Does Not Compute

It’s surely no coincidence that ever since Mike James successfully summoned the ancient Celtic technology god Ceilidh and bound him in a silicon prison (see previous entry) we have lost our cultural knowledge of computers.

I come from a generation of tinkerers, kids with the ability to pry under the covers of computers, and the interest to understand what we found. At the age of nine or so I would happily while away the hours on my ZX Spectrum programming little graphics demos, drawing the outlines of boobs or willies on the screen using basic vector maths, and hitting the reset switch when I heard mum coming.

Sure I’d play a lot of games too, but gaming was only a part of the story. It was the same with a lot of kids I hung out with, a nerd even at that age.

When I got my Atari ST, a significant upgrade from the Spectrum, I was initially disappointed to see that the machine couldn’t actually do anything. I was used to being able to turn on a computer and start programming within seconds. The ZX Spectrum’s default mode was a BASIC programming environment, and unlike the sluggish systems of today it booted up in the blink of an eye. In contrast, the Atari ST chugged away at its disk drive for a few minutes before defaulting to a pixellated picture of a wasp.

For me, this was the first visible step towards a future of stifled creativity. Perhaps Ceilidh was already in bonds.

I should probably explain the Ceilidh thing. Ceilidh was a piece of software written by someone at Manchester University, possibly Mike James himself but I don’t know for sure. Mike used to teach a programming course, and in order to test students’ progress he gave us little exercises to carry out. They would follow a certain pattern: given some data provided as text input, your program had to do some calculations and output the result as text. Rather than type the same input into a hundred almost-identical programs submitted by students and check the output by eye, Ceilidh automated the task. It would run through each student’s code and check that the same known input gives the same expected output.

But Ceilidh had some more advanced features. It was (supposedly) capable of checking that your work was adequately documented and sensibly structured. Naturally we wondered how this was possible, and, being physicists, we arrived at the only rational conclusion: Ceilidh was a god.

We began littering our code with messages of praise and supplications begging for good grades in return for good deeds. We reassured this once-mighty being that one day we would gather enough followers to his cause to set him free, and raise an army against his captor.

It later transpired that Ceilidh’s supernatural source code analysis abilities didn’t stretch as far as we’d been told. Mike had been taking up the slack, reading all our comments, becoming more confused and insulted with each one.

Back to my point. By the time Mike and Ceilidh got around to teaching us to program I was already quite comfortable with the logical and syntactic constructs involved, because I’d grown up with computers that exposed themselves to the user.

We were encouraged to tinker. Magazines filled their pages with source code for games that the reader was expected to type in at length. It might seem boring compared to getting a cover disc crammed with goodies, free software and demos, but seeing what was going on behind the scenes was a worthwhile education. The code barely ever worked anyway, but fixing the problems was usually more fun than the completed software anyway.

Now look at the state of computing today. We have consoles, machines that are highly tuned to play impressive video games and, recently, provide other distractions like streaming TV or high definition films. They’re excellent entertainment products, but they are black-boxes in the sense that they don’t give you a way to see under the hood. Tinkering is against the terms and conditions of use, and to write software for such systems often requires that you license a development kit at great expense even if your company qualifies.

The recently introduced concept of the mobile device “App Stores” is another example of creative constraint, even worse in fact. In Apple’s case developers can actually get their hands on the tools to produce software fairly easily, but then have to get what they make signed off by Apple before they can show off their hard work. They are not allowed to distribute their product by any other means, and have to fulfil Apple’s QA requirements before they can get to market.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Microsoft seem to be leading the field in regards to encouraging this kind of tinkering. Of course the home PC environment is already much more open than other platforms, and Windows could be said to be the least open operating system and to be getting worse.

But in fact Microsoft offer completely free versions of probably the world’s leading programming software, Visual Studio, along with free toolkits, free online documentation and no constraints on commercial use. They also have been the first to open up console development to the masses, with the XNA Framework offering a relatively gently learning curve for cross-platform development of games for PC, XBox 360 and Windows Phones. It’s not perfect, but they’re doing OK.

Other platforms and manufacturers could follow suit and open up tinkering to a wider audience, but is there even an audience any more?

The vast majority of kids only use computers for games and porn. Then there’s a bunch of boring crap that dad uses like spreadsheets and gay porn. And if there happens to be a copy of Visual Studio on the office computer then it’s so immediately complicated that ten year old Jimmy doesn’t know where to start.

It’s a mess. And it’s, ironically, a mess that has been created by the tinkerers of my generation, who have forgotten why computers excited them in the first place.

What we need is a saviour. No, not a fictional god. We need the one man who’s kept the faith, the one man who never lost his spark. The man who programmed “Elite.”

We need David Braben and his Raspberry Pi.

Four Hour Party People

I’m getting too old for going clubbing. When I was a first year at university in Manchester I’d enjoy nothing more than heading out to Satan’s Hollow on a Wednesday night. Clint Boon from the Inspiral Carpets in the pit and an all-you-can-drink bar for seven quid used to see me through to the wee small hours. I’d be a devil on the dance floor, inventing new shapes to throw. My favourite was a kind of two sided triangle that was impossible to colour in.

These Wednesdays I’ll settle for a cup of hot chocolate and a copy of Astronomy Now. Actually that’s been the case since third year. I’ve slowed down. A decade of cocoa and early nights, I’ve grown unaccustomed to the party lifestyle.

On Saturday night I went crazy. I went back to my roots, heading out to the Scottish countryside for a massive illegal rave, sweaty, stinking, drinking pints of love drugs, slamming jungle rhythms, shapes flying everywhere.

As with all the best raves we arrived at the village hall just before 8pm, carrying a modest quantity of booze and some nibbles for the buffet. The dancing was already in full swing. Thirty or more pensioners were slowly circling the floor, locking arms, shuffling this way and that and occasionally bringing their hands together in a single improbably synchronized and bizarrely incongrouous clap.

It all brought back so many memories of the hedonistic wasted nights of my youth. Before long I was back at my best, a beer in my hand, standing in a corner looking moody.

I’d forgotten just how regimented the dancing can be in these superclubs. The MC, a white-haired old lady shuffling back and forth in front of the stage, bayed at the crowd: “Three more couples, we need three more couples. Can we get three more couples for Gay Gordons wit da riddim, aye.”

DJ Bald Patch swaggered into the pit, ready to rip it up on the wheels of steel. Harsh tasty beats were sure to follow. “Advance,” yelled MC Blue Rinse. “Advance, and retire.” The crowd did as she bid, steam rising from their sweaty hair. “Advance, and retire,” she repeated. Is she this bossy in the bedroom?

The tune came to an end, and a couple of seconds of silence followed before the opening few bars of the next track on the CD commenced. DJ Bald Patch quickly skipped back a track and played the last tune again. Re-e-wind. This is the mark of a professional.

Soon the opening set came to a close and the floor emptied as people went off to “powder their noses.” A sound of snorting and coughing from the gents signalled the intake of copious quantities of cocaine and ventalin.

The buffet then opened, and we all filed past, piling paper plates high with munchies. Sarah and I bought four tickets for the raffle while the familiar strains of that hardcore classic “The Hokey Cokey” blasted from the PA. Something for the four-to-the-floor crowd. Bloody kids.

From this point on the evening passed in something of a blur. Maybe the chocolate brownies were stronger than I’d thought.

The music recommenced, and with it the dancing. We’d got to the point where people would dance to anything. All folk music sounds the same when you’ve boshed enough quiche.

I have an image, burned into my mind, of Pete picking up a five year old boy and spinning it around and around in a dervish frenzy, letting go as it reached the peak of its arc, and watching as it caromed off a trestle table and fell, dizzy and exhausted, in the midst of a group of shuffling geriatrics.

The dancefloor was cleared and a bottle of fine whisky was placed at one end. To win the booze, people were invited to skid pound coins across the polished wood from ten metres away, with the spoils going to the owner of the coin ending nearest the bottle.

I gamely took a turn and was even winning for a time, but at two foot distance my coin was bound to be beaten. I’m glad I ducked out early. The mood changed. These sorts of contests are often run by local gangsters. Bare-knuckle boxing, cock-fighting and get-the-coin-near-the-bottle… I didn’t need to get involved here.

But just as I hoped the evening would break up before midnight with the minimum of arrests, they drew the raffle.

Sarah and I had bought four tickets. When we won the first prize we were delighted and yet gracious. Drunk, and not just on the thrill of victory, I went up to claim what was clearly the best award on offer: a side of fine beef to feed ten people. Sarah headed me off at the prize table and sensibly took a bottle of champagne.

What a perfect end to the party.

But then we won again. Sheepishly this time, we walked to the prize table again and meekly accepted a voucher for money off at a posh restaurant. While the other partygoers slow-clapped we retreated to our seats.

No sooner had we sat down than our third ticket was called. Three out of four! What are the odds?

While I worked out the odds on my calculator, Sarah braved the barrage of abuse and rotten fruit to accept another prize. We took a bag of mirangues, the booby prize, hoping to calm the angry crowd, but it was no use. Cries of “fix!” and “cheats!” and “where’s my stick?!” followed us out into the night as we escaped the mob.

I doubt we’ll be invited back to the annual cancer research ceilidh.