Nothing set in stone yet, but it looks like I may be staying here in Tallinn.
I have applied for a full-time position, as a writer, and if that goes through I’ll definitely be basing myself here permanently. If that role doesn’t materialise, I’ll keep looking. I’m currently earning enough as tutor to keep me going, but this is not what I want to do long-term.
For at least the next 6 months, I’ll be based in Estonia.
I’m going to be writing - mainly about technology - from Tallinn, the tiny country’s capital. Keep an eye on Rational Geekery for how I get on. If anyone is in the market for a technology freelancer, based in the Baltic, then drop me a line.
I’ll also be doing some English tutoring while I’m there. Wish me luck!
I have updated the theme on Rational Geekery (ratgeek.com), with a view to ramping up the level of posting on the blog. I think the design had been taking the wind out the project, as I wasn’t be comfortable with it. The new theme is fresh and I’m really into it.
Hoping to push on the project and concentrate more time on tech writing.
I have created a tumblelog that picks up the RSS feeds from the blogs and personal sites that I create. It collects my twitter feed, flickr RSS, and both my political and tech blogs.
Introduction
Any review of 2007 pretty much writes itself. The past year has been a colossal year in politics, both home and abroad. Domestically we have seen the end of the Blair era, with the keys to 10 Downing Street passing, finally, to Gordon Brown. We have also observed a rollercoaster year in the fortunes of David Cameron and his re-branded Tories (you may recall Slippery Dave was under siege prior to the party conference, only to emerge stronger than ever). Holyrood has of course been captured by the SNP, and Northern Ireland hardly makes the papers anymore, never-mind the front pages. How things change?
On the international stage we have seen a Bush administration accepting its legacy, an emboldened Iran and Russia, and a China that appears increasingly confident in the world. We have watched various coup d’etat and political assassinations, and even a crackdown on Buddhist monks, but most of all, we have watched the oil price rise and settle at around the $100 per-bl mark, pointing to future conflicts – most definitely political and possibly military – over dwindling carbon-based resources. The early stages of the C21st century appear eerily reminiscent of the start of the C20th.
At home
In 2007 we said goodbye to our Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Easily the greatest British politician of his generation, the leader who seemed to have the electorate’s psyche hard-wired into his brain, had finally lost his touch. Political spin and various scandals had eroded trust in his leadership, but it was the war in Iraq and his relationship with George W. Bush, which was the real albatross around his neck. Even at the end, he was unrepentant about his decision to follow the American lead into Mesopotamia. Blair simply became more and more holier-than-thou as his political capital drained away. He had become detached from the electorate he once so masterfully manipulated. Blair resigned, allowing his bitter rival Gordon Brown, to claim the party’s leadership unchallenged.
Who would have thought that the fortunes of Gordon Brown could have swung so violently? In the early days of his fledgling premiership, the newly anointed PM was riding high after the much discussed “Brown bounce”. A fourth term looked a certainty as Tory knives were being sharpened ahead of David Cameron’s second summer conference. The Tories may have forgotten what it’s like to run the country, but when it comes to regicide, they’re definitely still the go-to guys.
Brown was all smiles and handshakes. He could do little wrong. Then a single political miscalculation (the will-he-wont-he election fiasco) threw the Brown bandwagon off-kilter. Cameron emerged from his conference on top in the polls. The roles had reversed: suddenly Brown could do no right, and Cameron no wrong. A flurry of political controversies, including the credibility-draining party funding scandal, threw the Labour Party into a tailspin and a fourth term majority now looks improbable.
At the year’s close the Tories are in a comfortable lead in the polls, and with the Lib Dems fitted out with a new Cameronesque leader, things do not bode well for Number 10’s incumbents. Brown will be under incredible pressure to call an election during the coming year, but unless his fortunes change drastically, it’s unlikely he’ll acquiesce to such demands from across the aisle - further damaging his tattered credibility in the eyes of the British people.
The economy will cool even further in ‘08 and more and more mortgages will default. Brown’s reputation as a economic titan will be all but destroyed. The Conservatives will talk about pensions and rocketing public spending (Brown has still not delivered any of the promised civil service cuts), and they’ll wax sanctimoniously about the country’s struggling middle-classes. In short, Gordon Brown will oversee the collapse of New Labour in 2008. And even if the government stumbles on into ‘09, the project will already be dead and Brown’s political career over.
Abroad
Huge corporatocracies control our governments and shadowy agents work against the interest of global peace, international law, and environmental sustainability. In fact, never has it been more apparent that democracy is just an illusion and that all political parties operate within the same narrow superstructure. In the last decade - and very much in 2007 - we have seen the façade of Western Democracy reach a nadir, as elected governments crush hard-won liberties and act with impunity across the globe, all in the name of fighting the nebulous spectre that is Islamic Fundamentalism.
The British and American governments continue to fight a war that was started illegally and - at least in Britain - lacks any significant public support. The Middle East is still in flux, with tentative steps toward peace lacking any real substance. And we, the West, do business and have strong diplomatic relations with a country that routinely liquidates thousands of political dissidents every year: China.
Is it any surprise that on a planet where 51 of the largest 100 economies are in fact corporations and not states, that we the people, seem to matter less and less to our leaders. This year the British Government quashed an enquiry into the actions of one of our top corporations, British Aerospace (BAe), which was accused of having bunged bribes to foreign nationals to grease a multi-billion pound defence contract. In 2008 the desperate state of the British Government’s morality was exposed as it disregarded the rule of law after an orchestrated campaign by BAe and the corrupt Saudi royal family. Weeks later our Queen rolled out the red carpet for a head of state who denies his subjects any religious or political freedom and prevents women from driving, and pretty much everything else. The Saudis are our friends and a strong ally in the Global War on Terror (GWOT), apparently. It’s worth noting that Riyadh finances many of the fundamentalist Madrases that educate poison young Muslims against the West.
2007 also saw Iraq get worse before it got better. Suicide bombings and violence reached record levels early in ‘07, before a ’surge’ in US troop numbers restored a semblance of order to Baghdad. Another of Washington’s solutions to the quagmire in Iraq included paying Sunnis militias to patrol their own streets, the Iraqi police having been exposed as corrupt and riddled with “enemy combatants”. The Sunnis, it appears, turned on al Qaeda forces and returned peace to their neighbourhoods, but many Americans find it hard to accept that their government is stuffing dollars into the pockets of fighters, who only a few months ago, were planting IEDs under US vehicles and mortaring its bases. “Progress” in Iraq is of course built on a foundation of sand, as no sustainable political solution has been reached by a still-born Iraqi parliament. However, one of the few pieces of legislation pushed through this cancerous institution was a law liberalising Iraq’s oil industry, a law strong-armed by the US. Priorities, it seems, have not been forgotten (remember electricity has still not returned to pre-2003 levels). And with Turkish military excursions into Northern Iraq, even the success-story that is the Kirkuk region, appears to be heading for violence.
In Central Asia a coalition between China, Russia and former Soviet Republics (the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) are asserting pressure on the US to close bases in the region (poverty stricken former states of the USSR were happy to accept US dollars prior to the rise in gas and oil prices, but now cash-flush China and Russia are happy help). America is being pinched in every direction. Indeed, China, Russia, and their acerbic bedfellows Iran and Venezuela, have grown in stature and now strut the international stage, hampering UN action in flash-points such as Darfur. Oil-drenched Russia has planted its flag below the resource-rich arctic circle and China’s military spending, not to mention its space weapons technology, is causing USPACOM to sweat. If the West continues to focus its attention on fighting a fluid, imprecise enemy on the streets on the Middle East, it may find itself marginalised and impotent as Russia and China solidify their global reach. 2007 has indicated that the unipolar world will be short-lived and that the Fukuyama-envisigned future of a global-wide market democracy is still a long way away.
Europe too has reached a nadir. As leaders push through a watered-down constitution, no-one seems willing or able to communicate a pro-European vision for the continent. Countries are pulling within themselves and politicians are pandering to nationalistic sentiments. Immigration is a key political stick for right-wingers and racial tensions are running high across Europe. If European leaders are unable to capture the founding principles of the European Union in the coming year, it’s increasingly clear that the people of Europe will, en masse, grow weary of the project and European co-operation and economic harmony may never again capture their imagination.
Following the assassination of Pakistan’s former PM, Benazir Bhutto, we cannot be sure that the fragile stability of one of Asia’s most important states can be maintained. Myanmar (formerly Burma) is in political turmoil and with North Korea just missing the deadline to give a full account of its nuclear weapons under a disarmament-for-aid deal, it is clear that the world will still be taking shape in 2008.
In Summary
I offer no apologies for the negativity of both these assessments. The world and the UK are in a period of great change and economic uncertainty. I would love to believe that 2008 will bring greater international unity and collected action, but I doubt this will come to pass. In Britain we have a government struggling to regain lost credibility, and abroad our dreams of global democracy are in tatters.
The one bright light on the horizon is the coming US elections, and the possibility that a moderate will win the presidency. If a Clinton, Edwards, Obama, or McCain wins in November, then maybe, just maybe, this slide can be slowed and a return to rational leadership in Washington is possible. Let’s hope so…
It was started last year, and when I took on several large projects. It sort of lost steam and took a place at the bottom of my to-do pile.
I haven’t had a chance to finish it - or give it the re-draft it so desperately needs. However, my partner and the kids are off to Tallinn again for 5-weeks from next week, and with other projects being rather slow at the moment, I should be able to give the book some genuine time and concentration. Armed with a regular full night’s sleep, copious amounts of good coffee, and an empty house, I really shouldn’t have any excuses not to get at least a re-draft and another 20,000 words completed (which will bring it towards completion).
The main story is robust, but the characters need some work - they’re maybe just a little-bit too stylised and could do with a dash of realism. I also need to change one of the places visited due to regional politics - Romania is now in the EU, which rather screws the narrative (you’ll see).
We all have strange talents that are pretty useless for the most part, and one of mine is an uncanny flair for catching flies. Whether you think that is pointless or just gross is immaterial, the point is, at this particular task, I’m probably better than you. So there.
When I was a teenager and I was courting some youthful girl, there was always some given moment when this talent would come in useful. A pesky fly would be hanging around her window, or pitter-pattering across to a tasty pastry my young associate had her eye on. Swooosh! And I had caught the fly. I’m not sure what primeval role I was fulfilling, but we both knew I had satisfied some sort of archaic need on her part to be protected from a quarter-inch winged shit-muncher. Now it was her opportunity to satisfy my need, my need to put my hand up her shirt. It’s anthropology, I guess.
But first I would be faced with a predicament. Either I let the fly escape out of the window, or I could destroy it. For a few seconds I am God. I have life in my hands, and I can decide in a heartbeat whether this small life is extinguished or not. Usually, with the amazed girlfriend watching, I will display a modicum of clemency and throw the fly out of the window, yet on other, more darker days, I may send the poor captive down the sink in a gush of tap water (well, I have to wash my hands anyway).
You may be wondering how I came to have this talent.
It’s not about speed or necessarily reflexes; although 20-years of Nintendo probably mean I’m pretty sharp in this regard. No, the real key to catching flies is in the technique.
I have watched these annoying bastards for hours. They’re predictable and nowhere near as clever as they like to think they are. But remember, the skilled flycatcher is cunning and bides his time.
You need to assess your environment. If the fly is on the curtains, then it’s game, set, and match to the flycatcher. Quickly move your open hand, horizontally across the surface of the fabric, and catch the fly from behind. You can, if you’re remarkably skilful, just lightly push at the fabric with your hand, which at speed leaves the fly suspended in the air before it can open its wings (you have sort of removed the ‘ground’ from under it). When you feel the fly’s wings against your palm, in an instant close your hand.
I’m not sure if catching the fly from behind helps because of some limitation in their peripheral vision, or whether it’s to do with the way they take off, but trust me, it’s much more successful.
The correct technique for the closing of the hands is equally essential to the adept flycatcher. Smacking the fingers and palm together, or having the target miss the palm, is likely to result in ‘wetness.’ No one, especially when showing off to a nubile young netball player, wants to have green entrails smeared across their hand (especially when you have rather improper intentions for the said hand later).
One must close the hand swiftly but leaving a tight channel inside for the fly to be caught. Don’t worry about it being airtight. That’s not important. It’s likely that the fly will be nipped and caught anyway – alive, but unable to escape.
If the fly is on the wall, one must use the same technique of moving the hand – horizontal to the wall’s surface, and catching the fly from behind. It’s less reliable than curtain hunting, but easy nonetheless.
When you have mastered these styles of hunting, you may feel confident to try mid-air fly catching. This is a skilled art, and one that certainly impresses an audience. Mid air fly catching requires patience, speed, and vision. You are not catching the fly where it is, but where it is going. Watch it fly. Learn its path and style. And quickly, moving the hand from the shoulder outwards (straightening the arm) to the point of connection. The same hand-closing techniques as above should be employed.
You need to anticipate the fly’s direction and velocity, and meet the fly a few inches from where it was when you first began your attack. The ideal distance for closure is just before the arm straightens, so any follow-through doesn’t affect accuracy. Practice is required, but it shouldn’t take long to master.
Once you have become an accomplished flycatcher, you will feel calmer with the world around you. You will exist in a Zen-like state. No longer can these annoying diminutive air-born vermin get the better of you. You can command your environment without resorting to chemicals or the captivating alchemy of ultraviolet fluorescent fly killers. No, you belong to a more noble tradition with roots in a better, more honest age.
