Giggles the netbook

Two weeks ago I acquired a netbook for travel. I face a few weeks on the road, and a light device that's good for email, web and writing will be just the thing. So I bought an Asus Eee PC, model 1001P.

The iPad was very tempting, but unfortunately, although it looks way cool, at heart it's a toy. Try typing on it, or connecting a USB. Or multitasking. The iPad is however streets ahead of everything else as an eReader. I much prefer the high quality backlit screen of the iPad to any of the eInk systems, and I never thought I'd find myself saying that. If only someone could marry Apple's product management to Microsoft's engineering, it would be awesome.

So I got the Eee PC, and my girls instantly named the machine Giggles. Forthwith is Gary's evaluation of Giggles.

First, the good news:

The battery life is incredible at 9 hours or more. Who would have thought advertising could tell the truth?

The small keyboard's not as much of an impediment as I expected. If like me you can touch type then you'll hit a lot of wrong keys, but it can be got used to with a lot of practise. Ditto, the mousepad is small but usable.

Connectivity is surprisingly good. (and far better than that iPad I mentioned…)

I expected a restrictive 10.1" screen size and therefore was not disappointed. It's usable for writing.

The portability is excellent. I carry Giggles to places where I used to take pen and paper.

It's so cheap, it's like buying a disposable computer. Value for money is A+.

Now for the bad news. Considering what I paid for it, it's rude to complain, but that won't stop me:

The Intel graphics chip is awful. Giggles is happiest at 1024x600 with no external monitor. Giggles can drive an external monitor—even my 24" monitor in portrait mode—but don't expect to look at it too long without getting eyestrain or a headache. There is a weird problem which I haven't worked out yet with viewing video from disk files—audio works but video is nothing but black—though streamed video from the net works fine.

You can practically see the steam-driven cogs make the CPU tick over. Sometimes I type text, and a few seconds later the machine catches up. No one in their right mind would run Vista or Win 7 on this box. XP's the strained limit. It might actually make a reasonably undemanding linux platform.

Asus includes a whole pile of "helpful" system utilities. These silently take over from standard Windows control panel dialogs, so that things don't behave like they should. For example, you can set screen resolution through the standard dialog all you like; and it won't do a thing because Asus has pre-installed a service called astray that sets the resolution to 800x600. You can see the resolution change from your own settings on boot as soon as astray starts. It took me two days to realize how much my life would improve if I hunted own and removed all the "helpful" utilities. Vanilla XP works just fine.

All in all, very usable as a takeaway machine. I might even manage to write while I'm away.

The Debacle at Tanagra

A few years after Cimon was ostracized, the Athenians faced a minor war at Tanagra. Tanagra was a minor city barely outside Attica. The Spartans had sent an army there and, obviously, the Athenians couldn't afford to have a Spartan force sitting alongside their border like that. The Athenians assembled their army and marched off to beat up the Spartans.

The two armies duly assembled in their lines outside Tanagra, and faced each other, ready to commence the battle, when who should show up but Cimon.

Now Cimon was ostracized, which meant exiled from Attica for 10 years on pain of death. But Tanagra was outside Attica, so Cimon had every right to turn up for the battle. Cimon stepped into the Athenian line, intending to fight as a common soldier.

Suddenly Pericles had a problem. Cimon was the arch-enemy of Pericles in politics, and Cimon was a great soldier. If Cimon displayed outstanding valour in the coming fight, the fickle Athenians might invite him back.

Pericles demanded Cimon go away.

Cimon pointed out he had every right to be there. Cimon also had an underlying motive: Cimon's ostracism had been for excessive friendliness with Sparta. If Cimon, in full view of his fellow Athenians, slaughtered a few Spartans it would give the lie to the indictments against him.

Pericles knew this perfectly well. He insisted that Cimon go away.

Cimon refused.

Things got a teensy bit violent, which is liable to happen when everyone involved in an argument is wearing armour and carrying spears and swords.

The Spartans stood and watched in bemusement while their enemy the Athenians began hacking away at each other. The friends of Pericles were determined to drive away Cimon. The friends of Cimon were equally determined he should remain.

Cimon was eventually forced from the field, after which the officially scheduled battle could commence.

Nicolaos will, of course, find himself stuck in the middle of this debacle. It can't appear for many books down the road, but I'm really looking forward to writing this scene.

Ostracism

This is going to sound strange, considering how much of modern politics already comes from Athens, but there's one thing we didn't pick up which I think we should have: a fun little system called ostracism.

Ostracism was a method to toss annoying people out of the city for ten years. After that they were allowed back, but if they set foot in Attica during their period of exile, then the penalty was death.

It worked like this. There was a council of 500 citizens, called the Boule, which was an executive administration. Membership of the Boule swapped 10 times every year, so everyone eventually got a turn. Each year during the 6th of those administrations, the council would vote on whether an ostracism should be held. There was no particular victim in mind at this point. In theory, that is. I'm quite sure everyone who voted had an enemy they'd like to see go.

The vote usually failed, but if it passed, then it guaranteed someone was about to be exiled, but no one knew yet who was going.

Two months later, the entire populace then voted to select the victim. Everyone wrote down the name of the person they'd like to see go on a piece of broken pottery. Pottery shards were called ostrakons, from which we get the word ostracism. Ostrakons were the voting slips of the ancient world. You simply scratched the name of your preferred victim into the pottery shard and dropped it into one of the voting urns. As long as there were at least 6,000 votes, the "winner" was given ten days to get out of town, or die.

This might sound bad, but a lot of high profile Athenian politicians took a hit on this. Even the father of Pericles, Xanthippus, got tossed at one point. He was recalled early though, because luckily for him the Persians invaded and the Athenians needed him back. Possibly the most remarkable thing about Pericles is that he managed to avoid being ostracized, unlike many of his friends and enemies.

A zillion of these ostrakons have been discovered because, when your voting slips are solid ceramic, the only thing they're good for after use is landfill. Here are some from Wikimedia:

The top word is Pericles. The bottom is a variant spelling of Xanthippus: Tsan(th)ippo. This is a vote to ostracize Pericles son of Xanthippus. But he survived.

This is Aristeides son of Lysimachus. He lost this vote. There's a famous story about his ostracism. Aristeides was known as the most honest and fair man in Athens. Rare qualities in Athenian politics. Everyone called him Aristeides the Just. When the ostracism was held, Aristeides came across an illiterate farmer who'd come to town to cast his vote. The poor farmer couldn't write, so Aristeides offered to help and asked who he wanted to nominate. The farmer, not recognising to whom he spoke, said he wanted to ostracize Aristeides son of Lysimachus. Taken aback, Aristeides asked the farmer, what had Aristeides ever done to him? The farmer replied, "Nothing. But I'm sick of all this talk of Aristeides the Just this, and Aristeides the Just that." So Aristeides meekly wrote his own name and dropped it into the urn. Ten days later, he left town.

Kimon son of Miltiades. Miltiades was the General who led the Athenians at Marathon, and his son Kimon likewise was a great military man. Kimon was also a super-conservative and the arch-enemy of Pericles. It was Pericles who engineered Kimon into being exiled. Kimon had blocked the democracy, and the moment he was out the city gates, Pericles' friend Ephialtes introduced the democratic reforms. A few days after that, Ephialtes was murdered. and The Pericles Commission begins. This vote was cast within a few days of the opening scene of my first book!

Such is life

I would be remiss if I did not point you to Kari Lynn Dell's blog post called A Friend In Need....

Kari is my agent-sister and a very fine writer. She also has a sense of humour.

The famous ancestor of Socrates

Socrates claimed descent from Daedalus. That's the same Daedalus who built the Labyrinth for King Minos, in which was kept the bull called the Minotaur. It's also the Daedalus who invented wings, and whose son Icarus experienced the world's first aviation accident due to pilot error.

The claim comes via Plato in his book Euthyphro. Plato often put his own words in the mouth of Socrates, but this sort of detail reads like it came from the real man. The odds are good that the real Socrates did claim to his friends to be descended of the great inventor.

This might sound weird, but it is typically Greek. Important Greeks regularly claimed descent from a great figure out of myth. Who you picked for your ancestor said something about you. The family of Alexander the Great for example claimed descent from Heracles. Alexander himself went one better and decided Zeus was his own father. So when Socrates claims the clever Daedalus, he is actually saying that the attribute he wants most to emphasize about himself is his own intelligence. It might even have been a family tradition.

As is well known, Daedalus decided to skip town when things went pear-shaped for his boss King Minos. Daedalus flew off into the sunset, to land in Athens, where he remarried and had kids. Daedalus therefore died an Athenian. In Athens, Daedalus is credited with having invented sculpture.

Now the father of Socrates (and Nicolaos) was Sophroniscus. By popular tradition Sophroniscus was a “polisher of stone”, which is code for a sculptor in marble. In the books I’ve accepted the tradition as true in the absence of anything better, though there’s a fair chance it’s apocryphal; the family trade isn’t mentioned anywhere until the following century. Since it was normal for a man to claim as his ancestor someone related to his own trade, it would be very reasonable for Sophroniscus to have told Socrates (and Nicolaos) that Daedalus was their forbear.

This isn't a spoiler, I haven't used this little factoid anywhere in the books, but since I never knowingly break history, it must by definition be part of the Nicoverse.