I still love this job

We had some "Good News" at work the other day.
Jodrell Bank Observatory has been selected as the home for the Square Kilometre Array Project Office. The SKA will be the world's largest radio telescope and it will be located in either Australia or South Africa. It is a global effort by astronomers and engineers from many countries, so being chosen as the place where the whole project will be managed is quite a coup.
Inevitably, news like this generates media interest...

I was working a Day Shift on Monday when the 'phone rang.
"Control room?..."
"Oh, hello. This is Kate from the BBC. Could I speak to Professor Simon Garrington?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't transfer you from this 'phone. It's a dedicated line just for the telescope control room. Hold on a moment, let me give you his office number."
"OK.Thanks."
I checked the internal directory and gave her the number, she said "Thanks" again, and that was that...
Until I realized that I'd given her the wrong 'phone number.
"Oh great," I thought. "That'll make a good impression. I wonder if I can ring her back with the right number." I quickly called "1471", got her number and gave it a ring.
"Er, hello." I said. "This is the Controller at Jodrell Bank. You called a couple of minutes ago, but I've just realized that I gave you the wrong telephone number. Look, sorry to have messed you about ,but I've got the correct number now, if you still need it."
"That's OK. I'm almost there now. I should be arriving at the Main Building in a couple of minutes."
"Oh. I didn't realize you were en route. If you park right outside the front entrance, I'll buzz you in."
"Thanks."

Simon met the lady from the BBC in the foyer, so it was about half an hour later that they both came into the Control Room to do a short TV interview about the SKA news.
"This is Kate Simms, from BBC North West News. And this is Kim our Duty Controller for the day."
As we shook hands I said "I'm afraid we've already spoken. I'm the bloke who gives out duff information and wrong numbers."
Honesty is usually the best policy.

Kate Simms is charming. Considering that she was working to quite a tight schedule, she was impressively down-to-earth.and calm. There was no visible trace of the stress or terseness that occasionally reveals itself when media folk are working to a deadline.
She singlehandedly recorded a short TV interview with Simon at ground level, then she lugged all her camera gear up into the telescope bowl to shoot a second interview, before returning to the Control Room to join the crew who had arrived with a satellite communications truck, to prepare for a live interview which was seamlessly dropped into the lunchtime news.

You've got to say it's a good day at work when, not only do,you get to hear some good news, but you also meet a genuinely charming celebrity.
 
SKA Image Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/SKA Program Development Office

Talk to the organ grinder, not the monkey

I wouldn't normally post about something that is so far from my personal experience, but the plight of the people in parts of Japan is impossible to ignore.
To experience an earthquake or a tsunami is hard enough for any nation, but to cope with both of these natural disasters and then have to respond to the threat of a meltdown at  a nuclear power plant and the prospect of an uncontrolled release of radiation represents an exceptional challenge.

As if the effects of this compound disaster aren't enough to contend with, the people who are part of the rescue effort, or trying to get things working again, or trying to find missing members of their family, or simply just trying to stay alive also have to put up with the world's media arriving by the planeload, looking for ever more dramatic things to film for the rest of us to watch on our 50 inch plasma TVs.

Every news crew wants an exclusive, so the temptation to squeeze more drama into any report must be hard to resist and it would take a very special kind of news editor to lead with the facts from a well informed source when they have some grim video footage, accompanied by an apocolyptic commentary by "their reporter at the scene of devastation", to open their news bulletin with a doom-laden splash.

Well I don't trust them. I don't believe that  they can bear to let the facts spoil what, to them, is just another story. I particularly don't trust news-mongers to tell us anything reliable if it involves science.
I don't want to get my news from these monkeys.

If, like me, you want to find out what's really going on at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, you might like to take the advice of Charles Stross, and have a look at the International Atomic Energy Agency site. The situation is clearly presented, without any tabloid melodrama, by people who are a whole lot better qualified to explain this complex and continually evolving situation than a bunch of TV journalists who know more about camera angles than containment vessels.

Not my turn in the spotlight

This evening, BBC Television will be broadcasting the first of a three night series called "Stargazing Live". These programs will be shown at 8 pm, on BBC2 and will be hosted by Professor Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain, live from Jodrell Bank.

I haven't seen the Control Room in so much turmoil since we had the film crew from "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy" doing a two day shoot a few years ago. In front of the Control Desk the set design team has built a raised area and a pair of platforms for large, plasma display screens. There are an array of studio lights strung from the ceiling, various microphones in strategic places, lighting control panels, audio mixers and all the miles of cable that go with them.
The rest of the main building is festooned with temporary signs and arrows pointing the way to the Production Office, Makeup, Green Room, Rehearsal Room and Dressing Rooms. Outside the building there's the kind of circus that always accompanies this sort of undertaking.
There's the "Gallery Truck", with an enormous articulated trailer which houses the outside broadcast control room. This appears to be one of those origami vehicles where the walls extend in all directions creating an internal working space that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. It's probably as close as you can get to having an actual TARDIS.
There are lighting trucks, satellite communication vans, catering trucks, a marquee laid out with tables for refreshments, portable toilets, generators, water bowsers, a mobile security post and a bunch of other non-specific vans.

The thing that's difficult to believe is that when I finished my shift yesterday morning, none of this stuff was here. As I walked out of the Control Room, the set designer and his team had just pulled up outside the Main Building.
While I was at home asleep, the place was transformed.

It's just the luck of the draw which of the six controllers gets which shift when this sort of event is on.
I can't decide whether or not to be disappointed that I'm not on-shift for all the fun and games. It's always interesting to be behind the scenes and watch how media stuff works, but it can be quite stressful too. We cannot afford to let the artistic demands of the TV crew influence any operational decisions about the way the telescope is driven. There's always the chance that you'll have to tell the director that he's not going to get his preferred shot of the telescope positioned low to the horizon because the wind is too strong.
As you can imagine, that doesn't go down too well, but it's better than breaking the telescope.

Anyway, if you were hoping to catch a glimpse of me actually working you are going to be out of luck. Your Controller for Monday and Tuesday evening's shows will be Jock, and on Wednesday it will be Andy.

 "We are in control...": Andy and Jock are second and third from the left, respectively.

"'Ello, I wish to register a complaint..."

It's funny the things that you take for granted.

There was a time when it was pretty hard work to get satisfaction from a retailer if the goods that you had bought were faulty.
If you took something back to a shop, you could generally expect scepticism and even outright hostility from the shop assistant for daring to return an item that had been unfit for purpose.
Getting your money back was often next to impossible even if you had a receipt, the original packaging and the bag that the assistant had put he wretched thing in when you bought it.

The phrase "The customer is always right", was a hollow sham.

I have a feeling that it was this environment and the recognition of the helplessness of shoppers that made Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch" such a perfect creation.
In those dark days before The Trades Descriptions Act, anyone who had ever bought something that was a dud could sympathise with Mr Praline (John Cleese) as he struggled to get satisfaction from the pet-shop owner (Michael Palin).

Thankfully things are much more sensible these days, so the trip to Tesco's to return a pack of five pairs of underpants, was completely stress-free.
The amount that the first pair had shrunk when they went through the wash was obvious when compared with an unworn pair, so the lady at the Customer Service desk didn't hesitate to offer a refund and an apology for the inconvenience

The only difficulty I had during the encounter, was resisting the almost overwhelming temptation to put on a hilariously amusing, high-pitched voice as I explained the problem.

Oh... all right then.... here's that sketch again.

Heroes with an ASBO... and a BAFTA too

Last night, I was pleasantly surprised to see that "Misfits", which I quietly raved about a few months back, had not only managed to get a BAFTA nomination but actually won the award for the Best TV Drama Series.

Considering that they were up against such quality, BBC productions as "Spooks", "Being Human" and "The Street", this is not a trivial achievement.

When the series was originally broadcast, it didn't seem to get a lot of attention. I don't know whether this was due to the misconception that, in the wake of "Smallville" and "Heroes", it was just another super-hero series, or simply that it was shown on "E4" and so a little less obvious in the TV schedules. Whatever the reason was for this apparent lack of interest, I started to feel as if I was the only person who was following the exploits of the delinquent characters as they tried to come to terms with the powers that had been inflicted on them.

None of the characters were immediately likeable and some were so abrasive, objectionable or just plain creepy, that it was quite uncomfortable to watch. These were the sort of young people who, if they got onto your bus, you'd want to move to a seat as far from them as possible.

The super-powers that the characters were lumbered with by the deliberately cliche "Strange Electrical Storm" were nothing we hadn't seen before, and yet the way that the bewildered recipients of these unwelcome talents came to terms with them was entirely fresh. Another master stroke was not revealing the nature of some of the abilities, until well into the series.

After each episode I found myself thinking, "Blimey! That was good... they can't possibly keep this up."
But they did keep it up. Right to the very end of the final episode.

...and now I've discovered that there's second series coming in November.

Excellent.

Steve "Interesting" Davis

I've always been a bit sceptical about snooker being classed as a sport. For me, sport should always involve some kind of obvious physical exertion and/or a risk to life and limb. The fact that a snooker player considers a bow tie as 'sports kit' doesn't help either.

Nevertheless, it is a sport and the professionals who play it have won my respect, for whatever that's worth.

Generally I don't have a lot of time for most sports. Football, rugby, athletics etc. all leave me un-moved, and as for tennis... That's completely insane; how can you have a game that can theoretically last for ever? Even when the matches don't continue until eternity, it certainly seems like they do.
But I digress...

I quite like watching snooker.
I've never played or even had any desire to play it, but it is a game I can understand and it is played at a pace which I can follow. Everything about the way the balls move across the table and the trajectories they take following a collision is so satisfyingly predictable. Every shot that a player takes becomes a demonstration of Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion.
The players are studiously calm and generally well behaved as they take their turn at the table, carefully chalking their cue as they analyse the probable outcome of the next shot. There is never any sense of unnecessary haste or urgency, just a measured concentration culminating in a single stroke of the cue and that wonderful sound as the balls collide and ricochet  across the soothing surface of the table to their predestined new resting places.
The player seldom exhibits any satisfaction or dismay at the success or failure of a shot, The audience may be applauding or groaning, but the player seems oblivious. They either set about the business of taking the next shot, or make their way back to their seat at the edge of the arena to watch and wait as their opponent takes their turn at the table.

The World Championships are being played at The Crucible in Sheffield at the moment, so there's been plenty of coverage on TV, and one of the best things about it has been the surprising performance by Steve Davis.

At the age of 52, he beat the defending World Champion John Higgins, before being knocked out in the quarter-finals by Neil Robertson.

Go Steve!!! All of us old buggers salute you!

Edge of darkness

There are trailers on TV at the moment for the latest Mel Gibson film, a remake of "Edge of Darkness".

I heard a review of it on "Front Row", the daily arts show on BBC Radio 4, a couple of days ago. It sounded as if it could be reasonable, but throughout the piece, the reviewer couldn't help but compare it with the original and the general impression was one of disappointment.

As luck would have it, I was at the library the day after I heard this review and was delighted to discover that they had the DVD of the original, award-winning 1985 TV series.
I grabbed it.
For a drama that was made twenty-five years ago, it is amazing how well it has aged.

I remember being thoroughly gripped by the series when it was first broadcast and what an outstandingly unusual drama it was for its time. The story, written by Troy Kennedy Martin, follows Craven, a detective, as he tries to come to terms with the murder of his daughter. He is drawn into a dangerous covert struggle between the burgeoning nuclear power industry and organised environmental activists. The quality of the cast, the writing and the production values set this series apart from anything else that was around at the time; it didn't do it any harm to have theme music by Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen either.

I'm not about to suggest that you don't go and watch the new version of "Edge of Darkness", but I'd definitely encourage you to get hold of the DVD of the original.

...and if you want to hear what the music was like, have a listen to this...

 

"Misfits": You wouldn't want to be these super-heroes

I'm not going to push too hard to encourage you to watch this series, because I don't want my enthusiasm to put you off.

All I'll say is that I'm really impressed by it and I'll be very sorry when it finishes.

It's showing on "E4" at present, and all of the first four episodes are still available on the "4OD" website, so you should have time to catch it before it's gone.

(Apologies to anybody who reads this too late, or who is outside the UK. Hopefully you'll be able to see it on DVD)

"Life" : Another neglected gem.

I've just finished watching the second, sadly final, series of the rather wonderful "Life". If you've not come across it, this is an American police drama, starring Damian Lewis as Charlie Crews.

At the start of the first season, Crews is released from prison after serving twelve years of a life sentence. He had been wrongfully convicted of a multiple murder, but thanks to the efforts of his lawyer, DNA evidence cleared him of the crime. Having lost his job, his wife, his friends and nearly all contact with the outside world, he emerges from prison enlightened by the philosophy of Zen which has helped sustain him during his sentence. After successfully suing the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD, he is reinstated to the police department and receives about fifty million dollars in compensation.

OK. It all sounds pretty contrived, but there is so much scope within the somewhat peculiar boundaries that the whole thing works.

Each week there's a crime to solve, while the season story arc follows Crews as he tries to discover who was actually behind the murders that put him behind bars.
Throughout the series, Crews calmly navigates a world that has changed while he has been out of circulation. Mind you, even his Zen outlook is shaken by the perplexities of mobile 'phone technology. He's also obsessed with fresh fruit; "See this apple... you couldn't get an apple like this in prison... or any other fresh fruit."

They only made two seasons of "Life", so although I'm disappointed to see it finish, at least it has ended before the inevitable decline of the TV series that is past it's sell-by date.

I got hold of the first season as a boxed DVD set from my local library and as I was carrying it home, Andy from over the road saw it.
"Oh, 'Life'. We watched that when it was on. It's a bit weird though."
"Is it any good?"
"Yeah, but quirky..."
He paused for a moment, then continued, "but you'll like it."

He was right.

Psychoville : Wonderfully unsettling

I just have to say something about "Psychoville", the pitch-black comedy drama that is on BBC2 at present. The end of the series is approaching fast, and each episode seems to head off into increasingly strange territory, so if you've not caught it and you fancy something a bit "off piste", try BBC iPlayer where all the episodes are available until the series concludes.

(Apologies to anybody reading this after the transmission dates, but I have no doubt that there will be re-runs and DVD releases, so you'll not be deprived of this malefic gem.)

This is the brainchild of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, who's "The League of Gentleman" gave us the citizens of Royston Vazey in all their repellent glory, so from the outset you know you are not going to be chortling away in the leafier suburbs of sit-com land; It's very definitely not "The Vicar of Dibley".

It is a grotesque and deeply uncomfortable show to watch but it works beautifully. All the major characters are uniquely monstrous and yet they could all exist in our cosy, normal world; they are all worryingly resonant.

Enjoy...

If only...

I've just finished re-watching the TV series 'Firefly', on DVD.

If you enjoy Science Fiction, and you've never come across this gem, beg, borrow or buy it NOW! It is a genuine lost masterpiece. It was the series that Joss Whedon created after he'd finished 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', and concerns the crew of 'Serenity', a Firefly class spaceship.

The series is beautifully made with a core cast of genuinely interesting characters, in a future where humans terraformed and colonized the planets and moons of an unspecified volume of space. Life in the colonies is pretty basic and is essentially a sort of futuristic Wild West, with any and all the technology that would be available by then. In a typical frontier spaceport you could expect to see horse-drawn carts alongside hovercars and shops selling spacesuits and stetsons. Unlike the 'Star Trek' universe, not everything is shiny and new, with most things looking pretty well-used. Also, unlike 'Star Trek', there are no aliens.

Sadly, the FOX Network weren't bright enough to let Whedon and his team deliver the programs as they were originally conceived, and they insisted on broadcasting episodes out of order. They were apparently scared stiff that if they didn't put loads of action in the first programs, people wouldn't bother to watch, regardless of the fact that nobody would know who the characters were, because the introductory episode hadn't been shown. After mucking about with the episode order, and moving some episodes aside to fit in sporting fixtures, FOX decided that the ratings weren't good enough, and cancelled the show after just 11 episodes had been transmitted.

Luckily, an extremely loyal and active fan-base lobbied for a DVD release, and when it duly appeared it included all the episodes in the correct order, as well as another three that had not been televised and a bunch of DVD commentaries and extras as well.
This DVD sold like crazy, and the popularity was so convincing that Whedon was able to get a green light from Universal Pictures to produce a full length feature film, 'Serenity', for cinema release.
It was some consolation

There is a story that after the TV executives first saw the pilot episode of Star Trek,
one of them said, "It's pretty good... but you've gotta get rid of the guy with the ears."
Fortunately for 'Star Trek', this suggestion was ignored.

If only similar sense had prevailed in the board-rooms at FOX, when 'Firefly' was created.

"... is the wrong answer." (again)

As an employee of Manchester University and occasional pub-quizzer, I had been following the fortunes of our team on "University Challenge" with some interest. Their progress through the various qualifiers, quarter finals and semi finals had been pretty remorseless, but having seen a similarly convincing performance from Corpus Christi College Oxford, I was not entirely confident that they would pull off a win in the Grand Final.

It was beginning to look as if the only way to guarantee a victory for Manchester, was to 'nobble' Gail Trimble, the Corpus Christi captain. Throughout the series, her breadth of knowledge and speed of recall had been exceptional, provoking press interest and some rather unattractive sniping across the media; some pundits seemed to have got their knives out simply because Ms Trimble had the gall to be a well educated young woman who wasn't afraid to show it. Her refusal to be dull-witted, shrill and objectionable clearly upset these people.

I missed the final and, even more annoyingly, heard the result before I'd had a chance to catch it on iPlayer. Manchester University had been beaten 275 to 190.

In the fashion of any fan, of any losing team anywhere, I muttered, "We was robbed."

It was some small consolation.

...and then it turned out that we really had been robbed.

One of the Corpus Christi team, Sam Kay, had not been eligible to take part; he had already left the University, and was working for accountancy firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers when the final was recorded. 

Oh dear.

The BBC snatched back the trophy, and have now declared Manchester as the winners by default. Not a terribly satisfactory end to what had been an excellent competition.

Ironically, on many of the programs, quizmaster Jeremy Paxman has launched the opening round with something like, 

"Right. You should all know the rules by now, so we'll get on with it. Fingers on the buzzers, here's your first starter for ten..."

It seems that you were wrong, Jeremy.

Where are the Science Police when you need them?

I've got a feeling that I'm soon going to need a new battery for The Tractor. It's doing an unsettling sort of st-stu-stu-st-stuttering thing when I start the engine on cold mornings, and although it is only a shade over three years old, I have a suspicion that items like batteries, windscreen wipers and clutch pedal rubbers are where Land Rover do their cost reduction.

Anyway, I thought I'd have a quick look in my local branch of "a well known national motoring superstore", and see how much a new battery would cost. 

Very nearly a hundred quid, as it happens, but this was not what tripped me into rant mode.  

Take a look at this Specification:

Guarantee: 3 Years

Startup Power: 510 Amps

Type: Lead Acid

AH Value: 68

Bench Charge: 6.8 Amps

Dimensions (LxDxH): 187x127x227mm

Reserve capacity: 125

Weight (kg): 16.69

There are at least two things wrong with this apology for a specification. 

Firstly, it doesn’t tell you the voltage of the battery. OK, most car batteries are 12 volt, but to leave out the voltage is absurd. 

Then we come to the real crime.

“Startup Power: 510 Amps” What the . . . ?

Amps, are the unit of electrical current. If you want to describe power, you cannot use Amps. The unit of power is the Watt.

I’m sure that the value of 510 means something, but it cannot be ‘power’.

This is fundamental science, and there is simply no excuse for getting it so hopelessly wrong.

[RANT ENDS]

On a lighter note, I was tickled to see that there has been a natural history series on TV, called “The secret life of elephants”. Suggesting that something as blatantly obvious as an elephant, could do anything secretly, is just perfect.

Patrick McGoohan: 1928-2009

"Where am I?"

"In the Village."

"What do you want?"

"Information."

"Whose side are you on?"

"That would be telling…. We want information. Information! INFORMATION!"

"You won't get it."

"By hook or by crook, we will."

"Who are you?"

"The new Number Two." 

"Who is Number One?"

"You are Number Six."

"I am not a number — I am a free man!"

From the opening sequence of most episodes of the cult TV series, “The Prisoner”. 

First broadcast in 1967, the series ran for 17 episodes and starred Patrick McGoohan as 'Number 6', a prisoner in The Village. This seemingly utopian setting concealed the sinister motives of an unspecified nation/organization as it set about breaking the spirit of No.6 and determining just why he had resigned. Who No.6 was, what he resigned from, where The Village was and who controlled it was never entirely clear to me, but when it was first shown on TV, it was compelling stuff. 

". . . be seeing you"