Palace Posy

Fourteen months later I finally follow-up on my short review of Threads with the promised discussion on the Cold War. This seems as good a time as any; it recently being the 70th anniversary of the nuclear attacks on Japan, and, therefore concurrently, the 10th anniversary of this blog. A good way to mark a decade of blogging might be to write something on the blog for the first time in months.

Cuevas de las Manos, Wikipedia, 2005

Threads depicts the almost total obliteration of a functioning state - it really was the end. The Day After (the American analogue, produced in the same era) on the other hand seems very tame, and deliberately so. It even includes a Presidential address, coming across on the radio without any hint of interference, which clearly indicates that for all the immense damage incurred the federal government appears to be intact - the future possibility of the cessation of existence of the USA like every other power in history being inconceivable to the majority of the citizenry (in my experience) and so probably too much for the casual public to swallow alongside their TV movie of the week popcorn. The softer depiction is of course the result of network pressure (can't keep the proles down if you make them start to think, after all), but it raises a serious problem in the logic of nuclear strategy: it almost implies nuclear war is winnable. The title is supposed to make you think about what happens after both sides' missiles have flown. By depicting what looks like a survivable exchange, it then begs the question what will the day after the day after be like.

Activation Theme / Windowlicker

Windows 3.1, Microsoft Corp. 1992

Tomorrow it's two entire decades since Windows 3.11 was released. The anniversary of a service pack for Windows 3.1 is a poor excuse to launch into this post, I know. You'll have to forgive the nostalgia - my first computer was an IBM PS/2 running 3.1. A technician had to be called out several times at expense to reinstall Windows as a result of my exploring the system. That computer is long gone after being replaced with a new Aptiva in 1998 - itself twice succeeded. Something about the old system still lingers fondly in my memory. I recall the last times I used that old operating system.

We're Going To Be Friends

Part Two of Three.

Hvamsfjordhur signature image, January 2007

On the seventh anniversary of the founding of Star City I compiled and republished my memoirs on NationStates during what looked like the long drawn-out dying days of that game. I'm unable to speculate if that's the case with CyberNations today, on the seventh anniversary of Hvamsfjordhur, as I've never been as involved in the politics of the latter as in the former. That's largely due to the mechanics of the game and the location of its servers in the US which has always resulted in a certain American domination. As update was scheduled at midnight Central Standard Time it meant the command structures of the alliances were firmly entrenched in timezones that would result in all the action happening whilst I was in bed. NationStates never had that because it lacked any realtime interaction between nations.

Personally, CyberNations came to an early peak with the era of the Great Wars. Unlike the Citrus and Polar wars, the Great Wars pulled in almost every alliance into the conflict. Yet at the end of the first instalment of this series the global powers were at peace. Where alliances were not treatied, they were at least signatories of non-aggression pacts. So how was the stability shattered? How is it ever shattered?

Like a Rainy Day's Earth Won't Sit Still, Sliding on Down a Hill

Cropped screen capture of Jurassic Park (1993)

Christmas television isn't what it was in my day! I remember the terrestrial premières of blockbusters on BBC1 being a focal point of the day. In 1996 the film of the evening was Jurassic Park, an all time favourite as a consequence of being the first non-animation I can recall seeing as a child in the cinema. Now it's all Dreamworks computer-animations that have those annoying angular graphics that make it look like Pixar on the cheap. Bah. Humbug. Well thank the Lord for ITV2, as not a day goes by without them broadcasting Jurassic Park or Back to the Future. Actually, make that six days. I noticed they broadcast the exact same double bill (JP, The Bourne Identity) at the exact same time not a week later. I've well and truly lost count of how many times I've seen said dinosaur film, though some would say clearly too much as I did a special Christmas Day live one-man overdub of almost the entirety of the film (and got told to shut up). The fact that I know the film so well as to quote entire exchanges of dialogue made me aware of ITV2's clunky editing.

When The Levee Breaks

Part Two of Three.

The Liberation Flag of The Proletariat Coalition (November 2011)

No better time to pick up where I left off than the tenth anniversary of the founding of Star City. Hard to believe.

When I originally wrote my NationStates memoirs the game was entering its twilight period and it didn't look like the dawn would follow. Another site was then in ascendence and the former star site blew off its outer shell and began to contract. At the time, and on this blog, I voiced a hope that an exodus of players might at least alter the balance of power in some long-running conflicts rather than the game just become very very quiet. It looked like the latter transpired because for about five years my activity fell to the absolute minimum of logging in to prevent deletion. Of the more than a dozen puppets I maintained at the height of the game I now only have two functioning as informal ambassadors - Isla Pena in the Allied States of EuroIslanders and Dotjxraomm in the AntiCapitalist Alliance. Though it felt like centuries had passed, the game was declining after three years.

Ask (GA-Slag FAQ 2)

Prijatelj, Rubberducky, Artemis, Llena, Altavoz

It's hard to imagine things would move on so far that the GA-Slag became part of a different decade. At the time we really were living in the present. By sixth year most of Les Enfants Terribles was in the don't-know-what-we'll-do-after-school class while the majority of the year were in the university application classes. We spent most of that class having a laugh; regularly at the teacher's expense, though she would say at our own expense. It is what it is, and this is the tenth anniversary of the night I was bored and got a freeware FTP application to work and uploaded the familiar black and red image of James Dean Bradfield from the NME. The first rant pre-dates that by almost a full month, but at the time it was being hosted on Stephen's GA-Master site, and so this is really the point at which I took the idea and ran with it. Let's take some questions from the audience...

It's My Party

I've often thought of 7 as my lucky number, or at least something of a favourite. I write 7 with a line through the vertical on recommendation after my poor legibility in fourth year maths mixed it up with 2. The reason I shoehorned that memory in is because the blog is seven years old today.

Then The March Led To Assault

Part One of Three.

Hvamsfjordhur signature image, February 2006

Let it never be said I'm not in it for the long haul. January marked nine years on NationStates and six on CyberNations (never the twain shall be mentioned on respective sites). In these online games two or three years are the equivalent of real world centuries; so not only am I old, I'm very old, and old people like to tell stories. When I republished my NS memoirs back in 2010 I stated that I didn't believe I had much to say when it came to my time on CyberNations as a member of the New Pacific Order. However, when the NPO marked it's sixth anniversary in January, I and twenty-five other senior members were asked by the media corps to comment on the evolution of the alliance in those years. As the oldest remaining member and fifth oldest nation in the world, I realised the more I responded with claims to have nothing interesting to say the more I started alluding to actual opinions and insights into those six years.

All Important Rubbish Made to Publish Made to Last

It's that time of year again I allow myself to write the worst easiest kind of blog post.

Ready Let's Go

Beyond The Infinite, Prij, 2005 

Every year I forget to write something on the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, and judging by the lack of material here this year was no different!

I remember when I was around nine, and hardly anyone in my class could name the first man on the moon, my dad had told me about the first man to go into space. He and the others that followed him were mortal men and women, but they have and will find themselves amongst the heroes in the sky. I'd rather kids want to be like Yuri Gagarin or Neil Armstrong than one of Simon Cowell's puppets because it's exactly what needs to happen in order to regain the future that should have been already.

One of the earliest releases from the original Human League was a tribute to Gagarin, but also a tribute to the people of the Soviet Union that made it possible. The Dignity of Labour chronicles the miners digging coal to make steel with which engineers construct the launch pad and craft that propel Vostok 1 and its occupant upward into the void.

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Ask (GA-Slag FAQ)

Two years ago in the GA-Slag Retrospective I wrote about the genesis and development of said site. In this second background feature I've collected some questions about the GA-Slag, addressed some issues, and provided a little background to events depicted in prominent editions.

Heard From Telegraph Lines

Back at the end of last year I gave the blog a new layout when I realised I had been using an ancient template the whole time. The labels gadget prompted me to get the post tags in order whereupon I noticed there was a gap in the more academic topics between mid-2006 and the end of 2008. Interestingly enough, that was the period this blog lapsed into diary mode. I managed to get back on track in October 2008 when I laboured to produce five whole posts, but it wasn't until this year that I regained motivation by inverse resistance to the rise of microblogging. Since I've mastered Goggle Docs' spreadsheets, here's some illustrations:

Where Do I Start, Where Do I Begin?

Part One of Three.

The Flag of The Polity of Star City

Since I last wrote about NationStates four years ago, I've noticed that the governments of many regions ceased to function and slid into informal gerontocracy as the numbers of residents declined. Well, as I write this on January 30th, my nation Star City is just over seven years old. When this is published my home region The Proletariat Coalition will also be seven years old - though the exact date in March is long-forgotten, it was contemporary with the invasion of Iraq; as such I tend to set the anniversary on the 20th. To mark this, I'm republishing my memoirs from five years ago. You can read the currently outdated history of TPC at NSwiki.

Book of Brilliant Things

Ten years ago, before I had an internet connection or Amazon started turning a profit, I remember being at my Nan's and the TV was on. During the programme break there was an advert for Amazon.co.uk. As a 75 year-old she dismissed the internet as a fad. A strange attitude to have for someone born 18 months before the first demonstration of the very thing she's sitting in front of. I do love the smugness that comes from looking back on that.

The More I See You

As anyone out there may have noticed, this blog seems to slip into comas quite frequently. Which is strange given that I have more free time now than when I started three years ago.

After one year, the number of posts fell by a factor of 10. Two-thirds of all the published posts were made in that first year. There's not a lack of material - the number of drafts has increased again.

Having revisited a lot of the early posts (some of which I'd completely forgotten about) I can say the quality has improved even if the novelty has worn off.

Celebrate

Ah, two years of blogging. Unlike last year's frantic pace, I've slowed down quite a bit this year. Maybe I've cleared a backlog of thoughts or maybe being unemployed just wasn't much to write about. As I said earlier:

Ëçë wëb-sögnäh eþ satewai jaami to alirazdlis.
This blog is as much for me as for whoever reads it.

There's plenty of stories about being a postman, I just haven't got round to writing about it all. Who doesn't want to hear about psychotic dogs, urine-soaked stairwells, and the passionate hate for people and their mail that develops within no time at all?

She's Your Friend, Until The Bitter End

In just under 6 hours time, this blog will be a year old. It's not dead, in case the lack of posts gave that impression - I'll be typing-up my rêveries from holiday over the weekend, filling in the space between this post and the last Leia-fanboi post.

In one year I've managed to publish 138 posts, almost all of which would still be in my head or in dozens of text files lost in one of the folders in My Documents if I was still having to edit HTML on my old website.