What the hell is Eurovision?

Sixty years ago, a group of people got together and said "Well, it's been a while since the last war and we're doing pretty well with this peace lark, but how can we help give that peace a real chance to grow and develop?"

Someone else at the meeting said "If only there were a way to show all the nations of Europe that they have common ground, and a medium by which we could handily transmit this message!"

And someone else said "What about a song contest?  And we could put it on that new fangled medium, television!"

Thus was born the Eurovision Song Contest.  It was initially bankrolled by Britain, Germany, France, Spain and Italy- now known as The Big Five, the nations who do most of the donkey work involved in the competition.

The rules are simple.  Each year, the member nations enter a song.  The Big Five go through to the final automatically, as does the host nation, and everyone else sends their tune to a knockout round (the Semi Finals). It never used to be this way, but there are now 40 member nations and that results in a four hour TV show.  

The final is kind of a big deal.  Different nations treat it a little differently, so I'm only going to write about it from a UK perspective.

Why do we watch?
This boils down to the following basic reasons:

1: I want to pass comment on the acts and be sarcastic or witty.
There's more of this since the rise of social media, and Twitter especially is a terribly entertaining addition to the proceedings.  Some of the Eastern European nations have the reputation for sending in material that is earnest and forthright and, to Western European eyes, occasionally batshit insane.

2: I'm watching ironically, at a party organised by people I know who aren't watching it ironically.
See below.

3: It's fun.
Eurovision, like the Oscars or the Superbowl, is a chance for people to organise a party.  Watching the show is a lot more amusing when you have friends close by who can share your witty commentary on the songs, or just join in the singing once everyone has worked out the chorus.  Very few parties are dry affairs, so the alcohol flows and us Brits indulge two passions at once: camp, and getting drunk.

Over the last couple of years, the European pop scene has got better, stronger and a lot more interesting.  There's less earnest pleas for world peace and environmental responsibility, at the price of less sheer mind-popping fun, and more credible pop music.  Eurovision is a chance to see what other countries think is decent music.

What's the politics about?
Essentially, you're supposed to vote for the best song.  You can't vote for for your own entry, and in the UK the vote is decided by the public - a phone vote contributes half the decision - and a committee of music industry professionals.  I have no idea how other nations do this.

What inevitably happens, though, is that blocs form.  

Each nation votes for 12 songs.  The most popular gets 12 points, the least popular gets 1.  Songs that don't make a nation's top 12 get zero.  It is possible to get a final score, after all nations have voted, to get the dreaded "null".  This year there were 40 participants.  So that's pretty humiliating.

The blocs are based on regional politics or shared culture.  The Scandiwegians (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland) tend to vote for one another.  The Eastern bloc tend to give Russia decent marks and vote for their neighbours too.  Cyprus and Greece usually award one another 12 points.

Often, the Big Five get very low scores.  Since they go straight through to the final, they can send any old nonsense (and the UK has, frequently, demonstrated that we treat the whole thing as a joke).  This year France, Germany and Austria (the host nation) got very low scores.  Germany got zero.

In the last couple of years, the audience has started to boo Russia.  This has nothing to do with the song they send and everything to do with the fact that Eurovision is hugely popular with the Gay community.  It's been the campest thing in the world for a very long time, but it's also been seen as a very accepting and open environment.  Last year's winner, Conchita Wurst, is a bearded Trans woman who is also (from a heterosexual point of view) worryingly hot as well as being a talented vocalist.  Europe, which is a fairly progressive place on the whole, occasionally uses Eurovision to send itself messages and that was a pretty clear one about acceptance and equality.

What?
The sending messages bit?  Yeah.  Member states routinely ignore the European Parliament, so Eurovision sometimes behaves like the continent's social conscience (and very occasionally it's subconscious).  Because it's arty and outgoing, and a lot of Europe isn't, you get all kinds of news from Eurovision.  This year, for example, quite a lot of nations are NOT happy with Mr. Putin and votes that should have been 12 points to Russia went elsewhere.  The UK is repeatedly warned that Europe is worth taking seriously, and we should join the family instead of behaving like a teenager and standing outside the party pretending to smoke while desperately wanting to be in the middle of it all.

If you look at the Twitter activity across the evening, the UK was the most vocal.  We care more about Eurovision than anyone else in Europe, or we're more prepared to sit around tweeting about it.

You're projecting a bit, there, Dave.
Yep.  It's still true, though.  As much as I love America (and I do), politically there's no point trying to be Uncle Sam's favourite.  The USA doesn't play the game that way, everyone knows it and it's time we stopped trying to be the same.

What happens when you win?
You host the show next year.  The act that wins gets pretty famous in the bits of Europe that aren't the UK.  Other than that, I'm not sure.  It's been a while since the UK won.

Why are Russia, Israel and Australia involved?  They aren't in Europe!
Neither are quite a few of the other nations.  Long story short?  Politics.  Apparently it got shown in China last night, so it'll be interesting to see what the Chinese audience made of it and we'll see if they decide to get involved in any capacity.

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Christmas Roundup

OK.  Christmas is done for another year.  Here's how I spent mine.

Christmas Eve - a coach to Oxfordshire, carols around a village Christmas tree in the early evening and the midnight service in a church that I'm pretty sure is a couple of hundred years old.  It was an Anglican service, and if you don't ever go to church outside of marriages or funerals and so forth, that means a bit of ritual, a lot of singing and a workout for your knees.  I went to pretty much the same service (with the same hard working staff, but at a different church) the next morning.  It was my second time in church in 24 hours, the vicar's fourth.

Christmas Day was all about family.  This year, we did a Secret Santa thing and I got a gorgeous carved Rhino from Kenya.  It's a beautiful, tactile piece of carving and I love it.  We ate, we drank, we played some games, we sang carols, we sat around making things and talking to each other.  No one did anything to excess, no one had a row and the whole thing was really, really fun.  I learned to play Irish Snap, and worked on my poker face with a couple of rounds of Cheat.

All of this was with the In-Laws, who have been gradually teaching me all of the important things about Christmas.

I've also read some books.  Pocket reviews ahoy!

Ya Gotta Read

The Martian by Andy Weir

Quick guide: man stranded on Mars attempts to survive.

My verdict: Awesome book. I couldn't stop reading it.  Funny, intelligent, engaging, fascinating.

You should read it because: You'll learn a lot.

I'm Currently Ploughing Through

Sniper One by Dan Mills

Quick Guide: True story of sniper operations in Iraq.

My Verdict: I am a total sucker for this kind of writing and this sort of real life story.  I'm fascinated, but unless you like books written by soldiers about their experiences, you might not.

You should read it because: you've got a yen to learn about the British Army.

Optional Reads

Closure, Limited by Max Brooks

Quick Guide: more Zombie stories by the man who brought us World War Z.

My Verdict: Mmmm.  It was okay.

You should read it because: you're a Max Brooks fan or completist.

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A Sword into Darkness by Thomas A. Mays

I've always had a soft spot for military SF.  I blame Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for this. The Mote in God's Eye and Footfall are still two of my favourite books, even though my tastes in literature have moved on.  Whatever your general preferences, reading those two books, and the novels of Tom Clancy if your tastes run to more real world fiction, you run into stories that catch you up in their narrative and pull you along with them no matter where they go.

It's been a while since I read any military SF, but Thomas Mays took part in The Writer's Arena and his story was thoroughly interesting.  I wanted to read more, he seemed very proud of his book and it was available on Amazon for the Kindle.  I bought it assuming I'd be taking a trip through some well worn tropes and treading a familiar path.  I wasn't entirely correct.

The story has a strong narrative.  It's a story you want to read and want to get to the end of.  You want to know what happens to the characters, even if you think you know at the outset.  Then you get grabbed by the author's intelligence and almost palpable joy at playing with fringe science concepts and, dammit, his enthusiasm is infectious.  This is the sort of science fiction you give to people when you want them to come to you later saying things like "so, how far are we away from a pebble bed reactor, exactly?"

That's a kind of fun you can only have with science fiction.  If books like this make people go and investigate what we're currently capable of or nearly capable of, you've got a book that inspires.  It's something that only science fiction does.  I love the work of Nick Hornby but his books have never once made me wish I was better at maths or less colour blind.

Are there down sides to the book?  Yeah, kinda, sorta.  It might be a bit gung ho American for a sensitive European audience, but frankly we see worse from Hollywood and since the main characters are American and more than a few are serving in the various Armed Forces you should expect a bit of respect for the flag and some patriotism.  Is it in many ways a bit of cheerleading for good old American rugged individualism and know how?  Yeah, kinda.  It doesn't get in the way of the story and the book doesn't lecture (although there were a couple of dialogue exchanges where a european lefty part of my brain started sighing and rolling it's eyes, I told it to shut up and let me get on with the narrative).

There are a couple of decent female characters - I'm sort of fond of Kris Munoz, even if she is the kind of brilliantly intelligent alternative lifestyle female engineer that we've seen quite a bit of in NCIS and Criminal Minds.  She seems like a well drawn character and is actually a lot more rounded than some of the men.  I think the author made an effort to ensure she wasn't just someone's love interest and, as a reader I appreciate that kind of thinking.

There are aliens, and they are impressive.  Their motivation is interesting and I'm not going to talk about it because I want you to go read the book.

For me, the big thrill of the book is that the author knows what he's talking about and can transfer that interest and enthusiasm to the page.  This is the same buzz that I get from Charles Stross, Ben Bova, Niven and Pournelle and half a dozen others.  I want to see more from Mr. Mays, because even though A Sword into Darkness treads familiar ground it does so with a lightness of step, a disarming grin and is excellent company on the journey.  Recommended.

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New Phone

I'm a fan of Android phones.  I've used an HTC and a Samsung Galaxy S3, and enjoyed both of them.  At upgrade time this year, I thought my choice was probably between the HTC M8 or the Samsung S5.

I was surprised to find that I went for a Windows phone.  The Nokia Lumia 930, in fact.

The phone itself is an improvement on the S3.  It feels heavier, which is oddly reassuring.  The design and construction shows almost Apple levels of attention to detail, to the point where although I have the phone in a protective case I'm finding reasons to remove the casing so I can enjoy the build quality.

Windows 8.1 works well.  It's noticably faster than the last edition of Android I used, but that's because the technology in the phone is beefier too.  The interface is nice - the live tiles finally make sense! - and it's simple to navigate.  So far, so good.

My biggest concern is the number of Apps that I thought I couldn't live without and which don't have an equivalent in the Windows store.  As it turns out, there are just two Apps I'm missing: a good Gmail client -  because I've got used to the way Gmail filters incoming mails into Personal, Social and Promotions - and an App I used to store e-tickets for the local bus company.

The mail client that comes with the phone is fine.  It's done a good job of repogramming me out of the notion that any old spam is perfectly acceptable because Google hides it away in the Promotions tab, which I can ignore.  I'm now evaluating which companies I really want to hear from.

Of course there are Gmail clients available, but I'm actually pretty happy with the native client on the phone now.  It's a nice, clean interface that I've rapidly adapted to.

My favourite feature is Cortana.  The Windows digital assistant might officially be in Beta, but it's already an important part of the phone for me.  Cortana has already worked out where I live and where I work, so I can ask her to set alerts and reminders for those locations.  The search results are from Bing, but Cortana seems to be pretty good at sorting those by relevance and location, which makes any results I get more immediately useful.  I can also allow Cortana to handle calls and texts for me when I set the phone to Quiet Time.  If I can work out how to set Quiet Time for any time I'm at work, I'll be delighted but it's not exactly burdensome to switch it on manually.

I've never used Siri, so I can't compare them directly, but I was speaking with a couple of iPhone users this week and they told me that Siri has a distinctly passive aggressive streak, which Cortana seems not to display.  Cortana's notebook is also accessible to me so I can find out and ammend what the assistant has learned about me.  So far, I'm using Cortana a lot more than my Apple based colleagues use Siri and this is earning me some envious looks.

Something else I'm really pleased with is the power management feature.  I've managed to keep the battery life on the phone to around 50% for a day - double what I was getting from the S3 which needed charging by late evening.  I suspect I could get two days out of a charge if I really needed to.  I've installed things like WhatsApp, which normally kills a battery, but told the phone that WhatsApp can check for new messages when I turn it on rather than when it wants to and this seems to have curbed it's energy appetite.

The switch from the Samsung to the Nokia was less problematic than my original switch from an HTC to the Samsung, and a lot of the two years I had with the S3 I spent trying to make it behave like the HTC had.  With the Lumia 930, I feel like I've got my first properly grown up smartphone.  A large part of that is that I'm actually using the digital assistant for stuff other than cracking jokes and finding easter eggs, and haven't bothered installing any games.  If that persists, I can see myself sticking with Windows phones for the next few upgrades.  Obviously, a lot of that depends on what happens to HTC and how Windows fares, but I'm already hearing good things about Windows 10.

But, look, back in the day I read scifi stories about people talking to technology and having it do useful stuff.  I'm living that now.  No, it's not solving any world problems and yes, there are some real issues to deal with.  Countless issues, in fact.  But just for right now, I'm living in a science fiction story and that's got to be worth celebrating even if it's just for a minute.

Right?

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Celebrity Photo Leak/Hack

This hasn't been a good week to be a female celebrity.

I've been thinking quite hard about all of the things that have been said about it this week and here's the conclusion I came to:

The whole thing is about consent.  None of the women who had their content shared consented for that to happen.  And that makes looking at the pictures distinctly creepy.  I do not want to be that kind of man.

In the extremely unlikely event that any of those women were to decide to send me a picture of themselves, they've consented to me seeing it and that is the bit that makes it sexy/erotic.  Without that level of permission, I might as well be a peeping tom.  That would be enough to put me on some kind of offenders register, which is also not the sort of man I want to be.

Yes, lessons learned about cloud storage.  No, that doesn't really matter as much as some people think it does.  Yes, it's an issue, but it's a secondary one.

Let's deal with it: nothing people build is perfect.  There's generally a way into everything if you look hard enough and are prepared to dedicate time to it.  We trust the things we trust because we kind of have to.

People, on the other hand, have a choice about how they behave.

Side note: I kind of got a little bent out of shape recently when I heard, for the eleventy billionth time, a fellow straight white male being described as a CIS-Shitlord.  I didn't say anything, because I'm trying to be better at social media and that means thinking about responses instead of just posting.  I eventually decided that while describing ALL CIS white males as Shitlords is unfair, it might be justified in specific cases.  It turns out that, after this week, there are an awful lot more of those people than I thought and I am deeply unhappy with the way my gender has represented itself.  

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Current Projects

My current To-Do list is the same as my previous To Do list, which isn't great, but I am at least making some progress.

A quick run down:

• Fairy Story
• Doctor Who Fic
• porting things over to Wordpress
• Fiction as a controlled substance
• SciFi noir story

But also, an idea occurred to me.

I'm spending a little time each week talking about, reading and voting on stuff that happens at The Writers Arena.

Why?  Simple.  The thing that writers need, that they need over and above everything else, is an audience.  We need readers, and it's not easy to get them.  The other writers who appear on that site are contributing to the creation of a community, drawing in readers to see the work of struggling amateurs.  That's worthwhile doing.  It's an all win proposition for readers: you get new stories each week, each one easily got through in a lunchtime at work, and you get to leave feedback, and you get to make a writer feel better about his efforts.

So go, read, vote.

I've contributed once, and hope to do so again.  

It's not an easy thing, writing for that competition.  Ten days to do four thousand words on a prompt that you don't select yourself (well, around 4k words anyway) is a tough gig, and that - from my point of view - makes every story that gets written a bit of a triumph.  Think about it like this: given the time constraints and the deadline, what you're seeing is a second or third draft.  It's possible the writers could polish more, but you get what you get.  It's pretty close to a live gig with writers.

I've decided to practice.  I'm going to go back through their previous prompts and produce my take on each one, which I'll park over on Wordpress if the result is any good.  I need the practice, I like the prompts and it'll push me to work more in long form because as fun as Reddit writing prompts are, they're flash fiction really.

And we'll see how I do.

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...and so I went home wearing the wrong head!

BOOKS!

The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross.  I was not ready for the feels.  I was definitely ready for a Laundry novel, which are to me as crack is to people who smoke crack.  I could tell Mr. Stross this, I could find him on Twitter and tell him that I think his books are marvellous, but mostly what I want is for him to write another book.  Lots of other books.  It's only been a day and the cravings have started already.

TELEVISION!

I've sort of drifted into watching Arrow this week.  It's basically Batman.  You can tell they wanted to tell the Year One story but then along came Mr. Nolan and his trilogy.  For all that, it's good stuff so far.  More on the Batman stuff later.

I've also been watching Penny Dreadful and holy *&£$ it's fun.  Fun in a gory, dirty, unpleasant and metaphysical way that I can't quite stop watching.  I love the performances.  When I've seen the whole thing, I might write more about it.

Hannibal is the best thing on TV at the moment.  It's beautiful, and that makes it haunting and strange.  The writing is...

...I think this is the closest I'll get to understanding Jazz.  The writing allows a lot of space for the actors to showcase their art and there are several very different styles of performance going on which don't slot together so much as harmonise.  The images are complemented by the music, which is harsh and difficult and entirely appropriate.  This is TV being art while still reaching out to the audience, and I have no doubt that people find it difficult and unsettling, but I love it.

Gotham is the Batman story, it's going to be a slicker, darker Smallville in which we see the events that shape the city and the people who will eventually form the Rogues Gallery for Batman.  One of the production team said "How bad does a city have to be that it sees a vigilante who dresses as a bat as a viable alternative?  How did it get this bad?"  I'm very much looking forward to finding out.  We already kind of know the ending, because eventually Bruce Wayne is going to decide that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot and the best way to avenge his parents is...well, I think everyone knows that by now. 

I'd like to see them pick up on Bruce learning to be a detective, as well as picking up all the other skills it took him a lifetime to acquire.  It takes Arrow five years on an island, but Bruce Wayne is supposed to educate himself thoroughly in all the arts he feels he needs in order to fight crime.  In many ways, actually...in practically every way, Bruce's education is the same as that of Sherlock Holmes.  I wonder if it has the same odd gaps?

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