"Hirst's exhibition is a stupefying admission of defeat, a self-obliterating homage, that reveals the most successful artist of our time to be a tiny talent, with less to offer than even the most obscure Victorian painter in the Wallace Collection"

 

Guardian Arts Blog | What is Damien Hirst really up to?

It's nice to see an Art critic finally call Damien Hirst's bluff and realise that he is singularly talentless. The problem is, it's a bit late now, isn't it? When "brit-art" first came about and some art lovers cried foul, the critics heralded it as a triumph. 'Isn't it marvellous,' they said, 'that finally we can see that sticking a dead animal in formaldehyde is amazing art.' Anyone who didn't agree was laughed at and told they just weren't intelligent enough to 'get it'. 

The whole Hirst inspired wave of art was a joke, it was vacuous, soulless, mediocre tat. Yet because the critics in the art world like to think they possess an intellectual superiority over the rest of humanity they bowed before the artist and acclaimed his genius. The less talent, the less aesthetic quality, the more they cooed. It reminds me a little of when William Boyd published his biography of Nat Tate, an artist he'd invented himself, and critics at the book launch gushed about the original Nat Tate's they'd seen and how great an artist he'd been. It's not about the art anymore, it's about proving they knew the next big thing first and that they have their fingers on the pulse.

What annoys me is that while the likes of Hirst and Emin were getting the acclaim other far more talented British artists were basically ignored.  It's an injustice that Hirst has became indecently rich from peddling such trash and has influenced art for the worse over the past decade or so. 

It's nice to see an art crtic realise that Hirst lacks artistic talent (as a self-promoting business man the chap is a genius) it's just a shame it's fifteen years too late.

Okay, so I should start with some refreshing honesty; the image above has precisely nothing to do with this blog entry - it's there solely because of the age old blog algorithm that putting a photograph of cute furry animals in a blog post increaces the potential for comments by a factor of 153. Tomorrow is the launch of the new version of the Ubuntu operating system. It's version 9.10 but in the aliterative tradition that dictates every release is dubbed after an animal this one is the Karmic Koala. (They're presently on Jaunty Jackalope and my first tase of Ubuntu was with Hardy Heron)

Ubuntu is one of the most popular versions of the linux operating system, it's an alternative to Windows or Mac OSX and it's abolsutley free. What has made Ubuntu so popular is like unlike other versions of linux Ubuntu is aimed at making the whole experience more user friendly instead of scary and geeky.  Now, I'm not going to lie - Ubuntu takes some getting used to, but then so does any change in operating system. Switching to mac takes a bit of getting used to, as would changing from mac or linux to windows.

The features I like about Ubuntu are speed - compared to Windows this is a very lightweight operating system, it's functional but it's quick and doesn't tie up as many system resources. I can boot up my four year old laptop in a minute using Ubuntu - it used to take three or four with windows - and I even find that slightly slow compared to some of the other ubuntu machines which can boot in thirty seconds. If you take a fresh install of Ubuntu and a fresh install of Windows you'll find that Ubuntu does more 'out of the box'.  It comes ready to go with an office suite, a powerful image editing suite, good photo management software, all of which have to be added to windows seperatley. 

Where I find Ubuntu does fail slightly is on gloss. Judging the appearance of anything is entirely subjective but I find of the three Mac OS X is the most aesthetically pleasing, it's glossy and smooth but doesn't have the "fisher-priceness" of Windows.  Ubuntu comes, by default, in a rather brown naturey kind of shade. The appearance is far more customisable than the other operating systems but I think that many users will not know that so they should make the default install more attractive colour wise.

One new feature that the Ubuntu team are particularly proud of is the 'software centre' which lets you add software to your system in much the same way as you add apps to an iPhone. You choose it and it installs, naturally the software is free too.  I think this is a much better way of handling software installation but I'd like to see it better organised with the things lots of people will want profiled or highlighted in some way. Niether Skype nor Songbird were in the Software Centre which is a shame as they're two of the applications that would be most useful to the everyday user.  You can still download and install them but we must assume not all users will know to look for software outside of what the software centre offers.

Ubuntu offers a good alternative to windows for anyone willing to take a little time to get used to something new - but they must also be aware that Windows software will not work so remember to check that there are linux versions available.  It's this that truly hampers linux from expanding at a more rapid-rate.  While there are often linux alternatives there are exceptions, must notably for the regular user will be iTunes. Songbird is brilliant but the iTunes store is used by a lot of people. It's strategy for the big firms not to make linux versions because it could affect their profits in other areas but as more people start to use linux hopefully this will change.

Overall I still think Ubuntu is a great operating system. It's not perfect but it has significant advantages in certain areas over Windows in particular. It's faster, more secure and free. I still think as an overall package Mac OS is my favourite - it's a fantastic system - but to run it you need a mac and to have a mac you need mac money.  Ubuntu is exceptional, it's free and it will often run well on older machines.

We've all been there before, you get to an exciting part of a book - a chapter where suspense, ingenuity and magnificent prose have melded together to make it unputdownable. Then the light starts to fade, you're a passenger in a car or train and you can't do anything about it. You strain your eyes a little, desperate to get to the end of a chapter and then find that you're presented with a cliff hanger and must go on but you can't as the light is now gone completely.

It was a refreshing change then, a few weeks ago, to be able to read the whole of Gogol's Taras Bulba while on a night journey. I was able to curl up in the seat with my headphones and my phone and read thanks to Stanza, a quite exceptional free eBook reader app for iPhone.  It's an exceptional app - it does exactly what it says on the tin but it does it smoothly and professionally. There are so many options to get the font and spacing displaying just as you like it for comfortable reading, you can use coverflow to choose books in the same way you choose albums on the iPod and you can even change the cover if you don't like the one on the book. The controls are simple; to turn to the next page you tap the right side of the screen, to go back a page you tap the left. Tapping the middle of the page brings up other options and gives you information about how far you are through both the chapter and the book.

Another great point about it is the range of books available; you can't presently buy unless you have a US billing address. (Though one website still think I live at the Waldorf Astoria so that is subvertible!) But there is a huge selection of free books available from Gutenberg and FeedBooks - naturally the free selection is heavily biased toward things that are in the public domain but this gives a great variety of classics, including many that are no longer in print. You can click on and get a new book in minutes, downloaded straight to your phone. You can store as many as memory will allow.  If you're a keen reader and have an iPhone or iPod touch then I think Stanza is a must have app.

"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask."

So said Joseph Conrad but more importantly than saying it, he did it. Conrad can't be skimmed or read lightly, he draws you into the world of his characters whether you like it or not. Works such as The Heart of Darkness and The Sercret Agent are immersive, they take you completely into the world he tells of and I don't think in either case it can be called a completely pleasent experience. Thankfully, however, it seems Conrad's talent for enveloping the reader into another world in novels was consistent and is very much present in The Duel (titled 'A Point of Honor' in the USA), a novella set in Napoleonic France.

Based on a legend remembered in the French army, The Duel provides an entertaining and engaging story of honour, single-mindedness and bravery in the Napoleonic wars. It tells the story of two Hussars, Lieutenants Feraud and D'Hubert, who duel repeatedly, deeming honour never to have been satisfied, throughout years of plot the two are thrown together on and off campaign and right across the continent of Europe. Niether man will reveal to others the reason for the ongoing duels and both gain renown within their regiments for their bravery.

It's a very interesting read and explores the concept of fighting for honour and the paradoxes that it creates; the reader is simoultaneously struck by the pointless nature of the ongoing contest and yet admiring of the courage and the romantic sense of honour that drives them. The ending to the story is quite fantastic, I can't comment on it for risk of spoiling the book for any who read it but I really do think that in it Conrad produced the perfect finish.

The Duel offers all of the vivid skills of the master novelist without the brooding intensity of some of his other works, it's a captivating piece of historical fiction that deserves to be remembered alongside other classics of the genre. It's an enjoyable and fulfilling read that ends on a very good note and is definitely worth a read.

I read this for free using Stanza reader on my iPhone (which is surely in itself worth blogging about) but when googling for a cover picture I found the edition pictured here from the folio society which I must say has a rather fabulous cover.

It may seem a little odd to anyone born after 1950 to think that Lux flakes (for all your stocking washing needs, ladies) provide me with a major source of entertainment but it's quite true. In fact, somewhat worryingly, I almost jumped for joy today upon finding a Lux related website. Perhaps I should explain.

Now, I like to nod my head to the latest phat beatz as much as the next chap (did that fool anyone at all into thinking I'm musically up to date? No? Really?) but often if I'm on the go and doing an activity that isn't particularly inspiring I find it nice to have some spoken word on my iPod. This is where Lux Radio Theater comes in to it's own. You see, Lux was the sponsor of this hugely popular radio show in the 30s and 40s in which some of hollywood's biggest names played in adaptations of films and plays. Each one hour show is full of familiar voices from the movies of the era, you get Cecil B. De Mille presenting and an assortment of random guests who weirdly enough all want to spare a moment to praise Lux products. ("I'll get to what it was like being a British Agent in Petrograd shortly but first I wanted to say how much I depend on Lux flakes to keep my clothes in great condition...", etc...)

Cecil B. De Mille shows that even the outrageously famous
and wealthy shouldn't wear boots with a lounge suit.

Silly as it might sound I'm really enjoying the entertainment value these shows provide - I heard Errol Flynn in 'Virginia City' this morning and this afternoon was to be found listening to Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland in 'The Scarlet Pimpernel'.  It's good old fashioned story telling; the plays aren't always amazing but what they do have running through them is that straight forward desire to entertain that permeates hollywood's output from that era. It's not about ultra-realistic sound effects and intense audio performances, it's about making the listener have a good time. It's about having fun; oh, and, selling soap of course.

Orson Welles starring in a radio play on CBS.

Today I googled to try and find a few more to listen too and stumbled across an absolute treasure trove of a site which I'm sure dorky old-fashioned geeks classic hollywood affectionados everywhere will love.  The Internet Archive has hundreds of episodes of Lux Radio Theater, and as if that wasn't enough further looking has shown it to have an archive of Orson Welles' famous Mercury Theater on the Air and the one and only, oft imitated, never bettered, Basil Rathbone in the Sherlock Holmes series with Nigel Bruce.

I can't even take in the many hundreds of hours of fun this site is going to bring!

For several years when I was a child there was only one sport for me.  People who know me now may assume that I whiled away my childhood hours with a copy of wisden or old videos of the superbowl but no, when I was ten and eleven the only sport that mattered was Formula One Motor Racing. I was reminded of this earlier when talking to Huwie about Jensen Button winning the championship; the problem is that for me the sport will always be a poor shadow of it's former self. I'm sure that to some extent I look back through rose tinted glasses but I'm equally sure that it was better in many ways. I remember distinctly the day it all changed, too, but more on that later.

I loved the duelling nature of it, there was something about it that was so gladiatorial; men pitting themselves against each other at two hundred miles an hour, pushing it to the very limit and risking their lives to try and beat the other guy.  But it wasn't just that, it was the fact that they actually seemed to race each other, there was more overtaking and more guts.  I was lucky to grow up at a time when so many legends were racing, real iconic figures, and it made it so much fun to see them duking it out week in week out. You knew that on their day any of three or four could beat the others and they fought so hard and pressed each other and made each other, and the racing, better.

Back then I was a Mansell fan, I couldn't see at the time why people thought him boring because all I could see was that the guy could really, really drive. I remember he won the title, then left to go to Indy Cars, broke his back, and still won that title too. Then their was Alain Prost, I wasn't a fan but no one could take away the fact that he was a truly fantastic racing driver. In hindsight though the most exciting thing was Ayrton Senna; should I ever have grandchildren (perish the thought!) he'll be the one I tell them about. Ayrton Senna was, I believe, the greatest motor racing driver ever. He was fantastic. In any other generation he'd have won many more titles but he came good at a time when there was tough competition and still won three championships. Ayrton Senna was rock and roll, man, he was the rolling stones.

Which brings us full circle to the day the sport I loved died because Formula One has never been the same since Senna died.  I didn't even believe it when I first heard it, it was one of those things which, as a kid, I just couldn't take in. With Senna gone and the others retiring F1 was left to the Shumacer years, boring, repetative, rubbish. Don't get me wrong, Shumacer can drive, but he's so blooming teutonic about it, he never seemed even remotley human or interesting. He dominated because there were so few exceptional drivers around at the same time as him. He is German efficiency but Ayrton was Brazilian flair and brilliance.

I'm happy that Jensen and Lewis have won titles, I like them both, I watch the Grands Prix when I'm around, heck I even take some credit for Hamilton's 2008 title in the rain at Interlagos. (Yes, that's right. The raindance worked. Oh yeah.) But it's not the same. The balance has tipped to techology over driver skill, their are few drivers who really grab you as worthy of following in the tire tracks of generations passed. Take me back to 1990 and let me watch the big names tear around Monza and I'd be happy, let me watch the duelling chariots emblazoned with their ciggarette advertisments as the drivers push the machine, and themselves, to the very limits.

Those were the glory, glory days.

'You know what you should do?' asked my inner nerd, in a confident tone - as though dispensing wisdom like Solomon, 'You should write a breathtakingly awesome blog entry.' I must admit that when my inner nerd makes such unlikely suggestions I'm prone to laugh heartily. (A small aside, if laughing at yourself it's best to do so quietly, people tend to raise eyebrows at your mental health if you're too obvious about it.) However, on this occasion, when my laughter had died down I decided to consider the suggestion with the gravity that it deserved.  I considered what would be the parts of an awesome blog entry and decided that it would need originality, wit, verbiage and - as if those three were not already a big enough ask - it would need to have a theme or topic.

As you can probably guess I stared at these requirements like a man staring melancholicly into the empty bottom of a large tumbler full of Glenfiddich and wondering where it all went. Blog entries, you see, seem to be somewhat like busses - oh, sorry, is that a tired and clichéd old metaphor? Anyway, the point is, when you actually want to write a blog there seems rarely to be one there to write; by extension, when you don't have time to write a blog entry they're cluttering the shelves of your mind like those fake books that clutter the shelves in Swedish furniture shops.

I'm sure that I could have bluffed my way through. I could have talked about why Vaclav Klaus should show some backbone or pondered on which classic song Simon Cowell is planning to torture this Christmas. Perhaps I could have ventured to speculate on the outcome of tonights Grand Prix and whether Jensen can finally show some killer instincts. It's not happening though, not today.

Today is one of those days when, like it or not, I simply don't have anything to write on my blog. People do say that to get past your fear you have to face up to it, so in the face of blog writers block I decided there was no other option but to put keys to keyboard and ream one off anyway. Anyone who reached this point should waste no time in going and getting themselves a large ice cream as a reward for getting through to the end.

There are those who live by their wits and those who live by their swords and, in Captain Alatriste, there are those who live by a deadly combination of the two.  Captain Alatriste is the first in a series of books from Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte and in it he sets about giving Spain it's own swashbuckling legend in the finest of Dumasian traditions. The author doesn't hide his admiration for Dumas, giving us a knowing refrence to a character and incident from Dumas' work. It's a tricky thing to so obviously refrence another work of fiction - and especially one as famous as The Three Musketeers - and yet somehow Pérez-Revertre pulls it off admirably. Instead of seeming like brash name dropping it just makes you feel as though the author understands what you want, knows the world you want to escape too and is going to make it happen. The plot is set during the 17th Century in Madrid and is narrated by a young boy whose father served with Alatriste and was killed and who is now looked after by Alatriste.  I can't say much of the plot itself because I don't want to give away any of the points; I thought the first twist was quite obvious but the pace and plot continued to move and throw in the unexpected to make for a very good read. I did find that sometimes the inclusion of poetry quotations broke the flow of the narrative a little but my weariness about that soon wore off as the book really got going and during the scene at the theatre I was left astounded at the fact that a writer would attempt such a scene and even more astounded by the fact that it worked seamlessly! It's the finest moment of the book. The novel is relatively short in length but I don't levy that as anykind of criticism - quite the opposite, in fact, so many of the good swashbucklers and adventures of the past were short by today's standards but were great reads. I'll be looking forward to picking up the second in the Alatriste series soon...

"To a German the passport is the proof of his existence... An Englishman believes that his presence in the shape of five feet nine of respectability on any spot of the earth is proof enough."

-The Times, on the need for passports, sometime in the 1840s.

I'm not sure I can add anything to such eloquently put phrases. I'd certainly far rather have spent the exorbitent cost of replacing my passport on a shirt or a particularly dashing hat, that's for darn sure. I do rather love the fact that there was a time before Her Britiannic Majesty's Secretary of State felt the need to request that you may travel without let or hinderance; just being present and English was enough.  (Though I did hear that Gordon had a slight problem with the Soudanese on that score.) 

BBC SPORT | Zimbabwe confident of Test return

It's good to hear that Zimbabwe are on track to return to playing Tests.  Cricket has meant a lot to people in Zimbabwe and it was sad when they could no longer field a team at Test level; entirely down to the policies of Mugabe. White men not being acceptable to farm Zimbabwean land or bat at the Zimbabwean crease.  I'll never forget listening as Henry Olonga and Andy Flower took to the field in black armbands to mourn the death of democracy in Zimbabwe - it was a powerful statement, especially as the ICC were wrong to have scheduled matches there in the first place. I think it's fitting that as Zimbabwe finally takes some steps towards recovery they should be welcomed back to the sport fielding a team chosen for ability, not the colour of their skin.