Once Upon a Time … Space

science fiction, video
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The local cable network is doing a promo for their kiddies channels package, which would not be of much interest to me, if not for one thing. One of the channels involved is repeating episodes of Er Was Eens… De Ruimte, (Once Upon a Time… Space) that was about the only proper science fiction on the telly when I grew up. I last saw this when it was first broadcast, in 1982/83, when I was already reading science fiction but Dutch television had little of interest; Battlestar Galactica was a few years ago, V would come a few years later. So it fell to an originally French cartoon series that was a sequel to a not very good series about The History of Man to fill the gap.

Which it did quite well.

Now compared to a roughly contemporary Japanese series like Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets (or Sj-force as it was also know in Holland) the animation quality was … not quite … as good and the characters somewhat on the stereotypical side (the main bad giuy actually being called “Generaal Naarling” (General nasty)), but it was also much more properly science fiction. Set some 1,000 years in the future, where a dozen or so races including humans have formed a peaceful union, the series follows the adventures of several new members of the union’s space police, as they have to deal with natural disasters as well as intrigues by the bad guys from Cassiopeia, a military dictatorship part of the union but constantly trying to gain ultimate power. The good guys are led by Omega and tend to go for peaceful solutions before grabbing for the laser.

The series lasted twentysix episodes, with the last six-seven or so forming one big story arc, featuring a new big bad manipulating Casseopia, a threat only resolved in the last episode. It was this that made the biggest impression on me, the first sustained space opera I’d seen. And what also made an impression was the music, both the opening theme as featured above, as the incidental background music, which is as burned in my memory as the Star Wars music…

Not a game

geekdom
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Sometimes the internet just works. Cause in point, a guy on MetaFilter asking for help with a Russian friend being lured to the US under false pretensions:

A Russian friend of mine may be in a dangerous situation in Washington, DC.

My friend and former student K arrived in DC yesterday, along with a friend. She came over on some kind of travel exchange program put together by a Russian travel agency called ‘Aloha’. They paid about 3K for this program.

The program promised a job offer in advance, but didn’t deliver. They said they would send one via email, but failed there, too.

Her contact in the USA barely speaks English, doesn’t answer her calls but does answer mine. He has asked her and her friend to meet in NYC tonight around midnight, with promises of hostess work in a lounge. Yes, I know how horrific that sounds- that’s why I am working all possible angles here.

She is not going to NYC but I need some help handling and understanding how to handle this- I have a friend helping them with a cheap hotel for the night, but that’s all at the moment. I am presently driving to LA and could fly her and her friend to meet me there on Saturday, but couldn’t house them indefinitely. I will be monitoring this thread over the next hour.

Guess what? In the next few hours and days the collective intelligence of MeFi does help and resolve the situation. Information is sought and found, contacts are established, people chip in to help — end result: everybody safe and sound. It’s fascinating to read in hindsight, when you know the outcome, though must of course have been incredibly stressful for the people involved. What struck me was how much it reminded me of the similar, fictional scenario in Walter Jon Williams’ This Is Not a Game, a confirmation of how well he gets internet culture…

Civil servant union moves leftwards

Activism, Unions
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AbvaKabo is the largest Dutch civil servants union, one of the bigger union within the FNV federation of unions. As such it was the driving force behind the recent garbage strikes, in which new, radical methods of organisation imported from the US led the unions to victory. And this success, together with the earlier success in the cleaners’ strike has led to a new feeling of militancy within the union, which was noticeable during the leadership elections.

Because despite this recent militacy the union is still somewhat alienated from its members; even more so from non-members of course, who they do represent in negotiations but who see no reason to become members. Membership had dropped over the years and the incumbent leadership of the union has tried to reverse this trend by making the union more of a customer care organisation, including tax advice and such. Some of the more activist cadre members have taken a dim view of this and other modernisation measures, prefering, especially now, to focus on action rather than reorganisation.

There was a real choice than at the elections, but the result was a typical Dutch compromise. The incumbent chair remained in her post, but several leftwing members were elected as well. It will therefore be interesting to see what the union’s strategy will be in the next great struggle, in the negotiations over pay and conditions for health care workers.

Pay no attention to the software behind the curtain

Amsterdam, geekdom, posts interesting only to me, video
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Bit of a bother with my bike today. A couple of weeks ago I had finally gotten a new bike, after my last one had been stolen more than a year ago. At the hospital S. is unfortunately still in there’s a bike repair place which also sells secondhand ones and when I looked there they had a nice, proper Raleigh bike, one of those that you can’t help but ride sitting up ramrod straight, for less than 200 euro. In very nice condition and looking as if it came straight out of the fifties, I was a bit wary of leaving it out on the streets. Which is why I usually stall it in the underground automated parking at the ferry when I go to work. And this uses some sort of Windows based software to do all the work, which I know because the first time I wanted to use it, it had blue screened. Not a good start, but I had been using it without problems ever since.

Until today. Checked my bike in with no problems; wanted to check it out tonight, no go. The chip and pin machine, with which you pay and which uses your bank card to recognise which bike you’re attempting to collect, was borked. So I called the emergency line, they asked the usual questions, then got me called back by somebody with some clue, he asked for the last four digits of my bank pass, then used that to locate and get my bike. The video above shows the physical side of that process; thanks to the monitor screen normally used to explain the system, I got to see the software side of things. It could’ve been an old skool DOS programme, a light blue background with hideously big buttons, with a list of ticky boxes in red (occupied) or green (free) followed by the bank pass number (only the last four digits shown iirc) the customer had used. The admin checked mine and hit the button “get bike” et viola, there it was.

As a card carrying geek it’s always interesting to get such a look at the software behind the curtain — and because it was a nice hot day, I had no problem waiting a bit longer than normal to get my bike either!