New site thanks to Wordpress

I've just spent some time transfering this blog, and my professional blog, Wisely if sincerely, to my own installation of Wordpress.

www.davidson-igd.co.uk is the location of my professional blog.
http://ccgi.twotee.free-online.co.uk/solarplexus is the new location of SolarPlexus.

However, www.davidson-igd.co.uk will link to both blogs. If you're still following the old Blogger feeds, or have bookmarked these pages then please trundle over to www.davidson-igd.co.uk to keep updated.

Someone may well point out that there's a cleverer way to redirect the feeds or something, but I need to press on...

Tumble-down townhouse?

I'm in tidy-up mode at the moment, and I rediscovered these pictures I took in Ludlow a few years ago. I reckon you'd not skip the full structural survey for this purchase!

Get lost squirrels - feeding small birds without making rodents fat

I'm getting tired of the bully-boy antics of crows, magpies and gulls - we get pigeons, ducks and the odd goose but they don't tend to terrorise sparrows and robins - so I'm finally trying to attract some smaller birds into the garden by sticking some nosebag out.

The big problem is that we have a healthy squirrel population, but since we more than cater to their yearly needs with our big hazel tree, I don't feel like letting them at the wee birds' food too.

Jez bought a nice steel feeder-sphere this year, it looks like something out of an inquisitional dungeon - the aim being to let little birds in but keep big greedy squirrels out. His good lady, Natalie, suggested I try using spent Coke bottles on a wire: the theory being that Mr Squiggle can't get around them because they spin, chucking him off into space.

From the pictures you can get the idea without me writing a yard of instructions, and so far the indications are good. The system certainly supplied much merriment to us yesterday as a particularly large brute of a squirrel (ie. a proven greedy bastard) attempted to get around the bottles.

However, for those of you wanting to try this out I've already seen some shortcomings that may require remedial work...

1. I'm using plastic-coated washing line - it may not resist gnawing. I could progress to metal fence wire.
2. I may have to assign the line to its own free-standing poles, rather than between two trees. The trees afford higher launching points for a squirrel who tries to plunge at the nutbags, horizontal distance is also factor.
3. Knot the wire, or bulldog clip it, to stop the bottles from traversing along to near the nutbags. A large squirrel can hang, and almost stretch under the coke bottle to reach the nutbag, by swaying to and fro.
4. If you're not bothered by the aesthetics, or perhaps wish to play-up the bottle aspect a great upgrade would be to use several bottles in line - that'll stop 'em!
   
5. A persistent squirrel may be able to trash the bottle through constant attacks, the plastic may degrade in daylight making it brittle - we'll see.

If all goes well, I'm going to adjust the tension and stick up a lot more food. Aside from that, we expect lots of fun watching the sodding squirrels get puffed out.

Lost HMRC data CDs found!

Thanks to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4761974.stm

Snow, garden, 18th November 2007

My word, it seems to have happened a little early this year - and, by Jove, they're already playing wall-to-wall Chrimbo songs on Real radio: makes one feel very festive, but my guess is that this feeling will peak too soon.

Carol Mansley

Many moons ago I worked at a graphics bureau in Brum called Scintilla. I was there for just over five years, and for most of that time I had a colleague called Carol Mansley. At the outset she was employed as production manager, but her style was completely dissimilar to her predecessor: Carol's blended management with a hands-approach.

Over the months, as our small team grew in proficiency, the pecking order became less marked and we became a group of equals. This actually didn't diminish Carol's role as much as it sounds, because I think it meant she enjoyed the job more: in the Us and Them game she was definitely one of Us. During our tenure we had our ups-and-downs, but I only recall one incident where the exchange of words became heated.

Carol was far more methodical and diligent than me, and had the sure-fire ability to quickly understand what needed doing, and when. The four of us were a team, and depended on each other. If you asked Carol to help out with something you knew it would be done - she was a very dependable and considerate workmate.

It was very difficult to see below the surface with Carol, as she kept her own counsel on most issues. She was certainly of the school that teaches one to sit back and observe, rather than offer half-baked opinions. She had a broad spectrum of interests: sport, gardening, technology, photography, reading etc. I recall that we shared a fondness for the TV series Red Dwarf, and she could do a cracking impersonation of Craig Charles!

When Carol did venture opinions, or wade into conversation, we were assured of a statement that made sense, was not verbose, and cut to the chase. Carol could say more with a few words, and the arching of one eyebrow, than most folk manage with minutes of chattering.

It was with much sadness, then, that I heard that Carol died a couple of weeks ago. By all accounts it seemed she died suddenly, at home, of kidney failure. I'm not aware if there'd been any build-up to this, or any period of illness at all. Unfortunately, I could not attend either the main funeral in Chester or a recent memorial service in Bartley Green. So, by way of poor compensation I've decided to pen this blog entry.

I invite all who knew Carol, and most of all Colin and Steve Mansley, to leave a comment here, either adding to what I've written, or correcting me if I've misremembered something!

I have a link to some pictures that Carol uploaded to Flickr only just recently. Sadly it looks like this was a process she was just getting into.

Christmas crackers! They just keep getting earlier.

Pictured: a house on my wife's route home from work, Brays Road, Birmingham...

Some people just haven't got a clue, have they? Now, normally you'd witness me banging on about carbon footprints, excessive electricity use and light pollution - and you'd expect me to say, "bah, humbug!" to boot.

But, come on! It's November the 8th for crying out loud! Just because the shops have had Christmas tat on display since June, doesn't make it right to deck your halls with holly just yet. I'm all for Christmas being special, but extending the lighting-up period to around a fifth of the year makes it proportionately less special. Nutters.

See-through cells

"A thin layer of organic photovoltaic (PV) film applied to the windows and rooftops of homes and businesses around the world has the potential to generate solar energy at radically lower costs."
The Engineer, 15-28 October 2007

Wow, windows that are also solar panels - imagine every pane of glass in new buildings actually contributing even a small amount of electricity. We need more stuff like this.

Text here, Flashy flash here

NIMBY

A letter in The Engineer recently...

"What is the point in the UK making any type of advances with regard to carbon dioxide emissions when the likes of China, India and Russia are increasing theirs?"
Jim Bridgman

We do tend to see this argument crop up a lot don't we? Often drawing comparisons between nations, but also between activities. For example, "why pick on reducing vehicle emissions when global heavy industrial emissions are so huge?" etc. etc.

To me the answer is as simple: My garden may be smaller than the chap next door, but I don't crap in it just because he does. There'd be two of us with faecal landscaping if I did that, not just one.

BrainBlip 2: thank you Agnes!

BrainBlip 1: broadcast today in a local shop...

...and this tirade from someone who hadn't the wit to buy herself a bar of soap.

Thomas Dolby - Academy 2, Birmingham.

Accompanied Jez, The Baron and Lady Baron to the Academy 2 last night, and met RussL briefly (who'd valiantly retraced his journey due to a forgotten ticket). We'd gone to see a certain Mr Dolby on the Brum leg of his UK tour. As noted by Jez, there were a heckuva lot of chaps in the queue sporting smoking blazers, bald patches and practised stoops. I guess that goes with the territory when you're off to visit an artiste who's been active from around the late 70s.

By going I was attending to a part of my personality formed in my teens. If I've got one thing to say to Thomas it's that he was probably responsible for me getting some good beatings at school: when my peers at a Scottish secondary school were sporting white socks, drainpipe trousers and donkey-jackets, I was garbed in a smoking jacket, waistcoat and baggy flannels, oh, and the round specs. Thanks Tom, no really, it didn't hurt at all - I could've conformed but I decided to stay a RetroNerd against all odds ;)

I've not witnessed much live music in recent years, but clearly the days of leaving a venue with ringing ears are gone to a certain extent? I guess the more accessible venues are strictly governed by health and safety legislation. Volume was good, the bass was deep but the lighting rig in the room had trouble dealing with some frequencies, and resonated quite badly.

The music? Well, I'm a fan so I loved every minute. It was interesting to hear him build up the loop layers, presumably rendering them subtly different with every performance. When your music relies on electronics it's good to see performers at least trying to inject some craft back into the live set. It's certainly not a new technique, and indeed stems from very early electronic music performances, but it does set apart the musicians from the karaoke brigade.

Like many in the audience I feel he could've spun out a few more tracks from The Golden Age of Wireless, but instead he decided to play the crowd with more funked up stuff from Aliens Ate My Buick. The encore of May The Cube Be With You was infinitely better live than on vinyl: it's a track I've never really enjoyed, like Bowie had the Modern Love album, Thomas Dolby had the Cube EP. Finally, Hot Sauce was as squirmy and dirty as the lyrics demanded. Nice.

A suitably quirky and intelligent performance, solid groundwork for the promise of a new album next year and another tour.

I had the bonus of being 'razzled' by a hoodie on the way to the choochoo station, who ran up behind me and advised me several times to 'never look back man', daring me to start something I'd hazard. In situations like this I'm quite a low-reactor, and I think my lack of response started to make him more agitated, but fortunately my purposeful gait won the day and he opted not to follow me into the station. What a tool.

Infinite MPG cycling shirt

I've added another t-shirt design to a small selection available through cafepress.com. I've seen a similar version of the design elsewhere (so I may be treading on someone's pedal clamps) but thought it needed a bit of streamlining design-wise. Jez may think the design is wrong, as it lacks a wonky spoke and a chap lying prone. And it's hardly 'infinite MPG' if the gallon is a measure of real ale ;) I'm not really bothered if anyone else buys this as it's only intended to provide a vehicle to let me buy a single shirt, but who knows?

My second Dr Who design has earned me around £50 in commission so far, and I dare say that'll be spent on more shirts. Interestingly I had to compromise the design because the previous one was pulled, presumably due to containing the police box image - which I'm reasonably sure cannot be owned by the Beeb. I noted that several similar designs were pulled from other users at the same time, and these all from so-called 'free' shops. The premium shops (added functionality for a monthly subscription cost) that featured images of daleks, police boxes and even Dr Who logos were not pulled. Strange that.

Kids, mobile phones and poverty

I've never felt the need to storm away from my radio, for heaven's sake, except for this morning. Nicky Campbell on Radio5Live had just started to cross-examine some blithering idiot representing a campaign against child poverty in the UK: Dare to Care. For once I was thankful for his ability to criticise Paxman-style, whereas normally I see this as a trait that makes complaints-where-none-exist for his TV vehicle, Watchdog. However, I saw red and had to scuttle away to my ablutions, treating the toilet cistern to a damn good thrashing whilst doing so.

Why? Because apparently the definition of child poverty in this country is the inability to attend a friend's birthday party with a present.

The 'logic' behind this? Because as the world's fifth largest economy our benchmark is higher.

Said blithering idiot tried to defend this position by saying that it was children who perceived poverty this way, and therefore as parents and adults we had to accept this, and more, we have to do something about it by raising awareness and supporting needy families. It was clear to me that this person had really rather cocked up by making this assertion, and at that point she wasn't a particularly good evangelist for the campaign.

Any sane person could rebut with...

1. Children are not mature enough to correctly establish worth and value against a global scale. They may be intelligent enough to give the impression of grasping these issues, but need adult guidance to hone a system of values.

2. Children (and some adults, but that's another bone of contention) will act like any selfish animal to obtain more of whatever they think they need. The adults' task is to help them differentiate between 'need' and 'want'.

3. Poverty is defined by the lack of the basics required for healthy human existence, and yes, this benchmark will change over time. 200 years ago we might have supposed the only prerequisites to be food, shelter and clothing. Nowadays we may sensibly add education, nurture and healthcare to that list.

4. Children may be victimised by their peers for not owning a mobile 'phone, as I was victimised for not having Clark's shoes or an Adidas sports bag. That does not mean that the victim is living in poverty. It simply means that the parents have exercised restraint against a coercive culture that seeks to make us all brand-ants. Or it simply means they've used their right to spend appropriately with limited resources.

5. Adults should be providing moral guidance, and helping children to arrive at a sensible value system - not the other way around! By all means listen to the views of children, but to recalibrate a poverty benchmark because of selfish, immature behaviour is clearly and demonstrably incorrect.

I could go on, but don't feel I need to. Bottom line? This is just another example of the cart leading the horse: the problem is we have a culture that increasingly devalues basic, wholesome principles, and places undue importance on materialistic items of luxury. The answer is to educate, not shift the baseline.

I'm all for providing for the needs of children, and there are families in the UK that do need help for food, clothing, shelter and education - but if these things can be provided there should be no burden of responsibility to do more.

Just because I can't afford to stump up £1000 for a school trip to the Italian Alps doesn't mean our family is on the breadline. It means I'd rather put the money into a savings account to fund college education, or have to pay for a roof repair to keep us all warm.

Peeved not paedo

I like taking photographs. Not in any kind of professional sense y'understand, but as I get older I'm finding it more important to document things as I go along and I can think of nothing more convenient than taking a few snaps.

These days a snapper has to be careful about shooting pics of people, especially of children. I never knowingly make strangers the subjects of my pics, and I am at least aware of the issues.

On holiday, whilst entertaining my three-year old son in Beveridge Park, Kirkcaldy, I spied a hamburger van with a horde of teenaged schoolkids around it. Their uniforms were all black. Next to this was a flock of white seagulls teeming over a bag of chips. The juxtaposition was startling. Since all of the kids had their backs to me I thought I'd take a distance shot of the scene as it was so interesting.

Imagine my dismay when two girls on a park bench starting calling me a "paedo" and shouting at the tops of their voices, laughing at the same time. I managed not to get too ruffled and stared at them for a moment or two, and subtly moved the aim of my camera - but notably didn't stop taking pictures.

Fortunately for me they stopped shouting. Clearly in that situation discretion was the better part of valour. However, to appear ruffled in front of those peasants would've been just as bad.

As a father, and somewhat overly-sensitive, I have fretted about this incident. I know I shouldn't feel personally insulted by the incident, but it still hurts to be smeared with something as abhorrent as paedohilia, even as a puerile joke.

Anecdotally, I heard of a professional photographer in Fife being reported for taking pictures of nude children on a beach. His argument was that he'd been taking pictures of this beach for years, wasn't intentionally including the people on it, and it was the decision of the parents to let their kids cavort naked. We may accuse him of being a bit ignorant of the social climate but that's all.

Needless to say, I have no pictures to show you of kids and seagulls so here's one of sleeping ducks instead...

Wot? No Galactus?

I managed to watch Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer last night.

I'm not terribly impressed by superhero movies. Oh, I can appreciate the yarncraft of something like Superman (the Donner version) but I'm always a little uncomfortable with blokes in tights running around on screen - even if the tights are clad in leather armour (X-Men). Without wanting to (or being able to!) analyse it too much it seems to me that the stories and situations sit better at another layer removed - ie. on the comic page, in a boxed panel. Sticking them on screen brings it all uncomfortably close to real-life, and too close to the novelty Spiderman who opens village festivals. But perhaps that's the nerd in me squirming - I mean, there may be folk in the audience who laugh at superhero comics, oh the shame.



Back to FF: ROTSS - on my scale of 1 to 10 for superhero movies, where 10 denotes Blade, and 1 denotes the mooted Antman movie (I mean, Antman? That's got to be crap from the outset.), I'd pitch the FF sequel at a very average 5. It's enjoyable enough to maintain interest for 90 minutes but I can't help but view it with the lens of insider knowledge, and that, unfortunately, means I hated their vision of the world-eating Galactus...

Forgive me if this topic has already been done to death, but as the movie is still fresh in my mind I've got to let off some steam.

If you buy into the charm of the comic FF, you must be using the original Stan Lee / Jack Kirby stories as your guide. There was an inherent wackiness to their adventures, driven from the oddball team itself and their oddball adversaries. To NOT have Galactus as a 100-metre tall, purple-clad humanoid with square irises just flies in the face of the Lee / Kirby vision. Moreover, not having the guts to use this version, and instead opting for an interstellar cloud of fog smacks of a cop-out.

We could explain this away as the cloud being the carrier for our planet-smashing Galactus - in other words, he's cloaked in a shroud of debris surrounding his vessel, and by removing him as a sentient character we simplify the story. But that's as boring as this blog.

I note that several reviewers offer the phrase, "...using the comic Galactus would never have worked on film...", and they singularly miss the point. Have they not seen Transformers yet?

An opportunity, missed.

The Empty Chair

The image sums up this evening's mindset. So, um, I'd probably best let the pic do the talking. Catalyst for the thought process is the near-empty booze glass. Go on, do I have to join the sodding dots as well?

Fathoming Vernor Vinge

Jez gave me a copy of A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge recently. He commented that it contained the best description of a group-mind he had read. Initially I misunderstood and thought he was referring to something like a hive-mind (see the Borg from Star Trek, or the Primes by Peter F Hamilton). But no, what we have here is a well-thought out story describing the lives and culture of pack animals, a bit like dogs, that have only animal intelligence when isolated, but link telepathically when in close proximity. Under special circumstances these 'Tines' then operate as humans would, with qualifications.

The novel itself is a fairly straightforward space opera: the grand backdrop for a classic race-against-time mission is a galaxy split into zones with difficult physical laws, zones that ultimately give rise to godlike beings that can infiltrate intelligent systems in subtle and cosmos-spanning ways.

At the outset I struggled a little with the style, the explanation of galactic zones and transcendental beings unfolds using its own jargon, this requiring the reader to hold onto half-formed concepts for a few pages longer than the norm (for a space opera!) in order to piece together the inferences. That said, I remember feeling the same way upon reading the first few pages of EE 'Doc' Smith's Triplanetary, and you can't get more simple action SF than the Lensman sequence! I think the fact that I was ten years old at the time didn't help. My excuse now? Easy: I'm an addled middle-ager with apple molecules for brain cells.

Anyway, back to Vernor's Vinge. I note that A Fire Upon The Deep dates back to around 1988, and this hints at why one facet of the story technique fails for me. Vernor uses the analogy of internet newsgroups as the vehicle for cosmic communications. In The Beyond (the zone of our galaxy where FTL is possible, and by far the most populous area) the so-called Ultrawave is used to beam information much faster than light: so fast that often real time communication is possible. The galaxy is networked via message groups that are text-based. It's not clear that this is possibly some sort of metaphor for some other, impossible-to-illustrate methodology, but since messages seem to be confined to a few Kb in size, and galactic bandwidth hopelessly small, then I think we can assume these are described literally.

And that's where the novel becomes a product of its time. The data bandwidths allowed by Ultrawave as described by Vernor are measured in units that wouldn't embarrass a dial-up connection of ten years ago. And there's no implication that this is a technical limit imposed by FTL comms, rather it smacks of the author just not reading his tea-leaves well enough.

Moreover, the very concept of newsgroups being used as the main means of communication is strange, especially so when even today newsgroup usage is on the wain, and we seem to be in the process of turning blogs into micronodes for all kinds of web-based content, cross-linked in an ever bewildering way.

The point being: if we expect content-rich comms now, and we allow for physical laws that transcend our own is it not more realistic to envisage an Ultrawave system that encompasses at least the information richness we currently employ?

In my opinion a far more successful futureview of comms traffic is provided by Peter F Hamilton in most of his recent novels - but notably Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. In particular his descriptions of hard-wired brain-friendly network front-ends are a joy to behold, and his grasp of the complexity of interrelated information would seem to be total. But, perhaps in 15 years' time I will be critical of this too!

All that said, A Fire Upon The Deep is an enjoyable read, and my qualms about the cosmic infospace do not hinder that enjoyment. In other respects his concepts of hard science are well-formed. For instance, his description of the Ultradrive mechanism is ingenious - a system that employs tens of microjumps a second that imperceptibly give the impression of FTL travel. A system where the looser physical laws of The Beyond allow more computational power, thereby allowing clear space to be jumped to. Presumably the limiting factor is 'how far can we scan, and how quickly can we compute the route?' - and this varies depending on the physics of the zone around the ship. I am grateful too that Vernor acknowledges the huge problems presented to interstellar travellers when attempting to match delta vee between planets. He doesn't just brush them this aside like EE Smith's 'going free' inertia cancellation system (one wonders where the energy goes). Vernor's jumping and flickering ships retain their starting velocity, which may or may not be useful when attempting to orbit a body 30,000 light years away, and have to fight like devils to make planetfall.

But what of the story? There are two distinct plot threads to enjoy: a manic plunge to find a secret weapon to save a ravaged galaxy; and a Robinson Crusoe-esque kids' adventure in a strange land. The former features a character who is an adventurer of the swashbuckling variety, and though his role is integral to saving the universe, his position is oddly passive despite occasional passages of Han Solo blaster-wielding. The latter plot thread is far more engaging, depicting the predicament of two human children who are abandoned to the whims of the Tines, but in opposing power camps.

Overall, it is Mr Vinge's realisation of the Tines' world and culture that excels. 'Pack' combination has to be achieved in very controlled ways, else the result is loss of personality, degraded thought processes, confusion or just plain imbecility. The concept of distance is of paramount importance, and forms the backbone for all that the Tines do.

It's a book about how distance is the ultimate limiting factor regardless of scale. Not only is A Fire Upon The Deep about the "awesome vistas of time and space" (according to the jacket notes) but also about the space between people.

This may not be classic SF, but it's good enough to read and pass on. Thanks Jez.

Teachers just don't get the picture: Youtube and bullying

Today, the BBC reports on a call from teachers for Youtube to be shut down. The naïveté of such a request from a body that represents purportedly intelligent people staggers me.

The closure of a social networking site will not stop teacher/pupil bullying, though it will remove one outlet for it. So that's good, the little sods will just resort to the old fallback of a turd through the letterbox. Let's be clear: bullying is not on the increase because it has more outlets, it's on the increase because of declining respect for authority, and a singular lack of discipline being applied to kids at an early age.

Youtube video bullying is the symptom, the disease is parental complacency.

It's becoming typical of our society to call for symptomatic relief, rather than face up to the hard graft of long-term cures.

And while we're at it - Look and Learn!

A smashing site providing complete resources from the classic Look and Learn magazine - and an image gallery of approaching 20,000 pictures!

Ron Turner cover collection

A gallery of sci fi pulp covers painted by british illustrator and comics artist Ron Turner for british pulp magazines in the 1950s.

Also includes artwork from the Into Space with Ace Brave pop-up book (1953), a double page spread from Lauries Space Annual (1953) and a series of painted covers for Practical Mechanics Magazine (1953-1962).

Space-suits you sir!

Now we're talking! MIT's Professor Dava Newman has re-engineered the spacesuit, making for a form that will be more comfortable, lighter, more flexible and - darn it - sexier!

This is achieved by stopping the body exploding in a near-vacuum by structural reinforcement, rather than pressurisation. Makes for an easier, safer repair too - punctures can be fixed with a simple bandage affair, unlike regular suits where depressurisation will occur if the hapless astronaut can't make it back inside pronto.

Whatever the technology, it looks like we've finally got the spacesuit of our science fiction dreams! Can someone ask Dava to make a transparent one please?

When is air conditioning not air conditioning?

I've just visited my local Dolland & Aitchinson for an eyetest. I'd cycled there so was a bit warm but upon entering the shop the warm fog that met me wasn't explained by my exertion.

Initially I thought the silly woofters had got the heating on. Yes, we're having a crap July but it's not cold. When I was asked to be seat myself in the middle of the shop I spied the culprit: a portable air-conditioner with it's vent-trunk just lying across the floor!

I quipped that it was stuffy in the shop, but nice and cool in the square meter in front of the aircon. I was met with a puzzled stare - until I elaborated that they were chucking warm air back into the shop. At this point I decided not to explain that by using an electrical device to shift cool air from warm air they were making the air warmer because of the energy expended by the unit itself - that was an gcse physics lesson too far.

Their solution? Open the front door.
"...but it's a noisy road out there!", complained the receptionist as this was done.

Oh, for the love of Pete. We can get as many cars as we like off the roads, but if we don't legislate against global aircon misuse (or just use?) then we may as well fart against thunder. I'm not dead against these devices - but I wish they'd be used sparingly and at minimum levels. What's the point in getting the compartment temperature lower than you'd find comfortable in winter?!

The reverse should be applied to patio heaters...

Angus McBride 1931-2007

A recent mailshot by military publisher Osprey brought to my attention the recent death of illustrator Angus McBride. My experience of his work is limited to the few military uniform books that I have seen, and a comic strip that he did for the much-maligned Eagle revamp in the eighties. I, for one, have nothing to add to his story other than the fact that I can recognise consummate skill when I see it.

Other sources: the Look and Learn blog, the Look and Learn picture library

Here's the text of the Osprey mailshot. Its author, Martin Windrow, claims this isn't a formal obituary but to be honest it probably is the closest we'll get...

A tribute to ANGUS McBRIDE (1931-2007)

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Angus McBride, one of the world's most respected historical illustrators and a true friend of Osprey. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time. The news of Angus's sudden death, on 15 May at his home near Waterford in the Republic of Ireland, has come as a terrible shock to his friends and colleagues. Everyone who knew him, professionally or privately, will wish to join me in expressing profound sadness and sympathy to his widow Patricia, to his son Ian and daughter Fiona, to his son-in-law Neil and to Angus's two young grandsons. Angus was such a vivid and unusual personality that he leaves an aching hole in the lives of his friends and family.

This is neither the time nor place, nor am I the person, to attempt to write a formal obituary. A brief summary of the main facts about Angus's life and work up to five years ago can be found in the Foreword to the book Warriors & Warlords. The Art of Angus McBride (Osprey, 2002). I simply want to record here a few thoughts that occur to me in these first shocked days, from the viewpoint of a colleague and friend of more than thirty years' standing.

Angus was a leading talent in the great generation of British illustrators that emerged in the 1950s and '60s, and who first gained wide attention in the pages of the classic childrens' educationaI magazines Look and Learn and Finding Out, which launched the careers of many of them. He was an almost exact contemporary of Ron Embleton (1930-88), and a decade older than Richard Hook and Gerry Embleton. These men have been close colleagues and friends over many years, and I am proud to say that they have been my friends too. They have made a central contribution to the long journey that Osprey has taken since those days when the catalogue consisted of a single series, with about 50 titles in the backlist and no certainty of lasting much longer. They were never more important than in the 1970s and '80s, when most art schools had long given up teaching life-drawing, and the 1950s generation were the only illustrators around with the skills to handle figurative work.

Angus's talent was innate, but he had to work hard and patiently for many years to learn his craft and build a career. An orphan from the age of 12, he had no chance to attend art school but got a job making the tea and doing any chore that came to hand in an advertising studio. In the 1940s there was no such thing as a guaranteed career path: a craftsman had to learn from experts how to handle pencils and brushes, paints and surfaces, and in the 1950s he began getting regular work as an advertising illustrator. There could have been no better way to increase his versatility, speed and confidence.

After retUrning in 1961 from several years in South Africa - complete with a wife and new son - he began to find expanding opportunities for the sort of work that he had discovered he loved most, mainly in the areas of historical and mythological illustration (though he could, and would, tackle anything). Over the next forty years his reputation grew steadily, from that of an utterly reliable professional to that of a deeply respected 'tribal elder' in his craft, whose work was known (and eagerly collected) internationally. A French reviewer called him 'the magician McBride': when you study how he handled reflected light, and how he drew the viewer's eye to precisely where he wanted it, that seems no exaggeration. On hearing of his death a skilled and experienced illustrator who had never met him told me that it was 'as if a great tree had suddenly fallen'. Angus had not only talent and the rare gift of lasting enthusiasm but the
courage and endurance for a lifetime of application - hard, unremitting graft. Moreover, in a competitive field he was not selfish of his talent or accomplishments, but generous and encouraging to anyone who sought his advice.

It was my good luck to be introduced to Angus by Gerry Embleton in 1975, at the time when, as a relatively new editor, I was anxious to lift the quality of the Men-at-Arms series of books (the work of both the Embleton brothers will be well known to Osprey readers). Angus first wrote and illustrated MAA 57, The Zulu War; he went on to illustrate scores of other titles, of which the last was 436, The Scandinavian Baltic Crusades 1100-1500. That book, and very many others of the ancient and medieval subjects in which Angus delighted, was written and art-researched by Dr David Nicolle - who had got to know Angus's work through his own father, the illustrator Pat Nicolle, in the days of Finding Out. Angus, in his tUrn, introduced me to Richard Hook: he, and later his
son Adam and daughter Christa, have also made a huge contribution to Osprey's lists. The point of all this is simply to celebrate enduring friendships born of the mutual respect and liking of a group of talented people, all of whom had the patience to learn how to do honest work the old-fashioned way.

In 1976, in the middle of another fairly grim decade in England, Angus, Pat and their tWo children returned to Cape Town, but he continued to work regularly for old and new clients in Britain and abroad. Occasional visits, in both directions, were a joy; and I will never forget the McBride's generosity to me in 1982, when I was suffering professional combat-fatigue and badly needed the sunshine and sea air that they made possible.

Conversation with Angus was a mental tonic. It was not only in his day-job that he was knowledgeable and gifted. His mind was wide open, embracing everything from music and the theatre to Egyptology and the occult; he was curious about everything, and had a flair for sharing his enthusiasms. He had an artist's eye for beauty, both natural and human, and his excitement in it enriched his life and that of those around him.

Finally, the McBrides decided that they could no longer live happily in what has become an unpredictable country. Both their children now live in the British Isles, and just over a year ago they joined their daughter Fiona and her family in the peace of the Eire countryside. They settled happily into the home that was built for them; and there, a few days after his 76th birthday, while taking an afternoon break from the drawing board to enjoy the view and the wildlife in his garden, Angus died of a heart attack, without a moment's warning.

He was lively, funny, endlessly interested and interesting, and the most marvellous company. You are lucky to meet somebody like Angus even once or twice in a lifetime, and I shall miss him dreadfully.

(c) Martin Windrow

We want radio not footnotes

Now, my radio station of choice for the morning just happens to be Smooth (nee Saga) so please don't judge me too harshly. For waking up I like my news local, my music unchallenging, and my presenters subdued.

However, I've noticed that they've developed an annoying little format habit. Not content with a news bulletin every 30 mins, we get a summary of upcoming news every ten minutes or so. What? Yes, a summary. This takes the form of the newscaster saying something like, '...and in the news at 7.30 we discuss the three soldiers who died in Iraq last night...'. Yes, discuss.

Given that news bulletins on music stations are already terse little pockets of fact (and some may argue my use of the word 'fact' there), I find it hard to understand why you need to telegraph them with audio footnotes. I mean, they're already bleeding summarised aren't they? It's not as if they're going to give us a 15 minute news programme where there may be opportunity to get down and mucky with some real detail is it?

These stupid little precursors actually consume measurable airtime, to my mind wasting valuable music time on what is, after all, a bloody music station. I can just see the marketing meeting now, where some bozo suggested making the station sound more punchy, dynamic and with-it by plastering stupid space-fillers everywhere. Cobblers.

It's part of the same malady we suffer when watching telly news these days. Sodding ticker-tape streamers at the bottom of the screen, optional multiscreen content, and all the time above this we have a 'real' programme that contains scant facts spun out over 30 minutes, repeat ad nauseum.

The next time you watch a TV news report amuse yourself by playing Count the Fact. Then measure this figure against how many minutes of spume were alongside it.

Heard recently on radio news - I can't identify the source as my memory is crap, but trust me, it may be paraphrased but the sentiment is intact:

In response to the direct question, '...and how are you going to solve the problem?', the useless answer was, '...we're going to examine the problem, and then pursue the best way to solve the problem...'

What beggared belief was that this response was accepted as an appropriate answer, and the interviewer moved on. What shoddy times we live in.

Doctor Who t-shirts online bestsellers!

A minor achievement: it would appear that my two designs for Doctor Who-inspired t-shirts are top sellers on cafepress.com! That doesn't mean a great deal since there are tens of thousands of designs available, and ultimately this only amounts to a few bob commission for me - but I felt warm when I searched under the keywords 'angel phonebox' and 'blink dead' and saw my stuff at the top of the list.

Hey, I might even buy one for myself!

Don't even blink...

After being thoroughly impressed by a recent episode of Doctor Who called 'Blink', one of the characters mentioned putting a slogan on a t-shirt. The phrase, '..the angels have the phonebox...' rings out as being ideal t-shirt fodder. I thought I'd make one for myself using inkjet transfer material, and then remembered that all sorts of on-demand merchandising is available on the web. Obviously when I Googled I found that dozens of people had already plastered the caption all over stuff. A lot of designs were available via cafepress.com, so I had a go at a couple of different designs and created a shop. You can see them here and here...

Stingy thingy

Pete Ashton displays a view of something wicked that invaded his space recently. It reminded me of some beasts that I snapped last year in Greece. Veritable monsters. Must be the heat.

To get an idea of scale the flower head is around 120mm across, and was attracting these (hornets?) like a bogof at Tescos. The pictures are not particulary good as I lost the focus on the second one, but you'll get the idea.

2000ad prompts meat-based thought process...

Today, Paul Rainey's excellent 2000ad Prog Slog raised a few points about meat rationing and so on. His phrase, "the plantation boss decides to punish his unruly staff by limiting the number of lumps of meat per portion of stew from ten to eight." took my brain straight off-topic...

Brit cut-price food chain Iceland really needs to increase the lumps of meat in their pies to eight! The good lady MrsDelete purchased a box of their steak pies recently - for a £1. Don't ask my why she thought this was a good idea, that's another blog. But, however little you expect for a quid, I'd expect more from a product that claims to be "filled with juicy chunks of steak" than what you see here in the accompanying photograph...

And, hey! I'm being charitable, some of the gristle came from the pie MiniDoc was eating. So, one teaspoon of vaguely-meat looking stuff, and half a teaspoon of boingy bits. Nice.

Brutalist Brum Blog from Pete Ashton

I noted with some interest this recent blog from Brum Blogger Extraordinaire, Pete Ashton. In it he mentions an old concrete shopping 'quadrangle' in Birmingham. I remember gaining access to the roof of Littlewoods way back in 1986-ish. Littlewoods department store forms part of this garrison, and afforded a different perspective to the norm. Here are a couple of pics.

If you look carefully at the big version of this picture you'll see that the mid-eighties timeframe is confirmed by the ladies' footwear - calf-enhancing heels all the way ;)

Oncey twicey thricey Spidey

Mate Greg P went to see the third Spidey movie a few days ago. He commented on in a casual fashion in an email to me. It struck me as a lucid and balanced piece so I thought I'd present i