Author Archives: Tim Hall

No one wants games designed by spotty nerds?

John Cridland, director general of the Confederation of British Industry came up with this breathtakingly idiotic line in an interview when talking about the British video games industry.

“We need extra coders – dozens and dozens of them – but nobody is going to play a game designed by a spotty nerd. We need people with artistic flair”.

Not only does it demonstrate Donald Trump level of ignorance and lack of self-awaremess, but his willingness to throw out casual slurs at an entire profession makes him the sort of person likely to use racial and gendered slurs if he thought he could get away with it.

How on Earth did a tool like this become director general of the CBI?

In the comments thread, commenter “Joe5000″ sums him up rather well.

In all seriousness, this contempt by the management classes towards technical workers is the main reason Britain’s economy struggles. We don’t have a Google or Microsoft like America, we don’t have a Volkswagen or Siemens like Germany, we don’t have a Toyota or Sony like Japan. But what we do have is a management class filled with people of little ability other than self-promotion with a contempt for the plebs who actually create the marketable products that drive a successful economy.

You ever wonder why Britain has such a bad trade balance and so much debt? It’s because the economy is run by people like John Cridland, a quangocrat and Oxbridge liberal arts grad who is given high positions and titles and a soapbox to run his mouth over things he knows nothing about.

I’ve always held that Britain has the worst management in the developed world and this guy is the ‘manager of managers’, enough said.

Quite.

Posted in Religion and Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 7 Comments

N Gauge Minories, anyone?

Blue Mk1 Suburban(Photo from Hattons)

Graham Farish’s BR Blue Mk1 suburban is now in the shops. It’s the sort of model that suggests a Minories-style inner-city terminus using the recently retooled class 31s and the forthcoming DJM Baby Deltic as motive power.

The prototype Mk1 suburban coaches were short-lived and should probably never have been built. Designed as like-for-like replacements for life-expired pre-nationalisation non-corridor stock, the short-distance services on which they were used rapidly went over to DMUs soon after they were built, and without toilets they were unsuitable for longer-distance services. Most of them had their bodies stripped off so the underframes could be used as Carflats.

There was one exception. Peak-time services on the City Widened line between Kings Cross and Moorgate had to negotiate the notorious Hotel Curve in a tunnel beneath part of the station. Clearances were two tight for 64′ coaches, which meant none of the high-density suburban DMU designs would fit, and the low-density 57′ DMUs didn’t have the capacity.  So a small fleet of 57′ Mk1 suburbans lasted until the Great Northern electrification in 1977 when the Hotel Curve closed. They were the only Mk1 suburbans to survive long enough to receive BR blue livery.

A cramped partially-underground inner-city terminus based around that theme would make a tempting model. But someone other than me can build it.

Posted in Modelling News | Tagged , | Comments Off

Dubious Moral Equivalences

WingnutThe Sad Puppies/Hugo Awards saga is the car crash that keeps crashing. The latest episode revolves around serial bad behaviour and repeated insincere false apologies from writer Lou Antonelli, one of the Puppies’ nominees.

It’s predictably depressing that some Puppies are defending his behaviour, while others are using the episode to suggest Requires Hate was unfairly monstered (click on either of those links at your own risk). And yes, hair splitting arguments over whether or not Antonelli is worse that Requires Hate are at best pointless wasted electrons and at worst attempts by people who are themselves part of the problem to derail justified criticism. It seems, yet again, that “Them and Us” trumps “Right and Wrong”. If you want to call out other people’s bad behaviour, then you can’t keep excusing obvious bad actors in your own camp and still claim the moral high ground.

A pox on both camps, I say. All it achieves is to alienate the ordinary readers of SF.

At this point things have become so polarised and so tribal that I wonder if there’s any possibility of bridge-building. Either the world of SFF will become Balkanised into multiple fandoms all of which view each other with mutual suspicion and loathing, or the whole thing needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from scratch.

Posted in Religion and Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

The Pros and Cons of Twitter Blocklists

Slate’s David Auerbach has written a well-balanced piece in Slate on the pros and cons of Twitter blocklists. He recognises that they’re a valuable weapon against harassers and trolls, but can cause their own problems, and that people and especially organisations should be wary of using third-party blocklists without understanding the agenda of whoever is maintaining the list.

For example, Arthur Chu has a shared blocklist of 30,000 people. All you need to do to get on that list is having ever disagreed with or criticised Arthur Chu. The fact that I’m on it ought to tell you all you need to know. Other blocklists will include you merely for following the wrong accounts.

Blocklists are at best a sticking plaster for a problem Twitter itself should have been more pro-active at dealing with a long time ago.

What’s very telling, though, is the level of vitriol I’ve seen directed at the the author of the piece, with some high-profile figures not even bothering to critique the piece itself but going straight to ad-hominem, accusing him of being pro-harassment (he’s not) or being a supporter of Gamergate (which he isn’t). Somebody’s even threatened to build a new blocklist threatening his followers (i.e. unfollow him or you’ll get blocked).

It does sound as though he’s struck a raw nerve.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Cambridge Rock Festival open thread

Now CRF 2016 is confirmed, what bands would we like to see? I think we can all take it that Mostly Autumn are a given, but what other bands would make a good bill?

To set the ball rolling, a few names off the top of my head.

Bands who are part of the festival “family” who should be invited again:

Panic Room
Cloud Atlas
Chantel McGregor
Kyrbgrinder

Bands who have played once or twice who definitely ought to be invited back

Morpheus Rising
Also Eden
Karnataka

CRF-level bands who haven’t (to my knowledge) played the festival, but should

Knifeworld
Magenta
Mantra Vega
Anna Phoebe
Arena
Threshold

And some ideal “big name” headliners

Blue Öyster Cult
Michael Schenker
Riverside
Fish
Uriah Heep
The Damned

Over to you: Who would you like to see?

Posted in Music Opinion | Tagged , | 8 Comments

This error 404 page from The Financial Times is wonderful, stating why the page cannot be displayed in terms of differing economic theories. You don’t have be an economist to appreciate it.

Posted on by Tim Hall | Comments Off

Cambridge Rock Festival 2016 is on!

CRF from the airAfter taking a break in 2015, The Cambridge Rock Festival is back for 2016, at the festival’s established site of Haggis Farm Polo Club just outside Cambridge, on the 4th to 7th August 2016.

It’s a great festival for classic rock, blues and progressive rock, with undercover stages for when The Great British Summer does its worst.

Early Bird tickets are available right now!

As yet no bands have been announced, though I’d be very surprised if Mostly Autumn weren’t on the bill. Headliners in recent years have included Wishbone Ash, Magnum, Caravan, FM and The Enid.

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The Isle of Man Railway

Douglas sheds

A few photos from my recent visit to the Isle of Man Railway, which runs from Douglas to Port Erin. Here No 4 “Loch” leaves the shed at Douglas to work the mid-morning train to Port Erin. Douglas station is much reduced from its heyday as the hub of a network covering the entire island.

No 12 and No 4 at Douglas

No 12 “Hutchinson” arrives at Douglas with the morning train from Port Erin, while No 4 waits to take the return working. All but one of the line’s operational steam locomotives are these 2-4-0Ts built by Beyer-Peacock on Manchester.

IoMR No "Loch" at Castletown

No 4 again, two days later at Castletown. There are several crossing loops on the line, a legacy of the days when the railway ran a far more intensive service, but for the 2015 timetable all trains cross at Castletown.

IoMR No 5

No 5 “Mona” leaves Castletown bound for Douglas. This locomotive carries the older green livery rather than the Indian red of the majority of the operational fleet.

IoMR Arrival at Castletown

No 13 “Kissack” arrives at Castletown from Douglas. The three-foot gauge gives the line a very different flavour compared with the two-foot lines of Wales. The well-maintained permanent way is reminiscent of the meter-gauge lines of Switzerland, and the locomotives seem more like scaled-down late Victorian standard gauge machines.

Leaving  for Port ErinKissack departs for Port Erin. If the locomotives have a standard-gauge feel, the coaching stock reminds me a lot of the bogie coaches of the Talyllyn railway.

IoMR No 12

Journey’s end. No 12 “Hutchinson” at the southern terminus of Port Erin. The railway has a complicated history. Initially built to serve the tourist industry, it had a lot in common with the standard-gauge railways of the Isle of Wight, which also ran with vintage equipment into the 1960s. The entire network closed in 1965 after making heavy losses, reopening two years later. Now state-owned, only the Douglas to Port Erin section survives.

What remains of Peel station

The lines to Peel and Ramsey closed in 1968, when it became clear that operating the entire network as a vintage steam railway wasn’t viable. Here’s the site of the station throat at Peel. The station building also survives as a coffee shop, though much of the station site has sadly been built over.

No 8 on a demonstration freight train at Douglas

And finally, No 8 “Fenella” with a demonstration freight train at Douglas. The IOMR was always primarily a passenger carrier, and never carried volumes of mineral traffic like the lines in Wales. General merchandise traffic tended to be tail loads on passenger trains.

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Cloud Atlas + Howard Sinclair at Bilston!

Cloud Atlas and Howard Sinclair at Bilston Robin 2 on Sunday August 16

The splendid Cloud Atlas headline Bilston Robin 2 on Sunday 16th August. It’s also a rare chance to see Howard Sinclair with a full band as support.

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Angus Young, Mel Gibson, Olivia Newton-John, Angry Anderson, Dame Edna Everage, Bouncer, Skippy. You guys took a hell of beating. A hell of a beating.

Posted on by Tim Hall | Comments Off