure the Zerg to that planet in order to take control in the ensuing chaos. Needless to say, broadcasting that recording is devastating: imagine a recording of George Bush from before the Iraq War admitting he knew there were no WMDs and going ahead anyway. And multiply it by a thousand. But the mission in which you take over the UNN to broadcast the recording is the one in which Tychus in most directly involved.

Okay, you might say, but any subterfuge on Tychus's part would risk giving the game away. Yet the game has already been given away to all but Raynor, who will brook no criticism of his buddy. Any villain worth his or her salt would take steps to avoid the kind of damage which Raynor causes: after all, if Tychus is there to assassinate Raynor, it should be done before Raynor manages to undermine the whole regime.

But Tychus isn't there to assassinate Raynor. He's there to assassinate the Queen of Blades, the ruler of the Zerg created from Raynor's old flame Sarah Kerrigan who was betrayed and left behind by Mengsk when the planet was sacrificed. It seems that Mengsk, in an amazing feat of premonition, knows that Raynor will ultimately succeed in battling through swarms of Zerg forces to Kerrgian in the hope that she can be deinfested and redeemed; and that Raynor's mercy will mean that Tychus will have to step in and take her out.

I don't buy this at all.

To begin with, at the start of the game when we meet Tychus for the first time, there is no indication that Kerrigan could become deinfested and so weakened to a point where she could be easily killed (other than Mengsk's fabulous skills of prediction). Secondly, everybody has been running circles around Mengsk throughout the game. Raynor has been making significant progress in his war of liberation; the disenfranchised on planets everywhere are in uproar; and even Mengsk's son Valerian has been vying for a position of strength. He's been secretly funding the recovery of an ancient artefact of immense power (which Raynor has been collecting the in fragments), and ultimately snatches away half of the imperial fleet and allies himself with Raynor for an assault on the Zerg homewold. So: the only time in the entire game in which Mengsk seems to be on the ball is at the moment of Tychus' betrayal, and by that time it is barely plausible. In comparison, imagine it had been Valerian who was behind Tychus' betrayal. Valerian is funding the Möbius company to search for the artefact, and Tychus originally says that it was this company who paid his bail. Likewise, Valerian knows exactly what the artefact does, or at least suspects at the start of the game. He's also trying to step out from under his father's shadow, and bears no personal grudge again Raynor. It's more than plausible that he would want to achieve something big (such as defeating the Queen of Blades) and would be more than happy to use Raynor to achieve that goal, which would double as rude gesture to his father as well.

In the end, it seems to me that the decision to have Mengsk himself behind Tychus' betrayal was motivated by an awareness that Mengsk seems to be complacent to the point of incompetence throughout the game; and that does not a good arch-villain make. The fact that it makes the whole betrayal preposterous seemingly slipped under the radar.

Finally, let's talk about the artefact. It's totally a deus ex machina. It effectively comes out of nowhere and saves the world. All of a sudden, the Zerg are (seemingly) completely defeated and Raynor has his girl back, and carries her off into the sunset. The only thing which keeps me from thinking that this is completely lame is knowing that there will be two sequels: the Protoss mini-campaign hints at a cataclysmic battle to come, although to be honest it didn't seem to add anything beyond what was already hinted at in the original game. And I know that it isn't fair to compare the end of Wings of Liberty to the end of Starcraft I (which was apparently voted the best end of a game in 2003). The artefact can't begin to compare to Tassadar's ramming a battle ship into the Zerg Overmind and (seemingly) loosing his life in the process. But if the end of this instalment brings us a third of the way through Starcraft II, then it may be fair to compare it to the end of the first chapter of the original game. Yet against Mengsk's sacrifice of an entire planet, and the betrayal of Kerrigan which sets in motion so many events to come, Tychus' betray just doesn't cut it.

Conclusion

There is plenty to like about Starcraft II. The graphics, when they work, are very good. The single player missions are well designed. The cinematics are excellent, as are the 'story-mode' animations. The variations brought into the campaign allow for interesting replays. And of course, this is no more than a half review, as I'm not touching on multiplayer at all. Ultimately, it may be no more than a quarter review, or even a sixth, if the sequels bring more to the multiplayer table. But my feelings remain the same: for the first time, I'm underwhelmed by a Blizzard game. And most surprising of all is that the story is its greatest disappointment.

Dilbert Comic for May 4, 2010

2010-05-04T09:38:00.001+02:00

(Semi-) regular posting will resume, but for now, today's Dilbert made laugh...

Final UK election debate

2010-04-29T22:09:00.001+02:00

Now this is ballsy...

2101 Mr Clegg says there should be no bonuses for board members of banks. He adds there should be no bonuses for staff of banks making a loss and no cash bonuses at all of more than £2,500.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/election2010/liveevent/

Silligism

2010-04-29T18:01:00.001+02:00

I blog, therefore I... Oh, wait...

Manga I'm currently reading

2009-12-12T23:05:00.001+01:00

And all of them in German :-)

Nana

Full Metal Alchemist

Death Note

Backuman

Yotsuba&!

Neon Genesis Evangelion

That's a fairly good range of stuff, I think…

Dilbert Comic for December 12, 2009

2009-12-12T10:39:00.001+01:00

Made me grin, that.

Hi-ho, Dino!

2009-12-03T09:31:00.000+01:00

You know, the question of how Creationists deal with the fossil evidence of things like dinosaurs is one of those obvious questions to which I've never given much thought. I suppose I assumed that either a Creationist would just go into denial mode (the fossils are a lie) or would attempt to come up with some fairly sophisticated explanation. I never even thought that the idea of humans strapping a saddle to a dinosaur's back would come into the equation. It makes perfect sense: the world was created for humans, dinosaurs existed, and therefore dinosaurs existed for humans. In a time before horses, they provided a mode of transportation.

(Photo from Roger Ebert's recent post)

Um, what? Surely that's not the best they can come up with? That's more in line with a cheesy 1950's B-movie than a seriously-held belief. Okay, I can understand that the Creationist Museum shown in the photo is serving a purpose: a place where Creationist parents can take their dinosaur-obsessed kids for a fun day out. It won't necessarily represent the cutting-edge (!) of Creationist belief. But even so: if this is so far removed from Creationist belief about dinosaurs, why not just take your kids to a standard museum and explain why it's wrong?

Downgrade Handbrake

2009-12-01T16:34:00.000+01:00

Much as I think the latest upgrade of Handbrake will ultimately be a great step forward, I have become fed up waiting for the documentation to be updated. I was in the middle of ripping all my Anime DVDs, although Handbrake now offers all sorts of benefits, such as soft subtitles (only in mkv format, as far as I can tell), faster encoding, and higher quality sound, I've ground to a halt in my ripping activities. The problem is typified by the Decomb settings; where as before you had Decomb and Deinterlace separately, now the options give you a slider for them as well. I have absolutely no idea what this does, and until I am able to find out, I don't want to carry on ripping. It comes down to this: either I want to be able to rip the remaining DVDs using 0.9.4 properly, and then potentially re-rip everything else, or I might as well finish ripping using 0.9.3 and then consider re-ripping the lot when I figure out how to use it.

To that end, following a thread on the forums, I'm posting a link to a site which contains older versions of Handbrake.

Of course, downgrading will probably mean having to trash preferences and reconfigure everything...

Jakewood Folk Club, 24 November

2009-11-26T17:57:00.000+01:00

More photos on the Flikr page, or here.

Flag: The Movie

2009-11-22T23:53:00.000+01:00

Just finished re-watching the movie version of Flag (which seems only to be available in German-speaking countries), and it is everything that Mind Game is not. I won't pretend to be writing a full review here, as that would hardly be fair with a 100-minute edit of a 13 episode series—and I can hardly assess the edit properly until I've seen the full series. But here's a couple of observations.

Firstly, the mecha elements of the show, which some people find inappropriate. Do we really need to have piloted robots in a UN-based operation set not too far in the future? Maybe not, but the robots here resemble the Tachikomas and Uchikomas of Ghost in the Shell (minus the artificial intelligence) more than they do the giant machines of Mobile Suit Gundam or Neon Genesis Evangelion. The HAVWCs of Flag are presented as if they are plausible developments of military hardware, powerful and maneuverable, but far from indestructible. On one level, they are an attempt to imagine what the conflicts of the near future might look like; on another, they are an attempt to reclaim the whole mecha genre from impossibly huge machines piloted by whining brats.

More importantly, the first person perspective—everything is seen through a lens—is not a gimmick. Flag is about the power of the image, and in particular the photographic image; to be constantly reminded that we are watching images is completely appropriate. In a sense, Flag is coldly objective in its resemblance to a documentary, stripping away (almost) all the usual bombast and noise associated with military drama. But not only that: by showing us what is seen through the viewfinder, rather than just the final product, we're being reminded that photography and film are a process, and at the same time that there is always a person behind the lens who sees.

This representation of photography is also a reference to traditional animation, and perhaps to film itself, which is precisely about using still images to create motion, narrative and meaning. Flag is at once a tribute to the camera, the media, and the operator, both in form and content.

As you might guess, I think that Flag is considerably more subtle that the military-political thriller it appears to be on the surface. Maybe at some point I'll attempt a more comprehensive and coherent review.

Mind Game, directed by Masaaki Yuasa

2009-11-20T20:31:00.000+01:00

Synopsis

Nishi and Myon were shy sweet-hearts at school but haven't met for some years. Nishi visits Myon and her sister Yan, who run a cafe. While there, two thugs turn up looking for Myon and Yan's father, who is in trouble with the local mafia. One of the thugs goes berserk, attacks Myon, and shoots Nishi.

His spirit leaves his body and meets a constantly shape-shifting God, who informs Nishi that he's dead. Not wanting to accept this, Nishi forces his way back to life through sheer determination, and finds himself in the cafe a few seconds before his death. This time he kills the thug, and flees with the two girls. A car chase ensues; just as capture seems inevitable, the trio drive off a suspension bridge and are swallowed by a whale.

Inside the whale they meet an old man who has been stranded there for 30 years; he helps them to survive and encourages them to make the most of the situation.

Finally, they escape.

Review

I like arty and pretentious anime as much as the anyone. I think Neon Genesis Evangelion, whose seemingly innocuous mecha beginnings give way to stream-of-consciousness psychoanalyzing, is a high-water mark. Confusing or confused, it's worth it. And I'm a huge fan of Satoshi Kon's work, all of which pushes the limits of anime. I enjoy the challenging stuff.

So when I read several fairly glowing reviews of Mind Game, I was curious. But I'm not sure if we were all watching the same film. Yes, the art and animation is spectacular, shifting between contrasting styles with grace and ease. It's certainly a visual showcase. Yet none of the reviews mention the aspects I'm going to talk about below; and I'm inclined to think that beyond the artwork, Mind Game is really just art-house by numbers. Fill in the dots between seemingly edgy elements, and you'll have a great piece of cinema. Or not.

Take the characters. Nishi is a wannabe Manga-artist. Fine. Myon wanted to be a swimmer until her breasts got in the way. Um, fine. The old man prepares gourmet dinners and talks to his friends, the dinosaurs. Whatever. And Yan wants to be a performance artist and likes nothing more that taping balloons to her chest, covering herself with paint, and throwing herself at canvas. While trapped inside a whale. Er… what?

This is all meant to be psychedelic and avant-garde, I suppose. Subtle it isn't. For example: Nishi tells Myon a story about space explorers for whom the only source of food on the planet they were stranded on was alien excrement. But then it turns out that the space explorers were actually on a cell in Myon's body, and they grew larger until being flushed out of her system. You can imagine the details, I'm sure. This charming tale has the inexplicable effect of seducing Myon; I can only suppose that her eyes were so clouded with love that saw in it the unrestrained imagination of her beau, and that the story was meant to have the same effect on the viewer. Personally, I just thought it was tasteless.

Duly seduced, Myon and Nishi have sex. Fortunately, there isn't any nudity, as their bodies dissolve into a kaleidoscope of lines, colours and images. Unfortunately, this sequence resembles nothing so much as a 1969 sketch by Monty Python: trains entering tunnels and then crashing, waves lashing against the shore, that sort of thing. Only in the sketch, we ultimately pan away to reveal an inept guy playing the film to his increasingly frustrated girlfriend. See, the Python sketch is a parody. Which says a lot for the sequence in Mind Game.

It's as if the whole thing is trying too hard to be different, to be absurd, to be psychedelic. Towards the end all four of the main cast pool their resources to escape, rowing as hard as they can through the water-filled stomach of the whale—until their boat is broken. With only the momentum to carry them forward, they use whatever comes their way as leverage to propel them forwards: bits of wood... fish... a fly... Onwards they run, as the whale swallows successively large objects: a ship, an airplane (which explodes behind them), an office block, which Nishi has to navigate his way through, leaping over tables and through windows…

Then finally we see a almost identical stream of images to those which opened the movie, only with slight differences; so whereas at the start Myon caught her foot in the door of an underground train she, now she doesn't. This is art-house by numbers again: repeat the same four minutes of footage with minor changes and in so doing give 'meaning' to the changes. What it actually means is not actually the issue; the fact that it's meaningful is all that's important.

In the end, Mind Game is a hodgepodge of highbrow and lowbrow; of comments about breast size and toilet jokes combined with literary references and pseudo-symbolism. Perhaps it wants to exploit the contrast in a kind of cinematic magical realism; but in my view it fails completely. Nothing represents the film better than Yan's paint dancing; it wants to be art, but it's mired in vulgarity.

Bought, watched, and offered for sale on amazon marketplace before I'd even finished it.
__________
What, you want a rating? 1/5. Its merits are few and far between.

Ouch

2009-11-15T18:57:00.003+01:00

George Orwell once remarked that political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters. That's true, unfortunately, and it's part of the reason that our society lacks a genuine, responsible, serious left-wing movement.

__________
Noam Chomsky, 1969

Aufbrüch!

2009-08-12T17:41:00.002+02:00

An impressive collection, no question about it. The box set includes the four original 'Umsonst & Draussen' releases in re-mastered form, accompanied by a booklet containing articles and photos (most of which are available on the official release site). You can also download the albums individually from iTunes (the German store, at least).

Most of the music is in the kraut-funk style of mid-to-late 70's Embyro, which is no surprise since they were involved in setting up the festival in the first place. The first album contains perhaps the most krautrock-orientated pieces, but is unfortunately marred by the mastering being done from an LP release (the original tapes were missing). The sound improves considerably with the second album, and although the music is more focused on kraut-funk, it makes for a more consistent listen. The third and fourth releases are both double-albums, over 90 minutes each, and diversify the range of music somewhat. That's good in one way, but certainly makes them feel more like compilations that the second album.

Very few of the recordings are available elsewhere (Embryo's 'Wir sind alle politische Gefangene' was released on the re-master of 'Apo-Calypso' as 'Prisioneri Politici'), and most of the bands are pretty obscure. That said, a large proportion of the bands involve musicians from better-know bands; some 67 minutes of the 4 1/2 hours of music feature Missus Beastly and various off-shoots, for example. Six tracks (from four bands) involve Marlon Klein of Dissidenten, who also is responsible for the re-mastering of the albums. And that's quite aside from the various Embryo-related projects. Obscure some of these formations may be, but there's no lack of musicianship.

On the (slightly) negative side, the CDs don't exactly follow the original releases - there's no way the third and fourth albums would fit onto single CDs. So all the albums (except the first) are split across at least two CDs, which breaks whatever continuity the originals had. It's better than leaving tracks off, and at least you can import the tracks into iTunes (or whatever) and make your own playlists. Also, the promotional artwork that you might see around is slightly misleading: in my edition at least, the cardboard sleeves containing the CDs are generic and do not show the original album art. That's slightly disappointing in an otherwise well-made box set.

All in all, this is a set which is greater than the sum of its parts, or at least than the individual songs it includes. Perhaps one more for the fans (of Embryo and later Missus Beastly in particular) than the casual listener, it's nevertheless a great overview of the alternative festival scene in Germany at the time. Recommended (4 out of 5 stars). __________ Original rym review posted here.

The History of Rock and Dance, by Piero Scaruffi

2009-08-03T10:36:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I came across Scaruffi's site for the first time, and began by reading his synopsis of German rock. Awesome.

Tribute to Jacko

2009-06-26T11:35:00.000+02:00

When I were but a wee lad, I happened to hear the first broadcast of Michael Jackson's Black and White, amidst much fanfare, on BBC Radio 1. Immediately afterwards, the show moved to a phone-in quiz, and the DJ asked the first caller what he thought of Jacko's latest song.

'Pretty crap,' the caller replied, and so the DJ hung up on him.

As the web collapses under the weight of Jacko's passing, I think that it is worth pointing out that there are still far more important things happening in the world right now. And, with no callousness intended whatsoever, that there were always those who thought he was, well, pretty crap.

Jethro Tull @ Festung Mark, Magdeburg

2009-06-14T12:11:00.000+02:00

I've been a Jethro Tull fan almost as long as I've been a music fan—practically speaking, that's since the late '80s, when I heard 'Living In The Past' while camping out in a tent in the garden. Since then their output has dwindled, releasing only four albums of original recordings, although singer and flautist Ian Anderson has also released four solo albums in the same period, often including songs in the Tull set-list. That was not the case last night (13 June) when the band played the Festung Mark in Magdeburg; celebrating a 40-year anniversary, the vast majority of songs were from the very earliest part of their career.

By 'vast majority' I mean that 11 of the 17 songs in the set were from the first two albums, 1968's 'This Was' and 1969's 'Stand Up'—eight songs from the latter album alone. Maybe the band had just become fed up with playing the set-list they've been touring since March, or maybe they knew that the Magdeburg crowd would be, shall we say, unresponsive at best, but this seems to have been a fairly unique move. Gone were 'Cross-Eyed Mary', 'Sweet Dream', 'Mother Goose' and 'Living in The Past', replaced by minor songs such as 'We Used To Know' and 'Back To The Family', which Anderson described as being the worst song he'd ever written, but great fun to play live. There were grumblings in the crowd, as this wasn't the greatest hits package they wanted—after the show I heard people comment that they could have just come for the last couple of songs (the obligatory 'Aqualung' and 'Locomotive Breath').

I was having fun, though. After seeing a somewhat lacklustre performance by Deep Purple last year, I really didn't want a band reminding me of how great they once were, but aren't any more. By playing so many minor songs it was possible to just listen to Jethro Tull, rather than comparing the latest live performance of a classic to the original and countless other recordings that have been made over the years. The band were clearly playing songs they wanted to play, and having fun doing so—and that was what I wanted to see them doing. Hits be damned.

Anderson's voice has clearly lost something over the years, but it never had as much to lose as, say, Ian Gillian, so the effect is less disturbing; and his flute playing is still excellent in any case. Martin Barre remains one of the most underrated guitarists in rock; and Doanne Perry may have only been with the band for 25 years, but his drumming is as as solid as ever. Then there were two other guys who I've not seen or heard of before. They did what they needed to and no more, which was also fine, as I'm really at a Tull concert to see Anderson and Barre anyway.

In the end, a somewhat controversial performance, which I can say that I enjoyed while understanding the frustration of others. And 'Stand Up'—a great album in any case—has acquired a new level of meaning for me. I saw it played live, after all.

Some thoughts on Opera 10 beta

2009-06-11T10:31:00.001+02:00

Spent a couple of days with Opera 10 beta, and I have to say it's looking good. A few observations:

The new Mac theme is serviceable—and therefore a vast improvement over the old one—although it helps if you switch the colour scheme to anything except 'None'.
The built-in mail server works fine, almost to the point of tempting me away from my current client of choice, Postbox. If only I could figure out how to set up some rules…
The integrated spell-checker is an essential addition; the lack of one has turned me away from Opera more than once.
The graphical tabs are nice, but the screen estate they take up renders them almost useless to me—in contrast to OmniWeb's implementation, which places them more efficiently on the left or the right.
I haven't yet managed to achieve full marks on the Acid3 test, on 99%. Not sure what I've got set wrong, but there you go.
As billed, facebook runs very smoothly.

There are so many things I love about Opera: integrated ad-blocking, mouse gestures, speed dial, the ability to reopen closed tabs, and even the mail, but in the end I always end up going back to Safari / Webkit. Opera has just never felt particularly Mac-like, and that's always been disconcerting, a friction between myself and the internet. The missing dictionary was a case in point: when every single app can access the Oxford dictionary built into OS X, an app which has no dictionary access whatsoever feels unbelievably crude. Opera 10 beta has gone a long way to overcoming this, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes next.

Snow Leopard: Thesaurus

2009-06-09T08:22:00.000+02:00

Snow Leopard includes the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus second edition. New features help differentiate between easily confused words, find the right shade of meaning, provide context to select the correct word, and give you background on words through the voices of well-known authors.

As a teacher, this is one of the things I'm looking forward to most in Mac OS X 10.6. The first edition—which is already included in 10.5—is pretty cool, but this sounds awesome.

Excellent timing, Scott

2009-05-21T10:15:00.001+02:00

And this is what I have to look forward to next week—oodles of making. Thanks, Scott.

A Chronology of Asterix

2009-05-18T23:07:00.000+02:00

Wikipedia helpfully lists all of the Asterix books in the correct chronological order, rather than the one imposed by the publishers. That's good, because there is a clear development in the visual style of the books, and sometimes even the story. For example, the Gauls venture further and further afield over the course of the first few books; in Asterix and the Golden Sickle, Lutetia (Paris) is considered a long and difficult journey—but if you've been reading according to the publisher's order, they have already visited Egypt and Rome by that point. In the same book, Getafix is planning to visit the annual conference of the druids; the next book, Asterix and the Goths, is concerned with his kidnapping at that conference. The publisher's order inserts a volume between those two books, thus breaking the story continuity.

But what Wikipedia doesn't include are the various short stories—compiled in Asterix and the Class Act—in a chronology with the main books, which would be useful for anyone wishing to read the everything in the original order. So here's one, correct as far as I can make out from both the English and French Wikipedia sites. Short stories are shown in italics; books are shown in bold.

1. Asterix the Gaul (1959-60)

2. Asterix and the Golden Sickle (1960-61)

3. Asterix and the Goths (1961-62)

4. Asterix the Gladiator (1962)

- i. Birth of an Idea (1962)

- ii. Obelix's Family Tree (1963)

5. Asterix and the Banquet (1963)

6. Asterix and Cleopatra (1963-64)

- iii. Press Conference (1964)

7. Asterix and the Big Fight (1964-65)

- iv. How Obelix Fell into the Magic Potion When he was a Little Boy (1965)

8. Asterix in Britain (1965-66)

- v. Springtime In Gaul (1966)

9. Asterix and the Normans (1966)

- vi. Asterix and the Class Act (1966)

10. Asterix the Legionary (1966-67)

11. Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield (1967)

- vii. For Gaul Lang Syne (1967)

12. Asterix at the Olympic Games (1968)

- ix. The Mascot (1968)

13. Asterix and the Cauldron (1968-69)

14. Asterix in Spain (1969)

- x. Asterix as you've never seen him (1969)

15. Asterix and the Roman Agent (1970)

16. Asterix in Switzerland (1970)

17. The Mansions of the Gods (1971)

18. Asterix and the Laurel Wreath (1971-72)

- xi. Mini Midi Maxi (1971)

19. Asterix and the Soothsayer (1972)

- xii. Latinamania (1973)

20. Asterix in Corsica (1973)

21. Asterix and Caesar's Gift (1974)

22. Asterix and the Great Crossing (1975)

23. Obelix and Co. (1976)

- xiii. In 50 BC (1977)

24. Asterix in Belgium (1979)

25. Asterix and the Great Divide (1980)

26. Asterix and the Black Gold (1981)

27. Asterix and Son (1983)

- xiv. The Lutetia Olympics (1986)

28. Asterix and the Magic Carpet (1987)

29. Asterix and the Secret Weapon (1991)

- xv. Birth of Asterix (1994)

30. Asterix and Obelix All at Sea (1996)

31. Asterix and the Actress (2001)

[32. Asterix and the Class Act (2003)]

- xvi. Chanticleerix (2003)

- xvii. Obelix: As Simple as ABC (2004)

33. Asterix and the Falling Sky (2005)

NOTES:

Dates are according to first publication; for books 1 to 20, the date is based on the serialisation in Pilote.
It seems that Obelix's Family Tree was published in parallel with Asterix and the Banquet.
The text of How Obelix Fell into the Magic Potion When he was a Little Boy was originally published in Pilote in 1965; the book currently available was first published in 1989 and includes new artwork.
The story Obelix: As Simple as ABC is included in some newer editions of Asterix and the Class Act compilation volume.

Well, I think that's everything...

The Bunny Boy Video Series

2009-04-09T12:30:00.000+02:00

*Contains spoilers*

I watched the first few episodes of The Bunny Boy Video Series by The Residents when they were originally released, but failed to keep up with them during the move to Magdeburg. Yesterday I listened to The Bunny Boy album on the way to work and decided to see what had happened to the Video Series when I got home, only to find that it had coincidentally just ended two days before, on 6 April 2009. So last night I downloaded the whole lot and sat down to watch.

Back to back, the 66 episodes (67 if you count the two-parter) take about two-and-a-half hours to watch. The episodes themselves are more like video diaries, shot from a hand-held camera by the Bunny Boy himself—who we learn is called Roger—although he eventually enlists help from a Russian friend named Igor. Most videos are single takes; cuts do creep into later episodes along with the occasional special effect (and glove puppets!), serving to undermine the impression that the videos are 'real', although I suspect that this was the intention in any case. The sleeve notes to the album state that the videos—supposedly posted to The Residents on a DVD—were the inspiration for their musical retelling, but the question of which came first is actually irrelevant. The videos describe events occurring after the release of the album, such as the Bunny Boy being persuaded to accompany the band on tour and seeking sponsorship for the show. The two approaches, video and album, essentially tell the same story through different media, rather like the stories which accompanied 2005's Animal Lover complimented the music.

The premise of the story is that Roger's brother Harvey has gone missing; not knowing where to begin searching for him, Roger records these short videos and posts them on YouTube in the hope that somebody will notice his plight and be able to offer help. Eventually clues start to come in, both from 'viewers' and by examining Harvey's belongings, and Roger is drawn to the small village of Patmos, Arkansaw. But this plot is more or less a Macguffin—Harvey is never actually found, and the only glimpses we have of him are torn up photographs. Indeed, it is never really clear whether Roger and Harvey are actually different people.

We learn that Roger went on holiday with Harvey's family to the Greek island of Patmos, where the Book of Revelation was written, and suffered a breakdown—to begin with he is unable to remember anything from the trip and is confused by a shadowy figure (himself) lurking in the family photographs. Harvey and his wife Hilda apparently became estranged after the failure of a dotcom company which Harvey attempted to launch, but Roger is still living in a 'secret room' in the basement of their house, surrounded with all sorts of paraphernalia.

Many of the scenes build on these ambiguities and can be viewed from the perspective either that Roger and Harvey are the same person, or that they are not. At one point, for example, Roger asks Harvey's daughter to make a plea for help on one of the videos, but she's too uncomfortable to do so; it isn't clear whether she's uncomfortable with recording the video for the voyeuristic public or whether the problem is rather that she finds it difficult to play along with Roger's delusions. One morning Roger wakes to discover a stack of boxes left outside his door by Hilda, apparently containing drawings and notes by Harvey; but again, we can't be sure whether Hilda passed on the notes to help Roger with his search or to snap him out of it.

But even this question is something of a Macguffin. I'm not sure that it really matters whether Roger and Harvey are the same person or not, and the lack of definitive clues seems to support this. What's important is how Roger sees the situation: that he really does have a lost brother, that signs seem to be pointing an Apocalypse which only he and Harvey can prevent, despite being consumed with doubt. If it's all a delusional fantasy, then it is still one which seems real to Roger, and all we can do is follow him. He may not actually fight the Beast in the cellar of a chicken farm, and it may all be a confrontation of himself; but then what matters is how Roger constructs his narrative.

Appropriately enough, social media such as YouTube and Twitter form an underlying critical theme in the series, as Roger attempts to get his message heard. To begin with he receives mostly spam; sympathy and criticism, when they come, are naturally from complete strangers, and both seem misplaced. He begins to don a rabbit costume when a viewer comments on his clothing, at first taking offence but quickly settling into the role. His 'viewers' become 'fans', both in his mind and in reality; in the end he receives sponsorship, with the unscrupulous Residents (!) selling the rights to his character (The Bunny Boy) and his predicament. The final episode gives us a taste of things to come, as an anonymous media company launches The All New Adventures of The Bunny Boy. What started out as a genuine plea for help is trivialised, sensationalised and commercialised: Roger is unable to keep himself separate, and his story becomes shaped by the media it adopts. This bitterness runs throughout the series: Roger is alone, occasionally indulged by those near to him, misunderstood and manipulated by those further away. The internet and social media do not really offer a solution, just more and greater disappointment.

All of this is, of course, purely interpretative. It's just what the Video Series meant to me. Others might see more in it, or less. But it's well worth watching.

The Bunny Boy Video Series can be downloaded from http://www.residents.com/bunnyboy/.

The Mark of A Geek

2009-04-06T13:16:00.000+02:00

A site broken in IE elicits only a weary 'Meh' while a site broken in Opera demands urgent attention. I know it's a common courtesy to make sure that a site runs in as many browsers as possible, but a problem in IE just makes me shake my head in despair. A problem in Opera is far more likely to pique my interest and make me search for a solution.

I'm not even a regular Opera user, so why should I care? Because in my head, Opera fits into the category of 'good' browsers, while IE does not.

The Dead Cat Bounce

2009-04-01T21:02:00.000+02:00

Uploaded a first impression of a site for work at otto.mjharper.de. No content yet, as I was just trying to get the feel of the thing. The design is loosely influenced—I hesitate to say 'inspired'—by the official university website. Small steps, but I'm happy with them so far.

Still can't decide whether I should really call the site 'The Dead Cat Bounce'...

What's wrong with these people?

2009-03-12T14:50:00.001+01:00

According to the clearly objective Tehran Times, the teenage perpetrator of yesterday's school shooting in Winnenden—in which 16 died—is a "terrorist".

terrorism, noun: the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. (Oxford English Dictionary)

Bearing in mind that, no-one, anywhere, thinks that the event had anything to do with intimidation or politics, I'm a curious as to why the newspaper think it's an act of terrorism. Perhaps because the perpetrator work black combat gear? Must be.

The guy who posted the link on Reddit insists that it was an act of terrorism, because the perpetrator 'didn't like the world as it was'. I've responded to this, but will stop, as there's no point in beating one's head against a brick wall.

In a similar vein, last night I edited the wikipedia article because someone had thought it clever to change "wounded two police officers" to "wounded two Nazi Party Officials". The page is now being proposed for protection as such vandalism keeps occurring.

I mean, what IS wrong with these people?

The demise of OmniWeb

2009-02-25T15:02:00.000+01:00

And hot on the heels of Safari 4 beta comes the news that OmniWeb will now be free, as The Omni Group admit that it is no longer under active development. Those of us who have been using OmniWeb for years and hoping for a radical update have suspected this for some time, and it's good to finally have it out in the open. Still, it's a great shame: OmniWeb was, and probably still is, my favourite browser; feature rich like Opera but streamlined in a way that the latter could hardly dream of being. But the recent development made it feel more than a little sluggish; I switched back to using Safari (Webkit, really) as my main browser some time ago, seduced by the speed and standards compliance.

I can't help thinking that maybe it would have been better if OmniWeb had just been retired completely, like Panic did with Audion.

Some thoughts on Safari 4 beta

2009-02-24T20:42:00.005+01:00

The hot issue in the Apple world is today's release of Safari 4 beta. And a cracker it is too. Fast, stylish, and standards compliant—I ran it through the Acid 3 test a few times, and it clocked in at somewhere around 1.4 seconds. Okay, I had to remove all my plug-ins to get it to launch (I've heard many people say that the problem is with the excellent Glims), but having done that it even works with the nightly builds of Webkit (at least on Mac), which is awesome to say the least.

And it's full of new features... which I can't help feeling I've seen before. Tabs on top? Most people are comparing this to Google's Chrome, but surely I've seen it before in Opera? The top sites screen? That reminds me of Opera's Speed Dial. Full page zoom? Er... Opera? Cover flow-based history search? That's History Flow from SafariStand this time. The smart search field? Glims, and the infamous Inquisitor (which I won't link to). And there may be more, but I've only be playing with S4B for a short while.

Now, I think that all of these features are great additions to a great browser. But you really do have to wonder whether imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... or something else.

UPDATE: Jason Snell on the same.

Today's Dilbert

2009-02-21T11:04:00.000+01:00

Surreal, Scott. Sometimes I feel like a lump of wood, too.

Momentous updates!

2009-02-19T17:03:00.000+01:00

Well, I just finished re-posting the Myst V site and The Stunted Ring, neither of which had been available since my move away from .mac. There's no new content to speak of, but they are back in all their dubious and/or faded glory ;-) The Myst V site had the most work done to it, moving the speeches to the sidebar and restoring comments to their rightful place below the entries, instead of being split off into separate pages.

The Carcassonne site still needs updating, but that will have to wait for a bit.

Just say no

2009-02-16T08:31:00.002+01:00

The Economist:

Since the start of abstinence-only programs, the federal government has spent over $1.5 billion on them, but the United States still has one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates of any developed country.

What more is there to say?

Here Comes Everybody

2009-02-15T18:48:00.000+01:00

Finally finished reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky:

Young people are taking better advantage of social tools, extending their capabilities in ways that violate old models not because they know more useful things than we do but because they know fewer useless things than we do.

and:

My students, many of whom are fifteen years younger than I am, don't have to unlearn those things, because they never had to learn them in the first place.

Unlearning is the key.

The everything-bucket

2009-02-13T17:48:00.000+01:00

In the debate about whether 'bucket' applications are a good thing or not, I'm inclined to think that computers are really just big buckets in general. I know that a tidy desk is supposed to represent a tidy mind, and I appreciate the idea that if I keep all my files organised, my productivity will increase because I'll be able to find things more quickly. Fine. But what I want—and what things like Spotlight or Hazel give me—is the ability to dump things somewhere, anywhere, and have the computer sort things out for me.

Take Hazel as an example. I don't use it to anything like its full potential, but I do have it set to clean up my desktop. I dump something on the desktop because I want to use it right now; after it's been there for a couple of weeks—time enough for me to file it away manually if I want—Hazel deposits it in a folder of similar files (jpgs, pdfs, and so on). Sure, organising files by type may not be the best solution. I'm sure I could spend some time with Hazel's preferences and have it tidy up more effectively. But the files are stored logically, and I now have a tidy desktop.

In the end, the more proficient operating systems and applications become at sorting out our mess, the happier I'll be.

Dumb AOL

2009-02-13T11:41:00.001+01:00

So AOL won't let me change the email address associated with my AIM account. Which is just plain dumb, since that address (mjharper@mac.com) is as dead as dead can be. Gone the way of the dodo. Expired, shuffled off this mortal coil. That sort of thing.

A first!

2009-01-28T01:48:00.004+01:00

Just got my first (hopefully!) free beer for playing an instrument during the Jakelwood Folk Club… Although whether you could really call it 'playing' is open to debate ;-)

On a related note, Gerry—the leader of the folk club—seems to have realised that by 'being late', Maika did not mean that she was pregnant.

All change

2008-12-11T15:08:00.000+01:00

Again? What is up with this guy? Why on earth does his blog keep moving?

Well, because it seems like a good idea. Actually, even though the blog hasn't moved very far this time, and despite it still being built with RapidWeaver, this is probably the most significant change since I started blogging back in whenever-it-was. One of the things I've always done in the past is rebuild all of the old content because I wanted the blog to be as comprehensive as possible. So whenever I moved the blog everything needed to be taken along. But this time the principle motivation was the opposite: I wanted to start again from scratch—I really liked the idea of abandoning all the 'legacy' content and procedures that I've built up over the years. If I started from nothing, what would happen?

Take the photography, for instance. Although I was very pleased with the way it was integrated into the old blog, it wasn't really very efficient. The last photo post I made took about a month before I could be bothered to spend the time to sort it out. Finding a more efficient method—say, switching entirely to Flickr, as I'm planning to do now—would also entail going through all the old photos and organising them. But if I just draw a line between old blog and new blog, I can find a new solution and not worry about how that affects all of the earlier content.

One reason for the change taking place now is that, after ten years living in Jena, I (effectively) moved to Magdeburg to take up a position teaching at the university at the start of October. Bearing that in mind, I've backdated all the posts—and tweets—I've made since then. Appropriately enough, the first tweet I made back in October sums the whole thing up neatly.

A new leaf.

Passed!

2008-12-10T08:15:00.001+01:00

Just found out that I passed my MA! I'm not sure how I did it, but I did.

On Writing Well

2008-12-06T12:28:00.001+01:00

Willian Zinsser:
Nobody told all the new computer writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they’re writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well.

That condition was first revealed with the arrival of the word processor. Two opposite things happened: good writers got better and bad writers got worse. Good writers welcomed the gift of being able to fuss endlessly with their sentences—pruning and revising and reshaping—without the drudgery of retyping. Bad writers became even more verbose because writing was suddenly so easy and their sentences looked so pretty on the screen. How could such beautiful sentences not be perfect?
Guilty as charged, I think.

American Civil Test

2008-11-27T09:56:00.000+01:00

Via Yahoo! News I just read about this online test of American history, economics and civics. Apparently, out of some 2,500 people who answered the quiz, ‘ordinary’ Americans scored an average of 49%; while elected officials scored only 44%. That’s pretty embarrassing, and the additional findings raise some interesting issues.

Out of curiosity—or arrogance—I decided to have a go at the test myself. And I go stuck on a few things, such as the main issue in the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858. Had to guess a couple. But there are only 33 questions, and not all of them are quite so esoteric.

I scored 67%.

Vobis Magdeburg: Avoid

2008-11-26T16:18:00.000+01:00

Last month, Apple introduced the new aluminium MacBooks, which feature vastly improved graphics cards and significantly higher performance. The relation between the new MacBooks and the old white plastic MacBooks is more or less the same as between the old 12” iBooks and PowerBooks of a few years ago: same size, different cases, and very different innards. Although the white MacBook line wasn’t discontinued completely, it did receive a large price drop—from €1,099 to €940.

Just to summarise—in case you’re confused—there are two important facts here: the new aluminium MacBooks are considerably better than the old white MacBooks; and the old white MacBooks were made considerably cheaper.

However, according to the salesperson in the Vobis store in Magdeburg, the only difference between the two models is the case: one is plastic, the other metal. Oh, and the white MacBooks still cost €1,099, and here’s the invoice to prove it.

Or, in other words: we’re money-grubbing parasites who will lie to you and then charge you too much money.

Screw you, as they say in France.

In Aller Stille, by Die Toten Hosen

2008-11-17T08:40:00.001+01:00

Not bad at all. In Aller Stille opens with a 'We're still here!’ song which sets the tone for the rest of the album. There's less musical experimentation (or, depending on your perspective, boredom) here than the Hosen's had a decade ago, so there's no horn sections or supermarket trolleys or funk rhythms. Nevertheless, a cello creeps into a couple of pieces, as well as a duet on a ballad. And a decent ballad at that. There is a fair amount of shouting—which should please my brother—although at times it sounds a little cheesy, as do the Madonna-esque keyboards on 'Disco' (but you can't really hold that against them as that's their point). All in all it's a short, punchy album which doesn't really do anything new but does show that the Hosen's can still muster up enough passion, anger, and musicality to remain relevant. Whether it's still punk is another question.

3.5 stars (Worthy). RYM review.

Festung Mark

2008-11-10T14:37:00.001+01:00

P1010084.JPG, originally uploaded by mjharper.

Some pictures from last night’s concerts in the Festung Mark. Maybe next time I’ll take the tripod…

A drunken name

2008-11-09T18:49:00.000+01:00

So there I am with my girlfriend on the station at Naumburg, and I am accosted by an amiable drunk who seems fascinated by the fact I’m English. Fine, whatever, discreetly move to a carriage further up the train when it arrives. But my friend is now moving along the train, and eventually settles not far away, talking to the Russian woman opposite him. I should note at this point that he seems perfectly capable of speaking several languages, and well. Noticing me again, he takes a renewed interest, and proceeds to offer me wisdom relating to a number of issues. First of all, German is a very important language, as so many other European languages are derived from it, and German women are tall.

Next, he tells me that German women are dangerous because they just want a man with a well-paid and steady job. Finally, just before he leaves the train, he tells me that he has just decided on the name of the first son that my girlfriend and I will have together.

Winston Aurelius Maximilian.

Jakelwood Folk Club

2008-10-30T10:16:00.001+01:00

Maika, originally uploaded by mjharper.

A few pictures from this week’s gathering at Jakelwood. Some have had a couple of simple effects added, such as blurring at the edges, but nothing substantial. A tripod would really help, because even with the flash the best I could do was point, shoot, and hope…

Magdeburg Cathedral

2008-10-27T18:04:00.002+01:00

Magdeburg Cathedral, originally uploaded by mjharper.

My first photo of Magdeburg, taken yesterday as I was wandering around looking for an Indian restaurant. The sky really was that grey.

Sunday update

2008-10-26T10:37:00.000+01:00

My first Sunday in Magdeburg. Maybe I’ll go out with the camera later and try to explore a little. I’m curious to see what the weather does…

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, with a lot happening but not really much to write about (at least not yet). Certainly nothing to rant about. But here goes with a summary. As far is work is concerned, its standards and goals are somewhat different from those in Jena. The emphasis on presentations means that many of the courses are top-heavy in terms of teaching, and that might be the hardest thing for me to adapt to. But new challenges are good, as it’s too easy to fall into complacency, just adding to old content rather than attempting new approaches. Back in Jena I considered trying to incorporate presentations into the business course, but I couldn’t see a way of satisfactorily doing so—according to the aims of the course—so I abandoned the idea. Here I have to do the presentations, and the course has to be adapted. It would be wrong to say that I was going that way all along, but the change of workplace has certainly meant I have had to pull my finger out do something about it.

I’m still in temporary accommodation, which is oodles of fun. Not. And in a couple of weeks I have to move out of the (nice) room I’m in, and into another. So I’m kind of living from my backpack at the moment; thankfully I have all my music and a good number of films (anime mostly) on the computer. But I did realise very quickly that I couldn’t divide my time equally between Jena and Magdeburg, as I had originally planned to do. Magdeburg is effectively the future for me, and I need to invest in it emotionally in order to be happy here.

Socially, I guess, the last two weeks have also been about removing the old finger. I’ve been out every couple of evenings. This week I brought my bodhrán along from Jena—just maybe the cool people in the folk group will provide me with the necessary impetus. That’s the plan, anyway :-)

It’s a time of endings and beginnings, I think. I hope.

‘Bout time

2008-10-12T17:32:00.000+02:00

‘Bout time I posted something. It’s been a chaotic month and I just haven’t found the energy to post anything longer than tweets. I really should use FriendFeed or something to include those in my RSS feed—as if anyone would subscribe! Ha!

Mind you, the fact that I’ve posted to Twitter some 26 times since my last blog post does suggest that micro-blogging has rather quickly become an essential part of my blogging experience (I’ve only been seriously using Twitter since June). The question is whether it has been to the detriment of longer posts on my blog… I don’t think it has, because the process is different; there’s no way I could have blogged from a concert before.

Anyway, I don’t really have much to say in this post—I mainly wanted to break the ice. Tonight I’m off to Magdeburg; tomorrow I have to teach there for the first time. And then I get to explore a bit… Maybe I should take the camera.

mjharper

Education and technological incompetence

Scaremongering

Gratuitous Censorship, or Why the German Censors should be Censored.

Journalism in Der Spiegel #2: The apocalypse in anime and manga

Journalism in Der Spiegel #1: The school teacher in Penthouse

Starcraft II: A half review of disappointment

Mac Land / Performance

[No spoliers]

Battle.net / DRM

[No spoliers]

Story mode

[Minor spoilers]

﻿Part one of three

[Minor spoilers]

The Betrayal

[Major spoilers]

Conclusion

Dilbert Comic for May 4, 2010

Final UK election debate

Silligism

Manga I'm currently reading

Dilbert Comic for December 12, 2009

Hi-ho, Dino!

Downgrade Handbrake

Jakewood Folk Club, 24 November

Flag: The Movie

Mind Game, directed by Masaaki Yuasa

Ouch

Aufbrüch!

The History of Rock and Dance, by Piero Scaruffi

Tribute to Jacko

Jethro Tull @ Festung Mark, Magdeburg

Some thoughts on Opera 10 beta

Snow Leopard: Thesaurus

Excellent timing, Scott

A Chronology of Asterix

The Bunny Boy Video Series

The Mark of A Geek

The Dead Cat Bounce

What's wrong with these people?

The demise of OmniWeb

Some thoughts on Safari 4 beta

Today's Dilbert

Momentous updates!

Just say no

Here Comes Everybody

The everything-bucket

Dumb AOL

A first!

All change

Passed!

On Writing Well

American Civil Test

Vobis Magdeburg: Avoid

In Aller Stille, by Die Toten Hosen

Festung Mark

A drunken name

Jakelwood Folk Club

Magdeburg Cathedral

Sunday update

‘Bout time

Part one of three