Via Tom at Comics Reporter comes a link to this charming footage of early 20th century pioneer of comics and animation, Winsor McCay; for those not familiar with him, Winsor created the first movie dinosaur, Gertie, back in 1914 - it was imbued with proper character (no doubt thanks to his cartoonist training and skills) which gave it some personality akin to the proper animated cartoons which would follow in the subsequent years. As well as pioneering animation in the dawn days of the then new film medium McCay was a popular comics creator for the newspapers, with his Little Nemo in Slumberland full of beautiful, dreamlike imagery that has remained influential for over a century, cited by creators like Moebius and Gaiman. Its a lovely piece of early cinematic magic.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Setting sun, furling sail...
The sun is declining in the sky, time to ship oars, furl sails for another day, make all ship-shape and Bristol fashion
I could be wrong, but I get the impression that the tide may be out at this point... You can actually walk down the steps right into the wee harbour floor at North Berwick during low tide, although I don't recommend stepping out much further than the base of the stairs as the muddy sand is rather sinky.
I could be wrong, but I get the impression that the tide may be out at this point... You can actually walk down the steps right into the wee harbour floor at North Berwick during low tide, although I don't recommend stepping out much further than the base of the stairs as the muddy sand is rather sinky.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Autumn in Edinburgh
Its Edinburgh, its autumn, its beautiful...
As I was walking through the New Town with dad for Doors Open Day we looked up Castle Street and saw two jet contrails describing a huge Saint Andrew's Cross in the sky above Edinburgh Castle. Legend has it that a vision in the sky before a battle 1100 years ago is the reason that the Saltire came to be the national emblem of Scotland (and one of the oldest national symbols in the world, I believe), so there was something especially magical about seeing this accidental creation above one of the great symbols of Scotland. Few minutes later or from a different vantage point and we'd not have seen this special view.
As I was walking through the New Town with dad for Doors Open Day we looked up Castle Street and saw two jet contrails describing a huge Saint Andrew's Cross in the sky above Edinburgh Castle. Legend has it that a vision in the sky before a battle 1100 years ago is the reason that the Saltire came to be the national emblem of Scotland (and one of the oldest national symbols in the world, I believe), so there was something especially magical about seeing this accidental creation above one of the great symbols of Scotland. Few minutes later or from a different vantage point and we'd not have seen this special view.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Dad in the City Art Centre
Out and about for Glasgow's Doors Open Day at the weekend with dad, who decided to sit down and have a breather while I wandered up the stairs in the City Art Centre on Sauchiehall Street, which has a lovely 'inside-outside' feel to its courtyard, with the external walls of old buildings making the atrium which is covered but flooded with natural light, even on overcast days. I went up the open stairs to take a few pics and leaning over the rail to look down spotted dad, who looked up towards me just as I was taking a pic; quite pleased with this one.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
reflections
Walking along the Union Canal near the old brewery, some new buildings I've seen being constructed over the last year. Wasn't sure if they were small offices or going to be homes, but I've been told they are a modern version of town houses, although it looks like they have completed them just in time for them to lie mostly empty as no-one can get the mortgage to buy them. I walk this way quite a lot and I've shot this in colour and not really cared much for the resulting pics, but shooting in black and white (and my B&W shots are shot properly in B&W, not colour then greyscaled afterwards on Photoshop, it makes a difference) I was much more satisfied with the result.
(click for the bigger version on the Woolamaloo Flickr)
(click for the bigger version on the Woolamaloo Flickr)
Friday, September 18, 2009
Even Hitler hates the trams
Some wag has reworked the subtitles on Downfall so now Hitler is ranting about the fucking awful tram line which is being imposed on Edinburgh (no referendum to ask the people like they did with the proposed congestion charge, but then the people voted against the politicians wishes and told them to shove that up their arses, so now they don't give us referendums before ruining the city in case we tell them what they don't want to hear. Democracy in action). Its a huge, multi million pound white elephant already running late and over budget and pretty useless since it is just one line which doesn't go near where about 3/4 of the resident actually live, which makes it pretty useless as a transit system - I live fairly centrally and work centrally yet I can't even use it when finished to go to work.
Monday, September 14, 2009
PM apologies for Turing
A while ago a petition was started on the 10 Downing Street site asking for the British government to do something posthumously about the great Alan Turing. Turing wasn't just a genius - an astonishing mathematician, one of the fathers of computing (this in the 1940s, mark you), early thinker in Artificial Intelligence and a legendary codebreaker whose work in the incredibly secret world of BletchleyPark's Station X was an enormous part of the Allied effort in the Second World War. In fact it is no exaggeration to state without the work of Turing and his fellows there is a very real chance the good guys might not have won, or at the very least the war would have run far longer, claiming many more lives (and imagine if Nazi Germany had lasted another 2 or 3 years, imagine if they had time to fully develop their new fast jet fighters to attack Allied bombers, expand their V2 rockets which there was no defence against, continue atomic experiments... It doesn't bear thinking about).
There is a part in Neal Stephenson's fascinating Cryptomonicon, a novel which, like his later (although set in earlier period) Baroque Cycle mixes real historical figures with fictional to create a tale richly detailed with extensively researched history, where those working with Turing in the race to decode the German Enigma codes ponders what they do. At first he thought their team was fighting the shadow war while the real war raged in the skies and seas and land. Then he starts to realise what they are doing, shadowy and theoretical as much of it is, is the real war: fates of convoys, great warships, divisions of troops, even the fates of nations depend on what they are doing behind the scenes.
For his enormous contribution to saving his nation and invaluable intelligence in defeating the most odious, vile threat the free world has faced Turing was persecuted by his country. Alan Turing was homosexual, at a time when it was not just treated as unacceptable by society but actually a criminal offence. His security clearance was revoked, he was hounded, subjected to a ridiculous snake-oil 'cure' which was effectively a form of chemical castration. Alan took his own life not long afterwards, eating an apple he had laced with cyanide. An intellectual genius who had armoured the free world against violent Nazi oppression was oppressed by a bigoted society until he took his own life. Thankfully today we have moved on a bit in the way that gay, lesbian, bi or transgender folks are viewed and treated but there are still so many ignorant bastards who still rant their ignorant bigotry as if LGBT people were of a different species and this is the cost of that kind of uncomprehending, ignorant hatred, one of our best and brightest lost and although he used his brain rather than a bayonet or a Spitfire, someone I would consider a war hero who fought the good fight as hard as anyone.
It is good in this month that marks the 70th anniversary of the start of World War Two that Gordon Brown has formally apologised for the way Turing was treated, although a full pardon and offering proper government support for the museum at Bletchley Park would be better - the place where many men and women laboured in secret, without honours or publicity, to help win the war deserves to be better known. Its not as eye-catching as a Spitfire or the Normandy Landings, but the backroom boffins of Station X paved the road to victory as surely as the soldiers, airmen and sailors, as well as pioneering a whole new field of codebreaking, intelligence and birthing the modern computer, all kept secret for decades, so sensitive was this information (much of it was used during the subsequent Cold War for British Intelligence, it was that good) and both Turing and his colleagues should all be far more honoured than they have been. We have many public monuments to those who sacrificed all in defending us, and its right we should, but we should also honour the remarkable intellects who did no less a work in defending everything we believe in.
There is a part in Neal Stephenson's fascinating Cryptomonicon, a novel which, like his later (although set in earlier period) Baroque Cycle mixes real historical figures with fictional to create a tale richly detailed with extensively researched history, where those working with Turing in the race to decode the German Enigma codes ponders what they do. At first he thought their team was fighting the shadow war while the real war raged in the skies and seas and land. Then he starts to realise what they are doing, shadowy and theoretical as much of it is, is the real war: fates of convoys, great warships, divisions of troops, even the fates of nations depend on what they are doing behind the scenes.
For his enormous contribution to saving his nation and invaluable intelligence in defeating the most odious, vile threat the free world has faced Turing was persecuted by his country. Alan Turing was homosexual, at a time when it was not just treated as unacceptable by society but actually a criminal offence. His security clearance was revoked, he was hounded, subjected to a ridiculous snake-oil 'cure' which was effectively a form of chemical castration. Alan took his own life not long afterwards, eating an apple he had laced with cyanide. An intellectual genius who had armoured the free world against violent Nazi oppression was oppressed by a bigoted society until he took his own life. Thankfully today we have moved on a bit in the way that gay, lesbian, bi or transgender folks are viewed and treated but there are still so many ignorant bastards who still rant their ignorant bigotry as if LGBT people were of a different species and this is the cost of that kind of uncomprehending, ignorant hatred, one of our best and brightest lost and although he used his brain rather than a bayonet or a Spitfire, someone I would consider a war hero who fought the good fight as hard as anyone.
It is good in this month that marks the 70th anniversary of the start of World War Two that Gordon Brown has formally apologised for the way Turing was treated, although a full pardon and offering proper government support for the museum at Bletchley Park would be better - the place where many men and women laboured in secret, without honours or publicity, to help win the war deserves to be better known. Its not as eye-catching as a Spitfire or the Normandy Landings, but the backroom boffins of Station X paved the road to victory as surely as the soldiers, airmen and sailors, as well as pioneering a whole new field of codebreaking, intelligence and birthing the modern computer, all kept secret for decades, so sensitive was this information (much of it was used during the subsequent Cold War for British Intelligence, it was that good) and both Turing and his colleagues should all be far more honoured than they have been. We have many public monuments to those who sacrificed all in defending us, and its right we should, but we should also honour the remarkable intellects who did no less a work in defending everything we believe in.
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