Matt's Site

Okay, so it's a day late and maybe a dollar short, but I'm getting my quota in now. I figure, all I have to do is write 2,000 words every weekday, and 10,000 words each weekend, and I'll sail past 50,000 with a couple to spare.
So today, I Reached my target of 25,000 words. In fact, I went past that and reached... 25,007. Woohoo.

I went back and re-read 'Government Joe must Die' last night. I wa surprised - I remember it being pretty clunky, but it was actually pretty readable. Okay, the plot is a tad flimsy, but I was pleasantly surprised by how readable it was. This one, though, is taking a long time to get going. The problem is, I know what's going to happen. Last time I really didn't, which made it easier; this time, I have a plotline which I ahve to stick to, and it's taking a long time to play out. I may not even reach the good bits before the end of the month!

“Hey, Panab.”
“Hmm?”
It was Chris, from the acceleration couch next to his. They had been relocated to the briefing room; theirs were the only two couches in here. It felt lonely.
“You think the Martians could’ve sabotaged our route?”
“What?”
“You know, mined it or something. It’d be awfully easy – I mean, we haven’t exactly been silent in our approach, they’ve known we were coming for a month at least.”
Panab pondered this. “It wouldn’t take much, would it,” he agreed sombrely.
“A few pebbles in the upper atmosphere, a low orbit maybe. Crack that heatshield and we’re toast.”
Panab grimaced. “Well, thank you for that happy thought.”
“Sorry.”
A long pause. They were about twenty minutes away from Titan’s upper atmosphere now; the view from the few cameras still pointing forwards showed a distant curve of the planet’s horizon. Panab knew that that horizon line was slowly flattening as they approached – but it was happening too slowly for him to be sure he was seeing it.
The canteen smelled faintly of old meals, of greasy meat and boiled cabbage, of cold coffee and ageing plastic.
“Sorry, buddy.” Chris said eventually. “just this silence makes me nervous.”
Panab turned his head to look at him. “Chris, my old friend,” he said, surprised. “It is out of our hands. If God wills it, we die here. If not, then we continue. We can never know the time or the place. How many times in your life have you, could you have been killed by some careless movement from someone else?”
Chris gave him a look of disbelief, then laughed shakily. “Thanks for those encouraging words, pal.”
Panab shook his head, frustrated. “Sorry, I expressed that badly. But if you are worried because it is now up to fate, or God, or whatever you wish to call Him, well – it has always been so. As God wills it, it will happen. Once you accept that thought, well, you still get scared, but at least now you have a handle to help control it. A handhold on the precipice, if you like.”
Chris considered this. “I never took you for the religious type, buddy.”
Panab laughed. “Well, that’s the way I was brought up. My parents were Moslems of the Ohio Heresy. They left Earth when the Middle Eastern Moslems began their purges, and… stop me if you’ve heard this.”
“No, really, go on. What’s Ohio?”
“It was a town in America. There was… well, that’s beside the point. Anyway, my parents left Earth, stopped on Deimos for a while, but never really settled. When my grandparents died, they inherited some money, and came on out to Ganymede. I think they hoped there’d be religious freedom there, but-“
“There is. “Chris looked confused, his baffled frown looking perhaps offended.
“Yes, of course there is… but back then, well, there was religious freedom, but there was a lot of stuff to do it was a hardscrabble life. So although they were practising Moslems, many of their practises had to be curtailed just because it wasn’t possible. I mean, praying five times a day when you’re-“
“Woah! Five times a day?! I don’t even eat five times a day.”
Panab frowned a little at that, but carried on. “ – when you’re in a spacesuit, or teleoperating a robot for nine hours straight, it simply isn’t possible.”
Chris chuckled. “Sure, I can just see some big construction rig getting down on its knees in the middle of a building site!”
“Precisely. So, they remained Moslem in their hearts, and hoped to get back to practising their full religion… but, well, to cut a long story short, they brought me up with the theory, but not much practice.”
Chris absorbed this, staring up at the ceiling – which is the only truly comfortable position in a proper acceleration couch.
Suddenly the room shuddered. The ship creaked and groaned alarmingly, popping noises came from all around them. And a thin thunder started somewhere behind their backs, echoing round the ship until it was impossible o tell where it came from.
“Relax, my friend,” Panab said loudly over the increasing noise. “And remember, we have a job to do as soon as we come out of the other side.”
Then, gradually at first, the weight began pressing down on them. It felt like someone was pressing them into sand, burying them alive. Breathing was a great effort. And all around them, the ship thundered and groaned. There were a couple of distant bangs… but they weren’t suddenly engulfed in a fireball, so Panab told himself that it was something none-essential, and concentrated on regulating his breathing.

In the flight plan, the aerobraking manoeuvre was supposed to take just over half an hour. In reality, it seemed an eternity. Panab had just about got used to the noise by the time it began to subside. Gradually, his joints ceased to feel as if they were being put through a mincer, and became merely painful; then, blissfully light once more.
Phil’s face flashed up on one of the screens in front of them. He looked pale and strained, but composed. “Panab, Chris: have you established contact with the probes?”
“Not yet… ah, there it is. Probe 1 now online, probe 2 still not responding… okay, we have probe 2 now. “ Chris sounded as fresh as a daisy, in total control. Panab had to look over at him to see the sweat on his pale face, to see how much he’d been affected. “They’re all nominal, Phil. No sign of a response to our re-entry from the Martians.”
There was no response.
“Phil? Come in please. Anyone on the bridge?”
Finally, Phil’s voice came back on the line. “Chris – you may not see a response. But we’ve got one up here.”
“Bridge?”
Phil was suddenly brisk. “Yep, okay, probe team. We’ll fill you in on the details later. It’s just… the Martian commander has transmitted a brief, voice-only message to us. Hello and welcome to the system, sort of thing. We’ll replay it to the rest of the crew when we’re fully squared away with parking the ship.”
“Roger that, bridge.” Chris said formally. “We’ll continue to monitor the satellite surveillance. Probe team standing by.”
It took a good ten minutes for the post-manoeuvre checks to be sort out. The bangs Panab had heard turned out to be a camera which hadn’t retracted fully and had sheared off, hitting one of the ultra-low frequency antennae and taking it with it.
“Nothing serious, then.” He said with relief.
Freda was down with the EVA team checking out the damage. Her voice sounded intimate in his ear. “No, not at all. The ULF antennae was really only there to be used if we got submersibles into the sea – but even then, we may not even have wanted to talk to the ship in orbit, we may have had some support vehicle much closer. So it’s pretty academic. And the camera was just an inspection system, we can replace that easily. So pretty light damage, in all.”

I have to say, this time around I'm a bit disappointed by the quality of my writing. Am I always such a lecturer? It isn't flowing, it's sheer hackwork. Hey ho. Bash on - hopefully the next 18,000 words will come a little easier than the last lot.

Approval was granted swiftly, and suddenly everyone was talking about it. Panab didn't remember them having made an announcement, but Drew stepped up and revelled in his new role as official spokesman of the Steeplechase Committee. This was good, becaues Panab didn't really have that much time to spend on it - he was still being worked hard by Phil in an effort to get as much intelligence on the Martians' activity as possible. It was tiring, wearing work - but at least he had something else to talk to people about. It was funny - he'd gotten so used to people sidling up to him and gently trying to tease clues about surveillance out of him, and now they were doing the same thing to try and get some clues about the steeplechase course! The first time it happened he laughed out loud, just from relief. In fact, it got slightly out of hand: deprived of group entertainment for such a long time, the crew of the Wednesday's Child fell enthusiastically upon Panab and Drew's idea like a pack of starving hyenas. It was strange fro Panab, though; his work with Phil was intensely private and quiet - nobody was allowed on the bridge while they were up there, and with just the two of them working in the darkened room, it was a very intense experience... and then he'd come offshift, and be surrounded by people wanting him to make decisions, or help out with the course, the competitor lists, even choosing the font for the runners' numbers.

In fact, interest in the steeplechase got to such a fever pitch that the steeplechase committee began meeting at night, and even then its first three attempts to choose a course had to be called off because people had gotten out of bed specifically to follow them around the ship and try and find out where the race would be held. In the end, Phil ordered the virtuality kits to be broken out of deep storage so the the committee could walk around a model of the ship and pick the course that way. Breaking out the VR kits was a major undertaking; it hadn't been expected that they'd be needed until quite late in the settlement process, so they were buried underneath everything. At least one spacewalk had to be undertaken just to reach them. This seemed rather melodramatic to Panab, and to many others, and caused some debate about whether the whole steeplechase thing ahd been blown out of all proportion - but Phil was quite firm that it was necessary, and even encouraged the whole process. When he mentioned this to Drew, though, the big engineer laughed.
"Well, sure. He's adding to the theatre of it, the whole media fuss."
"Why?"
Drew punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Because it's taking people's minds off what we're heading into, dumbass! The more fuss there is over the Race, the less they're fussing over evil Martians with ray guns waiting to blow us out of the sky."
"There aren't any evil ray guns, do not be foolish."
Drew adopted a shocked pose. "Woah, man, did I hear that correctly? Was that a top-secret military secret that just fell from your big secret agent mouth?"
Panab hit him, and Drew drifted backwards, laughing. "Dude, you're one hopeless secret agent. Can't even keep a secret - and anyway, where are all your secret gadgets? No invisible spaceship? Does your watch have a laser beam in it? Is there an AI on your shoulder telling you secret stuff? Is that why you have that vacant look on your face the whole time? Oh, no, sorry, that's just your expression."
"Ha ha."
"And, dammit all, where all the hot chicks? If I'm hanging out with a secret agent dude, there should be good-looking ladies practically dripping off me! You're a failure, Khaledi, a failure. More secret squirrel than secret agent. It's all very disappointing. Let's hope you're a better running-mate."
"What? I'm not taking part."
Drew stared at him. "Of course you are, man! Everybody else is, you have to too."
Panab was about to protest, but hesitated. "Everyone? Even Phil?"
Drew nodded. "Yup."

More trashy science fiction, from the author who brought you "Government Joe Must Die"- hurrah! Except we're nearly halfway through the month and I've only written 7,500 words - bugger. Only 42,500 to go! Ulp.

Phil stirred in his seat. “Okay, people,” he intoned, “RPC2 coming up. AIM takeover engaged?”
“Engaged.” Panab replied. Inwardly he heaved a sigh of relief. He knew Phil’s old-school ethos made the skipper insist on human supervision wherever possible, but as far as Panab was concerned this whole thing could have been handled by the computer, and they all could have been… well, he could have been in bed, damn it. Automatic Insertion  Mode was important now, though – if Titan’s orbit proved to be harbouring something hostile, it’s doubtful the humans in the loop would be able to react quickly enough. Panab could hand over to the ship’s systems with a clear conscience, and would do so gladly; he hated feeling like the weak link in the chain. But there was still the RPC2 checklist to go through… and as he worked his way down the task list, he couldn’t let his mind wander. Somewhere out there, four weeks ahead of them, the Ganymedans’ first probe to Titan was about to give them a first hint of what they were really in for.
This was obviously on Phils’ mind, too.  “Panab.”
“Skip?”
“Looks like a quiet couple of minutes – you’ve got the conn.”
“Yes, sir.” He replied automatically.
Phil grunted – Panab heard him doing something, then suddenly Phil’s voice boomed out across the ship’s PA.
“Crew of the good ship Wednesday’s Child, listen up.
“We’re about to get our first good look at what Titan has in store for us. It’ll be a peek through the keyhole, no more than that, but it should help resolve a few, uh, issues that I’m sure have been weighing on your mind as much as they weigh on mine.
“As you all know, Jovian Combined Security satellites picked up a ship from the inner system making a course change towards the Saturn system six weeks ago. Since then we’ve been under a communications embargo, which I know has not made things easy for you, and I’m very proud of the calm, professional way you’ve all conducted yourselves under that burden of silence. Obviously, whoever launched that ship did so under conditions of great secrecy. Our own launch was as secret as we could make it, and at this time I’m informed that whatever happens out there, in our little backwater of the solar system, will be between us and whoever else is in Titan orbit.”
He let that sink in for a moment. To Panab, the implication was obvious. This little game has no referees – it could get rough..
Phil continued. “Now, I know it wasn’t what we hoped for, but this is one outcome that received planning attention, and I’m confident we are not underresourced. More importantly, though, I’m confident that I’m facing the future with the best crew I could possibly have. I’m very proud of the way you’ve conducted yourselves to this point, and I have no doubt that we can and will surmount all obstacles to achieve our goal – a goal, I’ll remind you, which could have enormous benefits for us and for all those we left behind on Ganymede.

So let’s go to it. God bless us, and our cause.”

There was silence throughout the ship for several seconds. Then Panab heard a distant noise like waves breaking, drifting up from the depths of the Wednesday’s Child. It took Panab a moment to place it; down in the canteen, one hundred and fourteen people –  the entire crew -  were applauding.
 

It was time. Panab gave his checklist a quick onceover, then tapped in the AIM arm codes. On the screen in front of him, the animated top hat perked up, and shook gently. One oversized eye peeked out from underneath it.
“Heatshield temperature decreasing – all systems nominal for heatshield sep.”
“Roger that. You have a go for heatshield sep.”
A few moments delay, then the top hat was magically lifted off the little logodog. It blinked one eye sleepily. As more sensors came on line, it cocked an ear, then opened the other eye, until finally it was awake and alert, wagging it tail and glancing from side to side – waiting for something to happen

It didn’t take long.

The little animation sprung up, it’s cute little nose in the air, one foreleg poised over the ground in alert. “Okay, we’ve got a transmission, it’s weak but readable, 113 kilohertz. I’m buffering it now,” Chris announced. Panab could hear him tapping away. “Seems safe enough – broadcast English, mono audio, no band outliers. Wanna hear it?”
Phil waved a hand. “Just to the bridge.”
The sound of tapping again, and then a deep, jovial Santa-Claus voice began to declaim across the room, its mellow tones thinned by the crackles and pops of distance and of Saturn’s savage electromagnetic field. To Panab, its measured, loving tones perfectly evoked feelings of happiness and security, of trust and faith, of some pre-Diaspora happy family on Earth, a fire crackling in the grate, loved ones all around. It was undoubtedly machine-generated.
“…know the vastness of space to be an inexhaustible treasure house of knowledge and riches, beyond the imaginings of the Capitalist Roaders and their oppressive dogma! Titan can be so much more than merely another world to be exploited and oppressed by the megacorporations! Titan can be red! Titan is red! Titan is red! Titan is red! Message ends. Message begins: All those in Titan space, it is imperative that we make all efforts in our mission to create a scientific paradise on Titan, a world as yet-”
“Okay, that’s enough Chris. Turn it off.”
“-of human capitalistic exploitation, by the murderous cancer of humanity’s bourgeois demands for lebensraum! We must strive to preserve, and-“
There was an audible click, then silence. Finally, Phil sighed.
“Oh man,” he muttered wearily, ”it would just have to be, wouldn’t it?”
Panab looked over in surprise. It was the first time he’d ever heard Phil sound disgusted, or angry.
“It would just have to be the fucking Martians.”

Birmingham - that's my kinda town.

(Tragically, Mr Savalas recorded the script in the US and never went to Birmingham - but I'm sure he would've loved it anyway).

Stuff like this always exposes the seamier underbelly of the internet - where else would one seek delights but in bus-spotting?

(via core77...)

One of the problems for a young designer is that it costs a lot of money upfront to create a product. In particular, for small, mass-produced items, sometimes it's simply impossible to get anyone to supply you with components unless you order a minimum order quantity, or MOQ.

This site helps get designers there. The MOQ target is displayed next to each product, and you get to order your item at a steep discount in return for not really knowing when it's going to be delivered (if ever, I guess). It's a great idea for getting young designers' stuff before they get famous, and allowing them to jumpstart their idea into mass production.

There's not a lot there, yet... and most of them are fairly batty (except for the oddly tedious one or two that smell like some fishfood company taking advantage). My favourite, though is this one - a toothbrush which redirects the water flow up into a nice arc for you to drink from. Inspired.

Tell your friends! Donkeys live well in Azerbaijan... but bloggers who post videos sending up the government get beaten and arrested. Naughty government! Go and sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

Gott in himmel.

Under normal circumstances I'd dismiss this as the usual Silly Season padding - but for the fact that the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the representatives and standard-bearers of my profession, have pinned their name to it. So now it's no longer a farce - it's a tragedy. This is just the kind of moronic mega-engineering bloke-in-a-shed sort of stuff that we should be avoiding - one of these might be far more efficient than a real tree, but the technical problems are still vast, the outcome is uncertain, and the cost (both financial and environmental) is going to be high.

My message to the IMechE is: be ashamed of your pompous, overstuffed selves. Drag your sorry asses out of the Victorian era and recognize that the world will not be saved by giant steel structures, but by doing small, boring things on a massive scale - like, for example, insulating houses. The IMechE could do so much more by mobilizing its members to voluntarily go and install insulation in houses. But no, it pays academics to come up with dross like this instead. Lordy lord. Good grief. Engineers are supposed to be down-to-earth types! This is so typical of the IMechE - technically sexy but completely otherworldly. Idiots.

Someday, when I own a farm with several abandoned outbuildings and a rusty Land Rover, I am so doing this, oh yes.

Oh, this is fun.

I like the fact that 'too many cooks spoil the broth' ends up as an instruction.

For me, at any rate. My inbox is blank, and none of the buttons work at all. I tried posting a network message, and that failed. It's been like this since they did the upgrade, but I've only just got round to attempting to fix it. Can anybody see this? If so, can they please tell Claude or Clive or whatever his name is? And can they tell me, too? It's lonely out here,

If you'd been to Maker Fair, which was... somewhere, recently, then you might have been lucky to get your hands on these adorable business cards: How cool are they?

From Adafruit, who also have on their website a multitidue of small wonderful electronics projects, including the Minty Boost, which I think I might have to have...

Okay, so I guess I've been meaning to update the Boring Medical Updates for several months now, and I see that the last one was posted in September... well, a lot has changed since then, and a lot has stayed the same.

As the saying goes.

So: at the end of the last installment, I was about to go in for my first infusion of infliximab, and suffering from a sore bum and generally feeling crap. It turned out that the sore bum was nothing to do with the drugs - it was the Crohn's inflammation which had worked its way down to my anus and was spreading onto the skin around the outside. If anything, it was worse than the anal fissure because it was always there - you couldn't make it go away by sitting still.
But back to the medication: the infliximab worked. It WORKED. Shout it from the rooftops, it kicked in and made me FEEL GREAT. Not full of beans, but you know, normal. Able to consider the possibility of doing things like going skiing, going cycling, sailing, etc. Wonderful!  It was not without its downside, though - for one thing, I was still injecting myself with methotrexate, which I absolutely hated and which made me feel slightly nauseous for days afterwards. For another, there was the matter of an annoying skin sensitivity which has hung around persistently. More on that anon.

Infliximab is administered via what is known as an 'infusion'. If that puts you in mind of soothing herbal tea, possibly handed out by nurses on some sunny verandah somewhere... well, stop. Stop it right now. In actual fact, it is better known as being 'on a drip' for a couple of hours, with a needle in the back of your hand and some beeping bit of machinery gradually introducing this new toxicness into your system. Western General does have some nice leather armchairs (courtesy of the drugs company - thanks, drug company) for you to lounge in during this period, which is another reason why the stuff is way better than methotrexate. Happily, come Christmas I was able to leave the methotrexate stuff behind - no more plunging inch-long needles into my own belly, yay! Now it's just me and the infliximab...

First, the benefits - it works. The Crohn's inflammation round my arse cleared up, my anal fissures healed in double-quick time, and everything coming out was suddenly solid! I had more energy - in fact, for the first time in a long, long time, I was able to conceive of taking on more activities of an evening! No longer was I limited to working, eating and sleeping! Whoopee!

Next, the drawbacks. Most prosaically, this sudden firmness of the stool was a bit of a shock, and my bottom struggled with it for a bit. However, feeling a bit stretched every so often was a small price to pay, frankly. The other drawback, however, is a little annoying. For some reason the infliximab makes my skin much more sensitive, and itchy. Unless I'm careful, I find myself scratching it to the point of causing a nasty rash on my arms. However, I've started taking these one-a-day anti-histamine pills, which keeps it under control - although I still find myself occasionally giving the upper arms an absent-minded rub. Just got to keep an eye on that.

There is one final problem with this wonder-drug. For the first few infusions (so, call that three months), it seemed to work flawlessly, and I was completely solid and symptom-free from one session to the next.  However, since January, I've noticed that the effects are beginning to wear off as I approach the next infusion. Now, this also coincides with the point at which my former employers started talking about a redundancy program, which I will freely admit made me rather stressed (and not just me, either - but that's a different story). So there might be an element of stress-related flare-up in there. It's not uncommon. However, over the last two infusions, it seems like the last two weeks before a session have seen me on a decline. In fact, last time I ended up in bed for the entire fortnight!

In response to this, the hospital have reduced my infusion interval from eight to six weeks. This is my first six-week interval; right now, it's four weeks since the last one and two weeks to go before the next. Right now, I feel pretty good. This is a good sign since I am in the middle of moving house, selling my flat, and finding a new job - all very stressful undertakings, I'm sure you'll agree. What's more, I'm changing hospitals - so my next infusion will (if they ever ring me back) be in Addenbrooke's, and not anywhere in Scotchland.

So right now, we stand on the eve of great changes, and only time will tell...

Came across this while I was at the Grand Designs Live exhibition which is on in London this week (and yes, I am now full of plans to build my own house on a piece of land the size of a postage stamp somewhere desirable)... this is a stove made by 'artist-blacksmith' Daniel Harding, when he needed to keep warm in his camper van while on January surfing expeditions. Pretty, no? And entirely recycled. And finished to a high standard, which makes a change.

It's commentary, Jim, but not as we know it. What I especially like about the ARC, though, is the imagination that goes into soe of the animated sequences.

Strange how some things seem like complete common sense, and yet rarely get articulated...

Just doing some spring cleaning of my inbox, clearing out some links...

Somebody has made monochrome paper lanterns and called them vases. They are pretty. That is all.

In reality, this is more of an introduction to rapid prototyping rather than a serious way of getting stuff made... but it's pretty cool.

Simpy gorgeous Green + Design (architecture really)

You all know I'm a sucker for this sort of stuff.

Yeah, so, last Saturday was our concert of Shakespeare lyrics set to music, which the Glasgow Herald appears to approve of. Zonino! Fame at last.

Slightly poignant for me, though, as it seems inevitable now that I'll be made redundant in the next couple of weeks - at which point I will be moving across the country to live with my girlfriend in a long-promised relocation. So this will almost certainly be my last gig with the Calton Consort. Sad.

http://www.dance.ohio-state.edu/5_resources/labanlab/index.html

Nothing to do with Lebanon, labia, laboratories, Los Angeles Bathyscape Association, oh no - this is a notation of movement, specifically dance movement. Came across it reading this article in core77 about incorporating movement into design - v interesting.