I tried opening a Perl script today using LaunchBar. As I have many code editors installed, it prompted me with a list of all available editors that are capable of handling *.pl files (Perl scripts). I was surprised to see that iBooks Author was now included:

I had read that iBooks Author supports Javascript (in addition to HTML) and initially I was excited that you might be able to embed Perl scripts in this new iBooks format. But alas no:

So I'm not sure why *.pl scripts are being associated with iBooks Author if it can't open them. You don't see this association of Perl scripts with Pages or Keynote, so there must be something in iBooks Author which is making the Finder associate *.pl scripts with the application.

Bitcasa is the latest offline storage technology that is starting to make waves in the tech media. It's being advertised using the strapline 'Infinite storage on your desktop'. Yes, infinite storage. Think Dropbox on steroids.

The service, currently in beta, allows you to mount folders from their online servers and make them appear like local folders. There is a web interface that gives you access to your files along with hints that iOS/Android access will be available at some point too.

Of course, you can't store everything locally, so you do have to download/upload files as needed but you can set a quite large cache (up to 14 GB) to essentially keep your most used files local.

The technology is based on FUSE (thanks to @modernscientist for pointing this out), but it blurs the lines between what is local and what is remote. However, because all of your 'cloudified' folders (to borrow from Bitcasa's terminology) are each mounted as a network drive, this does create the following problem (on Macs anyway).

 Once you cloudify any folder, the file permissions of everything in that folder are all turned on. I.e. any user who has access to your computer can read and write to the files in that folder.

I created a test folder with some basic text files and I added this to Bitcasa. This is how the local permissions of that folder looked to me:

drwxrwxrwx@ 6 keith staff 204 Jan 16 08:59:02 2012 Test/

In the terminal, I then switched to a backup user account (Steve) that I have on my Mac. To that user, the permissions of the same folder look like this:

drwxrwxrwx@ 6 steve staff 204 Jan 16 08:59 Test/

I then tried deleting the folder while logged in as Steve:

$ rm -rf Test/
rm: Test/: Resource busy

It can't delete the folder, but it does delete all the files inside it. This has huge security implications if you share a computer with someone else (with a different account), or if you have an account on a networked machine. If so, then any user — intentionally or otherwise — can read and delete the contents of any folder that you add to Bitcasa.

This is, of course, no different to what happens if you leave a USB drive plugged in to your Mac, but I'm guessing that the average Bitcasa user might not realize this.

Updates

Updated 1/16/12 1:33 pm to clarify that it is based on FUSE technology rather than appearing to be FUSE-like

iTunes in the Cloud is a great way of making the songs in your iTunes library available to all of your iOS devices, but it is not without various wrinkles (which will hopefully be ironed out in a later update). Here are some examples of what I mean. I believe that these are only problems when you are also using iTunes Match.

Each of these folders contains different combinations of my playlists (with some overlap).

But on my iPhone, if I try accessing this playlist, the 100 item limit is ignored:

I'm hapy to wait while 100 songs download over WiFi, but I'm going to wait for over 6,000 songs to download.

4) You can't include podcasts in synced playlists

I have mentioned this before, and this is something that already has driven me to use the excellent Downcast app. If you place any podcasts in a playlist then see a warning icon appear next to the playlist name. If you click on this, you'll see the following warning:

These four issues are not problems if you don't use iTunes Match; they all work as expected if you are syncing playlists in the traditional manner of using iTunes to choose which specific playlists will be copied to your iOS device. I really hope that at least some of these problems get addressed in the near future.

Despite living in Davis for several years, we had never visited this fantastic wildlife area which is right on our doorstep. Yesterday we remedied this situation and took a few photos while walking around one of the many little walking loops that can be found.

This area is over 16,000 acres and is a (temporary) home to many migratory birds. It is easy to lose yourself in the wild tranquility of the place and forget forget that Davis is just a few minutes drive away.

(download)

Click here to download:

photos-from-the-yolo-bypass-wildlife-area-mdlGddeymjrxqmfJdlyb.zip (30.21 MB)

The recent changes to Twitter's web and mobile interaces have not pleased everyone. John Gruber – as always – hits the nail on the head with the many user interface (UI) problems that have arisen in the new interface on mobile clients. The #NewNewTwitter app on my iPhone has also caused me to look elsewhere, and I'm currently trying out Tweetbot which I mostly like. Using a new mobile version of twitter has also caused me to reevaluate my desktop version of twitter which for a long while has been the official version from Twitter (which built on the excellent Tweetie app).

Twitterrific from The Iconfactory is a paid app which has very good reviews. It's normally $9.99 but is currently on sale at half price so I thought I'd give it a try. The must have feature that I need in any twitter client is the ability to support multiple accounts (I have seven accounts, many of which I use for various work-related projects). Apart from that, I like clients which have clean, attractive UIs and which have support for many keyboard shortcuts. So in these regards, how did I find twitterriffic? In a word...'unusable'. Here's why:

2) You can press the left arrow key when a tweet is selected to display a new pop-up window. If your selected tweet is part of a conversation, the pop-up window shows the tweets in that conversation. If your tweet wasn't part of a conversation, you see recent tweets that mention the account of the tweet that you selected. But you have to use the escape key to close this window, no other key will make it disappear (you can also click elsewhere with a mouse). It would make sense to me to maybe make the window disappear by using the left arrow again, so you don't have to move your fingers. I don't like having to reach for the escape key (which requires a little bit of a stretch on most keyboards).

5) If you receive a new mention or direct message it is not always clear that this has happened. You can turn on Growl notifications, which helps, but otherwise you may just notice that the twitterriffic menu bar icon has turned blue. This indicates that something is new, but what? The menu bar icon does not have a menu to reveal what the new item is (e.g. a mention vs a direct message) or which account they have appeared in. If you turn on the sidebar (see previous item), you might hope that the 'Mentions' or 'Messages' sections would display in a different color to draw your attention to what is new. But alas, this doesn't happen. So for someone like me with many accounts, I have to search through each account in turn, checking to find out what is new.

6) You can 'jump' to your next twitter account using the Cmd + J keyboard shortcut, but unlike other twitter apps, you can only navigate forwards. So again, if you have many different twitter accounts you need to use this shortcut several times if you just want to to go to the previous account. There is a toolbar icon that allows you to switch to different accounts, but that requires using the mouse.

9) When you mouse over any tweet, two small icons appear in the bottom right. The first is an arrow which, if clicked, gives access to retweeting, replying to, or direct messaging the author of the tweet. The second 'gears' icon gives you various options, including favoriting the tweet. I'm surprised that favoriting a tweet doesn't merit it's own star icon in the tweet itself, rather than adding this as a buried function of the generic gears icon.

10) Twitterriffic uses color to distinguish between different types of tweet. If you use the 'light' color scheme then you may see the following colors: 

Being the political junkie that I am, I was quite excited to see a new 'Election 2012' app from the New York Times. However, I quickly noticed that most links that you may care to click on this app are accompanied by a little padlock icon. Clicking on these links takes you to a 'Subscribe' page where you are prompted to pay at least $14.99 per month for a NYTimes.com subscription. There are just six links that let you freely view NYTimes.com articles within the app. There are another fifty-four which link to content where you need a subscription. They do provide free links to an 'All Sources' section which just links to news articles from other providers (Washington Post, CNN etc.).

(download)

Click here to download:

A_new_app_from_the_New_York_Ti.zip (1.12 MB)

Together again!

In the light of the events of November 18th at UC Davis, many have called for Chancellor Katehi's resignation. A much smaller minority have called for her not to resign. I presume that many others – myself included – are reserving judgement until the various investigations have been completed.

I get the feeling that many believe that as the Chancellor ordered the police on to the quad, she should resign irrespective as to what specific instructions the police were given. Others may feel that the nature of her instructions might be a critical element in assigning guilt. 

I'm hopeful that the ongoing investigations will answer the following questions, all of which may influence people's perception of the Chancellors role in these events. Ideally these questions will be answered with verifiable evidence which doesn't rest on the sole testimony of any one individual. I.e. it is not enough for the Chancellor simply to say that she instructed the police not to use force, there must – somewhere – be evidence to corroborate this.

Unanswered questions

1. Did the Chancellor act alone in ordering the police on to the quad? 
   1. If not, then who else advised her and what advice did they give? 
   2. Did she receive any advice to not send in police?
2. At the time that any order was given what information did the Chancellor (and advisors) have about the state of events on the quad (number of tents and/or protestors)?
3. What were the specific instructions to Police Chief Spicuzza regarding the removal of students and/or tents?
4. Did the Chancellor know that the police had, and were liable to use, pepper spray?
5. Was the Chancellor aware of the UC Police Department's guidelines on using force?
6. What specific instructions did Police Chief Spicuzza give to her officers?
7. What specific instructions were given to Lt. Pike – and to the second (as yet unamed) police officer who also used pepper spray?
8. Lt. Pike can be seen in some videos giving and receiving instructions via his radio mic. What were those instructions?
9. After finding out about what happened on Friday afternoon, what was the Chancellors immediate response before her first email to the campus community that was sent late on Friday?
10. Was the Chancellor solely responsible for this first email (i.e. did she draft it or just approve it)?
    1. Did she receive any advice not to send the email, or to change the text?
    2. When this email was sent, what information had the Chancellor received about the events of that afternoon?

I think questions 3, 6, and 7 are the most pertinent, but I also think that the initial email which was sent did a lot to make the whole situation even worse.

Please feel free to suggest other unanswered questions in the comments. Alternatively, if you know of answers to any of them, please let me know (citing evidence rather than just opinion) and I'll update the blog post.

Update 1: 11/30 - It seems that a majority of the Graduate Student Association have also called for the Chancellor not to resign 

Ten questions to solve. All answers can be formed from the letters in the word 'Thanskgiving', and you can only use those letters. So there are 2 x G, 2 x N, 1 x T etc. Clues are somewhat cryptic and all but one answers involve two words. For each question, I also reveal how many letters are in each word of the answer. 

If you are confused, I'll give you three examples to begin with:

Example 1: I just rescued one of King Arthur's minions from danger (6, 6)

King Arthur's minions would be the knights of the round table, and if you are rescuing someone then you might be 'saving' them, so the answer is saving knight.

Example 2: I have a list of 7 things:  lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, and pride. If you had to remove one of those things from the list, what would you be doing? (6, 3)

The list contains the seven deadly sins. So if you removed one, you would be taking sin. 

Example 3: An unforgettable singer without any Cole? (3, 4)

To which the answer would just be Nat King.

Now you know the format, we'll move on to the quiz. Answers are included below. Best score at our Thanksgiving dinner was 9/10.

1) People who have this are easily insulted, and are also very easy to give injections to (4, 4)

2) As soon as we get a lot of snow, I'm going to Lake Tahoe and I expect I'll suffer from too much exposure to the sun. What will I be getting? (3, 3)

3) Someone has just acquired another possession (5, 5)

4) About a thousand years ago, a gentleman from Scandinavia may have worn this on his head (6, 3)

5) Someone is contemplating about getting older (6, 5)

6) I get very nervous and agitated about the prospect of going on long walks in the countryside (6, 5)

7) I'm in possession of a rather noxious odor (6, 5)

8) What might you call nitrous oxide if – in addition to making you laugh – it made you contemplate and consider the mysteries of life? (8, 3)

9) One thousand grams has just disappeared (9, 2)

10) If an actor from the film Apollo 13 started making an alcoholic beverage using juniper berries, what might he put on the bottle? (1, 5, 3) – this one requires two punctuation characters in the answer!

Good luck!

Answers

1) Thin skin

2) Ski tan

3) Gains thing

4) Viking hat

5) Thinks aging

6) Hiking angst

7) Having stink

8) Thinking gas

9) Vanishing KG

10) T. Hanks' Gin

One of the demands of the Occupy UC Davis movement appears to include a demand to remove all police from the UC Davis campus. Consider the following map which shows most of the UC Davis campus and some of the wider city of Davis. 

Location 'A' is the current home of the City of Davis Police Department. Location 'B' is the home of the UC Davis Police Department. If people don't want cops on campus, would they want them 'next to' campus, or do they want them to come from the City of Davis Police Department which is a 10 minute drive across town? 

In the USA there have been 20 shooting incidents on college campuses in the last five years alone, resulting in 60 deaths. It's hard to say whether having police on campus helped play a role in reducing yet more fatalities in these tragic events, but personally speaking, I'm glad that we have a police force on campus.

I think the issue of whether police should carry arms at all times, and the much more significant issue over the involvement of police during peaceful protests, are completely separate from whether we should even have police on campuses at all.

There are some estimates that there were maybe 5,000 people on the UC Davis Quad today. I was there from about 10:30 and tried – as best I could – to provide some coverage of events via my twitter account.

When I arrived, there was hardly anyone there at all. Apart from the news crews you wouldn't notice anything to make you think that one of the largest gatherings in UC Davis history was about to take place. The speeches began at 12:00 and were led off by many vicitims of the pepper spray. These speeches were all articulate, powerful, and moving...a credit to UC Davis. 

After several speeches the UC Davis Chancellor, Linda Katehi, spoke briefly. She was emotional and started out by apologizing for the events of the previous Friday. Here are a few photos from the day. I am glad that I was there and was extremely happy to be part of such a large, peaceful, gathering.

(download)

Click here to download:

pictures-from-today-s-rally-on-the-uc-davis-quad-bxaDvChzooiwyzpurafu.zip (87.25 MB)

The crowd were clearly waiting to hear from the Chancellor and they made this clear:

(download)

Click here to download:

Let_her_speak_2_-_Broadband.m4v (4.24 MB)

A short while after this, the Chancellor addressed everyone with a short speech, her voice quivering at times. She started out with a direct apology, this video only shows the second part of her speech.

(download)

Click here to download:

Khatehi_speaks_-_Broadband.m4v (24.15 MB)

I was at last work last Friday and was very curious as to what would happen as the hours counted down to the 3:00 pm deadline; the time by which protestors had been asked to remove the tents from the UC Davis Quad.

I was tempted to go along to see what would unfold, but opted to stay at work. Physical separation, however, is no real barrier to being present at events these days. As the UC Davis police moved on to the Quad, there was semi-live coverage through the twitter accounts of Justin Cox (@DavisCAPatch), the Davis Enterprise (and @Cory_Golden in particular), and The California Aggie (@CaliforniaAggie). The former twitter account offered a link to a live video stream. I was able to listen to this but couldn't get a stable enough stream to watch. Here are some notable tweets that occurred on Friday afternoon, all of which I retweeted : 

I am writing to tell you about events that occurred Friday afternoon at UC Davis relating to a group of protestors who chose to set up an encampment on the quad Thursday as part of a week of peaceful demonstrations on our campus that coincided with many other occupy movements at universities throughout the country.

The group did not respond to requests from administration and campus police to comply with campus rules that exist to protect the health and safety of our campus community. The group was informed in writing this morning that the encampment violated regulations designed to protect the health and safety of students, staff and faculty. The group was further informed that if they did not dismantle the encampment, it would have to be removed.

Following our requests, several of the group chose to dismantle their tents this afternoon and we are grateful for their actions. However a number of protestors refused our warning, offering us no option but to ask the police to assist in their removal. We are saddened to report that during this activity, 10 protestors were arrested and pepper spray was used. We will be reviewing the details of the incident.

We appreciate and strongly defend the rights of all our students, faculty and staff to robust and respectful dialogue as a fundamental tenet of our great academic institution. At the same time, we have a responsibility to our entire campus community, including the parents who have entrusted their students to us, to ensure that all can live, learn and work in a safe and secure environment. We were aware that some of those involved in the recent demonstrations on campus were not members of the UC Davis community and this required us to be even more vigilant about the safety of our students, faculty and staff. We take this responsibility very seriously.

While we have appreciated the peaceful and respectful tone of the demonstrations during the week, the encampment raised serious health and safety concerns, and the resources required to supervise this encampment could not be sustained, especially in these very tight economic times when our resources must support our core academic mission.

We deeply regret that many of the protestors today chose not to work with our campus staff and police to remove the encampment as requested. We are even more saddened by the events that subsequently transpired to facilitate their removal.

We appreciate the substantive dialogue the students have begun here on campus as part of this week.s activities, and we want to offer appropriate opportunities to express opinions, advance the discussion and suggest solutions as part of the time-honored university tradition. We invite our entire campus community to consider the topics related to the occupy movement you would like to discuss and we pledge to work with you to develop a series of discussion forums throughout our campus.

I ask all members of the campus community for their support in ensuring a safe environment for all members of our campus community. We hope you will actively support us in accomplishing this objective.

Linda P.B. Katehi
Chancellor

I find this behavior strange. If you use the Mac keyboard shortcut to reveal a hidden dock (Cmd + Option + D), the appearance of the dock will 'push' any windows out of the way that are in the area where the dock appears.

Typing the keyboard shortcut again to hide the dock does not move the window back. This video hopefully demonstrates what I mean:

(download)

Click here to download:

dock_bump.mov (2.46 MB)

See previous blog post for more details. Answers to multiple choice questions are in bold face.

Round 1: 1971

1) What is 1971 in Roman numerals? 

MCMLXXI

2) How many men walked on the moon in this year?

4 (two each from Apollo 14 and Apollo 15)

3) Born in 1971, what singer-turned-actor would win a 'Best Supporting Actor' Oscar nomination for his role in the 2006 film 'The Departed'

Mark Wahlberg

4) Nicknamed 'Satchmo', this famous jazz trumpeter and singer died in 1971. How was he better known?

Louis Armstrong

5) Which of the following events did not occur in 1971?

a) The NASDAQ stock market index was launched?

b) The metric system was adopted in France (this was in 1791!)

c) Amtrak began inter-city rail services within the US

d) Walt Disney world opened in Florida

Round 2: Star Wars

1) Complete this Obi Wan Kenobi description of Mos Eisley spaceport:

"You will never find a more wretched hive of <blank> and <blank>"

"scum and villainy"

2) Only two actors have featured in all six Star Wars films. Can you name either of these actors who made famous the roles of the two droids R2-D2 and C-3PO (1/2 point for each)

Kenny Baker & Anthony Daniels

3) According to IMDB which film, from the six-film franchise, has the lowest rating?

IV - 8.8

V - 8.8

VI - 8.3

I - 6.4 - The Phantom Menace

II - 6.8

III - 7.8

4) The Golden Raspberry awards are famously awarded to bad films and to bad actors in particular. Only two people from the Star Wars film series have ever won awards for their bad acting. One of those two people further distinguished themselves by winning the award twice. Who was it?

Hayden Christensen

5) The third film of the franchise was of course Return of the Jedi. Many people do not know that it was very nearly released with a different name. By what name did we almost come to know this film as?

a) Repair of the Jedi

b) Resolution of the Jedi

c) Revenge of the Jedi

d) Reward of the Jedi

Round 3: My Travels

In my 40 years on this planet, I have spent time in 20 different countries (22 if you include principalities and Crown Dependencies). Excluding Europe, I have visited nine countries. name five of them.

USA

Canada

Mexico

China

Japan

UAE

South Africa

Singapore

Thailand

Round 4: The Beatles

1) There are many people who have, at various times, been credited as being the 'fifth' Beatle. Name two of them.

(1/2 point each) 

Pete Best (original drummer)

Stu Sutcliffe (bassist, founding member)

George Martin

Billy Preston (played on 5 songs, co-writing credit for Get Back)

Eric Clapton (guitar solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps)

Brian Epstein (manager 1961–1967)

Jimmie Nicol (played 8 gigs in Australia as drummer)

Andy White (drummer on Love Me Do)

Yoko Ono (lead vocal on one line of a song + backing vocals on another)

2) The White Album starts off with 'Back in the USSR'. Who plays drums on this track?

(1 point for Paul McCartney, 1/2 point for George Harrison and John Lennon)

3) Their first album ('Please Please Me') was released in 1963. Their last album – before they split up – was Abbey Road released in 1969. In total, how many studio albums did they release while they were still together as a band? (UK studio album releases only).

12 (Magical Mystery Tour was a double EP, not an album, Let It Be was after they had split up)

1/2 point for being within 1 (9 or 11)

4) After they split up in, all four Beatles released solo albums in 1970. According to their highest chart position in the UK album charts, which Beatle did the worse?

George Harrison – All Things Must Pass #1

Paul McCartney – McCartney #2

Ringo Starr – Sentimental Journey #7

John Lennon – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band #8

5) Which of these isn't a song by The Beatles?

a) Old Brown Shoe

b) Blue Jay Way

c) Paint it Black - this is by the Rolling Stones

d) Yellow Submarine

Round 5: Eating out in Davis

1) If you were fearsomely good at working out the answer to anagrams, then maybe one could say that you were a 'Daring Solver'. What Davis restaurant is an anagram of 'Daring Solver'?

Silver Dragon

2) Sometimes it seems that Davis is very unbalanced in the types of restaurant that we have. I want you to put the following 4 types of cuisine in order of their popularity in Davis (low to high):

Pizza (16)

Indian (4)

Thai (8)

Greek (1)

3) I like trying new places whenever they open in Davis. Excluding coffee shops and places that specialize in desserts, I count 126 different food establishments on the Davis Wiki page for restaurants. What percentage of these have I eaten in? 

1/2 point if you are within 6%, 1 points if you are within 3% either side

90% (113/126)

4) If you used the Yelp.com recommendation service in order to find restaurant suggestions, you could read the following review for one particular Davis eatery:

"This burger, ordered medium rare, is the juiciest burger on the planet. It has buffalo sauce, bleu cheese, and the best seasoned patty that just falls apart in your mouth as you masticate. Literally an orgasm in your mouth. I've cried eating it once as well. It's just that good."

The place which features this burger is also the most highly rated Davis restaurant on Yelp. What is it?

Froggy's = 1/2 point

Tommy J's = 1 point

5) Three of the following four eating establishments used to exist in Davis but have since closed down. The other is a work of fiction. Which one?

a) Wok N' Roll

b) Professor Pizza

c) Richard Nixon's Dirty Little Secret

d) The Velvet Elvis

Round 6: UK vs USA

As George Bernard Shaw famously noted, England and America are two countries separated by a common language. I'm going to give you 5 words from American English, and I want you to tell me what the equivalent British English word should be? E.g. I say 'sidewalk' and you say...

1) The Big Dipper (i.e. constellation Ursa Major) -> The Plough

2) Rutabaga -> Swede, Turnip, or 'Neeps'

3) Trunk (of a car) -> The Boot

4) Math -> Maths

5) Vest -> Waistcoat

Round 7: Apple

1) Before his untimely death, Steve Jobs had just resigned as CEO of Apple. In his last year at Apple, what was his annual salary as CEO? 

$1

2) Which year did Apple first launch the 'Macintosh' computer? 

1984

3) How many iPods or iPhones do I own? 

1 point for getting it right, 1/2 point for being within 1

6

4) The original iPod is now 10 years old. Following the launch of this now iconic product, we have also seen iPod minis, iPod nanos, iPod shuffles and iPod touches. If you had brought *every* version of every new iPod model ever released, how many iPods would you own? This includes all colors and capacities being treated as a separate model.

(1/2 point for being within 10, 1 points for being within 5)

197 iPods! Comprising:

46 iPod shuffles

13 iPod Minis

70 iPod Nano

57 iPod Classic

11 iPod Touch

5) Apple has occasionally been involved in making products outside of their primary line-up of computers, music players and phones. Which of these categories has Apple *not* been involved with?

a) Printers

b) Digital Cameras

c) Games Consoles

d) Juicers

Round 8: My Top Tunes (audio round)

Over the last 7 years or so, I have embarked on a quest to rate all of the music in my iTunes library. This task would be made considerably easier if I stopped buying new music. My rating guidelines are very strict, and only 151 songs in my library have been awarded the maximum 5 star rating. I will play you snippets of some of those songs, and I want you to tell me the artist and the name of the song (1/2 point for each).

1) California by Joni Mitchell

2) Changes by David Bowie

3) Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones

4) Baba O'Riley by The Who

5) And for the final question. What is the connection between those previous songs?

All released in 1971

Tie breaker

How many songs in my iTunes library?

13,527

Last night I acted as quiz master at my 40th birthday party. The quiz was inspired by various things I like. Some more details (including the full rules) are available on the flyer I made. I am posting all of the quiz questions below, but if you want to take part you first need to decide which of the eight rounds you are going to 'play your joker' on:

Round 1: 1971

Round 2: Star Wars

Round 3: My Travels

Round 4: The Beatles

Round 5: Eating out in Davis

Round 6: UK vs USA

Round 7: Apple

Round 8: My Top Tunes (audio round)

Before you see any of the questions, you must choose one of the above rounds. This is 'playing your joker' and means that your score for that round will be doubled. The catch is that you have to make that decision purely based on the brief description of each round.

The Quiz

40 questions = 40 points total, but your Joker, can double points in any one round for a possible + 5 points, 45 max. If you want to play this properly, then allow yourself no more than 5 minutes per round...and obviously, no cheating. I'll post the answers in a few days.

Round 1: 1971 (the year I was born)

1) What is 1971 in Roman numerals? 

2) How many men walked on the moon in this year?

3) Born in 1971, what singer-turned-actor would win a 'Best Supporting Actor' Oscar nomination for his role in the 2006 film 'The Departed'

4) Nicknamed 'Satchmo', this famous jazz trumpeter and singer died in 1971. How was he better known?

5) Which of the following events did not occur in 1971?

a) The NASDAQ stock market index was launched?

b) The metric system was adopted in France

c) Amtrak began inter-city rail services within the US

d) Walt Disney world opened in Florida

Round 2: Star Wars (a huge influence on my early life)

1) Complete this Obi Wan Kenobi description of Mos Eisley spaceport:

"You will never find a more wretched hive of <blank> and <blank>"

2) Only two actors have featured in all six Star Wars films. Can you name either of these actors who made famous the roles of the two droids R2-D2 and C-3PO (1/2 point for each)

3) According to IMDB which film, from the six-film franchise, has the lowest rating?

4) The Golden Raspberry awards are famously awarded to bad films and to bad actors in particular. Only two people from the Star Wars film series have ever won awards for their bad acting. One of those two people further distinguished themselves by winning the award twice. Who was it?

5) The third film of the franchise was of course Return of the Jedi. Many people do not know that it was very nearly released with a different name. By what name did we almost come to know this film as?

a) Repair of the Jedi

b) Resolution of the Jedi

c) Revenge of the Jedi

d) Reward of the Jedi

Round 3: My Travels

In my 40 years on this planet, I have spent time in 20 different countries (22 if you include principalities and Crown Dependencies). Excluding Europe, I have visited nine countries. name five of them.

Round 4: The Beatles (one of my all-time favorite bands)

1) There are many people who have, at various times, been credited as being the 'fifth' Beatle. Name two of them.

2) The White Album starts off with 'Back in the USSR'. Who plays drums on this track?

3) Their first album ('Please Please Me') was released in 1963. Their last album – before they split up – was Abbey Road released in 1969. In total, how many studio albums did they release while they were still together as a band? (UK studio album releases only).

4) After they split up in, all four Beatles released solo albums in 1970. According to their highest chart position in the UK album charts, which Beatle did the worse?

5) Which of these isn't a song by The Beatles?

a) Old Brown Shoe

b) Blue Jay Way

c) Paint it Black

d) Yellow Submarine

Round 5: Eating out in Davis

1) If you were fearsomely good at working out the answer to anagrams, then maybe one could say that you were a 'Daring Solver'. What Davis restaurant is an anagram of 'Daring Solver'?

2) Sometimes it seems that Davis is very unbalanced in the types of restaurant that we have. I want you to put the following four types of cuisine in order of their popularity in Davis (low to high). By popularity, I mean the number of restaurants/eateries in Davis that sell food of that cuisine:

Pizza

Indian

Thai

Greek

3) I like trying new places whenever they open in Davis. Excluding coffee shops and places that specialize in desserts, I count 126 different food establishments on the Davis Wiki page for restaurants. What percentage of these have I eaten in? 

4) If you used the Yelp.com recommendation service in order to find restaurant suggestions, you could read the following review for one particular Davis eatery:

"This burger, ordered medium rare, is the juiciest burger on the planet. It has buffalo sauce, bleu cheese, and the best seasoned patty that just falls apart in your mouth as you masticate. Literally an orgasm in your mouth. I've cried eating it once as well. It's just that good."

The place which features this burger is also the most highly rated Davis restaurant on Yelp. What is it?

5) Three of the following four eating establishments used to exist in Davis but have since closed down. The other is a work of fiction. Which one?

a) Wok N' Roll

b) Professor Pizza

c) Richard Nixon's Dirty Little Secret

d) The Velvet Elvis

Round 6: UK vs USA

As George Bernard Shaw famously noted, England and America are two countries separated by a common language. I'm going to give you 5 words from American English, and I want you to tell me what the equivalent British English word should be? E.g. I say 'sidewalk' and you say 'pavement'.

1) The Big Dipper (i.e. constellation Ursa Major)

2) Rutabaga

3) Trunk (of a car)

4) Math

5) Vest

Round 7: Apple

1) Before his untimely death, Steve Jobs had just resigned as CEO of Apple. In his last year at Apple, what was his annual salary as CEO? 

2) Which year did Apple first launch the 'Macintosh' computer? 

3) How many iPods or iPhones do I own? 

4) The original iPod is now 10 years old. Following the launch of this now iconic product, we have also seen iPod minis, iPod nanos, iPod shuffles and iPod touches. If you had brought *every* version of every new iPod model ever released, how many iPods would you own? This includes all colors and capacities being treated as a separate model.

5) Apple has occasionally been involved in making products outside of their primary line-up of computers, music players and phones. Which of these categories has Apple *not* been involved with?

a) Printers

b) Digital Cameras

c) Games Consoles

d) Juicers

Round 8: My Top Tunes (audio round)

Over the last 7 years or so, I have embarked on a quest to rate all of the music in my iTunes library. This task would be made considerably easier if I stopped buying new music. My rating guidelines are very strict, and only 151 songs in my library have been awarded the maximum 5 star rating. I will play you snippets of some of those songs, and I want you to tell me the artist and the name of the song (1/2 point for each).

question_1.m4a

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question_1.m4a (517 KB)

question_2.m4a

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question_2.m4a (819 KB)

question_4.m4a

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question_4.m4a (774 KB)

question_3.m4a

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question_3.m4a (573 KB)

5) And for the final question. What is the connection between these songs?

Tie breaker question:

How many songs in my iTunes library?

The big day finally arrived today, the launch of a new iPhone from Apple. After a lot of speculation, and with about 30 minutes to go before the keynote started at Apple HQ, Mashable posted this piece:

The New iPhone Is Coming and I Don’t Want It

The timing of this post bears repeating. Before anyone had actually seen the new iPhone, or knew exactly what features it would or wouldn't be getting, Lance Ulanoff waded in with his opinion. If he waited just two more hours, he would have been in a better position to write something about the actual product vs the not-yet-released product.

He opines "I love the look of my iPhone, so why do I need the teardrop shape?". Yes, that's the 'teardrop shape' of the imaginary iPhone 5 that never came to be. He concludes by saying "I do not need the iPhone 5". He also admits earlier in the article that he owns a two month old iPhone 4. So I think we can best conclude this entire non-piece as:

Man with almost-new iPhone, won't be buying new iPhone.

Not to be outdone, Mashable waded in with several more iPhone-related pieces later in the day, including this one:

iPhone 5 A No-Show: Did Apple Fail To Manage Expectations?

This piece concludes with a particular poignant question "Does this mean we have to endure one more year of iPhone 5 rumors?".

Those pesky iPhone 5 rumors. The rumors that Mashable clearly hates and woud have no role in propagating. Rumors based on speculation rather than fact. So you can magine my surprise when I searched Mashable's website for 'iPhone 5'. Surely, they would have barely mentioned this purely hypothetical product? There couldn't be anything written about it by Mashable that could fuel those tiresome rumors. Oh what's that you say Mashable search engine result? 

Search Results for 'iPhone 5': About 33,100 results

This may be an inaccurate number reflecting some glitch in their search engine, but the search still returns ten pages of iPhone 5 related stories including:

iPhone 5 Could Be Thinner & Wider [PICS] - Mashable

iPhone 5 Rumor Round-Up: Bigger Screen, Better ... - Mashable

Fresh Rumors: iPhone 5 To Have Metal Back, NFC? - Mashable

Two New iPhone 5 Clues Point to Separate Camera Flash - Mashable

iPhone 5 Countdown: When Can You Actually Buy One? - Mashable

The iPhone 5 Rumor Mill Kicks Into High Gear - Mashable

Etc. Etc. Etc.

A lot of our time in Portland seemed to be spent frequenting bars, brew pubs, restaurants, food trucks, and cinemas. Portland is a great place to go if you like your food and drink. One place that has to be seen to be believed is Voodoo Doughnut. Nearly every time we passed this place we would see a queue outside of 15–30 people. We passed this place a lot, at various times of the day and there was always a queue. They are famous, amongst other things, for their maple bacon doughnut. A doughnut ... with bacon! They also offer a 'coffin' of doughnuts ($100 with coffin). We had the bacon doughnut because you sort of have to really. It was so very, very wrong, but also so very, very right.

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a-long-weekend-in-portland-part-3-food-and-flicks-FqrkikAyJAogpiIxGmjl.zip (14.84 MB)

We ate at many great places, many of them tiny and local. Sizzle Pie was our first port of call and they kept us happy with slices of delicious pizza. We also visited a few of the many, many different food trucks that are prominently located throughout the city. One bar we enjoyed a lot was Henry's Tavern, a huge place containing multiple rooms and bars on different levels. The main bar was flanked by a ring of ice that was there to keep your drinks cool.

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a-long-weekend-in-portland-part-3-food-and-flicks-uAAjplCIfozIeJGnzdho.zip (10.17 MB)

Without a doubt, my favorite aspect of Portland was that many cinemas allowed you take drinks into the cinema. Not sodas or coffees but beer or wine. The magnificent Laurelhurst Theatre allows you to also buy slices of pizza. It was just too awesome for words. Further upping the ante was Living Room Theatres in downtown Portland. With this cinema you can order food and have it delivered to your seat! The theatres were really comfy and spacious too; plenty of room to stretch out your legs. After being able to watch a few films now with a pint of beer in my hand, I can only ask ... why can't all cinemas be like this?

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a-long-weekend-in-portland-part-3-food-and-flicks-ExxgsuDaxiwHioFkkhGk.zip (10.74 MB)

Of all the cars I saw at the special Portland Art Museum exhibit, there were a couple of cars that oozed sexiness and sleekness. The first three photos below are of the first car, and the rest are all from the second car (the name and details of which I did not record). This second car looked so great from so many different angles.

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a-long-weekend-in-portland-part-2-more-cars-jkyvlgefeeoBpEeoxeeC.zip (20.56 MB)

I spent last weekend in Portland, Oregon. This is somewhere that my wife and I have been meaning to visit for many years but never quite got around to going. We had a great time, and I think this long weekend will inspire several blog posts with many photos.

To start with, I will just say that we spent one afternoon visiting the Portland Art Musuem which had a special exhibit on about the 'Allure of the Automobile'. As well as the collection of amazing cars inside the building, there was also a temporary display of classic cars (along with their proud owners) outside the museum. I don't think I've ever seen so many vintage cars all in such immaculate condition in one place. I'm not a car fan by any measure, but there was an undeniable beauty to many of these cars, some of which dated back to the 1930s.

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a-long-weekend-in-portland-part-1-cars-ykanJwEGgCsIJBiqepHI.zip (21.3 MB)

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The title of this post might also double as a personal creed for my life. I like tidiness. I like structure. I like order. We all know that it is far too easy to fill our homes up with 'stuff', and some of us – myself included –  derive an almost unnatural amount of pleasure in finding ways to arrange, catalog, and otherwise organize such material.

However, I find that the blog title isn't just a proverb that applies to the tangible things in life that clutter up our homes. Many speeches, presentations, and adverts would also benefit from adhering to this philosophy. You don't have to be Steve Jobs to realize that, sometimes, less is more; that what you choose to leave out of a talk/presentation/advert is sometimes more powerful that what you choose to leave in. This is particularly true of PowerPoint presentations.

At this point, I should confess that I have no formal training in advertising, design, or indeed in any creative art. However, I do feel that I have a strong eye for 'good design'. I am drawn to adverts that are clean, clear, and which present their message in a focused way, free of clutter and other distractions. I am equally dismayed, appalled, and sometimes terrified by adverts that use inappropriate fonts, add unnecessary elements, and which otherwise turn fine pieces of advertising copy into what we in the UK might call a dog's breakfast.

Sometimes I wish that I could ignore bad design in advertising. The truth is that I get rather hung up when I spy the slightest 'wrong element' in an advert. The remainder of this post will deal with one such wrong element, one that many Davis residents will have seen – and probably completely ignored – over the last few months.

Theatre goers in Davis, California may have noticed a recent advertising campaign for Yolo Federal Credit Union, one of several credit unions in the area. The campaign appears to be targeted at the younger generation, people who may not have yet thought about the necessities of long-term financial planning. I presume that the goal of this campaign is to reach out to people with disposable income and convince them to dispose some of it into one of their financial products. One advert in particular consists of nothing more than a single slide of material, with some minor animations, which is accompanied by a voice-over.  The single paragraph of text on this slide appears under a heading that seeks to grab your attention, not so much by way of the words that appear in the title ('Hello, Freedom!'), but mostly because of the grotesque nature of the font that is used. I reproduce this slide below.

It's an admittedly blurry image, courtesy of my cell phone camera, but you can hopefully see the item that causes me so much offense. Look in the bottom left corner and you should recognize a portion of an optical disk. It might be a DVD, it could potentially even be a LaserDisc, but I think it is much more likely to be a compact disc. If that is the case then this begs the important question:

Why is there an image of a CD on an advert for a local credit union?

Well let's look at the rest of the advert. The montage of pictures on the right-hand side of the advert imply a concert scene, maybe even a music festival. There are smiling faces, hands in the air, and a band rocking the stage. It all becomes obvious now. There is an image of a CD on the advert because 'the kids' these days are all about music. And nothing says 'music' like a CD. Right? I mean everyone is buying CDs these days. It's such a new format (first album released on CD was in 1983); it remains so popular (CD sales have declined by about 75% over the last 12 years); and it's not like there are any other alternatives (over 10 billion songs downloaded from iTunes).

I assume that Yolo FCU may not have wanted to use an actual branded product in their advert (like one of the 300 million of these things). However, if the goal was to simply reinforce a connection to the idea of 'music', couldn't they have just shown a picture of some generic earbud headphones, or an electric guitar, or anything else? Are the youth of today going to watch this advert and get turned on by the dynamic combination of text and imagery? Because surely nothing screams 'freedom' like a compact disc? In trying to be 'hip' I find that the advertisers have only succeeded in portraying themselves as exceedingly out of touch. They may as well have included something even more anachronistic in the advert.

On the one hand it is such a small detail, and maybe I should not let myself get sidetracked from the overall message of the advert. On the other hand, the entire advert is one single slide, and so the CD becomes a significant component of the whole. If your advertising campaign is based on the notion of young people gaining independence in the world, then shouldn't everything that appears in the advert totally reinforce that point?

I frequently wonder about how the design of the this final frame came about. Presumably someone had to 'sign off' on this advert. Did they just glance at it and think 'yeah, that will do'? Alternatively, maybe there was a method behind this madness, maybe the choice of this particular design element was the result of thoughtful, and deliberate contemplation? One possible idea that I considered is that someone thought it would be hilarious to put a CD image on an advert for a financial institution, because such institutions also sell products called certificate of deposits, commonly known as CDs. I contemplated that possibility for about two seconds before I had to accept that if that was the case, then we might as well just call an end to our existence as life would no longer be worth living. So let us instead imagine two fictitious advertising executives, who we shall call Bob and Geoff, as they went about their final evaluation of this advert:

Bob: "All finished, but we ended up with a bit of spare space on the bottom left of the slide."

Geoff: "Couldn't we just make our corporate logo bigger, to fill the space?"

Bob: "We could do that Geoff, and that might make for a cleaner slide which better reinforces our corporate branding, and makes the tag line actually readable. But seeing how I recently purchased a large collection of 1990s clip-art, why don't we just throw in a picture of a CD instead?"

Geoff: "Sounds good to me Bob. Is it time for lunch yet?"

1. The 'Medium' power setting is not in the middle of the dial! That's pretty counter-intuitive
2. The manufacturers found space to write the word 'Defrost' (7 letters) but not the word 'Medium' (6 letters)?!?
3. The setting 'M. Low' looks, and reads, very odd
4. The increasing thickness of the markings makes it look like the power settings are on a logarithmic scale 
5. Power settings are written with lower case characters, whereas food types are written in all upper case characters

Overall it is needlessly cluttered and confusing. Why not just have 'Low', 'Medium', and 'High' with perhaps icons for defrost, pizza etc? Why not use a scale that maybe just goes through settings such as 1–10? Why not spend some time designing your products?

However, if you are fond of power controls like this one, then perhaps you would find the following power intervals to be of use too?

Basement power level: Nothing happening here. You can zap me for as long as you like but your food isn't getting any hotter

T-minus 10: ice might start melting, but only just

Annoying defrost: most of the food will have defrosted, except the edges which will have cooked

The 'move-along-nothing-to see-here' setting: located just before you get to the middle of the dial; you will never use this setting.

Perfectly cooked edges: this setting will perform an admirable job of cooking the outer edges of your food. The interior will be cold, potentially frozen even.

Nuclear war: This is probably the only setting that you will use. This setting will heat your food to the same temperature as the surface of the sun

Occasionally I really get a song stuck in my head. Last week it was 'Someone Like You' by Adele, which I think is an amazing song. I decided that the only way to get over this song woud be to record a version myself. So yesterday, about 3:00 I sat down at my laptop and opened up GarageBand.

Musically, the song has a fairly simple structure and the original is written in the key of A, which makes it fairly easy to play on my baritone ukulele. I started off laying down a few very simple, and quite sparse, electronic backing tracks (drums, bass, and a few synth parts). Then I recorded a single ukulele track across to which I added a little bit of flanger effect.

Finally I added some vocals. I'm not a great singer, and for some (many?) songs I'm actually a pretty terrible singer. But I didn't let that stop me! On songs like you this you really appreciate how fantastic Adele's phrasing is on certain parts. I think I could have done better than what you are about to hear, but by 11:00 pm I was a bit tired from recording many different takes. Anyway, I sometimes find it more fun to do everything in one go and then leave it as is. It's a moment captured in time, maybe a painful moment, but a moment nevertheless. In any case, I hope you at least enjoy the musical arrangment.

Someone_like_you.m4a

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Click here to download:

Someone_like_you.m4a (6.21 MB)

Note, this post was originally written in April 2009. It is being reproduced here as the current blog host (MobileMe) will become defunct at some point in the next year. This blog post completes a series of 11 blog posts about my memories of life at Chalkstone Middle School, 1981–1985.

One billion, one hundred and eighty-three million, three hundred and nine thousand, eight hundred and fifty-seven. That (very large) number reflects - at the time of writing - how many seconds that I have been in existence on this planet. I’m not saying that I have behaved like a saint for every one of those seconds, but I like to think that for the most part, I have been a honest, decent, and law-abiding citizen. As a pupil, I tried to obey the rules, and stay on the right sides of the tracks (which is more impressive than it sounds if you knew how easily Haverhill could lure you to the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks).

However, during one summers day in 1985, it seemed that it was time for me to blot my copybook and and damage both myself and my reputation, as I used just one of those seconds to say something that was not altogether appropriate for a school ground environment. One second may not seem a long time, but it is long enough to be able to quickly spit out five short words, and on that particular day the five words in question were “Miss Cox is a Nazi”.

Whilst it is unlikely that there will ever be a good time or place to call someone a Nazi, this was a particularly bad choice of location for my utterance. Had I decided to say those words from within the confines of my bedroom or even on the outer fringes of the school playing field, then maybe I would not be sitting here today writing this recollection. However, I chose to say those words at the end of a school assembly, and I overcame the possible problem of not having everyone pay careful attention to my words by using the assembly hall’s PA system to broadcast my message to each and every person in the room. Of course, I could have just whispered to it a couple of my friends. I could have even spoken it aloud to the rest of my class. But no. I was living up to my occasional nickname variant of ‘mad Nod’, and I decided to say those five words to the entirety of Chalkstone Middle School, pupils *and* teachers.

There was no introduction, no warm-up announcement to introduce the fact that I - Keith Robert Bradnam - was about to publicly decree that Miss Cox, my form tutor and a sports teacher at the school, was a paid up member of the Nazi party (a claim that was blatantly untrue I hasten to add). Likewise there was no post script to the announcement, I simply walked up to the microphone at the end of assembly, leaned forward and excitedly (perhaps even enthusiastically) said “Miss Cox is a Nazi”. It’s hard to think of anything more idiotic and shameful that I have said either before or since that incident. 

At this point I have hopefully raised some important questions, chief of which is ‘why?’. Why on earth would any sane individual insult someone in this way, and why do it in such a public manner? Why would someone who had previously been branded Jewish Nod call someone else a Nazi? Alas, there is no easy or simple answer to this question, but there were some reasons (albeit tenuous ones) that led me to this predicament. Bear with me as I attempt to clear my conscience and put forward my version of the events that unfolded on that fateful day.

As mentioned already, Miss Cox was my form tutor for my fourth (and final) year at the school. At some point in the preceding years she had changed her name (presumably through marriage) from Miss Ellel. She was young and attractive and therefore she was very popular with the boys. Though I think it is fair to say that she was very popular with everyone, as she was a fun and friendly teacher. Indeed, she was one of the last people on this planet who you might think had secret Nazi tendencies. In addition to teaching physical education, she may have also taught biology. I say this only because I remember her teaching a sex education lesson that I found embarrassing at the time...though at least I finally found out what a ‘French letter’ was.

At the start of each morning and afternoon we had ‘registration’, a short period of time before our proper classes started where the teacher would ‘take’ the register to check that everyone was present (which was important at Chalkstone, what with people doing the occasional runner). During these times, we would chat to each other, maybe play some cards and in general just hang out as school kids are wont do to. We would also chat to our form tutors (those we liked anyway). And so at some point in my fourth and final year at Chalkstone, I struck up a rapport with Miss Cox, and somewhere along the line I invented the notion that she was a Nazi. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. But the important thing about this was that it was in jest (well as much as calling anyone a Nazi can be in jest) and she seemed to go along with the joke. I should reiterate this point...it really was our little joke and she never seemed to mind when I would ask her things like “Did you drive to work in your Panzer today miss?’). All good, clean, and harmless fun. Except that ultimately it wasn’t harmless...or good for that matter. Actually it’s debatable whether it was ever clean either. It wasn’t like I was calling her a Nazi every time I saw her, just now and again I would make some subtle reference to her alleged political persuasion. As I said, I don’t know how (or why) this started, but it is abundantly clear how it all ended.

Fast forward to the middle of the year. It was a day where some people from our form class were performing in the morning assembly. I don’t think that classes were forced to do things in assembly, it was more of a case of whether pupils had enough talent and/or ego to do anything that might be of interest to the whole school. Our main school hall had one end that consisted of big folding, wooden doors. These could be opened up to reveal the drama ‘studio’ which was behind the main hall. This area was slightly elevated with respect to the main hall (probably by no more than a foot) and it functioned as a stage from which teachers could address the gathered masses. I think pupil performances in assembly were generally appreciated by teachers as it meant that they had less to do in order to fill the time. Now whilst I think it was a group of people from our class who were performing that day, it doesn’t really matter what class they were in. All that matters was that they had asked me to help them out with one small detail.

As I recall, the people in question were Andrew Jarvis, Gerald Lloyd, and possibly Zylan Hurrell and Adrian Hutton. I might be wrong about the last two. Actually, it was very likely that Sam Marsh was involved...I say this because the featured performance concerned music, and Sam was a drummer (who would later go on to find a modicum of fame as singer/drummer in Jacob’s Mouse). Their ‘performance’ consisted of them miming to a rock song...a ZZ Top song as I recall. At least I think they were miming...I can’t remember if there were even any instruments on stage. The basic plan was they would mime their way through the song, and three and half minutes later, that would be that. The end of the performance would also mark the end of the assembly. Hardly the greatest act of entertainment to grace a school assembly, but it was probably exactly the sort of thing that many kids thought was ‘cool’. I would welcome any more details about the act if people can remember anything. My memory of this segment is probably clouded by the unforgettable events that followed afterwards.

My role in this little musical workshop number was basically to stay hidden in the wings and start - and then stop - the requisite track at the relevant time. It was not a challenging role and I performed my functions as required. The music player (it might have been a tape player, but it could also have been a record player) was part of a larger audio unit housed in a lectern-like piece of furniture. The top of the unit featured a microphone that was physically attached with one of those bendy little necks. The output of said microphone could be redirected to two large PA speakers that were located above each side of the stage in the assembly hall. I had been required to turn up before the assembly started in order to learn my arduous ‘sound-engineer’ duties, and I recall that this meant that I skipped registration. It may have been in this set-up period that we discovered how to turn on the microphone.

As the performance ended (no doubt to rapturous applause, I mean it was five boys miming a ZZ Top song...could it get any better?), teachers started shepherding pupils out of the hall and back to their classes. During assembly teachers would sit (on chairs, not on the floor like us of course) down the two sides of the assembly hall and watch out for any deviant behaviour. I believe that the assembly hall had some sort of order to it (first years sat at the front?) and it took a while to empty the hall as there were only two exits that could be used.

While people started filed out of the exits, we remained on the stage. Someone among us (I’m thinking it was Gerald Lloyd) realised that the presence of the microphone afforded us to say something live to (most of the) gathered school. And so it happened. First of all I think Gerald and maybe Andrew just made some amusing, comedy noises (well it was amusing for thirteen year olds). E.g. “wah, wah, wah, wahhhhhhhh” (I hope you can hear that sound in your head). Maybe one of us was daring enough to say something like “bum”. I had yet to say anything. Maybe I was feeling a little peer pressure to say something, or maybe I chose to do this of my own volition. It doesn’t really matter any more, because you know what I said next. Just five little words, and just like the ‘good ol’ boys’ from the Dukes of Hazard, I was certainly ‘never meanin’ no harm’.

What happened next is a bit of a blur. I recall that the assembly hall was still mostly full but I didn’t think anyone’s attention was on us. As soon as assembly officially ended, pupils start chatting to each other and so the background noise level in the hall had notably increased. And it wasn’t like we shouted these things into the microphone. At that point, I honestly believed that no-one had really listened to what we had said, or more importantly to what *I* had said. It was the last thing on my mind that someone like, oh I don’t know, let’s say ‘Miss Cox’ could have heard every one of those five words that I had spoken.

We were still on stage, looking out the gathered masses when suddenly I spied Miss Cox striding purposely towards the stage. Even at a distance, I could see that her face was red with rage. Not embarrassment, not anger, but r-a-g-e, rage. And so we come to what has become my golden rule of social interaction:

Never. I repeat NEVER, call someone a Nazi in front of several hundred people, and particularly when said someone had had a major (potentially relationship-ending) dispute with their partner the night before. 

Now I don’t know exactly what had happened to Miss Cox the night before, and I don’t really know how I later found out about this. But I think it is sufficient to say that this was absolutely the worst possible day I could have chosen to bring ‘our little joke’ to a wider audience. Miss Cox bounded up from the school hall onto the stage (she was a sports teacher after all). It wasn’t just the fact that she seemed so angry, it was more the fact that this was someone who I had *never* seen angry. She wasn’t a bullying teacher, the sort to shout at pupils and humiliate them. She was kind, and friendly and yet here she was standing in front of me looking like she wanted to kill me.

I remember she then clutched the front of whatever I was wearing and proceeded to violently shake me. I was now very scared. Whilst she had every reason to criticise me for my public insult, she actually chose to question me along more formal lines. She demanded to know why I wasn’t at registration (which I think is something akin to a legal requirement). You have to admire her, she wasn’t getting sidetracked by the whole Nazi thing at all. She was just concerned about my failure to be present during morning registration. Ok, so the Nazi thing probably didn’t help. I have a memory of trying to pose a calm response and point out that I was helping out ‘the band’ with their performance. That didn’t go down very well. The rest of that day is a complete blank for me, except that I know I ended up being thrown to the floor. I wonder if the thought crossed her mind to give me a bit of a kicking while I was down there.

So that pretty much describes the whole ‘Miss Cox is a Nazi’ incident. I possibly had to see the deputy headmaster that day, as I definitely recall a chat with Mr Danes at some point about this. No more punishment was forthcoming. Indeed no more punishment was necessary. I had been humiliated in front of the whole school (which is probably only fair as I had humiliated her in front of the whole school as well). Life moved on and I probably had a very embarrassing week with people asking me questions about what happened. In fact, because so many people had seen me get the very public dressing-down I was asked about this incident for months to come, by younger pupils that I didn’t know. “Are you the kid that called the teacher a Nazi?” was a frequent question. I also remember that a year or two later (when I had moved up to Samuel Ward Upper School) some friends of my older brother asked me about the incident, as they had heard about it from their younger brothers/sisters. It was the kind of notoriety that I really didn’t want. This was something that ‘other pupils’ did. Not Keith humble-as-a-mouse Bradnam. As you can imagine, I didn’t ever risk calling her a Nazi again (even in private). I sadly have no recollection of how we interacted in our registration periods for the rest of that year. Though I probably was very careful with everything that I said.

If this incident had happened in the last 10 years or so, then I’m almost certain that the very fact that a teacher had touched me would mean that I could sue the school, have her dismissed, and probably get a large cash payment as hush money. But this was 1985 and this was Chalkstone Middle School - a school that only a few years earlier had actively encouraged pupils to settle their disputes, not by exchanging calm words of reason, but by exchanging angry punches of hate. In a strange kind of way, this was just another ‘normal’ day at Chalkstone Middle School.

And so I would like to end this blog entry - and indeed this entire blog series - by issuing a full apology to Miss Cox. I have no idea where you are right now, and the chances are probably very slim that you are reading this. But if you are then please let me offer my fullest, and sincerest apologies. This event has stayed with me through all these years and I remain ashamed of what I said. You are not, never have been, and never will be a Nazi and did not deserve my public declaration to the contrary...but you did drive a Panzer right?

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There are some teachers that you can joke around with, there are some teachers that will tolerate a small amount of misbehaviour, and there are some teachers that you know you can push to the limit without any serious repercussions. Mr. McLaughlin was not any of those teachers. Mr. McLaughlin believed that you were in school to learn, and he did not tolerate any misbehavior. Whereas some teachers use humour to win over their pupils, Mr. McLaughlin used fear...and it worked.

I think we started science lessons with Mr McLaughlin in our 3rd year (though possibly in our 2nd?). I vividly remember our first lesson with him. The first thing he did was gesture towards the science store cupboard (which was used to keep all manner of chemicals) and said something along the lines of “I have over 100 ways I could kill you with things in that cupboard...you will not go into that cupboard. Ever.” He did not mince his words, and he did not suffer fools gladly.

If you’re going to rule by fear, then it makes sense to always keep a weapon at your side. Mr. M’s choice of weapon was the half meter ruler, which was always within his reach. Whereas one meter rulers were a common sight in science classes, half meter rulers were not, and this makes me think it was a custom job. I can picture him cutting down rulers to different lengths to determine which gave him the best trade-off between portability and reach.

I think there are lots of individual stories about some of the various punishments that were administered in science classes by Mr. McLaughlin, and perhaps the most widely told stories concern the ‘board rubber’. On occasion, the class would be asked a question. To Mr. McLaughlin this would seem a straightforward question to which any idiot could answer. To us, these question sessions were a case of trial-by-ordeal, as we frequently did not know the answer. The standard pattern of events would be that he would pick someone to answer the question (it was unlikely that any of us would have been brave enough to volunteer). After being given the wrong answer, he may have said something like ‘Fetch the board rubber, you buffoon’. The pupil in question would then retrieve the chalk eraser from the black board, and Mr. McLaughlin would then ‘smack’ the pupil on the cheek with the board rubber. It wasn’t always a hard smack, just firm enough to make you regret not knowing the correct answer. He would then move on to the next pupil in the class and repeat the question. This time though, the board rubber would be held just a few inches away from their cheek. Maybe this was meant to ‘encourage’ you to remember the correct answer, but more often than not, this added stress would only make you forget everything that you had ever learnt. Mr. McLaughlin was happy to proceed around the entire class until he elicited the correct answer from someone.

Did he enjoy administering these punishments or did he genuinely think that this was a valid teaching method? Who knows, but given some of the other physical ‘interactions’ that happened in his class, one has to lean towards the former explanation rather than the latter.

One of these ‘interactions’ came when he was demonstrating how electrical circuits worked. This demonstration called for some volunteers (it wouldn’t surprise me if no-one actually volunteered for these demonstrations and instead everyone was picked). A group of us were told to stand in a circle and link arms. I believe that I was one of the ‘volunteers’ and that I was standing next to Robert Winner. As Mr. McLaughlin proceeded to explain how electricity flows through a circuit, he moved on to demonstrating what happens when a circuit was broken. To make his point, he swiftly brought down his half meter ruler on one of Robert Winner’s arms, forcing the circuit to be broken (and nearly forcing Robert’s wrist to be broken).

In another lesson - also concerned with electricity - Mr. M. had a chance to get us to receive punishment at our own hands rather than his. I think that this involved one of us standing on a plastic tray and then holding the discharging rod of a Van de Graaff generator. The plastic tray would insulate the person in question from receiving any shock. Mr. McLaughlin then asked that person to give hand shakes to their ‘friends’. The ‘friends’ in question then received a large electric shock, which Mr. M. seemed to find quite amusing.

A final memory of those science lessons once again involves electricity...I’m not sure why these are the only lessons I remember, it must be something to do with the pain involved. In many science lessons we had to use ‘transformers’ to generate the electricity for many of our experiments. As I recall, these were yellow blocks with a black and red terminal, and with a switchable voltage. The voltage started at 1 volt, and increased in intervals up to 12 or maybe 24 volts. In one lesson, Mr. McLaughlin challenged us to set the voltage to 1 volt, and then put the terminals of both cables on our tongue. I don’t know what was more bizarre: that he challenged us, or that so many of us tried it. After several people experienced the unpleasant tingling of having 1 volt of electricity on our tongues, he then urged us to try 2 volts. And then 4 volts and so on. I recall being intrigued enough to try a few of the lower voltage settings but then it started getting unpleasant. We were in class ‘3/1’ at the time, the top class in the 3rd year, and we were therefore meant to be the brightest pupils in the year. I think that those of us that tried this bizarre experiment, stopped at about 6 volts. Mr. McLaughlin was eager to see people go further and taunted us with the revelation that when he did this with 3/6 (the lowest ranked - intellectually speaking - class in our year) that some of them went all the way to 12 volts. At this point, I think we were saved by the bell.

Although these stories may paint Mr. McLaughlin in an unfavourable light, and portray him as a bit of a sadist, I still have fond memories of his science lessons. He did install fear, but at the same time I felt a lot of respect towards him. At one point he made some claim along the lines of ‘when you are all at university...’, but university seemed so far away for us then. But he was right to make us think about our future education, and I credit his science lessons with inspiring me to stay with science and make it to university...though I tried staying clear of subjects that involved electricity.

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This is a short appendix to part 8 really. And I have to confess that I’m not even sure that this was a Chalkstone era story, it very possibly was from my time at Samuel Ward Upper School. It is only because a) I can’t remember any of the teachers involved and b) can only think of the name of one boy involved in this story (who was at Chalkstone & Samuel Ward) that I am including this here.

Ok, so in addition to all of the school trips where we were able to stay for a few days, there were also the occasional day trips. At least I’m assuming that there must have been at least a few, but I can’t remember any except Boulogne and...a trip to the US Air Force base at Mildenhall (or possibly Lakenheath). Anyone else care to bring forth some details of other day trips?

We were shown around the base by some American chap who was probably depressed by the fact that this was what his military career had turned into. I remember hardly anything about what we were shown. I only remember that at the end of the trip we were taken into an officers recreation room, where other officers were playing pool in the background, and that was when we were allowed to ask any questions about all of the many things that we had been shown that day.

The teacher in charge must have hoped (or prayed) that this small gaggle of boys of girls would be capable of asking at least one question. An intelligent question would be even better. After all, there was potential to ask about what it was like to fly fighter jets, or how much money these expensive planes cost to build. An even more salient, and political, question would have been to ask about whether it was right that the UK should allow America to effectively use our country as an aircraft carrier. One hand was raised by a boy, and that boy was Christopher Todd. He had a question to ask, and the teacher gave him the go-ahead to ask it. The senior USAF airman turned to fix his attention towards Christopher, and awaited whatever probing and insightful question was coming his way. The boy who was now representing all school children of Haverhill, Suffolk asked the following:

“Is that a full size pool table?”

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A week ago I would have been hard-pressed to remember more than one class excursion away from school. But various comments on this blog have jogged my memory, and I’m now somewhat surprised by how many opportunities we had to get out of Haverhill. There are others who probably think that we didn’t get out of Haverhill that much, but my perspective is firmly from the point of view of someone who had spent all of his life in Haverhill (in the same room of the same house). Whatever lay beyond the borders of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire was - for me - an undiscovered country.

So whilst I can now remember a bit more about several trips, I’m very hazy about which order they occurred in. There was the day trip to Boulogne which I have already covered in my French blog entry. Given the various ‘personalities’ in my year, I can only think that most teachers were filled with dread every time it was announced that they had to accompany the pupils on a trip anywhere. I will do my best to recount a few anecdotes from these various trips in the order I remember going on them.

First up, Isle of Wight (was this a 1st year trip). I don’t remember too many people going on this trip, but there was certainly many of the usual suspects mentioned in other blog entries (Steve, Rob, Danny, Mark etc.). I think this may have been my first time staying overnight somewhere in a big dormitory style room. As mentioned elsewhere, I cried after arrival as I couldn’t open my suitcase and I had to be rescued my Mrs Smith. I don’t know how many other teachers were on this trip but one other teacher was certainly Mr Pope (the woodwork/metalwork teacher). He brought his guitar and there was a sing along at one point. I still remember everybody being deeply unimpressed when he started playing ‘Postman Pat’. But this might have been a response to Robert asking him if he knew how to play ‘Hey Mr Postman’ (to which Robert had his own set of lyrics). We went out to see the Needles, we visited the bay where there was a big cliff of multicoloured sand, and we visited ‘Blackgang Chine’ (whatever that was). The main memory of the whole trip was Robert Banham/Winner (someone please tell me which surname came first, I can’t remember) keeping us all awake late into the night with many ‘eggy guff’ related antics. He also did a bit of naked dancing on his bed, lit only by the moonlight coming through the window. I’m spotting a theme emerging here between nudity and Robert Winner.

Into the second year, I recall a Geography field trip to Wales. My memory is now kicking into gear and I can say with some certainty that we stayed at this place in Bryn Dinas, Snowdonia. The girls got to stay in the main building, the boys were placed in some huts outside. There were a lot of two-person huts but also a fewer big dorm-style huts. Mr Church (Geography) and Mr Eason (P.E. & maths), and Miss Ellel/Cocks were on this trip I think. I bunked with Chay Adamou as I recall. We did lots of walking on this trip and had been told in advance that ‘outdoor clothes’ and ‘sturdy walking boots’ were required. So of course Sarah Adams turned up with jeans, a denim jacket, and shoes which were more appropriate for a school disco. We did orienteering and I got lost with Chay and luckily we bumped into Mr Church (by complete chance). That was a major event in my life as I vowed never to be so useless with a map again, and I have since devoted most of my adult life to knowing a) where I am and b) where I am going at all times. So I guess getting hopelessly lost was useful in that respect. Some other people who may have been on that trip were: Stephen Edwards (Eddie), Darren Mears, Colin Wheeler, Alan Blundell (sp. ?) - who was Robert Winner’s step-brother?, Amanda Rampling, Julie Parfitt (?) and Chris Nelson.

After lights out there were a lot of high-jinx activities from the boys outside. I recall a story of how someone had bought an adult magazine and this was being shared around in one of the bigger cabins, but how a teacher discovered somebody with it. There was also a fancy dress competition one night. Eddie & Darren Mears went as Rick and Vyvian from the Young Ones (more of a vocal act, than any costume involved), Amanda went (and won) as an Indian snake charmer, and Chay was another winner as he went as an ‘all-weather-outdoor-cameraman’ (with a TV camera cleverly fashioned out of some packed lunch containers and a broom handle). To my eternal embarrassment, I chose to convert a black bin liner into a ‘superhero costume’. Donning a pair of thick, black gloves, I transformed myself into...SuperNod. Oh how I cringe now. I had not thought beyond the costume and so had no sense of purpose of what SuperNod did, or why he did what he did (by day a shy, awkward geek in school uniform, by night a shy, awkward geek in a ripped black bin liner?). This event probably sowed the seeds for my life-long hatred/fear of fancy dress parties.

The other things I remember from this trip are a lot of horrible taunting towards Alan Blundell (Blundle?). He really was picked on a lot, the poor kid. Also during this trip Colin Wheeler (who seemed a giant at the time, he was fully grown at age 9 I think) had a bit of a fit, threw a table across the room (oh how my memory likes to exaggerate, not even SuperNod could do that), and then stormed off on a mini-runner. I never knew what was behind that but for the rest of the trip I think everyone became a bit worried about what they said to him in case it triggered another episode. We walked up Mount Snowdon on that trip but due to descending clouds we had to turn back after walking about 3/4 of the way up the mountain. I say that we ‘had’ to turn back, it was apparent that other pupils (younger than us) from other schools were still going up the mountain. I was very annoyed by our failure to reach the summit and I vowed that one day, I would return and make it to the top. I think it took me another 15 years or so until I had the opportunity, and this time I conquered the beast (I am SuperNod after all, how could I fail?). 

Reading back what I have written so far, it seems that these school trips had several profound influences on my life!

Ok, so on to third year or fourth year maybe. At some point we were essentially offered a choice. There was a trip to France, or what was called the ‘Football tour’, this trip took you to (what was then) West Germany, but gave you opportunities to see the Netherlands and Belgium as well (but of course you had to play football as well). Taking advice from my brother, I chose the football tour...despite my inability to play football. My brothers advice has been the cause of many of my downfalls, but it took me several more years to realise that.

So I can’t comment on the French trip and I don’t really know what the whole deal with ‘Tony the bus driver’ that others have alluded to in other blog comments (please explain). The football tour was a joint effort with another school in Haverhill I think, I certainly recall lots of people that I didn’t know on the trip. Mr Burling went on that trip, and maybe Mr Eason (I wonder if he still lives at the same place on Chapple Drive?). The most laughable part of the whole trip was that we were were told early on that there would be four teams and these teams were chosen at random, and no-one should think that you have been placed into a team based on your perceived ability (or lack of). The names for those teams?  A1, A2, B1, and B2. Hmmm, guess which team I was in? Yep, B2.

The A teams consisted of people who could play football and were actually quite good at it (e.g. Harry Zachariou...his real name is Charalambos if you didn’t know). The A teams also got to wear the school football kits. When you moved to the B teams you had people who couldn’t play football, and indeed didn’t really want to play football. They were just there for the socialising and maybe for the chance to thump a German. There were not enough football shirts for all the teams so I remember that we had to wear the school rugby shirts (but not even with matching shorts or socks). Team B2 looked a pretty rag-tag bunch of misfits.

The matches seemed long, and were tiring. In one game, it rained a lot and I froze to death. Our lack of football skills ensured that we comprehensively lost all of the matches that we played. It was embarrassing to turn up to play other teams who all had matching kits (football not rugby) and even matching tracksuits. They must have laughed at us, and we were not good standard bearers for the country that had been dominating European football at that time.  After one defeat, the home team asked us if we still would like to play a penalty shoot-out. It wasn’t necessary but maybe they wanted to inflict further embarrassment and humiliation on us. I don’t remember who won that shoot out, but I do remember taking a kick and scoring a majestic goal that sailed into the top right corner. Despite being a meaningless goal, it was one of the best moments of my life.

That highlight of the trip still pales into insignificance when compared to what I will always remember most about the whole experience. During one of the matches, the referee had to intervene to break up a fight. This fight was not - as you might expect - a fight between one of us and one of our European opposition. No, the fight was between two members of our own team. If memory serves me correctly, it was Adrian Purr and Christopher Nelson. Was there ever a more sorry excuse for a football team? Good old Chalkstone Middle School, making it’s mark on the world!

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One of the more infamous events to happen while I was at CMS was of course the incident that can be referred to as ‘the runner’. I’m not sure how much I can really say to describe the events of that day, so I’m hoping that others will add to the comments to flesh out the events of that day (and night???).

It’s worth remembering that in the days before texting, and before facebook status updates and instantaneous twitter messages, that news had to spread by word of mouth. And so there is always an element of Chinese whispers when you hear a story which had already been passed around by several kids who might have all added their own embellishments. The events of that day were probably spread about very quickly amidst much excitement.

Of everything I have tried reminiscing about so far, this is the story which I have the least immediate recall. So I apologise now for any glaring inaccuracies. As I can remember, the whole thing started at a morning break one day, during our fourth (?) year. If you recollect, the edge of the playing fields had that very short - but very steep - downwards slope that led to the hedge+fence combo that formed the perimeter of the school grounds. That hedge always had really thick leaves which took a long time to fall from the branches come Autumn. I can remember liking the sensation of crushing the dried brown leaves whilst they were still attached to the hedge.

Anyway, one morning break a certain quartet of pupils (Robert Banham/Winner, Adrian Hutton, Steven Haynes, and Gerrard Garrett were gathered at the edge of that slope. My understanding is that one or more of them decided to expose themselves to a passing lady. I’m sure if Robert was involved there was probably some witty comment as well (though maybe not containing one of the three words that graced many of his outpourings, namely ‘egg’, ‘guff’, or ‘trump’). At the time I don’t think anything else happened. The woman left the crime scene, break time finished and everyone returned to classes.

Maybe this type of thing would not be regarded with so much shock these days. Maybe if a 13 year old boy decided to flash someone from within the grounds of Chalkstone Middle School, a passer by would today just retort ‘Put it away son, I’ve just had my breakfast’ and walk off. But back in the early 80’s this was a very terrible act that been committed. The woman in question (and I have to confess I don’t even know if it was one woman, or even if it was a man...though that seems less likely), contacted the school to complain (“Hello, I’d like to report the sighting of a fairly small, overly pallid penis please”).

It must have taken a little time for the complaint to reach the intended recipient (Mr Levi Strauss F.W. Woolworths Slow-but-steady-phew Clapham), but it reached him at lunchtime. I know this because I was sitting in the canteen eating my lunch when Mr Clapham came storming into the dining area and barked out the names of the four perpetrators, asking them to show their faces. He was very angry. This was the first I knew anything about the whole affair, and even though I didn’t know what he wanted with Robert, Adrian, Gerard, and Steven, his tone of voice told me that someone was in big trouble.

My other clear memory of this part of the timeline was that Mr Clapham - upon identifying Steven, or Steven identifying himself - came storming over to him and physically dragged him out of his chair. The amusing part came when Steven tried to protest that he hadn’t yet finished his dinner...a comment that didn’t go down too well with the furious Clapham.

At some point after lunch I think I recall seeing all four suspects lined up outside Mr Clapham’s office. They looked like they were on death row. At this point they no doubt had a deep and serious conversation about what they had done and what were the likely implications. They had the option to weigh up the situation and reflect on the possibility of giving a full and honest confession and extending a deep and heartfelt apology to the innocent victim of their ‘sex attack’. They *had* this option, but instead they reached a different conclusion, namely “let’s do a runner”.

I have no recall of the timeline of events after that. I think word got out fairly quickly that they had legged it. This provoked a lot of speculation, because I’m not sure if we all knew at that point why they had fled. Over the next 24 hours various strands of gossip coalesced to form the opinion that a) they had left town and b) two of them were making their way to London, and two to Liverpool. This was all clearly nonsense as I don’t think anybody had any real knowledge of their whereabouts. The reality was that  four twelve-thirteen year old kids with - and let’s go wild with the speculation - a combined pocket money income of £10 a week maximum - were not going to make it very far.

As I recall, they got as far as Linton (~10 miles away) or possibly a bit further. Then I recollect that the story of the day was that they had unknowingly chosen to sleep overnight in a haystack outside the house of the deputy head (Ray Daynes) who found them all in the morning and took them all back to school to be held accountable for their actions. This also sounds a bit too far-fetched to me, and so I ask for clarification from Steven. Namely:

1. What was the actual event that was ‘performed’ to the passer by?

2. How far from Haverhill did you actually get?

3. Were you discovered or did you turn yourselves in?

4. What was the punishment?

Whilst we’re on the subject of ‘indecent exposures’, I’d like to also point out that at some point in the third or fourth year, some people found out that I owned a cheap Polaroid camera. These people included - surprise, surprise - Robert Banham/Winner, Steven Haynes, and I think Zylan Hurrell and possibly Simon Lansdowne. They realised that an instant camera gave them the possibility of producing some of their own pornographic material, and asked me for a loan of the camera. I obliged them but I wanted to know nothing whatsoever about what uses the camera was being put towards. I find it unlikely that they would have coerced any females into being involved, so was the plan to photograph themselves? For once, I’m not really sure if I want to know the answers. I guess there is the possibility that a revealing set of polaroid prints is in existence somewhere, sitting on a shelf waiting to be rediscovered.

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