Monthly Archives: November 2008

Why ‘searching’ means something

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Google have unveiled the Google Flu Trends website.  Basically, if you start searching for ‘aching muscles’ or ‘flu symptoms’, and lots of other people in your area are doing the same thing, it’s an indicator that people are starting to feel ill.

Using that, Google is predicting how much flu activity there is in certain areas.  If we assume people aren’t cynical on a big enough scale to ruin the data, this is a pretty amazing example of why searching isn’t entirely passive.  Why collecting data about what people are searching for is an active thing.  If you know what people are interesting in finding out, and you know what they’re finding, you can fill empty markets or predict trends.

Google – it’s the beginnings of a collective conciousness, a gathering of minds all asking the same question.  A billion people all pondering vital questions.

Like, “Is Angelina Jolie still as sexy as ever?”

Sodding cold

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Still coughing, still getting annoyed by it.  Have another headache today from the coughing.  Feel as though the cold is coming back which would be an officially bad thing[tm].

Grete had her dentist checkup today – and has passed with flying colours.  It’s the first time she’s had a checkup in five years and she was pretty worried.  On top of being worried about visiting the dentist anyway obviously.  So she was pretty relieved to find out she doesn’t need any work.  My wallet was equally pleased she didn’t need any work.  So just the £180 for me next week, and then probably another £100 or so when I can find the time and energy to go back.

We’ve got guests this weekend so we’re tidying (extra-tidying honest) the house – which means basically Grete is tidying the house and I’m blogging about it, but it’s like a shared experience.  Friday we have Tracey and her mum who are here until Sunday.  On Saturday they’re going with Grete to a craft fair in Birmingham and meeting Grete’s mum and aunt there, who’ll be coming back on Saturday late afternoon.  Lynda’s going with them, so she’ll be here Saturday morning.

The BBC news site has a story which strikes a chord with me and my NHS experiences.  The comments are well worth reading (even though they didn’t publish mine yet). Here’s a (long) quote from the article,

Last year a friend of mine had an appointment with her doctor. Her local bus route was disrupted by road works. So, she left half an hour before she really needed to so as to make sure she got to the surgery on time.

As it turned out, there were no delays so she went to the reception desk prior to intending to sit down with a magazine to await her turn to see the doctor.

When the receptionist spoke to her, this was her loud greeting: “You’re early. You don’t expect to be seen early do you?”

In front of a waiting room full of strangers, my friend told me that she felt embarrassed and belittled.

In a health service that treats thousands of serious illnesses every day and has been a foundation stone of our society for 60 years, this was no life or death matter.

Yet, it is highly unlikely that a member of staff in a store such as John Lewis would address someone in this way. The people served there are customers. The people served by the NHS are patients.

It’s worth reading the whole thing and the comments.  I can’t say enough how I agree with the general points made, and in the comments section many people agree with me that it’s not usually the medical staff that are the issue, it’s the administrative staff in the way.

Of course, sometimes it can be the medical staff, like the GP who told me to eat less cake and stop taking sugar in my tea (neither of which I did at the time) because I was now diabetic.  You shouldn’t have to fight both your illness and the establishment to get good treatment.

I could rant for hours about the terrible treatment Grete has had over the years with her depression and associated issues in the hands of the NHS.  I think the idea of a national health service is fantastic, and I wouldn’t want it to go away, but the processes and people around it need to understand more clearly that their role is to get people help, and that those people are already vulnerable, scared and in need of assistance.

Indiana Jones DVD

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Couldn’t resist, bought the 4th Indy movie (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) on DVD today in Tesco.  £5 off if you bought it with enough other stuff, which made it not too bad.  I think it’ll be enjoyable on DVD (clearly, otherwise why did I buy it), and previous experience suggests the bits I found frustrating on first viewing will be easier to deal with on DVD.

I guess that’s because it’s less of an ‘event’, where-as going to the cinema I demand to be entertained so any distraction is frustrating.  X-Men for me was a serious example of this, where I enjoyed it far more on DVD than I had in the Cinema.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Another day nearly done

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Played a bit of Lord of the Rings Online tonight (and last night), been a while since we played any MMORPG’s so was quite nice to kill a few orcs and goblins.  The cough is still bugging me, the tail end of the cold and the part I hate most really.  Coughing gives me a headache and just annoys me in general.

Weather has been pretty bad last few days, windy, heavy rain, the cats have given up all hope of spending any more time outside until the early spring and settled into winter mode.  For Bubbles this essentially means trying to find the warmest place in the house to sit – and that includes on me or Grete.

Remind me to write a blog post about Fringe and/or Burn Notice.

Proposition 8 may not last

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The language is a little confusing, but there may be some light at the end of the tunnel for people protesting against proposition 8.

From UPI,

It’s unfortunate, obviously, but it’s not the end,” Schwarzenegger told CNN. “I think that we will again maybe undo that, if the court is willing to do that, and then move forward from there and again lead in that area.

How goes the war against the humans?

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I’ve been using that phrase (How goes the war against the humans?) since I first played Wing Commander II sometime in the very early 90’s. I had an Intel 386DX with 1MB of memory, and a Soundblaster compatible sound card (couldn’t afford a real soundblaster). That computer kept me going from the end of the first year at University (when I replaced my Amstrad 1512 with it) to the end of University and beyond. It got slowly upgraded to the point of uselessness and finally replaced. I blogged a while back about the moment I got rid of the last bits (keyboard mainly).

Anyway, Wing Commander II was just amazing.  There is a moment during the introduction when a conductor taps his music stand, and then an orchestra plays the intro while scrolling into view over the horizon (you can check out all the music here).  I was amazed.  Shortly after that is a cut scene, and amazingly, some folk have converted all the in-game speech and have it on the web, here’s a link to the file with the quote in question.

The thing that got me started looking for that, is that I’m still quoting games, movies and music from more than 15 years ago.  In fact, the whole conversation with a friend started when I tried to work out what I did on Sundays before the internet.  One of those things was play computer games, Wing Commander II being one of them.  Games and movies from my early 20’s have had such a lasting effect on my speech and memories.  I’m the kind of annoying nerdy geek who quotes this kind of stuff at random during conversation, even when I know no one around me will have a clue what I’m on about.

I’ve been asking people I’ve not seen for a long time “how goes the war against the humans?” when we see each other, since 1991, and most of them still have no clue what the hell I’m on about.  It’s amazing to me the impact that art (essentially) can have on memory.  I have lasting and vivid memories of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, F19 Stealth Bomber, and a bunch of other very early games in the early 90’s.  But equally, I have memories and still use quotes from movies around that time and even earlier.  When someone asks if I’d like to play a game, I still respond with (mashed up) quotes from WarGames (how about a nice game of tic-tac-toe or, yes, how about a game of thermonuclear global war?).

Maybe I’m easily impressionable?  I find myself saying ‘hmm, upgrades?’ and ‘guns, lots of guns’, and ‘i know kung-fu’ quite a bit as well (from the various Matrix movies).

Anyway, after finding the web site linked above, and listening to that intro another thing became clear.  Not only do I have vivid memories of playing a lot of Wing Commander II, but hearing that speech opened up a bunch of additional memories that I don’t think about as much.  I was reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant around the same time, I was living in a flat in Sheffield, I used to watch Northern Exposure, I used to eat a lot of tuna and salad cream on toast.  I used the launderette just up a hill not far from the flat (which is something I had totally forgotten until just now), and I hated it.  I used to get up at 5am to catch three buses to get to work (until I met some other guys at the same place and starting getting a lift in, Jack Dainty, Chris Philips, they were good times).  I remember Charles Dobson coming to visit and we bought a crate of beer from a local off licence, and we either dropped it and/or some of the cans exploded in the shop.  So many good memories.

So it’s amazing to me how the sound from a computer game can open up memories of the same time that I’ve not thought about for such a long time.  I’m the same with smells and music, sometimes a smell or a song will bang open a massive collection of memories I’d totally neglected to refresh over the years.

Like the Graceland album, which evokes a vivid memory of walking to Jack Dainty’s house in the early morning, through a couple of parks in Sheffield.  Playing on my fake-walkman casette player would be that album (I had very little music on tape), and I’d play it full blast and watch the sun come up over the trees to burn off the morning mist while I walked.  And then we’d listen to Chris’ Michelle Shocked album in the car on the way to the labs.

So yeh, if you ever meet me, and I ask you how goes the war against the humans, just lie and tell me it’s going fine and that the Kilrathi shall once again be the supreme beings in the universe, and all will be well.

And I’ll just nod.  Pleased with our mighty power.

Midnight Run

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In a continuing theme of finding random films on Sky Movies that I’ve not seen yet, we watched Midnight Run last night.  It’s a reasonably typical buddy-cop action comedy style movie from the late 80’s staring Robert De Niro.  The story centres around De Niro’s character, an ex-Chicago cop turned bounty hunter, his history with the mob, and a bail bond collection he has to bring back before midnight in five days from the start of the flick.

The otherwise simple collection is complication by the involvement of several other factions.  The FBI has an interest, the mob has an interest, De Niro’s ex-wife and family show up briefly, another bounty hunter is involved and the bail runner himself (an ex-mob accountant) clearly has some involvement.  The single-threaded plot moves forward at a good pace to bring all these factions together at various moments and then again for the finale.

There’s no overt slapstick here, the comic moments come from the story, characters and the dialog.  De Niro brings his usual weight to what could have been a pretty light role, adding depth and emotion to the main character.  The supporting cast is pretty good, and I enjoyed Yaphet Kotto as the main FBI agent.  The dialog between De Niro and Charles Grodin’s character (the ex-accountant) drives the story forward and makes up a good 50% of the on-screen action, so luckily it’s interesting and worth listening to.

Midnight Run is a better than average implementation of a common 80’s theme, standing above the others due in no small part to De Niro and the well written dialog.