A Hero Worship Article to Stephen Fry by an Admirer of his Work

I have recently finished reading Stephen Fry's [1] two biographies (yes, his life was interesting enough to allow for two not just one and it looks like there may be a third one) Moab is my washpot and The Fry Chronicle. To my own, very personal surprise, I found that it merits writing my thoughts down in one of those rather unremarkable articles of mine.

The books in itself were fantastic due to Fry's rather peculiar writing style balancing between rarely found excessive eloquence (as befitting one of those bloody Cambridge graduates who can only speak like twats... I jest of course, I am envious of the experience... probably not, I loved rough Glasgow and skanky Manchester a lot) and infrequent (and for that reason all the more shocking) vulgarity. Of the two books, I definitely favour The Fry Chronicle which describes his Cambridge years and his subsequent rise to fame (Moab is my washpot talks about his childhood and adolescence up to the point of his incarceration as a youth criminal for credit card fraud).

As a non-native English speaker who lived in Britain a decade, I wholly enjoyed reading Fry's writing for something that only Greg Graffin [2] of the popular punk band Bad Religion [3] (and another person whose life fascinates and interests me) achieved before him. I learnt new English vocabulary (regarding one of Bad Religion's song lyrics: I still keep forgetting what the word reprobate [4] means). It sounds weird, but I have become so accustomed to using English and using it also in academic context that I rarely encounter a text where I truly have to check words. With Stephen Fry's prose, this happens to me about every five pages. Some people find that annoying, I revelled in it as I felt for the first time in about three or four years that I actually improved my English (Since my departure from English shores, it actually feels that I am losing my edge a bit).

I was very surprised to read that Fry is a hobby computer enthusiast like me. Not just electronic gadgets but programming and all. But unlike me, he was there from the very first minute. I felt several pangs of envy when he talked about how he spent thousands and thousands of pounds on computer equipment (unfortunately on Apple Macintoshs, but youknow my view point on that [5]) - As a side note, I always want to call him Stephen, because the two books were so courageously revealing his most personal trials, tribulations and fears that I feel that I know the man already since 20 years. This is, however, not true, thus I shall stick with his full name or plainly with Fry.

His friendship with Douglas Adams [6] also left me a little bit envious as I have been a great fan of Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy infour parts [7] since my adolscent days. One of the true literary masterpieces.

I have found several parallels to me (but also quite a lot of huge differences... and no, the parallel is not that I am also gay) that left me feel very sympathetic to him and makes me appreciate the works and contributions that I like so much even more than before (Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie).

I guess, as a conclusion to this rather pathetic hero worship article, I can only hope that Mr. Fry never reads this article after I read how critical he can be of other people's work (despite saying that he will never admit to having thought it). 

References

[1] http://www.stephenfry.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Graffin

[3] http://www.badreligion.com/

[4] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/reprobate

[5] http://nebelhom.blogspot.be/search/label/Apple

[6] http://douglasadams.com/

[7] http://douglasadams.com/creations/hhgg.html

New Year's Resolutions 2013 – No More Facebook

Much has happened since my last post to this blog and this is, of course, in no little part due to my laziness. I just had “better” things to do or as a friend of mine put it once quite fittingly. “Having no time for one thing, just means that you would rather spend your time on something else.”

So for awhile, I simply “rather spend time on something else”. The reasons were different. The main one being the demise of my pet project. The music player (see various posts here [1]) for roleplaying. The player was built on the idea of tagging, but my approach of using an md5 hash was just not working right. It was slow and sluggish and it took about 10 seconds to start with about 5 songs and an eternity for about 1 GB worth of music and sound effects. I couldn't improve it for reasons I don't want to get into.

Once that fell through, I decided to improve using Udacity [2] and hone my skills (if one could call them that) by helping on the Mozilla Project [3] in the Automated Testing team (A*Team) [4]. This proved to be such an enjoyable experience that I have stuck with it since August of last year and spent most of my free-time on their IRC channel trying to learn more about it and the way they run their projects. By now, I have come to hate git [5] and only just about accepted mercurial [6] as version control software.

Anyhow, three paragraphs just to explain why I stopped blogging. Sheesh! Onto the real reason for this blog entry. It is the new year which I passed in lovely Vienna with my darling wife and a good friend from there. During that time, a certain resolution ripened with me. I want to opt out of this facebook harrassment (from now on referred to by its french joke name fessebouc; la fesse = buttock, le bouc = goat; Why I do that? Because I can). Everyone sees it as this fantastic tool, but over the course of last year, fessebouc has annoyed me greatly with some decisions they made.

It started off harmlessly enough with them wanting to change my user interface to this timeline idea [7] that they fancied so much. They first asked me if I wanted it, as in “Do you want to try our new and great timeline”, to which I said No. Several weeks after, the same request came, to which I said again No. Why change something that isn't broken, for crying out loud. And then shortly after, they just changed it. Just like that. All illusion of being able to decide it myself gone by virtue of their little display of power. I am sure they thought that “he won't mind anyway, the old chap.” ... Well, I did mind and it pissed me off so much that I wrote a complaint in which I said, that these sort of measures are more likely to drive me away than endear me to fessebouc. Of course, there was no answer. Not even a hint.

Well, that was me already annoyed by them. But then there followed a consistent stream of these things that were handled the same way. First a mail saying that if you don't want it, say so, with the subsequent change to it anyways. The more outrageous changes were, however, yet to come! Let's start with forcing anyone to use their real name [8, 9 for policy]. Why on earth?!? No conscious thought were given to those rather sensitive cases where someone may truly endanger himself by publically stating his opinion in countries where freedom of speech is not as existent as in the western world (as an example of the merits read this article [10]) or the much quoted teacher-pupil relationship problem. This is a very sensitive area as adolescents may unknowingly endanger the teacher's career by bringing him into a dicey situation. If they want to become "friends" with the teacher, is s/he supposed to block any attempt or is it no problem? Using an alias would be a good solution for a teacher in this case to avoid any such issues with accepting pupils as friends. "Friends" - Such a freely used term nowadays. When before it defined a close relationship with someone who is not the partner nor has familial ties to the person, now it can describe someone who is not even an acquaintance. But I'm getting diverted from the real issue here.

Now, looking at the above problem, one may think: “No problem, I just set my privacy setting so that people can't find me with a name search.” Well, the clever people from fessebouc thought of this, too, by getting rid of this possibility and making every profile available for all search engines [11,12 for German]. Again, why on earth?!? To me, this really was the final nail in the coffin.

Thus on New Year's, I came to the conclusion that I will stop using it. It was a nuisance and e-mail spam that I accepted for the greater good of keeping in touch with people who seem to only live in the world of fessebouc and are only reachable through it, but this is it. I have had enough. I am aware that it is here to stay and unlikely to go away. I am also aware that not only fessebouc adopts dubious policies regarding privacy in the digital space, but in this case, I can do something about it and I don't want to play any part in it anymore. I will also try to discourage people from posting pictures of me on it. If you, as a fessebouc user read this, please consider this a polite request to refrain from posting pictures with me in it on fessebouc (or any other media as a matter of fact without my explicit permission). Thus, my New Year's Resolution for 2013 is to leave fessebouc and be done with it. May it go its merry way, I hope it falls flat on its face (which it most likely won't) and that the people responsible for these decisions understand that the privacy of the individual should be respected even though the majority of people “doesn't seem to mind.”

References

[1] http://nebelhom.blogspot.be/search/label/Music%27N%27SFX
[2] http://www.udacity.com/
[3] http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/
[4] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Auto-tools
[5] http://git-scm.com/
[6] http://mercurial.selenic.com/
[7] http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline
[8] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/08/facebook_real_names/
[9] http://www.facebook.com/help/292517374180078/
[10] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/02/07/google-executive-wael-ghonim-admits-he-was-el-shaheed.html
[11] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/facebook-changes-privacy-settings-again/
[12] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/namenssuche-bei-facebook-privatsphaere-einstellungen-werden-simpler-a-872932.html

Wow! The German "Wahlrecht" is illegal... just Wow!

Just imagine the following lovely scenario. In a year's time, there are national elections in your country, but the law defining the "right to vote" is illegal. Well, the German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe did just that. It declared the right to vote ("Wahlrecht") a representative of each person of German nationality to not be legal in the eyes of the federal constitution ("Bundesverfassung").

As a German who is able to look at it from afar having lived abroad for most of my adult life, this is hilarious. Without boring you all with the details, it boils down to each political party and coalition which was in power tinkering with the "Wahlrecht" a little bit to emphasise the aspects that helped them in the last election. Finally, after it was found that the right was illegal in 2009, the coalition designed a new right to vote against the will of the opposition, which then went to court. The outcome is as mentioned.

According to various news sites (SPON, FOCUS, Die Sueddeutsche) the judges gave various reasons that I will mention with a personal opinion, but first I have to comment that the complexity (mostly mathematical) of this matter is ridiculous. It turned into a coloss of such unimaginably impenetrable proportions that I think most politicians were just hoping that noone would touch it. Reading those articles made my head spin a little and judging by my academic achievements, I always assumed that I was good at understanding complex issues.

The most bizarre aspects of the legislation is that it is possible that a party with more votes, will have "less" seats in the parliament (?!?). Like, I assume, at least 90% of the German population, I am not so strong in the finer points of these laws and rules. In the news and media, they use certain words that I have never bothered to look up, because I wasn't interested enough. One such thing is an "Überhangmandat" (Overhang seat). This is something that hardly anyone understands in its entirety. The english wikipedia article quotes it as

Overhang seats can arise in elections under the traditional (i.e. as it originated in Germany) mixed member proportional (MMP) system, when a party is entitled to fewer seats as a result of party votes than it has won constituencies.

Now, the government and the opposition have about a year to get the next draft right. Having seen how the Belgians can run their country without having a government for about one and a half years, I am skeptical if there will be such a legislation by the designated date. It remains to be seen.

One Death is a Tragedy, One Million Deaths is a Statistic.

"On Friday, July 20, 2012, just after midnight, a gunman opened fire during the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in a Century movie theater in Aurora, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. The gunman, acting alone and dressed in protective clothing, entered the theater and set off tactical grenades, then opened fire with multiple firearms on the theatergoers. The attack was one of the largest mass shootings in terms of number of casualties in United States history. James Eagan Holmes was arrested in connection with the crime."

- excerpt from the Wikipedia entry about Aurora, Colorado.

I heard about the news roughly two days later and I was shocked. Sadly for me, not because of the sheer atrocity of it, but because of the thought that I had. "Oh what? Again?"

After I realised my complete and utter insensitivity to the subject, I started to become angry, mainly because I know nothing will be done and it left me wondering. What does it take for US politics to do something about the weapons laws in that country. Granted, not only the US had shootings, but Europe, too. Nonetheless, the laws are the most lax in US of A. Chances are that they will do nothing and a couple of years later, another one will happen and the world mourns once more (after more research, I have to correct myself from a couple of years later to "a couple of months later")

These killings are senseless and a great majority of them could be prevented if it wasn't for the high percentage of gun nuts in the US who feel great with some cold iron in their hand as a penis substitute (NRA anyone? "From my cold, dead hands" anyone?). As a European, this is complete nuts to me.

When Americans say to me that they have firearms in the house to protect themselves, I find this shortsighted. It is so easy to get guns over there, it is safe to assume that when they have guns, so will the people who want to rob, burgle, whatever you. So, let's say a burglar comes into your house with a gun. You notice him and storm out with your shotgun still half asleep. He finds this a threatening gesture (No shit! I would!) and he's high on adrenaline anyways, so he decides to shoot you and leg it or you shoot him, because you are high on adrenaline. Either way one person ends up gravely injured or dead.

If guns were heavily regulated or banned, people would have maybe knifes or clubs. This could still end deadly or with grievous injury, but the chance is much smaller and if one guy has a gun, the odds are higher, he won't fire it, because the situation is clear who has the upper hand... and the little fact that those stand offs would be rarer occurrences.

Anyhow, back to my main point. Why are US politicians not doing anything?!? I took the liberty of doing some wikipedia and google research. I wanted to see how many school shootings (granted this was not a school shooting, but the man was young and a student, so who's counting) there were since the first one in my memory, which was Columbine, 20.04.1999. But after a surprisingly high amount of hits and this very interesting wikipedia article which summarised all school shootings since the early beginnings, I decided to choose my birth year, 1982 as a start date. I am impressed and also appalled by the sheer volume of information on this topic.

According to that table since 1982 there have been a grand total of 111 (!!!) shooting incidents at US-American schools (European shootings are rarer, but they do occur). A hundred and eleven! This is not counting the shootings by students in cinemas and grocery stores or wherever, never mind gang-related shootings. The trend is more horrible when looking at it by year. In the 80s, there were 9 incidents with 14 mortally wounded victims. The 1990s already have that number rising to 30 incidents and 66 victims (The infamous Columbine shooting falls under that 10 year period). This trend is rising even further according to the statistic from 2000 to 2009 with no less than 50 incidents in the US (there were sadly also several in Europe a total of 12 incidents) and 102 victims. Bear in mind, this is only at schools in the country (!!!). I must admit, I find this number staggering and it leaves me speechless as to the inability of US politicians to take actions. If this carries on and the trend will rise further, we can look at the numbers from 2010 to 2012. According to that, there have been so far 22 incidents with 31 victims. You don't have to be a maths genius to calculate that this number should rise for the period of 2010-2019 to grand total of 73 incidents!!!

Unfortunately, politicians will do no such thing and regulate fire arms even further or ban them outright. They are more interested in talking about evil video games and other triggers. Why don't take away their tools! It's the tools that kill not the playing of video games nor listening to satanic heavy metal/rock nor any other artistic outlet. As it stands, I think this will make the above calculation sadly soon a reality and every time after about 6 months, those who were unaffected by the tragedy, will live to Stalin's famous quote:

"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

As we slowly add another shooting to the list of shootings...

Codeacademy: I never thought I would fall for that trick

Been starting with the CodeAcademy recently to learn javascript in a less than pressured way. I always had the issue that I needed to learn coding the hard and time intensive way, i.e. practice, practice, googling the solution and more practice.

I read about the CodeAcademy and was actually just curious and to learn Javascript, because it is useful. The bastards got me hooked. I always fancied myself a man capable of independent thought, but all that "Congratulations! You earned a new badge!" got me as droolingly addicted like all those other muppets out there. Ah well, fellow muppets, I am now another member. Just wait until I managed to attach the strings to my wrists, ankles, back and head...

Then and Now - Or how I like listening to older people

I've watched an interview with Bryan Cranston (lead actor of Breaking Bad) on the David Letterman Show (check out the video below) and something struck me. He was talking about the time he took with his brother in search of his vocation by riding a motorcylce through the US and only stopping when they needed cash. Once or twice he makes a comment like "Bear in mind this was in the 70s, so finding a job was fairly easy".

Now, I am one of those folks, who likes listening to the stories of people who grew up in a different era. I remember the time, I spoke with a friend of a friend of my brother's (yeah, I know, it is a bit convoluted) who lived in Northern Ireland during the IRA's heyday selling photocopiers to companies, because every time a bomb went off, the shockwave would shatter the glass of windows and the like in the area. These damages were payed for by the government and so all companies were fairly eager to buy them. Even if that story was not true (not sure, why it shouldn't be), it is still a fun story from a different time.

But back to my point, I have a bit of a romantic streak when I like to do something like breaking out and go somewhere where progress isn't as advanced but don't have the guts for really taking the step. I remembered wondering if times were really that different in the 70s, when I watched "The Motorcycle Diaries" (check trailer below), but I figured, then, that it is different, because that's South America. Well, judging by the interview above, it was different in the westernised world, too. 

Most people take all these stories with a pinch of salt thinking "another old fool ranting about the good old days", but I am starting to wonder if the young people of today are a bit more pressured into completing their apprenticeships, studies or whatever they are currently doing (I still call myself young, but that's probably just my opinion ;D). I still remember my University studies and they were happy and careless. I enjoyed them and the people I met and the studies I did, greatly affected the way, I approach situations. When I look at the students after the Bologna Process, there already is a stiff difference. They seem to have less time to do more and it feels to me as if they are herded through their student life just to get finished. Only to go on and find a job and live a streamlined life.

This brings me back to one specific point that Bryan Cranston mentioned. It was easier to find jobs in the 70s. My mother told me the same stories, when she tried to find a student job. I told my wife this and the people in their environment from that time all said the same. There were more jobs than people, willing to work, around apparently. I currently am myself in the job hunt, too, and I always assumed that I did fairly well in the career skills department, but I am finding myself in extreme difficulties actually finding a bleeping job. So it would seem that those old ranting fellas are right and it is harder to find a job nowadays.

I am not sure this constant development towards efficiency is a good thing. Efficiency is very good and I am mostly all in favour, but it should not hamper the personal development of the individual. My life has been everything, but straight forward and I am, for the most part, glad that it turned out that way. I was, however, unlike other people, able to combine my detours with things that can be written on a CV. Judging by the fact, that those flower-power loving 60s and 70s hippies (I jest, of course) actually formed their future, my and your present, I really wonder what the western world will look like in, say, another 20 years, with peeps like me being able to form their future. People that were already formed into efficient problem solving, out-of-the-box-thinking, maximised worker bees...

I can live without the 3D-cinema experience

I just came home from watching the movie "The Avengers" (Check out the trailer below). I was really looking forward to the movie and it definitely delivered. Good all round evening cinema, I would say.

But there is one thing, that is occurring recently, that really puts me off going to the cinema: 3D-movies. They really do not add anything extra for me. I like watching a movie in a row that is fairly close to the silver screen, so that my entire vision is filled up by the screen. Frankly, if I do that in a 3D-movie, I feel like puking. I remember, by some random accident, my wife and I watched Avatar from a front row seat (yep, that's right; row "one"). While I thought, I felt rubbish and dizzy, I then looked over to my wife and believe you me, she looked like death warmed up and about to share her evening meal with the rest of the audience via regurgitatory means.

Additionally, where I am currently at, a 3D movie is in fact about €4 more expensive than a normal movie. Personally, I find that a bit steep. I still reminisce about my student times in the UK, where I could go and watch a movie for £3. Currently, because I am not a student anymore and most movies are in 3D, I pay a whopping €11,50 for a movie. I am sorry, but that is just not on.

What makes the entire thing even worse is, that I sometimes get the feeling that there are hardly any 3D effects. Avengers had some, but if I am honest, I could have happily lived without them. Sometimes, one of Iron Man's rays went the audience's direction and the big fight scene at the end (if anyone thinks I just spoilt the movie by saying there is a big fight at the end of it, is officially a moron) had some effects, but nothing major. When I watched Alice in Wonderland, I actually felt cheated out of four euros, simply because I saw Johnny Depp do something once in 3Dish. The rest was just a normal frickin' film! It drives me bonkers!

Since I am also one of those people with less than stellar eyesight, I have to rely on glasses. Contacts never worked out for me, which isn't a problem... in a 3D cinema, this is a different story. Having one pair of glasses on is fine, two pairs on the other hand, is plain silly. Until my first 3D movie, I never thought that running out of "nose space" would be an issue. As a laboratory chemist who has to wear additional safety specs in the lab, I know what I am talking about and these far too large, wanna-be futuristic looking 3D goggles are just a hassle.

All in all, I can really say that I can understand why true cinema is going downhill. the 3D technology has been around for a while, but never caught on in Europe. Now trying it again, I have to admit to myself, that it pushed me out of the cinema. I used to love going to the movies. It was one of those things that I would do on my own and I would go home, wholeheartedly satisfied. With the advent of 3D-cinema this unfortunately changed, because the higher production costs (or whatever causes the excessive increase in ticket price) are making cinemas come up with strange ways to get more money out of the viewers pockets. Where I am at, they always (yes always, not only in very long movies) take a half-time break, "to give us the chance to go to the toilet". More like the chance to buy half a litre of coke for what feels like 5 euros... I am getting carried away and so I shall stop here with this ;)

At the end of this, all I can say is. Avengers: fantastic movie. 3D-cinema: fantastically overrated, overpriced and just not worth it. Bring back old movie cinema and old prices.