TECH: Chromebooks And Why I Am A Convert

I’ve been using a Chromebook for just over a month now, and I’ve totally fallen in love with it. After years of mainly Windows, some Mac, some Linux and even older stuff (Acorn Archimedes anyone?) I’ve found an OS that just does works for me.

The last computer I actually bought was a cheap Linux netbook for £100 about 7 years ago - all others had been inherited or bought.  It just about did the job - I needed it to write basic documents like CVs, to check emails and to blog. 

Since that more or less bit the dust I’d been borrowing a spare laptop that had Windows XP on it which was a big step up but was slooooow.  Booting up into a usable state was about 8 minutes, and having to install more and more programmes to do what I wanted to do just slowed it even more, along with the virus checker chugging away in the background.

So I got an Acer 14 Chromebook with an HD screen because I wanted an efficient and affordable laptop I could call my own. The interface is very intuitive, but is in reality is only there to enhance the Chrome browser that 67% of readers of this blog use.  This is a really weird concept to get your head around at first if, like me, you have been using Windows for over 20 years.  You aren’t installing programmes, just plug ins to the Chrome browser.  You aren’t using a virus checker because there’s nothing a virus can really do to you.  The system updates itself in the background so if there are updates (and they do seem pretty regular) you won’t notice it at all.

Most importantly, everything is fast and feels ‘clean’.  It’s booted up in 10 seconds - it actually takes me about as long to enter my password.  There’s never been any lag for me.  It’s a no-frills approach to computing that’s a pleasure to actually use.

As technology goes more and more down the cloud route, the benefits of a browser-based OS become very real. One of the main criticisms of ChromeOS is that there’s little you can do on them unless you have an internet connection.  Which isn’t entirely untrue, but my response question would be: how often does an average user use their laptop without an internet connection?  

Writing documents and listening to downloaded music are the main things probably, which can be done with a Chromebook offline.  Games as well maybe, although the chances are if you’re a serious gamer you have a desktop or a console, not a laptop - and even then, our dependence on internet has encroached into this area with some of the most popular games being MMO. The majority of things people use their computers for today require wifi.

I know 2 people with MacBooks and many, many more with Windows laptops, but I think the minority would suffer from using a Chromebook instead.  All that time ago my netbook felt very limited.  Since we have become more and more fond of streaming media and using our smartphones for doing things, confining yourself to using a web browser is far less constricting.  It should be said that I have been invested in using Chrome, Google Drive, Android etc for years now - if you’re already part of the IOS ecosystem it would make sense to get an IOS laptop.  But I’ve been using a Chromebook for around 6 weeks there have been only 2 times when I have had to use a Windows PC to try and do something.  Once was to fill in a form which had been created using lots of boxes on MS Word, which neither Google Docs or MS Online could manage (and to be honest even using desktop Word it wasn’t easy to do because it had been badly formatted to begin with). The second time was trying to upload different versions of songs to Google Play Music without them being replaced by the service’s matching system (and it didn’t work doing it on Windows).  Neither were major things, although it goes to show that there’s a way to go for Google before it can expect people to use Chromebooks as their only device.  

That time may be closer than expected though.  Chromebooks are being used heavily in schools, meaning that a generation will be comfortable with using them, offices are increasingly becoming paperless and our media is now not only almost completely digital but largely cloud-based as well.  Coupled with that, Android apps are planned to come to most Chromebooks soon - although the roll out has been painfully slow - and these will plug a lot of the gaps for people that see a lack of functionality.  Although seen as a bit silly when they first came out, Chromebooks are definitely a very viable option for people these days, and it’s not impossible to foresee a time where they are doing extremely well out of beating Apple on price and Windows on ease of use.

It’s maybe premature to say that ‘they’re the future of computers’ - but I really hope they are.

TV & RADIO: Full Disclosure - The BBC Salaries

BBC stars being forced to reveal their salaries is a bit of a non-story isn’t it? Is it really a surprise to anyone that Gary Lineker isn't on minimum wage, or that Jeremy Vine earns more than a junior doctor?

Of course it's not. This has been at most an open secret; more realistically it is common knowledge. People on the telly get paid shitloads, and the majority of the high earners are white men. That is what we have learnt today.  Who knew, eh?

The real story here is the government of the day getting a dig in at Auntie Beeb, and our attitude towards public funding.

All governments seem to end up resenting the BBC, at the very least since the early 60s where ‘That Was The Week That Was’ showed the first signs of the dog biting the hand that fed it. Tory governments make more natural enemies for it because the BBC tends to be quite liberal, but Labour governments usually end up resenting it too; possibly because when they are in opposition it seems like the BBC is on their side, only to find out when they are in power they actually aren't.  Alastair Campbell famously met his match by going on a crusade against the BBC over the Iraq war, and losing because (according to Andrew Rawnsley’s book ‘End Of The Party’) people don’t just see the BBC as a news outlet but also as the people who make Eastenders and Cbeebies.

Theresa May is a Prime Minister who badly needs some heat taken off her and has found a convenient way of doing it, at least temporarily.  The reason why these salaries are being publicised is that May, and Cameron before her, demanded them to be.  That’s fair enough to an extent, it is public money after all, but the way it has been done is very obviously an attempt to shame the BBC.  It won’t work.  In the short term, some pay cuts may be made to some of the more bloated wages.  In the long term, to be honest probably in a day or two, people will go back to hating the politicians again.  The BBC makes things that people enjoy and politicians don’t - the BBC will always win a fight for the public’s heart against politicians.  This is a desperate act of spite that will do nothing except embarrassing a few people who are media-savvy enough to take it.

And pots, kettles, etc - who on earth are politicians, of all people, taking the moral high ground on this issue?  They’re hardly all scrimping and saving with the rest of us, the JAMs that Mother Theresa has done so much for.  We might be putting public money into the BBC but at least we get something we enjoy watching out of it, which is more than can be said for PMQs (they need a new showrunner there…)  They probably win on points regarding gender equality, but I’m pretty confident in saying that Westminster is not a hotbed of forward thinking feminism.

We do have a love/hate relationship towards public funding - no one enjoys being taxed, but most people enjoy the free healthcare and free entertainment that goes with it.  The BBC obviously isn’t our only source for entertainment - out of the old school main channels, there’s also ITV and Channel 4.  ITV commands similar ratings for programmes that to my eyes are much lower in quality.  Channel 4 - which is partly publicly funded as well - also produces interesting programmes.  However, it’s fairly uncontroversial to say that for many the BBC produces the majority of the media they consume, and that is because of the quality of the programmes it produces both for TV and radio.  

It is extravagant to pay millions of pounds to a small group of individuals.  It’s perfectly valid to wonder why the hell society seems to have always thought it perfectly sensible to pay actors and presenters more than doctors - that has always baffled me. But that’s not the BBC, that’s how it is everywhere, and the BBC has to compete within its market or settle for having less talent than its competitors.  It obviously pays less than other organisations because there’s always BBC stars ‘selling out’ to other channels for more money - and usually immediately losing their audience because they’re no longer producing something people want to watch, like those two off the One Show who went over to ITV and dropped off the face of the earth.  

Would I pay Chris Evans over £2m for presenting Radio 2?  Fuck no.  I wouldn’t pay Chris Evans to do anything, apart from to get the hell away from me.  Even if I liked him, I’d probably say £2m is too much.  However, most of the salaries on the list don’t seem batshit crazy when taken in context of the industry - it would be interesting to see them compared with their ITV or Sky counterparts but that’s not going to happen.  I suspect it’s a whole lot less, maybe comparable to wages of a private and an NHS doctor.  As far as I’m concerned the BBC has consistently good results in many areas and I’m happy with what they do.

Which is more than I can say for this government.  If you don’t like the idea of people being massively overpaid, don’t take your eye off the ball like May wants you to and instead think about how much public money she earns, and more importantly how much she spends - and in whose interests it is spent in.  

TV: Doctor Who Series 10 Finale

This blog contains spoilers...

The ending of the latest series of Doctor Who ends with the 12th Doctor stubbornly refusing to regenerate, something completely in tune with Capaldi's portrayal; and then meeting the first Doctor, possibly the only previous Doctor who can match the 12th Doctor for stubbornness.

Well I did say there were spoilers.

Anyway, that will all be dealt with at Christmas no doubt, Steven Moffat’s last flirtation with timey-wimeyness before he goes. Well his love of timey-wimeyness is less ‘flirtatious’ and more ‘rampant’ but you know what I mean.

This last series has seen the introduction of Bill, who has been one of the best companions in a long time.  Clara was originally created more as a development than a personality - the ‘impossible girl’ - and her departure last year, where she basically became a Doctor-like figure in her own right was a continuation of this, despite an attempt to giver her more character development in Season 8. That’s not to say she was a bad companion, but it’s refreshing to have a character that was more emotionally realistic and bult from the ground up.  In fact Bill’s character is probably my favourite companion from Steven Moffat’s tenure. Moffat sometimes can’t seem to help himself from going all timey-wimey on his characters, which isn’t always a bad thing in this kind of show - might not work as well in Corrie - but it’s nice that Bill became a powerful and realistic dramatic force in the programme to contrast with the weirdness around her.  Until she became a Cyberman and the Doctor couldn’t save her of course (you know by now there’s spoilers - if you’re annoyed about this spoiler you only have yourself to blame).

The build up of the evolution of the Cybermen finally gives them a origin genesis story in New Who - their introduction way back in Season 2 was basically the same as Genesis of the Daleks, but with Trigger from Only Fools and Horses instead of Davros.  Seeing the slow evolution of the Cybermen as something that a civilization willingly does in order to survive is believab

le (as far as Doctor Who goes) and creepy than the idea they started out as kidnapped homeless people by bad men and turned into robots.  The city (which has a strong 1920s ‘Metropolis’ feel), dominated by a hospital with its Inpatient, Conversion Theatre and Outpatient wards feels suitably decrepit and desperate. The patients, covered head to toe in bandages before being fully converted, are eerily sympathetic, and give a greater understanding of the point of the Cybermen - they started out as willing converts, and then went around the universe spreading the good news.  They’re technological evangelists.  According to the Doctor, all the vague and conflicting stories about where the Cybermen come from can be explained by the fact that this is where evolution takes everyone eventually, when mother nature can’t keep up with the demand for survival, humans give her a hand with their own augmentations.  These early Cybermen, based on the original Cybermen from the 60s, are suitably slap-dash and the best that could be done with limited resources (which in real life is exactly why the Cybermen costumes looked like they did in ‘The Tenth Planet’ making this episode partly a retcon 60s costume design).  It doesn’t take them long before they develop ‘war units’, who are the traditional armour plated Cybermen we are used to.

Oh yes, and that seemingly friendly man who looks after Bill for years in order to trick her into undergoing conversion?  Yes, that’s John Simm in disguise for the majority of the first half of the story, doing an excellent job of the Master being in disguise for an actual reason.  In the first multi-Master story the series has done, he is there in order to remind us how much Missy has become better at not being a completely villainous bitch and is starting to go over to the Doctor's side.  Simm’s Master is the traditional Master, the trickster who just likes being evil for evil’s sake.  He’s largely there as a counterpoint to Missy but steals a great many of his scenes.  When both versions of the Master murder each other (timey-wimey breakdown alert) there’s a brilliant scene of them giggling and laughing their heads off like naughty schoolchildren.

This series got the balance of dark and light just right.  The Doctor is still aloof but not as unkind or unsympathetic as he was in Season 8.  Most importantly, the plots have been entirely relatable and could be a great place to introduce someone to the series (perhaps - as long as someone could explain the Master to them).  If you’re ever trying to watch the show with a non-fan, Moffat is at his most frustrating when he over-eggs the clever plotting and it’s much more reined in here.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Capaldi’s Doctor finally ends, and of course finding out who his replacement is going to be...

BOOKS: Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of The Rock Stars by David Hepworth

It’s obvious from David Hepworth’s book that he is a big 70’s guy. His other recently published book, which i haven’t read, is about 1971.  He is definitely the kind of person (I can just picture it) who would say “music isn’t what it was.”  That’s effectively what this book is.

Therefore, this book on the rise and fall of Rock Gods is at its most enthusiastic in its first half.  Rock Gods of the 80s onwards are treated with less interest.  Kurt Cobain’s suicide is dealt with intelligently but briefly, almost dismissively compared with the longest chapter which is on the rise of Bob Dylan who Hepworth considers the ultimate Rock God.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with that although it gives more than a clue to what Hepworth considers the golden age of rock music.

Really, the nature of the book, although interesting, has less depth than the title promises.  The introduction starts promisingly but the book itself is really just a chronologically ordered list of potted biographies of famous musicians based on a year in their lives.  The book very quickly moves away from analysis of what a rock god is or was and becomes more concerned with anecdotes and trivia - interesting trivia, but still.  Example: the chapter about Jim Morrison focuses a lot on the year he got done for getting his cock out onstage but doesn’t really explain why I should care, or how it contributes to the rise or the fall of the Rock God. Likewise the fact that Little Richard's 'Tutti Frutti' was originally about anal sex is funny but essentially pub quiz level information.

The ‘event in the year in the life of’ approach rarely works for me.  Without context such a narrative relies either on the reader already knowing the context or not caring about it.  The death of John Lennon works better than most; but this could well be because The Beatles have several chapters devoted in this book.  Elvis gets two, everyone else just gets one year, usually the year they made it or the year they died.  

Likewise the list approach is always highly subjective.  My main query is the inclusion of Ian Dury, who was great but a relatively minor player looking back. Considering there’s no chapter on Sid Vicious from the same period seems an odd choice, Vicious being the ultimate anti-Rock God.  The conclusion I draw from this is that Hepworth isn’t interested in 70s punk and so chose someone he liked to write about.  Nothing necessarily wrong with that, it is his book after all - but this points once more to this being more like a list of favourite artists than historically influential ones.  Another quirk is the end of chapter lists of important singles and albums from the year in question, which sometimes omit songs from the artist you’ve just been reading about.

The overarching narrative is that the concept of the Rock God relied a lot on their mystique and ability to seem different to their audience in a special way.  According to Hepworth this went out the window with the arrival of us living, in his words, in a hip-hop world, which he seems to class as the opposite of rock somehow.  It’s true that In the 21st century, it’s not hard to find out what people in the charts have for breakfast or where they shop, which makes them less mysterious and more directly boastful. Instead of hiding away in a Gothic ruin pretending to be an occultist like Jimmy Page they will show off their bling on Instagram at will.  Considering there are chapters on Elvis and Michael Jackson, this doesn’t sit right with me.  They’d be straight on Instagram showing off their latest expensive diamond encrusted toilet roll holder or whatever.  The fall of the Rock God is more likely due to the fact that Rock Gods lost their novelty and that Rock as a genre ground to a natural halt.  

The mid-90s is a good place to stop - it was at this point that rock slowly became more derivative, with Oasis and Blur pinching bits of the 60s, Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party pinching bits of the Post-Punk era, and the original bands themselves reforming to do on the whole uninspiring Greatest Hits/grab the money and run nostalgia gigs.  The Rolling Stones are for instance are technically still going, but I’m sure people who see them now are either on a nostalgia trip or are curious to hear them play their old stuff live - and they give those people what they want.  Go on, name their last album without googling it - or in fact one of their albums from the last 20 years.

It is, however, premature to write off rock as a genre even if Rock Gods have in fact gone for good.  There’s always exciting indie stuff out there, as well as a lot of dreck admittedly - but that has always been the case, even in Hepworth’s day - for every Beatles there would have been a hundred Gerry and the Pacemakers.  Music is fashion, and fashion goes in cycles.  The 80s were on the whole a dry spell for guitar bands in the mainstream, but things turned around in the 90s through to the early 00s and then turned around again.  What Hepworth really means are that his Rock Gods are dead.  Music stardom still exists, and there’s nothing to say that guitar music won’t become culturally dominant again (although it’s true to say that there’s nothing to say it will either).

This is not a bad book, and is well written for what it is - if you enjoy music from the period covered (and I definitely do) you will find it very enjoyable.  But don’t expect more than some interesting facts from the past.  The future has no place in Hepworth’s obituary of the Rock God.