March 2008 Archives

At last, a proper Gran Turismo game available for the PS3. Well, almost: Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is as close as we'll get for at least a year.

First impressions: It takes a looooooong time to install this game. I'd expect that if I'd downloaded it; not when I've gone out and bought a piece of plastic with the game on. Before that, even, I got 'connection to the server could not be established'. More on this later.

After the installation - during which I had enough time to make a pot of fresh coffee (bean to cup), prepare some lunch, put some washing on, clean up and change my clothes - the game actually starts. Another failed server connection later, we're in.

And boy, does it look good.

After a good gawp at the intro video, and letting it fly me through what I thought was one of its circuits - somewhere in Germany or Austria, it reminded me of Hamlyn in Germany (yes, the Pied Piper place is a real town) - I thought it might be good to have, you know, a go. Turns out it wasn't a circuit at all, just a photogenic place to show off the cars. Oh well.

The first thing I must do, it says, is visit the dealerships and buy a car. That's familiar. Also familiar is the reality of not having enough money to buy a decent car. Irritatingly, all the obvious choices for a first halfway-useful car are just a few credits too much. No Scooby, no Mitzi, no Elise, oh wait... I can afford an RX-8! Oustanding - One throbbing, veiny mid-life-crisis mobile, comin' at ya!

After numerous recommendations, I tried out Synergy on my desktop Vista machine and newly-installed Ubuntu setup on my Playstation 3. I was doing the whole multiple keyboard dance while installing Ubuntu, going slowly but surely insane using the wrong keyboard and/or mouse all the time.

Not any more. Synergy installed without incident, ran first time, and just works. One keyboard, one mouse, one shared clipboard, two machines across two operating systems and two hardware architectures. Awesome.

Arthur C. Clarke, one of greatest visionaries of Science Fiction writing, has died aged 90.

I remember reading his books when I was very young, and he opened my eyes to a world, indeed more than a world, of limitless possibility. He was the eternal optimist, champion of the human spirit, and an inspiration for generations of SF writers.

God Speed, Arthur. May your new journey be longer than you expect; and may the truth be even stranger than you suspect.

Months of waiting and hoping, reduced to a single line on a little test stick. It seems somehow callous, this little chemical marvel.

I can't think of anything to say that would equal how I feel about this at the moment.

An article in the Observer (pointed out to me by this slashdot article) quotes Britain's latest surveillance wheeze: Take DNA samples from five-year olds who are 'likely' to become criminals later.

The quotes are almost beyond belief (my italics):

'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.'

I'm a big fan of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and of course this idea is classic Ministry of Truth. It's almost funny; it would be actually funny if I had any faith in our Government to resist the execrable findings of fascist lunatics like Mr. Pugh.

Pugh's defence is that kids already give fingerprints. That's equivalent to "I've already punched you in the stomach, so it must be ok to punch you in the face". It's wholly ridiculous to take children's fingerprints; taking their fingerprints or DNA and storing it on a database forever - based wholly on the suspicion that the owner might at some indeterminate point in the future commit some crime - is not the action of a free society.

Ministers defend privacy invasions such as these on the basis that it's what people want. The moral bankruptcy of this stance offends me; as does its startling hypocrisy given the decisions this Government has made in direct opposition to the will of the people - Iraq being the obvious example. It is a Government's job to lead, not to follow. The Iraq invasion was wrong, but it was at least a leadership decision. Taking the mother of modern democracies into the realms of dystopian science fiction is not leadership, it is tragic stupidity.

I do not understand how an allegedly centrist-coming-from-the-left Government can indulge the organised, high-tech surveillance and cataloguing of its citizens. That this debate can even occur demonstrates a wholly unacceptable state of affairs. Something has to be done.

When the state treats its citizens as the enemy, the enemy is the state.

I couldn't wait for the official download, so I found it, downloaded it, verified the signature and installed it.

No drama. It just worked.



Everything is running fine. Actually it feels a little snappier. It'll take a bit more experimentation before I form any useful impression. It installed without breaking! That's the important thing.

Halfway through the two-week wait. It's torture. Every slightest change in her mood, her skintone, every ache, every pain, every tiniest shift in tone of her voice; everything is analysed and interpreted by us both, the people least qualified academically and emotionally to analyse or interpret anything on this subject.

Luckily I've had an all-consumingly busy week at work, and that keeps my mind off the waiting. Even then, it feels like an awfully long time since the scan.

It's very hard to keep an even keel. My emotions are all over the place. I want to seem excited for Sandra's sake and for her kids' sake, but I don't want to allow myself the luxury of feeling excited because a disappointment would then be all the more crushing.

Everything that can be done has been done. The effort has been made, the expert advice given, all the operations and scans performed, the samples provided, the drugs adminstered, the money spent. All we can do is wait and hope. I don't think I've ever felt so totally helpless before.

My partner and I are near the end of an IVF cycle. It's gone well so far, and all we have to do now is wait. It's going to be a long few weeks.

Embryo transfer was Saturday, two embryos were implanted. They gave us a picture. If this works, we have a picture of our baby or babies, age five cells!