Thursday, October 20

 
 
YEAR:  2016 | Tags:  | | |
 
 

 
 
 

6T tram, 15:50

 
 

No gloves this morning: the temperature had risen to merely normal again.

I spent the morning with the CMS class, some of whom had emailed to say that they would continue working from home. In the afternoon I worked for a time with Malin who remained after the class finished to continue working on her site. We solved a nasty problem involving menu structures.

I then carried on working on the convivial mechanics website, where I found myself working on a nasty problem involving menu structures. I couldn’t get it to work and when I went to ask for advice Malin had gone.

Now I have to get home to look after Sunshine. Irma works late tonight and the cat will almost certainly want to go out for a while. I have run to the tram and now I breathe heavily while looking around. I can see nothing of interest but I decide that nothing of interest might actually prove quite interesting. I take several photos, choose one, work on it, and upload it before the tram gets to Sörnäinen.

I will let Sunshine out, and then back in. He will not like the wind and make only a token voyage around the area, going a little further than the first flower bed.

At Crazy Days last weekend I got a card entitling me to two free months of HBO access. I will therefore decide to watch the first episode of Westworld, the new HBO series. I will find it completely engrossing both in terms of the story and the way that the story gets told. The series has its roots in the old movie starring Yul Bryner, in which a robot at a futuristic theme park gains consciousness. In the series though the back story has much more depth and detail, and the effects used to convey the extent of the Wild West theme park look astonishing.

More interestingly, the story focuses on what it means to have a vicarious holiday in a theme park where you can do almost anything because most of the inhabitants are robots. It then focuses on what it might mean for one of the robots to begin to gain some elements of consciousness. Finally the story constantly reminds us that the robots have no feelings or intelligence by showing them performing the same actions and having exactly the same conversations every day and then shows scenes of brutality that defy you not to be moved or shocked. These get filmed in exactly the way they would get filmed in a big budget Western movie, with the visual and soundtrack cliches.

Of course, this may all go downhill in the second episode. I shall watch that as soon as I can.