Archive for May, 2009
Excuses, excuses
Posted by Simon in Mere Opinion on May 29th, 2009
Illegal copying of material has become some commonplace that, apparently, many people don’t think of it as a crime at all. People are quite open about making copies of stuff illegally, and can’t pretend that I’ve never done it myself.
So I can’t take the moral high-ground, and I won’t. If you’re copying stuff illegally, you’re probably just as nice a person as me. And I’m a very nice person.
But that doesn’t stop me getting pissed off about it.
It’s not the fact that people are downloading stuff without paying for it that pisses me off, it’s the excuses that people seem to think they have to give for doing it. For example:
“But, when you pay for music, most of the money goes to the wrong people anyway.”
So? If it that were true, you have to admit that some of the money goes to the creative people involved. Plus, all the other people involved in putting together that song, film or TV show. So, in some way, you’re stealing from those people, and no matter what your feelings are about the fat cat media moguls creaming off the profits, there a people involved who don’t deserve to be stolen from.
“But it’s not stealing.”
Okay, so you’re not reaching into their pockets and pulling out wads of cash with a hearty “yoink!”, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not a thief. Perhaps the problem here is that the word thief has the wrong connotations. It suggests that something has been physically transferred from the victim to the perpetrator. When you take a copy of something that you didn’t pay for, the original still exists, no harm no foul, right?
Wrong, it’s still stealing, it’s just by a more circuitous route. If you don’t like being called a thief, invent a different word for what you’re doing and we’ll add it to the dictionary. (Definition: see “Thief”).
“But everyone else does it!”
That one doesn’t work. Ask any MP.
“But you can’t get this TV show any other way!”
So? Just because you can’t get something by legal means doesn’t make it right to get by illegal means. In fact, I’ve not seen a single situation where a little sprinkling of two magic ingredients won’t resolve this kind of issue.
The magic ingredients are patience and money. For example, virtually every TV show comes out on DVD eventually, and you can wait and pay for it. If it doesn’t, well, see my next excuse.
“But I need it NOW!”
No, you don’t. You want it now. Nobody needs to see the latest TV show now. Chill out, go for a walk, read a bloody book, watch something else on the telly. Amazingly, you won’t die.
“But the laws are stupid and restrictive.”
That’s a maybe. I sometimes think it’s stupid that I have to drive at 40 miles an hour along the long straight road to my house, because that’s the speed limit, even at 2 in the morning. That’s because laws are blunt instruments, designed to be morally right in the majority of situations. In this case, it’s morally right to expect payment for something you’ve created. The laws that defend that right may be “stupid” in places, but if you’re worried about that, fight to change the law.
For info, downloading stuff illegally isn’t fighting to change laws, it’s just ignoring them.
There are probably a lot more excuses that I haven’t thought of, but they all seem to boil down to the same basic statement: “I don’t want to pay (or wait) for the content I’m consuming, and people have made it easy for me to get it for nothing, so I will.”
That’s not an excuse, it’s a reason. If you use it as your reason, rather than pretending that somehow you’re fighting the good fight against restrictive copyright laws and evil media corporations, then I’ll respect you for not fooling yourself or trying to fool me. But don’t pretend that it’s a good reason. It’s just a reason.
Pro or Ante-natal?
Posted by Simon in Mere Fatherhood, Mere Opinion on May 27th, 2009
There was news this morning of a study that showed that prospective parents who attended antenatal classes that promote breathing techniques have no better experience during labour than parents who are just taught the basic “nuts and bolts” of what pregnancy entails. Women that had been attended classes and were taught “natural birth” methods (supposed to reduce the amount of medical intervention required in the birth) ended up asking for the same amount of conventional pain relief as women who’d not taken the classes.
The NCT (not NCP, they’re something quite different) are disputing the claims. This is unsurprising, as most of the extended antenatal classes in this country are run by them.
Jane and I decided early on that we’d not bother with NCT classes and instead take the free NHS route. This entailed a slightly cursory programme of three visits to a community centre to learn about stuff like how plastic babies fit through plastic pelvic bones, and how much change you need for the hospital car park (which isn’t NCP or NCT). I think it was enough information for us.
One of the things they covered was pain relief, and I remember in particular the discussion we had about TENS machines. For the uninitiated (as I was), a TENS machine is a bit like those muscle stimulation gadgets they sell on the shopping channels to get rid of flabby tummies. Placed on the skin, they stimulate the nerves and are supposed to reduce pain during labour.
There’s not much evidence that TENS machines actually work, and the midwife at our antenatal class that covered pain relief more or less admitted that she thought twiddling with the knobs on the machine distracted mums from the pain by “giving them something to do”.
I think that’s probably the main benefit of extended antenatal classes. The nine months of a first pregnancy is an awful long time to fill, and the gaps between decorating and buying baby stuff are mainly filled with worrying about something you don’t really have any control over: the birth. NCT classes and their ilk give parents “something to do”, and maybe give them back a sense of control.
It doesn’t matter so much, then, that what they’re learning is a little common sense midwifery wrapped up in a lot of (literal) puff which won’t actually benefit them on the day. The important thing is that up until that day, they felt more able to deal with it.
But I’m still happy of being to be ignorant of how to breathe. When the day comes, I’ve been taught by existing fathers the two facts that will get me through the worst of the delivery. One: take the blame for everything. Two: if they’re biting down on their hand, don’t offer to replace it with yours.
Oi, Darcy, you slaaaaag!
Posted by Simon in Mere Fakery on May 26th, 2009
Guy Ritchie’s latest effort is coming out soon, a “re-invention” of Sherlock Holmes. I’m inclined to hate it already. Okay, so Star Trek was recently re-imagined, and I loved that, but for some reason I don’t trust Mr. Madonna’s Ex to handle this cherished character in the same way. Especially since Guy’s suffered the fate of everyone who gets near Madonna, and lost any talent he may have had.
Madonna is a career vampire, she feeds off those of others. Just think of all the people she’s been closely involved with, and then think of what happened to their careers afterward. Britney Spears and William Orbit (remember him?) to name but two. Mere husks now. I think it’s some kind of alchemy involving the blood of African orphans.
Anyway, it has got me thinking what other classic literary works Ritchie can get his hands on after Sherlock Holmes…
How it Works: The Baby
Posted by Simon in Mere Fakery, Mere Fatherhood, humour on May 25th, 2009
I must admit this whole new baby malarky was starting to panic me, but then I remembered a very instructional Ladybird book that I was given back in the seventies. After a bit of rummaging in the attic, I managed to dig it out and scanned in a few pages.
I think you’ll agree, it’s a perfect introduction for any father new to baby ownership.
Front page
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Page 4
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It Came From Underneath My Granddad’s Parasol
Still farting about with the Kodak Zi6. Here it’s used to film a snail that was minding his own business underneath my granddad’s garden parasol.
I loved the way the tiny pinpricks of light were playing off his slimy skin. Wish I could have held the camera more steadily, and the depth of field is a bit too tight. I couldn’t get the whole snail in focus at once, and he was pretty tiny.
So small and precious
Posted by Simon in Mere Fatherhood, humour on May 21st, 2009
When the time came, it only took about an hour. There was quite a bit of blood, and forceps were required. I must admit I felt quite faint.
Up until now I’d only seen it in medical scans, but we all knew it had to come out eventually. And this morning, at about 11am, it finally happened.
My wisdom tooth came out.
What!? Oh don’t look at me like that!
Men have such big teeth. It’s quite painful. Women are so lucky that they don’t have to go through stuff like this.
Right, I’m off to hide from Jane before she reads this post, goodnight!
Aw, birdies!
I recently bought a mini HD camera (a fun but no-frills Kodak Zi6) and this is quick film I made with it. Just a bit of Blu-tack fastened it to the post next to my peanut feeder, and over an hour it caught a blue tit, green finch and great tit helping themselves to the peanutty goodness.
You might just spot the resident pair of robins, flitting in to eat the raisins on the lawn.
Any silly comments about the tits will be summarily removed!
It lives!
How to rescue an iPod Touch that’s been dropped in water
The patient
Jane and I both love our iPod Touches, the iPhone for people who don’t want or can’t have an iPhone. Jane in particular has been using hers loads during her pregnancy. She’s got a lot to lug around without adding a laptop.
So it was rather awful when she announced grim-faced at the weekend that she’d dropped it in water. I won’t say which body of household water she dropped it in. She had it in a back pocket of some baggy pregnancy jeans, you can use your imagination.
It was only in the (clean, I hasten to add!) water for about 10 seconds, but that was enough for the water to get in through the interface port and kill the thing stone dead.
Not good.
We left it sitting on the boiler for a day, hoping it would dry out, but it still remained steadfastly brick-like. I started looking up stuff on the internet, and came across the old chestnut of leaving a water-soaked mobile or other gadget in a bowl of dried rice to “draw out the moisture”. How this is supposed to work, I have no idea, does the water deep inside the gadget somehow know the rice is outside, and wanders out to have a look?
If rice were some kind of high-powered dessicant I think they’d put a Vesta risotto in the bottom of hi-fi boxes, but they seem to stick with those little sachets of silica gel.
(As an aside, have you ever wondered what would actually happen if you ate one of those little sachets? I can only imagine it would be something like when Jerry tricked Tom into eating alum powder and his mouth puckered up like the end of a party balloon.)
Anyway, in desperation we tried the kill-or-cure solution: cooking it.
We put the oven on a low heat (about 50), with the door slightly ajar to allow the moisture to escape and stop the temperature getting too high (in theory). The iPod was positioned near the back, with the hole for the interface cable facing the fan at the back of the oven.
And left it for about an hour.
After removing it with oven gloves, and allowing it to cool, I tried the power button. Miraculously, the boot screen appeared.
And wouldn’t go away. There was also a kind of mottled pattern behind the display. Looking kind of like a lot of moisure behind a display would look.
So tonight I returned the iPod to the oven for another hour-long stint at 75 degrees C.
It seems to have worked! The screen is back to normal, and it’s now sitting up in bed and taking fluids. Well, when I say fluids I mean electricity, it’s learnt its lesson there.
Tigers don’t just come in orange
Posted by Simon in Mere Fatherhood on May 18th, 2009
Even before Jane got pregnant we knew that the little one-bed maisonette I’d bought back in my swinging bachelor days wasn’t going to be big enough for three. Actually, it was barely big enough for two.
We’d been trying for ages to sell both my place and Jane’s old place down in Cambridgeshire, but the down-turn in the market meant that houses just weren’t selling. So eventually we decided to bite the bullet, put both our properties on the rental market and rent a bigger property with the proceeds.
And that’s how it’s worked out. Kind of. We ended up renting a great place just south of King’s Lynn, and Jane’s place has been rented out for ages, but my place has only just gone on the market. It’s taken me this long to get it completely decorated and repaired up to a standard that’s rentable. So basically we’ve been losing money on it hand over fist while it sat empty. But there’s no way on Earth I would have been able to properly repair, paint and decorate the place while we were living in it. There was barely room to swing a cat, and there are laws against swinging cats coated in marigold emulsion.
Having a nice new house to prepare for the baby’s arrival in has been great. Renting means that everything DIY-wise is basically done for us. The downside of that is that we haven’t had the traditional pleasure of painting and decorating the nursery in preparation for the baby’s arrival.
So we decided in order to stop the baby’s room being a totally nondescript beige box, we’d commission an artist to produce a painting to liven up the room. We knew exactly the person for the job.
I’ve been friends with Sophie Green for a few years now. I could tell you just how highly I value our friendship, but I paid money for this painting so I’d better keep this on a professional art-buyer level (and not the soppy blubbing fool level).
Her recent work has included creating illustrations for children’s stories, and she has a great eye for the kind of bright bold designs that children love. Some of her recent art work has also involved repeated crowds of animals. We wanted something like that for Junior’s room. But with tigers.
Someday I’ll explain the tiger thing.
The painting came today, we adore it. I just love the fact that my son will grow up knowing this picture, and it’s not going to live in the nursery forever, it’s too good for that!
Nursery Tigers by Sophie Green
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You can see more of Sophie’s work at sophie-green.com.