A doctor in the house

Doctor, 1: A physician; a member of the medical profession; one who is trained and licensed to heal the sick or injured. 

Doctor, 2: A person who has attained a doctorate, such as a Ph.D, conferred by a college or university.

From the Latin, doctor, the agent-noun from the verb docere, to teach.

Well, for the first time in family history, there is a doctor in the house – daughter Moni successfully defended her doctoral thesis at the Łódź film school today, 14 years after she began her screenwriting studies there. We are all proud.

The process that took almost three hours and involved 12 academic reviewers cross-questioning her on her 300-page thesis, entitled Autorzy, zawodowcy i  współtwórcy ('Auteurs, professionals and co-creators'). This is the first detailed analysis of the way Polish screenwriters carry out their work.

Moni's thesis begins with a series of 12 interviews with working screenwriters from different generations, and shows how the profession changed over time, particularly with the transformation from communism to market democracy after 1990. She looked at how the market and the opening up of streaming and serials had shaped the way screenwriters operate. 

From this, Moni developed the notion that there are three basic archetypes of screenwriters working in Poland, the visionaries who drive the creative process from beginning to end, the 'hired pens' on whom directors and producers can rely to turn out a competent script, and the collaborative partnerships that depend on a shared vision of the final product.

The third model is trickiest to get right; trading ideas to create higher value than one person could do on their own. These often fail because of a lack of leadership and of a shared vision. With nine out of ten scripts failing to make it onto the screen, this is a common reason. The professional – who is not emotionally tied to the project – can be relied upon to turn out a commercial hit. The auteur, who doggedly pursues their own vision to the end, often creates an art-house or cult, hit but can sometimes cross over into the commercial mainstream.

Collaboration is trickiest. Getting it right means mutual understanding of each other's roles, openness and honesty, feedback and empathy – as well as the importance of the contract. Who should lead? The writer, the director, or the producer? Whose artistic vision is it in the first place – and what should be the role of co-creators or collaborators? Should they be script-doctors, merely there to tweak and improve, or are they there to lift the work to a higher level?

Moni has the green-light to turn her thesis into a book, which will hopefully serve as a valuable asset for aspiring screenwriters.

This time two years ago:
Szczecin dawn

This time three years ago:

Win-win-win-win-win
(in praise of charity shops)

This time four years ago:
Comfort, discomfort and winter cold

This time five years ago:
Frustration as completion of Chynów station draws near

This time six years ago:
London in verticals

This time nine years ago:
Castro's death divides the world

This time ten years ago:
London to Edinburgh by night bus

This time 11 years ago:
The Regent's Canal, London

This time 13 years ago:
An end to the entitlement way of thinking

This time 14 year:
West Ealing - drab and sad suburb

This time 15 years ago:
To Poznań by train

This time 17 years ago:
Late autumn drive-time

Qualia compilation 12: moderne living

As a child, we lived in a 1930s end-terraced house that my father (inspired by BBC's Barry Bucknall) modernised in the 1960s. My parents were sociable people and would often visit their friends, the majority of whom also lived in 1930s or Victorian houses. The latter made a different impression on the five-year-old me; they had higher ceilings, ornate carvings, ceramic floor tiles, stained glass and draughty corridors. By the mid-1960s, even the Victorian houses were starting to look different inside, with wall-to-wall carpets, brightly coloured curtains and patterned wallpaper. But the world I was born into was still somewhat drab and austere.

I remember two houses I visited with my parents that stood out and triggered anomalous familiarity. Memories of these two will flash back to me from time to time.

Both were newly built and served as harbingers of a new style of interior space. One was a maisonette in Hanwell, another was a terraced house in Hemel Hempstead New Town. This would have been sometime in the early 1960s; these new homes were quite unlike the fussy cosiness of pre-war or Victorian/Edwardian housing. We drove there in our Morris Minor along a short stretch of the newly opened M1 from Watford, my first ever motorway journey – very exciting, and futuristic.

I can't remember the people we were visiting. It could well have been a colleague of my father from work. I do remember, however, that he was keen to show off his new hi-fi, and that my father was very keen to see it. This was an entirely new concept to me, and when we saw it, at first I thought I was looking at a radiator or some form of domestic heating. Then the man took out a record and played some modern jazz. Whenever I hear Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, I get that vibe; maybe that's what he played. 

The maisonette was also a new thing. The very word 'maisonette' smacked of modernity. On Lower Boston Road, it looked like a two-story semi-detached house from the outside, with large windows, white siding and brick, but you had to climb stairs on the side to get in and it was only on the upstairs. A Polish woman lived there, a friend of my mother's; we visited her during a weekday, so maybe school holidays, most likely before my brother was born. 

I associate the this place with the new house in Hemel Hempstead; both were qualitatively different to the way most of my parents' friends (or indeed we) lived at the time; up-to-the-minute, spacious, clean lines, no clutter.

American style. That's what it was. Those two homes that felt instantly familiar; not from the sets of American black-and-white TV shows I watched (I Love Lucy etc), but a lifestyle that I felt I knew from before. The space age was entering the living room.

Below: I asked both ChatGPT and Google Gemini to illustrate the contrast between styles of homes. ChatGPT produced the result that resonated better with my childhood memories.

This time last year:
Springlike Autumn

This time two years ago:
Encouraging more cycle-rail journeys

This time three years ago:

Time's Telescope

This time four years ago:
Justify the buy: Nikon D5600

This time five years ago:
First frost, 2020

This time seven years ago:
Edinburgh, again and again

This time 11 years ago:
Ahead of the opening of Warsaw's second Metro line

This time 12 years ago:
Keep an eye on Ukraine...

This time 13 years ago:
Płock by day, Płock by night 

This time 15 years ago:
Warning ahead of railway timetable change

This time 18 years ago:
Some thoughts on recycling

Snow magic for the cats

Out into the snow they go... well, not all of them; Scrapper, Pacyfik and Arcturus spent several hours in the snow yesterday. Czester and Céleste spent yesterday inside my warm kitchen. This morning, Scrapper wants some more snow action, but Pacio and Arkcio have decided to stay in. 

Scrapper was first out of the door, before I could get out with my camera. Below: the start of the expedition – who's in and who's out? In the foreground, Céleste and Czester are about to follow Scrapper into the garden while Pacio and Arkcio decide that venturing outdoors is not for them right now. Wenusia was first out, and last back in.

Below: Scrapper is a natural in this environment. He's really enjoying himself, and was very keen to get out as soon as he'd finished breakfast.

Czester's autumn-themed camouflage not working very well here. He was the only kitten in the litter with a normal-length tail.

Below: Céleste (la bellissima) is attired for the snow. Coat by Courrèges.

Below: halfway down the garden. Scrapper is in the lead. He is bounding through snow in huge leaps, clearly very keen on the stuff.

We go to the end of the drive and turn into the forest next door. We regroup at the fallen tree, then go off to explore further. Below: Czester adds a dash of colour to the snow scene.

Below: heading back to the house, through a magical garden of wintery delight, the cherry trees covered with snow. Sgt. Scrapper leads the way

Evening falls, and it's time for me to set off for my long walk. Below: Céleste is at the window to bid me farewell. Ain't she pretty?

From the moment the kittens' eyes opened in late June, every day they've lived has been shorter than the day before. Summer reached its zenith, autumn crept in, nights became longer than days, and now snow had fallen. The kittens have no experience of the year's cyclical nature; they don't know that by next month the day will start to get longer again, and spring will come. 

This time two years ago:|
Kraków's symbol of transformation

This time three years ago:
First proper snow of 2022/23

This time four years ago:

Sleep – a portal to another universe?

This time six years ago:
A month and much progress at Chynów station

This time seven years ago:
Tram tips for visiting Edinburgh

This time eight years ago:
Warsaw to Edinburgh made easier

This time ten years ago:
Stuffocation: the rich-world problem of dealing with too many things

This time 13 years ago:
Heroes on the wall (for my father)

This time 15 years ago:
Tax dodge or public service?

This time 16 years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time 15 years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time 18 years ago:
Another point of view

First snow, three abstracts (and a fourth with no snow)

Below: bicycle-storage sign on window of Koleje Mazowieckie train arriving at Zalesie Górne station.

Below: modernist architecture along ulica Wołoska. I felt a strong xenomnesia flashback witnessing this from the tram. Scandinavia in the mid-1950s?

Below: ul. Madalińskiego. Pasteloza-style facade with tree in foreground. Again, familiar, recognised.

...and one from last week, before the snow fell. Socialist Realist architecture along Aleja Solidarności.

This time last year:
The snow and sun

This time six years ago:
Photo round-up, London, Warsaw and Kraków

This time nine years ago:
Poland's North-West Frontier

This time ten years ago:
Cars must fade from our cities

This time 11 years ago:
Unnecessary street lighting wastes money

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw's heros on the walls

This time 14 years ago:
Tax dodge or public service?

This time 16 years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time 17 years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time 18 years ago:
Another point of view

Dreaming of the future

I dreamt this headline this morning (I just typed those words as the BBC newsreader spoke the words 'this morning'). Going to bed last night at half past nine, I rose today at half past five, the first thing I did was to jot these words before I forgot them. As soon as I'd fed the cats and made myself a coffee, I asked ChatGPT to produce me a photorealistic image of the headline of which I'd dreamt: 

{{ Having a hotel breakfast. I hastily pull the bread out of the toaster to spare it from being burnt. [Wow! I just typed the word 'burnt' as the BBC Farming Today presenter said the word 'burnt'!] This is a square slice of rye bread, crumbling at the edges. I try to communicate telepathically with the bread, but other than a faint spark of gratitude from it, I'm not getting anything meaningful other than this headline. }}

Logically, by asking the question, the piece of bread in the AI-powered toaster is already sentient. And I'm now asking myself whether I'm imbuing artificial intelligence with the ability to infect matter with sentience.

I seem to be receiving fewer and fewer 'meaningful' dreams than I did; my bedside dream-diary gets fewer entries. But this morning...

Below: sunrise with Scrapper. A short pre-breakfast stroll to catch the dawn. After the cats had eaten, only Scrapper showed any desire to go out for a walk with me.

This time three years ago:
Winter's on its way

This time eight years ago:
Kolej grójecka by Bogdan Pokropiński

This time ten years ago:
PIS, thinking wishfully about the village

This time 12 years ago:
An unseasonably warm autumn in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
Shedding light on an unused road

This time 14 years ago:
S2-S79 Elka from the air 

This time 15 years ago:
Fish and chips in Warsaw

This time 16 years ago:
Spirit of place – anomalous familiarity moments 

Walking under the clouds Pt. II

Another short day with heavy cloud, rain, drizzle and damp. It rained too heavily for a morning walk, so I held off until three o'clock, less than 45 minutes before sunset. Gloom envelopes the land, but trudge on I must.

What am I even doing coming up this way? A new sign has been put up. 'Unauthorised entry prohibited'. It's  cheaper to put up a sign than fencing off private land or putting up a gate. What legal consequences are there in Polish law for ignoring such signs? If it's your land, and you have title, just fence it off!

Left: this is (or rather was) the New Way, which it now turns out to be nothing more than an access road to a building site at the far end. My hopes for a new thoroughfare, parallel to the one shown on local maps as a public road (but with no-entry signs at either end) have been dashed. So, a new route needs to be found. So I walk through an abandoned orchard (shrivelled apples still on trees, no fence), following the border between Machcin and Adamów Rososki. Past the cottage in the photo above (is it abandoned? Hard to tell, certainly no one around) and then onto the farm track heading east towards Machcin (below).

Below: walking home along the road that has Adamów Rososki on the left and Grabina on the right. This is unusual in England, where roads don't demarcate borders between villages, but rather cut across them.

The incessant drizzle, the darkness and a houseful of hungry cats hastened my return home, so a mere 11,000 paces knocked out today. Again, I went to be shortly before 10pm last night and woke up before 6am this morning, and still feeling fine, mentally and physically!

This time six years ago:
Truth, lies and manipulation
Peter Pomerantsev's This Is Not Propaganda

This time seven years ago:
First frost, 2018

This time ten years ago:
Cameron, Paris, ISIS, PiS and Brexit

This time 12 years ago:

Work restarts on Jeziorki Ponds redevelopment

This time 13 years ago:
Foggy days and Warsaw's airports

This time 15 years ago:
Local elections – the lure of ultra-localism 

Walking under the clouds

Not the best weather for walking, but those daily paces are essential. Below: the former village shop in Machcin, long closed. A reminder to use or lose your local services before they get steamrollered by corporate power and consumers' drive for low-cost convenience. This one might be gone, but there are similar local stores in Grobice, Widok and Rososz; I make a point of popping into these when out on my walks to make some small purchases, water or in summer beer, snacks, cat-food, and anything I've run out of at home. And just to say hello to the shopkeepers, to be recognised as a local. Community is important in rural parts.

Below: something most welcome – the prospect of roadworks and 860m of sorely needed asphalt from the Jakubowizna-Machcin road (from which the photo was taken) to Dąbrowa Duża in the distance. This would link the new asphalt from Gaj Żelechowski and Dąbrowa Duża (completed in April this year) with the network of roads running east from Jakubowizna. Will the new road be opened to traffic before the local by-election for wojt (mayor) of Chynów gmina (municipality) on 7 December?

Left: orchards now without apples or leaves; it will be five and half months before they fill with blossom.

Back home, though it's early afternoon, the sun, is low in the sky. It struggles bravely to peek through the low cloud.

Left: out at the far end of my garden. One circumnavigation of my land is a seven minutes/700-step stroll. Beyond the fence lies yet another orchard. My fence lies within Grobice rather than Jakubowizna, along with the furthest-most three metres or so of the działka. Whilst I have a ban on harming nature (including plantlife) on my land, I do keep the path clear of overhanging branches with the lopper and shears.

Home from my walk, I'm met by my cats, who associate my return with feeding time. I shall not disappoint them!

Three weeks into winter time, and I'm still sticking to summer time, going to bed as I did yesterday at quarter to ten and waking up just before six. Not a minute of daylight missed. The Hammer of Darkness dodged again.

This time two years ago:
Using it not so as not to lose it
(Wars restaurant cars in Polish trains!)

This time four years ago:
Pleasance, the feeling of feeling pleased

This time five years ago:
Another dream of Dziadio

This time ten years ago:
Teetering between rage and reason

This time 11 years ago:
Poland – it works!

This time 13 years ago:
Foggy evening on Aleja Szucha

Brand new used laptop

I write this post on the laptop I bought used in June 2018, a second-hand Dell Latitude E7440, ex-corporate leasing. The service tag at the bottom of the laptop indicates that it was shipped on 15 August 2015, so it's over ten years old. And unlike my previous laptop, a Samsung bought new in 2011 (which fried and died), this Dell is still working fine, albeit without a battery (I replaced the first one, but when that replacement battery died, I discovered they no longer made them). And the QWERTY stickers have been replaced twice (see below). Otherwise, works perfectly!

When I bought it, I was roundly mocked by fellow blogger Student SGH for not saving wisely. "I burst out laughing," he wrote, "that sounds like Panie, Wieśwagen od starego Niemca, tyle co do kościoła i z powrotem jeżdżony." Well, I'm the one laughing now, as I have a piece of kit that stood the test of time.

So if it's working OK, even as a stationery PC, why do I need a new one?

 [Click here for original post and comment.]

Software. And hardware. The main reason for my purchase of a new used ex-corporate leasing Dell Precision 5750 is the latest release of Adobe Photoshop (version 27.0). Asking the old Latitude to run it was like expecting a horse to pull a 12-carriage passenger train. Whilst it could cope with simple tasks like opening a .jpg file and cropping it or altering colour balance, anything more challenging would cause the laptop to slow right down. Of course, six or seven years ago, it would rip through photo after photo at amazing speed. However, all the bells and whistles introduced by Adobe in the successive iterations of Photoshop that have been released since 2018 have slowed down my laptop to a crawl. The final straw came with the introduction of full-blown AI tools in the release before last. Asking my laptop to do AI-assisted noise-reduction would result in several minutes of  'thinking' followed by the application crashing.

So – old laptop (15" screen):
8 GB RAM, 113 MB graphics card, Intel Core i5-4300U CPU @ 1.9GHz

New laptop (17" screen):
32 GB RAM, 6 GB graphics card (what a difference!) Intel Core i9-10885H CPU @ 2.4GHz

Now, I've moved over to the new laptop so that I can actually use the new Photoshop. Below: to put it to the test, I took a photo this evening soon after sunset, to get a grainy photo on which to try the denoise tool. Here it is: wow! I wasn't expecting it to be anything like this smooth!

Interestingly, the new used laptop came from Norway rather than Germany like the old one did; in both cases, stickers were needed to adapt the keyboard to the QWERTY systems used in the UK and Poland. I ordered mine with Windows 11 in UK English. I paid 3,600zł rather than the 6,530zł for a new one on Allegro.

Over the past 18 years I have bought five computers for myself and family at Master s.j., Aleja K.E.N. 105/U6 in Ursynów, and am totally satisfied by the professionalism, helpful personal service and value for money that this small shop offers, far outclassing all the big-brand IT chains. Please support local suppliers wherever you can! These guys specialise in building bespoke PCs, refurbishing ex-leasing gear and repairing old computers. 

This time two years ago:|
Kielce across the tracks

This time five years ago:
Chynów situation update

This time six years ago:

Winding down, moving in, keeping on

This time seven years ago:
Socialist-realist Tychy

This time nine years ago:
Face to face with the UK retailing scene

This time 12 years ago:
Bricktorian Birmingham

This time 13 years ago:
Łazienki's statues renovated

This time 17 years ago:
Last of the Rampa na kruszywa

This time 18 years ago:
Airport zoning halts Jeziorki development