The 21st

Above- The Charge of the 21st Lancers

Left-

From the Purton Museum, England. The Battle of Omdurman.

This image shows the 21st Lancers in one of the final battles. Notable in that this was Winston Churchills regiment, at least in this campaign, where he was also newspaper reporter. He did not get a very good welcome because they were concerned he would send back unfavourable news. He distinguished himself as a soldier and kept his head down with his reporting. To avoid his reports being scrutinized by the brass, he wrote his mother very long detailed letters which she sent to his paper to be published.

The war office only let him go on the pleadings of his mother in fact but made it clear he was on his own and no favours would be heading his way. "...you will proceed at your own expense and in the event of your being killed or wounded...no charge of any kind will fall upon British Army funds."

Swirling Dervish part one

I'm starting a series on the African colonization and didn't know what end to dive in at so I figured the middle looked OK as a starting point. The date is September 2, 1898 and its just outside Khartoum. The Battle of Omdurman sees the Britsh forces under Sir Herbert Kitchener defeat the Dervish army. England and France divide up the Sudan. Now I gotta get the details straight and at least find a map. See you tommorow.

Where's my beret.

Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman died today in Faro, Sweden. He was 89. Responsible for bringing the serious to serious films, he made over 50 of them. Lovingly photographed and often with zany, unreal scenes, his movies enshrined cold winter nights and weak frozen sunlight peaking through trees.

He traded some tin soldiers for his brother's magic lantern when he was a child after falling under its spell when it entered their household. Life was strict in the Bergman household and he left as soon as he could when he was 19.

Drama was his first love and he made a name directing plays through the war years. He moved on to TV dramas in te 50's and worked out parts of his movies either on stage or through made for TV series. Anyone who can make a movie based on the black plague, and make it work, has to be good.

Blade Runner

Storing information on transparent discs is not that new a technology. The idea was conceived in the late 50's by David Paul Gregg and patented in 1961. MCA bought out Gregg in the late 60's and combined with pioneering efforts by Phillips developed the Laserdisc by 1978. The idea was that MCA would pump out the discs and Phillips the players. MCA called the product Disco-Vision (oh my) and came out competing head to head with the big kid on the block, VHS tapes. MCA's first release on this format was Jaws in 1978.

Oddly enough, the format was pushed in the Japanese market with players and discs being sold at near VHS like prices. The result was a large customer base with lots of players in homes and a good selection of discs. Major releases continued until 2001.

Laser discs were typically 30cm in diameter (12 inches) and were 2 sided like LP's. The video portion of the show was analog, while the audio was often digital. This was a weird combo because the video took so much space in analog format that the whole movie had to be on both sides of the disc, and yes, you had to flip it, unless you had one of the fancy machines with a head that would migrate to the other side. Either way there was a pause while you changed sides. Later versions doubled the capacity of the disc so most movies fit.

As for the audio, no one had CD's yet, so this was the only source for digital music. The soundtracks outshined what was heard on VHS. Some versions of discs had analog and digital audio tracks and supported surround sound. Star wars Episode 1 released on Laser Disc in Japan in 1999 was the first in 6.1 Dolby surround sound.

Laser discs remain collectable with many videophiles preferring the quality, selection and features to those on DVD.

Smoke me a kipper

Born July 25, 1955, Jem (Jeremy)Finer of the Pogues. He played guitar, bass and banjo. He teamed up with Shane Magowan in 1981 to from the Pogues. They tried busking for a while and when they auditioned for a busking license at Covent Garden they were turned down. An onlooker said"Very few people have come here and failed what we like the to call the Covent Garden Seal of Quality. I'm sorry, you have failed."

Pogue Mahone.

London calling.

Time to take a break from ranting on about low level brain activity and powerful people. I was combing the WWW looking for possible topics when an old movie revue caught my eye. It was for Sabrina, a 50's classic in which, among other things, Humphrey Bogart talks on a mobile phone. Though it is no doubt not a real cell phone, mobile phones were in use in many cities.

So here's what I could find out. The idea of mobile radio is not a new one. Radio receivers have been "portable" for over a 100 years. Combination transmitter/receiver since the 1920s. I am stretching the word portable to mean that the radio was not fixed to base station. In the 1920s, these portables were in either trucks or trains. They were very large, bulky walkie talkies (built into a desk often) and worked like you expected- press to talk then stop and listen.

Although true mobile communication, they had some drawbacks, not the least of which was their size and power consumption, they did not operate in a cell like manner. That is to say they transmitted a signal from one device to be received by another. Cell phones are radio devices that transmit to small repeater transmitters that pass the signal down the line from "cell" to "cell" of repeater transmitters. This cuts down the size, the power requirments and liberated users from being within transmission range of just one transmitter.

These old brutes were finicky and required training to run, again limiting their use to large organizations like railroads and the military. The Second World War saw technology move to more phone like convenience with mobile radios becoming phone handset shaped, though kinda big still, and able to handle full duplex communication: no more press to talk.

Just after the war Bell labs conceived the cell communication concept in an internal memo by D.H.Ring. Although they didn't call it cell phone technology, they essentially described the roots of what the service is.

The challenge for the technology then was how to stay in contact. After all, mobile phones were mobile. And moving around transmitters made it tough to keep a long conversation together. Mobile phones of that time, ( probably the phone that Bogey used), were two way radio hand sets transmittinmg to the local telephone company, AT&T, who patched the call into their hard wired phone service. This service was available in many North American cities then and continued into the 90s in many countries. I have used this service on the West Coast of Canada many times.

Taxis and police services used dedicated radio systems, that were mobile but did not work with the telephone system. In fact early police radios were simply base station transmitters that broadcast over regular radio. When there was something up they sent out a "calling all cars" and the police would stop and use a phone to call in to see whats up.

The FCC throughout this time had no use for giving out radio licenses for mobile phone use. They saw TV as needing as much bandwidth as possible. Finally in the 1960s they relented and Bell, AT&T and Motorola went back to their labs and started cooking. Across the ocean, Ericsson had a fully operational mobile phone sytem in place in Sweden by 1956. Large and bulky, the phones still had to be used within one transmitters range, the technology to "hand off" a call to the next transmitter hadn't been perfected yet.

On April 3, 1973, Dr. Martin Cooper placed the first cell phone call. The rest is history.

Too much is just right.

Never one to overlook any country in my thirst for bad monarchs, I turn my gaze north to France. You may rememeber my concerns about concentrating DNA and limitless wealth in the hands of a few have rarely proven to be a positive influence on society. Take the case of Marie Louise of Orleans. Born in 1695, this happless young women barely reached 24.

Grand daughter of Louis XIV, the Sun King, she went on a tear starting in her teens and never looked back. Given to excess, it is said she was overweight, pushy and had a terrible temper. In short, she was no peach to be around. But there was pressure to marry. A match was proposed but the soon to be husband didn't think much of the odds of having children with her. She dieted and bound herself until she had a pleasing figure. This only made her more disagreeable. She became pregnant 5 times in her short life and lost every child.

To make matters worse, her husband had to compete with her father for her time. The two were said to be inseparable. Folk wondered openly about this odd relationship, and speculation arose about who really was the father of some of her children.

When Louis XIV died, her father became leader and then the last strings of self control were broken. Openly hostile, she and her husband didn't even try to hide their affairs. What followed now was a continual party of food, drink and every kind of debauchery. She gave up all concerns about her weight and indulged in rich food and drink. Her estranged husband died shortly thereafter after falling from a horse. She was totally free to do anything.

So being the catch that she was, she married again, in secret, to the Count of Riom. Normal life went out the window and things got really strange. Up to now she had troubles with food and excessive living. Her relationship with her new husband took on a much more sinister twist. She assumed a slave like role and seemed to relish in doing his every deed. Fearful and neurotic she became a religious fanatic part of the time, and party girl the rest.

The unhealthy living, and several pregnancies in quick succesion beat her down to the point of no return. Just shy of her 24th birthday, the "Princess Chubby" died.

Sub-Urban

The 14th century saw the Roman Catholics headquatered in France at Avignon. The papacy had gone back and forth between France and Italy and at this stage there was mounting pressure to get the Pope back to Rome pronto. Pope Gregory XI conceded but one of his underlings screwed up bad by ordering the killing of over 400o people in Cesena. The resultant outcry forced Gregory from Rome. He died soon therafter.

At the conclave it was obvious the Italians wanted an Italian Pope. The majority of Cardinals were French, so the locals, expressing their God given right to voice their opinion, did what any good Catholic should do in this situation, they formed a mob. When they broke down the doors, the cardinals, scared out their wits, grabbed the first Pope-looking Italian gentleman they could, fitted him out in Pope clothes, and paraded him out to the mob. The poor old guy freaked out and swore at everyone. This bought the cardinals time to come up with a second choice, Bartolemeo Prignano. Given the name Urban VI, he had earned a reputation as an effective, unobstrusive administrator.

Things unravelled very fast for Urban. No one knows why but he drank himself silly at his coronation and tried to attack his caridinals. From that moment on, he became violent, mean spirited and unpredictable. At almost every meeting he singled someone out and gave them shit, sometimes lasting for hours.

The cardinals had had their fill and retreated to France. They came up with the proclamation that Urban had been elected under threats from"external sources" and therefore his election was invalid. So the crafty cardinals went and elected another pope, but the whole mess just got worse. Their new choice for pope was some fellow named Roberto Visconti, Clement VII. He was our pal from the above mentioned killings and went by the charming name of the "Butcher of Cesena." You got to start wondering about the lead content in the wine goblets. How did they expect this to smooth anything over?

The resulting war between the 2 Popes went on for nearly 40 years and is called the Great Schism. Urban died in 1398.

I want noodles.

Most countries take turns when it comes to bad, unpopular or unsuitable leaders. Thank heaven that it doesn't happen to them all at once. Before suffrage and the idea of demoncracy spread its influence outward, many countries laboured under monarchies that tried politicians patience, drove the excheckers mad and generally screwed up the country until murder, revolution or both drove the unfortunate ruler from the throne.

The concept of bloodlines and inheritance is an obvious weak point in this system. Great kings and queens don't necessarily beget worthy successors. And add to this flaw the paranoid in- breeding that occured with some families in a twisted attempt to keep blood lines pure only increased the chances of producing iffy offspring.

One such example is Emperor Ferdinand (the good natured) of Austria. Born in 1793, he was mentally challenged and said to be not particularly good looking. He had a large head, flat on top, a big nose and it was said that one of his favourite passtimes was to stuff himself into wastebaskets and roll about the palace in them. A quote from him about his ability to govern tells the whole story: "It is easy to govern, but what is difficult is to sign one's name."

He took the throne in 1835, passing over his only brother, Franz(who was said to have had not much to offer as a leader too). A bride was chosen who actually became his nurse and helper, as Ferdinand had frequent and violent epileptic seizures.

Described by his contemporaries as an oaf representing the crown, he preferrred to describe his reign as "I am emperor, I want noodles, so get them."

Pass the plate.

On this day in 1730 Josiah Wedgwood was born. An English potter, he is perhaps best known for "jasper ware", the blue and white pottery that instantly identifies English pottery around the world. Started in 1774 it is still being made today.

Early in his career he met and became friends with Erasmus Darwin and when long time business associate Thomas Bentley died, he asked Erasmus to come on board. Josiah's daughter wound up marrying Erasmus's son and they had, amongst other children, you guessed it, Charles Darwin.

Video game frenzy.

Its so hot today I just had to take a time out. Plans were for a piece on a notable leader who had embarassed himself. Instead I went looking for really bad video games. A while back I wrote a bit about how many lines of programming it takes to create a real simple program, so it floors me to know how much time and sweat went into these stinkers. They were all bad for various reasons, and I'm sure some may have been a favourite of yours at one time in 1989 or something. What is incredible is that someone thought they had a hit.

In no particular order, how about JumpMan for the Commodore 64, PC and Apple 2? The character simply jumped.

Or Wild Woody for the Sega, about a pencil that throws dynamite.

Nintendo's Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom.

Um Jammer Lammy. A psychedic guitar playing lamb.

70's Robot Anime Geppy-X: The Super Boosted Armour. What?

Ninja Hamster. The game package has a hamster that looks kinda Hitler-ish. Just too odd.

And, I'm sorry, Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf.

I just have to stop.

For a look at these and over 40 other treasures check out http://www.gamerevolution.com/feature/worst_names

Money troubles.

I'm starting a new section called "Back to Front" where I dig up and examine stuff that we seem to feel are part of our time and history, when, in fact, they came from a while ago.

So here's a quick look at the Secret Service. I must admit I got onto this upon seeing a picture in Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples of President Abraham Lincoln with a Secret Service agent, Allan Pinkerton. The caption states that the year is 1862, when many other sources say Lincoln established the USSS in 1865. Doesn't matter. Pinkerton looks dogged and observant.

Initially the Seccert Service was charged with eliminating the vast amount of countefeit money that was circulating in the US. This was compounded by the states issuing their own currencies through many different banks. There were hundreds of kinds of ways to pay for things and this just made it so much easier for the bogus bills to proliferate. In 1865 some estimates show one third of the money in circulation was fake.

As history is rife with irony, the USSS was not charged with the protection of the president. In fact Lincoln was assassinated the night of the very day he formed the service. Two more presidents were assassinated (Garfield and McKinley) before the duty was assigned to them in 1901.

Here we go again.

The Russians have had big cannons and big trains. Neither of which worked a damn, or at all. So I am not surprised that they built and tested an ekranoplan, or Ground Effects Vehicle. In simpler terms it's a huge plane with stubby wings that flies about 20 feet off the water at high speed.

I may not have the engineering down, but Russian scientists discovered that airplane wings had peculiar lift qualities at very low altitudes. In fact they discovered that wings can lift more at low altitude because air is trapped between the surface and the wings. And, here comes that love of real big dangerous machines again, the bigger the wing, the bigger the lift.

Russian aviators, like their engineering cousins of yore created a craft that was over 100 metres long, 40 metres wide and powered by 10 jet engines. Take that down to your Town Pantry Chevron for a fill up and scrape the bugs off the windshield. Not surprisingly when mortals tinker with big and loud they get hurt. One of the babies crashed in the early 80's as a result of NOT ENOUGH POWER to safely lift it off the surface of the water.

The Americans, never one to miss a chance at jumping at quality intelliegence, dubbed the soviet ekranoplan, when having been scratching their heads over what they were looking at in U2 photographs, the Caspian Sea Monster.

Give em enough time and money . . .

So this time I just have to get into the 20th century and find a machine worthy of my scrutiny. There are many worthy contenders, but I'm going to start working on the pile with this magnificent machine, the Convair F2Y Sea Dart.

The idea was a seaplane / fighter aircraft hybrid. Not a bad concept, but this thing flew supersonic, and remains the only seaplane to exceed the speed of sound. I live on the coast and have flown in and seen many seaplanes. It is truly unbelievable that this plane flew and was somehow quite safe given the conditions seaplane fly under.

It actually sat in the water, the fuselage acting as a boat, with the wingtips touching the surface. There were two retractable skis that popped out once the plane was moving. The jet engine air intakes were thoughtfully mounted as far away from the water as possible.

Intitial tests were with low power engines and the plane never did much, although it did fly a bit. No one liked the tremendous shaking on takeoff and landing that the skis produced either. No matter what, it could not break the sound barrier with these engines. Once proper engines were fitted it went supersonic once, but fell apart during aerial demonstrations killing the test pilot.

The truly odd thing is that after such a crappy start the navy actually thought of carrying these things around in a submarine and launching them out of doors behind the conning tower.

And oh yeah, I forgot to mention, did you know that Goodyear made something called the XAO-3 Inflatoplane?

What's that really bright light?

July 4, 1054. Way before the first rockets lit up the Independance Day skies, something was going on up there. First recorded by Chinese astronomers, Supernova 1054, (what was to be called the Crab Nebula), showed up in the heavens. According to records it was damn bright. It was easily visible during the day for weeks and remained in the sky for a total of nearly 2 years altogether.

For a slightly technical but none the less engaging report on this check out this SEDS article:http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m001_sn.html

Really big shoe (in the mouth)

Never one to shy away from anything big; noises, smoke and smells, I couln't pass up at least one miltary shit storm. This one begs to be examined closer: The Battle of Karansebes. It's a little tough to dig up a lot of facts on so hang with me a bit, have faith.

Sometime in the fall of 1788, the Austrians were at war with the Ottomans. The Austrian army comprised about 100, 000 soldiers. Seems some of the scouts headed out to see where the enemy was and instead found some locals who were quite willing to part with some liquor. They had been walking all day and were very thirsty, and in the absense of someone to shoot at they got drunk.

As the day wore on the rest of the Austrian army caught up with the scouts, now with a good glow on, and asked them nicely to share. Fearing they might sober up and have to fight the enemy, they chose to sharpen their skills instead on there brothers.

What really happened, of course , there was one shot in the air that scared the real crap out of the soldiers. The ensuing runnning and yelling was just gas on the fire. In the confusion shouts were mistakenly interpreted. Cries of "the Ottomans are coming! struck fear into their hearts. To make matters even muddier, the army was composed of Italians, Slavs and regular Austrians of varying dialects, and . . . a few other nationalities just for fun, all of whom had just moments earlier been arguing over fair liquor rations for all.

The poor Austrian officers tried to restore order but that ended in more confusion. Their shouts were mistakenly understood to identify THEM as the Ottomans. Would someone just dish up an Ottoman?

Everyone went screaming through the woods and eventually got the whole army running around shooting at imaginary enemies.