Don’t mention the war

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The US Ambassador came to College today, to give a talk to the Gates Scholars, and I sat in on the proceedings.

Robert Holmes Tuttle is a genial cove who apparently continues to be Co-Managing Partner of Tuttle-Click Automotive Group, described by the embassy as “one of the largest automobile dealer organizations in the United States”, while still representing his country. (Wonder what he does when questions about automobile emissions come up.) Mrs. Tuttle, a corporate lawyer, also came along and lent a touch of glamour to an otherwise drab occasion.

Tuttle’s talk was stupendously banal — partly a paen of praise to his country’s enlightened tax system (eh?), and partly a sermonette on the importance of giving (prompted in part, I guess, by the fact that most of his listeners were in Cambridge because of a huge benefaction made by Bill Gates to the university to establish the Gates Scholars scheme).

The Q&A session with the students was similarly banal. The questions were uniformly respectful and mostly vague. There was not a single mention of the war in Iraq. (John Cleese, where are you when we need you?) A question about anti-Americanism abroad was skilfully deflected by the Ambassador with anecdotal guff about how English visitors to the US are always overwhelmed by the hospitality and friendliness of the natives. He dealt rather well with a questioner who asked whether released US prisoners should have the right to vote (apparently they don’t), by explaining that sometimes there was a conflict between his personal views and the fact that he had to represent his government. Asked what he regarded as the two biggest problems facing the world, he replied “poverty and bad governance”, which I thought was a pretty intelligent answer — especially as I had expected him to trot out the party line about global terrorism.

As he gave his talk, a couple of thoughts came to mind. One was Ambrose Bierce’s definition of an ambassador as “a person who, having failed to secure an office from the people, is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.” Mr Tuttle is a substantial donor to the Republican party, and served as Ronald Reagan’s Director of Personnel. The other thought was that this genial, agreeable chap is essentially the acceptable face of Rumsfeld, Cheney and all the other right-wing nutters who have driven the US into its current cul de sac. He is, in other words, the velvet glove for their mailed fist.

Adobe LightRoom

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I’ve just begun trying out the Beta version of LightRoom and am startled by how good it is. I was initially put off by all the guff about how it was tailored to the ‘workflow’ needs of serious photographers. In practice, it’s a very neatly designed program. The ‘workflow’ idea is embodied in the notion of four main phases in the life of an image — Library (storage and filing), Develop (adjust), Slideshow (Display) and Print (see top right-hand corner of picture). Unlike most other Adobe products I’ve used, LightRoom seems intuitive and fairly self-explanatory. It’s nowhere near as powerful as PhotoShop for image manipulation, but then life is too short for most of us to learn PhotoShop. All in all, my first encounter with the software has been a revelation. No doubt more experienced and perceptive users will soon be emailing me lists of its deficiencies. But my reaction is positive so far.

The TAKEAWAY Festival

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The User-Generated Content movement continues to grow. There’s an interesting event coming up at the Science Museum — TakeAway: DO it yourself media . Blurb reads:

More and more people are transforming themselves from media consumers to producers – using the new tools, software and technologies now at their disposal.

From the expanding realm of free and open source software (FLOSS), to peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution and ‘pervasive’ mobile and locative technologies, the possibilities exist as never before to create and disseminate our opinions and experiences through our own media.
TAKEAWAY, the Festival of do it yourself Media, will help you to understand what it’s all about and how to take part in the revolution.

Wrong number

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I’m grateful to the readers who have kindly drawn my attention to this item in the current issue of Private Eye.

Only three months into 2006, there is already a hot favourite for this year’s prize for the most spectacularly dud PR puff.

The April issue of GQ carries an “article” about the new Wembley stadium which reads more like a publicity brochure for the sports venue and its management company. Hack John Naughton can barely contain his awe and reveals that “the stadium architects employed astronomers to calculate the position of the sun on May afternoons to ensure that the pitch is not covered in shadow when the FA Cuo final is played. At 3pm on Cup Final day, only two southern corner flags will be in shadow”.

Not that anyone will notice. Just after the mag went to press, it was announced that the stadium wouldn’t be ready in time for the FA Cup Final, which will now take place in sunny Cardiff instead.

Er, not guilty, m’lud. It’s another chap with the same name. He specialises in covering what might loosely be termed popular culture. My academic colleagues never tire of showing me their (lovingly photocopied and distributed) copies of his review of Stag Night Videos! The only time our paths have crossed was when a Prosperous Sunday Newspaper sent me a large cheque made out to “John Naughton” for pieces I hadn’t written. (And, since you ask, I returned it.)

How’s this for minimalism?

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The website of a company set up by three ex-Apple grandees which went public this week and attracted $150 million in funding despite making clear in the prospectus that the founders have no idea what the company will do. It’s a “special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC”. So now you know.

Update (18 March)… From Good Morning, Silicon Valley:

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and one of Acquicor’s principals has apparently put the brakes on Wheels of Zeus (WoZ), the wireless technology venture he launched in 2002. Now normally that wouldn’t be such a big deal. Companies are shutting down all the time. Problem is, WoZ’s impending demise wasn’t disclosed in Acquicor’s prospectus. And it really should have been. After all Acquicor is a special purpose acquisition company — a company formed to acquire other companies — and much of its credibility rests with the reputations of its founders. I imagine Acquicor investors would have liked to have been told that one of its principals was pulling the plug on an enterprise that might have have been one reason they invested in the first place.

Joined-up photography

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One of the photographic forms I really admire is David Hockney’s ‘Joiners’ . Like all great artists, he makes it look easy. But actually it’s fiendishly difficult to do well. This is an attempt I made to convey the feeling of the Connemara graveyard in which my grandparents (and five of their children) lie buried. It’s a beautiful, peaceful, windswept place, from which you can see Galway Bay and the Aran Islands, and somehow cried out for something better than a static picture. But this doesn’t work because, for example, I missed out the heads of two of the Celtic crosses. You can’t read the headstone at this resolution, but it reveals that, in 1922, two of their children died within a week of one another (both from infectious diseases now routinely vaccinated against). And they lost another child just a year later. The horror is unimaginable. But that’s what life was like in rural Ireland in those days.

Microsoft has sense of humour: official

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Apropos that spoof video I mentioned a while back, it’s now emerged that it was actually made by Microsoft! “It was an internal-only video clip commissioned by our packaging [team] to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging and to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding,” Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla told The iPod Observer by email.

[Pedantic note: we will overlook the split infinitive in that sentence.]

The video, which can now be found on Google Video, pokes fun at Microsoft’s tendency toward cluttered packaging by imagining how the company would have designed the box for the original iPod. Where Apple’s design is sparse, Microsoft’s final creation is full of so many stickers and other information that the photo of the MP3 player can be barely seen.

“While MS did not release the video”, said Mr Pilla, “it’s natural to share funny things with friends. So while we didn’t publicly share the video, it was shared with appropriate teams internally. We’re happy to see others enjoy the laugh as well.”

I think I shall have to go and lie down. In a darkened room.

Thanks nevertheless to Bill Thompson for shattering my illusions about the Evil Empire!

Wallace worth more than Grommit!

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Honestly! According to BBC Online,

Oscar-winning Aardman Animations has been given £4,000 to replace the Wallace prop lost in a warehouse fire.

The company has also been given around £2,000 for a canine Gromit prop as part of an undisclosed insurance payout for the damage to the Bristol premises.

It got £100,000 for the Chicken Run pie machine lost in the fire last October, which was caused by faulty wiring.

Insurer Norwich Union says it based the sums on the cost of “reinstating” the props and not their market value.

Cheapskates!

Technolust

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The Editor of a leading Indian newspaper came to visit us today. Like me, he’s a full-blown gadget freak. Unlike me, he travels a lot — and therefore spends a lot of time in duty-free shops. (He also has more money.) He was quietly flaunting this exquisite device — the iMate Jasjar. (Who invents these names?). It’s beautifully made, has a good QWERTY keyboard and gives excellent Web access. The only problem is that it runs Windows. And costs £649.49 on Amazon.co.uk. Sigh.