Halt and Take Breeze

Next episode of ZaCoDe is under work and it will deal about MikroMikko Ergo X Pentium 133 MHz business PC from around 1995. Also included will be horrible crimes related to the computer, in a suitable detective fashion. On the almost finished drawing by my wife is an adaptation of The Scream by Edvard Munch for the episode, as I requested from her. Pukiupipiol.

Horrible things are happening...you'll see...

How about a Corona beer?

Besides computer things, I've been reading books and watching movies & series. For books I'd like to mention  two books, neither of which are about computers this time. Firstly I'll talk a few words about Pussikaljaromaani (literally Bag Beer Novel) by Mikko Rimminen from 2004, which was a Finlandia nominee at the time. The novel was compared favorably to old modernist (from early 20th century) one day novels with stream of mind narration, Alastalon salissa by Volter Kilpi and Putkinotko by Joel Lehtonen. Those on their own part were back in the days compared to Ulysses by James Joyce.

Shortly, I was not impressed. For structural reasons I can see why it was being praised, but I just didn't find it very fun or pleasant to read. Content did not give anything to me and it felt more like a phony-funny postmodern parody of those modernist novels, and more of a chore to read than the old books.

I do admit though, that I found it better than most Finnish books - on the other hand I have hard time thinking of a handful of Finnish books that I'd ever liked of. Also to be honest it felt like a book I could have imagined to write myself, not to mention how in literature studies it used to be common to come across with "unusual" features in literature. Those might be two reasons why I didn't really like the book: to me it felt like something too much dealt about both on narratological and content-wise level. What feels like a cliché to me is often not that to the big audience. Unfortunately that goes also vice versa at times: I follow mainstream entertainment so little that sometimes the most typical events in everyman's entertainment fiction feels fresh to me.


Samurai

Another book I'd like to talk about is Samurai - Japanilaisen hävittäjälentäjän muistelmat by Saburo Sakai and Martin Caidin & Fred Saito, which is a Western variant of Japanese flying ace Saburo Sakai's autobiography. The Finnish translation was released in 1958. I had had this book on my reading queue since at least 2000's, but I'm actually recalling I was supposed to read it already in 1990's. I had it once borrowed already from the library of Tampere, but I had so many other books as well that someone reserved the book before I had started it. That was unexpected, since the book was a storage book which had not been borrowed very frequently.

After having read the book I also found out that it's argued that Caidin exaggerated various factors in the book in order to increase its sell value in the Western markets - there'd been no proper possibilities to check facts in 1950's anyway, and the English language original book was never released in Japan as such. I have no proper ways to check facts either - there are many cases in the book which are about to suspend disbelief, yet they could well be possible. For instance there is a case where Sakai encountered 15 Grumman Hellcat planes and came close by because he thought they'd been friendly Zero planes (Sakai had lost sight on his another eye from earlier wounds). However, he managed to survive the encounter intact back to base on Iwo Jima after long pages of evading (p. 256-265). If the opposing pilots were inexperienced, it definitely could've happened. Nevertheless, my point here is, that I can't confirm these cases: from Wikipedia I can find this case being referred to another book from 1985, but since I don't have that book, I can't check if that book has gotten its data straight from Samurai for instance.

The translation does not exactly alleviate the issues with text. In Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saburō_Sakai) there is an English quote from Sakai about ruggedness of American Wildcat planes:

"I had full confidence in my ability to destroy the Grumman and decided to finish off the enemy fighter with only my 7.7 mm machine guns. I turned the 20 mm cannon switch to the 'off' position and closed in. For some strange reason, even after I had poured about five or six hundred rounds of ammunition directly into the Grumman, the airplane did not fall, but kept on flying. I thought this very odd — it had never happened before — and closed the distance between the two airplanes until I could almost reach out and touch the Grumman. To my surprise, the Grumman's rudder and tail were torn to shreds, looking like an old torn piece of rag. With his plane in such condition, no wonder the pilot was unable to continue fighting! A Zero which had taken that many bullets would have been a ball of fire by now. "

This section also is in Finnish in the book I read, or at least almost:

"Tältä etäisyydeltä en tarvinnut tykkiä; lasketin 200 konekiväärinluotia sen ohjaamoon ja näin niiden repivän rikki ohutta metallia ja lasien pirstoutuvan. En voinut uskoa silmiäni; Wildcat jatkoi suoraa lentoaan kuin mitään ei olisi tapahtunut. Zero, joka olisi saanut niin monta luotia sisuksiinsa, olisi ollut nyt jo yhtenä tulipallona."

The Wikipedia reference's source is not fully clear, because it refers to a webpage which claims the quote coming from Sakai's book "Zero", but I can't find reference to a book exactly by that title. Therefore it might well be that the English quote is not from the English version of Samurai but another book where the quote is dealt differently - I don't know.

In any case, for those who can't read Finnish, the differences (in addition to obvious abbreviation) are that in the Finnish text it's claimed Sakai shot only 200 bullets to the cockpit of the plane. These claims of 200 bullets to cockpit are already internally a bit inconsistent, since elsewhere in the book it has been insinuated earlier that 200 shots per shot down plane was a fairly nice result. In addition it sounds odd if shooting specifically the cockpit did not kill the pilot - Sakai is told to go closer after shooting to look hail the pilot while wondering how it was still just flying forth. In my quote there are no remarks about the shredded rudder, but that actually is in the book later down the page.

Sort of an Easter egg:
Doesn't this look like a murder weapon?

Assembly mnemonic HCF

Then is the turn of a television series - although I'm not even certain are fictional video series entertainment really counted as television material anymore, since more and more people are not exactly watching them by television broadcasts. At least as far as I know, nobody I know would call direct-to-video shows or movies as television programs if they're not actually broadcast by a TV channel. Anyway, I watched a full season of a modern series (2014-2017) for the first time since the 2003 launched Battlestar Galactica (which on its own right was approximately the first contemporary non-animated fictional series I had seen since 1990's).

The name of the series is Halt and Catch Fire. It was their last, best hope for a better IBM PC compatible computer. It failed - to become a Macintosh before Macintosh. And I'm well aware that I'm having an allusion to a completely irrelevant another series. In any case, I had not really seen much fiction which would have a strong plot device on historical computer(s). As in this was not retrocomputing even while I think one reason they decided to make a period drama revolving around computer emergence of 1980's, was that retrocomputing has been sort of fashionable in 2010's. Nostalgia bites sweetly.

Basically content of the series was nice, although I was slightly annoyed by so many storytelling conventions that I assume are trendy nowadays with most American "quality" fiction series. Those things would probably be also part of the reasons why those series are nowadays popular and compared favorably to older style of making series TV fiction. That is drama for reasons of drama. I found the characters highly fabricated - not so much of uncreditable by acting, but rather made filled by "drama potential" by their nature just for story reasons. Ie. every character in the series seems really wrecked from some point of a view in such fashion that it will "naturally" cause conflicts with other people, and therefore there will be gain of dynamic events and excitement from plot twists all the time. That feels to me mostly as annoying and estrangening - especially as of as two of three (or four) protagonists annoyed. Again, I'm not sure about how common this is, since I don't watch series, but I have indirectly gotten the impression that this kind of scriptwriting would be typical lately. If it is, I just find it a stupid fashion which got old 10+ years ago. Still, the core content and some other characters carried out the season easily, despite the sides which I disliked in the series.

At least I won't get spoiled with German texts.

Now I might start "Staffel 2" of Halt and Catch Fire. I had to hunt for getting the series on a disc here in Europe, but found it from Germany by eBay in unopened store plastics. Fortunately it has original English audio, although needs to survive without subtitles (I'm way more skilled in written than spoken English, and sometimes it's hard to hear what people say in television, when there are people in my house making other sounds). Unfortunately it is not a Blu-ray, and maybe even more unfortunately there are not, for what it has seemed to me, seasons 3 and 4 available on physical media at all. Reviews have suggested that the season 2 (likewise as 3rd and 4th season) was much better than the first one, so I can't deny I'm quite curious how I will feel after watching this.


Hollywood went computers

Finally movies: I have had this theme of "computer" with films I've been trying to muster for watching. Since I've already written so much, I'll try to abbreviate my comments on movies to only a sentence for two movies:
1. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) - a disappointment, since most of the movie the "computer" was really just a kid who got his brains act like a computer, but what should be expected from a Disney produced comedy.
2. Electric Dreams (1985) - otherwise an average romantic comedy/drama apart from the very prominent presence of a vintage computer in da haus which made me quite excited and perplexed about the model of the device used in the film; also from a modern point of view the natural 1980's contemporariness felt really fresh after all these years.

Retrocomputing 4 from Outer Fiction

Because this is kind of a diary and I like to keep record on books and movies I'd gone through, I'll in passing mention that I read a book by Brian J. Robb: Vastustamaton Brad Pitt (original title The Rise to Stardom, 2009). Nothing special about that as such, but I suppose few thoughts of it in addition would be appropriate. The book was quite nice to read, yet it's not something I'd think I'd read again. Got some information about movie with ties with Brad Pitt, and I guess he could be deemed as a more noteworthy actor than the pretty pin-up boy reputation which he himself clearly disliked would have expected. Also I have to deem it is kind of sad even that in Finland it is actually relatively hard to find books in their original language even if they're in English - I only read the Finnish translation as I happened to get the book from library removals. However, this book and thoughts about it have nothing to do with the topic tonight.

On the other hand, some other books and films I've met recently have more remarks on it. Should I not be interested of retrocomputing or alternatively had I read and seen those works of fiction while they were all new, I might have not really paid that much attention. The book I'm referring to is Syvä kuolema (Deep Lies, 1986) by Stuard Woods and the movies I'm thinking are the two agent Jack Ryan films based on Tom Clancy's books starred by Harrison Ford: Patriot Games (1992) & Clear and Present Danger (1994). For those who are potentially considering reading/seeing those without having done it before, I'd like to notify that I'm not planning to give out any major spoilers. I'm mainly going to talk about certain technology used in the fiction.

What combines all of those three is that they're agent stories. I used to think that I'm not interested about such stuff. In fact even while Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising were of my favourite books as a kid, I didn't really like any later books from him as I felt they were too much of agent stories (I think I did read The Sum of All Fears and Clear and Present Danger in Finnish). Therefore I found myself surprisingly indulged in these plot based fictional pieces of work. Might be that now as older I think differently, but also these feel fresh to me since I'd not really gone through this kind of fiction much. Also reading plot based books feels fresh after so many years and pages of research books from the university.

I suppose I need to get this bookcrossing
case back on the road soon.

Especially this Deep Lies surprised me, as I was expecting some quite standard level nothing too special plot based thriller. The cover actually mostly amused me, especially as it has few stereotypic spies in trench coat, shades and a brimmed had which the book has not really at all, and which hints that the cover artist has not exactly read the book - like it usually goes. I also do have to admit that much of the things happening there plotwise didn't really impress me (many things seemed too foreseeable in a long run) and if the twists are not keeping in tightly enough, the "thrill" element goes quite much wasted. That has been actually a major reason why I would not care much of thrillers and horror, as the expected emotional effect would hardly ever impact me. Then later on I've found other fields of interest in both genres.

In any case I was wondering why would not Deep Lies be classified as a techno-thriller, and that what actually then makes a techno-thriller over a normal thriller. A significant plot device in the book is based upon using computers and other technology instead of traditional on-spot agents. Otherwise submarines starting from Whiskey-on-the-Rocks incident at Swedish coast in 1981 (a Whiskey class Soviet submarine got stuck on rocks openly visible on surface close to a Swedish naval base) are in significant role in the book - there are no similar new innovations such as Russian stealth submarine from The Hunt for Red October, but otherwise I could not feel thinking that this Clancy's books might have well been one source of influence while writing the novel.

As a retrocomputing hobbyist the most amusing part in the book was nevertheless the fact that the people were installing IBM PC AT based multi-user multiprocessing computer network system to make things work smoothly and have data stored and shared for those who needed it quickly. Some Western agents were mocking Soviet computer capabilities, as they didn't even have MS-DOS compatible computer systems. Also there were several sections that were depicting the text PRODUCED BY THE COMPUTER:
ON ITS SCREEN
WHILE THE USER
TYPED COMMANDS.

LOADING RESTART SEQUENCE FOR BLOG NOTES... PLEASE BE PATIENT.

It was argued that those models of computers were hard to get even in USA at the time, so I suppose the book was supposed to be set in around 1984/1985, as the IBM PC AT was originally released in 1984. I can not recall it would have ever directly stated when the book actually was set to happen, but it clearly was intended to depict contemporary times of the book release. By 1986, when the book was released, however, I think PC AT models were not that rare anymore, as the IBM PC AT model itself was discontinued by 1987 and Compaq had already released a 386 processor based PC compatible in 1986. Regardless, big 5.25" floppies were there to save the day.

Then for the Clancy novel film adaptations with Harrison Ford. I was constantly trying to look at the computers they used in the offices. I even had to stop, rewind and image freeze another of them just to take a closer look on a computer on the background - I believe it was some IBM PS/2 model computer. My wife was left rolling her eyes when this happened as we were watching thise movies together: Is this guy here just to catch computers? To me it mattered a lot to the atmosphere too, since the movies were meant to set in 1980's, and had someone had for instance some CD-ROM equipped 486 PC on his desktop it would have felt a rough anachrony over there. However, all the models seemed appropriate for having been used in CIA office as "the best tech we got" in late 1980's, and details like that give a good impression for the film.

Another thing worth interest in my opinion was that in Patriot Games there was a scene unlike I could remember having ever seen in any other movie. Maybe I have just not seen such movie, but in any case. There was one action scene that was depicted almost entirely from the satellite link vision on the office agents and managers: all the soldiers were seen through satellite camera in bird perspective and it seemed just like some 2D computer war game. The whole scene distanced the real acts very efficiently and in such distinctive fashion, that it forced to think about how it would feel like - you have to make educated guesses by fragments of technical intelligence data, and then you can just send in the troops without any direct involvement. Should your guesses go wrong, you could risk lots of innocent lives, and in any case someone else would do your dirty work when needed.

The scene I'm referring to can be found from YouTube actually:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoVWedQOQl4

I suppose the studio executives and movie producers would nowadays deem that this kind of a scene would not appeal to the modern audience sufficiently due to lack of closeups with fancy CGI explosions in colour and other stunning (and often silly) visuals. To me the scene felt much more realistic than typical action scenes in movies, and most of all it felt much more emotionally impacting than the typical "show it all" movie entertainment. It's a bit similar effect in movie narration as when the camera is turned away from the actual murder and then it would feel more terrible than if the kill is actually showed. Still I'm somewhat surprised that this kind of scenes are not more commonly used in movies.

Would you watch a movie with this cover?
Well I did, and was positively surprised.

Then finally as a bit of extra, I saw just today a movie called Speed Racer (2008) by Wachowski brothers (The Matrix). The movie was a box office failure, and I was expecting it to be rather bad, but I found it actually quite watchable material. I'd deem it at least more or less of a good bad film (ie. a movie with various things done badly but that it's quite entertaining to watch). The style of visual narration is kind of cartoon-like (well it's based upon an anime with the same name actually) in quite personal and even unique fashion with overwhelming amount of certain kinds of effects and transitions. The movie is supposed to be a family film, but some scenes might be a bit questionable for the youngest kids. In fact overall it would surprise me should this movie not have attained at least some degree of a cult following. I definitely could recommend it - with reservations - despite certain silliness and some nonsensical factors; it's not even trying to be realistic anyway, it is basically scifi stuff, and it has some almost dystopian visions of corporate power settings. It could be even compared to Death Race 2000 from some parts, such as when in the Casa Cristo "rally" there are stylized teams with military and barbarian theme, among others, with the team leader of latter exclaiming: "Crom!" On the other hand the movie's heavily computer generated colourful world reminds me a bit of Tron (1982, the first feature film made almost exclusively with computers). Still I can see how this wild gamelike action movie with partially almost surreal montage and partially achronological narration would have been rejected by quite a few people in the West.

Speed Racer, however, unlike the Brad Pitt biography, is related to the topic. In the first half of the movie there is a scene with a corporate manager telling about his own past in passing, how he had to work hard himself just like other people before his company got so big and powerful. He worked hard with Commodore 64 in order to reach the greatness he is in now. Can you imagine? Considering that the setting is for some parts quite (retro) futuristic or at least of alternate reality timeline world, it felt even off-the-place to have a real computer classic being mentioned there like that. But maybe Commodore 64 was the professional computer workhorse in the alternate history of that movie unlike IBM PC and compatibles, and as such I'm not complaining about such amusing and actually unexpected reference.