Life Imitates Art

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Passing through Heathrow T5 just after Xmas on my way to Bavaria for a meeting or two, I grabbed Charles Stross’ “The Jennifer Morgue” to read on the plane – and doubtless, in some airports too, since ground temperatures dropped to -20 practically while I was in the air.

Stross is definitely Our Kind Of Author, though I find he has that breathless Linux-Nerd way about his writing which immediately puts my teeth on edge (but doesn’t stop me reading). He clearly has some technology scars about his person and has done at least one book (Halting State) which suggests a high degree of familiarity with the online world and software development.

Anyway, at one point in “the Jennifer Morgue”, Stross stymies his heroes by having their transport crash – in software, not by running into something solid. As he no doubt intends, I had a nerdy chuckle at that while the Airbus 319 speared through the crystal-clear air across a Europe whiter then even the dreams of the BNP could make it.

Then I got in my hire car.

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Maps?! Where we’re going, we don’t need maps!

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Growing up I always used to love family trips. A bit of sun, sand and ice cream; a nice sing-song; maybe a rollercoaster or two. An uncomfortable dip in the freezing, polluted sea; a nasty bout of the runs in a caravan chemical toilet; the chance to relentlessly bully my little sister and get relentlessly bullied by my big brother.

But there was one thing that really entertained us without fail: the obligatory map-reading fiasco. Some of the finest arguments I’ve ever witnessed occurred in the front of our car, usually to a bizarrely ill-fitting soundtrack of Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years (thanks for that, Dad). So it’s with great sadness that I realise I’ll never repeat the great shows put on by my parents.

You see, over the last few days I’ve driven nearly 1,400 miles around the UK on a bit of a mountain climbing quest, and the journeys were, it has to be said, uneventful. And it’s all the fault of my car’s newest shiny gadget, its very own 1.21-Jigawatt flux capacitor, if you will. Also known as TomTom.

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