Author Archives: Tony Ballantyne

Writer and Tech blogger

The Model Railway Men

I stumbled across the ebook versions of the Model Railway Men novels on Amazon and bought them for old times sake.

I loved the Model Railway Men books as a boy, I suspect anyone who loved reading and had a model railway would have done the same. They tell the story of Mark who finds a group a tiny people living their perfectly scaled lives on his model railway layout.

On rereading, I found the books a little dated, but well written and surprisingly well observed. I find I receive constant reminders of how much of the "wisdom" I’ve accumulated through the years had its seeds in the books I read as a child. These books were just such a reminder.

With the reminders came a realisation. My wife was a big fan of the Chalet School books as a child and, (just like Chaz Brenchley), she still is now. I read a couple of the Chalet School books and found them tedious: completely devoid of incident; they seemed to me nothing more than a recounting of day to day manners.

My realisation was that the Model Railway Men books would be just as tedious to an outsider, something I didn’t understand when younger. There’s a chapter in the first book where Mark is helped by Telford – the leader of the Model Railway Men – as he works out a timetable for his layout. A discussion follows featuring such details as to when to run the milk train and how many coaches the express should have. As a boy, I loved that passage in all its mundane detail. As an adult I still do, but I can now recognise that others might not.

One last point. I grew up before there were computers in households. If games consoles had been available back then I’m sure I’d have spent most of my time on one, but as they weren’t I found other ways to amuse myself.

My friends and I were train spotters in those days. Whilst that was never cool, it wasn’t as odd as it maybe appears now. We used to ride our bikes to a nearby railway bridge and write done the numbers of the engines that ran past on the London to Edinburgh route. At home, I’d design model railway layouts and work on improving my own real one. In those days, trains and SF were practically all I thought about .

And then when I was 14, I got my first computer. I lost interest in railways virtually overnight.

I stopped designing layouts, I stopped making models and scenery. The track on my layout was ripped up. I still have two suitcases in my garage full of engines, carriages and other paraphernalia, but they’ve never been opened.

There are still people who love railways, but I suspect not so many as there once were. There will be many people like me, for whom railways once half filled a need, who found something far more satisfying in programming.

Six Tips on Writing Speech

Or more precisely, a conversation in six sentences.

A pupil recently asked me about writing speech in stories.

“Do I need to put he said, she said after every sentence?”  he asked.

“No.” I replied.  “If you look at a story in a book, you’ll notice that they very rarely indicate who has spoken.”

“Really?”  He picked up a book, read a few sentences. “Oh yes,  I see what you mean!”

“There you go.  You have to learn to trust the reader; they’re cleverer than beginner writers give them credit for.  The reader can recognise who’s speaking when people are taking turns in a conversation.”

“So you only have to indicate the names at the start?”

“Well,” I said, “You might want to occasionally remind them who’s speaking.”

See Also

The Manchester Arena

I turned on the television on Tuesday morning to see a chicken being cooked. Two breathlessly enthusiastic Americans were discussing the flavours; the tenderness; exactly how healthy the recipe was.

It all seemed so out of place. I already knew from Facebook that a bomb had gone off the night before in Manchester Arena at the end of a pop concert. I was looking for the news, trying to find out more information. The image of a chicken cooking seemed so wrong, but so many other times I’ve woken up and watched the equivalent whilst other people were waking up to their own personal tragedies. This is how people compartmentalize their lives.

I went into work early: I knew that some of our students were likely to have been there and support would need to be put in place. I arrived at school to the news that 22 were confirmed dead and 59 injured. As the day wore on the students came into school and we heard stories from those who had been present in the Arena. One by one we marked our children safe, but the word was out that relatives were still missing.

As I went to bed that night they were playing The Lark Ascending on the radio, one of the most peaceful, beautiful pieces of music I know. It seemed very appropriate.

Next day dawned with unconfirmed reports that close family members of some of our students were dead, caught in the blast. Confirmation came at 10am. Assemblies were held. A teacher read The Lord is My Shepherd and children were given time for reflection. In common with many other English schools, our Year 13s were leaving at the end of the week. They were reminded that it was understandable to feel compassion, but that it was okay to go on revising and working hard, it was okay to enjoy themselves on their Leavers’ Prom. This echoed what a lot of people on the news have been saying: that the best response to terrorism is to carry on as normal, to go out and watch a concert; to have a drink; to meet up with friends. They’re right, but responding to terrorism is not the only reason for doing so. Doing these things is what being alive is all about.

Today is Friday. Our students are wearing pink wristbands as a statement of community, fellow feeling and quiet respect for those who are grieving. Tonight, the year 13s will go to their Prom wearing pink carnations. They’ll be getting ready as I write this, putting on suits and dresses, doing their hair, getting ready to celebrate the end of their schooldays.

I hope they have a great evening. Life goes on.

Silence

My friend asked me to cover her duties as organist over Easter whilst she was trekking in Nepal. (I say trekking, she’s checking on the progress of health centres she helped to set up whilst doing voluntary work a few years ago. There’s someone who’s making a difference.)

Last night I played the Maundy Thursday service. This is the service where they wash people’s feet (something I didn’t get to see from my position sitting behind the organ). It finished with the altar being stripped, following which a silent vigil was to be held.

After the final hymn, I collected my music together and headed out the door – I was returning home to a huge pile of washing up and maybe a glass of whisky – when something caught my attention.

Silence.

The church was now a large, empty space, filled with nothing but silence. Not the silence of the night, nor the silence that results from the absence of sound, but rather a conscious silence. The silence of so many people sitting with their thoughts.

Despite the fact I had so other things to do, I sat down and listened to my own thoughts.

There’s a lot to be heard in the silence. Films, TV programs, radio show, shops and malls, even some museums now, all like to impose their own soundtrack on our lives, trying to shape our emotions to their own ends. It’s easy to forget what can be heard when that external soundtrack is removed.

Read what you like into the above. As the world fills with more and more noise and activity, I’m increasingly drawn towards stillness.

MyKitaab Podcast

The mission of the MyKitaab podcast series is to help answer the question “I have written a book, how do I get it published in India?”

Here, host Amar Vyas talks to me about writing, blogging and Open Source software, especially  Emacs!

You can access the podcast as follows:

Or listen to it here:

Microcosms

From Eric Brown’s introduction…

THIS VOLUME CAME ABOUT ONE summer a few years ago when Tony came up to Scotland with his family. We were wandering around the pretty seaside town of North Berwick and talking about recent short stories we’d written. Tony happened to mention that he was working on some short- shorts, which he hoped to place with Nature, and I mentioned a short-short market that I’d recently sold to, Daily SF. I then suggested that, when we had enough tales to form a volume, we should gather them all together and attempt to find a publisher. Years passed; we wrote short-shorts between bigger projects, and Keith Brooke who runs Infinity Plus Books expressed an interest in publishing Microcosms.

Microcosms: 42 pieces of flash fiction by Eric Brown and Tony Ballantyne

Published by Infinity Plus

Buy the Paperback Edition on Amazon UK | Amazon US

But the Kindle Edition on Amazon UK | Amazon US

 

The Human Way

The Human Way appears in the March/April 2017 Issue of Analog

Fans of the Recursion series may recognise Craig, Armstrong and Joanna – as well as the Eva Rye – from the beginning of Divergence.

The story continues the Fair Exchange series that has been appearing in Analog over the past few years. It takes place in the Recursion universe around 10 years after the events depicted in the novels.

Six Reasons why Maintaining a Blog will make You a Better Writer

  • It will make you write regularly
  • It will make you finish something – you’re not a writer if you’re only producing half finished stories
  • It will make you publish something – no more constantly rewriting, trying to get something perfect
  • It will mean your stuff will be read by somebody else – no more stories silently gathering dust in the drawer
  • It will make you engage with feedback and criticism
  • It will let you move on – time to start something new … and better

See Also

WordPress Pharma Hack

Someone kindly emailed me to point out that my writing site had been hacked. Links for Cialis were now appearing scattered throughout the text.

A quick Google search revealed that this was a common hack, and was probably the result of some rogue code embedded in a file after a brute force attack. I ran a site security check (there are many free services if you search for them) which suggested that the problem was located in wp-config.php. I could have paid for a clear up, but taking a look at the file in question it was clear the code wasn’t exactly trying to conceal itself. Once snipped out, my site’s performance improved immediately.

… or so I thought.

A few days later, the adverts reappeared. This is a clever hack – snip out the code and it regenerates itself.

There are various flavours of the Pharma Hack, (a search for WordPress Pharma Hack will give you all the details you need and more) the one that hit me had added an innocent looking file: /wp-includes/init.php

I only discovered this after I’d deleted all my themes and plugins and installed fresh versions of wp-admin and wp-includes. When I restarted the site, the following message appeared at the top of the page:

include_once(.../public_html//wp-includes/init.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in .../public_html/wp-config.php on line 93

Checking line 93 of wp-config showed the offending line (I’ve surrounded it with **s):

** include_once(ABSPATH . '/wp-includes/init.php'); ** 
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');//Disable File Edits
define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true);

I removed the line, reset my passwords, including the database passwords, reinstalled my plugins and (hopefully) that’s it.

I should have noticed this sooner, of course, but I’ve not been blogging recently as I’ve been concentrating on finishing my next novel.

Even so, I must hold my hands up and admit that I’ve not given my sites the attention they deserve. I’ve installed some security software following a quick search for WordPress security plugins on Google, I’ll take some time to monitor what’s going on in future.

Martin Carthy

I wondered about going to see Martin Carthy last night at the Band on the Wall

I’d heard that his voice isn’t what it was, that he can’t always form the chords any more. Well, that’s what happens when you get older, and as my companion Crofty pointed out after the show "I love a musician that at 70+ doesn’t try to be anything other than themselves at 70+"

So last night wasn’t a virtuoso performance, but to be fair, that was never Carthy’s shtick. What we got was an engaging show, a bit of chat and an overwhelming sense of folk heritage.

On playing Bruton Town:
"I learned this from Davey Graham"

On an English version of Mrs McGrath:
"I didn’t realise there was an English version until I heard Tim Hart and Maddy Prior play it in ’68"

It would seem reasonable to assume that most of us in the audience had been part of the folk scene for the past decades, attending gigs in little pubs and clubs up and down the country. Carthy, of course, has been at the heart of all this.

I don’t listen to much folk music nowadays. Too many of the performers learned their craft in the conservatoires, and that doesn’t seem very folky to me.

Last night’s show may have had its imperfections, it was all the more enjoyable for it.

(And whilst not suggesting for a moment that Carthy is second rate, I’ve written more about performance here: Second Rate Entertainers)