informage

I haven't posted anything about the Tsunami in Asia, because I haven't had anything to write. I haven't even known what to say or think. Up until today I felt quite removed from it, feeling that it was a horror I should really feel, but not having access to any feelings. Today I received a personal account from my friend Adrian Frielinghaus, who was holidaying in Thailand en route to Hong Kong to study. I didn't actually know he had been there, which made reading this all the more impactful. Anyway I felt that his account, understated as it is, should be preserved.

There's been a war of words going on for some time about the value, or lack of it, of Wikipedia. Tim Bray's writings on the subject do a great job of summing up the arguments, and I'm with Tim all the way. Wikipedia has become my first port of call when I'm looking for data, and only if what's there isn't satisfactory, I look elsewhere. Of course, as with any summarising secondary source, I'm well aware that when it really matters I need to go further in my research.

One huge benefit of Wikipedia that I haven't really seen mentioned is the availability of metaknowledge. What I mean by that is that every page has 'discussion' and 'history' buttons so that beyond the 'finished' article I can see how the article has evolved over time, and what discussions have led to that evolution. In fact I've now taken to looking at the discussion page for most articles I read allowing me to instantly take the temperature of the intellectual environment around a topic.

I recently read a couple of engaging blogs, both of which can (and possibly should) be read as a contiguous whole, something with which to while away those mundane back-to-work January afternoons.

First, Bob Harris went on a mid-life crisis journey around the world and wrote about it. He has some fascinating insights as a progressive American on the move. For obvious reasons I particularly liked the stuff on South Africa - although I don't agree with every word. Bob Harris did some stand-in writing on Tom Tomorrow's blog.

Second is she's a flight risk by Isabella V, international fugitive. I first saw this just after she started somewhere around a year ago, and was reminded of it by Jamie Zawinski. It's a fascinating story of a rich heiress one the run from her powerful family, hacking into wireless nets with her Linux-running laptop, hanging out with smugglers on tropical islands and just generally living a life less ordinary. One can't help but have doubts about the veracity of the whole thing, but apparently an Esquire journalist has met her for what that's worth.

(Jamie Zawinski - or jwz as he's known - is a bit of a geek legend, one of the early Netscape developers who now runs a nightclub in San Francisco. His blog is a fairly continuous stream of links to web exotica).

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece that began "I was brought up by a Feminist and a Marxist". That's actually a very crude simplification of the complex drama that was my childhood. Inevitably one of the key players was upset: my stepfather Mick felt that he'd been edited out of the script of my life. After writing that sentence it did cross my mind that Mick might appear to be omitted but I decided, as he had also at times identified himself as a Marxist, that he was covered. He of course doesn't feel that way. In actual fact I was brought up by a whole gamut of people, including my mother Hilary above all others, my father Martin for a few years at the beginning and intermittently thereon, my grandfather Arthur until his death when I was fifteen, my stepfather Mick from the age of nine or so onwards, my grandmother Inez and all the other myriad adults who impacted upon the person I have become.

At first I justified my simplified account as deliberately archetypal; to be read as a personal fiction rather than literal fact-telling. For example, there's also much more subtlety and complexity to my mother than just 'Feminist' and my feminist influences came from several sources besides her. Whilst talking this through with Mick I realised there was something else at work: a deliberate duplicity that I have learned to adopt in conversation to avoid getting bogged down, or even embarassed, by my quagmire of parental relationships. In many ways I do this to fit in. 'Normal' people have mothers and fathers, and like almost everyone, in my mid-teens I wanted to be 'normal'. Mick has been such an important man in my life that I often refer to him as my father, whilst in other conversations I will refer to Martin as my father. Some friends have learnt this and developed a routine of asking which father I am referring to.

Anyone who has kept an eye on my blog for a while will know that I took a long break from posting this year. In fact a quick look at the archives list on the right allows even the new visitor to discern this. Well I guess I should say something about that.

I had a tough year, no doubt about that. I split up with a woman that I truly believed was the love of my life in April. I spent much of the year processing that, dealing with the fact that the next decade is going to look a whole lot different from how I thought it might. Cape Town can be a tough place to feel depressed - the beauty is awe-inspiring, but I feel surrounded by a pressure to be living my perfect life. How can I not when the sea is so blue, the mountains are so beautiful, life is so good.

Probably not quite what you're thinking - I'm talking about networking up PCs as performance art. Sounds pretentious, but it was somewhat inadvertent, at least the performance element was. I spent today helping Wooloo's Thankyou project in Khayelitsha (Cape Town's biggest township). You can check their site for the full story, but basically it's a multimedia art exhibition occuring simultaneously in a New York gallery and a Khayelitsha shopping mall with webcam links between the two.

It pretty much came down to me to get the Khayalitsha side of things running. Which meant networking up 6 PCs, configuring some caching to speed things up and setting up the webcam and an upload facility. All on a bandstand in front of several hundred people with a DJ and some dancing mixed in to add to the performance experience. Quite an experience, lots of fun, but now I'm too tired to write any more. Anyway visit the site and release the rands!

I'm not big into television - in fact these days I never watch it. Except that is for certain specific shows - almost always on DVD or via BitTorrent - that get recommended to me as a notch above average. Recently one such show has been 24 (yup I caught on rather late). The recommendation came, rather insistently, from my friend Callan, as did the first couple of seasons worth of shows. If you haven't seen 24 - and you have any kind of appreciation for visual entertainment - watch it. It is superb, and that's all I'm saying on that.

More recently the rather unlikely candidate of the "re-imagining" of cheesy 70s space opera Battlestar Galactica has hit my radar. I hardly watched the original, but I had some toys and a book and loved the concept. This makes me the perfect viewer of what is seen as a travesty by the dyed-in-the-wool deep-nerd fans of "the original series" (TOSsers in online lingo). The new series takes the basic premise of the original, keeps the characters with the odd gender and ethnicity alteration to add spice, and basically retells the story as though it really happened rather than throwing out yet another piece of hammy space theatrics (*cough* any of the Star Treks *cough*)

The new Battlestar Galactica is to TV sci-fi what 24 is to TV crime thrillers. It has a gimmick (remake of a cult show, rather than the real-time of 24), it has the peerless Edward James Olmos (Bladerunner) where 24 has Kiefer, it has the gritty verité cinematography, it has the "no-one is quite who they seem" mystery appeal, it has top-class acting and character development, and it has the edgy minute-by-minute sense of crisis. In essence both shows manage the conjuring trick of combining a raw down-to-earth documentary feel with epic context and plot. Of course TV crime thrillers have always been a bit better than TV sci-fi, and indeed Battlestar Galactica isn't quite as good as 24. However it's the best sci-fi series I've ever seen, and I've pretty much watched them all. Long live Galactica!

I was brought up by a Feminist and a Marxist. This has its good and its bad sides. The good is that I was embued with a deep sense of equality and humanity and a strong critical sensibility. The bad is that it sowed within me a rejection of humans, of humanity, because I was brought up to believe that humans are bad. More specifically I was brought up to believe that men and capitalists are bad, but being a young man living in a capitalist society I interpreted this rather broadly.

When I was around 21 years old, after having been politically active in quite a negative way for some years, I had an epiphany about this. This wasn't sudden; it took place over the course of several years and arose out of a whole range of influences. The epiphany was this: humanity is wonderful.

"I am because we are" is the most elegant translation I've heard of the Nguni word "Ubuntu", where Nguni is the collective name for a group of Southern Africa languages including Xhosa and Zulu. It's a beautiful sentiment, sometimes also translated as "humanity to others", with implications that extend much further. It lies behind much that is deeply appealing about African culture. It's also the name of a new version of Linux.

Crikey - a 6 metre long granny-eating shark is on the hunt here in Cape Town. And who's to say it's just after grannies? Well I think that puts pay to any ideas about taking up surfing again. Or anything else involving any kind of proximity to ocean water for that matter. I can't help but think that the increase in chumping to attract sharks for "cage dive experiences" is making matters worse - shark attacks have increased significantly in the last few years - despite some lame protestations I've heard that it couldn't possible be connected. Yeah, right.

Talking of behemoths, our local brewery - no less than the largest in the world after swallowing those notable Wisconsin brewers whole - seem to have a rather nasty grudge against Justin. I don't know him that well, but he seems like a decent fun guy and certainly doesn't deserve this for having a rather clever light-hearted poke at a completely legitimate target.