Slowdown
12/11/2008
Life outside is getting suddenly very intense, so you'll have to forgive me if there's a corresponding slowdown in terms of updates on this site. I've just gone from 1 to 2 essays a week, a situation that's gonna last more or less til the end of term, which, if I'm going to do them justice, means I have to average out at more than 8 hours of work a day. And of course that has to be good work, so it can't just be a straight block or I'll fall asleep. When you add in my excitement at the ADC (where I could quite happily spend a couple of days solidly each week) and choir (another 8 across the week), and you can see where this is going...
I should really be reading Max Weber at the moment (I wish he could just have put down his main ideas as bullet-points, damn him). But I'll leave you with one of the sillier implications of the new workload. You might have thought that, having an academic library in college (a hundred yards from my room) I'd rarely want to go further afield for my books... but it doesn't seem to have nearly everything I want. OK then, but the UL over the road has almost every book ever published in English, surely you'll be fine with 2 libraries, then. Afraid not, I'm not allowed to take anything out from the UL til my third year, and while I can work in there it's not always open and so forth. Lets add a third library to the equation then - the divinity faculty library is entirely geared towards giving students and scholars of theology the books they need, and I can borrow plenty of books simultaneously from them. Three libraries must be enough for any man. Again, it doesn't quite work - yes there's a copy of all (or very nearly all) the books I'm likely to need, but there's only one copy, and probably about 50 people taking theology in my year, many of whom want the books at the same time.
So yesterday I went through 3 libraries in half an hour, and after that my book cravings still weren't satisfied, so I registered at a fourth (the SPS library, to get some of the Weber stuff). How many libraries do you think I can register at by the end of my 3 years here? I might need to work on a good excuse to be allowed access to the BGML, which houses physics, maths, and compsci books, as part of my theological studies ;-)...
Cheering snippets
9/11/2008
A couple of bits of internet to raise spirits - I meant to post them just after the last entry, in part to cheer myself up from that, but work got the better of me... First is one that demonstrates that we're not drifting into a police state without any resistance (apart from a few blokes in masks): from the register, Lords demand DNA database deletions. Apparently the Upper House reckon that it's actually not OK that, among other things, there're 40,000 innocent children on the DNA database (among perhaps 850,000 total innocent profiles), and that according to the guidlines it should be virtually impossible to have your profile removed. They've demanded a clear, published procedure for removing your details if you're found innocent, which has got to be a step in the right direction. The comments on the article all seem to be picking up on the slightly ironic situation we have on our hands, where the only people who seem to look out for our interests in parliament are the unelected lords. I'm particularly fond of the description one Peter Hawkins gave those on the red benches:
"The thin ermin line"
My second link shouldn't surprise anyone... Stephen Fry's blog is regularly thought-provoking, and he's just given us an essay on language. It's particularly verbose, even for Stephen, which I suppose is rather appropriate given the subject, but I wanted to especially draw attention to the following:
"But above all let there be pleasure. Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and flinty words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches and crackling utterance and utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet. Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and language that oozes like a lake of lava. Words are your birthright."
Beautiful. I love it when people remind me to celebrate things :-)
Remember, Remember
5/11/2008
Today started with good news of democracy seeming to work. I certainly don't imagine Barack Obama will be able to live up to people's expectations of him - what human could, given that the world wants him to be something of a saviour. All he needs to do is be better than Bush, really... My only worry is that people got very excited about another young national leader, elected a decade ago on a platform of change. We got Tony Blair and New Labour out of it. Fingers crossed for Obama.
Once the Americans had shown us the point of democracy, a few intrepid Brits had a go at defending our own (as I'd mentioned before).
It was very straightforward, and in a way its minimalism (only around a dozen of us came in costume, in the end) helps to prove its point. The question was whether one could still go for a walk through town - happening to dress in a perfectly understandable way, given that it were guy fawkes night. And bear in mind that at no point were any political points raised: no chants, no banners, no T-shirts - nothing that could imply subversion or political intent, simply a small group of people walking in the vicinity of Parliament. Does one need official permission to walk the streets of London now? I'm afraid the answer is very clear from the next photo:
All the participants were searched, and asked to remove masks and give names. Since we had taken the precaution of actually knowing our rights (I know, it makes it much harder to intimidate us, doesn't it - tho I should say it was the PCSOs who were particularly keen to demand things they had no right to demand) we refused the two latter requests. To give the regulars credit once they'd ascertained to their satisfaction that we weren't armed/carrying hidden placards/possessing anything else thought naughty we were allowed through. It remains to be seen whether we'll all be on terrorism watch lists from here on - we were told in no uncertain terms that we'd be followed by CCTV and police photographers, presumably to try to get our faces on film. And given the hardly anonymous nature of this site, among other things, I suspect that if they really want me they'll find me. If I get mysteriously held up the next time I go through customs, at least I'll know why (unlike many of the poor sods who've ended up on those lists for even less defensible reasons).
We did it, and I've got a stop and search card to put up on my wall. Democracy wasn't saved, but we made a small stand. Maybe next year it'll be a bigger one.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Phrase of the day
3/11/2008
"Meta-narratives of human emancipation and social progress are undermined by the advent of post-modernity"
Honestly... what sort of a world have I got myself into? ;-)
Up all night
2/11/2008
I've just plunged headlong into what may very well be one of the most exciting worlds in Cambridge: the ADC theatre. You've seen my excitement about lighting (and indeed stage tech in general) here before, and it's been very easy for me to stick with doing small stuff and to get the impression that I know something - even tho even then, I've always worked under someone rather more knowledgeable. I guess it's good to be reminded that Socrates is right (if indeed it was he that said that the one thing he knew was that he knew he knew nothing).
It began with a whistlestop tour of the theatre itself yesterday afternoon, which was a good indication of what was to come. I remember going backstage at the Everyman in Cheltenham (a sizeable professional theatre) some years ago and being much less overawed than I was by the ADC - although admittedly I probably would have realised the importance of less of the stuff I saw then. The density of flying wires... The packed LX room(s)... The heavily personalised SM's desk (complete with a light that comes on whenever a particular door is open, since when said door has been left open in the past, dry ice exiting the building through the roof has resulted in R-TOPS)... The sound desk... The lighting desk... The depths of the construction workshops below stage... The patch bays... Oh the patch bays...
Heady stuff. So after a quick nap that evening, I arrived back at the theatre around midnight to join in my first de-rig/rig night. Just as a sense of how busy the theatre is, in a normal week they have two shows (a main show at 7:30 and a late show at 11), which run from Tuesday to Saturday night. On Saturday night after the late show's finished a team of techies descend to break down the set and any non-standard lighting (probably quite a bit) that's been used by either of the previous shows and to put in place the backdrops and lighting rig for next week. That'll run til about 7 ish, after which a new team come in to build the sets for the new shows. After them, late on Sunday evening, the lighting focus (with another group of devotees) begins. I don't know how late they have to work to finish that off, but everything has to be ready for technical and dress rehearsals on Monday. Curtain up on Tuesday. Then next weekend it all rolls through again.
So here's me into a midnight get out. And to be fair that bit's quite straightforward: it's mostly set that we're dismantling, which doesn't take a lot of background knowledge. If you know where the scenery dock is, and how to use a screwdriver and a spanner, you're probably OK. Around 2:30 the tricky stuff starts. Now we're learning knots for the flying gear and rigging a show's worth of lights (for which detailed plans are provided, which makes it rather easier - if you can decifer which of the very similar diagrams refers to which light). "Chins up on stage, counterweight 16 (IWB 3) going out." At about 6:15 the new main show's TD (who's in charge of the rig) tells me to go home - at a guess he's fed up of me standing around and doing one useful job every half-hour... I know I would be. So I roll into bed at about 7, after what in essence has been an 8-hour mini-day.
I might not be there at the same time next week, but I'll certainly do my best ;-)