HAMLET
Act II, Scene II
HAMLET
More relative than this: the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
HORATIO
It's time to put some cheese —
He doth don dark spectacles.
— in this mousetrap.
MINSTRELS
Yeeeeeeeeeeah!
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Illogical Songs
My attempt to live according to the lyrics of obscure songs has hit something of a logical hiccup. On the one hand I'm told that "Nothing that's worth having comes without a fight", and on the other that "Nothing that's forced can ever be right, if it doesn't come naturally leave it". Oh, what's a boy to do?
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Josephine Hart
The news of the death of Josephine Hart was a blast of cold air on an otherwise beautifully warm English summer Friday afternoon. The announcement came in a company-wide e-mail — Lady Saatchi being the wife of one of our founders — popping up in my inbox incongruously alongside the mammoth, on-going "where shall we go for drinks after work?" exchange.
I never met Josephine — we were once, briefly, in the same room: our little glass-walled meeting room on the 3rd floor: I ran in, jabbed a key on a laptop to make it behave itself, then ran out again; she was on the phone in the corner the entire time — but I had hoped to. I'm sure no-one will mind me mentioning that we were in the early stages of planning an app based on her West End Poetry Hour. I had badgered everyone I could find to be allowed to work on it, and was looking forward to the experience. (I secretly hoped to impress by suggesting the app be entitled "These Fragments". I also hoped to be able to argue her into including "The Fire Sermon" in place of "A Game of Chess". She would doubtless have been able to see instantly through my paper-thin knowledge of modernist poetry.)
The article on her passing on the BBC website ends with her quoting a quote by Yeats. The full quote runs, "Art is a social act of a solitary man". I had never heard this before, but I think it perfectly captures the dichotomy present in the process of creation.
I never met Josephine — we were once, briefly, in the same room: our little glass-walled meeting room on the 3rd floor: I ran in, jabbed a key on a laptop to make it behave itself, then ran out again; she was on the phone in the corner the entire time — but I had hoped to. I'm sure no-one will mind me mentioning that we were in the early stages of planning an app based on her West End Poetry Hour. I had badgered everyone I could find to be allowed to work on it, and was looking forward to the experience. (I secretly hoped to impress by suggesting the app be entitled "These Fragments". I also hoped to be able to argue her into including "The Fire Sermon" in place of "A Game of Chess". She would doubtless have been able to see instantly through my paper-thin knowledge of modernist poetry.)
The article on her passing on the BBC website ends with her quoting a quote by Yeats. The full quote runs, "Art is a social act of a solitary man". I had never heard this before, but I think it perfectly captures the dichotomy present in the process of creation.
Sure, Deadlines Suck, But…
My first thought on reading Marcus Zarra's post — and Jeff LaMarche's follow up — on the iOS development community's response to the release of The Daily app was to Tweet "Whoa. So The Daily app was basically written by the iOS dev equivalent of The Travelling Wilburys?". My next, well...
I am a salaried iOS developer working for a reasonably big-name company. (I won't name them here, but if you're really interested in who they are — perhaps you'd like to take a shot at getting me fired — you can find out with only a couple of clicks. And if I write the post I'm planning for later today, you probably won't even need to do that.) I have worked on apps for some fairly well-known brands and personalities. I'm not sure there's one of them I'm totally happy with — which couldn't have been much better if only I'd been given more time to polish, or if certain design decisions hadn't been made. I'm going to be attending a couple of iOS dev conferences later in the year and I really hope there's some kind of amnesty scheme in place because otherwise I'm likely to get a well-deserved slapping from the likes of Matt Gemmell or Mike Lee. So I can understand where Marcus is coming from — I imagine what he had to put up with was an order or two of magnitude worse. But...
This is the bit I have to qualify by saying that I've never used The Daily app. It isn't available in the UK and I don't have a US iTunes account. But I read the same press coverage as everyone else, where people whose opinion I respect mentioned that there were certain flaws with the app. I also read that most of these were fixed in later updates. Great.
The iOS-slash-Mac developer community is, as Marcus observes, a wonderful thing. It's most of the reason I got involved in the first place. (It wasn't until the iPhone came along that it was actually possible for me to turn this into a full-time job.) It is a community of craftsmen, each more than happy to share trade secrets with their peers. But what it has never been — and it's possible that I'm accusing Marcus of having rose-tininted specs here — is some kind of uncritical, mutual appreciation society. There has always been criticism. Bad design and bad implementation has always been called out. If the only notable difference your app offers over its dozen competitors is that its window smokes while it's working, you will be openly ridiculed.
If there were problems with The Daily app, falling standards of politeness within the community shouldn't be blamed for attention being drawn to them. The buck always stops with the developer. So instead of complaining, admit things could have gone better. Maybe explain a little about the kinds of pressure you were under to deliver — those of us who are in the same boat will nod along in understanding, while those who get to work without deadlines and idiot management can feel glad they're not in your shoes. And then knuckle down to making the 1.1 as best you can, given the same constraints of time and resources.
I am a salaried iOS developer working for a reasonably big-name company. (I won't name them here, but if you're really interested in who they are — perhaps you'd like to take a shot at getting me fired — you can find out with only a couple of clicks. And if I write the post I'm planning for later today, you probably won't even need to do that.) I have worked on apps for some fairly well-known brands and personalities. I'm not sure there's one of them I'm totally happy with — which couldn't have been much better if only I'd been given more time to polish, or if certain design decisions hadn't been made. I'm going to be attending a couple of iOS dev conferences later in the year and I really hope there's some kind of amnesty scheme in place because otherwise I'm likely to get a well-deserved slapping from the likes of Matt Gemmell or Mike Lee. So I can understand where Marcus is coming from — I imagine what he had to put up with was an order or two of magnitude worse. But...
This is the bit I have to qualify by saying that I've never used The Daily app. It isn't available in the UK and I don't have a US iTunes account. But I read the same press coverage as everyone else, where people whose opinion I respect mentioned that there were certain flaws with the app. I also read that most of these were fixed in later updates. Great.
The iOS-slash-Mac developer community is, as Marcus observes, a wonderful thing. It's most of the reason I got involved in the first place. (It wasn't until the iPhone came along that it was actually possible for me to turn this into a full-time job.) It is a community of craftsmen, each more than happy to share trade secrets with their peers. But what it has never been — and it's possible that I'm accusing Marcus of having rose-tininted specs here — is some kind of uncritical, mutual appreciation society. There has always been criticism. Bad design and bad implementation has always been called out. If the only notable difference your app offers over its dozen competitors is that its window smokes while it's working, you will be openly ridiculed.
If there were problems with The Daily app, falling standards of politeness within the community shouldn't be blamed for attention being drawn to them. The buck always stops with the developer. So instead of complaining, admit things could have gone better. Maybe explain a little about the kinds of pressure you were under to deliver — those of us who are in the same boat will nod along in understanding, while those who get to work without deadlines and idiot management can feel glad they're not in your shoes. And then knuckle down to making the 1.1 as best you can, given the same constraints of time and resources.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
"Poems from a Notebook [#328]"
This is a quick (at least by my sluggish standards) attempt to write something with a golden era feel to it. I think I got close — I nailed the paper-thin characterisations, anyway. I've had the idea rattling around for a while, but it was pushed to the fore by my trip to the Out of this World exhibition at the weekend. Well, it was either this or work out how quickly an iPhone 4 could calculate the nine billion names of god. An hour on Wikipedia gave me a selection of names and terms to throw into the mix, so from a distance it might look like I know what I'm talking about.
And in case you were wondering about the "[#328]" — well, under the Many World interpretation, this is just one of a near-inifinite number of ways in which this story could have unfolded. I considered at least a half dozen other causes of the narrator's pathology before choosing this one. Maybe I'll come back one day and — in a Warhol-esque manner — write up and publish some of the others. Who knows, one of them may even be worth reading.
And in case you were wondering about the "[#328]" — well, under the Many World interpretation, this is just one of a near-inifinite number of ways in which this story could have unfolded. I considered at least a half dozen other causes of the narrator's pathology before choosing this one. Maybe I'll come back one day and — in a Warhol-esque manner — write up and publish some of the others. Who knows, one of them may even be worth reading.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
"Out of this World" at the British Library
The British Library is currently hosting an exhibition of Science Fiction entitled Out of this World — running until the 25th of September; discovered via a re-tweet by Neil Gaiman — so in an attempt to fool people into thinking I do something with my life I went along to take a look.
First impressions were poor. There was a talking heads video looping just within the entrance — but audible pretty much throughout the space — which was both unnecessary and distracting. (I'm of the general opinion that authors should be read and not heard.) The space itself is best described as crepuscular. I'm not sure if the low lighting was necessary — there were some old manuscripts on display and I don't even pretend to play an ancient documents expert on the internet — but the lack of illumination became a problem in the furthest corners. I wouldn't complain about the interactive exhibitions — such as the 'design an alien' thing — if only they'd actually served their purpose and kept the kids out from under foot.
As far as the content went, the exhibition's subtitle — Science Fiction but not as you know it — tells you what to expect: if you're an actual SF fan, you won't be surprised to see the whole gamut of the genre, from Swiftian tales of fabulous lands to literary SF by the likes of P.D. James and Kazuo Ishiguro, covered. There are some interesting finds — particularly in the form of early works in languages other than English — but generally it came across as a non-SF fan's idea of surprising SF. ("Some of these books don't have space ships in them! Who knew?")
There were also a couple of what were, to my mind at least, odd choices. Sure, the whole "what counts as SF" debate continues to rumble on, so you may disagree here, but including Gaiman's (without question excellent) Sandman, even in the section on dream states, seems a bit of a stretch. And then there was yonder blue box. I must admit I somehow managed to walk past it at least once before realising what it was. (In my defence, it was kinda awkwardly situated.) Does a TV show have a place in an exhibition on literary SF? Especially one which appears to want to highlight something other than the mainstream? (Oh, sod, it. Why the hell not? I'm always as happy as the next nerd to see the TARDIS. Plus, there was also a steampunk K9 — this one, I think — made of wood and brass and win.)
So is it worth going to see? In general — and at the price: free — I'd say, "yes". If you strike it lucky and get there when the kids are elsewhere and there are just a smattering of idiots to get in your way, you'll find a lot of interesting items. The original manuscript pages from, among others, Arthur Clarke and J.G. Ballard, complete with corrections in the authors' own hand, are well worth viewing on their own. (I does make me wonder, however, what current authors will be leaving for future exhibitions. In one hundred years time, will crowds gather to view the actual genuine thumb drive China Miéville had biked to his publisher?) I was also pleased to see that both Iain Banks' Culture and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy were given case space.
Final verdict? Take a quick spin around, then buy the accompanying book by Mike Ashley (£16.95 from the gift shop) to enjoy from the comfort of your favourite reading chair.
First impressions were poor. There was a talking heads video looping just within the entrance — but audible pretty much throughout the space — which was both unnecessary and distracting. (I'm of the general opinion that authors should be read and not heard.) The space itself is best described as crepuscular. I'm not sure if the low lighting was necessary — there were some old manuscripts on display and I don't even pretend to play an ancient documents expert on the internet — but the lack of illumination became a problem in the furthest corners. I wouldn't complain about the interactive exhibitions — such as the 'design an alien' thing — if only they'd actually served their purpose and kept the kids out from under foot.
As far as the content went, the exhibition's subtitle — Science Fiction but not as you know it — tells you what to expect: if you're an actual SF fan, you won't be surprised to see the whole gamut of the genre, from Swiftian tales of fabulous lands to literary SF by the likes of P.D. James and Kazuo Ishiguro, covered. There are some interesting finds — particularly in the form of early works in languages other than English — but generally it came across as a non-SF fan's idea of surprising SF. ("Some of these books don't have space ships in them! Who knew?")
There were also a couple of what were, to my mind at least, odd choices. Sure, the whole "what counts as SF" debate continues to rumble on, so you may disagree here, but including Gaiman's (without question excellent) Sandman, even in the section on dream states, seems a bit of a stretch. And then there was yonder blue box. I must admit I somehow managed to walk past it at least once before realising what it was. (In my defence, it was kinda awkwardly situated.) Does a TV show have a place in an exhibition on literary SF? Especially one which appears to want to highlight something other than the mainstream? (Oh, sod, it. Why the hell not? I'm always as happy as the next nerd to see the TARDIS. Plus, there was also a steampunk K9 — this one, I think — made of wood and brass and win.)So is it worth going to see? In general — and at the price: free — I'd say, "yes". If you strike it lucky and get there when the kids are elsewhere and there are just a smattering of idiots to get in your way, you'll find a lot of interesting items. The original manuscript pages from, among others, Arthur Clarke and J.G. Ballard, complete with corrections in the authors' own hand, are well worth viewing on their own. (I does make me wonder, however, what current authors will be leaving for future exhibitions. In one hundred years time, will crowds gather to view the actual genuine thumb drive China Miéville had biked to his publisher?) I was also pleased to see that both Iain Banks' Culture and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy were given case space.
Final verdict? Take a quick spin around, then buy the accompanying book by Mike Ashley (£16.95 from the gift shop) to enjoy from the comfort of your favourite reading chair.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
"The Endless Sleep"
So here we have my homage to Raymond Chandler, with a little bit of H.P. Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. I know what you're thinking: "that's an awful lot of casual, era-authentic racism to squeeze into one story" — but I think I've managed it.
(And I've also started putting the links to the story before the spoiler-tastic discussion. Go me! It's almost a shame that no one ever reads these posts.)
So I hope you're all familiar with The Big Sleep, and the little piece of attendant lore concerning the death of Owen Taylor, the Sternwood's chauffeur. The story goes that the writers working on the screenplay adaptation — including Leigh "I'm the reason Empire is the best film in the trilogy" Brackett — wrote to Chandler, asking for confirmation as to who killed Taylor. Chandler thought about it for a while and then wrote back that, to be honest, he wasn't quite sure himself.
I'd been wanting to tackle this mystery for five or six years, but it was only at the end of last year that how to tackle it — with the Lovecraftian angle — occurred to me. I'll admit that my main inspiration there came from Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, which does something similar, introducing Sherlock Holmes to the Great Old Ones.
I hope I've managed to give the narrator something of a Chaldler-esque voice without straying to far into pastiche or parody. It runs pretty close at the beginning, but I think I reined it in by the end.
I also hope that you all found the startling reveal at the end as enjoyable to read as I found it to write.
(And I've also started putting the links to the story before the spoiler-tastic discussion. Go me! It's almost a shame that no one ever reads these posts.)
So I hope you're all familiar with The Big Sleep, and the little piece of attendant lore concerning the death of Owen Taylor, the Sternwood's chauffeur. The story goes that the writers working on the screenplay adaptation — including Leigh "I'm the reason Empire is the best film in the trilogy" Brackett — wrote to Chandler, asking for confirmation as to who killed Taylor. Chandler thought about it for a while and then wrote back that, to be honest, he wasn't quite sure himself.
I'd been wanting to tackle this mystery for five or six years, but it was only at the end of last year that how to tackle it — with the Lovecraftian angle — occurred to me. I'll admit that my main inspiration there came from Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, which does something similar, introducing Sherlock Holmes to the Great Old Ones.
I hope I've managed to give the narrator something of a Chaldler-esque voice without straying to far into pastiche or parody. It runs pretty close at the beginning, but I think I reined it in by the end.
I also hope that you all found the startling reveal at the end as enjoyable to read as I found it to write.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
My Year So Far
It's almost June and so far this year I have released exactly one app which I have worked on end-to-end. That app is My Royal Wedding. Yeah. It's been that kind of a year so far.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
"It Coulda Woulda Shoulda Been a Wonderful Life"
Despite the title, this didn't turn out to have much in common with It's a Wonderful Life beyond the broad theme. Which just goes to show what happens when you don't plan what you're going to write before you sit down and start typing. There are many directions in which you can take the 'suicidal person looks back on their life' idea, and I'm sure it won't be long before I try out some of the others.
This story also contains a couple of references which probably won't age very well at all.
This story also contains a couple of references which probably won't age very well at all.
"Of Mice and Men and Midnight"
I wanted to write something Gaiman-esque. (Chicks dig Gaiman, right?) So here is a slight spin on a classic fairy tale.
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