Attack of the Mutant Space Zombies

September 19, 2007 Leave a comment

I was quite alarmed when I read this story from Peru today. A meteorite falls to earth and hundreds fall ill; how long before the alien virus (for that is what it surely is) starts turning people into crazed mutant zombies? Sure, Peru seems like a long way away, but this kind of infection tends to have an unpredictable incubation period, so there are probably already symptomless carriers spreading the contagion. We’ll see cases in Lima, then fleeing tourists will take it to North America, and from there it will go global.

Like most municipalities, my home town is woefully unprepared for mass zombie attack. I can only hope that, faced with a rising tide of the undead, the authorities will relax our strict gun-control laws, and issue firearms to surviving citizens. Based on extensive experience of playing Doom and Resident Evil, I would favour a pump-action shotgun, though I guess a good 9mm pistol would do, so long as it had a 25-shot magazine, since zombies can usually take a few bullets before they go down. The whole situation is likely to be fairly chaotic, so I think I could depend on finding plenty of ammunition just lying around.

I’m probably more prepared for this sort of emergency than most people, having suffered from zombie-phobia since childhood. As phobias go, it’s quite a good one to have, since it doesn’t really impact much on my day-to-day life, and an extreme aversion to animated corpses is likely to be quite adaptive once the damned start wandering the earth, feasting on the flesh of the living.

I can trace my fear of zombies back to my first viewing of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, when I was in my early teens. I’ve seen the film several times since then, and while I can appreciate Romero’s sly critique of consumer culture, my visceral reaction is still “Arrrgh!! – Zombies!!”.

My condition seems to be getting worse as the years go by. I haven’t been able to see any of the more recent zombie flicks, like 28 Days After or Shaun of the Dead, and I’ve had to give up playing zombie-themed video games. Even writing this post will probably give me nightmares.

Why do I find zombies so scary? The idea that friends and neighbours could shed their veneer of civilisation and try to kill and eat me must tap into some sort of subconscious paranoia. There’s definitely a sexual subtext too – a fear that libidinal energy might overwhelm the ego and allow the unrestrained id to act out its destructive impulses. (I’ll blame that on watching Cronenberg’s Rabid at an impressionable age). Then there’s the pitiless and relentless nature of the undead, which surely echoes the creeping reality of human mortality. Or maybe it’s just because the putrefied complexions of the living dead look really unattractive.

Anyway, I’m going to go out to the shopping mall tomorrow, to check out how easy it would be to block all the entrances with big lorries. I might look into learning how to fly a helicopter too…

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Technical Update

September 12, 2007 Leave a comment

Upgrading my computer is turning out to be a bit more complicated than I had anticipated. I’d thought that it would just be a case of ordering a new graphics card and slotting it in, but I hadn’t reckoned with the fact that technology has moved on a bit since the last time I took an interest in the inner workings of my machine.

Things are made more difficult by the fact that I have only a hazy idea of what is inside the case at the moment. I bought the machine, without any documentation, at a bankruptcy auction about four years ago, and, apart from putting in a new hard drive a while back, I haven’t had any reason to open it up.

The last time I was in the market for expansion cards, they came in two flavours, PCI and ISA, which lets you know that it wasn’t yesterday. I had heard about the introduction of AGP, and I guessed that my current motherboard probably had such a slot, since it was modern enough to support a P4 chip. A little web searching helped me track down the specifications of the board to confirm this. (Tip: to find out more about your motherboard, make a note of the BIOS version listed in the setup menu, type it into Google, and you should end up with a link to the documentation for the board). To further complicate things I discovered that there are several different types of AGP slot, but luckily I managed to find this page, which reassured me that my board should be able to take any new card that I bought.

The card also has to meet the Second Life minimum requirements, with enough to spare to ensure that I don’t have to do all this again when they upgrade their system, not to mention working with Linux, preferably out of the box.

Eventually I narrowed it down to the nVidia GeForce 7 Series. I chose nVidia over ATI because the nVidia Linux drivers seem to be a bit more stable. (Purists would say that the drivers aren’t truly open-source, because nVidia don’t release the source code, but I’m willing to compromise to get this project off the ground). I would have gone for a cutting-edge 8 Series card, were it not for the fact that they seem to only come in PCIE format, AGP having evidently passed the date of its planned obsolescence. Most 7 Series cards are PCIE too, but I managed to track down the Inno3D 7600GS which comes in an AGP version.

I’ve gone into all this in rather obsessive depth, partly to explain why I haven’t managed to get my act together sooner, but also because the experience has made me reflect on how the way I use a computer has changed over the years.

Like many boys of my generation, in the UK at least, my introduction to computing came through the ZX Spectrum, back in the 1980’s. (I did have an Atari 2600 before that, but I don’t think that counts as a proper computer). I used to spend hours labouriously typing in programs written in Z80 machine code, which even at the time was pretty arcane. I created some neat stuff, including an Asteroids knock-off which, in my opinion anyway, was as good as the commercially-available games of the era. I might have gone on to a great career in the industry, if I hadn’t gone off to University and been distracted by drink, drugs, music, politics and girls.

Medical students today seem to spend most of their time sitting in front of computers, but back when I was at medical school “Information Technology” meant the telephone. I did have a couple of friends from the science faculty, who would sometimes talk about a wonderful thing called the “internet”, but nobody paid much attention to them.

It wasn’t until a few years after I graduated that I got myself a PC. I did a bit of programming, subscribed to a couple of magazines to keep up with technical developments and regularly dismantled the machine and rebuilt it with new components.

Then, around the mid-90’s, I acquired a 14.4 modem and discovered the internet, which at that time was just starting to become a mass phenomenon. I was soon enjoying Usenet groups and the first primitive web pages. I remember when I upgraded to a 33.6 modem (a US Robotics Sportster which cost me £200 – I dug it out of the cupboard a few weeks ago when my broadband connection broke down, and it still works) and was completely amazed at the speed. I taught myself HTML (in those days AJAX was something you cleaned the bath with) and put a few pages up on Geocities.

As time passed I lost interest in the computer in itself, and increasingly saw it just as a box that I used to access the net. Eventually I gave up trying to create any online content, web pages or even newsgroup posts, and settled into being a passive consumer of information. This blog is the first time in ages that I’ve tried to reverse the process, and I have to admit that I’m finding it hard going, since every time I sit down with the intention of composing a post I tend to be distracted by essentially aimless browsing. (I have a bad Wikipedia habit, as you’ll know if you’ve followed any of the links from this post).

Anyway, I’ve ordered the graphics card from Amazon, and I should have it by the start of next month. While I’ve got the case open I’m going to put in some more memory, a bigger hard drive and a DVD-RW drive, and I’m also planning to install the latest version of the Mandriva Linux distro. Once I’ve got all that up and running I should be able to install the Second Life client, and finally get down to business.

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This ain’t the Mudd Club

September 10, 2007 Leave a comment

The first record I ever bought was the 7″ single version of “Heart of Glass“, back in 1979. This came to mind today when I read that Hilly Kristal, owner of CBGB’s in New York, had died, just a year after the club was forced to close as the neighbourhood around it gentrified. CBGB’s hosted early gigs by Blondie, and several other bands that I grew up with, like Television, Talking Heads and the Ramones, so the news of Hilly’s death produced the depressing realisation that a time that I had lived through was being consigned to the history books.

I visited CBGB’s a few times in the early 90’s, though by then the club’s glory days were long past, and the bands I saw were completely forgettable. At least the Bowery was still authentically scuzzy, and observing the street life was quite entertaining. I remember being tremendously impressed by the general grittiness of New York the first few times I visited – it was exactly how I had imagined it would be from watching Taxi Driver and Mean Streets. I hear that the city has been cleaned up a bit in the last few years, which I guess is good news for New Yorkers, if disappointing for Scorsese-loving tourists.

The last time I was in New York was 1992, for the CMJ. I saw some great gigs during the course of that event, notably The Flaming Lips and The Jesus and Mary Chain, both on the same bill at the Roseland Ballroom, and enjoyed some interesting social interaction with the local music crowd.

Now CBGB’s is gone, Joey, Johnny and Dee-Dee are dead, and the time when I would jet across the Atlantic to go to a music festival is nothing more than a fading memory. I keep meaning to go to SXSW or Burning Man, but at some point in the last decade my life became too complicated to do things impulsively, and I’m no good at planning ahead, so I don’t think it will be happening any time soon.

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Jerome update

August 28, 2007 Leave a comment

Jerome hadn’t posted in his blog for a couple of weeks, causing me some concern, since if it turned out he had died my light-hearted comments about his health were going to look in rather poor taste. However he’s back now, and looking fairly fit in the photo he’s posted. No word on his scan results or job search though. Doesn’t he know that people are worrying about him?

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I fear to watch, yet I cannot turn away

August 22, 2007 Leave a comment

Actually I take back what I said about the X-Factor. Having watched the first show of the new series, I have reverted to the view that they expect us to laugh at the hopeless losers, especially when they burst into tears during the post-rejection interview. To be fair to the producers they do leaven the cruelty with some sentimentality, by featuring stories like that of the girl who only entered the competition to realise her late father’s dying wish. Luckily she had a good singing voice, and the judges were spared the embarrassment of having to crush her dream at the first audition. No doubt they’re saving that poignant moment for a future episode.

It makes for morbidly fascinating viewing for a while, though it is best enjoyed in small doses. I always end up wondering why people are willing to subject themselves to humiliation on national TV (and worldwide via YouTube), when a moment’s reflection would tell them that their chances of success were close to zero.

Is reality TV culture blunting our collective discernment and self-awareness, or merely giving a platform to people who are already suffering from delusions of talent? A clue that the latter is the case comes from the observation that winning a TV talent show is far from a guarantee of lasting fame. Most of the acts that have emerged have been briefly tolerated by the public before slipping back into the limbo of Z-list celebrity. (For some the backlash comes with frightening speed – Steve Brookstein, winner of the first series of X-Factor, was reportedly booed off the stage at his first concert. People weren’t just indifferent, they actually paid money to go to his show and give him abuse). To me this suggests that the audience for these shows is tuning in to see the drama of success and failure (especially failure), rather than to appreciate the artistry of the performers. The alternative – that the likes of Shayne Ward really do represent the musical taste of the UK population – is too horrible to contemplate.

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My friend Jerome

August 13, 2007 Leave a comment

Having jokingly linked to Jerome’s Unemployment Blog yesterday, I now find myself worrying about the poor guy. Not only is he out of work, but he’s sick too. Luckily he seems to have health insurance. His doctor sent him for a CT scan, which made me think that Jerome must be really ill, until I remembered that in the US the structure of the health care system encourages lots of expensive investigations, whether they’re needed or not. Here in the UK, with our socialised medicine, we only order scans for people who we think might actually have something seriously wrong with them.

Anyway, Jerome’s scan was clear (apart from some slight abnormality which he is going to get an MRI scan for – and Americans wonder why their health insurance is so expensive) so his doctor thinks he probably has a gastric motility problem. Obviously it’s difficult to diagnose things over the internet, but I would have guessed that from his original description of the symptoms, thus saving thousands of dollars, not to mention all the radiation he will have got from the CT scan. I would probably have ordered the ultrasound to exclude gallstones though.

I feel like I really know Jerome now, to the extent that I feel able to second-guess his doctor about what might be wrong with him. This despite the fact that he or she is presumably a reputable professional who will have carefully examined Jerome and considered all the relevant data before coming up with a rational plan of investigation, whereas all I have to go on is some scraps of information and my ill-informed prejudices about American health care (which I got from watching ER and Nip/Tuck). Completely absurd of course, but like I said before, the internet is great at producing the illusion of intimacy. I don’t know if Jerome will find my interest in his health a bit creepy, though I would hazard a guess that yes, he just might. That’s what happens if you put details of your personal life on the web for all to see though.

And, Jerome, if you’re reading, listen to what your doctor says, not what some stranger on the internet tells you.

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Some encouragement

August 12, 2007 5 Comments

There is some evidence that I am not the only reader of this blog – it gets a few views from people referred by Google, though most of them seem to be searching for something else. I also got a supportive comment from the writer of the blog Surface Earth (have a look, and see if you can figure out what it’s about), but he or she came across this page by accident too. My Technorati authority rating remains stuck at 1, with a ranking of 3,915,745.

Luckily, like most bloggers, I don’t need much encouragement to keep sharing my thoughts with the world. The main problem is finding time to sit down in front of the computer long enough to complete a worthwhile post. It would be a lot easier if I was unemployed.

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Blog Idol

August 12, 2007 Leave a comment

I’m generally too much of an intellectual snob to lower myself to watching reality TV, but I will admit to making an exception for shows like X-Factor. Not the later stages, where they get the people who actually have some ability and ruthlessly extinguish any trace of originality or individuality, but the first few episodes, where the experts tour the country sifting through the hopeful masses to uncover some hidden nuggets of talent.

During these audition shows the cameras will invariably home in on several would-be stars, each one eager to proclaim their absolute faith that they are going to be chosen, because “I really want this, I’ve always wanted it.” We then see their acts, which reveal that they would be well advised to direct their creative urges into other projects. They are told as much, kindly by the kind judge, brutally by the brutal judge. Afterwards some appear defeated and disillusioned, but most retain their belief that, one day, they will make it to the top, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I used to be sure that the program producers included these segments for their comedic value; that we were being invited to laugh at the losers who were deluded enough to think that a lame impersonation of Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears would be their passport to the golden realm of celebrity. Now I’m not so certain. Maybe we’re actually being asked to admire the way these aspiring stars remain true to their dreams in the face of the world’s cruel indifference.

That would certainly be in line with the general trend in our culture to favour emotion over reason, and to believe that the key to achieving a goal is to desire it with sufficient fervour.

Nowhere is the line between desire and reality more blurred than on the internet, particularly the wild frontier of Web 2.0. The barrier between inspiration and publication is so insignificant that anyone with any sort of half-baked idea can present their work to the world. This has generally been felt to be a good thing, representing as it does a major democratisation of the creative process, but the absence of external editorial control does call for a bit self-restraint, a quality that is not always associated with bloggers. So while there is a lot of interesting material in the blogosphere, there is also a not inconsiderable amount of self-indulgence.

I’d have to admit that this blog is not a great advert for the medium, consisting as it does mainly of my inconsequential thoughts on random topics, with very little that pertains to its ostensible subject. I could try to excuse this with reference to my other commitments, but the truth is that, like the X-Factor hopefuls, I am guilty of mistaking a wish to do something for the ability to carry it off. I still think the basic idea is good, and I am going to try to approach it a bit more methodically. Expect a few more weak columns before I get my act together though.

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Ah…sweet liquor eases the pain

July 31, 2007 Leave a comment

I went to see “The Simpsons Movie” last weekend, and very entertaining it was too. It was more like an extra-long version of the TV show than a proper feature film, but in an age where most summer blockbusters are just glorified advertisements for tie-in merchandise that hardly counts as a criticism, especially when the TV show in question is one of the finest comedies ever broadcast. There was the anticipated high quota of visual and verbal jokes, the trademark sharp social comment, and moments of wild surrealism. It wasn’t perfect though; the plot seemed a little over-extended, and I felt that more use could have been made of the the broad cast of characters that for me has always been the great strength of the show. Most of Springfield’s residents did feature at one point or another, but, Ned Flanders aside, none of them were really integral to the story. These are minor quibbles though, and I doubt I’ll laugh as much at any other film this year.

I don’t think that I could write anything about the broader cultural phenomenon that is “The Simpsons” that hasn’t been said already, so I’ll just note that I concur with the general opinion that the show is not as funny as it used to be. My all-time favourite episode is “Bart’s Inner Child” from season five, but every show from the first eight years is guaranteed to have a host of quotable lines.

Intriguingly, the end of the Simpsons’ golden age (as I see it) coincides exactly with my 30th birthday…

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Endless Vacation

July 28, 2007 Leave a comment

I’ve been reading reviews of the film Hostel 2, which was released in the UK the other week. Critics over here are fairly unanimous in the opinion that the movie is an unpleasantly misogynistic piece of crap. US film writers pretty much hold that view too, though a few do buy into director Eli Roth’s explanation that his film is not actually a cheap exploitation flick, pandering to the worst instincts of sick individuals who like to fantasise about torturing young women, but is in fact a serious work of horror, which performs the traditional role of the genre by allowing the audience to exorcise their subconscious fears through a cathartic experience of vicarious menace.

I haven’t seen the film myself, or its predecessor, so I don’t really have an opinion on whether Roth has a point or not. Whichever way you look at it though, the fact that there is enough of an audience in the US to make this movie a commercial proposition tells us something interesting about the current state of the collective American psyche. Either casual sadism is becoming more mainstream, or paranoia has become so widespread that people really worry that stepping over the border carries a risk of being kidnapped and murdered by sinister foreigners. Thinking about how this might translate into US foreign policy is the sort of thing that keeps faint-hearted Europeans like me awake at night.

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