King of the Mountains

I was browsing in a local shop last week when something grabbed my attention. To whit, a 3ft tall Lego tower crane.

When did these happen? When I was a kid, we got little Lego stuff. I remember what was, at the time, a large mobile crane. It was about 8in long and came with the usual smiling yellow chap as a driver, sensibly attired with a hard hat. I had a fair number of the diggers too, all built to the same scale. This might be where I get my love of anything large and noisy from.

Fast forward about fifteen to twenty years and I came across a pile of low loaders in my local Aldi. In a whimsical mood I decided that £12 wasn’t too bad and bought one. After assembly I was astonished how far these things had moved on. These aren’t toys any more. It’s a pretty decent freelance model of a truck that just happens to be made of Lego.

I know the fashionable thing is to decry the specialist bits now included, usually with a growl of "When I were a lad we had to make our own (insert part here)". But looking at the current crop I really can’t see how you could do as good a job without the oddball bricks.

Yes, I bought the crane. It’s sitting on my desk looking huge. It also looks surprisingly realistic considering the driver has a bright yellow plastic head. The cantilevered design is pretty much spot on, remove any part of it and it’ll sag. Whoever designed it clearly understood how these things work from an engineering viewpoint. It’d be wasted on the average eight year old.

Which leads me to wonder, are they after a different market? The Star Wars and Indiana Jones ranges suggest so. They’re labelled as being suitable for kids who probably weren’t born when the films came out. Is the real target market twentysomethings who grew up with Lego and now have a bit more spending power than they did in their pre-teen years?  The move to ever more detailed and increasingly fragile models suggests so.

At least this is a harmless form of refusing to grow up, as opposed to the toddleresque behaviour exhibited by those who can’t hold their beer. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to order a large green tipper before they sell out… 

Inspired by a recent New Scientist piece I thought I’d write something about these intriguing creatures.

They have tentacles, funny eyes, and built in water-jet propulsion. What’s not to like? Added to this, research suggests that they are very intelligent indeed. Their camoflage in particular is incredible.

The cuttlefish can make itself invisible against all natural backgrounds, and will do a fine job when presented with man-made ones too. Witness one test when it was found that they would align themselves to stripes painted on the back of a tank. Horizontal stripes saw them lying flat, vertical saw them raising tentacles to blend in. They can even generate a moving pattern over their skin to distract prey and confuse predators. Of course, there’s always the famous cloud of ink as a last resort.

If you see one in an aquarium it will manage to look deeply thoughtful. While I somehow doubt it is considering the mysteries of the universe (other than where the next meal is) there is a fascination to them. Apparently they will often respond to divers making the "peace" sign by raising a couple of tentacles in a similar manner. While this is an alarm signal rather than a response in kind, it is still somewhat astonishing that a squishy tentacled thing can recognise and respond to humans. These little chaps (and chapesses, although I have no idea how to tell the difference) could well have been the dominant life-form on this planet had evolution taken a slightly different turn.   

Plus the baby ones are adorable. Look at those cute little tentacles! 

I found a very funny website yesterday, part of which was devoted to cheap ‘n dubious Chinese-made toys. It’s here

What particularly caught my eye was the wonderfully naff "Titanic-Bot"

I really feel there should be an awards ceremony for toys like this. This one should get the bad taste award along with the supreme bizarreness award. I mean, it’s a ship that sank with around 1500 of her passengers and crew, but made in plastic and that can transform into a robot. I suppose it would have made the film somewhat better, as that site notes. Mid-way through one of the annoying soppy bits the ship turns into a 200 foot tall flying robot. It might even spare us that ghastly song.

Even more bizarre, the toy is clockwork. So you can indulge your inner Captain Smith by dodging the terrifying walls of foam in your bath and re-enact the sinking after colliding with a giant knee. Or have it turn into a giant flying robot that carries everyone to safety. Entirely up to you. Again, it would have made for a better film and would only be slightly more inaccurate.

Another observation on TV series of late, mostly provoked by watching more House than is sensible. Where are all the intelligent heroes?

Action series seem to be filled to the brim with assorted numbskulls who you somehow just know were top of one of their school sports teams and were always picked first. They were the popular ones, the ones who were in every after-school club going and spent their holidays helping underpriveleged water voles.

But what of the kid who wasn’t picked so much as grudgingly accepted. The one who wasn’t attractive, or popular, or charismatic? What happened to them?

Occasionally they get their chance. Like Major "Q" Boothroyd of James Bond fame, who in at least one film got a chance to be something other than simple comic relief. The fact is, old Q would probably have made a better spy than 007. He had the ability to disappear into the background, like George Smiley in the various John Le Carre works. But usually they get to sit in base camp, radioing instructions to the chiselled muscular idiot who has the main role.

The obvious question is why. If I had a choice of people I’d want helping me to defuse a bomb, the PhD student electronics genius would be first choice, ahead of the idiot who played football (or worse, the bastardised wimpish mess they play on the other side of the Atlantic) and can lift his own weight with one arm.

Actually, I think I’d put Mr Potato Head ahead of that goon. At least I could use the plastic bits to wedge the mechanism.

Thing is, while they were wasting their lives in the gym some of us were honing skills. Skills they tried to bully us out of thinking we had. We can’t throw a ball, but we do understand tools more complex than a hammer. Last time I checked, complex tool use was one of the things separating Homo Sapiens from the apes.

Before anyone complains about how my last post admired Gene Hunt, I’d like to point out that he isn’t a complete numbskull. Hunt has some very specific skills, not least the intuition that means he finds the right suspect most of the time. He also knows when to employ a boot and when to find the right spanners. By the standards of some US TV series he’s positively intellectual.

Thunderbirds got it right. The Tracy brothers relied on their machinery and their skill in operating it, and unlike most modern heroes it never broke. When it did get damaged, they brought it home. No ejecting into the sea then swimming for miles with a broken arm for Virgil after Thunderbird 2 was shot up. He had more sense than that.

So what am I calling for? How about a hero who was never popular, never picked for anything. You’d wonder why he bothers saving the people who didn’t give a damn about him. He’d be the one who can balance thousands of tons of steel with a fingertip, rather than blowing it up or trying to lift it. The man who will make a lever long enough and find the place to stand before moving the Earth. The man who doesn’t need a hulking great brute of a pistol, because he knows how to hit the important stuff with a smaller one and isn’t compensating for anything. 

The first series of Ashes to Ashes ended last night with a series of events that easily reached the standard of Life on Mars. This morning I read a review that claimed that people only watch it for DCI Gene Hunt. I don’t entirely agree, clearly the more involved plot details are a little too much for the London-addled minds of the TV reviewing classes. However, I have thought about the appeal of DCI Hunt.

The fact is, even the most left-wing, emotionally intelligent, moisturising metrosexual man wants to be Gene. They won’t admit it, but deep down they secretly admire him. It’s the same reason that witless American series with the torture fetishist in the lead role does so well. Secretly or not so secretly, men want to be him and women want him.  

Take a look at the lawman (to quote Bowie). Gene is described by one of his colleagues in Life on Mars as "An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding". Accurate, possibly. But compare him to many modern young men.

Gene drinks heavily, refers to women as "skirt" and wouldn’t recognise a salad if it attacked him. But on the other hand, he can handle his drink. He doesn’t drink beyond his capacity then try to pick fights or turn into a snivelling tantrum-hurling man-child to get attention from women. Likewise while he may have had trouble with the concept of female colleagues there is evidence in Ashes to Ashes that he is changing. His reaction to Shaz being stabbed and to Alexs’ various perils  suggests that despite feminism having barely registered he is at heart a gentleman, although his protective attitudes may grate with his colleagues (such as when he advises Alex to go home and sleep rather than throwing herself at a random Yuppie). When it’s important, the usual apparently emotionless tough guy becomes a caring person.

As with that other great fictional lawman Sam Vimes, Gene is not by nature violent. In three series he has never attacked someone just because he can. He despises violent criminals and regards himself as the sheriff protecting the general public from them. He will punch, kick, and on occasion shut suspects in an industrial freezer but only if he has a firm belief that they have been guilty of things that are at least as bad. Compare this to the frquent drunken brawls with reasons such as "he looked at my girl" that his real life counterparts have to break up outside city centre clubs on a daily basis.

This then may be the secret of his success. While he can look after himself and those around him, he is never prone to bouts of meaningless violence and deep down he is a caring if a little over-protective individual. Despite his neolithic views on homosexuality and minorities he still regards them as people, evidently regarding their background as less important than the crimes committed against them. His response to a murder being described as a "Hate Crime" is particularly telling: "What, as opposed to one of those I love you murders?". He would never physically attack someone on the basis of their skin colour, sexuality or football preferences. Compare this to the recent real-world case involving a girl beaten to death simply for being a Goth.

I can think exactly how the Gene Genie would have dealt with the gang responsible for that. And I think an awful lot of us would have held his coat as he did so.  

Your truck no longer has all the trim it left the factory with.

You cut some or all of the missing trim off in order to fit protective plates, bars, or sliders.

Other people know where you’ve met your new friends by the fact that you almost immediately start discussing how to use cooking oil as fuel.

Snow provokes a similar reaction from you to that of the average five year old.

You find yourself doing the weekly shopping in something equipped to cross the Sahara because you can’t be bothered to take all the gear off.

Your most useful tools are a can of Plusgas and a big set of spanners.

The thing you desire at the moment is made of steel plate and costs around £300.

Before trying to go into a multi storey car park, you first have to unbolt the two metre long aerial from your roof.

Your car washing routine consists of thoroughly jetwashing the underside then giving the bodywork a brief pass with a hose.

After doing this, your driveway could sustain a crop of vegetables.

The paint on your roof is scratched.

You have got out of bed at five AM in order to drive around a frozen mountainside.

You then repeated this the next day.

You wonder why anyone would buy a car that can’t put a wheel up on a tree stump and keep the remaining three wheels in contact with the ground.

You find yourself relishing the chance to go to cities, as you find scaring urban 4x4s hugely amusing.

You have watched and laughed at videos of clueless Hummer drivers breaking their vehicles.

You regard “Not suitable for motor vehicles” as a challenge.

Likewise news reports along the lines of “Town cut off by snow”.

Your “satnav” is a laptop PC running mapping software.

About a year ago I watched an episode of anime on a friend’s computer. Now, most anime has giant fighting robots. Initial D is something else entirely: For a start, it’s about streetracing.

In Britain this would raise thoughts of idiotic youths with oversized stereo systems doing handbrake turns in the local supermarket car park. Not so in Japan. Touge, or mountain passes, are the racetracks and racing is conducted at a semi-professional level. Obnoxiously loud stereos are not found, only modifications that improve performance. Likewise dangerous driving is frowned upon. These are not your local Novaboys, they have more in common with a rally team. Local areas have their own race team, which competes with others for prestige.

The story begins with Ryosuke Takahashi, a touge racer who realises that he does not have much time left before the adult world begins to impinge on his racing. He decides to start a new team, Project D, with the aim of beating every other team in Japan. He recruits his younger brother Keisuke and an uncannily talented young man by the name of Takumi Fujiwara as drivers, and in the best anime fashion the victories begin to pile up. Every race sees Takumi take on a far more powerful opponent and beat them by sheer skill with his 1986 Toyota Corolla (AE86, in racer lingo). Takumi’s skills improve with every race, as he learns from his opponents. Later in the series, his father buys a Subaru Impreza. Takumi uses this alternately with his AE86 to deliver tofu for the family business, effectively causing him to chase his Impreza times with the AE86 and develop his skills further.

So what’s the appeal, I hear you ask? Well, the idea of being faster in an old car than far newer models due to skill is very pleasant for those of us who through choice are still driving an 11 year old Land Rover (and before anyone says it’s not touge-ready, I’ll suggest you see it in action first…). The idea of developing your fast road abilities in the wilder parts of the country is also one I feel a natural affinity to, given that the vast majority of my miles are covered in terrain where the Project D crew would feel at home. Certainly I maintain that anyone who learned their car control in a Welsh winter will be a formidable opponent in all weather conditions, and very much enjoy showing clueless people in new Range Rovers precisely what a Series 1 Discovery is capable of.

The Washington Post recently printed an article about the interaction between military robots and their human operators. You can find it here.

Interesting reading, a mix of sad and funny. I’m particularly taken with the tale of the soldier who took “his” robot fishing, and could picture the scene when another returned to base with a box containing the remains of the robot. But this isn’t just a case of people doing strange things under stress.

Think about your car, your computer, your boat, indeed anything else complex that you own. Have you ever felt that it seems to have a soul? I suspect most of us have. It’s a basic human urge to interpret the behaviour of a machine as a show of emotion. Add a little stress, which can be as light as attempting to cross an unfamiliar city at a busy time, and you rapidly find yourself thinking of your car or bike as having personality. Certainly I refer to my car as “she”. You’ll probably find that most men do. If anyone complains I point out that all ships are female, so why not refer to a car in the same way?

There is no way in which a car can be capable of emotion. But try telling yourself that after it apparently found an extra few bhp from nowhere and enabled you to avoid getting hit by that truck. Or why it feels far livelier on a holiday trip than on the daily commute. Or how it managed to outpace something far newer and more powerful. It’s undoubtedly due to your experience of the car but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve formed an emotional bond. 

This is probably not a bad thing. Think about it, are you likely to scrap something that you feel emotion for before its time is up? Are you likely to scrap it at all? You’re more likely to repair rather than replace, and that’s a good thing for the world as a whole. It uses far fewer resources to make a few spares than to make a complete new widget.

In 1957 a proposal was made by the head of the Netherlands state railway, F.Q. den Hollander to assemble a network of luxury express trains linking European states. The name given to these trains still reeks of glamour: Trans Europ Express.

Initial participants were West Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands. Later Belgium and Luxembourg would join. There were numerous innovations intended to speed these expresses; passport control (in pre-Schengen Europe passports were still checked at each border crossing) would take place on the move, the trains would use diesel power to avoid problems with differing electrical power supplies, only first class accommodation would be provided and the trains would be of the multiple unit type to avoid time-consuming shunting at terminals. The first services began on 2^nd June 1957.

In 1974 the network reached its peak, and began to die off. German expresses were renamed “EuroCity” or EC. The TEE name retreated to the realms of the enthusiasts and nostalgia-ridden. And yet, the concept has not died. We are currently seeing electric trainsets built that are able to handle multiple voltages to allow through running into neighbouring countries. The destination boards may no longer say TEE, but anyone who witnessed the original TEE services would not see a huge difference. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bahn’s museum section has an immaculately restored electric loco and a set of matching coaches that operate charters as the TEE Rheingold, much as they would have done originally. It has even attracted the attention of musicians, the German group Kraftwerk titling an album “Trans Europ Express”.

At this point you may be wondering why this is important. There is in fact a very good reason. A network like this offers the best chance of dissuading people from using short-haul air travel and thereby reducing the heavy carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft, to say nothing of the noise pollution and vapour trails caused by aircraft. While a train still uses energy, it requires far less power to keep a TGV at cruising speed than an aircraft. The time taken to cross Europe may be longer, but surely we should consider whether in this age of cheap web-based teleconferencing we really need to travel long distances on a regular basis anyway? If people managed to do business in 1957 with just reliable rail links then we should have no trouble now with the incredible strides in technology since that era. We simply need to move away from the idea that we can travel anywhere in Europe in an hour for comparative pennies before we are forced to by rising oil prices.

So on the 2^nd of June raise a glass to F.Q. den Hollander and the TEE. Their best years have yet to come.

If you’ve searched the internet for information in recent months, there’s a good chance that you’ll have seen the name “Wikipedia” pop up in search results. Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia with serious aims.