So when do India/China catch up?

I've had the opportunity to see Hans Rosling before in conferences, and one can't help but be infected by his sense of enthusiasm at the stories which his powerful interpretation of statistics reveal.

I guess his broadmindedness is partly explained by this stint in India as a student. I didn't know that before.

There is a new field or term emerging called data visualisation. The experts describe 'a sea of data' which is now available globally and accessible anywhere online. The problem is how to interpret it to reveal its hidden narrative. To find the simple story within the data/information overload. Rosling has been doing that since a long time before.

Thanks to the following presentation, 37 years from is now a milestone all of Asia would have its eye on. Striding along the stage with an "environmentally-friendly" presentation pointer, Rosling looks a bit like a modern day Gandhi, just carrying a bigger stick. He understands and sympathises with the emotional touch points of Indian audience and navigates them well. The prediction graphs and statistics are not going to progress on their own, we will have to live each day to that future date and contribute to the trajectory.

In case you don't want to see the whole video, Rosling answers the question at about 14 minutes from the start...

*        *        *

Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century

I went to the cinema to expecting to see a different Sherlock Holmes, a character repackaged to cater to a new market, in a crude manner that detracts from his original essence. Didn't happen.

The new Sherlock Holmes, played by Robert Downey Jr., is a much more dynamic character - younger, more adventurous, bit less of the English gentleman than previously depicted. Nevertheless, the core of the character hasn't been lost - the eccentricity, self-assuredness, intense concentration, and even human weaknesses. Jude Law would not have been my choice for Dr. Watson, but he's pulled it off quite well, next to Downey's Holmes. So, if you are a fan of the classic A.C.Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, you probably won't be disappointed.

The marked difference was in the the look of Holmes. The new movie has not shied away from redefining the portrait - gone is the combed back hairstyle, the sharp jawline and chin. Downey doesn't look anything like the classic Holmes, who has been played best by actor Jeremy Brett (see on the right) in the almost complete series by Granada Television. Jeremy Brett was probably the first to capture the full theatrical intensity of the character, watching him was like following the original sketch in the books. In fact, my friend Prasanna aptly remarked that the villain in the movie is a closer look to the classic Holmes. Not commonly known is the story that the look of Holmes didn't come from the author A.C. Doyle but from his first illustrator.

The story of Sherlock Holmes first began in 1887, with the story A Study in Scarlet, published in Strand magazine, London. The Sign of Four was published in 1890, and the series The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes began in 1891 ...

With the stories serialized in The Strand came the first illustrations, and it was Sydney Paget who was to fix the the features of the tall, thin, bony character for generations of enthralled readers. The story is that Sydney was actually commissioned by mistake, instead of his brother Walter, whose work the magazine knew through his illustrations for Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson. If so, this quirk of fate was balanced by a kind of poetic justice on Sydney's part, for he used his brother's lean features as his model for Holmes. And later after Sydney's death in January 1908, Walter himself illustrated one of the stories, The Adventure of the Dying Detective. What Holmes would have looked like had Walter got there first we can only guess, for, like all the other artists commissioned to continue Sydney Paget's work, Walter did not stray far from the image of himself Sydney had fleshed upon the bones of Conan Doyle's creation.

- Preface, The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes

Holmes has been seen that way ever since. There have been many actors in to play the detective, all bearing resemblance to Sydney Paget's illustration.

However, more than that, the reason Sherlock Holmes has avid followers around the world and across generations is his personality. In a sense he is very much a 20th century man, before his times, even bit of a rebel. His firm foundation in scientific principles led him to be accessible, yet his public performance of a mind-reader and magician is highly entertaining. He's a magician who, in the end, reveals his tricks of the trade, leading all who read the accounts to think that they can follow the indicated lead. He's a fictional character that has inspired creation of countless other similar fictional characters. It becomes more than just a story.

The new movie with all the benefits of modern technology (and big budget) fills in the larger picture as well. The musical score suits the setting. There are panoramic views of the London of the late 19th century, with references to the social, technological and industrial upheavels taking place ..

Arthur Conan Doyle's birth year, 1859, fell 22 years into Queen Victoria's 64-year reign, a time of unparalleled growth and optimism for the British Empire. Resources and labor taken from colonies worldwide had made England prosper, and the time of serious independence struggles lay in the distant future. Business flourished, technology blossomed, and London grew at a great rate - from one million people to six in the space of a century - creating problems of urban overcrowding familiar to us today: poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, crime. While the great divide between rich and poor and the economic and human strain of maintaining the colonies exacerbated social problems that were as yet insoluble, Victorian Britons, led by Victoria's husband Albert, put their faith in technology and science. The contrasts and conundrums of this fascinating time provided Conan Doyle with the raw material and the backdrop for Sherlock Holmes: a man of science, undistracted by the gentler passions, who moved easily through the disquieting urban space, using his wits to solve its moral and practical dilemmas.

- Sherlock Holmes, Victorian Gentleman http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/history.html

Come to think of it, there are actually many parallels to the enormous changes taking place in cities of the today's emerging nations. Many of similar patterns and contrasts can be spotted in places such as New Delhi. It could be a new setting for a modern fictional detective.

Books: Richard Herley

Here's another author who is now offering his books (or ebooks) direct to users. A relatively well-known author who's book The Stone Arrow won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. His book The Penal Colony was made into a movie No Escape starring Ray Liotta.

He likens his delivery mode to software shareware - "A model based on trust" :

You are free to download and read each of the books posted on this site. If you enjoy or gain value from it, I ask you to pay me a one-off fee. Just as with computer shareware, the same condition is imposed on recipients of any copies you make.

The fee is related to the length of work as well as to my collection costs, and is comparable to a single royalty from a mid-priced edition. It is much less than the price of a paperback or a commercial ebook of similar quality and length.

In this way you will encourage me to go on producing work you like. I hope that you will also feel a personal interest in the book concerned and a connection with its author.

The books are available on his website http://www.richardherley.com/ .

Armageddon 2007 in Wellington

OK, my hand's been force-ed. I had been lazying around not putting up the pics from the Armageddon 2007 event in Wellington. But thanks to my pal Monty's initiative, I better get around to it. There are always more than one side to a story.

'Armageddon' is held every year in Wellington, it's a showcase of art, technologies, media and of course toys and collectibles related to the imaginative worlds formed in human minds. This is the first time I visited one of these. We got to meet Billy Dee Williams, the actor who played Lando Calrissian in Star Wars. He was pretty nice - smiled and shook hands.

 

We also got to meet with the actor John Rhys Davies - he played Gimli in Lord of the Rings. I told him I'm a big fan, and the big man winked back, while putting sugar into his coffee.

 

Most of the cast of Pan's Labyrinth was also present, but we had no idea who was who.

There were stalls showcasing the gadgetry that goes into making the costumes - rubber masks, clothes and props. There were lines of computers with enthusiasts trying out the latest computer games. Sony was showcasing its latest Playstation 3 gaming console. There was a team from Massey University Institute of Technology and Engineering demonstrating a robot that can play a ball game on a board. I chatted with the project Professor, and he said that they sometimes have teams of robots playing each other. The robots were controlled by a remote computer, rather than being autonomous devices. An overhead camera mapped the board and the position of the robot and relayed that to the controller.




There were also plenty of vendors selling computer games, board games, DVDs. I completed my collection of Matrix movies, by picking up a DVD of the first movie. There were plenty of characters from the movies walking around, there were competitions happening on stage involving re-enactments of favorite scenes.

The New Zealand Army was in here too. They were letting people try out their training simulations. These looked like games but responded much more sluggishly, probably more realistically. All wars should remain that way - games inside machines - and not spill out messily into the real world.

I had really come to take a look at the graphic artists and their work. Comic art has a lot of influence on contemporary culture. Look at all the latest movies such as 300.

In the end, I just felt a couple of decades younger, and let myself go into the fun atmosphere. There's a slideshow of more pictures below, none of which are to be take seriously, of course. ;)



Monty's take on things:
Photos
Comic

Book Review: The First $20 million is Always the Hardest

I read this book around 5 years ago, but it's passages keep coming back to me. It's quite superb and written for anyone to read, though techies will identify with it and enjoy it the most. I laughed and nodded my head through many of the pages. It was published in March 1997 and is authored by Po Bronson, who has been described as: "Po Bronson is a genuine voice of a new generation, the bard of Silicon Valley." by Lewis Lapham

It is written in the time and about the time when information technology was a boom story. Everybody was inflating the internet bubble without any conception of a possible bust at the end. Many techies were working feverishly to turn their expertise and ideas into fortune. Riches and Glory never seemed so near as in those early years. It may seem so long ago, but we are only talking the 1990's.

In the beginning of the book an employee, the main character Andy Caspar, goes through the process of leaving his company - yeah, you simply can't just walk out. He's on a bright-eyed quest to join the league of enterprising individuals out there engaging in research and making a difference. At the other end is a seasoned project manager, Francis Benoit who's already had a string of achievements under his belt and is now trying to form a new team. He's past the hype and trying to push the realistic boundaries. The starting setting is 'LaHonda research center', the place where Francis Benoit works and where Andy Caspar is looking to join.

Excerpt:

Benoit chipped in. "I want him to keep my friend Ronny Banks, but Hank here has been trying to convince me that we should keep you instead. Maybe you would care to help us."

Andy was caught off guard. What could he possibly say about himself that would earn their respect? What did they want? "Look, I’m not a conventional engineer," he started out, "I didn’t even study engineering in college, but maybe that makes me … different." He was just saying something, but Francis Benoit leapt at it.

"Different? Now that’s an interesting theorem. How do you think it would make you different?"

"Well, I might approach a problem differently."

Francis baited him. "Are you saying you are different because you approach things differently, or you approach things differently because you are different?"

Now Andy wished he hadn’t said anything. "Sometimes I think I see simpler solutions …" he offered.

"Ahhh, now we have something. You said before that you approach things differently, therefore you are different. Now you say that you have simpler solutions, so I am to conclude that you are simple?"

Andy looked to Hank Menzinger for help. He was still there grinning away, as if we all should be enjoying our merry selves right now!

"Perhaps Andrews would be a little more comfortable if you asked him some questions," Menzinger offered.

Yes, do that, Andy thought. But wait—Andrews? Plural? Menzinger had said Andrews again. Menzinger thought his name was Caspar Andrews! Menzinger was his supposed advocate in this debate, the one small chance he had at being reinvited, and Menzinger didn’t even know his name!

"Uh, it’s Andy …"

Francis said, "You used to work at Omega, huh? Did you ever sell the Falcon chip?" Francis had designed the Falcon.

"I left before the Falcon. I was selling the Eagle, the 486."

"Did you like it there?"

Should he tell the truth? Probably not. "Yeah, I guess."

"Then why did you leave?"

"Dunno. They don’t really let marketing people become programmers. The usual career path is the other way around, programmers burn out after five years, move to marketing."

Francis said, "Why do you think they burn out so fast?"

This was a delicate question, but Andy couldn’t avoid the truth, even if Omega was a big sponsor for La Honda. "In that environment, programmers have to make so many compromises … it’s hard to keep the desire, the will, when half your work gets thrown out every year."

That brought a bit of a smile to Francis’ mouth. Andy wondered if maybe he’d said something right.

In the end Francis banishes Andy and a bunch of usual suspects to a shed to work on an impossible project, essentially to get them out of his main team. The project is to make the first $100 PC. Now what would happen if Andy's disgruntled bunch - somehow, maybe, actually succeed. That's where you'll have to read the book. It was one of those books that kept me in a happy mood for weeks.

If you don't like reading then there's the Movie. It is a disappointing Hollywood adaptation, mainly goofy without any of the intelligent sparks, and it ruins the advanced interesting makeup of many of characters.

At present, as the digital economy matures, the benchmarks for a successful idea are getting harder. In this year's Sun (Microsystems) Developers Day conference, the keynote speaker emphasized that investors look to see some sort of return on their investment within 6 months, they used to be patient for years.

Read Book Prologue
Read First Chapter
Amazon Link

Review: An Inconvenient Truth

I rate it a full '5 stars'. If you can see it, see it on a big screen, that's where the scale of the presentations make an impression. I went with my wife today, on a Saturday morning, and found the cinema empty. It was a fun exclusive screening.

Though many of the facts are popularly known, this movie meets the challenge of presenting these in their true context while making an impact. Along the way, Al Gore explains his life-long involvement in the issue, and that this is not a new fad that he has picked up. Examples of worldwide glacier reduction and desertification are very shocking. Many areas neglected in the popular media, show some of the most disturbing illustrations.

This movie may have an effect where everything else seems to have failed - changing the perception of the US public. Most of them don't really care, think that environment concerns are questionable, don't affect them, or is just another way to spoil their economy. Strangest of all the US administration seems to agree with this. Perhaps its just that US government is heavily swayed by mercantile lobby. The movie does acknowledges that US accounts for more carbon dioxide emissions than most of the earth's continent combined. The refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol is highlighted. It is also noted that some states of the US are disagreeing with the central administration and trying to pass smarter emission regulations. Most of the states shown seemed to be democratic.

But its more than that - Asia is rising and following on the same paths that developed countries have. With all the talk of leapfrogging technology era's, perhaps Asia can leapfrog over the industrial irresponsible practices and be more environment friendly. Japan is shown to have the worlds best car emission regulations. In New Delhi, the public transport system buses and autorickshaws have been converted to Natural Gas engines, perceptibly improving the air quality of the city.