Author Archives: Tony Ballantyne

Writer and Tech blogger

I think that I shall never see…

Here’s a very simple idea

  • Find a tree, near to where you live, and go and take a photograph of it.
  • Set a reminder on your phone to photograph the tree in three months time, and set that reminder to repeat every three months

And that’s it. I’ve been doing that with the tree outside my bedroom window for about ten years now. It’s very easy to look back at the pictures, just open your photo app and search for that day.

But rather than show you pictures of my house, I’ve decided to start the process again with another tree. Here it is attached to the post

This is not a fake rant

I really don’t like M and Ms

Not the taste of them, I don’t really have much of an opinion about that one way or another, they’re just another sweet.

It’s true that the advertising campaign irritates me, the characters they’ve chosen. I can’t stand the red M&M. He thinks he’s cool because he’s rude and obnoxious. He’s just rude and obnoxious. I don’t like the way the yellow M&M lets the Red M&M push him around. He needs to learn some self-respect. Moreover, I don’t like the unspoken assumption that he deserves this treatment because he’s not very bright.

Neither of these things would move me to blog, however.

And then I saw this:

This is a machine advertising the fact it can’t sell M&M’s. It’s sitting there using electricity to tell you it doesn’t work. Why don’t they just turn it off?

Seeing this made me realise something, something that moved me to write this. Not because I wanted to do one of those angry rants you see popping up on Facebook, but because I really really hate M&M’s and all they stand for, and you should do too.

You might say that they’re only just sweets, but actually that’s exactly why you should be angry. Because they’re just sweets. Sweets with a huge advertising budget.

Is it really that important that we spend all that money, not on education or libraries, but on advertising mediocre chocolate? Because let’s face it, if the chocolate was that good they wouldn’t have to advertise it. But because it’s a mediocre product up against other mediocre products they have to pour money and resources into getting people to buy it. And while they do that the good stuff is drowned out by the noise.

That out of order M&M machine, sitting there taking up space and guzzling electricity and advertising its own shittiness is emblematic not only of the food industry, but of the music industry and the publishing industry and any other industry that elevates the mediocre in order to sustain itself.

That machine isn’t just wasting resources. It’s stopping other, better products occupying that space. To all those original voices out there, struggling to be heard, never forget: that M&M machine is one of the things stopping you.

Costco Lasagne

Imagine I go to Costco and buy one of their large lasagnes. My family are looking forward to eating it for dinner but on the way home I fall in love with it , and it falls in love with me, so I can’t eat it anymore.

Arriving home, my family say they’ll respect my new life partner, but I notice that my son in particular keeps looking at it and licking his lips. Nonetheless, he keeps it together, even joining my lasagne friend and me for the occasional night out and picnic in the country.

But then my evil neighbour discovers that I’m dating a lasagne and decides that he wants to eat it, not so much because it’s tasty but because he wants to upset me. My family rally round to defend my new lasagne partner and join battle against the enemy. They end up killing my neighbour which is probably a bit extreme, but that’s what they do.

Now that we are safe once more, I explain to my lasagne love that I can turn it into a real human being and we can be together properly at last, but my lasagne says no, they want to stay as a lasagne.

That was the film Twilight explained through the medium of lasagne. I realise the film was released 18 years ago but I’ve only just seen it.

Face it, if you’re coming to this blog for up to date news you’re really looking in the wrong place.

Everybody Digs Bill Evans

I saw the film Everybody Digs Bill Evans earlier this week, at the excellent Home Manchester. Despite (or maybe because of) the fact the film has a limited release, the cinema was surprisingly full. I’m assuming every jazz pianist in the area was in there.

The film deals with Evans’ breakdown following the death of friend and bass player Scott LaFaro in a car crash (oddly enough I talked about that in this post just a few months ago), and it’s an original take on the bass biopic.

It doesn’t lean into the cliché of smoky New York jazz clubs, soundtracked by Bill Evans’ more accessible pieces.

Nor does it fall into the trap of creating false conflict just to advance the drama. Bill Evans stays with his parents in their Florida retirement home in order to dry out and rebuild himself. His father’s jealousy and resentment are there simmering, below the surface, but the script doesn’t resort to false conflict, creating arguments and artificial shouting matches just to move the action on.

My one criticism of the film is that there is hardly any Bill Evans music in it. I don’t know why this is, maybe they couldn’t get the rights. There’s nothing wrong with the original soundtrack, it’s just that not why I went to see a Bill Evans Film. But then again, maybe the music wasn’t needed. The introspective nature of the film perfectly captures the introspective nature of Evans’ music.

I listened to You Must Believe in Spring on the way home. I’d recommend you give it a listen now.

Tip Toe round the monkeys

I recently read an article by a developer about having their work rejected because they used AI in its development. The story isn’t as straightforward as you might think, and they make a good case for their actions. You can read the story yourself here, though I warn you it’s quite technical

Techie or not, I think you will find the following extract interesting:

The (US Copyright) Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants. Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy(ies) state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit.

I never knew that. You can read about the application of that law in this story of why monkeys can’t claim copyright over their selfies.

Ah, you might think. But what about AI?

Don’t get too excited. The people with the money will ensure that this doesn’t apply to them. Look forward to seeing the work harvested from your hard work being copyrighted by some LLM in the future.

On a separate note, I can’t remember if I expressed my opinion about the last series of Doctor Who here. Probably not, as I try to praise twice as often as I condemn. So let’s dwell on the positive

Tip Toe, Russel T Davies’s latest series, is outstanding. Some of the best writing I’ve seen in ages. Thoroughly recommended.

Plus ça change

The post title sounds quite impressive until you realise I learned it from a song by Rush. Bonus points if you can name that song.

I bought a new pair of Doc Martens the other day.

I buy my docs Jack Reacher style. I walk into the shop, ask for a pair of size 9 1461s, black stitching. I put them on, flash my Blue Light card1 and pay. Then I walk out of the shop leaving my old shoes behind.

But this time, as I was trying them on, the young shop assistant engaged me in conversation.

“Is this your first pair of docs?”

“No. I bought my first pair when I started teaching back in 1988. They cost £30 back then. I remember buying a blue tweed jacket at the same time. I was going to sew leather patches on the elbows… “

The jacket was intended to be ironic, but I never got a chance to say that as the assistant interrupted me:

“So you know how to break them in?”

Doesn’t everyone know how to break in new shoes? I suppose not. Shoes nowadays are lot more comfortable than when I was a kid.

“Well, yes. I’ve bought a new pair every two years since my first ones. They’re ideal if you’re going to be on your feet all day…”

“So you won’t want any cream then?”

I realised at that point she wasn’t interested in what I had to say, she was just trying to make a secondary sale.

And I also realised that I had turned into my father, regaling young women in shops with stories of my childhood.

I did consider continuing with my Doc Marten stories. How they keep coming into fashion, how I once got a free pair. But I stopped. The world has moved on. I realise it’s no longer the done thing for people my age to recount their lives in public.

Now we do it on social media instead.

  1. A Blue Light card is something that is given to UK public sector workers rather than decent wages. It allows firms to offload old stock or to encourage them into their restaurants when business is slow. ↩︎

Digital Sovereignty

According to Wikipedia,

The Darlington Bus War was a series of events between 1986 and 1995 in the UK bus industry in the town of Darlington, County Durham, culminating in the wholesale entry of Stagecoach Group onto the Darlington bus scene, and the collapse of Darlington Corporation Transport.

Follow this link to read the full article

but the relevant paragraph is this one

It was the combination of Busways’ actions in recruiting so many of DTC’s drivers so quickly, registering services on all its routes and running free services which caused DTC’s final collapse. We find these actions to be predatory, deplorable and against the public interest.

— Monopolies and Mergers Commission

Essentially, Darlington Transport Company Ltd (DTC) was unfairly forced out of business by a much bigger competitor offering free rides.

I grew up near Darlington, and I remember the bus war. I remember seeing three different nearly empty buses pulling up at bus stops. Naturally, given the choice, passengers would catch the free one. The free buses were funded by a much bigger company, DTC couldn’t compete and went out of business. After that, the fares went up and the service plummeted.

It’s a business model used by tech companies all the time. Undercut the competition, drive them out of business and then raise the prices for all. It’s one of the driving forces behind enshittification

Apple, Microsoft and Google are all guilty of this. I touched on it in this recent post: It’s the dishonesty I can’t stand

Frankly, I’ve had enough. I’ve championed open source software for years. I’m now going all in. I’m beginning the process of cutting my ties with the big tech firms completely. I’m not alone in this. Here’s one example of a German State that is replacing Microsoft with open source software. There are many other examples.

This is an example of Digital Sovereignty, taking back control of your data, something I’ve been doing for years, but am now stepping up the pace.

Why? Because as long as the big tech firms hold my data, they can lock me out of it.

It can happen by accident as happened to this long term Apple user who lost access to 20 years of his digital life

Or worse, it can happen deliberately. The current situation in the Middle East has thrown up examples where all sides have been locked out of accounts by the big tech firms. You can search for your own examples of this.

And even if I still have access to those services, who is regulating the cost?

Tech firms have long introduced charges for services that used to be free, they are now rapidly raising prices at will, and by all sorts of ways. Pay extra to remove adverts that never used to be there from streaming services, anyone?

But can an individual establish digital sovereignty? Of course you can. Throw away all your computers and go back to pen an paper.

Okay. Can you do this whilst still enjoying the benefits of IT? Yes, quite easily. You’re going to lose some of the convenience of modern integrated systems, but you are regaining control of your life. And the more people that do it, the better it will be for everyone.

Listen to me. I’m a survivor of the Darlington Bus War. I know what I’m talking about.

I’ll be writing about the process here occasionally. Let me know if you want to know more…

Rush for Insight

My favourite sketch on the recent series of SNL UK was the British Pork Sketch. I thought it was funny and absurd as I watched it, but what lifted it to genius level was the final reveal when everything suddenly made sense…

I love this sort of writing.

You can hear it in the song The Day Before You Came by ABBA.

It was all the way through the first series of Mad Men.

Robert McKee calls it the rush for insight. It comes at the turning point of a story, when new information is revealed and suddenly the audience is hurled back through all that has gone before and everything suddenly makes sense, or even better, a new kind of sense.

Robert McKee often quotes the moment in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader reveals he is Luke’s father. At the point the audience looks back through two films and three years, and odd events that happened in Luke’s past suddenly make sense. We realise why Yoda wanted to train him, why Ben Kenobi didn’t like to mention his father, why he kept having those lucky escapes from the Empire.

Now, before you read on, there are spoilers in the next section. I didn’t put this warning earlier as I can’t believe anyone reading this blog hasn’t seen The Empire Strikes Back. If you haven’t, it’s time to reconsider your life choices.

Listen to the Day Before You Came. This is one of my favourite songs, and, unusually, not for the music. Listen as the singer recounts a series of routine events that take on sudden poignancy when you realise how her life is about to change. That insight comes in the last line of each section: it’s also the title of the song.

I’m watching Mad Men for the umpteenth time with my daughter. Mad Men is a masterclass in writing, not least for the way it deals only in the edges of ideas. But the first series is also masterclass in turning points and rushes for insight.

In the first episode Don Draper’s behaviour is cast into harsh relief when he goes home to a family we weren’t previously aware existed. As the first series unfolds more revelations about his and other characters send the audience constantly rushing back through the previous episodes to look at events with new understanding. Watching the show a second time, you pick up on clues and subtleties you were previously unaware of. Rushes for insight make something worth looking at again.

This is a favourite technique in SF. I use it a lot in my Fair Exchange series of short stories. The crew of the Eva Rye make a trade using Fair Exchange software, but it appears as if they have been cheated. The fun comes at the turning point when everything turns out to have been fair all along.

But here’s a little secret. There are big twists still to come in the series. I’ve just been bringing it to a close this week and I can’t help but smile at what’s to come… You’ll get the first hint of these twists in the next story.

More on that in a later post.

Writers’ Retreat

Last week I went to my first ever writing retreat.

It won’t be my last. Having a week with nothing to do but write or take inspirational walks turns out to be my idea of a wonderful time.

But what was even better was meeting up with the other writers. We had some come great chats over breakfast and dinner, read through some works in progress and even did jigsaw puzzles when the excitement got too much.

One thing I learned during the course of the week was how much publishing has changed since I started writing. There are far more ways into print. For example, I met writers taking a thoroughly professional approach to self publishing, hiring editors and designers to impressive effect. There are far more tools available to help writers thanks to computers and the internet. The field is also much wider than it used to be, with many more genres and subgenres. Far more diverse audiences can be reached.

But I don’t think getting published is any easier. Far from it. The market might be bigger, but it sounds like an empty, echoing place for someone just starting out.

My first sales were over thirty years ago: jokes and articles to magazines such as Private Eye and short romances to women’s magazines. As I’ve written elsewhere (many, many times), writing romances is a great way to learn your craft.

From there I made it into Interzone and other SFF publications, which encouraged me to write my first novel. Along the way I received many rejections and a lot of very good advice. I still maintain the importance of writers submitting work and learning from their rejections, however I am coming to realise how lucky I was to receive so much feedback when I started. There are still editors who offer constructive feedback, of course, and if you find one, value them!

Publishing may have changed but my advice hasn’t. Keep writing and submitting. Count your rejections, and if you get feedback, learn from it. If you’re not getting feedback, join a writers group where you critique each other’s work. If you are getting feedback, join a writers group anyway.

Writing is seen as a solitary occupation. That only goes for the part where you put down words on the page. I met some inspiring people on my writers retreat, and I was reminded that, as with everything else in life, you can’t do it on your own.