Pete Baker’s Blog

I intended to finish this post right after seeing the film the other week, but I’ve been so busy to blog about anything for the past few weeks that it kind of got stuck in draft form… oh well, better late than never.

So, Vron has been introducing me to Slovak and Czech culture, and the other weekend we went to see Marcela, a film by Helena Třeštíková /Taskovski Films. From what I gather, it was originally one of a group of documentaries of the lives of various Czech and Slovak people from the early 1980s to the present day. Indeed, the film starts in early 80s Warsaw-pact Czechoslovakia, and starts out as a fairly standard documentary of the life of Marcela, her marriage and birth of her first child, and her struggle to get on the state housing list for a place of her own, as initially, she is sharing cramped living quarters with her parents, husband and baby.

So as expected, it starts simply as a look behind the Iron Curtain, back in the 80s when the Cold War was at it’s peak. Here, documented by a film crew in a Warsaw Pact country, is the life of an ordinary Czech person, without any of the political commentary, propaganda or spin that you might expect from an Eastern Bloc film. That on it’s own would make the film an interesting watch – though having said that, the documentary was produced as a film in 2006, well after the Velvet Revolution, so the lack of communist propaganda is not surprising.

Then things change.

Things start going wrong for Marcela – her husband leaves her, and we begin to follow her struggle to bring up a child as a single mum in a communist state where jobs are difficult to come by. The film suddenly stops being a documentary and becomes something a lot more personal. It turns into a story – like something out of a tragic novel. I had to keep reminding myself that this was still a documentary, these were not ‘characters’ that I was getting attached to, and the events of the ‘plot’ did not come from the mind of some scriptwriter, but was just ordinary stuff that just happens to people all over the world every day.

Ultimately, you end up getting really attached to the lives of Marcela and her children, and that’s what makes it a winner. However, some parts of the film are almost unwatchable because of their emotional intensity. Go and see it if you can (I think it’s no longer on general release), but be ready for a bumpy ride, it’s a real emotional roller-coaster.

I’ve just spent the last weekend getting my RYA Level 2 sailing certification at the DSWC on Millwall Dock. It’s been a top weekend, whizzing around the dock doing various exercises – man overboard, mooring, following a course around bouys, follow the leader.. having to do my capsize drill again for the first time in about 8 years was a bit of a shock – b**dy hell Thames water is COLDD!! Also, the wind was gusting to god knows how many mph, so that was making things pretty interesting… a couple of the other students turned their boats turtle (i.e. capsized right over), which was fun to watch. Bit scary if the boat lands on top of you, though, I guess.

The course has got me all charged up about sailing again for the first time in about 15 years… and now I’m looking at getting into dinghy racing and having a go at a Pico or a Laser. Working up to skiff sailing, you see, in my dreams ha ha ha.

I’m also still thinking about getting more big boat experience – and possibly doing the RYA Day Skipper and Yachtmaster certifications. They do these at Docklands, but I’ve been told that it may just be easier (and more fun) to head down to the Solent and do the course in a week at one of the sailing schools down there. There’s plenty of well established schools round Port Solent and Southampton, like Sunsail. Talking with some of the people down at Docklands, it’s also apparently generally quite easy to get to be crew on random boats out of the Solent if you just head down there and hang around the docks a bit (especially during a big event like Cowes). A nice cheap way of getting bigger boat experience, though goes without saying you’re going to have to work for it.

So last week, after a company p*ssup involving much champagne on the top floor of our office, I decided to lose my balance and fall down the top flight of stairs. Result: One dislocated ankle and a whole weeks worth of hobbling and pain.

Needless to say, I decided not to go into work and decided to work from home instead. I was finding it difficult to sit down at my desk at home and work, as my ankle kept swelling up rather painfully during the day. A short trip to the Doc’s later and I was told I was doing all the wrong things. Apparently, I needed to:

i) Raise my ankle above the level of my torso.
ii) Get an icepack on it
iii) Compress the swollen area with a bandage
iv) Above all, stop putting my weight on it!

Taking this advice literally, I decided to re-arrange my home work area as above. I was lying on my bean bag when I took this shot. V comfy!

The ankle is now nicely healed, and swelling has gone right down. So remember, kids, next time you drink too much champers and fall down a flight of stairs, remember to apply RICE

So last weekend I went to Devon for the first time in my life. I’m amazed that it’s taken me 33 years to get there, given the outdoorsey sort of person that I am. I think having a childhood spoiled with the Yorkshire Dales, the Lakes and Northumbria kind of kept Devon and Cornwall low on my list of places to visit in this country.

So my first experience of Devon was a wind and rainswept night spent rough camping on Dartmoor last Friday night. We had the tent pitched by12:30am – quite difficult, actually, not because of being in absolute and utter darkness, but because of the difficulty in finding a tent sized pitchable area in the dark without cowpats on it. We were woken up at 3am by some pretty strong winds and heavy rain which lasted until 4pm the following day. Lovely. Still, it was a cool experience, snug in a little tent, knowing that you are the only people for miles around.

The next day we chickened out and headed for a campsite near Slapton Sands on the coast, where the weather got a lot better. A very different kind of beauty to wild and desolate Dartmoor.

Overall, I think Devon is a lovely place, and I’m sorry that it took me so long to actually go and check it out. But I still think I prefer the Northumbrian coast to the Devon coast, and the Yorkshire Dales to Dartmoor. As wild and as desolate as Dartmoor is, I still think the Dales is wilder and more dramatic, especially the area of the moors west of Pateley Bridge heading towards Grassington. And Devon definitely gets more tourists, and is more geared up to them, so it has a more touristy feel, I think. But then again, I am a Northern Git, so I’m probably biased.

I was chatting with my Spanish tutor, Agu, last week about Moorish Spain and the Alhambra, and she mentioned that she had seen an advert for an exhibition in London which had Moorish – and specifically Iberian Moorish – items on show. We agreed to go see it this Saturday just gone. It’s called Spirit & Life, and it’s at the Ismaili Centre in South Ken, until 31st August:

http://www.akdn.org/museums/index.html

We went and checked it out, and there’s a few items from Granada’s Nasrid dynasty… but it’s about so much more than just Moorish art. There’s a huge range of general Islamic stuff from all round the world…. gorgeous scrolls, paintings, vases, scientific texts, a Qu’ran on a huge tapastry (really small writing), stuff from India & China, a page from the Blue Qu’ran. Each item in the collection is painted or carved in amazing detail. As the website says, everything in the collection is extremely rare, and probably won’t be seen in this country again for a long while. The collection is touring Europe… I think it’s off to Germany and France next. It will finally go on permanent display at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada, when the building is complete in 2010.

So if you’re based in London, and you’re into this kind of stuff, then I seriously recommend you go see it whilst you have the chance! It’s brilliant!

Enabling a new breed of terrorism… hack the departures board, and redirect all passengers to the wrong flights…

Theres an interesting interview up on The Register today with Wade Alcorn, on his recent paper on infecting web browsers with a basic JavaScript exploit framework. The idea is that this would be capable of launching exploits against targets INSIDE THE FIREWALL of the network on which the web browser is running – i.e. making the infected web browser into some sort of simple Metasploit, with the user of the web browser remaining totally unaware that they had been zombied.

But it doesn’t stop there – Wade also mentions the idea of infecting web spiders with such a framework. I’m aware that the most poular web spiders (Googlebot / Slurp!) do not parse JavaScript, but still, it’s an interesting and somewhat scary idea.

American puppets, so goes a little over my head… but still well funny….

With thanks to catandgirl.com

Damn…. I was hoping for an R18…. instead I’m not even a video nasty:

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Keep seeing this sticker all over London:

I’m pretty sure it’s not a fly poster for a club, so I’m figuring it’s some sort of anti-surveillance society statement, as the stickers always seem to be near CCTV cameras and speed cameras. The circle in the middle looks a bit like a camera lens too. ‘Identify, Control, Dictate’… all a bit V for Vendetta! It’s a nice design whatever it is.

Keep an eye out for them….

Edit: My mate Ian thinks that they are part of a viral marketing campaign, possibly for a video game…. he could be right, I think that the logo is a little bit too slick for some grassroots activists, and also stinks a little of expensive PR….