Where Worlds Collide

Not quite as bad as last week’s episode, but still has the feel of a ‘filler’, with the only special effect being the CGI ‘scribble’, possibly the wierdest monster I’ve seen. They’re clearly saving the budget for the final two-parter that I’m not going to get to see

There’s a gross and unforgivable error with the trains in the background. At the beginning we clearly saw a pair of Central Trains class 170s. But the episode is supposed to be set in 2012, and as everyone should know, Central Trains is due to be abolished next year. The presence of a First Great Western HST and a Wales and Borders 158 probably gives away the fact that it was filmed in Cardiff even though it was set in Essex. D’oh!

Carl Cravens announces that he’s getting into publishing:

I’m starting a publishing company to publish Fudge-compatible PDFs, and eventually larger POD works.
…
Yes, I have a company name and I’ve registered a domain name. I’m not going to tell you the name until I have something to show. Gotta keep you in suspense about something.

What am I going to publish, you ask?

My focus is going to be on short, interlocking books… I’m thinking around 32 pages max, unless that turns out to not work for what I’m doing. They should be fairly affordable… maybe $5.50 for 32 pages. (More expensive per-page than 3rd Edition GURPS books… but we’re talking a niche market here.)

I’m going to start with a free “quick-start” fantasy rule set based on Fudge. It will be a “complete” rule set, with all the options set (no “toolkit” here), but it will be bare-bones. After that, I’ll be building a fantasy world, about 32 pages at a time. The opening book will be kind of like The Keep On the Borderlands… it will contain a little bit about the world, some detail about a specific area, containing an adventure and enough material to get you started. The world is one that my wife and I started working on a couple years ago… it’s familiar enough that your D&D-playing buddy will be comfortable in it, but it has enough twists and turns to keep things interesting.

Fudge really needs some decent settings. It will be interesting to see how this one turns out, especially when it’s published in small 32 page installments.

I’m tagged myself for the music meme from Eine Kleine Nichtmusik.

Like Rob, I’m a luddite and still have everthing on CD. I used the highly non-scientific method of picking up the first 20 CDs I set eyes upon (mostly the ones I’ve been listening to recently), then rolling a d20 to choose the song, rerolling if I selected an instrumental, or one where the first line contains the song title.

So here’s the list of first lines.

1. Too easy to explain, too easy to explain
2. Transient jet lag ecto mimed bison
3. Going up, coming down, and she counts every day
4. Even after all the days are gone
5. The ways, the ins and outs of heaven elude us to the end
- Mostly Autumn: Heroes Never Die
6. Coraz bilzej moment, gdy nie poznan juz siebie
7. József Attila: Reménytelenül
8. He captured and collected things and put them in a shed
- Porcupine Tree: The Creator Has A Mastertape
9. Is there anything good inside of you
- Frank Zappa: Andy
10. Queen of Light took her bow, And then she turned to go
- Led Zeppelin: The Battle of Evermore
11. Every day I have to look to the sun
12. You’re burning my heart, you’re burning my mind
13. Every time I leave you say you won’t be there.
- Queensrÿche: Jet City Woman
14. I still have questions with no answers
- Queensrÿche: A Junkie’s Blues
15. The stars are shining bright up here
16. Is this happening, is this fantasy?
- Blackmore’s Night: All Because Of You
17. Thoughts blow around in your head like a wind that pretends
- Mostly Autumn: Answer the Question
18. Lookin’ ’round for a feelin’ I love the rhythm and blues
- Journey: Lay It Down
19. It’s killing you, you’re killing me, I’m clinging on to my sanity
20. Morning people take the news, a paper window on the world.
- Renaissance: Can You Hear Me?

Yes I know there’s some real cheese in there. Most, if not all, are from artists known more for the music than the lyrics, and some are very obscure. There’s no Morrissey or Pulp to be found in this lot. And no, I don’t know what the two non-English ones mean.

As with Rob’s list, if you think you can identify any, put your suggestions in the comments box. I’ll post the answers in a couple of weeks. No cutting-and-pasting the lines into Google: that’s cheating!

Update: I’ve goofed on #7. The line I quoted was a title, and doesn’t form part of the actual lyrics. The first line is actually “Az ember végül homolos“. Strictly speaking it’s not valid anyway, because it’s spoken rather than sung. Full marks to Chadders anyway for recognising the poem!.

Amadán is sick of spam.

In the meantime, though, I am deleting anywhere from 3 to 20 posts a day from [expletive deleted] spammers. And the effort it takes to prune any blog comments of comment-spam is a significant discouragement. I would really, really, really like to see some innovative technology developed to do something to those [expletive deleted]. Imagine what the computing power of the NSA could accomplish if turned to good

A couple of days ago I found out that all (legitimate) mail to me from The Phoenyx was bouncing because of a new spam-filtering technique implemented by my hosting provider, which was unfortunately generating too many false positives.

Patrick Niesen Hayden of Making Light has been hit by 2500 email spams, almost all of which are bounces caused by the spammer faking his email as the reply address. Commenter Erik V. Olson remarks:

For all intents and purposes, the spammers have won. Nobody talks about stopping them, we all merely talk about how we shuck and jive and filter and block to keep email a valid means of communication, and more and more people are deciding that this is way too much effort for way too little gain.

I’m still fighting, with my own mailserver, but this domain will be my last one ever. If it gets spammed into oblivion, then I’m off the net, because I have better things to do than maintain block lists and spam filters, and [expletive deleted] if I’m paying for bandwidth so that the spammers can spam me.

I think any serious attempt to reclaim the Internet from the spammers can’t just focus on improved blocking and filtering techniques. It’s got to focus just as much on shutting down the spammers. Let’s have enough spammers in jail (or messily murdered) that the rest are sufficiently discouraged and find some other avenue of employment.

I don’t think you can make ‘spamming’ illegal as such; I think ‘Opt In’ vs. ‘Opt Out’ vs. ‘Existing Business Relationships’ contains too many grey areas to be meaningfully legislated for, as well as raising some free speech issues. What I would like to see is a lot of the methods and techniques used by the worst spammers made extremely illegal across all nations connected to the internet. I’m talking about the sorts of things no legitimate business could defend using, but without which the current level of large-scale spamming would be impossible.

Things like the following:

• Deliberate repeat violation of the TOS (Terms of Service) of any internet provider.
• Use of somebody else’s email address as fake return address.
• Use of false personal information when registering a domain.
• Use of any insecure third-party proxy servers without permission of the owner.
• Not just the creation or deployment of viruses to create ‘zombie nets’ (which is probably already illegal), but the use of these zombie bots.

I’d also like to see all existing laws regarding hacking and DDOS attacks specifically exclude sites run and owned by known spammers.

Oh, Crap.

Americans, don’t bother wasting valuable electrons downloading tonight’s episode.

There’s a theory that, in order to maintain the karmic balance, for everything that’s really good, something else has to really suck.

If the recent two-parter “The Impossible Planet”/”The Satan Pit” was one of the best, showing what the classic Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker years might have been like given a budget, then “Love and Monsters” is that episode that restores the balance.

It’s so bad I very nearly switched off halfway through. If I’d wanted to sit through a cheesy soap opera I’d watch rubbish like Neighbours. Most of the episode is a lame joke at the expense of Dr Who fans. The Doctor himself is reduced to a very minor cameo role. Peter Kay (who I personally cannot stand at the best of times) is smugly irritating as the stupid villain. He’s in the Jar Jar Binks league.

I really, really hope this stinker is a one-off, and doesn’t represent the moment when the whole thing jumps the shark.

Journey, Manchester Apollo, 5th June 2006

I get the impression from online discussions that many American rock fans don’t consider Journey a serious rock band. They’re known largely for the somewhat cheesy 80s power ballads that got played to death on American FM radio. Worse still, they’re the band your younger sister liked.

In the UK, where they never had a top ten hit, the have none of that baggage. People pay as much attention to their hard rockers as their ballads.

Journey hadn’t played Britain since (I think) 1980, which is perhaps one reason for their relatively low profile over here. Since Steve Perry reportedly disliked playing outside the US, they never toured during their early 80s heyday. Which is why they’re playing the 2700 seat Apollo theatre the night after Bon Jovi (who theoretically appeal to the same sort of audience) headlined the City of Manchester Stadium.

They did, however, have enough fans to sell out the venue in five days. The atmosphere before they hit the stage was electric with anticipation. Could the band still cut it so long after their commercial heyday? What would they be like with new singer Steve Augeri? He sounded impressive on the new “Generations” album, but how would he sound on Steve Perry’s songs?

Journey hit the stage at 7:45pm, very early for a headline band, and dispelled any doubts within minutes. They launched into a storming version of “Separate Ways” leading into two hours of superb hard rock. The band were superbly tight right from the beginning, but also rocked hard, playing one great song after another.

While they played all the big hits, of which there were a great many, they also played a lot of harder-edged album cuts. The setlist included oldies like “Wheel in the Sky”, some new songs from the excellent “Generations”, and virtually the whole of the 1981 “Escape” album, but little from the more lightweight “Raised on Radio” or “Trial by Fire”. I was especially pleased to heard “Mother, Father”, and “Edge of the Blade”.

Steve Augeri didn’t disappoint as a frontman. He sounded more like Steve Perry than Steve Perry, hitting all the high notes perfectly. Drummer Deen Castronovo sang lead on several songs, which threw me for a while because I couldn’t work out where the vocals were coming from when Augeri wasn’t on stage! He’s actually a pretty impressive vocalist in his own right; he was especially good with his powerful rendition of “Mother, Father”. Naturally, Neil Schon played plenty of his amazing shredding jazz-metal guitar, ripping the place up on almost every song.

Overall a superb show, proving the band are still on the top of the game even twenty years after their commercial peak. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another quarter century before we see them over here again.

It probably means I’ve been paying to much attention to American political blogs when I find things like Meet the Press in Hell screamingly funny.

Tim Russert: Thank you for joining us. Today on our panel we’re proud to have bestselling author and Constitutional expert Ann Coulter, and author and internet sensation Michelle Malkin. Our guest in studio this morning is Jesus Christ, leader of the Heavenly Host. Joining us by satellite is his opponent, Bob Satan, Chairman of the National Republican Committee for a New World Order, and author of the bestselling guides to conservative parenting, “Fatherhood: of All Lies” and “O-Me! O-My! O-Men! Raising Antichrists That Liberals Will Hate.” He joins us from the Green Zone in Megiddo. Mr. Satan, thank you for being here.

When it comes to the likes of wingnut harpies like Coulter and Malkin, mockery is the best approach. These people are trolls. Spluttering indigation is the reaction that actually want. Caustic parody, on the other hand, hits them where it hurts. Note how many of the lines in this parody are taken from actual smears of politicians and pundits that refuse to follow the freeptard world view.

Russert: Mr. Christ, what do you say to accusations that you’re opposed to fighting a battle to bring about the end of all life on Earth because you’re an Anti-Semite?

Jesus: Well, first of all, I’d like to point out that I myself am Jewish�

Ann Coulter: Yeah! Just like George Soros. Another Jew who somehow figured out a way to avoid crucifixion.

Jesus: I WAS crucified! (DISPLAYS WOUNDS IN HANDS)

Michelle Malkin: Why don’t people ask him more specific questions about the nails in his hands and feet? There are legitimate questions about whether or not they were self-inflicted wounds.

Russert: What do you mean self-inflicted? Are you suggesting Mr. Christ crucified himself on purpose?

Michelle Malkin: Did you read the book by Barabbas and the Golgotha Veterans for Truth? Some of the thieves who were actually crucified have made allegations that these were self-inflicted wounds.

Read the whole thing.

Yesterday morning I discovered a wet patch in the middle of the carpet. I hadn’t spilled anything, so this looked worryingly like a leak. First thoughts were that the radiator was leaking, so I turned it off. But the wet patch kept spreading. Even turning the water off at the stopcock made no difference. I immediately started moving stuff upstairs to prevent it getting soaked. It was at this point putting my ear to the wall I could hear running water. It was coming in from next door!

The next door neighbour’s kitchen and living room had an inch of standing water on the floor, with water coming out from under the front door. She also hadn’t been seen for a week.

In the end we had to call the police to come and break down the front door. They wondered whether the neighbour had drowned in the bath (she hadn’t), and traced the problem to a burst pipe in the kitchen.

The waterlogged carpet in my living room is probably a total loss. Unfortunately this means I’m going to have to dismantle the Wöminseebahn while a replacement carpet is put in.

Queensrÿche, Manchester Academy, 4 June 2006.

Sunday night saw the second of my three concerts in five days. This was Queensrÿche’s Mindcrime II show at the Manchester Academy. They’d played low down the bill at the Monsters of Rock festival on the Saturday, and Sunday’s Manchester gig was their only British headline show.

Queensrÿche are an extreme case of a band peaking early. Their third release, the 1988 concept album, “Operation Mindcrime” is rightly regarded as a masterpiece of progressive metal. The followup, “Empire”, was much more commercial but still packed a punch. After reaching that stage, most bands either hit a lengthy plateau or split up. Queensrÿche did neither. Instead they released a string of mediocre albums culminating in the dismal downtuned alternative rock sludge of “Q2K”. They’d become a pale shadow of their former selves.

Sensing that they’d hit rock bottom, they decided to revisit their past, and release a followup to that classic concept album. “Operation Mindcrime II” picks up the story twenty years later. Musically it’s not a patch on it’s legendary predecessor, although it wasn’t anything like as dire as “Q2K”.

Support was Roadstar, the band formerly know as Hurricane Party. They played a great half hour set of conventional but entertaining 80s-style hair metal. Let’s party like it’s 1987!

When Queensrÿche took the stage, my first reaction was “They look like U2″. Geoff Tate in dark glasses looked like Bono, with bassist Ed Jackson in the hat resembling The Edge, and Michael Wilton looking a bit like Adam Clayton. Only when Geoff removed the dark glasses he then looked like The Office’s David Brent.

For much of the set they were joined by guest vocalist Pamela Moore. She had played the part of hooker-turned-nun Sister Mary on the original album and reprised the role (as a ghost) on the followup. As well as the parts she sang on the records, she added a lot of backing vocals throughout the set. In songs like “Spreading the Disease” and “Operation Mindcrime” itself, she sang many of Geoff Tate’s lines, perhaps an indiction that Tate’s voice doesn’t have the awesome range of 20 years ago.

The Mindcrime II tour was billed as the two albums played back to back. I had some misgivings about this, fearing that the weaker “II” songs would make the second half a bit of an anticlimax. But the 90 minute set meant that they didn’t play the whole of the two albums. They played all of the original “Mindcrime” bar ‘The Mission’, ‘Breaking the Silence’, and the instrumentals, but only half of the weaker sequel. They moved the closing number of the original Mindcrime, ‘Eyes of the Stranger’ to the end of the set, which balanced things out a bit.

The quality was a bit variable. Opener ‘Revolution Calling’ sounded a bit thin, but the energy levels picked up considerably as the set progressed. The high spot was a theatrical version of “Suite Sister Mary”, a reminder that Pamela Moore was trained as an actress before becoming a singer. The hit ‘I Don’t Believe In Love‘ was a pretty powerful version as well.

For encores, they played a couple of numbers from “Empire”, the title track, and a decidedly messy version of ‘Jet City Woman’. Then they annoyed the audience by waiting for ages before turning on the house lights, making us think they were coming back for a third encore, since there were still ten minutes to go before curfew.

I’ve since read a really bad review of their performance at Monsters of Rock the day before. I don’t think they were anything like that bad in Manchester, but it was definitely a case of good rather than great.

Zappa Plays Zappa, 1st July 2006, Apollo Theatre, Manchester

When is a tribute band not a tribute band? When it’s lead by the late bandleader’s son, and includes several members of the original band? Zappa Plays Zappa is such a band.

Frank Zappa’s eldest son Dweezil put together a band including Zappa alumni Stevie Vai and Napoleon Murphy Brock, plus a bunch of young unknowns picked for their chops rather than name recognition, then, in the best tradition of Zappa senior, rehearsed them solidly for three months.

I only discovered Frank Zappa’s music in the 1990s, after he’s stopped touring. I can’t think of anyone else who’s successfully thrown rock, jazz, pop, classical and comedy into a blender in quite the way he did, and I never expected to be able to hear his music performed live. Until now.

The support was a 1973 concert film of Frank himself. As the film ended the eight musicians walked on stage and launched straight into the opening number (which was one of the few in the set I didn’t recognise!)

The setlist covered much of Frank’s lengthy career, but concentrated very heavily on the mid-70s, especially the Apostrophe(‘) and Roxy and Elsewhere albums. Since this is probably my favourite Zappa era, I’m not complaining. They played flawless renditions of favourites like “Let’s Make the Water Turn Black”, “Peaches en Regalia”, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow”, “Zomby Woof” and “Cosmic Debris”, as well as dazzlingly complex instrumentals like “The Black Page” and “Echidna’s Arf”. No “Dangerous Kitchen”, but with FZ’s vast back catalogue there’s now way they could possibly play everything.

Although it was probably Stevie Vai’s name that helped sell tickets, for my money the star was Napoleon Murphy Brock. He handled pretty much all the lead vocals, not just his own, but a lot originally sung by Frank himself, as well as some mean sax. Dweezil himself has matured into pretty impressive guitar player in his own right. To be honest I preferred his playing to Vai’s, which sounded a bit too clinical for my tastes.

The show was unfortunately marred by equipment problems part-way through, when Dweezil first lost his guitar signal, then got an electric shock of the microphone. “That wasn’t a nine volt battery!”, he exclaimed. It’s a tribute to the skill and showmanship of the band that they kept on playing, slotting in the keyboard and sax driven “Pound for a Brown” which didn’t need Dweezil’s guitar while they tried to fix the problems. They finally bypassed whatever box of tricked had failed and plugged the guitar straight into the amp, for a superb rendition of “Inca Roads”. Then there was a short interval while they checked the electrics for safety, before the band came back and played right through to the curfew without going offstage and coming back for an encore. Dweezil told us that “Sofa” was supposed to have been the end of the set.

The ghost of Frank returned for what was supposed to have been the first encore, as we were treated to archive footage of Frank soloing accompanied by the live band on stage; shades of the recent Frank Sinatra show in London.

A superb show, showing how a great band can still rise above equipment problems and still bring down the house. They head for America next.