Ethical Companies – The Blog

Well I had to laugh at Labour’s latest “idea”. A poster created by a staunch Labour supporter showing David Cameron on the bonnet of an Audi Quattro, Gene Hunt style (Ashes To Ashes). This is, however, a bad idea on a number of levels:

1. Gene Hunt is actually considered to be quite a “cool” character, and this actually makes Dave seem quite cool, and he looks approachable and open.
2. Audi Quattros are seriously cool cars, and coming from Mr Non Petrolhead (me) this is high praise. Ditto the “making Dave look cool” stuff from point 1.
3. The 1980’s weren’t that bad really. Ok they weren’t exactly my “golden years” but it seemed a whole lot easier to get a job then, and life was far less hassle than it is now. I know Margaret Thatcher and John Major come in for a lot of flack but I honestly think they were a hell of a lot better than Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
4. Labour have left themselves open to a 1970’s version ….

Oh dearie me. Now that is far more “truthful”. The 1970’s were rife with strikes, the Winter Of Discontent and the absolute mess Labour had made of our economy. Many of you reading this won’t remember 1979 (I don’t remember it that well myself) but you really should go and ask your parents and grandparents what Labour did to our country in the 1970’s before you vote.

Steve

Tweet This Post 

As you may well know I used to be a chef. When I was in my final year of school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, except that I wanted some money (who doesn’t ?) I applied for a part time weekend job at a local restaurant washing up and got the job Friday and Saturday nights washing up for £1 an hour and after a while was put to work on the “starters”. It seemed the natural thing to ask for a full time job as the end of school was approaching I had decided I wanted to be a “star” chef, no doubt inspired by the success of celebrity chefs such as the Roux Brothers.

It was a bl*&^% awful job with hindsight. Not only had my pay decreased but we never got overtime, it was split shifts and you got Sunday and Monday off (I went to catering college on the Monday); if you wanted a different day off or to go on holiday at a different time to when the restaurant owners were on going on holiday then it was “tough”. I’ve never wished ill of any of my employers but I come pretty close in this case. Whilst I learnt how to cook, the price I paid was too high (poor wages, no social life, depression etc). The only good thing that came out of it for me was an appreciation of quality food, as I ate several things I’d never experienced before (such as avocados) and developed a taste for other things I’d had little experience of (decent cheese).

Bearing in mind this was 1981, the food was, as you might imagine, very much reminiscent of the culinary zeitgeist heavily influenced by 1970’s bistro classics and the Nouvelle Cuisine that was popular (well in some circles, certainly not any circles I moved in though) in the early 1980s. In the starters we had the inevitable prawn cocktail, dressed crab, melon and avocado vinaigrette plus the obligatory “soup of the day” (whatever it was, I only did cold starters in my section). Main courses were largely steak or fish orientated with the inevitable Steak au Poivre, Tournedo Rossini, Dover Sole and Beef Wellington.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this was that I recently saw a page on the Retro Food Recipes website listing food of the 1970s era. It’s interesting to see that many of these classics endured and are still popular 30 or 40 years later, yet Nouvelle Cuisine is often spoke in an almost embarassingly low voice of remembrance. You see some great cooks on TV, making some complex (and in some cases, such as Heston Blumenthal’s food, very technical) dishes, yet I reckon when it comes down to it it’s hard to beat a prawn cocktail, steak au poivre and …. Something else (you can keep the Black Forest Gateau !)

Having said that, this was also an era of some truly atrocious food as well …. Angel Delight, Pot Noodles …. Do I need to go any further ?

Steve

Tweet This Post 

Back in the distant eons of time (and oh yes it was a long time ago, I had more hair etc) I was a big fan of the Commodore 64 (C64) computer (as were many other people, to date it is still the single best selling computer of all time.)  On of the main reasons the C64 was so popular was its advanced graphics and sound chips (for the time.)  The sound chip (aka SID chip)  in particular is considered to be the best chip of the era and was streets ahead of any of the competitor’s offerings.  The sound that can be achieved from a bog standard C64 SID is quite amazing for its time:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=c64+sid+collection&search_type=&aq=f

Many C64 “musicians” went to work on later formats and are responsible for mainstream music as well as video game soundtracks, names such as Rob Hubbard and Jeroen Tel. Amazingly the C64 still has dedicated “fans” and every year some of these fans meet up at demo parties and compete to produce the best graphics, sound etc. Over the years the sound technology on the C64 has been tweaked a number of times and a lot of very stunning sounds have been produced, however, until a new routine called “Vicious SID” came along ….

Much as I like the C64 I don’t have anything to do with it these days and haven’t used one since about 1996 or so (possibly earlier) so I don’t tend to look up any C64 related news on the internet at all. However, I recently came across the Vicious SID article on http://c64music.blogspot.com/:

A team of supertalented coders have managed to break the limits of C64 sound once again.

The Human Coding Machine from Germany and SounDemoN from Finland, have managed to create a music routine that allows you to have:

- 4 channels of 8-bit samplerate, digi playback
- 2 channels of SID synth sound
- You can filter both SID channels AND SAMPLES!

Ok, this is technogeekery to most of us, just take a listen. Bear in mind this is output direct from a C64, a 1982 computer ! Ok it sounds very C64 style and 1980’s but it’s pretty amazing stuff. There’s more here:

http://www.scs-trc.net/x08/music/vicious_sid_mp3.zip

Simply amazing considering the age of the computer.

Steve

Tweet This Post 

How we all break the law every day.

“Millions of people who declare themselves innocent law abiding citizens actually commit around seven crimes a week.

The most common offences are speeding, texting or talking while driving, dropping litter, downloading music illegally or riding bicycles on the pavement. Other daily crimes include eating or drinking while driving, parking on pavements or not wearing a seatbelt.

More than a third of people are not at all bothered by the fact they are breaking the law, with 58 per cent of those saying the crimes are minor.

Another 20 per cent don’t see them as being illegal because everyone else does it as well.”

Only 7 ?  I suppose the most common law broken is that of speeding.  This of course is understandable as many speed limits are entirely random and/or inappropriate and many view speed cameras as draconian enforcement designed to leverage as much cash as possible from the motoring public as possible.

However, what I find interesting is illegal “downloading.”  This is an old debate which has been going on for a long long time.  As long ago as the early 1980’s (possibly earlier) computer software was regularly “cracked*” and distributed around the world via bulletin board systems (aka boards or BBS’es.)  This was very prevalent on the Commodore 64 computer system and there were a number of established “boards” in the United States with names like Warez Galore (Seattle), Candyland (Nashville), Prowl’s Place (Brooklyn) and Foreplay (not sure where in the USA.)  It wasn’t too big a deal to the gaming industry as modem speeds at this time weren’t really “up to it” when it came to mass distribution.  Commodore 64 modems could only achieve maximum speeds of 2400 baud, with 300 or 1200 being the most common modem speeds.  To put this into perspective Ultima V on the Commodre 64 took around 10 to 11 hours to upload in 1988 via modem, I’ve just tried a download on my Virgin 50mbit connection of the exact same game over the internet; it was too quick for me to actually time it, seconds literally.

As time has gone on modem speeds have increased and the internet has become accessed by more and more of the populace.  Illegal downloading is almost inevitable, software/movie/music companies seem to have as many problems combating this now as they did in 1980s and 1990s, little has changed.  However, I would like to point out a couple of things out which don’t occur to many of these companies; not to defend the the “criminals”, but just to make these points clear:

1. Some “products” can no longer be purchased.  Consider the downloadable (legally) SNES games you can download to your Nintendo Wii to play.  This is great if you want a title Nintendo has made “available” such as Legend Of Zelda A Link To The Past (the only SNES game currently installed on my Wii) but not so hot if you want a less mainstream title which hasn’t been “released” for download to your Wii.  There’s thousands of games out there on vintage systems you simply can’t buy any more and if you want to replay those games of your misspent youth you’re stuffed, unless you can download a “copy.”  My point being, the download, whilst illegal, doesn’t actually equate to a financial loss to the game’s publisher.  And it’s not just games, there’s a lot of films/TV series etc which simply haven’t been released on DVD (and in some cases not even on VHS), but you can download them if you know where to look ….
2. If someone wasn’t able to download a film/MP3/game they wanted would they buy it anyway ?  In other words does the download equate to a financial loss to the publisher ?  I suspect that in the majority of cases people who download new films (let’s say the current hit Avatar for example) wouldn’t pay to see the film if they couldn’t download it, they simply wouldn’t watch it.

Why do I make these 2 points ?  Because it annoys me when companies make statements like “we lose £15 trillion a year due to illegal downloads”, but I don’t think they take these factors into consideration.  It’s hard for today’s digital generation to see downloading as a crime and it’s become commonplace.

Steve

* Cracked – When a game has been “cracked” it simply means the protection has been removed and the game put into a form which is easily duplicated due to the lack of protection.  In the case of software this is by modification of the software code and the “check it’s not a copy” parts stripped out.  In the 1980s cracking involved removing the software protection and transferring the game to disk in unprotected form which easily be uploaded/downloaded.  Cracking goes back to pre Commodore 64 times but the Commodore 64 is the machine where cracking literally “exploded.”

Tweet This Post 

Emulators on Wikipedia.

“An emulator in computer sciences duplicates (provides an emulation of) the functions of one system using a different system, so that the second system behaves like (and appears to be) the first system. This focus on exact reproduction of external behavior is in contrast to some other forms of computer simulation, which can concern an abstract model of the system being simulated.”

Ok, that’s accurate but somewhat “dry.”  Basically emulation allows you to use software for one system on another system.  For example you can run Windows software on Linux or Macintosh or ….  More interestingly you can play old games from non PC systems on your PC.  This ranges from the 8 bit systems of the 1980’s through the 16 bit glory of the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga to consoles such as the Sega Dreamcast and Sony Playstation 2.

I discovered computer emulation about 1995 or so with the C64 emulator C64S.  Whilst it wasn’t stunningly compatible and didn’t run all C64 games on your PC it did work on a 386 PC under MS-DOS.  The Commodore 64 was a massively popular home computer and there are thousands (I mean that, it’s not an exaggeration) of games available for it and they are not too hard to find on the internet with the use of Google.  Your verdict on C64 games may of course vary but for me these are some of the classics:

• Elite. Heck, who hasn’t heard of this one ?  It started life on the BBC Micro B, and was also ported/written for:  Sinclair Spectrum, Acorn Electron, Commodore 128, various other BBC models, Acorn Archimedes, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore Plus4, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Apple 2, 2 PC versions and even a port for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console.
• Ultima IV. A classic computer RPG and for me one of the greatest RPGs ever.  Again converted for several systems including the C64, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.  Don’t think it made it to any of the other 8 bit systems, as it was very large on 4 disks so may have been out of the reach of many 8 bits which were tape drive orientated.  Might have been available on the Apple 2 ?
• Paradroid. Superb game where you run around a spaceship as a robot destroying all the rogue robots to regain control of the ship.  A little crude graphically now, but heck what a game considering it was under 40k in length !  C64 only, although a new version called Paradroid ‘90 later appeared on the 16 bits.
• Impossible Mission. You might have seen this in the last year or so turn up on the Nintendo DS; yes it’s the same game.  Was released on various 8 bit systems, including the Sega Master System and the NES if I recall correctly.
• Sanxion. Superb shoot ‘em up and one of the pioneers of the genre.  Also the game which brought Rob Hubbard to fame for the music which he wrote for the game.  Converted to Sinclair Spectrum but the music soundtrack was “destroyed” in the process as the Commodore 64 was streets ahead musically over the Spectrum.
• Hypersports. A joystick thrashing game.  I played this one ….  A lot.  The skeet shooting was my favourite bit.  Also ported to several other 8 bits.
• Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Classic command line text adventure.  How many hours have been wasted trying to get the babel fish on this game ?  Shows up on various platforms, not very processor intensive so easily written, even for low end 8 bits.

I could go on for hours ….  As you can probably tell I was a big Commodore 64 fan.  Here’s the Commodore 64 emulator running Elite right on my Vista desktop:

Vice also emulates the Commodore VIC20, Commodore PET and various other 8 bit Commodore platforms. You can download it here.  Vice is free, there are other C64 emulators but this is the one to pick in my opinion.

So what of the other platforms ?  Well there are emulators available for:

• Sinclair Spectrum (various models.) Don’t know much about them, was never a big Spectrum fan. World Of Spectrum is an extensive resource detailing Spectrum emulation and also the Sinclair QL (a computer I know virtually nothing about.) Games to look out for are: Elite, Jet Set Willy, Manic Miner, Head Over Heels and Atic Atac.
• BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. Never owned either of these (didn’t use one at school either like a lot of people did.) BeebEm seems to be the favoured emulator for BBC, and Elkulator for the Acorn Electron. Again, look out for Elite, and also Chuckie Egg.

This link will help you find emulators for MSX, Atari 8 bit, and pretty much any 8 bit computer system you can think of ….

Once you’ve got your emulator running, turn to Google to find the games …. Most of the 8 bit era games are pretty easy to find. If you can’t find what you’re looking for just drop us a line and if I can point you in the right direction I will !

Happy emulating !  I’ll be writing some more entries on emulation over the next few days.

Steve

Tweet This Post 

The Age Of Love – Behind Blue Eyes

I’ve been reading the Behind Blue Eyes blog on and off recently and found his comments on the 1980’s interesting as I have been considering the 1980’s myself for a number of reasons.  It is often said that we look at the past through rose tinted spectacles and that our recollection of the past is tainted by only remembering the “good stuff” and forgetting the bad.  Is this true ?

Myself I left school in summer 1981 largely unsure of what I wanted to do but with some notion of becoming a star chef (God knows where I got that idea from) and immediately got a job at a local (well localish) restaurant and started attending college on day release to get City and Guilds 706/1 and 706/2 (these qualifications are considered to be somewhat “rare” now and have been replaced with NVQs.)  College was pretty good what I recall of it and the tutors Chef Oliver (not Jamie lol !) and Chef Salsano were nice people to work under.  My boss at work was, however, a different story.  An Austrian by birth he had come to the United Kingdom and started up a restaurant and was quite definitely the most irritating and obnoxious boss I have EVER had the misfortune to work for.  He was also a miser and I was very poorly paid, even by “school leaver” standards and had to work up to 55 or so hours a week with no “overtime” pay.  Whilst I don’t deny the job gave me some valuable experience this is not the way life was meant to be so my important years of 16 to 19 were essentially ruined by poor wages, a bad boss and absolutely no social life due to the working hours.

Things got largely worse work wise after some changes, and I rapidly came to the conclusion that the catering industry was not for me.  I can cook, and I consider myself to be quite a good cook but it’s not my idea of a career.  Only those who end up on the TV or set up their own premises can make big money and even now catering is still is a poorly paid and largely disregarded profession.  We’re not all Gordon Ramsey or Jamie Oliver after all.

I ended up in the transport industry next.  I’ve been a courier, a next day delivery driver (DHL style but not DHL), an HGV driver, a despatch rider and even an international air courier.  Again not much scope for a “career” but better pay than catering and it is possible to get by.  Work wise that about sums it up for the 1980’s, although there’s other bits and pieces.

What about the “Age Of Love” part ?  Well ….  Let me see, there was …. Err, not a lot of that going about.  I was never a very confident teenager and health issues (I had had a lot of health problems when I was young with asthma and recurring bronchitis etc which I fortunately “grew out of”) had left me a nervous lad with little self confidence.  I couldn’t say “boo” to a goose, as the expression goes, so “love” was largely off the menu.  My first experience was ok, but my first girlfriend was less than pleasant and her treatment of me little short of disgraceful.  Funnily though I have stuck her name into Google and Facebook once or twice, as I am convinced that she probably now has 6 children, and lives in a council sink estate, maybe that’s just wishful thinking  A little bit of “revenge” mentality ?

Not surprisingly I was uninterested in politics, but it was of course an era of major change.  The Warsaw Pact was disbanded and the Soviet Union ceased “hostilities” (if you can call them that) with the Western world, essentially ending the Cold War.  The real change though was the change in economics.  The Margaret Thatcher/Ronald Reagan era was essentially a revival of capitalism and laissez faire economics (free market economics), the downside of which we are now feeling.

So have I anything positive to recall about the 1980’s ?  Err ….  Well there’s always the music.  Like any 16 year old lad I was into music, and Top Of The Tops was something I looked forward to every week (I worked Thursday nights so used to ask my mum to record it which she didn’t always manage to do) when I got home Saturday night after a long day in the kitchen.  Tainted Love by Soft Cell was number 1 when I left school and remains a firm favourite song for me.  Then there was Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Modern Romance, Michael Jackson and the greatest of them all ….  Frankie Goes To Hollywood.  Born out of what was called “Boystown” disco (Divine was another example) genre, to me Frankie was explosive.  Relax was great, Two Tribes even better, and I even discovered a taste for ballads with The Power Of Love.  God I wanted a Frankie Says Relax t-shirt as well, but I never got one ….  To anyone who has never listened to Frankie: if you’re going to experience the 1980’s then Frankie is what it’s all about (to me at least), they are the musical symbol of the 1980’s era.  I know some will disagree with me (doubtless Russ and Richard) but I still don’t think 1980’s music comes any better.

TV and film wise I don’t recall much of the 1980’s due to the antisocial hours I was working.  I do recall finding Private Schultz and Blott On The Landscape rather humorous though.  As for the films, well this is the era that gave use Back To The Future and Indiana Jones, seriously good stuff …

The only other memorable aspect of the 1980’s was the boom in computers.  The Commodore VIC20 and 64, and miscelllaneous arcade games exploded onto the world and we were awash with Pacman, Defender in the arcades and superb computer games such as Fort Apocalypse.  So the era gave me a grounding in computers, valuable experience for the future.

So all in all a pretty naff era.  What about the 1990’s ?  Well that’s another story, and I might reflect on that at some later point.

Steve

Tweet This Post 

As you may or may not be aware it is currently the 25th anniversary of Virgin Airlines.  So how does choose to celebrate this event ?  By a TV advert of course, which is (in my opinion) blatantly sexist.  The advert is set in the early 1980’s with a backing track by Frankie Goes To Hollywood (one of the greatest groups EVER in my opinion), presumably in Heathrow Airport.  A young businessman enters the terminal, with his “brick” mobile phone and is “gobsmacked” by the sight of red clad blonde airline hostess beauties strutting by in high heels.  People throughout the terminal turn their heads to look and are stunned, etc.  You get the idea.

Now don’t get me wrong I am not the most politically correct man on planet earth, but I am reasonably educated in such matters and have more respect for women than many men might have.  But I can’t stomach this, it is pure sexist in my opinion.  Please watch and tell me what you think.  Am I right or am I simply being a prude ?

Steve

Tweet This Post 

For those of you not “in the know” this is a series hosted by Giles Coren (I believe he is a journalist, not sure) and Sue Perkins (who is also a journalist apparently, and a stand up comedienne.  I couldn’t possibly comment on whether she is funny or not as I’ve not seen her “work”) which is shown on the BBC.  In each episode they rediscover food types and trends of bygone eras.  First one I saw was about the Edwardian era where all the food was very “Upstairs Downstairs” with dishes you could imagine Mrs Bridges cooking for “the master” upstairs.  I also saw the medieval era episode, and that’s about it so far ….

What I really wanted to see the 1980’s episode, but BBC iPlayer was being “stroppy” with me and was having none of it.  As some of you know I myself was a chef (of sorts) in the 1980’s; the era where “celebrity chef” meant Anton Mosimann or one of the Roux Brothers and you needed to take out a mortgage to purchase a complete set of Sabatier Chef’s Knives.  The 1980’s was an era of “nouvelle cuisine”, where portion control gave way to the chef’s artistic ambitions.  So I wanted to take a look back at this era and have a bit of a snigger ….  Having said that nothing much has changed, to see some of today’s chefs on the TV, they still have a desire to be the next Van Gogh and use white plates.  Thanks heavens for Jamie Oliver with his “bish bash bosh” approach.

So did anyone see the 1980’s episode ?  Let me know.  This evening I shall watch the 1950’s episode.  I have no idea what people ate in the 1950’s to be honest ….

Steve

Tweet This Post