This is another Babylon 5 soundtrack, but one you almost certainly haven't heard before. It was intended for a video game, but it seems that project was cancelled – so now it has nowhere to go apart from YouTube or similar, as it is here along with a still scene of (mostly) Centauri warships, with a Narn heavy cruiser in the near distance.
(Note: this is soundtrack No. 2 of what is clearly a suite of tracks, so I shall endeavour to find the other parts during this evening.)
It's distinctly Christopher Francke material, with many of his signature motifs – especially B5 ones – but I detected a handful of what to me sound like Jarre influences at around eight minutes in, lasting just half a minute or so...
Friday, 23 November 2012
Voices of Authority
This excellent and highly evocative piece by Christopher Francke for the second Babylon 5 CD really needs to be listened to in a partially-darkened room, at a quiet time, and in a receptive mood. It needs to be at a decent volume level, but not over-loud – it doesn't need it...
Thursday, 22 November 2012
I Can Be Intolerant Too
Occasionally I have a bout of bringing to a head all those 'connections' that have been annoying me for a while. In the case of Twitter, I go through a (generally short) session of what is known as unfollowing a few others I had been following. I have done so with three tonight.
Those I select for this procedure tend to be ones whose on-line version of verbal diarrhea – usually on one or perhaps a few subjects, continually repeated – just gets to be too much (so goodbye to AngelNeptuneStar and PolleeTickle) or obsessive on an unpleasant – to me – topic. Therefore, goodbye also to LoveThyTruth, whose obsession with the ladies and making what is supposed (by any decent person) to be private embarrassingly and perpetually public.
Interestingly, with the former, I might have developed an interest in looking into the HS2 railway business, but this experience has put me off completely and I now have next to no interest in it.
I'm really not interested in that ego trip any more than I want my Twitter timeline to be bombarded with endless tweets about HS2. Anyone competent would know how to summarise and thus ration their output in any session/day on the same topic. The rest of us know how to do it, so it isn't exactly difficult.
The bottom line is that it takes a lot for me to snap, but when I do I will not hesitate to cut offenders out of my consciousness. Perhaps if and when they learn how to handle the medium properly I could then re-follow them – but I'm not interested in doing so until and unless that happens!
Those I select for this procedure tend to be ones whose on-line version of verbal diarrhea – usually on one or perhaps a few subjects, continually repeated – just gets to be too much (so goodbye to AngelNeptuneStar and PolleeTickle) or obsessive on an unpleasant – to me – topic. Therefore, goodbye also to LoveThyTruth, whose obsession with the ladies and making what is supposed (by any decent person) to be private embarrassingly and perpetually public.
Interestingly, with the former, I might have developed an interest in looking into the HS2 railway business, but this experience has put me off completely and I now have next to no interest in it.
I'm really not interested in that ego trip any more than I want my Twitter timeline to be bombarded with endless tweets about HS2. Anyone competent would know how to summarise and thus ration their output in any session/day on the same topic. The rest of us know how to do it, so it isn't exactly difficult.
The bottom line is that it takes a lot for me to snap, but when I do I will not hesitate to cut offenders out of my consciousness. Perhaps if and when they learn how to handle the medium properly I could then re-follow them – but I'm not interested in doing so until and unless that happens!
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Shake On It
A fellow who was obviously a little over-indulged on drink collared me on Star Hill and rode back to Chatham (and, in his case, beyond) from the 'bus stop.
We talked about this and that in those few minutes – but then came the handshake as I 'dinged' the bell for the stop adjacent to Wickes.
It was a normal (and firm) handshake first, immediately followed by what I think must have been a masonic one, which came as a surprise to me. No doubt I failed that test; but it was interesting that he tried it on me, presumably suspecting that I might have been a Mason myself – or whatever it represented (it wasn't one of those usually shown being practiced by famous people)..
I can never be a Freemason or anything similar, of course, and it has never even been seriously suggested to me – but it certainly was intriguing to have this happen to me today and I thought it worthy of a brief mention here.
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Favourite Simple Game
Back in the days when a chap ('Bill R') and I ran the DTI Computer Club, Bill brought in a game that was simply a signalling exercise based on a seven-hour shift at Kings Cross railway station in London.
On the BBC Micro this involved a track display screen, switchable to/from a loco yard screen, and operated in four basic colours (Mode 1 on the Beeb) of black, white, yellow and red.
It was very effective, and not all that frenetic – though it does have its moments at certain times during the shift. Being judged Excellent, let alone Outstanding, wasn't exactly easy to achieve, despite the deceptively straightforward nature of the game and its sometimes seemingly leisurely pace.
It was really all about locomotives: getting the right type attached to outgoing trains, getting the locos that brought the trains in subsequently out of the platforms and (in most instances) to the station's loco yard for refuelling. The judgment on one's performance was based around timekeeping – essentially, getting trains out on time, and not keeping them waiting to come in from elsewhere on either of the 'up' lines (Up Fast and Up Slow). Although the slow line arrivals always keep to time, there are random early and late arrivals of various time-shifts on the Up Fast (UF) track.
Come forward several years and Acorn's Archimedes computer and its successors supplanted the old BBC Micros for most purposes (there are still some Beebs running factory machinery and doing other jobs even today). I was delighted when The Data Store in Bromley released an updated version of the KingsX game to run in the newer computers' desktop, fully multi-tasking, and all in one display...
The loco yard now appears at the bottom-right of the display area, rather than in a separate screen as it had to in the old Beeb version. From this we can see a few of the complications.
For example, the West Bay (WB) where the Motorail from time to time asks for a shunting locomotive (Class 31) to take some coaches to the Ferme Park depot near Finsbury Park. The loco Hold point (H) causes a blockage of the Up Slow (US) line every single time a loco moves to or from that point. It takes three minutes (the game advances in half-minute 'jumps' at ten times real life speed, i.e. every three seconds) for a loco to get to the Hold point from a platform or the yard, so it's quite an impediment.
On top of this, the occasional parcels train needs to go into platform 1, so that has to be clear of stock and locos in time for their arrivals – and those trains can (and often do) run early or late, sometimes by quite a few minutes.
The two suburban services – half-hourly to Royston and the hourly semi-fast – have to go on platforms 9 and 10 (and nothing else can go on either of those platforms). Sometimes an incoming train doesn't form an outgoing service, but after a while asks for a (shunting) loco to take it to the depot.
Thus we end up with a surprisingly complex scenario; and at certain times during the simulated work-shift it becomes just about impossible to keep to timetable, even when everything arrives on time thus creating no deviations from a nominal pattern. For example, at just after 9 am, a situation arises whereby there just isn't any platform available for an incoming train until after it has been held up at a red signal outside the station.
There is no way around this; and even solving that with a minimal delay then, of necessity, holds up the outgoing semi-fast suburban service at 0908 hrs, which ends up departing a minute late. There are a couple of other sticky moments in a similar vein; and several periods when, because of other movements, it is very difficult to get all the needed locomotives out of the yard and attached to trains in time for their scheduled departures.
Overall, this relatively simple simulation is actually quite a challenge. A hugely bigger such game, called simply Signal Box, is vast by comparison, and unless one has a display some 4,000 pixels wide will always involve sideways scrolling so one never gets an all-at-once view of what is going on. I can't really do that one, I have found.
Perhaps if someone were to produce something in between that will fit on a modern HD (1,920 pixels wide) display, that might be manageable. In the meantime, I still have an occasional go at KingsX, at which I am now usually rated as Outstanding!
On the BBC Micro this involved a track display screen, switchable to/from a loco yard screen, and operated in four basic colours (Mode 1 on the Beeb) of black, white, yellow and red.
It was very effective, and not all that frenetic – though it does have its moments at certain times during the shift. Being judged Excellent, let alone Outstanding, wasn't exactly easy to achieve, despite the deceptively straightforward nature of the game and its sometimes seemingly leisurely pace.
It was really all about locomotives: getting the right type attached to outgoing trains, getting the locos that brought the trains in subsequently out of the platforms and (in most instances) to the station's loco yard for refuelling. The judgment on one's performance was based around timekeeping – essentially, getting trains out on time, and not keeping them waiting to come in from elsewhere on either of the 'up' lines (Up Fast and Up Slow). Although the slow line arrivals always keep to time, there are random early and late arrivals of various time-shifts on the Up Fast (UF) track.
Come forward several years and Acorn's Archimedes computer and its successors supplanted the old BBC Micros for most purposes (there are still some Beebs running factory machinery and doing other jobs even today). I was delighted when The Data Store in Bromley released an updated version of the KingsX game to run in the newer computers' desktop, fully multi-tasking, and all in one display...
The loco yard now appears at the bottom-right of the display area, rather than in a separate screen as it had to in the old Beeb version. From this we can see a few of the complications.
For example, the West Bay (WB) where the Motorail from time to time asks for a shunting locomotive (Class 31) to take some coaches to the Ferme Park depot near Finsbury Park. The loco Hold point (H) causes a blockage of the Up Slow (US) line every single time a loco moves to or from that point. It takes three minutes (the game advances in half-minute 'jumps' at ten times real life speed, i.e. every three seconds) for a loco to get to the Hold point from a platform or the yard, so it's quite an impediment.
On top of this, the occasional parcels train needs to go into platform 1, so that has to be clear of stock and locos in time for their arrivals – and those trains can (and often do) run early or late, sometimes by quite a few minutes.
The two suburban services – half-hourly to Royston and the hourly semi-fast – have to go on platforms 9 and 10 (and nothing else can go on either of those platforms). Sometimes an incoming train doesn't form an outgoing service, but after a while asks for a (shunting) loco to take it to the depot.
Thus we end up with a surprisingly complex scenario; and at certain times during the simulated work-shift it becomes just about impossible to keep to timetable, even when everything arrives on time thus creating no deviations from a nominal pattern. For example, at just after 9 am, a situation arises whereby there just isn't any platform available for an incoming train until after it has been held up at a red signal outside the station.
There is no way around this; and even solving that with a minimal delay then, of necessity, holds up the outgoing semi-fast suburban service at 0908 hrs, which ends up departing a minute late. There are a couple of other sticky moments in a similar vein; and several periods when, because of other movements, it is very difficult to get all the needed locomotives out of the yard and attached to trains in time for their scheduled departures.
Overall, this relatively simple simulation is actually quite a challenge. A hugely bigger such game, called simply Signal Box, is vast by comparison, and unless one has a display some 4,000 pixels wide will always involve sideways scrolling so one never gets an all-at-once view of what is going on. I can't really do that one, I have found.
Perhaps if someone were to produce something in between that will fit on a modern HD (1,920 pixels wide) display, that might be manageable. In the meantime, I still have an occasional go at KingsX, at which I am now usually rated as Outstanding!
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