always_black

Managing a Mod Project

2004-10-08T12:21:17Z

I was a little bit unsure of what the seminar was supposed to be, other than the title, “Managing a Mod Project”. It still seems a bit presumptious of me to take that mantle on, as mentioned elsewhere on this site my 'management' role of the single mod I've worked on consisted of overseeing the last deperate attempts to finish the first part of the first episode of The Cassandra Project. On the other hand when it comes to cataloguing mistakes to be learned from, I decided I probably had enough experience to do that well enough. And as I said, I was due an adventure.

A presentation that never was. Recorded here because I like it better written out straight than the mental image of me sweating under spotlights in front of actual real people.

In _blackbox: Managing a Mod Project

always_black @ 2004-09-27T13:06:00

2004-09-27T12:09:56Z

I finally got around to making a website to put all of my stuff on. It's here:

http://www.alwaysblack.com/

I've already transfered the stuff I wrote here to there and in future I'll put new stuff there and a link in here for the benefit of the friends system.

The website also includes its own forum for comments and I appreciate any criticism so if you feel the need please post it on there:

http://www.alwaysblack.com/forum/index.php

Queen of the Iceni

2004-09-01T15:18:29Z

The release of the Rome: Total War demo led to a discussion about use of the wedge formation by Roman infantry. I thought I remembered something about it used to defeat Boudica, so I looked it up. I'd forgotten what an utterly perfect picture of human savagery the story of the Iceni Queen is.

Prasutagus, King of the Iceni feared that upon his death the occupying Romans would no longer honour his kingdom's client status. In his will he left half of everything to which he was entitled to the Empire, perhaps hoping that would be tribute enough to keep the wolves from the door of his wife and daughters. I wonder what he said to her, on his deathbed. Did he tell her he'd seen to her future? Did he tell her she would be safe when he was gone?

When Prasutagus died the Roman bureaucracy tried to take it all. "The Icenian chiefs were deprived of their family estates as if the Romans had been given the whole country. The King's own relatives were treated like slaves" says Tacitus. Did she stand against them when the soldiers came to stake their claims?

Modern translations say that the Queen was flogged as punishment, but other variations use the term "scourged". I'd heard the term 'scourge' used as a verb before. It's an odd usage so I looked it up. From: http://www.bible-history.com/past/flagrum.html

"The Roman scourge, also called the "flagrum" or "flagellum" was a short whip made of two or three leather (ox-hide) thongs or ropes connected to a handle as in the sketch above. The leather thongs were knotted with a number of small pieces of metal, usually zinc and iron, attached at various intervals. Scourging would quickly remove the skin. According to history the punishment of a slave was particularly dreadful. The leather was knotted with bones, or heavy indented pieces of bronze.

"Sometimes the Roman scourge contained a hook at the end and was given the terrifying name "scorpion." The criminal was made to stoop which would make deeper lashes from the shoulders to the waist."

Tacitus also records that Boudica's daughters, aged 10 and 14, were raped as an additional punishment to their mother.

What do you imagine could be born there behind those eyes while the skin is torn from your veins, the veins from your meat and the meat from your bones? And while the squeals and screams of your children tear your soul to tattered rags?

Put yourself in her place, tug as hard as you can on those leather straps and as vainly, and try to decide which pain is worse, the cruel instrument that rhythmically flays the skin from your shoulders, the cries of your babies as they plead to you and with their tormentors or the memory of departed Prasutagus, your husband and king, and his whispered promises that lie broken and shattered.

How much outrage can the bones of one skull contain? The humiliation compounded upon anger compounded upon utter fury, pressure cooked with white hot hatred until a new star is born like a diamond from coal. And the power of that new star that lives in your head, that lights everything you cast your eyes upon, what could you do with that power?

I think I could burn the whole fucking world to the ground.

Dio Cassius the historian: "In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colors over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch."

And from Tacitus, a speech attributed to her: "But now, it is not as a woman descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I am avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters. Roman lust has gone so far that not our very persons, nor even age or virginity, are left unpolluted. But heaven is on the side of righteous vengeance; a legion which has dared to fight has perished; the rest are hiding themselves in their camp, or are thinking anxiously of flight. They will not sustain even the din and the shout of so many thousands, much less our charge and our blows. If you weigh well the strength of the armies, and the causes of the war, you will see that in this battle you must conquer or die. This is a woman's resolve; as for the men, they may live and be slaves."

Boudica assembled the tribes of the Iceni and the Trinovantes and began a revolt. She marched them south to Camulodunumm and began to take apart the Roman Empire, one Roman at a time. Inhabited by veterans and poorly defended, Boudica's army laid waste to Camulodumn. And then Londinium and then Verulamium.

Heaven is on the side of righteous vengeance, she said. Three cities reduced to ash, Roman men, women and children slaughtered like cattle. The survivors in Camulodunumm that took shelter from the carnage inside a temple were burned alive as they prayed in vain for salvation. Innumerable dead, the Britons reportedly tried to level everything the Romans had touched. One account claims they cut the breasts from the Roman women and stuffed them into their mouths. It claims that they impaled them then on wooden stakes. Was that enough, do you think? To put out the star in her head? Can you slake a thirst like that when it looks you in the eyes each day and calls you mother?

The bulk of the occupying forces of Rome were otherwise engaged far away in the isle of Mona, now called Angelsey, murdering druids. They marched south when news reached them that a Briton woman, hell-bent on driving Rome from the shores of this island, had made a fairly good start on her goal.

The Roman commander Suetonius Paullinus met Boudica's rebels on an unknown field of battle. His ten thousand legionaries faced down two hundred thousand blood-stained and angry Britons. They defeated them easily, so the reports say, losing only 400 men and decimating the Britons to the last man. Superior training and technique trumping the brute force tactics of their opposition.

It couldn't have ended any other way, I suppose. A fire like the one that was lit inside Boudica can't rage forever. If you're the fanciful type (and I am), one might say that Boudica got paid what she was due, that the old gods that were dying with the massacred druids to the north-west lent her the vestiges of their guttering power to cut one last bloody gash in the side of advancing 'civilisation'. The price for that last blow a demonstration of the rule of discipline above enthusiasm, the rule of order above chaos.

Along Came a Spider...

2004-08-02T14:52:00Z

I get accused quite often of reading too much into casual observations. I probably do but it's probably because I find people fascinating, not just the obviously interesting ones but also those 'ordinary' people that you might just pass in the street. Every individual has their own album of stories and it irks me irrationally when I see a glimpse of something interesting but the details are denied to me.

Take yesterday, for example. It was hot, a sweaty summer day and we were walking back to the car after doing the rounds of the shops. Standing in the carpark were two women.

I would place the first woman somewhere in her fifties, possibly older. She had dyed blonde hair with white-grey roots, she wore a summer skirt and a white halter neck top. Her companion was much younger, perhaps in her late teens to early twenties. She wore jeans and a light blue top in a similar halter style. The younger girl was quite studious looking and shy with little black rimmed round glasses.

It's hard to say if they were mother and daughter with a big age gap or even grandmother and granddaughter perhaps, but they spoke to each other with a familiar manner and they seemed as surburban as it gets, nothing at first glance to mark them as remarkable in any way.

As we approached them across the carpark they both turned around to look at something, maybe the car they were expecting. I noticed a dark smudge low down on the shoulderblade on the older woman and as I got closer I saw that it was a tattoo. I don't know a lot about tattoos but this one had that smudgy, faded, slightly distorted look that I associate with being old and worn. Maybe that's a bad assumption on my part, maybe new tattoos can look like that if they are done on older skin. It was hard to figure out what it was, but it caught my eye because although tattoos aren't unusual on ladies of my generation, I still think it's uncommon on ladies of a certain age. As we passed and I got a closer look it turned out to be a depiction of a winged insect, I would say a 'fly'.

This to me is strange in itself and not, I would imagine, a common subject for body adornment least of all for a woman in her fifties. As if that wasn't enough, I automatically looked at the back of her companion and was surprised to see that she also had a tattoo in the same spot, low down on the shoulderblade.

That one was much cleaner and crisper in detail and quite clearly a small garden spider.

Concert

2004-06-08T12:32:16Z

I can't stand being in Boots (the chemist, not the footwear), especially the cosmetics section, so sterile, plastic and chemically synthesised. Just walking around the place gives me a headache, but it's one of those dubious headaches that I worry will lead to maniacal shouting, the pushing over of lipstick displays and the shaking by the shoulders of artificially enhanced shop assistants. So I usually wait outside.

So I was waiting outside Boots on Sunday and across the way were four girls. I'd say they were in late teens, maybe early 20s, dressed casually but down-casual, like for comfort not preening. Worn-in jeans and sweaters for lying on the couch and watching TV rather than butt-torturing strutterwear.

They had arranged themselves in a loose, inwardly facing circle in the middle of the broad pedestrianised street and dumped their canvas bags and battered cases in the middle. Three were violinists (or some such similar instrument, I display my ignorance) and the fourth a cellist squat-sitting on a chair, her instrument held lightly between her knees.

I've seen string quartets busk before, of course, but always on the way to elsewhere with no time to stop and analyse the phenomenon. They struck up and I watched one of the violinists. She wore a dark pink sweater and the knees of her jeans were faded. She had curly hair tied back behind in a pony tail.

I watched her pretty closely, I mean, attentively. I can't play a note on any instrument to save my life and I find people that can really fascinating. She held the violin under her chin, padded with some ad hoc hand towel or a terry washcloth maybe, folded square. She stared intently at the sheet music on the stand in front of her, the bow of the violin moving back and to easily, held lightly.

I couldn't identify the piece they were playing, classical was never really my thing beyond a few compulsory listening sessions my junior school teacher Mr. Holmes forced upon us during Assembly. To me it's the background to some advert or the atmosphere of the lobby of some uncomfortable hotel. I probably have a respectable composer spinning in his grave.

As I watched the girl something significant became apparent. She appeared to change state. It was like watching someone fall asleep, except more dynamic than that. When someone nods off in front of you they are still quite the person you know but the part of them you usually interact with goes absent. It was like that. This is what happened to the girl are she played her violin, but instead of snoring and dribbling she transformed into a conduit for her music.

It's natural to think that the violin is making the music as the bow flies back and forth across the strings, but watching the expression change across her face it's easy to see what a naive and unthinking assumption that is. She had totally given herself over to the sequence, her usual identity demoted to become a living, breathing medium. Her head moves with the detail of each phrase, her eyes are unfocused and unnecessary and the movements of her bow arm and the fingers on the neck of the violin and instinctive and subconscious.

Then she glances up and catches the eye of the girl standing opposite in the circle. Some wordless exchange passes between them, interwoven with just the notes of the music and she smiles and nods. What did she say? I wondered. What did she say in the music and what did she hear in response from her opposite number that brought a smile? The cellist smiled too and I realised that a whole conversation might well have occurred at some level within the private connection these four musicians have created there in the street. It's like magic and these girls are some modern day coven of witches stood there in the street weaving this spell between them.

And the spell was working too, people stopped dead in their tracks to listen to them. Some were the kind you might expect to listen to classical music at any opportunity, elderly shopper in small groups, particularly well-dressed individuals. But there were also young children there rapt in fascination at the power in the noise these four produced together and the parents of those kids just as absorbed. Skinheads and rock chicks and wannabe gangsters stopped too to listen to the four modern day witches in their casual clothes fill the air with emotion.

I never really thought about what the word 'concert' means before. You hear it all the time, 'I went to a concert', 'that concert was rubbish' etc. but these girls were /in concert/, their individual expression ejected through their instruments and then blended together in the air, each like a cog in some kind of organic machine. It must be some privilege to reach a state of union like that.

Worth tossing them a quid for, anyway.

What Happened When I Got Back... Part 1

2004-05-30T22:13:30Z

Transcript of the Captain's announcement upon touching down:

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen, it's currently 6:20 outside the window and here we are at the very busy Heathrow airport.

"As always at Heathrow, every new arrival comes as a complete surprise so we're sitting here on the taxiway waiting for a parking space. Honestly, it's easier to find a spot to park outside a toyshop on Christmas Eve than it is to get somewhere to park a 747 at Heathrow airport these days.

"There are four aircraft in front of us but I have noticed there's a sneaky space available round the back of Terminal Four. We're in a very good position for turning right so with any luck I'll be able to scoot round and nab that one.

"Unfortunately the thing about Terminal Four is it's proximity to a hotel that belongs to a chain that seems to have rather a lot of influence in this world. Heathrow have had a few complaints from residents of the hotel about the noise so this means that unlike other terminals we won't be allowed to proceed under our own power just in case we wake anyone up. we'll have to get a little man in a tractor to tow us in.

"You'd have thought that when they built the hotel they might have noticed the huge international airport at the bottom of the garden, but there you go.

"On behalf of British Airways I'd like to thank you for...blah, blah, blah"

He was showboating for Kylie of course, but still, gotta admire a guy who can summon a sense of humour after haul-assing a 747 halfway around the world.

Unreasonably Exciting at a Primal Level

2004-05-30T13:13:13Z

I love the smell of testosterone in the morning...

http://www.marines.com/default.asp