Phones are obviously portable and these days have clear, easy to read screens (in most lights anyway) and are very light and easy to hold. They’re great if you’re stuck in a queue or on a bus but the small screen size and the fact that keeping the screen on for an extended period of time runs down the battery which isn’t always desirable. Computers are similar, trading off portability and convenience in the form factor for the larger form factor.

The iPad deals with the screen size issue without much impact on either the form factor or the battery life but the LCD display is hard to read in sunlight and can be hard on the eyes for extended use. E-Ink displays deal with those issues by swapping them for others that mean they can only work for eBooks so the devices aren’t at all general purpose. The first generation of displays had problems with frustratingly long refresh times and less than ideal contrast ratios but these have been largely addressed in current generations of device – current generation displays are beautiful.

Thus far I’ve pretty much just been reading copies of books I already have physical copies of so I’ve not really had a think about how I feel about any of the models for eBook publishing that are floating about out there, or about the DRM issues.

One of the most interesting decisions I’ve noticed is the model that things have for handling network I/O. At one end of the scale you’ve got iPhone OS which does very little network I/O off-line – it will fetch mail in the background and there’s MobileMe sync but that’s about it. Everything else is triggered by direct user action and is generally visible to them. Even with the mail there’s an element of interactivity – it will notify the user about mail before it’s actually been downloaded, for example. At the other end of the scale the Blackberry does its level best to mask the existence of the network – any updates go on in the background, with the fact that there’s any interaction with a remote system being hidden everywhere except with things like unsent messages. Both these are reasonable choices.

The iPhone model flows from the same place as the decision not to allow background apps, trading interactive performance and a degree of usability (especially where the network is slow or intermittent) for a tight control on things that incur power and bandwidth costs. This avoids surprises, especially given the number of third party apps out there, ensuring that the system always behaves as expected.

The Blackberry avoids the user being troubled by the vagaries of spotty connectivity but also means resources get consumed without user interaction, which can impact performance all round without it being clear to users what the device has been spending resources on. Then again, it’s much less common to use anything except the standard application set on a Blackberry and that is highly optimized for its function – there’s less to be worried about.

I’m not sure I’d say either approach is better – they’re not solving quite the same problem and they’re certainly part of very different systems – so it’s interesting to consider the differences. Personally I find waiting for the network annoying, but then I’m a pretty technical user so the drawbacks in terms of understanding power consumption aren’t so important for me as they will be for many other users.

Of course, almost all  my production computing is done on Linux where this problem just doesn’t exist (my Macs exist to support my iPhone and provide media playback). So much better on several levels.

This being a Dogma 95 film there is little need to wait for a HD version – the Dogma rules are all about getting back to basics including all-natural lighting and handheld camerawork done with low end cameras. This means there’s really not any detail to miss, instead there’s a visceral, documentary style feel. Really the film is all one big sequence of formal exercises – the Dogma rules are obviously a big formalism, the plot is very Jacobean and the whole thing revolves around a rather grand birthday party with bow ties and a toastmaster. The thing that really hooks me is the contrast between all this formality and the content, which is fairly brutal and emphasised by the visual style. I find this sort of setup endlessly fascinating when it’s done well.

• Encounters at the End of the World: Werner Hertzog goes to Antarctica, making a film more about the sort of people who end up spending their time there than about anything else. Though there are suicidal penguins.
• Mum and Dad: If you like this sort of thing the chances are you’ll think it’s brilliant. You may, however, still agree with the other people who don’t like this sort of thing and might describe it as being sick and wrong.
• Standard Operating Procedure: I blogged about this at the time; Errol Morris covers Abu Ghraib and does it very well.
• Just Another Love Story: I really enjoyed this when I saw it, though I do agree with most of the linked review. It’s a noirish thriller with three different time periods in the story being revealed in parallel. It looks gorgeous, it’s very well executed but I’m hesitant since I think I may feel differently when I see it again.
• Good Dick: In broad terms this is a very messed up take on a romantic comedy, more messed up than I believe it’s really intended to be (if you see it, think about what’s actually going on in the story). I enjoyed it for this and the contrast with the immediate tone but it’s not for everyone.

As far as the EIFF moving to June goes… I’m not convinced. I didn’t notice any dramatic improvement in the quality of the programme and while it did avoid the rain that Edinburgh suffered in August there’s nothing quite like the atmosphere you get during the main festival.

There’s one fantasy series that I have kept up for more years than I’d care to count – a series by Steve Erikson called (in rather grand fantasy style) the Malazan Book of the Fallen. There’s a lot of good stuff in there in terms of standard nuts and bolts things that apply to all books like the quality of the writing and the world building but the main thing that keeps me buying the new novels as they come out is the way it breaks one of the most important genre standards: in these books life is just as random and potentially unfair as it is in this one.

Normally even the best fantasy presents a world where, fundamentally, everyone knows what is going on. There will be some form of challenge to the stability of the world driving the plot but this is most definitely an aberration to be dealt with. Things like magic will normally exist and while they won’t be understood by everybody the people who are expected to do so generally will. Bad things may happen but there will be some sort of rhyme or reason to it, a greater purpose beyond the immediate loss or suffering. Mostly, it’s all going to work out well.

For me all of this makes the experience much more empty than it should be – it’s harder to invest in what’s going on when at the back of your mind you always know roughly how things are going to turn out. The fact that the Malazan books avoid this is what draws me in and keeps me coming back to the series. Characters are confused, they don’t know what’s going on, they die (sometimes for no particular reason). The world is complex and messy, with several independant groups and civilizations acting by themselves with limited knowledge and abilities. All of this makes for much better suspension of disbelief and much more interest.

The texts have much of the obliqueness of her songwriting, made less obscure by the extra room for explanation that the extended form allows. Everything is apparently impressionistic and naive but expertly wrapped up and structured, with a wry humour taking the edge off the darker material and showing self knowledge that gives a great degree of insight into the experiences being described. Most of this text has been mailed (out on a mailing list I can’t find a link for right now) so it was familiar. The performance added a lot – Kristin has great timing and delivery, adding a lot of warmth to the proceedings.

Much of this has been covered in detail in other reviews but one of the things that particularly struck a chord with me which I don’t think I’ve heard anyone articulate particularly clearly was the description of talking to other people who were doing music and realising that there were people who just didn’t get it, who just did things and didn’t really connect with what they were doing in any meaningful way. There are some things that seem so natural and obvious that it causes quite a bit of cognitive dissonance when you realise that it’s not so for everyone – in my case it’s been things like abstraction and the engineering idea of elegance but I’m fairly sure that this is actually a universal experience. I believe there are some people with hand eye coordination and stuff.

The only reservation I had was with the music. Since I knew most of the songs the musical interludes were a bit frustrating at times – I kept on being disappointed when the second verses failed to appear. Of course, this probably doesn’t peg me as the most critical observer of her work so you might want to take what I say with a pinch of salt.

With perfect timing it just ended. Such a shame it never got a terrestrial airing in the UK. Never mind, four more seasons for me to get through.

This is obviously a subject that has been gone over in the media but not in this form – as ever, Morris mostly just lets his subjects talk and leaves it up to the viewer to put their own intepretation on what is being said, foregrounded even more here by the presence of the person responsible for sifting through the images describing going through exactly this process with the images. The effect is much more chilling than the condemnation of the media – the body language and the words of the soldiers speak volumes but nothing gives you enough distance to simply switch off and say “I’m not like them.”

The people in the film who feel they can say that do not always appear as morally distinct as they might hope to. The title comes from one of the things that had to be done when examining the images during the investigation – the investigator had to decide which of the images showed things that were perfectly normal interrogation techniques (the standard operating procedure) and which were crimes. His verdicts aren’t always what you might expect.