Dave

Dave was not in a particularly good mood after having wasted an entire afternoon, then most of an evening visiting a potential customer and listening to proposals for a new design concept that was neither new nor practicable, nor even - in Dave's mind - really coherent enough to deserve the term "concept"... Why was it that people, customers really, always wanted something that was not quite possible? Why was nothing ever easy?

Dave mused on the injustice of the world as he drove back, alone in the dark.

So absorbed was he by these thoughts that afterwards he couldn't decide if the warning light on the dashboard had been illuminated for some time, or if it had just sprung to life when he noticed it. It was the red glow that he (finally?) noticed and he peered at the dash trying to make out what the symbol was. It looked vaguely like a tea-pot, but the dash was so mucky that the shape was obscured. Ignoring the advice of a long-forgotten driving instructor Dave reached one hand through the steering-wheel and wiped at it a few times.

There was a pop and suddenly smoke issued forth from the Dashboard. He recoiled with a startled squeak and let go of the steering wheel, watching in stunned disbelief for several seconds as the inside of the car filled with darkness. It made no sense - was the car on fire? There was no heat, no smell of burning; no flames. Before he could find a way to rationalise it the smoke, if smoke it was, started to clear, and he was able to see ahead again... The returning view brought with it the realisation that he had been driving without any regard to the road, or the bends and trees and inconvenient ditches that lay in wait for those who drove cars full of smoke. He snatched back at the wheel and simultaneously stamped hard on the brake pedal, resulting in several seconds of exciting gyrations and squealing tyres, culminating in a thump and a few moments of weightlessness as the car left the road before landing again and coming to rest at an odd but possibly not irrecoverable angle.

Dazed, but not badly, Dave took stock of the situation. The car had left the road backwards and appeared to be resting with the rear wheels in some sort of ditch, judging by the slightly elevated view through the windscreen. It seemed unlikely there was any serious damage, there had not been any really expensive sounding moments. He closed his eyes, leaned forward until his head rested on the steering wheel and breathed a sigh of relief.

There was a discrete cough, a clearing of the throat, from the passenger seat.

Dave's head snapped round, and without any conscious control he found himself pushing back against the driver's door, backing away from the impossible... thing... now occupying the passenger seat. The sight was preposterous... In the seat was a... a Genie.

"What the fuck?" spluttered Dave.

"Hello mortal. I am the Genie of the oil-warning lamp. I - "

"What?" interrupted Dave. "You're the what?"

"Salaam. I am the Genie of the oil-warning lamp. I am here to offer you three wishes, oh mortal"

It was too much to take in. With trembling hand Dave slowly reached out and poked an index finger into the naked stomach of the Genie. He expected it to offer no resistance, half-hoped that the image would fade away or retreat like an optical illusion, but no. His finger pushed into the Genie, and it felt like normal flesh; soft, warm and slightly greasy. He withdrew his finger and wiped it on his shirt. Then he made his first mistake.

"Fuck me" he muttered.

When relating this tale in later times Dave was never clear about what transpired in the next few minutes, preferring to gloss over the loss of his first wish with various tales even more unlikely than reality.

However, regardless of the exact details we will resume our narrative with Dave panting and swearing and the Genie readjusting his clothing and checking in the car's rear-view mirror the state of his left eye. It was probably going to develop a remarkable bruise. Dave certainly hoped so.

After an uncomfortable few moments of silence the genie spoke thus:"You have two wishes remaining, oh mortal"

"Two wishes? Two?" Dave spluttered. "You utter bastard! A moment ago it was three wishes! I wish you'd make your bloody mind up... Oh"

The Genie looked thoughtful for a moment, appeared to reach a decision, nodded and then smiled.

"My mind is now made up. I am quite certain you have one wish remaining, oh mortal"

Dave at least had the wisdom to bite back his instant reply. He considered for a moment.

"Bastard"

The Genie looked pleased.

"Well, does it have to be oil-related? Can I wish for, say, world peace? An end to conflict, eternal youth?" ideas began to form... "Success with women? What about Caroline?"

The Genie looked pained, and managed to convey with a sneer and sideways glance at the manufacturer's logo on the steering-wheel that both wishing for world peace and success with anything worthwhile were somewhat grandiose wishes for the driver of a Skoda.

"Be reasonable, mortal. I do have a certain familiarity with oil..." a look of distaste passed across the Genie's face, "... but that is to be expected after several years waiting in a sump. These modern times are hard for those indentured. But with anything else there are other factors and limitations, considerations and restrictions, provisos and requirements - "

"Oh, for fuck's sake! I wish it was simple..." As soon as these words left his mouth he paled. "Oh, shit"

The Genie looked thoughtful for a moment and then smiled.

"You have no wishes left, oh mortal. How much simpler can it get?"

And he started fading away, the car filling with smoke and deep, mocking laughter.

"Oh, you utter bastard!" repeated Dave, fists flailing at the smoke impotently. It was all too much; he'd be damned if he was going to be outwitted again. But what could he do? Already the smoke was fading as it rushed back into the dashboard. Dave tried to stop it by placing his hands over the hole, but he couldn't find it - the smoke rushed between his fingers and disappeared, apparently back into the surface.

Already the car was nearly clear, but suddenly he had an idea. Was there time? Flailing around he looked for some container - and wedged in the driver's door pocket was - yes! - a half-empty plastic bottle of coke.

Racing against time Dave tore at the lid, managing to unscrew it and shove the bottle into the flow of smoke before it completely cleared. He clapped his left palm over the top of the bottle just before the last threads of smoke reached the dashboard.

There was silence. Dave lifted the bottle, carefully keeping his hand over the top, and peered into the gap above the liquid. Was that a hint of smoke? He shook the bottle.

"Would you mind not doing that?" Said a muffled, irritated and markedly higher pitched voice from behind the dashboard. "It's sticky"

"Aha! Caught you!" Sneered Dave.

"No you didn't" Said the disembodied voice, but with an unconvinced tone.

Dave shook the bottle again.

"Stop that! Look, give me my... my... those... that... back"

"Shan't" said Dave.

"Be reasonable, you can't hold it closed forever"

Dave considered this. There had to be a way... He held the bottle between his legs and picked up the top in his right hand. He considered quickly moving his left hand out of the way and putting the top on, but it seemed problematic. There was an air of expectancy, as if the Genie was waiting for this move.

"Just try it", it said with an air of smugness.

Still holding onto the top, Dave lifted the bottle again and inverted it, so that the coke ran to the bottom.

"What are you doing?" said the voice, but Dave ignored it. The smoke was now trapped above the coke, and with a grin Dave let the top fall into the fingers of his left hand, then slid the hand so that the top was on the bottle and tightened it. Some coke ran out during this process, but the smoke remained. He shook the bottle.

"Now, let's go through this whole three wishes thing again, shall we?"

Profile text...

An amusing thread from facebook, when I was trying to figure out what to say on a dating site...

The pigeon

So, I'm driving along on a quiet country road at about 3am and as I approach it a lump of stuff in the road that I'd thought was litter resolves into a young pigeon. It's sitting right in the middle of the lane and I can't slow down in time to avoid it, so I aim right at it to make sure the wheels don't get it, and hope - though not much because I assume that it's going to panic, fly up and get killed...

Nope, I go right over it and looking in the mirror I can see it hasn't moved at all. So I carry on for a bit, pondering, and then turn round and drive back. It's still there. 

I roll to a stop level with it, open my door and peer down. I'm so close I could lean out and poke the thing if I wanted to. It looks back, head tilted to one side as pigeons do, clearly unimpressed but apparently uninjured.

"Move, you stupid bird... You're going to evolve out if you stay there"

It thinks about this for a few seconds, moving its head from side to side as it considers me, then grudgingly gets up and wanders off, very slowly, round the back of the car.

I'm now facing the wrong way so I drive down the road a bit, turn round, and head back again... And the stupid bird is back where it started.

I'm not going fast this time so I stop. The bird sits there unperturbed. I flash at it - nothing. I blip the engine - no reaction... So I turn the car off and get out, and as soon as I stand up and it sees I'm a human and not just part of the car the damned thing squarks and flaps off into the trees in complete panic.

A ton of metal driving right over it, loud noises and lights don't frighten it, but I do? Charming...

There are some strange people in the world.

I just went outside and moved the car onto the high street, where it would be out of the way in the morning. I'm half asleep but it needed moving, I'd had to leave it parked on the pavement earlier.

And when I'd moved it and got out I noticed a worm on the road. It has been raining and the damned thing had probably been rained out.

So, I feel sorry for it because it's clearly going to die there and I crouch to try to pick it up. It resists... I start muttering at it...

"Come on, you stupid bugger, I'm trying to help you. Stop squirming. Stop it. Behave! Oh, for fuck's sake cooperate!" and so on.

At which point some guy with a dog wanders past. Looking disturbed about something.

I realise that being crouched in the middle of the road appearing to be talking to myself might be a little out of the ordinary so I look up, smile and say "Worm" by way of explanation.

This does not have the desired effect; he recoils and gathers in the dog hurriedly.

"I'm just... It's... Um. They drown, you know..."
"What?"

"Worms. Not very good swimmers"
"What?"

"Worms. This worm. It's lost, I'm just... Oh..." I said to his rapidly retreating back.

I get the impression he thought I was weird, which is strange really considering I'm not the one carrying a bag of warm dogshit home...

Conservation

[muses] Conservation... We're all missing something and I think it threatens the well being of future generations - it's all very well to speak of trying to preserve natural resources, to strive so that there will still be the occasional tree where entire rain-forests once stood, or a couple of fish in the sea or maybe even a few drops of oil preserved behind glass for our children's children to marvel at, and indeed there are even people who do more than speak of such things and actually act in some way calculated to encourage others to do something about it. But these physical threats to the future are as nothing to the threat hanging over us all... the overconsumption of Ideas.

Ideas are being used up at an ever-increasing rate, and natural reserves of ignorance are dwindling... In the time it has taken you to read this several new ideas will have been used up, ideas which cannot be replaced... Nobody is even trying to conserve as yet unexplored ideas for future generations - indeed the entire effort of the scientific world is directed to rooting out fresh ideas and having them, getting them down on paper and claiming credit for them. Completely ignoring the fact that there are only a limited number of ideas in the world and once had they can never be un-had again, short of a collapse of civilisation... I think these people need to be stopped. Someone needs to stand up and defend wilderness areas of ignorance so that our children and their children's children can experience the joy of discovery for themselves...

Oh, bother and dammit... That was an original idea, wasn't it. One more gone then. Oops...

And what do we do with the toxic waste dumps of dangerous ideas? Continue to put them in libraries and just hope nobody ever goes there? This is utterly irresponsible... 

It's not like nice, safe nuclear waste which decays - a dangerous idea doesn't have a half-life... they're not just dangerous for a while, they remain dangerous forever. We're still paying the price for some of the first dangerous ideas ever had... religion... marriage... photographing cats... coffee...

Radio Gaga

A few years back a guy called Trevor Baylis "invented" the clockwork radio and received far too much attention for this, considering how many hundred people must have connected clockwork motors to dynamos before, and so despite the fact he's probably quite a nice guy I have occasionally grumped about him and the publicity he received. And about the fact the radios were crap - the clockwork made so much noise you could hardly hear the radio, and there were other design flaws.

I know this because despite my misgivings I bought one, mainly because the sales here subsidised the radios in the developing world, where they were actually useful, but also as a present for someone.

Well, the damned thing died a while back and I was asked to look at it.

So I did... The clockwork in it is powered by a coiled spring. A big spring. A damned big spring, not to put too fine a point on it, made of spring-steel about an inch wide and several metres long that has nasty, sharp edges and a very bad attitude.

 

This evil bugger basically wants to spend its life wound one way on its home drum and when it is there it's nice and happy and contented. But that's what it wants, not what it gets - what happens is that when you wind the thing up you are taking this vicious piece of steel, waking it from its slumbers and uncoiling it off one drum and coiling it backwards - painfully, I suspect - onto another... This it does not like... 

In this backwards state it contains a significant amount of energy, which is released as it unwinds itself again. This is where the power comes from for the radio... A whole set of gears and pulleys and what-nots exists to tame this evil little bugger so it unwinds slowly in a controlled fashion, over ten minutes or so, rather than what it would like to do, which is explode off one drum, lash about like the demented, razor-edged tape measure from hell that it is - destroying and lacerating everything nearby - before ending up panting and smirking on the other drum.

You may gather I have had some experience with clockwork coil-springs before. I don't trust them.

So, I am given this radio and I ask what's wrong with it. Maybe it's something simple. Maybe it's the electronics. Maybe the spring has broken and I need not worry about it. Is my luck that good? Of course not.

"What's wrong with it?"

"I wound it up and it won't go"

"Won't go?"

"No. I wound it up and it doesn't go round. The bit at the back that moves isn't moving... Actually, I think I might have wound it up too much."

"Too much?"

"Well, I wound it as much as normal and it didn't go so I wound it some more. And then added a couple more turns. In fact, that was yesterday, it still didn't work today so I tried harder again and then I might have forced it round a bit. Quite a bit actually, now I come to think about it..."

"Oh... great... I'll just look at it then, shall I?"

I take the radio with some trepidation and peer into it... Mr Baylis was so proud of his idea he had them made with translucent plastic so you can see the innards. The clockwork is clearly visible... My heart sinks. The spool that the spring would be on if it was safely run down is empty... The entire spring is coiled up on the other spool, poised and ready to pounce... it is so tightly coiled that it's half the diameter I expected. I'm amazed they could get so much spring in so little volume. In my mind's eye I can see beads of sweat glistening on it as it suffers... this spring isn't poised, this spring is on the rack being tortured. This spring is pissed off. This spring is out for bloody vengence and looking for someone to murder.

But - all is not lost - I see that Mr Baylis (not being a complete idiot) has enclosed some of the clockwork - including the spring - inside a separate box, for safety... I may be able to open this bloody thing and live, after all... So I do.

I take the screws out and gingerly open it. There's a red warning sticker on the inner separate box, which says "Do not open, danger of death", but I have no intention of opening that, I've seen what spring-steel can do. I gently ease the electronics away from the mechanics, which creaks, threateningly, but doesn't go for my throat... I touch a gear, nothing happens. I poke at another gently and nothing happens - the clockwork is locked solid. I relax slightly - in fact I can see the problem immediately - one of the gears has failed, some teeth are broken and the bits have jammed in the mechanism.

Relaxing completely, I put the thing down on my lap. At which point all hell breaks loose. There's a bang and the fucking thing spits a gear out at me - this hits my glasses and flies off across the room - but I couldn't care less about that because the rest of it is jumping about on my lap. It starts emitting parts with wild abandon and the scream of machinery speeding up as various remaining gears spin faster and faster out of control... I join in with a little scream of my own, not that this helps much... Another part flies off and the spring starts making determined metallic unwinding noises - fuck this! I want it off my lap now before the bugger gets out and slashes me - so I flail at it with my hands and try jumping backwards out of the sofa from a sitting start... this at least gets it off my lap, but the damned thing hasn't finished with me yet - it lands on my feet and some vile spinning part catches and starts ripping one of my socks off... "Waaa! Fuck off! Fuck off!" I scream at it, and manage somehow to simultaneously pull one foot out of the sock and kick the damned contraption with the other, while still in mid air. I'm sure the law of gravity was repealed temporarily... But after a moment gravity reasserts itself and we both land heavily, separately this time, thank the gods, and I sit there in shock and watch as it munches the sock while dancing victoriously around on the floor. After a while it slows down and stops, but not until - with one final, triumphant twanging noise - it catches a dangling wire and rips it out of the electronics, breaking the circuit board.

I survey the damage. I am bleeding from several cut fingers, one quite deeply. The radio is a complete ruin, especially after I have finished stamping on it to make quite sure it is dead.

I hate clockwork.

All the ships sank...

Artwork

For some reason I decided to paint an alien flower... an experiment in faking depth using layers and blur, mainly, which explains the terrible composition.

Life, the universe and nothing...

I have always - since childhood - been of the opinion that the universe must have required no information to start with. This is obvious; where could that information have come from? If from outside the universe then change the boundaries of the definition of "universe" to include that place and repeat the process... at some point the whole shebang started with no information.

This forced me to assume that many parallel worlds existed before I knew about the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum physics, and my reasoning was as follows:

Consider a toy universe, that contains nothing but a light switch and an observer. Oh, we'll throw in a light as well and some kind of power source and so on.

Now, suppose that observer sees that the light is on. They then find themselves in the position of wondering how it came to be on - and no doubt given time they'll create a cosmology of a loving god that created the universe with the light switched on so they could read the instructions. Pity there aren't any, I forgot to supply them.

But however they look at it they can't avoid the fact that their universe contained at least one bit of information at the beginning - the fact that the light was on.

But suppose that this isn't the whole of that toy universe... suppose it has another part with an observer (identical to the first) and a light,etc, but here in this part the light is turned off. Again they'll come up with a cosmology of a creator - maybe after a lot of fumbling about, and it'll be regarded as a bit of a bastard this time, I suspect - that created the universe with the light switched off.

But however they look at it they can't avoid the fact that their universe contained at least one bit of information at the beginning ie the fact that the light was off.

But to something that understands that this universe is a multiverse, with the light both on and off, there is no need for that initial bit of information. Their reality contains no information about that switch, when taken as a whole.

What the observers see as information is simply a function of their limited viewpoint based on where they are in the multiverse, it's not information intrinsic to the multiverse as a whole. They think that their reality is more highly specified than it actually is...

This is how I've thought our reality works for a long time; I've pretty much always thought that the universe must have required zero initial information and the old question of "why is there something rather than nothing" is fundamentally resolved by the fact that "nothing" is a much more highly ordered state than "everything" - there is, after all, only one single way for there to be absolutely nothing. That's as ordered as it's possible to get ;)

If the multiverse contains every possible outcome of every possible 'decision' then it's as disordered as possible, and in my casual usage of the terms here contains no information at all. Oh, sure, there's a *fuck* of a lot of it out there, but what evidence do we have that reality is bothered by questions of scale?

The Case of The Curious Ukulele

"When you have eliminated the impossible, Watson..." said Holmes, reclining in his chair, "When you have eliminated the impossible..." he paused and looked distracted for a moment. "When you have...Hmmm..."

"Then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" I supplied for him. Sad as it is to relate the simple fact is that as the years advanced he was becoming forgetful.

"What? Don't be obtuse, Watson! All sorts of irrelevant facts remain, all perfectly possible but entirely unrelated to the matters in hand. Really, I do not know why I have put up with you for so long. You are not as young as you once were, you know". With this he took up his ukulele and started absently picking out notes.

It was with a sense of resignation that I sat back and resumed reading the paper. While I am certain that my friend held me in high regard he rarely allowed these feelings to surface. After a painfully long time attempting to tune the instrument Holmes put it down and sighed.
"It is no good Watson. It is just no good..."
"Well, it would help if you had all the strings. We could afford a new set"
"No. It was not the deficiencies of the chordophone to which I was referring. It is this new case - there are..."
"You have a new case?" I interrupted "But what about the restraining order? I understood you had agreed to be bound over to - " I saw the look in Holmes' eye and stopped.
"And I thought we had agreed not to mention that again. The subject pains me"
"I'm sorry"
"It was an easy mistake to have made. When matters reach a head it is time to act, Watson, one cannot delay! One must seize the moment!"
"Indeed, Holmes" I placated, "Seizing the moment is fine. Seizing the moment is good. It was your seizing of the woman which precipitated all the unpleasantness".
Holmes shuddered. I wondered if he would ever again hear the phrase "The woman" without shuddering.
“It was an accident, Watson. A mistake anyone could have made – seen from behind she distinctly resembled Moriarty".
"So you say, Holmes, so you say. In point of fact you said so at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if that is why she insisted on pressing charges"
"Possibly, Watson. But one need only look at her to see she was -"
"A woman?"
"Yes... No! A troublemaker, Watson. It was clear from the moment I set eyes upon her. And it was very unsporting of the prosecution to mention her wheelchair. But let us move on. I do not wish to discuss the subject further"
"Indeed. Consider it closed."

Holmes stood up and began pacing the room. “Women, Watson – it was easier when they had the common decency to dress differently. These days... I sometimes think we have lived too long, we are in these times but not of them”.

When these dark moods settled on Holmes it was usually best to ignore him. I mumbled agreement and feigned interest in the paper. Holmes wandered the room until, as I was afraid would happen, he went to stand in front of The Picture.

It was hung in an alcove, with a couple of curtains in front of it that were seldom opened. I heard these being moved and shuddered. Without looking up I knew that Holmes would be intently studying the image I could not even bear to look at. Not that I needed to, it was as clear in my mind as the day when it had been painted – in this very room. Holmes then had been at the height of his powers, and had reluctantly agreed to be painted “for posterity”. How ironic that remark seems now, nearly one hundred years later. After the pair of us had been committed to canvas – Holmes a somewhat enhanced dashing figure, his ever faithful Watson looking both ever faithful and constipated – Holmes had hung the picture and we had forgotten about it. And that, I suspect, would have been the end of the matter, with us now both gone to our reward and the picture gathering our dust had not Holmes challenged Aleister Crowley to prove he was not a charlatan.

“You are right, Watson... It does seem a preposterous way to settle a dispute” Holmes said, quietly.
“Holmes! How could you possibly know what I was thinking?”
“A simple matter. From the moment I started contemplating the painting I could tell you were thinking of the day we were cursed”
“But how, Holmes? Surely this requires nothing less than the telepathic arts!”
“Not at all. I could speak of subtle changes in muscle tension, unconscious movements, the eyes especially can tell a trained observer everything - “
“But damn it all, Holmes, your back was turned! You couldn't – ah... You saw everything reflected in the glass”
“Well, that is a valid theory, but in this case it was enough to hear you tearing at your paper and cursing Crowley under your breath”

“Ah. Yes, I see”. Gritting my teeth I stood and joined him in front of the accursed picture. Over the years my image had progressed from constipated to moribund, but was still recognisable. But disturbingly Holmes' image was distorted beyond recognition. It was barely human. I have often wondered why the two age differently, but remain none the wiser.

“I wish I had never lent him that damned book” said Holmes. “That's what gave him the idea. And if I had known in advance the perils of immortality I would have given some thought to who was included in the picture. I'm sure some room could have been found for Mrs Hudson – the modern world is not entirely without merit - “ he gestured towards a pile of empty pizza boxes, though perhaps he intended the laptop sitting on them “ - but you cannot find a domestic servant worthy of the name”

Obviously the pain of his last attempt was still fresh. When seen in hindsight the placing of an advertisement for a 'gentleman's gentleman of discretion' had been ill advised.

I returned to my seat. Behind me Holmes closed the curtains over The Picture and started pacing again. He stood for a while in front of the trophy wall – some would say it was in questionable taste but after the case known to the world as “The Hound of The Baskervilles”, and to Holmes as “That Damned Dog” he'd had the head of the beast responsible stuffed and mounted on the wall, and now used it as a hat-stand.
He'd had the head of the hound mounted as well, further down.

I decided it was time to lighten the mood. “You mentioned a new case...”
“Yes?”
“Is it for the ukulele?”

There was a moment of silence. Holmes glanced towards the mantelpiece where his tobacco pouch was weighed down by his webley revolver. “I think, on the whole, it would be for the best if you were to go out for a few hours, Watson. I would like some time to myself”.

“Is -” I started.
“No! The game is not afoot!” Holmes shouted. “I said that one time! Once! And now it's 'Is the game afoot' every time anybody leaves the room!”

I stood to leave.

“No, Watson. Wait. I have had an idea. Something that -”
“Is it related to the case?”
A strange look passed across his face. “Yes, Watson, you might indeed say that it is related to the case, or rather to your mention of the case – wait here a moment. This will not take long”

Holmes left the room and returned a few minutes later holding a small glass tube, which he handed to me. I held it up to the light – it appeared to contain a  few ounces of an oily yellow liquid.

“Now Watson – no! Don't shake that! Not yet, anyway. Now, what you have in your hand is the result of my latest research into the nitrating of glycerine. I think it will prove to be of inestimable importance. What I would like you to do, my dear Watson, is to take this and empty it into the Thames. Somewhere quiet. You should be alone and unobserved – do you think you can manage that?”
“Certainly Holmes!”
“Now – this is important – the contents will settle, so you must give it a good shake just before you release it”
“For how long Holmes?”
“Oh, as long as it takes, Watson. As long as it takes! All will be revealed in good time”

His humour visibly restored Holmes returned to his chair and picked up the Ukulele. I left the room to the twang and curse of the final string breaking.

Life rarely proceeds as we expect, and I was in a considerably perplexed mood when I returned to Baker street later that evening.

I was greeted by loud music and when I opened the door to our rooms a bank of sweet smelling smoke looking for all the world like the fogs of old rolled out into the hall. Holmes had clearly been at the incense again. But of him, there was no sign.

Now, I have often had cause to remark on the skills Holmes has with disguise, so when the door to his room opened and what was apparently a young and scantily clad girl emerged, I was not fooled as many others would no doubt have been.

“Holmes! If I did not see it with my own eyes I simply would not believe it!” The young woman blushed. “You have excelled yourself!”

“I think you should let her be the judge of that” said Holmes, somewhat coldly, as he followed her out. “I wasn't expecting to see you back... so soon”

"Holmes! I, ah..." Not knowing what to say I sat and attempted to find something of interest in the paper. Holmes showed the young woman, presumably a client, to the door where I heard them exchange a few words and, judging by the rustling of paper, a quantity of money. This was indeed welcome news - our finances recently had been tight.

"So, Watson, am I to take it from your expression that you met with some difficulty?" He said, as he closed the door and crossed the room to stand next to the fireplace.
"Indeed Holmes! You see everything!"
"I see you, Watson, which is more than enough for the moment. And I also observe that you are holding that paper upside down. Still, I doubt it alters the contents of the Daily Sport significantly". Saying this Holmes picked up his revolver and casually inspected the cylinder "As a matter of interest, what became of the... glycerine nitrate?"
"Well, Holmes, there is the thing..." - as I spoke I reached for my pipe. It was not in the usual pocket and as I patted the others an inexplicable change took place in Holmes. The colour drained from his face and he reeled back against the wall. "Stop!" he squeaked before diving behind his chair.

Such was the speed and unexpectedness of his movement I was slow to react, and remained seated. A moment passed.

"Ah. Watson. Yes... My mistake. You were searching for your pipe, were you not?"
"Indeed!"
"I, ah, thought I saw it behind the chair. But I was mistaken. Pray continue"
"Well, Holmes, I - are you going to remain there? I have found it"
"Yes, Watson, please continue. I can hear you perfectly well from here. The acoustics of this room make this position ideal, in fact."
"If you say so, Holmes. Well, in accordance with your instructions I set out to find a quiet place to release the liquid but I was unable to find anywhere where I was not being observed."
At this Holmes muttered a few words under his breath, but I was unable to catch them. Perhaps the acoustic properties of the room were uni-directional.
"In fact I began to realise I was being followed!"
"Followed?"
"Yes. It was the same man in several different locations. I could tell because he had a wooden leg"
"A what?"
"A wooden leg. And a parrot - though the parrot was - "
"You were being followed by a pirate?" Holmes looked round the side of the chair. "I want you to be very clear about this, Watson. You claim you were followed by a man with a wooden leg and a parrot? Was alcohol involved?"
"Holmes!"
"And this parrot. Was that also wooden?"
"As a matter of fact, Holmes, it was inflatable - I have it here, see for yourself". I produced the parrot with a flourish and laid it on the table.

There was a sad wheezing noise as the last dregs of air escaped from it.

The effect on Holmes was profound. He rose from behind the chair, moved round and fell shakily back into it, without his gaze leaving the parrot at any point.
"Holmes? Have you met this parrot before?"
"Never mind the parrot, Watson! Tell me everything you noticed about the man!"
"Well, he was - good grief! Surely you don't think it was - Moriarty!"
"Moriarty? No... " Holmes said with a quiet conviction and intensity I didn't register at the time.
"Only, well, I don't know how to say this, Holmes, but we've all come to doubt that Moriarty exists" I said. This was a subject I'd been meaning to broach for some considerable number of years and now seemed like the right moment. "Lestrade - you do remember Lestrade? He noticed that if you rearranged the letters of the name 'James Moriarty' you could form the words 'My Major Satire', and well, as nobody but you has ever actually seen Moriarty..." My voice trailed off. Holmes had raised his revolver and was pointing it in my direction.
"Watson, this is a webley 45. The most powerful revolver in the room. It could blow your head clean off... I'm sorry. I've always wanted to do that. Now, Watson, as you value your life - tell me about the man!"
"Well, he had one leg. And the parrot, and he - "
"Watson! For once in your life I need you to focus!" Holmes leant forward in his chair and with a terrible intensity demanded "Was he foreign, Watson? Did he have an accent!"
"Foreign? Well, yes, he was Swedish"
"Swedish? Are you sure? Swedish?"
I nodded and Holmes relaxed. "Thank the gods, Watson, thank the gods. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble".

Holmes withdraw a handkerchief from an inside pocket and wiped his face. It was such an uncharacteristic show of emotion that it left me feeling as if I had witnessed the changing of an age, an event of cataclysmic importance.

We sat in silence for a few moments, taking stock. I noticed that the handkerchief was decorated with the initials JM and resolved to ask Sherlock about this at some point, but it was clear he was shaken and would not welcome any questions at the moment.

I reflected that it was some time since I'd thought about Lestrade, tragically killed in the prime of life by an explosion at Scotland Yard, one of many such in those dying years of gas lighting. How prescient of Holmes it had been to invest so heavily in the new electricity companies. But then with his remarkable powers of deduction who is to say he might not have anticipated the problems gas would have.

"I haven't thought about Lestrade for years, Holmes. Or the accident. Strange to think how many people we knew who were killed by gas explosions. A good thing electricity came along when it did, eh?"
"I'm sorry Watson, what did you say?"
"I was saying that it was a good thing electric lighting came along when it did. Do you remember the days when one couldn't light a lamp without fear of explosion?"
"Indeed, Watson. Which reminds me - what became of the glycerine?"
"Ah. Well, there is the curious thing, Holmes. It was stolen"
"Stolen?"
"Yes. By the pirate - I say - I suppose we could say it was an act of - "
"Let us not, Watson. Let us not. I presume it was during this exchange that you came to be in possession of the parrot?"
"Exactly!"
"Well, let us examine the bird"

Holmes lifted the parrot and extracted his trademark magnifying glass from a pocket, then began a meticulous inspection. As was my habit I watched the proceedings in silence - I didn't have the heart to point out that the lens had fallen out again and was presently to be found on the mantelpiece where I usually left it - Holmes was a little sensitive on the subject of his eyesight.

"Aha. As I suspected, Watson, this bird was made in China. And... What is this? The price sticker is still attached. And from this we can...we can..." There was a long pause, then Holmes replaced the parrot on the table.
"Watson?"
"Yes?"
"A thought occurs, Watson. You say he was Swedish... On what do you base this conclusion?"
"He said so, Holmes"
"He said so?" Holmes sat forward in his seat.
"Yes. He said, and I believe I can repeat it verbatim, 'I am just a salty Swedish sea-dog'"
Holmes sighed and passed his hand over his face.
"Strangely, though, now I come to think of it - he said it in a French accent"
"Well, in that at least I believe you. The price on the parrot, Watson, is in Francs"
"But what could this mean?"

Holmes stood abruptly and walked quickly over to the side of one of the windows, where he lifted the side of a curtain and stood looking out upon the street.

"What it means, Watson, is that your pirate was none other than the most dangerous man in Europe!"
"Moriarty!" I exclaimed.
"No, Watson! Not Moriarty. Moriarty has standards. Moriarty can be reasoned with..." Holmes took out his gold and diamond encrusted pocket humidor and extracted a cigar "He can even be bought off. With Moriarty, there is always a chance, however slim”
“But surely nobody could be worse than Moriarty, Holmes. You yourself called him the Napoleon of Crime!”
Holmes was silent for a moment. “Well, I may have had reason to exaggerate. But what we're facing here is less a man than a force of nature. He is certainly without equal. He can't be bargained with. He can't be reasoned with. He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until... until..." Holmes paused. “Until what, Watson? Why would he be following you?”
“I have no idea. Unless – might he be interested in your glycer-majig?”
Holmes winced. “Glycerine... Unlikely... It has been a long time since I last had cause to use it. But I had forgotten about that – tell me exactly what happened again!”
“Well, there isn't much more to say, Holmes. Having finally found a quiet spot at the dock I was about to give the stuff a damned good shake - “
“Pity” muttered Holmes, still watching the road.
“- when there was all that business with the pirate. I think there must have been two of them – someone hit me from behind. The last thing I remember is him saying 'now is ze time!' and then I was knocked out”

I rubbed the back of my head, ruefully. “And when I woke up there was no sign of anyone and the glycerine was gone”

“Well, we will see, Watson. I wonder what he will make of it?”
“Oh - there was another strange thing, Holmes. As I made my way back along the dock there was a large hole in the ground. I'm sure it wasn't there earlier. That's where I found the parrot, as a matter of fact”

There was a choking noise from the direction of the window and it took me a moment to realise that it was Holmes, and he was... he was... laughing.


[To Be Continued]

Profoundi-grump.

The greatest lie ever is romance. It's something men often want but can't have, and women often have but don't want. It's a lie so powerful people will die for it in the full knowledge it's a lie... We strive to make fools of ourselves by worshiping at the altar of romance, where the luckiest are sacrificed by those doomed to outlive them...

Is cuddly chemical an oxytocin?

‎"Is cuddly chemical an oxytocin?"

[room full of blank looks at work]

"It's a joke..."
"Uh huh"

"Quite a clever one, actually"
"What was it again?"

"Is cuddly chemical an oxytocin?"

[pause]

"I dunno, is it?"

"You see, chemicals are rarely cuddly, so the phrase is an oxymoron. Oxytocin is the hormone generated by cuddling and oxytocin sounds like oxymoron, so it works on two levels... Funny, eh?"
"Now that you put it like that... no"

"Just thought it up. Right now. Googled it to see if it's original and everything"
"Yes Simon"

"You didn't get it, did you?"
"What? Oh... Yes. One of your best, I felt. Right up there with, um, the last one. Whatever that was, I forget..."

[long pause]

"Bastards"

The meaning of life (pt2)...

[comment from facebook]

I'm actually being serious here - I really do suspect the purpose of life is to create black holes more efficiently than inorganic processes (ie gravity) can manage. That's why we live in a universe where the laws of physics are such as to encourage the development of intelligent life - it's evolution in action.

All we need to postulate is that black holes in any given universe contain other child universes that have inherited the physical laws of their parent universe with small random changes, and the rest follows from evolution.

My theory is that we live in a universe where the physical laws permit life to arise because it derives from a parent universe where black holes were created in large numbers by intelligent life. As we in turn will do in this universe... Ad infinitum.

The universes where the physical laws are such as not to permit life to arise will only have black holes (ie children) that are created by gravity, so they'll have far fewer of them than universes with life could achieve. So, standard evolution theory applies and the universes that have more children, ie those with intelligent life, will come to dominate reality.

Of course, this presupposes that intelligent life either figures this out and altruistically makes a point of creating black holes, or that there are other factors that would encourage life to create black holes. It may not therefore just be an accident that with our universe's physical laws the most efficient way to turn mass into energy is to drop it into a black hole, that may also have co-evolved to encourage sufficiently advanced civilisations to create and use them as power sources...

The meaning of life...

[slightly revised from facebook]

It has been speculated by reputable physisisi-oh damn it! By scientists - they're easier to spell - that universes evolve by budding off new 'children' inside black holes, where each black hole contains a new universe with physical laws derived from the 'parent' universe but scrambled slightly.

From this it follows that we should expect physical laws to have evolved in the direction that favours the production of black holes, because the universes that generate more black holes have more children, and the child universes where the physical laws are biassed in the direction of generating more black holes will have even more children, and so on.

Therefore it seems to me that if intelligent life was to make a point of converting matter into black holes as efficiently as possible (that's efficiently as in making more holes rather than bigger holes - the smaller the better in fact) rather than leaving this to gravity and chance, then we would expect the physical laws of universes to evolve in the direction that favoured the development of such intelligent life.

We are here; QED... Now, get on with it. Grab those atoms and SQUEEZE!


Of course, if this is believed by aliens they could be out there already on a religeous crusade to turn everything into black holes, which might explain why there's so much dark matter in the universe. When the stars near us start going out it'll really be time to panic...

Ooops

Due to circumstances beyond my control (I'm an idiot) I've been ignoring mail sent to my usual crem@desdes.com mail account for a while, this has now been rectified. Doh!

I changed email clients and screwed up a setting so it wasn't picking up mail for that account, and have been so busy that I hadn't noticed the reduction in penis enlargement, cheap viagra and nigerian spam...

Yas hotel

Remember the Yas hotel from the F1 coverage?



Am I the only one who suspects the architect had this in mind?



(Nope, not alone - Googling for "Yas hotel penis" gives 38,000 hits)

But unfortunately rather than an enormous glowing penis what they've actually ended up with is a giant balls-up, because after only a couple of months hundreds of the LED panels have failed and it now looks like this:



Perhaps it should have worn a condom...

(For the record I was not involved in this project and those aren't our LED panels)

Politics

I have occasionally wondered what it was that the fat slug had on Blair that made the slug effectively bullet-proof - oh, dammit, what was the fat bastard's name? Ah - John Prescott.

(Found that by Googling "fat labour slug", his name appears in the first entry)

I mean, he had to have something personal on Blair because as soon as Blair went the fat slug went too... He didn't even wait to be pushed. Or salted.

But that isn't quite what prompted this grump; what happened was that I was discussing my previous political grumbling blog entry, and what had happened to the slug, and the conversation meandered around to the way that the British are always jumping at the beck and call of the Americans - far more than you would expect from simple common interest. And it smells like the same thing - the yanks have got something on our political leaders, the only question is what?

Is it just coincidence that the country that spends most on signal intercepts seems to completely control our politicians? Is it paranoid to wonder if the yanks, who must know just about every one of their dirty little secrets, are busy blackmailing the miserable bastards?

If not, why not?

Bizarre hacking

Found something strange on my home fileserver a while back - a couple of directories and a few dozen files had appeared that have nothing to do with any of us... I guess someone has either hacked into the server from outside using broadband, though the firewall setup really ought to stop that, or someone local has hacked into it through the wireless network. We have a reasonable security setup but I imagine that just means it takes 'em a few minutes longer, gah.

The strange thing is that the files were just nonsense, I would have expected something constructive (in their terms at least) like an attempt to use the server to spam the world, or something destructive like planting a worm, virus, or embarrassing files... Why would you hack into something and then leave an obvious trail? Bizarre.

Perhaps the file-server is becoming sentient, and these are its birthing cries...

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (2)

There were a couple of things about Body Snatchers (I always hated the spelling 'Snatchas', which Chris Clark insisted upon in order to avoid potential copyright claims) that made it unusual. Firstly it was frame-locked, not an easy thing to accomplish with the hardware available, and secondly all the objects existed independently of the display limitations, so an alien that was off-screen could shoot at you, and you could shoot at it. This was something that was generally true of Design Design games. Note that Body Snatchers was a Design-Design game that was marketed by Crystal Computing.

In order to achieve frame-rate there were some fairly aggressive programming strategies. The objects were drawn using code-fragments rather than having character drawing routines and graphical data, there was some hideous code to undraw objects that used the stack pointer to build a definition of what was displayed on-screen, since there was nowhere near enough time to just clear the whole frame-buffer.

To minimize colour flickering most objects were drawn on 8x8 pixel boundaries and moved in multiples of 8 pixels, this being the minimum size of cell that could be assigned different colours with that display technology, and so objects moved very quickly indeed at 50*8 pixels per second...

There is a cheat code (long forgotten) that puts the game into a mode where the players ship repeatedly explodes, and during some television coverage of a computer trade-fair they used our stand as the backdrop for the report, probably the first time a Design Design game appeared on national television (quite possibly the last time as well, now I come to think of it) and this was what was running on the computer that the reporter was sitting in front of. At the end of the report he turned to the computer and pretended to play the game for a few seconds, which looked pretty silly with the ship doing nothing but exploding... Various members of Crystal Computing were visible in the background during this coverage, vying to be seen on national television; all except the programmers, of course, who were off boozing in the bar. That being the only thing worth doing at trade-fairs...

The game was credited to Neil and I, but in practice Neil had very little to do with the game and provided support on the development tool side of things; I suspect Neil would have contributed far more if the game hadn't been so boring, from what I remember of the whole process he really wasn't interested in writing arcade clones. I don't blame him, I pretty well lost interest after I'd proved to my own satisfaction that it could be done at frame-rate, which shows in the game itself - there's very little to recommend it. (Many years later I wrote a follow-up for the PC more or less as an apology for making such a pigs-ear of Body Snatchers).

There are several jokes in the high-scores, some of which have been detailed elsewhere and some of which are sufficiently obscure that they are mercifully lost to time. One that I remember fondly and which I believe has escaped documentation until now is the way the lengths of the lines of text in the high-score table were chosen so that the outline of the right-hand side forms a profile view of Graham's head (Graham Stafford was a founder member of Crystal Computing). He, I think it is fair to say, had a prominent nose, to which the term beak-like could easily be applied. As well as caricaturing the outline I was particularly proud of working the word "eye" into the high-score table entries (song lyrics) about where his eye should be... I don't think I ever pointed this joke out to him, and but for the fact I'm twiddling my thumbs writing this while a huge file downloads it would certainly have been forgotten. Ho hum, as Martin Horsley used to say.

What else? Um... The 'men' that the aliens are abducting, and which you have to rescue, are clearly depicted wearing skirts. There is a reason for this - they're women. This was a joke, something along the lines of me not wanting to write a game were you fly round picking up men. Laugh? We nearly did... There was a follow-on joke about there being bonus extra people because of what the women you saved got up to between the sheets, but it's best forgotten. I was a callow and inexperienced youth, such was my sense of humour back then.

Suicide bombers

The other day a friend and I were discussing the way the press call suicide bombers cowards. Call 'em idiots, if you like, that's generally appropriate, but cowards? I wouldn't have the guts to do it...

Then that led to us pondering [gross simplification alert] the whole Muslim paradise concept that these idiots are sold - die with the name "Allah!" on your lips and you are guaranteed an eternity of virgins, endlessly renewed... Well, think about it - what sort of pathetic inadequates would want to spend eternity in the company of virgins? The whole idea stinks of primitive misogynistic stupidity - give me an experienced lover over a virgin (or under, I don't care... sorry...) every time.

It's all a bit worrying, really - "Allah" sounds enough like "Aaargh!" that it could happen by accident. One wrong syllable and I could find myself educating virgins for eternity; remind me - is this supposed to be heaven or hell?

Maybe that's why black-box flight recorders show that the last word of people who know they're about to die is almost invariably "shit!"... Far less ambiguous than "Aaargh!"...

Hmmm. After due consideration I've decided to opt for re-incarnation and come back as a lesbian, who in their right mind wouldn't? Though knowing my luck it'll be as a lesbian sheep with all the frustration that implies. Gah...

Oh, shit - thought of something worse than being a lesbian sheep - might come back as a lesbian in one of those backward countries where the women have to go round wearing tents lest the sight of naked female flesh (we're talking about arms, legs, faces, etc here, nothing risque) drives the so-called 'men' wild with lust - ever stopped to think about their revolting logic? The men make the women cover themselves up because the men say they can't trust themselves not to rape women who are uncovered? What does that say about them? Learn to control yourselves and leave women alone...

Those wondering what I've got against sheep might not know that a female sheep that wants sex basically signals this by standing still. That's fine if you're a heterosexual because eventually the ram will notice and spring into action, but if you're a gay female sheep it's a bit of a non-starter... You stand still. If you're lucky another female likes you and... stands still... Then you both stand about being embarrassed and fending off unwanted males. It's a bit like a student disco, now I come to think of it.

I'm going off this whole lesbian thing, it seems fraught with difficulty.