Recent Entries

More on Iain M. Banks and a film review

This follows on from the last entry.

There's an interesting review of Iain M. Banks latest, and probably last,
science fiction novel, in number 243 of the British science fiction magazine
Interzone (the only SF journal I still read with any regularity, and
even that's pretty hit-and-miss). I just finished "The Hydrogen
Sonata," which, unfortunately, is not his best -- although I did enjoy
it. The review-author says there is "so much crammed into" the novel,
and in my opinion that's its problem: it's about so much it ends up
being about almost nothing, and I found it a little too light hearted
for its subject matter.

And for another review: I ended up not having to work over the weekend
so I just watched a DVD of "The Awakening," a BBC-produced ghost story
with lovely performances by Rebecca Hall and Dominic West. Set just
after WW-I, a London woman with complex motives makes it her business to
expose extrasensory phenomenon as hoaxes purpetrated by charlatans.
She's hired by a Master at an orphaned boys' school, housed in a Downton
Abbey-like manor house, to disprove the existence of the supposed ghost
of a long-dead boy who is scaring away the current class of boys and
(more importantly) their parents' money. Atmospheric and modestly
scary, the story features several surprises that are fully foreshadowed
in the plot. It got mixed reviews, and I don't disagree that the acting
is better than some elements of the plot, but I liked it a lot.

Enjoy!

-- Donald

Current Mood: sad

Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks

One of my favorite authors died last weeks - Iain Banks.

I’ve read probably half of his books, both mainstream and science fiction. He loved life and politics -- some of his "Culture" novels tried to work out how a liberal society could believably function with real people in the real world; unfortunately, Mr. Banks felt the need to set these works in the far future. He loved the outdoors and Scotland: he talked me into hiking in the Cuillin Hills and the West Highland Way over a pint in a small pub in Edinburgh. I consider his books “Walking on Glass,” “The Player of Games,” and “The Use of Weapons,” three of the best books I have ever read.

Iain was the master of rabbit-out-of-the-hat plots - without ever making you feel cheated. I'd thought "Use of Weapons" a good book, with a few places where the author indulged his light-hearted cleverness a little too much - until I read the last few sentences, when it turned into a fantastic and very serious novel that I recommend to everyone.

There is nothing light about his non-SF, which tends to be dark and gritty and edge-of-the-seat good - I love both Iains. As one Scottish writer put it, "We just lost two of our best authors."

I am about four-fifths of the way through his second-to-last novel. His last novel, out 20th June and which he did not live to see in print even though the publisher tried to rush it out before he died, apparently is about a man dying of cancer and is said to have been started before he himself discovered he had terminal cancer. I will miss having him in this world.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/06/remembering-iain-banks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks

The new Harry Potter film

They’ve taken what I consider the best book, and made by far the best film, almost (but unfortunately not quite) without a false note. The film is beautiful, dark, funny, and very well paced, with outstanding special effects that usually remain firmly within the story. The concentration stays centered on the teenagers, and their humor, cruelty to each other, and sexual tension are all spot on. All fantasy films should be like this. . . .

Highly recommended.

-- Donald

Donald's Trapeze class

Some of you know that I'm taking an occasional class in flying trapeze. It's true. Here are some pictures.

The description that follows the link is not for those with acrophobia! The rest of you may want to read before looking; the photos will probably make more sense.

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a269/DonaldFR/Trapeze/Trapeze_Donald

This all got started when one of my partners and her children got invited to a birthday party featuring what I understood at the time to be a chance to play circus, and asked me along. I didn't really want to go. I like to do real things, not preted to do things. (I find Disneyland and similar venues monumentally unattractive -- though I do like science fiction and fantasy, so go figure.) I let myself be talked into it.

The event turned out to be at a professional school called Circus Center. We all got little classes from experts in circus arts. I spent a couple of hours failing to learn to juggle; a few more learning that I am no more capable of tumbling now than I was in secondary school. I fell in love with the flying trapeze -- even though I don't generally do well with heights and never would have suspected this of myself.

We get fitted with wide fabric safety belts like cummerbunds, and given a serious lecture about never doing anything we are not told to do and of doing what we are told at the exact time we are told to do it. Helped by a teacher, we take a few practice runs on a static trapeze bar near the ground, identical to the one in the air. Then, we're off.

Dip your hands in chalk then climb something over two storeys on a rickety metal ladder attached to a scaffolding-like metal tower. At the top is a platform a little more than twice the width of a 2x4. The scaffolding extends above your head so that you have something to hold on to.

Clasp the two parallel metal bars of scaffolding, separated by maybe ten centimeters, on the far side of the platform, while the teacher attaches safety lines to the safety belt. Retain your grip on the back vertical with your left hand, let go with your right and rotate around so that your toes extend over the edge of the platform. Try not to look down while waiting for the teacher to hook the trapeze bar with a long metal pole and reel it in. When she says to, reach out with your right hand to grip the bar. While being held by your left hand and the teacher gripping the back of your safety belt, thrust your pelvis out over infinity. I try it several times until she is satisfied that I have it right.

One of the hardest things I have ever done was to let go of the scaffolding with my left hand to grip the other side of the trapeze bar. Now I am held onto the platform by nothing but the teacher's grip on my belt, plus my increasingly sweaty grip on the trapeze bar. I am seriously scared; my acrophobia cares not one whit that there is a net a long way down, somewhere between me and the even more distant floor. It is a good thing I had practiced the motions on the ground first, because I am in no shape to do much thinking.

The teacher says, "Ready." I bend my knees. She says, "Hup!" Almost in spite of myself, I let go the platform with my toes and fall out. The first time, I simply swing, and I am far too scared for it to be much fun. A teacher on the ground grips the safety lines, keeping them clear and untangled, while shouting precise instructions. When he says, "Ready to let go," then, "Hup!" I can't let go. I swing back and forth once more. On the up-swing, "Hup!," and I manage let go the bar and fall to a mattress lying on the net.

While watching the other people in the party take their turns, or not, I work up the nerve to try it again. The second time still is not much fun, but I know what to expect and have time to think and appreciate the experience.

By the third attempt, I am having fun, although I am still only swinging. The next step is to try and get your legs over the bar. My partner's daughters handle this easily. My old body is too stiff to get my legs between my arms, so they have me hold the trapeze bar with my hands close together and swing my legs around the outside of the bar, then over it. This turns out to be easier than I had expected from the test runs on the static bar. They call the order right right at the moment of free fall when my swing reverses, which, combined with the reversing momentum, swings my legs up almost of their own accord.

That's all fine, but I am unable to achieve the next step: letting go the bar to hang from my knees. It takes me three more classes to get up the nerve to do that. Again, this turns out to be much easier than on the ground; they make the call at a time when I am at the top of the back-swing and I float easily down without much shock.

The next step is to get efficient enough at this process so that one of the teachers can time your swings. Then, at the top of your and their swings, they grab your arms and you transfer to the other trapeze bar, being held by the teacher in a double-arm grip, who releases you to fall to the mattress. After that, you learn the body motions to keep your swing going and to time your swing -- which, apparently, are subtle and difficult.

I don't know how far I'll go with this, but right now I'm having a blast. Apparently they have students into their sixties. If anyone wants to check it out, the Circus Center school offers "drop-in" basic "flying" classes every Saturday and Sunday morning. (But call in advance; they do sell out.)

http://www.circuscenter.org/index2.html

http://www.circuscenter.org/classes/sched_reg.html

-- Donald

Plantar Fasciitis

Woodwardia asked me to write up something about Plantar Fasciitis for a Live Journal friend of her's. Since I know a lot of people with this problem, and am often asked about it, I'm posting this here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantar_fasciitis

I'm a performance dancer in a very physically demanding dance form. A few years after I started, probably in my late thirties, I got plantar fasciitis and had to take a six month leave from my performance group. I tried everything up to and including cortisone shots. Nothing worked. Then I met a sports medicine specialist at Kaiser who showed me how to live with the problem. Using the techniques I've described below, I've been able to live with plantar fasciitis, manage it, and keep dancing for almost twenty years. Unfortunately, doing this is not easy and takes a great deal of work every day.

According to the Kaiser doctor, you need to realize two things to deal effectively with plantar fasciitis. First, once you get plantar fasciitis, it _never_ goes away, it just hides for a while. You will have to manage it every day for the rest of your life. Second, you do most of the damage when you first get out of bed in the morning.

Managing plantar fasciitis means stretching. All the time. You can't possibly do it too often or too much. This is relatively easy for me, since I don't drive and I'm often waiting for a subway train or bus. I stand on a stair in the station with the heals of my feet hanging over the edge and -- very gently -- provide downward pressure. Another good stretch involves planting your foot on the ground and leaning forward against a wall. Anything that stretches the systems of muscles and tendons that go along the bottoms of your feet, up the backs of your legs, and over your buttocks.

For people who drive a lot, I think it must be much harder to integrate stretching into your life, but I would suggest that whenever you get out of the car, or in any other situation where your muscles were relaxed, lean against the car (or whatever) and stretch before you do anything else. If appropriate, consider standing at your desk at work, or in a meeting, and stretching while you work. The key is to make stretching so much a part of your everyday life that you don't have to think about doing it; you just automatically stretch throughout the day.

The second issue is getting out of bed. When you've been lying down for six or eight hours, your muscles and tendons are completely relaxed. If you suddenly use them when the tendons are inflamed, you encourage the inflammation.

My doctor had me take a towel or the belt from a robe and, while still in bed, lie on my back. I would put the belt around the bottom of a foot with the two ends of the belt in my hands and -- very gently -- raise my straightened leg off the bed until I could feel the tendon go tight. I would stretch each leg every time before getting out of bed -- even to go to the toilet. Being gentle is important because your tendons are relaxed and easier to damage. Since I have the plantar fasciitis under control, I no longer do this stretch, but I lean forward against the bed and stretch each morning. (Watching me this morning is when Woodwardia remembered to ask me to write this!)

Even after you think you are completely cured, remember that you aren't, and be sure to listen to your body. Keep stretching. At the earliest sign of renewed plantar fasciitis, increase your stretching and back off your exercise. That said, when you aren't injured, get lots of exercise. Keep your muscle tone up and your weight down, which reduces the weight your feet and legs must support and maneuver, and thus the stress on the tendons.

When the plantar fasciitis is at it's worst, do not put your full weight on the arches of your feet when barefootor or in unsupported slippers. Wear well-supported shoes from the instant you get out of bed. Get inserts with good arch support since those stretch the tendons on the bottom of your feet. If you can afford it, you might consider prescription arch supports molded to your feet.

Hope some of this helps. Good luck!

-- Donald

I FINALLY got some of my summer vacation phots posted. Enjoy!

The Outer Hebrides, the outermost archipelago of islands off the Western coast of Scotland.

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a269/DonaldFR/Outer%20Hebrides%202007/

--
Donald F. Robertson
San Francisco

DonaldFR@DonaldFRobertson.com
www.DonaldFRobertson.com

The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land. -- Thomas Huxley.

my Web site is finally back

I finally got it finished and re-posted over the weekend. It presents a selection of my articles, usually in their original form as opposed to how they were published.

http://www.donaldfrobertson.com/

As I am a writer, this is a text-based site meant to display manuscripts -- it is as basic as possible. I may replace some of the links with buttons at some point, and I might add a frame or two, but if you want fancy graphics and moving pictures, you should look elsewhere.

Although I did use a graphical front-end, most of the code is written by hand.

Enjoy!

-- Donald

Once - recommended movie

I took my mother out to the movies this weekend, and I'd heard that Once featured Irish music, so I suggested that one. It was not at all what I expected, but I hugely enjoyed it. It's a bittersweet love story done for Irish Television, set against the background of a group of street musicians who scratch up enough money for one last-chance recording session.

Everything about this film is as small as the title. The music is simple (what I would call coffeehouse folk, rather than traditional Irish), and both the A and B parts of each song are often based on four chords repeated over and over. The two main characters do not even have names (called just "boy" and "girl" in the credits). There is very little plot, with much of the film consisting of long recording sessions. Apparently, the film only cost 200,000 Euros to make and used non-professional camera equipment because they could not afford the permit to film in Dublin.

But, the very simplicity works very well for this film. The hand-held photography using the characters' faces to tell the story is wonderfully intimate. The music is very nicely executed -- apparently both main actors have their own bands in their day jobs. The barely-sketched love story manages to imply great depth. From the very first hilarious but sad opening scene, the film uses a dry and melancholy sense of humor that I fell in love with. Even my mother, whose interest and knowledge of music starts and ends with Grand Opera, loved it.

This is not a great film, but it is a very good one, and I recommend it especially for musicians and romantics!

One warning. Try to see this at a theatre where they haven't blown out the speakers with too much volume. I found some of the accents challenging, particularly the Czech heroine, but then I often have a hard time with accents. . . .

-- Donald

Michael Smuin

Today is a very sad day for me.

Many of us Scottish dancers still remember being extras on the set of "So I Married an Ax Murderer" at the Edinburgh Castle. Helena and I had been assigned to waltz over the mineature rail road tracks that held the camera without looking like we were waltzing over rail road tracks. I still treasure the memory of Michael Smuin (as I recall), or (more likely) one of his immediate crew, mumbling to us something to the effect of "nice waltzing." Shortly after that (I can't remember whether that time should be measured in hours or days), Michael Smuin collapsed of a heart attack on the stairs at the back of the Castle, not far from where I was standing.

He survived, and after a long recovery, he decided to stop wasting his post-San Francisco Ballet life doing choreography for bad movies, and started the Smuin Ballet Company. Yesterday, he had another heart attack during rehearsal, and this time he did not survive. There is an article about his career in today's San Francisco Chronicle, page one above the fold.

Michael Smuin has always been my favorite choreographer. He loved women and sex, and both interests heavily influenced his athletic and emotional dances. I, for one, will greatly miss his new work.

-- Donald

Turkey Photos

I finally got my photos up over the weekend. Enjoy!

http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a269/DonaldFR/Turkey%202006/

There were Roman buildings still in use, and romantically ruined cities on the tops of hills. I saw the Black Sea, probably for the only time in my life. Cappadocia was a Tolkenesque landscape of lava-tuft pillars with thousands of years of homes carved out of them. Snow-capped volcanoes loomed in the distance.

The people were wonderful, and, though I couldn't put a finger on why, I've never been a place where I felt less at risk of something being stolen. Maybe it's the "forbidden fruit" effect, but I found the women in their colorful robes and scarves and western rucksacks to be excruciatingly attractive.

The Anatolian Museum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Anatolian_Civilizations), with its incredible collection of Neolithic art was worth the trip by itself. (One day I plan to hijack Woodwardia and cruelly make her spend a long weekend there.) Most amazing was what may be the one of the first landscape paintings to survive, showing the Neolithic town of Çatalhöyük with a smoking volcano in the background (http://nhmag.com/index_feature.html), which accurately echos the real volcano visible today.

Turkey is a cat lovers paradise. Apparently, Muhammad liked cats, so, while people don't take them into their houses, they do take care of them. There was a butcher next door to our Pension in Istanbul. First thing in the morning, he set out newspapers over the sidewalk and put out the chicken slops. Soon there were many tens of cats, and, over the next half hour, more kept arriving. He stood over them and helped chase off the seagulls while they ate. Everywhere we looked, we saw swarms of well-fed, affection-starved cats. When we entered an outdoor "site," I would pick one up and pet it until we got to the end, then set it down. That said, I didn't see more than a hand-full of mature cats, so they must not live very long. . . .

In spite of its undoubted political risks, the upshot is that Turkey is highly recommended as a vacation destination, especially in winter. The weather was very like a California winter and I don't think we met a single other American. We heard that Turkey is hot and very crowded in summer.

-- Donald

Satellite Radio

Satellite radio seems to be popular all of a sudden. Since I was aware of the industry long before it was a available (I'm a space industry journalist, amongst various other careers), I was a very early adapter, and many people have asked me my advice. One of my best friends just did so. I thought I'd post a version of my response to forward to people who ask me in the future. So, if you want satellite radio, here are my entirely biased opinions!

------

Regarding satellite radio, the clear choice is Sirius, but the why takes a bit of explaining. First of all, on ideological grounds, Sirius was an entrepreneurial company that invented the idea. XM was backed by GM's infinite resources to crash the party when it looked likely that Sirius would succeed. So, if you have any affection for "the little guy," Sirius is (marginally) closer to that. [I should say up front that I own stock in both companies, but a lot more in Sirius, and I am also a customer of Sirius.]

If you listens to public radio, Sirius is your only real option. Since Sirius proposed the idea of Satellite Radio, and at first planned more niche programming than either service actually offers, they locked up the NPR and PRI contracts and XM is locked out (though they've tried to fake it by hiring ex-NPR employees to create their own station). Sirius offers a direct feed from both public networks.

Sirius also has the best technical solution. Their satellites are in Molnoiya orbits, which were invented by the Russians for military purposes, while XM's spacecraft are in geostationary orbit. The latter is cheaper and allows less complex equipment in your car, but it means the broadcasts come down at an angle. They can be blocked by buildings, mountains, or canyon walls. The further north you are, the greater the problem. To fix that, XM has installed lots of repeaters in urban areas, but if you do much traveling in the remote countryside, there could be areas of limited and broken coverage.

Molnoiya orbits are very close to Earth on the opposite side of the region you are targeting, and very high over (in this case) North America. By carefully spacing three satellites, one of them can always look more-or-less straight down into urban and rural canyons. Sirius needs far fewer ground transmitters and is likely to work better in rural areas. However, since the system must track three moving spacecraft instead of one fixed satellite, the car electronics are much more complex. Sirius ran into unexpected trouble making it all work together, were second to market, and have yet to fully recover. Another potential problem for Sirius is, while they do have a backup satellite, it is on the ground. If one of their satellites were to comprehensively fail with no warning (not a common occurrence but not unheard of), it would take time to get their backup into orbit and coverage could get spotty for that period of time.

Both signals can be briefly blocked by dense trees, power lines over the road, rural bridges and tunnels(obviously!), or very intense rain. I used to have noticeable problems with power lines, but that seems less noticeable now; maybe I'm just used to it. Also, when the radio ham next door was alive, I could not listen whenever he was using his equipment.

Both systems offer circa 150 stations, split roughly one-third talk with commercials and two-thirds commercial-free music. The talk gets less bandwidth, so when there is music on a talk station (e.g., NPR), the results can be relatively disappointing; I listen to Prairie Home Companion on the local broadcast! Disappointingly, both systems offer many tens of channels of the same crap you can get over local radio (e.g., a channel devoted completely to Elvis 24 x 7, or American Football, et cetera). That said, Sirius also has a channel of 24 x 7 BBC, a channel devoted to world radio stations (an hour each rotating between various country's shortwave broadcasts), three classical stations (pops, symphonic, voice, but alas they dropped their excellent chamber music station). They have circa five jazz stations, a blues station, and one devoted to musicals (though one friend can't stand listening to it because, instead of offering the entire musical, they play single songs). There used to be a folk music station, but the dropped that for a "coffee" house station. Nonetheless, my honest opinion is that Sirius' programming is a little better than XM's. While both networks’ lack of true niche programming is disappointing, as is the ongoing reduction in what little there is, I am still a mostly happy customer.

Best of all, so far, satellite radio is unregulated except for frequency use. The increasingly less subtle censorship found on broadcast radio is largely absent.

Regarding hardware, there are two routes. The more effective but more expensive is to get separate receivers and subscriptions (second subscriptions are discounted) for each site, i.e., home, car, and boat. The cheaper solution is to buy one receiver and one subscription, and move it between separate base stations attached to antennae at the three sites. It's been a long time since I bought our equipment, and things have undoubtedly changed, so you should go to a good audio or car electronics retailer and ask their advice for your particular situation.

Subscriptions are circa $13 a month. Sirius used to offer a $500 "lifetime" subscription good for the life of the radio (not your life!).

Satellite radio is going the same route as satellite TV. Is it everything it could be? No. Is it better than any of the alternatives? Probably, yes. Hope all that helps!

-- Donald