The bleeding obvious

..more
people that need to be fed and watered. This is not surprising. It might, however,
fill one with a general sense of foreboding for the health of the planet
After a while this becomes background noise, ever present unpleasant facts that
become a steady drone of something which we sensibly decide we can’t do
anything about. Until maybe next month. And as I am far from the evangelical
type I am not proposing that we do anything at the moment as I want to revisit
something I wrote earlier this year about computing. I wrote my usual thousand
words or so about the fact that I was purchasing my first new computer after
several decades of having them supplied by whomever I was working for. And it
wasn’t going to be an Apple, even though I spent some time praising them
Well it arrived and it all works rather well. And it is quiet, very quiet and
the only limitation that it has is me. I have the feeling that this large black
box lurking under the desk is rather like Marvin the Paranoid Android in ‘The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, quietly sulking waiting for me to type
a letter or move the mouse. ‘ “Reverse primary thrust, Marvin.”
That’s what they say to me. “Open airlock number 3, Marvin.” “Marvin,
can you pick up that piece of paper?” Here I am, brain the size of a planet,
and they ask me to pick up a piece of paper”’.
So it’s called Marvin. And now it knows.
The insanely large HP ZR30W monitor into which I am staring at the moment is
genuinely colour accurate courtesy of some nifty software and hardware from
Datacolor and a Spyder 3 gizmo that accurately calibrates the monitor and keeps
it aligned according to the amount and type of light coming in my room. And
given that I am recreating a some of the early art work I destroyed in what
can only be charitably described as a hissy fit twenty years ago it is very
useful. I am fortunate that paintings that I am working towards recreating were
quite hard-edged and simple. I have the working drawings and have also discovered
some damaged slides to give me an idea of the original colour. But as the paintings
were reasonably large at 122cms square I am going to rework them as prints.
In theory I could send them off to a company and they can print them exactly
as I see them. Or they can sit here on Marvin as chronicles of wasted time.

For your confusion I have included one of the first drafts of one of the four
of what were originally called the Jarama series. The paintings were loosely
based on a series of photographs of a Formula one accident at Spain’s
Jarama circuit possibly in the late 1960s. My clouded memory thinks it might
have been Graham Hill in a disintegrating Lotus. He lived, but the painting
ended up in a dumpster.
But, if you put together computing and automobiles you might come up with a
Sony PlayStation and a game like Gran Turismo 5. Now I spent my a large part
of my working life at the pointy end of business and telecommunications computing
where vast amounts of money were spent on data centres and fibre optic networks,
and I must say that I am over-awed at what this device and program can do. When
a team of people can create the appearance and dynamics of over one thousand
cars in assorted environments with different weather and conditions one should
remain permanently gob-smacked. And then have real time interaction with the
input of one or more users flailing away at a range of input controls is staggering.
At times you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between what is being
created in CGI real-time with a movie of the same event.
Want to race 180 corners of Nürburgring in the rain in anything from a
427 AC Cobra to a Volvo with racing tyres and no traction control and a manual
gearbox? You can – and see all the reflections of passing cars and listen to
the specific engine note rising and falling with your throttle input. Incredible.
And there is a genuine skill involved, not only with the game creation, but
in actually playing a simulator game like this. I was scoffing with the best
of them until you get into the more difficult rally sections on gravel or snow
where the required skill and coordination are possibly beyond the average senior
citizen with a desire to be Sebastien Loeb, the seven times World Rally Champion.

Yet the ultimate difference is that on my own computer I can create, through
words and images my own imaginary worlds. They probably are not as good as the
teams at Sony and Polyphony Digital can produce but, be they ever so humble,
they are at least mine.
I’ll stagger on at my own slow pace keeping Marvin absolutely unmoved.
He’d probably say “Well I wish you’d just tell me what to do rather
than try to engage my enthusiasm.”