Is the first Charles Stross I’ve read (yes, I know, what took so long) and it’s good. Well thought out, mostly believable, and with good writing to backup the story. A little less cerebral than the best Culture novels, but that’s certainly a matter of taste. Stross wins huge points for the best ZeroWing reference in a work of serious fiction, but also loses some points for having an enemy who are essentially Nazis From Space.
Leave the first comment ▶Flashing
1) – Dear compact camera manufacturers,
Most of the people who buy your cameras leave them in ‘A’ mode for their entire lives. While some of your customers may conclude that the little lightning-bolt icon beside the D-pad has something to do with the flash, figuring out the correct button sequence to disable the flash is beyond them. Yes, I know on most cameras you just need to press that button repeatedly until an icon appears of the lightning bolt behind the ‘prohibited’ circle, but this seems to be a leap too far for most people.
Unfortunately, since these people can’t figure out how to disable their flash, all photography is banned in many places where it might otherwise be nice to take the odd picture. Cheers guys, another triumph for lousy human interface design.
2) – Dear world,
The tiny flash unit on your compact camera is not a magical device. Despite the impression you may have gained by blinding your friends and family with horrible white light from the worst possible direction, the flash is not a ‘make the dark go away’ button. Notably, when used in large spaces such as music festivals or ancient ruins, it achieves almost nothing, except to irritate everyone nearby. It might light up a statue directly in front of you (providing you don’t stand too close, of course) if you’re lucky.
</rant>
I realise photography is also banned in the tombs to sell more merchandise, but I’m still tempted to start smashing the flash lamp on every compact I see. It’d improve the mean quality of photos on FaceBook considerably; they’d either be better pictures, or pitch black – a plan with no drawbacks that I can see.
5 comments so far, add yours ▶Thebes, Day two
Took a bike (and the ‘people’ ferry) today, avoiding the 7km detour the minibus takes. The ‘people’ ferry being so called to distuinguish it from the the tourist ferries, clearly tourists aren’t people. And, to be fair, based on walking around the Royal Mile in August, I’d tend to agree.
First stop was Ramesses II’s mighty temple to the greater glory of … himself. As monumental egos go, his does seem to be up there with the all time-greats like Mao and L. Ron Hubbard. I was surprised how quiet the temple was, but even at 9 am the heat was pretty intense. Then on to the Valley of the Kings again, with a brief stop to look at Howard Carter’s rather nice (but derelict, for now) house. The climb up to the valley is quite a lot more noticeable by bike (as compared to air-conditioned minibus), a better machine would have helped a lot (especially in the saddle area). The bike, to (mis-)quote Jeremy Clarkson ‘felt like it’d been in a crash’, notably the headset / wheel alignment was off. I guess I should start travelling with WD40, gaffer and my Leatherman, but two of those are hold-luggage only, and in Egypt every tourist site has a metal-detector on the gate. At least the tourist police have a sense of humour, unlike BAA staff: ‘No bomb today, sir? No bazooka?’ is the usual enquiry.
Visited KV34, which is comparatively remote (at the end of the valley), and very deep. This was generally good (fewer people) but the atmosphere was hot and humid, which is probably destroying the decoration at a frightening rate. Then on to KV15 which I had entirely to myself (well, and the guard). Tombs are infinitely more interesting places when you can stand in silence and appreciate the original art, or contemplate the centuries rolling by above dark, sealed vaults. Trying to do either while the annoying kind of Americans make inane remarks is tricky, it makes me want to seal them in a dark vault for a year or two.
Finally, KV43, which again was almost deserted and is ‘quite’ big (sadly KV17 and KV20, the hugely deep ones, are both closed at the moment). The guard earned his baksheesh here – providing a torch to illuminate some inaccessible side chambers off the burial chamber which contain skeletal remains of cows. This is assuming they weren’t placed there last week from a Luxor abattoir’s, clearly I couldn’t tell three-thousand-year-old mummified dead cow from three-month-old dead cow. (Mmmmm, steak). (Checked – The TMP page says the remains are real, and they have degrees in this stuff)
After lunch, tackled Medinet Habu, Ramesses III’s mighty temple to the greater glory of … go, on, guess. Pretty good, and in a much better state of repair than the Ramesseum, but was getting a bit temple-d out at this point, and the heat was intense. The first pylon includes awesome frescoes of defeated enemies being tallied – in the form of scribes counting a pile of severed hands, and another pile of severed genitalia. So if you ever think your lot in life is bad, remember you aren’t being paid (or worse, indentured) to count cock. Hopefully.
Leave the first comment ▶Thebes, Day one
Opted for the hotel’s suggested one-day West bank tour, partly to meet some other people and partly to get some interprative background. We began with the Valley of the Kings, which is as bleak and desolate as everyone says, and does feel quite remote, despite being right beside the area of cultivation. The sense of remoteness is not helped by huge numbers of visitors, of course. Visited KV2, KV16 and KV11 – all quite well trafficed tombs, KV11 including a dog-leg due to encountering KV32 on its original axis. The steep ascent out of KV16 gave some of the older / larger proportioned tourists some difficulty; no defibrillators beside the fire-extuinguishers as of yet, though heart-attacks seem more likely than fire in stone tombs.
Next up was Hatsephut’s immense temple to the greater glory of … herself, unfortunately her step-son was unimpressed by mum’s power-grab and scratched her out of (almost) every freize and cartouche. The New Kingdon pharaohs do come across as a bit of a touchy bunch, though all sorts of other people have willfully messed around with the temples since their construction.
We then had the obligatory stop at an alabaster factory (i.e, shop) where sadly everyone declined to buy anything.
Then on the the Valley of the Queens for two small but beautiful tombs. The Valley of the Queens contains a large number of gaping holes in the ground marking assorted tombs; some are covered but plenty are not. Clearly Egypt is not yet the land of the lawsuit.
Leave the first comment ▶The Train
The sleeper train from Cairo was pretty good though very pricey – but it transpired I was in first class, which wasn’t exactly required. Spent some time in the ‘club car’ before bed, which was a surreal experience of foreigners being served over-priced drinks (but, then, it’s a train, Virgin gouge the same) to an eclectic mix of what I presume are Egpytian classics and western hits while the bar staff encouraged all kinds of silliness. The image of a well-built American student trying to belly-dance on a table, on a moving train (and Egyptian track geometry seems to be up there with the Northern line, maybe a little better to be fair), accompanied by Michael Jackon’s Thriller, will be with me for some time. Oh my yes.
Leave the first comment ▶Luxor & Karnak
Luxor – hotter than Cairo, and something of a tourist-trap. Sadly the current town has very little to recommend it (even moreso than Siem-Reap), since everyone is here for exactly one reason. Fortunately all the large hotels are on a single drag south of the real town. Cycling around makes everything much more pleasant, since you’re harder to hassle. Of course the roads and traffic are bad, but that’s just as true in Edinburgh. A better bike (working brakes, some gears, a saddle with some remaining padding) would be nice but would probably get stolen rather fast.
Spent day one looking around Karnak and the Luxor temple, both of which are stupendously large, impressive and rammed full of tour groups. Returned to the Luxor temple in the evening, when the flood-lights are on – the combination of cool air, a black sky and the lit ruins is excellent. The pharaohs would have paid quite a lot for decent lighting I think; bas reliefs look awesome with some up-lighters, statues are really enhanced by rim-light / back-light.
Leave the first comment ▶Cairo, Day Two
In spite of the rumoured ‘general strike’, saw the Egyptian museum today. It’s just as crazy as suggested – a grand decaying building, stuffed full of wooden cases and innumerable pieces of ancient stone, jewellery, pottery. It’s also stuffed full of tourists, mostly being herded around by guides, ignoring the instructions not to touch anything, and trying to control extremely bored offspring. In spite of all this, there’s plenty good stuff to see. The contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb take up a large amount of space – while the tomb is small, the photos taken before the contents were removed show a scene that resembles a junk-shop, with priceless gilded goods stacked up to the ceiling. Apparently this may be due to the tomb being used to hide away all the extraneous royal regalia associated with the end of his dynasty; it seems chucking unwanted possessions in the attic is nothing new.
After lunch, wandered around Coptic Cairo, which contains assorted churches and a synagogue. All worth seeing, one in particular contains a cave / crypt (sadly inaccessible) which is supposed to mark the spot of some biblical event. Wandering around the lower levels of the area (ground level having risen considerable in two thousand years), it’s easy to see why those with over-active imaginations might dream up fantastic tales set in such places. Though apparently even small chapels near Edinburgh suffice if you’re crazy enough. So far no one has offered me a guided tour of the Well of Souls, though.
Also, it has been raining. Tonight, off to Luxor on the sleeper train.
Leave the first comment ▶Cairo, Day One
Some initial impressions, not as mad as Bangkok or Hanoi, but still pretty frantic. Same huge amount of decaying colonial buildings wedged between modern concrete piles, same festoon of wires everywhere. Degree of hassle seems lower too (or I’ve become hardened to it) but haven’t hit the hot-spots yet. Today I saw the Citadel (full of locals due to it being the weekend and the compound containing the military museum) and the mosque of Sultan Hassan. Also got introduced to one of the local fast foods, kushari, it’s like rice-a-roni with spicy tomato sauce, and the local beer, confusingly named Stella, but owned by Heineken.
One comment so far, add another ▶Cameratiks
Turns out the 50-150 is less useful as a walk-around lens than hoped, because 50mm on a DX body is just too long. So the Nikon kit lens is getting some use, and I can see why the 18-200mm jack-of-all-trades have their advocates. I’ve been using the 30mm prime so much even the 18mm end of the kit lens feels pretty wide. The key issue with the 50-150mm is that in the average walled enclosure / courtyard / pylon you just can’t get far enough away to capture everything, though of course for detail shots it excels.
Leave the first comment ▶Perfume
The film, not the book. The film is stunning, disturbing, and moving, marred in a few places by crowd scenes that lacked believability. In general I was much happier with the whole film once I realised (near the end) that it’s a fairy tale, not a work of serious fiction – would be curious to know if the same is true of the novel. As a traditional fairy-tale, i.e visceral, filled with convenience and bloody, you couldn’t ask for much more.
Other comments – Dustin Hoffman is excellent, Karoline Herfuth is stunning in a pre-Raphelite kind of way, and before watching a film on a laptop on an aeroplane, check the content first, or hope the people sitting next to you are engrossed in the in-flight movie (oh my).
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