The unexpected wonder of reading the greatest bedtime book ever told to the kids

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Each time I finished The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as child and young adult, people would question me why I kept reading the books again and again. One of the things I said to them was the wonder I gained from discovering new ways of thinking of the characters, the prose and the story. And, despite the 10 or 20 times I previously read The Hobbit, as I read 2-3 pages most nights to the girls at the moment, my memory is again delighting in finding new things and recalling parts of the story I had forgotten.

I’ve always believed it’s best to have read any book before you see a big screen treatment, so once I saw the teaser trailer for Peter Jackson’s upcoming movie, I was inspired to read it to them as a bedtime story, before they had their ideas about the characters and the story corrupted by the movie. It had been initially told as a bedtime story by Professor Tolkien to his children, and as a huge fan, I like to think it has always been an ambition of mine to introduce mine to it the same way.

They are moving away from having young childrens books read to them so being introduced to new, interesting and imaginative ideas like those in The Hobbit have to be a good thing. They are also discovering concepts of how fear can be balanced with longing and light with darkness. So much so that my initial fears they would have nightmares after the run-ins with the Trolls in the wood and the Great Goblin in the Misty Mountains have, to date, completely unfounded.

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And so tonight they met Gollum, who despite Dad’s best efforts to sound cringeworthy and horrible, drew the loudest and longest giggles to date. No pre-conceived notions, no biases to be confirmed, just Mr. Tolkien’s prose brought to life by me.

Praps Andy Serkis and Peter Jackson have more insight than some give them credit for. Praps It likes riddles, praps it does, does it?

I’m keeping the progress of my reading, almost daily, over at my Goodreads profile – a great resource for reminding yourself of the books you have read and would love to read as well as discovering new works and authors. Come and join me, and share your own story about this wonderful piece of fiction.

Ubuntu thinks the HUD is the future of the menu.

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Ubuntu proposes to introduce the HUD or “the future of the menu“.

Mac OS X introduced Application switching with trackpad gestures a couple of years ago, so between that and Spotlight, I never use the Cmd-Tab or Dock and I rarely use the menu bar either in OSX (Less said about Windows here the better).

But, Mac OS X has had system wide user configurable commands for a number of versions now – so what is this really going to offer aside from removing the menu bar? Which full screen mode in OS X already removes.

I think it’s an interesting idea, but for discoverability sake what are they proposing to replace it with? Or are all Ubuntu users already 100% familiar with available commands in a static environment where new applications almost never get added?

It’s starting to remind me of the command line, and the reason widely used modern Operating Systems have GUI’s in the first place.

No White Cliffs of Dover from PJ Harvey at the State Theatre

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It’s not often I sit down to a rock and roll concert, but this week at the State Theatre in Sydney, we were obliged to do so for PJ Harvey’s Sydney Festival gig.

And, surprisingly, it worked. The muted, awkward, whoops and lack of desire to shake ones booty to the passionate tunes and pounding rhythms from Let England Shake was not just because the resident jobsworths would’ve swooped on us like a Cinema usher protecting a young couples virtue in 1963. The extraordinary lyrics, much heard this past year, in this new setting helped too.

Resplendent in robes, bodice and horns, Ms Harvey and her complement played with our emotions throughout, providing an excellent – yet not exactly mirrored – rendition of one of last years most celebrated albums. Yet another magnum opus from an artist who I think has previously presented at least three.

Moistening of the eyes was even encountered at the opening to Bitter Branches, On Battleship Hill, and In the Dark Places, but this wasn’t a sad concert. The triumphant nature of musical accompaniment provided an impressive counterpoint to the emotionally challenging lyrics.

One of the thoughts which came to me toward the end, especially as they will no doubt soon start preparing for the 100th anniversary of the butchery which influenced many of the songs, is Let England Shake should become required listening before the commemorations which will soon arrive. Remember what happened and why it happened that way, not what they would like you to believe about their wars.

As in Hanging in the Wire, there was no White Cliffs of Dover and nothing from perhaps her previous most commercial tome – despite one of the few contributions from the floor looking for some good fortune. But this was an uplifting concert all the same, and for someone who rarely gets to enough live music these days a more than fitting way to start 2012.

Keep it up Polly Jean, those who continually push the boundaries should always be celebrated. I’m already looking forward to the next time you visit Sydney.

There’s wisdom in crowds – when it comes to Comic Sans.

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The Internet, as we know, sure likes its hate. And as sure as one site celebrates the beauty of active wallpapers, another is sure to point out their fatal flaws. Thanks to tumblr, everyone can quickly have a blog illustrating their divisions. And the bickering can begin in earnest.

Conversely there’s the well loved kittehs and the dreaded comic sans. Wise crowds know the Googles will help us together share our love or a finger pointing “ha ha”. Whichever is most suitable

But as with any crowds there are always contrarians, celebrated or otherwise. And as usual tumblr is the culprit in the case of celebrating Comic Sans.

Let the pile on begin.

Android v iPhone: each to their own, with a side of finger poking

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In his post You Sense It Or You Don’t the creator of Mars Edit Daniel Jalkut comments on the recent sparring between Joshua Topolsky and M.G. Siegler following Siegler’s recent Galaxy Nexus review.

A most excellent post which could almost be distilled to the following line:

For whatever details a given person appreciates and values, far more people will be disinterested and be unlikely to even distinguish differences.

So Android users, if you can just accept the iOS is for the discerning we’ll happily accept and appreciate your testing of the kinks in the upcoming features of iOS 6 for us.

Netbank: taking no risks with your security on the iPhone

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Which Banks iPhone application is, according to their own PR , a very popular way for their customers to access their financials online.

And they’ve generally done a great job. Retaining Security – the key focus in any banking service online – without sacrificing usability throughout the app.

Except in one simple case.

The close button.

At first glance it seems they’ve done the right thing with both the position and the behaviour of the button. In almost every app I use on the iPhone a button in that location signifies going to account settings or going back.

Until you realise any habitual, yet accidental, press will log out the banking session.

The challenge with habitualising yourself NOT to press it is a toss up between wasting a trunkload of time in Facebook figuring out an alternative way to find the kinky photos your friends share or repeatedly logging back in to your banking.

Perhaps they could remove the close button it and just let us use the “Log off” link they’ve helpfully provided instead. Or maybe it’s an undocumented security feature to protect us from ourselves and the HTML session embedded inside application wrapper.

Less Hay made in 2011: Annual blogging report

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,400 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

BBC self-promotion should also face the facts

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In the final episode of the recent BBC drama, The Hour, one of the major characters could be heard berating one of his journalists with fact, not opinion for proposing they run a story which couldn’t be verified.

The BBC World Service this week broadcast an extract-come-promotion for an upcoming documentary concerning the fate of a large number of Irish men who served in the British Army during World War II.

Being Irish, I took some notice of it, but didn’t listen to it in detail. Not long after I noticed a number of people sharing a link to the same story from the BBC website. Reading through the content, I was pretty certain it was reasonably close to a transcript from the radio piece. While on the whole the piece was factual, a number of issues stood out.

  • Firstly, the focus on the punishment meted out to the 5,000 or so soldiers who had deserted the Irish Army to join the British with barely a mention of the 30,000 or more other Irish nationals who also served in British forces during that war.
  • The presentation; neither supported nor contradicted, of a quote from a supposed History Professor at Trinity College in Dublin:

I’d estimate that 60% of the population expected or indeed hoped the Germans would win

In order to meet the requirements of its own title, no doubt the Face the Facts program, once broadcast in full, will correct these omissions and errors. There are plenty of Irish, British and other historians who can help them explore and explain to their listeners the reality of the time; such as the complex and confrontational relationship between Britain and Ireland in the years leading up to 1939. It’s such a pity that in the modern quest for instant gratification and self-promotion, headlines missing critical pronouns and questionable statistics are allowed to run.

The challenge of facts served without context and opinions presented as facts remains when you consider some of the commentary accompanying the sharing of this article on the internet. To the uninformed, it may seem as if the Irish Free State was in league with the Nazis, and that all Irish citizens who dared to fight Mr Hitler were punished severely upon their return.

We used to rely on journalists at the BBC, on programs like those represented in The Hour, to explore and present the portion of a story which wasn’t instantly obvious. For as with all, there is almost always more to a story than that which meets the eye.

While it’s clear The Hour is just a drama, you have to believe the script was influenced in some way by the policies which existed at the BBC at the time of the Suez crisis. 55 years on some of the same policies could be well used at their online news site.

Unfortunately, it seems the venerable BBC has succumbed to the Murdochian need to promote its upcoming investments rather than ensure both the story, and indeed the bait of the headline, are factual; or at least where opinions are presented they are backed up or contradicted so as not to be confused with facts.

In the case of today’s example, that’s more than unfortunate. Ireland has come a long way from the days of de Valera and his comely maidens dancing at the cross roads. It didn’t shoot them in the head, but its treatment of those deserters from its army who chose the bigger picture over Ireland’s own interests does need examining. I look forward to the documentary in anticipation it faces the facts rather than continuing to present them in a way which suits its narrative.