Pete Ashton’s Blog

Someone was asking me what I was doing on Saturday. I said I was going to a wedding. “Ah well, bad luck” they said. No, I replied. This is the wedding of a goth I used to live with. It should be nothing if not entertaining.

Here’s the happy couple:

I lived with Mr James Lindley in the 3rd year of University and then for a couple of years after and unlike most of my Uni friends we’ve managed to stay in fairly good touch ever since (mainly due to him - I am awful at keeping contact with people as many of you reading this will know.) Speaking of which, there was a good turnout of friends from 10 years ago, some of whom looked exactly the same, some of whom it took me a good couple of hours before I clicked. People who used to have long lanky black hair should be forced to pin a photo of themselves with said hair on their jacket should they later decide to sport very short blond hair. And it was good seeing them again. Nice to dive back into old patterns of behaviour long forgotten.

So far I’ve processed my photos of the ceremony which took place in Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens, a lovely oasis of lovely made even more lovely by the gorgeous early evening sun. Here’s the slideshow:

Photos of the debauchery that followed will emerge like toxic goo at a later date.

I’ll be 36 on Friday. This month’s Robot vs Dinosaur is also on Friday so rather than my usual trick of not doing anything on my birthday I’ll be there.

All are welcome!

This weekend saw me going to two events, Stan’s Cafe’s Of All The People In All The World on Friday and the fourth Project X Presents. Unfortunately a bit too much boozing on Friday night meant I spectacularly missed all of Artsfest this year. I wonder how it went?

Anyway, the TTV Machine was in action at both of the above. I realised it’s been two years since I first took the contraption out and suffered the stares of bemusement and have produced over 850 photos with it since then. It might be about time I did something with all of them. It also might be time to build a new contraption. I have ideas…

Here’s yer Rice slideshow:

And here’s yer Project X slideshow:

A few months ago I heard that David Simon and Ed Burns, creators of The Wire (possibly the best US TV series in the world ever, as it’s also know), were working on a mini-series for HBO about the Iraq War called Generation Kill. Last week I found out it had aired in the US. Naturally it’s not available to buy here yet so I was forced, forced I tell you, to torrent it. I will be buying the DVDs though when they eventually come out as it’s rather good indeed.

It’s a tricky one to describe though as there’s so much prior art for this kind of thing. The most immediate comparison is a series called Tour Of Duty which was on telly in the early 90s but that was superficial rubbish by comparison. Similarly the heavy-handed Vietnam movies with a message don’t quite relate. Generation Kill is more subtle and oddly detatched considering how intimate the portrayal of the characters is. I won’t say any more other that to highly recommend it to you. I understand it’s still on HBO On Demand, if you have access to that. Otherwise wait an absurdly long time for the DVDs or get ye to the torrents. It’s well worth it.

Currently I’m mad busy with work stuff so blogging will be sporadic but I was TTVing at Matt and Kate’s wedding on Saturday and the photos from that will surface as and when I find a moment. In the meanwhile the above is one I couldn’t wait to process. 10 year olds are great, no?

The story so far…

Google release a browser. The whole world of people who care about such things go “Oooh! Shiny!”

Someone reads the End User License and doesn’t like what they find, says they’re a lawyer (though emphasizes this is not legal advice) and declares they can never agree to this.

The tech blogosphere goes mental. I picked it up from Jemima Kiss at The Guardian via Twitter but the big shitstorm seems to be happening on Gizmodo with the not-at-all-hysterical headline Google Chrome EULA Claims Ownership of Everything You Create on Chrome, From Blog Posts to Emails.

Now, for the record I haven’t downloaded Chrome (it’s Windows only right now) and probably won’t use it since I rely on my extension-loaded Firefox too much to change. It sure looks interesting though and I expect a lot of the groovy under-the-hood stuff detailed in Scott McClouds comic like the V8 Javascript engine and improved memory management to make it over to Firefox eventually. So I’m not that bothered about the EULA personally and have no real desire to defend Google on this one.

What bothers me is, other than the lawyer’s personal decision, the reporting on this has been appallingly misleading and devoid of any calm, rational thought. Sure, the EULA has some nasty sounding passages in it thanks to it being written in legalese but it doesn’t say Google “owns” your stuff. In order to understand what it means you have to understand how web services operate, which makes the bad reporting of this by tech journos even more depressing. I mean, if this was some monkey at BBC news then I’d be annoyed but shrug it off. But when my own people fuck up like this…

Anyway, here’s a short refresher in how the Internet works for those who were asleep at the back.

When you create something you own the copyright on it. You can choose to give this “right to copy” away by signing a publishing deal or similar but at the point of creation the fundamental right to copy is with you. So let’s say you take a photograph of a dog. You created that image and therefore hold the copyright on it.

Let’s email that picture to someone. What happens? First of all you upload a copy to your email service. If you’re using Gmail this then sits on the Gmail computers, probably a few times since they back stuff up. It’s then sent to your friend who uses Hotmail, so another bunch of copies are stored there. The image is huge, having come straight from your camera, so when your friend views their email Hotmail creates a smaller version that they can check before deciding whether to download it or not. This is modifying your original work, something that is protected by copyright law (I believe).

So when an EULA says “reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute” that’s what it’s covering. The right to make copies and display them to people without having to ask you for permission every time.

You like how you can click one button and have Google Docs turn your Word document into a web page? Covered by the license. You like how Flickr can make your photos appear in searches and be embedded in other people’s blogs? Covered by the license.

I believe (and I could be wrong) the reason for these licenses is not to let large corporations steal all your stuff and use it for their nefarious ends. It’s to stop litigious opportunists suing the shit out of them for the sort of copyright infringement that is essential in making these services work. Without allowing Google to make copies of stuff that other people own they wouldn’t be able to let you email it or, I suspect, display it in your browser as every time you look at a web page a copy of that is stored on your computer.

And (I believe) even if you give away the “right to copy” you still own the stuff. You’re just letting other people copy it, within specific circumstances.

Anyway, enough of my cod-lawyering. The point is I’d hope the tech-nerds out there who report on this stuff would have the nouse not to get drawn into this bullshit and actually apply some thought to what they’re reporting. The same thing happened when Billy Bragg decided to take on Murdoch’s MySpace on similar grounds. I had a hell of a lot of respect for Bragg before that. I lost a lot of it afterwards.

You people are not stupid. Stop acting like you are and leave the stupid to the Register where it belongs.

I love my Tumblr. It’s probably my favourite blogging service for quick and dirty posting of random stuff I find online and I find a lot of random stuff I want to share. It’s notable that I’ve been consistently posting to it for over a year now as many other social media-type services have fallen from my favour. That says a lot.

I also follow a few other Tumblrs and yesterday put them all in one folder in Google Reader. Oddly there’s only six, and curiously they’re all by women. I don’t think the latter means anything though. Here’s who I’m following right now:

• More(ish) from Meg Pickard.
• Joblr from Jo Geary.
• Cleanskies owns a Tumblr from Jeremy Dennis.
• Arty Type from Candice Smith.
• Careless Gene from Laura Careless.
• Pictures-a-go-go from Anna Mondo.

I like these because, on the whole, they provide me with a constant stream of cool stuff - videos, photos, links, etc - and because I sort of know the people running them so there’s a personal connection. Is anyone else actively running a Tumblr account that I should know of?

As you might be aware I’ve been playing a neverending backgammon tournament with Sarah Allen. Every month or so we meet up and play the most bitter and ferocious games you’ve ever seen. I’m so happy to have found someone who takes this game as seriously as I do. The air is electric with tension as we cast the dice with fury, our attention glued to the board of pointy arrows. It’s good stuff.

The rules of engagement are fairly simple. We play sets comprising of best of three games and an evening will consists of at most three sets. These sets then go onto the score board which we’ve mislaid but knew that when we entered the pub I was one set up. Tonight I won two sets 2:1 with Sarah scraping the first game and me royally kicking her arse on the second two. I was feeling pretty good about things, dancing the Numa Numa dance and being rather smug, as was my right as king of backgammon.

Since I’d won the evening’s play and it was getting late thanks to an interval of setting the world to rights (as you do) Sarah suggested we finish up with a quick game outside of the tournament for money. I had £11 in my wallet so we played for a quid. Sarah won. Not happy about this I decided to raise the stakes and placed my tenner on the board which, after much prevarication, was matched and the £20 pot was tucked beneath the unused doubling die as the game commenced.

She beat me, casting out all her pieces before I’d even made it home. It was a crushing defeat. I was not happy.

As usual I was Twittering the results (though the release of Google Chrome somewhat stole the audience - damn you Google) and the general consensus was I’d been played. Still, I’m three sets up in the tornament. She’s gonna have to work hard to top that.