Colin MacIntyre

Colin MacIntyre, aka Mull Historical Society

Al Swearengen

The wicked Al Swearengen from HBO's Deadwood, played by Ian McShane

Star Wars revisited

I was rummaging in the loft last week for some old Star Wars toys for Nephew and Niece to play with. Amidst the piled up bags and boxes receding into the blackness I found just about everything except for the X-Wing and Jabba the Hutt. I even found this, which Big Bruvva made from cardboard and paper mache about a million years ago: some kind of massive snow tower from the Battle of Hoth.

I'd forgotten all about it since it was sent up to toy heaven. It's amazing though. None of the official Star Wars toys were as cool as this, a three-storey fortress with doors, roof hatch, side ramps, escape tube, windows cleverly fitted with (clear plastic) glass, gun turret. Big Bruvva even painted it up with battle damage.

If anything, twenty years of sitting in the loft has only made it look more rugged and authentic. It seemed a shame to leave it there with a ten-year-old Nephew who is the biggest Star Wars nut on the planet running about, so it is now entertaining a new generation. It is officially the coolest Star Wars accessory after Lego Star Wars, whatever that is.

Henley-in-Arden & Wooton Wawen

Today I went for a drive to Henley-in-Arden, a pretty little market town across the border in Warwickshire. I went there in 2001 to do look at the church for my undergrad dissertation and was curious to see if anything had changed. It hadn't.

Kim the Dog on the site of the old Norman castle

I went up the hill overlooking the town, which used to have a Norman motte and bailey hill on top of it. Nothing there now though, just grass and nettles.

Down in the town there was a church fete, so I decided to look for some ice cream. The old man at the entrance said I had to pay 20p to enter, then he threatened to take my credit card and beat me up, so I punched him in the chin and ran past. Once inside I completed my objective of purchasing ice cream (rum and raisin flavour), and also bought a homemade gluten-free chocolate cake (of the various cakes on offer it seemed to offer best value per ounce) before running back out.

I'd left Kim the Dog in the car with the windows slightly open as it was a hot day and I wasn't worried about anyone trying to steal a broken-down old Metro with an aggressively paranoid collie in the front. Also, Henley-in-Arden is not exactly GTA.

Middle England

On the way I home I decided to swing by the village of Wooton Wawen, because: a) I also had to visit it in 2001 and haven't been back since; and b) it has a silly name.

I won some Anglo-Saxon nerd points because this is one of the oldest churches in the Midlands, founded in the early eighth century, and perhaps my favourite medieval church anywhere. It's like a massive lego set which has been randomly expanded over a thousand years.

This, my friend, is a genuine Anglo-Saxon archway

Wooton Wawen was the site of a priory for centuries until the Dissolution, at which point the manor fell into the ownership of a stubborn Catholic family, even though the church itself became Protestant. So Wooton Wawen remained an isolated pocket of Catholicism, with a third of its population refusing to convert. In 1700-and-something the Anglican Church finally sent a minister to root out and correct all the Papist heretics, but he ended up converting to Catholicism himself. ANGLICAN INQUISITION FAIL LOL.

How it should be done

Across the road was a general store, which had this friendly sign outside:

Huzzah, England and Ireland united by a common hatred of the French!

Nerdfest 2010

Yesterday I went to Bletchley Park with Ant and Tiff for the 2010 Vintage Computer Festival, the most concentrated amount of nerd in one place I ever hope to experience. The Amiga fanbase, which has been in virtual exile since the collapse of Commodore in 1994 (comparisons with the Jewish Diaspora are justified), was out in force to celebrate the official launch of the first new Amiga system in 16 years.

Since we were an exclusively Amiga household for many years, I wandered about getting nostalgic over all the old machines on display, many of which I'd never seen before.

The Amiga 1000, where it all started in 1985!

Amiga 500 (1987), our first home computer

Amiga 2000 (1987)

Amiga 3000 (1990)

Amiga CDTV (1991), a CD-based home entertainment centre which was waaaaay ahead of its time and therefore failed

Amiga 600 (1992), the first computer Edmund bought

Amiga 1200 (1992), made of awesomeness

Amiga CD32 (1993), our first games console, not that it was any good

After the Amiga excitement we went into the Bletchley Park mansion, the ground floor of which had been turned into pure nerd heaven, each room filled with row upon row of every games computer and console known to man, from Binatone to PS3.

This guy looked like the happiest person on the planet

This A1200 happened to be running Deluxe Paint II, so I drew a picture

We also popped into the on-site National Museum of Computing and saw lots of computers which are now apparently museum pieces.

Left to right: Amstrad 1512 (Dad's first computer); Amstrad CPC464 (my friend Bob had one of these); Sinclair ZX81; Amiga 500

Ant & Tiff in front of a Harrier Jumpjet

After the museum we went back to the marquee to witness the launch of the Amiga X1000, the first new Amiga system in 16 years. It was a truly momentous event, although the sheer volume of overweight, balding geeks crowding around the X1000 display meant we couldn't see or hear anything.

Sixteen years I waited for this moment

Doctor WTF?

Of the many things in this world I have resigned myself never to understand (among them quantum physics and any form of organised sport), one is the BBC's flagship sci-fi campfest Doctor Who.

It's not like I haven't tried to like it. I like sci-fi in general, being quite partial to really good TV series like Babylon 5 and the new Battlestar Galactica. I also have no problem with off-beat drama that doesn't take itself too seriously and rejoices in its very cheesiness. But after watching a couple of episodes of the new series of Doctor Who I was left amazingly unmoved.

The new Doctor Who, Matt Smith, who according to Moogdroog "looks like a giant foot"

If it was a nerdy niche show that would be all right, but it seems to be massively popular with a broad swathe of the viewing public. Is it because it's so undemanding and family friendly? Do people find it funny and exciting instead of cheap, poorly written and melodramatic? It pretends not to take itself seriously, but it this is belied by its insistent moralising and hapless stabs at dramatic profundity. What the hell is going on here? Can the BBC truly do no better?

Sorry. Had to get that off my chest, it's been bugging me for several years.

* UPDATE *

Stephen Fry agrees with me, and he's right about everything except the iPad.

Action Man reborn

Moogdroog, being a thoughtful soul, decided to get me some kind of "well done" present after I was awarded the Josef Leinweber Prize earlier this week, an international award given every three years by the Faculty of Theology of Fulda for the best doctoral thesis on the history of the bishopric of Fulda, Germany.

She obviously racked her brains for some time before she found the most suitable gift imaginable: a 10" fully posable Royal Marines Commando action figure.

I received an official gift very similar to this from the Dean of the Faculty of Theology, except instead of being an action figure it was a certificate in a leather folder

The toy is from a new line called H. M. Armed Forces action figures, which offers a realistic yet affordable alternative to highly expensive collectible military action figures on the one hand, and the day-glo travesty that is modern Action Man on the other. Any British male born between about 1960 and 1985 may well have fond memories of the old, authentic Action Man, the greatest toys ever to shuffle awkwardly across the earth, before something terrible happened and the brand turned into a weird cartoony rip-off of every line of super hero toys ever produced.

From this...

...to this.

I wonder if one reason for the demise of Action Man is that parents grew wary of filling their kids' toy boxes with such highly realistic militarism. A fierce and heartfelt reviewer debate about H. M. Armed Forces toys on Amazon seems to suggest so, where one critic derided the new toys as "digusting propaganda", only to be countered by a fan with the witty retort "Diiiiiiick".

It didn't really strike me as being military propaganda (I loved Action Man but don't much like the idea of joining the army) until I visited the website and discovered they also produce a range of "role play" toys for children. Then I saw the TV advert for these toys, and I have to say I was a little creeped out...

The Old World and The New World

I was in the university library yesterday evening and bored of reading about monks (having overdosed on St Boniface in Fulda a couple of days earlier), so I sat down with my shiny new copy of Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint, in which he advocates a lifestyle founded on a version of the Paleo Diet. I've already been following the Paleo Diet for the past two or three months, with occasional lapses due to moving about and visiting Pizza Hut and suchlike. Sisson certainly knows what he's talking about. I always hated biology at school, but Sisson manages to make the biological basis of the Primal lifestyle both comprehensible and interesting. The main thing is to hunt and kill at least one animal every day - it could be a duck or a cat or an elk or anything else, as long as it can be eaten.

I also got Terrence Malick's 2005 The New World out from the library on DVD, starring Colin Farrell as Captain John Smith and Q'orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas. It is either a piece of sublime cinematic genius or lumbering and pretentious, I'm still deciding. Much of the film consists of long, slow shots of forests, shorelines and meadows, with ponderous internal monologue voiceovers which reveal the surprising truth that north America was settled not by pilgrims and pioneers, but tortured emos:

If only I could go down that river. To love her in the wild, forget the name of Smith. I should tell her. Tell her what? It was just a dream. I am now awake.

Or:

Who are you whom I so faintly hear? Who urge me ever on? What voice is this that speaks within me... guides me towards the best?

Or:

There is only this - all else is unreal.

Or my personal favourite:

You flow through me, like a river.

A line worthy of an Avatard. The New World reminded me a lot of another of Malick's films, The Thin Red Line, which is one of my favourite war movies but similarly strays rather too often into portentous philosophising (the film's opening line, I think, is a dreamy voiceover which asks, What is life...?) and idealisation of the old Western trope of the noble savage living in harmony with nature.

There's also the question of Colin Farrell, whom I do like as an actor, but I'm not sure why he sticks with his Irish brogue in this film when he's supposed to be playing an Englishman. The gaggle of Jamestown urchins also provide a couple of the best moments in the film with their Ken Loach-esque realism, but again, I'm not sure why these diminutive English colonists sound like they were picked up from some Dublin backstreet. Maybe it's because Irish accents sound more Olde Worlde to cinema audiences.

Malick's version of the John Smith/Pocahontas romance aims to be a more a historically accurate retelling of the story, except for the fact that the romance never actually happened; the real Pocahontas was only 10 when she saved John Smith (she's portrayed as 14 or 15 in the film), and the idea that they were romantically involved is a later fiction. The Pocahontas story has always bothered me anyway. There's something weirdly paternalistic and prurient about it which, ironically, is an effective metaphor for the philosophy of colonialism as a whole.

Never mind, New World (aged 15), the Old World (aged 30) is here to look after you

Still, this version is much less offensive and more inventive than Disney's. Although that may not be saying much.

The pursuit of perfection

I've almost finished my current job, which was supervising 1st year archaeology undergrads on a university training excavation here in York. The little tikes have just about learned how not to smash their toes with a mattock, so I consider my work here done. Tomorrow I fly with Moogdroog to Germany to give a speech about German history in German to an audience of Germans.

Speaking of Germany and the inevitable connotations of Aryan supermen that come with it, I see that Britain's Got Talent (aka Britain's Got Too Much Time On Its Hands) has been won this year by the Children of the Corn. Either that or they are the product of some secret Nazi experiment to grow a race of blond super-athletes in underground vats which has at last come to fruition.

Nole sent me an email informing me that some über-nerds had created a replica of Babylon 5 on Second Life. I moseyed on down to have a look, but not before giving my avatar a thorough facelift. (Or rather several simultaneous facelifts in different directions.)

The result is this malformed dwarf bearing an odd resemblance to Sylvester Stallone who scurries around the Second Life universe dressed in pink and lime green lycra, refusing to talk to anyone, attracting piteous glances from his physically perfect fellow-citizens.