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I’m guessing not many people (who read this) saw Ian Hislop’s programme about Beeching last week, or know about him from other sources (unless I’m not the only one to spend much too long reading about this sort of thing on Wikipedia…). So I’ll summarise. In the first part of the 20th Century (up to about the 1920s), the railways in Britain were pretty damn good. The network was well used and had a pretty good coverage. However, as they started to face competition from other forms of transport such as cars, lorries, buses and planes, the rail companies found it increasingly hard to make a profit (except for in WW2, where the network was suddenly utilised again for the war effort). In addition to the competition, the railway system in Britain grew up in the Victorian era in a pretty unmanaged way. As now, everything was privately owned, but unlike now there was much more competition, to the point of certain routes being duplicated and run by two different companies. There were a lot of railways in the country - at the peak just before WW1, about 22,000 miles. Obviously, this is hellishly inefficient, and really needless after the railways were nationalised in 1947. Anyway, eventually, things came to a head and the Government decided to bring in someone from a corporate environment, to try to help turn the system around. They chose Dr Richard Beeching, at the time head of ICI, to be head of the new British Railways Board. In 1963, he released a report entitled “The Reshaping of British Railways”. The report was basically an analysis of which lines were used the least (using data from a survey which took place over just one week), followed by his recommendation that if these lines were closed, the rail network would begin to show a profit again. In the following years, 9000 miles of track (and 4000 stations) were removed. Unsurprisingly, this was fairly unpopular. Beeching thought that the network should run as a business; i.e. should pay for itself. He neglected the idea that - especially at that time, when it was nationalised - it was a service. If you trim it down until you have a core business that returns a profit, then yes it might make sense financially, but it negates the point of a railway! Also, the report didn’t consider any alternatives to closure. There were plenty of ways that costs could have been cut without severely impacting upon the service offered, yet they were simply not looked at. Additionally, when tracks and stations were closed there was no consideration given to the future expansion of the network. In America when a line is closed, theres a practise called “Railbanking”, where the railroad right-of-way is preserved should the route become viable again in the future. This prevents the land being built on, and if that had taken place it would’ve made life hell of a lot simpler for Network Rail (or whoever) now, when they look at expanding the network. Another brilliant thing about The Beeching Report is that it assumed that people would get the bus or drive to a station to use the train. But people are inherently lazy, so the assumption was only half right. They used their cars, but just drove where they wanted to go instead of to the station. The same sort of thing happened with freight I think, which again is hardly unpredictable. The effect of all this is that now the main lines had fewer passengers/freight moving on them, which from a financial standpoint it probably made things worse in some areas! Certainly, most loss-making routes made such a marginal loss that the overall net effect of the reforms was two-tenths of not a lot; the railways continued to lose money. The point I’m trying to make - apart from lamenting the railways - is that when increased profit is the only goal, it seems incredibly easy to be incredibly short-sighted. The rail companies were in the early part of the 20th Century when they failed to adequately invest in the network and rolling stock to stay competitive, the Government and Beeching were in the 60s when they decided to close things willy-nilly, and plenty of people are still making the same mistakes. I’m pleased that one of the conditions of the RBS bailout by the Government is that in future any bonuses given to directors will be made in the form of shares (and I assume they have to hold onto them for a while). Hopefully that’ll tie their fortunes to that of the Bank, forcing them to take a longer-term approach. It’s beautifully simple; let’s just hope it’s effective. Posted by Dickie :: 4 Comments
The Belgian Grand Prix took place on Sunday. It was, it’s fair to say, an extremely good race. The last few laps literally had me on the edge of my seat because it was so amazingly tense. Anyway, Lewis Hamilton was the victor after yet another outstanding drive. I’m not really a fan of any team or driver, but he’s seriously impressive and for my money is one of the best drivers out there at the moment (and given that he’s only on his second season, it won’t be long till he’s the best out there). He really deserved to win, because he outperformed everyone else so remarkably. So, he won. Although actually, he came third. You see, he made the basic error of, uhm, overtaking a Ferrari… I’ll explain. For most of the race, Hamilton was 2nd to Kimi Raikkonen. After the second set of pit stops, however, Hamilton started to close to Raikkonen due to the McLaren seemingly working the tyres better than the Ferrari. With 3 laps to go, he was close enough to attack. Coming into the Bus Stop chicane (is it even called that any more?) at the end of the lap, he outbraked KR and went to the outside, to be on the inside for the second part of the chicane. KR forced him over, so LH decided that rather than crash into him, he’d cut the corner. This put him ahead of Raikkonen, which for obvious reasons is illegal. So, Hamilton let him past, and re-took the lead at the La Source, the next corner. This is the move, if you wanna watch. Because he cut the corner, the stewards later decided that Hamilton had an unfair advantage, and applied a 25 second penalty to him (basically they added 25 seconds to the time it took him to finish the race), which meant he finished third. Given that Hamilton slowed to allow Raikkonen the place, was subsequently 6kph slower over the start/finish line than Raikkonen and behind him on the track, I’m not sure where the advantage comes from. If anything the fact that he had to slow down to concede the place means that he must’ve been slower than Raikkonen, I would’ve thought. That he took the lead at La Source is testament to Hamilton’s skill and Raikkonen’s cautiousness. Two weeks before that, Felipe Massa (the other Ferrari driver) was leading the “race” (procession) at Valencia. At his second pitstop, he was released into the path of another driver, and had to lift off to avoid crashing. I defy you to watch this and tell me it’s not unsafe. The rules pretty much agree, and IIRC mandate that Massa should’ve had a drive-through penalty (i.e. have to drive down the pitlane without stopping), which wouldve cost him the win and given it to Hamilton. Now, this wasn’t Massa’s fault, and I wouldve been a bit disappointed if he lost the win because he deserved it. But, he also deserved the penalty, because he and the team broke the rules. He got a fine of $10,000, rather than the penalty stipulated in the rules. No punishment at all, then. Bear in mind that at the same race (and in fact at Spa), the same thing happened in the support race. Result? Drive-throughs. These are two parts of a very large picture. And I don’t want to believe that there’s bias towards Ferrari (and against McLaren), but the more that happens the more it becomes more and more possible. At the very best, there is some horribly inconsistent application of the rules. At the worst, it’s bias. Either way, yet again the powers that be have shown themselves to be horribly out of touch with what the fans want. With all the “important” people calling the Valencian race a huge success, even though it was actually really, really dull. The commentators at one point were talking about a tomato-chucking contest thats held in the region each year. I shit you not… And then with this race, penalising Hamilton for doing his job in overtaking Raikkonen. They don’t realise that this is exactly what the fans want to see; two drivers battling hard for the lead of the race. That’s exactly what motorsport is all about, but it seems that the FIA want to stop that at all costs. Over the past decade or so, pretty much all the rule changes have conspired to make overtaking harder for the drivers, and detract from the spectacle. Not on purpose, obviously, but it’s clear that those making the rules don’t think about the effect those regulations will have upon the sport. For them (and by “them” I mostly mean Max Mosley, the arrogant bastard), it’s mostly about a long power trip. About getting their own way. The Hamilton ruling angered me. After such a stunning - inspired - drive, it’s gutting to see him stripped of such a well-deserved result. But it’s not just that. And it’s not just because it’s yet another highly dubious decision that benefits Ferrari. It’s because I can imagine the “average” viewer, who doesn’t really follow the sport that much but watches the odd race. I can imagine them seeing the Belgian GP and tuning out thinking Hamilton was the winner, only to hear on the news the next day that actually he came third. And I can imagine them thinking “what a load of bollocks that F1 is then”. It angers me because if anyone says that because of this race, I can’t defend it. I’m fed up of the sport I love being tarnished by fools. (anyway, if you’ve ever said F1 is boring, watch this. Even though I know how it ends, watching it back it still makes me smile) Posted by Dickie :: 2 Comments
Part I It just seems like such a basic thing, in this always-connected world we live in. That said, there are probably more pressing things to sort out on the rail network… Anyway, I write this en-route from Cardiff to the joy that is Birmingham New Street, which is probably a good example of something that needs sorting, actually. As is the way the train keeps bouncing from side to side, making it bloody hard to type. I digress. Last week was spent in Devon, in a lovely little place called Slapton. There are a couple of interesting things about Slapton. Firstly, it has a big freshwater lake (Slapton Ley) which is separated from the sea by a narrow shingle bar, and the whole site is a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest), because it’s home to some rare birds or something and because it’s a really good example of that sort of habitat. Secondly, during the 1940s, the whole area was evacuated so that the Americans could practise invading it. Apparently it has a lot of similarities to Utah beach (the western-most beach they landed on during Operation Overlord). However, during the exercise (codenamed Exercise Tiger), a bunch of German ships happened to come across the landing craft just as they were about to land and managed to sink a few. As a result, there were about three times as many casualties during Ex. Tiger than there were on Utah during Op. Overlord. Well, I thought that was interesting, anyway. It was a pretty good week, all things considered. True to form the weather was pretty poor (after the weeks of gorgeous sunshine we had during the exam period), but it seemed to stay dry during most of our outdoor stuff, which was good. I quite like the field courses we have, because its a nice to get a chance to spend time with and get to know people that I wouldn’t ordinarily talk to. That said, it also means I had to tolerate some of the people who really irritate me, but gotta take the rough with the smooth and all that. Actually, one of the nights spent down t’pub was somewhat eye-opening. There were a bunch of us in this tiny (usually quiet) pub, being studenty… I noticed after a while that the only people talking were those who were the loudest. There wasn’t really a conversation going, either; they just seemed to say something, then wait for other people to finish talking, and then say something else. We were there for a good few hours, and no-one really said anything. Now I don’t expect every conversation to be deep and meaningful; considering the meaning of life and other worthy questions. But I do think that conversation should be interesting, not just based around “this one time, I was really drunk…”, or whatever…. Eventually they got round to playing drinking games (loudly), which was just embarrassing. OK, drinking games can be fun, but there’s a time and a place. A quiet pub, where you can piss off all the locals, really isn’t it. The next night we all went to Torquay (for a fun night out!), and I spent it with a different bunch of people. We ended up in this cramped little pub, where there was a guy with a guitar playing away in the corner. A guy with a guitar who seemed to be able to play any song you requested. Most people went to a club I think, but all present at the pub were in agreement that they missed out. Horses for courses, I guess. The trip kinda got me thinking about where I’d prefer to live: a small place like Slapton, right next to the sea; or in a city. I really love the sea and being near it, so I think I’d really love to live near it. Cardiff is technically by the sea, but most of the city is a teensy bit inland, so I never really see the sea. So yeh, I’d love to live somewhere in an ickle coastal town, I think, but at the same time I do love cities. I love the atmosphere, and the way there’s always something happening. I think that when I’m rich and successful in years to come, I’ll just buy a house in a city and a place by the sea, and alternate as the mood takes me. Don’t know which city, and which place by the sea though… Part II I had to get off the train, so I had to stop writing. I’m now writing from the sofa at home, a few hours later. Watched the Monaco Grand Prix earlier, which was really very good. I really felt sorry for Sutil (he’s in one of the worst teams, and was in 4th place until the current world champion crashed into him a few laps from the end). Hamilton was bloody lucky – his puncture earlier on in the race gave him a real strategic advantage over Massa and Kubica, and apparently he got a puncture on the slowing down lap after crossing the line. Lucky the race was shortened, then. Speaking of Massa, he’s driving fantastically at the moment. Dare I say it, title hopes? He seems to be doing better than Raikkonen at the moment, it has to be said… Doctor Who the other day was really bloody good. Most of this series has been pretty poor, to be honest. It’s almost as if the writers have tried to make it comic because they’ve got Catherine Tate, but it’s really not worked. It’s been cheesy, almost slaptstick humour. Thinking back to the first “new” series, with Christopher Ecclestone as the Doctor, that was really rather witty and that’s the way it should be. Apart from that, it’s been predictable as well. Like “The Doctor’s Daughter”. Who didn’t foresee her getting shot? And then who didn’t see her re-generating (and keeping her form)? Bad. Just bad. Anyway, the last episode was good. It’s properly dark, and not at all predictable. And I really like the way that it addresses the fact that the Doctor is a time traveller. For those that don’t watch the show, I’ll explain what I mean. One of the characters in the episode knows the Doctor, but first met him at a time later than the meeting we see in the show. So she knows the Doctor and has known him for years, but he has no idea who she is. It’s pretty clever. Can’t wait for Moffat to take over the direction of the show. The Lost season finale came out the other day as well, and I have to say I thought it was pretty good. It did exactly what I expected – answered a few questions, introduced some new ones, and basically revealed a little bit more of the story. I have to say I really like some of the issues and themes that Lost looks at. Things like Good vs Evil, Science vs Faith, Fate or Destiny vs Free Will, and so on. That, and the entire story is pretty magnificent. If you haven’t watched it before, I urge you to acquire it and to spend a few days watching it all from the start. It’s really worth it. Posted by Dickie :: 8 Comments
I wanted to reply to comments from the last post, but it’s probably gonna get quite long so I thought I’d just write a new post. Most of this is aimed at Andy’s comment… Something I want to get entirely clear (and probably wasn’t clear in the post) is that I think the Killers’ cover of the song is - on the whole - ok. Passable. Not bad. Note that I avoided any jokes about them “killing” it (despite the obvious temptation). Okay so the guitarist simply can’t play the part, and the tone is awful, but whatever. It sounds OK. But…
So it’s clearly a love song. And to my mind a love song should have some sort of element of passion to it. If you listen to a good one (like the original version of Romeo and Juliet, or Buckley’s version of Hallelujah, or Love Sick by Dylan), that comes in spades. When Knopfler sings the lines I’ve quoted, you can hear the heartbreak in his voice. I don’t get that feeling from The Killers’ version. They’re just going through the motions, which makes the whole exercise pointless. Music is about emotions, about conveying a feeling and telling a story, and a song (or performance) which fails to do that isn’t worth listening to. So “how fucking dare anyone cover it who doesn’t fully understand the subtle nuance” is half right, I guess. It’s a nuance, but not a subtle one. A love song which is devoid of emotion just seems to defeat the point, and that’s why it’s bad. It’s not purism by the way. There’s a cover of the same song by The Indigo Girls, and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. They’ve taken the song and performed it in their own way, which is surely the point of a cover? Think of Hendrix’s version of All Along the Watchtower, or Buckley’s Hallelujah; they take other people’s songs and make them their own, and arguably make them better by doing so. But this is straying from the point… What I’m trying to say is that it’s not “how dare anyone cover this!?”, it’s more a case of “meh”. I disagree with the point about “The guy even says at the start of the video that they won’t do it justice, but that it’s worth doing if they get a Killers fan to listen to Mark Knopfler. They’re on your side, for crying out loud” as well. My main gripe wasn’t that they didn’t perform the song that well - I didn’t like them beforehand, and I remain justified after having heard them do it. My main gripe stems from the comment about “I’m amazed that they’re from England”. If he’d heard any of their songs, he’d know they plainly are from England. A lot of the songs even mention places in England, for fuck’s sake! It just sounds cynical. “Oh, they’re popular, let’s play that…”. Maybe I’m being cynical; maybe someone else in the band wanted to play it, and he’s just going along with it. I don’t know, and perhaps I’m being harsh, but it just irked me. I also didn’t call them “complete wankers with no skill at all”. I called them “talentless no-ones”, which I should probably take back; they have a talent for writing relatively mediocre poppy songs with a strong chorus, which is popular because of the whole club thing, and bring little new or interesting in terms of musicality. Hey, if you like that sort of thing, fine; I’m not saying it’s wrong for people to like them (as I’ve said before, people want different things from music). I just happen to have a penchant well played, well written, interesting music, so The Killers don’t particularly float my boat. It’s not that I’m a purist (well, maybe a little), it’s just that they’re really bloody dull! Re: “wanky bullshit”, well you just can’t say that. I doubt you even know most of the people I listen to (without looking at Last.fm), and of those you know I listen to, how much have you listened to? Very little, I’d wager. Even if you have heard it, still can’t call it “wanky bullshit”. Well, you can, but you’d be wrong :-p Re: Hendrix is best… That’s slightly more complicated. He really was great, and anyone who disagrees is a fool or a liar. This story particularly amuses me. But… As I said up the page, music is about emotions; about storytelling. So yes, Hendrix was a fantastic performer, and definitely a great technical guitarist, but Knopfler is my favourite purely because of the way he uses a guitar to convey feelings. To quote the great Douglas Adams:
QFT. Also, that list has Kurt Cobain at number 12, David Gilmour at 82, and Nick Drake nowhere to be seen. It was clearly compiled by idiots. Anyway, now you see why I didn’t want to write this via phone… I’m probably gonna write some other stuff relating to this week when I’m less tired, but for now I think sleep would be a good idea. Oh, re: Monaco… I had a few things I wanted to not hear about while I was away: the race, who left the Apprentice, and the Lost finale. I found out the part of the result of the first when someone told me, and the rest when I looked it up afterwards. And then some people were watching The Apprentice on iPlayer the other day whilst I was playing cards with some people, and I kinda caught the end of it. Oops. I’m gonna watch Lost unspoiled tomorrow though, which is good. The GP result is kinda annoying. I’m in a fantasy league with some people here, where you pick teams & drivers and get points depending on how well you’re doing. I did have a pretty clear lead, but it’s gone down to something like 4 points now because most of my teams did badly. Ho hum. I look forward to watching the recording on Sunday, anyway - sounds like a pretty damn good race (despite it being the dullest part of your weekend, Flix :-p). Posted by Dickie :: 4 Comments
I think I’ve mentioned before (on a comment elsewhere, iirc) that I have a certain amount of distaste for The Killers. This cover of “Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits is (mainly) why. Ok, it’s not bad. But then it’s an amazingly good song (better than the inoffensive trite they usually play…), so they’d have to be fools to completely cock it up. That said, the guitarist is blatently struggling to play his part (and the tone of his guitar is awful. Awful!), and his solo at the end is just laughable, but y’know… The guy singing kinda fails to convey any sense of emotion as well. It sounds like he’s trying really hard to sound cool, rather than trying to tell the story within the song. So it won’t go down in history as The Best Cover Ever, but anyone who hasnt heard the original (most of The Killers’ fanbase, I imagine) would probably think it’s ok. But I have heard the original, and it’s one of my favourite songs ever. So the Killers’ lacklustre effort really shows them up for the talentless no-ones they are. For comparison, this is the way Mark Knopfler, who wrote the song, performs it live. Take note of the decent singing (when you write good lyrics, you don’t need to try to sound cool), the excellent guitar playing (best guitarist ever), and the band just generally being awesome. Also, take note of the tone of the guitar being much nicer on this version. But then he has a Resonator (a National from the 1930s, iirc. And apparently a bitch to play), and they’re pretty fucking awesome. That said, the performance isn’t what irritated me when I first heard it (to be honest, it just makes me laugh). It’s the little interview at the start:
Wrong. Just wrong! That quote really just says that they know nothing about the band, that they’re not really that into the music, and just… Suffice it to say, it really annoys me. Knopfler has a way of writing songs which really tell a story, and the fact that they’ve misunderstood his music that drastically is just contemptious. If they were a proper band, who cared about music, then they wouldn’t say such a thing… Basically, all this is a roundabout way of saying: I went with one of my brothers to see Mark Knopfler play in Cardiff the other night, and he was bloody brilliant. But then, I’ve seen him before and he was brilliant then, so it wasn’t exactly unexpected. What was unexpected was another band we saw on the same night. We went to a jazz bar in Cardiff after the gig (which is bloody good, if expensive - £2.95 for a pint of Guinness!), and saw some random band play there. Didn’t really know what to expect, but they were actually really bloody good. After that gig, there sadly wasn’t any more live music to go see, so we ordered another couple of pints and talked about girls… Anyway, two great gigs in one night. Can’t beat that! (Yes, another post starting with the letter A. I would try to find another lyric which doesn’t start with that, but…) Posted by Dickie :: 6 Comments
So, elections last week. Stuff happened, Labour lost out massively, and the Tories did well. Blah blah blah. These were the first elections that I’ve not voted in (that I’ve had the chance to vote in). Reasons are basically that I couldn’t be bothered to sort out postal votes and all that jazz, or to re-register in Cardiff. Reasons for why I couldn’t be bothered follow shortly. Anyone with whom I have talked about politics will say that I’m generally right-wing Tory scum. That’s true insofar as I’ve historically voted for the Conservatives. But that probably says more about the other parties than it does the Tories. My beliefs are a mix of left and right, I suppose, and come to think of it I guess most people could say that. I think government should be small, but at the same time I’m fairly convinced that privatisation isn’t always a good idea. In theory, privatisation should result in lots of companies competing to provide the best service at the lowest price. In reality, there seems to be an ethos of saving money by not investing, and not transferring the saving to the customer. Looking at the rail and telecoms systems (for instance), I think they’d be in a much better state if they were still nationalised (to be fair, I think historically they’ve been fairly mismanaged, so they weren’t in the best state when they were privatised. But if that’s the case, they shouldn’t have been privatised). Similarly speaking, the BBC is a shining example of what you get when you have a large organisation that is devoted to providing a service. Because it doesnt have to return a profit, it can afford to invest in new technologies, even if they might not work. I read a thing a while back about the evolution of the BBC web services since the web was in its infancy, and it’s really staggering. Broadly speaking, I think that anything which provides an important service to the nation (so transport, health, education, telecoms, gas, water, electricity, etc) should be run by the government. I also think economic intervention is usually pretty damn stupid. The congestion charge in London is a fantastic example. Yes, it reduced traffic for a while, but it’s now above the level that it was when the charge was introduced. Yes, it’s less than it would be if it wasn’t introduced, but the fact that road usage in London is still increasing is a sign that it’s a poor solution. All the charge does is push poorer people off the road - people who can afford the charge still pay it. I love the irony, that such a left-wing policy is so inherently unfair. What I’m trying to say is that economically, I’m right wing. Socially, I’m fairly liberal. I don’t really know what you’d classify me (what is it with our endless need to classify? Why can’t people just be?), probably Libertarian. Anyway, after the waffling preamble we start to approach the nub of this post. If you wish to comment on anything, comment on what follows. I don’t want an argument on political beliefs, because theres no point and because I’ve only briefly put forward a subset of mine. I think what I think, and you think what you think. In my experience theres little chance either of us are going to change our minds, so lets not try. (That, and I’m right :-p) The reason I couldn’t be bothered to vote this time around is that I’m fairly disgruntled with the whole political system at the moment. It seems to me that the people most likely to win an election (or put themselves forward in the first place) are not the people most suited to governance. Politics is about image above all, and frankly it’s ridiculous. Example. When someone makes a mistake, everyone immediately calls for his or her resignation. Surely this is wrong? If you’ve made a mistake, you learn from that mistake and are better suited to do the job. Ok if it’s an absolutely massive mistake, fair enough. But for most things, just let them stay. Ooh, another example! From motorsport, but it works nonetheless. Max Mosley is the president of the FIA, which is the body which governs a lot of motorsport internationally as well as being responsible for lots of road car stuff. I think the Euro NCAP tests is an FIA thing, for instance. Anyway, a while back the News of the World published a video of him having an orgy with 5 hookers, which had some pretty extreme elements (BDSM, to be precise). They claim that it was a Nazi orgy, because he spoke some German (he says one of the hookers was German), and.. well the family name is hardly untarnished… The Nazi bit is probably not true (and I continue under the assumption that this is proved. If it is true, you can appreciate how the situation will change), but nevertheless he may end up losing his job over it. These sorts of activities are pretty untenable in certain countries, and so Mosley would be unable to work in those places, making his position fairly untenable. Is it right for someone to lose their job over something completely unrelated to it? Of course not, but so important is a good image that as soon as it is tarnished, it’s impossible to continue doing the job (that said, this is something Mosley seems to dispute…). Nah, Mosley should go because he’s plain bad at his job, not because he likes to spend the odd afternoon being whipped by 5 prozzies. By the way, the man is 68, so he clearly has stamina for his age… Other things… The cabinet confuses me. Surely the people in charge of the NHS, or education, or whatver, should be experts in those particular fields, not politicians whose first objective is the furthering of their own career. I know they’re advised by experts, but even so… The system is generally good, I think. The idea of an elected House of Commons being overlooked by a House of Lords is just genius, and it’s probably the best system we could hope for. The problem at the moment is that the wrong people are running the system. I was going to finish this by saying it needs changing, but having thought about it more, it doesnt. So I finish with a question: does government shape society, or is government shaped by society? Is our vain, vacuous, hopeless government simply a reflection of the people it governs? My answer: Big Brother. Sigh. Posted by Dickie :: 7 Comments
This is a continuation of a comment I wrote on one of Flix’s posts. I started to write another comment, but it kinda turned into an essay and got ever so slightly away from the main thrust of the post, so I moved it over here. It’s something that I’ve been sorta thinking about lately anyway, but Flix’s post was sort of a catalyst to this getting written. Hope you don’t mind, Flix :-) So I basically started off on a rant on maturity, and whatnot. The thrust of my initial comments on the post referred to this remark:
That’s fairly true up to a point, but we catch up. Over a certain age (late teens? 20?), I don’t think “maturity” is anything to do with gender, and more to do with a bunch of other factors. Some people just are immature. As I said over there, I’ve met as many (and maybe more) immature gals as I have immature guys. And certainly looking at my circle of friends and most people I know that are of a similar age, no gender is any more or less mature, on the whole. Another thing is that different aspects of people mature at different rates anyway. For instance, looking back at how I was when I started Uni all that time ago, I realise now that although in some ways I was pretty mature, in some other ways I was still relatively naive. And I’m sure that’s still the case (and probably always will be. No-one can ever be completely mature) but I think I’m generally more mature than I am immature. All that said, I’m fairly sure that in a few years I’ll look back at myself now and marvel at my immaturity. I’ve seen the same sort of thing in other people too - just because on the whole someone is mature, doesnt stop them from having immature moments or immature aspects of their personality. And vice-versa, of course. All that said, it’s a weird concept, maturity. I mean, what is “mature”, other than a societal construct defining how we should act? Wikipedia says: “Maturity is a psychological term used to indicate that a person responds to the circumstances or environment in an appropriate manner”, and certainly from that definition it’s a hell of a subjective thing. Define “an appropriate manner”? Everyone’s gonna come up with something different, so how can we definitively say what is or isn’t mature? It’s all about society, innit? That, and our endless need to categorise… And now for something completely different! For anyone who likes free stuff (and thats everyone, surely?), look at this. It’s a seriously good event (I went last year and it was marvellous) and well worth going to. Hell, it’s free, what have you got to lose? Could even camp nearby, and join in with all the beer, burgers, barbeques and beer! Heh, as if :-p Posted by Dickie :: 8 Comments
So it’s just over two weeks before my exams start. I have four spread over a fortnight, before I shuffle off to Devon for a field course for a week (sidebar: who the hell thought it’d be a good idea to go on the same day as the Monaco GP? One of my favourite races on the calendar, and I have to miss it. Or, more to the point, get Mum to record it and then devoutly avoid any news sources for a week. Which shouldn’t be hard - apparently the place we’re going doesnt even have cashpoints…). Anyway, just over two weeks before exams, and we’re still being taught new material, meaning it’s still worth going to some lectures. Oh, and we have a bunch of coursework due in the next two weeks. One is a design module, which we’re yet to start the drawings for. Which means dealing with possibly THE least intuitive piece of software ever. Obviously, one of the things we have to do (by “we”, I mean “me”. Being the resident geek means that getting things out of AutoCAD is my job…) is the FUN task of getting drawings out of AutoCAD. YAY! It’s just like printing a word document, only on A2 paper and so loading the plotter is massively awkward. Oh, and obviously as it’s an engineering drawing it’s pretty much useless if it’s not to scale. But getting things to scale in AutoCAD is a black art; you play around with various options and hope one of them gets the damn thing to the right scale. Otherwise, there’s the risk that it’ll come out at 1:1, which… Well we’re designing a 3-storey office block at the moment, you do the maths… Changing linetype is even more fun. We managed to get dashed lines on the last drawing we did, but I don’t think any of us knows how the hell we did it. Can you tell I hate that software? Also, theres maths to be done. Loads of our calcs (i.e. designing the RC beams and slab so that the thing would stand up, if it were ever built) have gaps, where we’ve started and got bored… Good idea at the time, but bad when it comes to write them up and we find out that we’ve left bits out. And ESPECIALLY bad when you do part of those calcs and find out that your floor slab fails servicability checks… (You basically design for two cases. The ultimate case is the absolute maximum loading that something will take before it fails; in other words “if you exceed this, the thing will fall down”. The other one is the servicability state. If it fails this, then the structure won’t fall down, but it will do something that it shouldnt. So it might crack or bend too much in certain places, or something like that. It’s safe, but isn’t doing its job properly, which means that as a design it’s failed. A perfect example is the Millennium Bridge in London; that wobbled because of the loadings placed upon it and was uncomfortable but not unsafe. But, a bridge that people don’t want to use is pretty useless, so the structure is said to have failed*. In the case of our friend the floor slab, it fails a deflection check, although thinking about it it’s only just over the limit, so we’ll probably be ok. Huzzah for factors of safety!) So yeah, beyond the design module, I’ve also got maths coursework due in next friday. Which I haven’t started yet. That’s on Matlab, and I’m not actually sure what we’ve got to do for it. In fact, all I know is that “it’s solid!”, which doesn’t help… Aaaand on top of that, we have to update our Professional Development folder (think NRA, except that this counts towards a module) for… Well I think that’s in for the week before exams, but to be honest I’m not entirely sure. Hmm. And I found out the other day that because of something I’ve gotta do on Wednesday, I’m going to be missing a guest lecture which we’re expected to write a report on. So I’m gonna have to half-inch someone else’s notes to write some sort of waffle for that. Basically, what I’m trying to say is: my timetable sucks. I’m trying to revise, but between lectures and coursework and other stuff, it doesn’t always happen. That said, I went down to the library a few times this week and got a decent stack of revision notes done, which doesn’t suck. Ideally I want to have all my notes done by a week on Sunday, but after printing out circa 40 pages of notes on Law that I need to learn, I think that target is slightly optimistic… Now I’m sure I’m not the worst affected. I’m sure someone will leave a comment like “well you think that’s bad? I’ve got 100 STRAIGHT hours of exams, a 20,000 word essay due in the week before, and my lectures finish AFTER my exams!”, but damn it, it’s my blog and I’ll moan if I want to :-p. It just seems so silly to still be teaching us stuff and expecting work off us right up to the start of the exam period. This is why I wasn’t looking forward to coming back to Uni after Easter. I still feel far too unstressed though. They haven’t shifted from “too far away to worry about” to “Imminent! You’re bloody screwed!” yet…
*Writing that makes me happy, because it means that I’ve learned something during the last couple of years… Posted by Dickie :: 6 Comments
Okay, first things first (because I forgot on Monday and feel ever so slightly guilty), a motorsport thing… :-( I’ve been reading a lot about motorsport in the 50s-70s lately, and of course been watching the F1 retro thing that I mentioned in the last post, and there are several things apparent. The sport now is much more professional, more corporate (James Hunt, 1976 F1 Champ, had a badge on his overalls that said “Sex: Breakfast of Champions”. You can’t imagine anyone getting away with that these days…), and much more expensive. F1 specifically is touted as one of most technically advanced sports in the world (with good reason), yet theres much less room for truly inventive and radical thinking. If someone came to the game with a revolutionary part nowadays, other teams would probably try to get it banned. In the past, they’d just try to make something better… But for all that motorsport fans witter on about “the good old days”, we forget the bad things. Reading about the era, or watching that programme, it’s really scary how many drivers died because of the sport. I literally can’t imagine that, and I have no idea how people drove the cars in those days knowing that they were likely to die in them. Whilst I’m on the subject of motorsport, a word about Max Mosley: lolz. About bloody time the arrogant tosser goes (assuming he does, of course). Anyway, now time for rant the second. I talked last time about the net, and the whole “brave new world” thing. Well, now the flip side. On the one hand, I can’t believe that ISPs think the BBC should pay for them to upgrade their bandwidth. The BBC is just a content provider, and I fail to see how that means they should pay for the bloody network as well. It’s purely the ISPs responsibility, and frankly it serves them right. Broadband in this country is shockingly bad when you compare it to other places, and it’s about time it was sorted out. On the other hand, I’m really not surprised. All infrastructure in this country (roads, trains, post, communications, etc) is overpriced and shit. We seem to have this aversion to investment, the philosophy of “oh well it works ok at the moment, we’ll just patch it up”. Okay, but that means that infrastructure doesnt grow with demand, meaning that service gets worse. I don’t know if that’s a result of privatisation, poor regulation, or just The Way We Are, but it’s really inexcusable. Again, if you compare something like our trains to pretty much any European ones, then you notice how woefully bad ours are. Actually, making the point about privatisation, it amuses me how most large companies seem to massively miss the big picture. Taking the example of the trains, if they continually invested in stations/trains/tracks (and I mean basic maintenance as well as updates for faster service or whatever), surely over the long term that will save or make them more money? Provide a better service, then more people will use it… I see the same kinda thing when I work in the Bank (but with different things. There it’s the way they treat staff), and I just find it amazing. Ho hum. Posted by Dickie :: 4 Comments
Well going green seems to be all the craze at the moment… Anyway, this is something I’ve been working on for a few days now. I bought the hosting before Christmas and didnt do anything with it, and I had some time last weekend so thought I’d finally get around to moving things over here. There’s nothing new here as such, it’s just a new (hopefully nicer) way of presenting it all. I’ve spent so long looking at the damn thing as I’ve been writing it that I’ve sort of lost all ability to judge how good it looks. To be frank, I’m already sick of the greenness, but familiarity breeds contempt and all that… The only thing I’m really unsure about though is the “listening to” section on the right. I’m not really sure what the point is (other than demonstrate that I spend far too much time in front of a computer as it updates all the bloody time), but I can’t be bothered to get rid of it at the moment, so I’ll do it some other time if I still feel the same. Anyway seeing as I’ve written pretty much nothing for a week, I may as well do so now. Beats sleeping, eh? I went home for the first half of the week, and I have to say it was pretty refreshing. I hadn’t really noticed it beforehand but being stuck in the Uni “bubble” does kinda suck, and it was nice to go back to the real world for a few days and get away from everything. Considering I am one, students do tend to intensely annoy me. Most of ‘em seem to think that the world owes them something because they’re a student. Like with student loans. I’ve written here before about the fuss people made when the interest rate jumped to 4.8% (or whatever it is) a few months ago. It annoyed me that people fussed so much; 4.8% is a very good loan rate, you pay it back when you earn over a certain amount, and if you don’t like the fact that it can jump by so much, dont take the loan… Either way, just because we’re students it doesnt mean we’re entitled to anything, and it annoys me when people forget that. The student lifestyle irritates me too. A generic night out is to some crappy club, with shitty music played far too loud, where you drink far too many awful, overpriced drinks and end up posing for a photograph with a kebab in one hand and a traffic cone in the other. It’s shit! I still don’t know why people want to do that sort of thing; if you want to go out with some friends, it’s much better to go to a pub, have a couple of pints and talk for a while. Surely you get to know people better that way than you do by sleeping your way round the student body (although perhaps I’m just saying that cos I’m not getting any…). And this idea that getting drunk = good night out is just stupid. So does it make me a hypocrite that I got drunk on the day I came back to Cardiff? (the answer is no, by the way. Being drunk was just a side-effect of the drinking… By the way, I tried a green beer that night. It wasnt as good as it looked, sadly). Anyway, sleepy time. Oh, and Happy St. David’s day to my Welsh reader(s?). Posted by Dickie :: 14 Comments
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