Old school
Jul. 3rd, 2009 01:23 am![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris1. Wow, it's hot, especially when we can't ventilate this house nearly as much as we'd like, bearing the safety of our indoor-only cats who are far more adventurous than they are streetwise. We're having difficulty sleeping due to the temperature and that's having all manner of knock-on effects.
2. Few sporting tournaments take place anywhere as euphonious as Wimbledon, whose annual lawn tennis championships are in progress at the All England club. I'm not a particular tennis fan, but I've been enjoying this year's championship. It's certainly exciting that Andy Murray has reached the semi-final and has at least as promising a set of prospects as Tim Henman ever did. The only thing to grumble about is the rather fussy and slightly pretentious typeface used on all the electronic scoreboards, which I suspect is a new development compared to last year.
I'm particularly enjoying the developments in the infrastructure, though, and this year's event has two excellent developments. The new roof over the Centre Court is an instant smash hit, so to speak, and already has demonstrated its worth in preventing a Bad Light Stopped Play incident, even if not yet a Rain Stopped Play incident. It's also a pretty solution, as well as a practical one, and I think a counterpart roof over at least No. 1 Court is more likely than not within the next ten years. The new No. 2 Court has also got off to a fine start; while it is physically just a roofless bowl, it is an aesthetically pleasing one, and the camera angles with the outside of Centre Court in the background make us feel at home straight away.
I look forward to the redevelopment of the old No. 2 Court into a new No. 3 Court, though the suggested three-year timescale strikes me as rather leisurely. It seems strange that the old No. 2 Court had a reported 2,990 capacity and the new No. 3 Court will be cut down to just 2,000. If this is the result of turning a set of stands into a bowl, it's got to be considered a step up. Commercially, the impact of the new No. 2 Court is immediately very beneficial in terms of ticket revenue; I stand to be corrected, but previously I remember Wimbledon selling (in previous years) specific Centre Court tickets, specific No. 1 Court tickets and general grounds admission tickets. This year, a new tranche has been added in terms of selling specific Court No. 2 tickets - and a good number of them, too, for those who want to see nearly-the-best-of-the-best tennis. It's plausible that specific Court No. 3 tickets might follow in future years. The value of the general grounds admission drops slightly each time, but it's still an attractive proposition.
In some regards, the new No. 2 Court is overdue. Compare Wimbledon's facilities to those of the other Grand Slams, all of which have at least three show courts. Melbourne Park, which hosts the Australian Open, has the 15,000 capacity Rod Laver Arena, the 10,500 capacity Hisense Arena and the 6,000 capacity Margaret Court Arena. The French Open's Roland Garros stadium has the 15,000 capacity Philippe Chatrier Court, the 10,000 capacity Suzanne Lenglen Court and a rather good (3,500 capacity?) No. 1 Court as well. (One source suggests there may be a new 15,000 capacity centre court coming, though it's unclear whether it would be an addition or an expansion.) The US Open's National Tennis Center, to excerpt the name, has the 24,000 capacity Arthur Ashe stadium, the 10,000 capacity Louis Armstrong stadium, the 6,000 capacity Grandstand Stadium, as well as three side courts with capacity into four figures. Wimbledon really lagged behind in terms of having two big courts and not much else; No. 2 Court is a step forward, and No. 3 Court will hopefully be another in time.
The best thing about the Wimbledon facilities is that they all look pretty on TV. Centre Court will never compare to the Ashe stadium, but Centre Court looks nicely designed on TV, whereas Ashe stadium just sprawls and sprawls. I claim I'm not being jingoistic here; the new Wembley stadium - while it looks great from the outside - has an inside that suffers in exactly the same way. It's not a size issue, it's a design one; Barcelona's Camp Nou is bigger than Wembley but looks really put-together in a way that Wembley does not, and the San Siro is formidable and brilliant while being not much smaller. Now it may well be that Wembley's much-vaunted "no bad seats" policy is a natural consequence of the degree to which it sprawls, and stadiums which might look better from the inside, to my eyes, turn out to have problems. It's a balancing act, but more people will see the inside of the stadium on TV than ever will see it in person.
It's also tempting to wonder what might follow for Wimbledon after a new No. 3 Court. After all, the All England Club claims to have six show courts: Centre, No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 (the old No. 2), No. 4 (the old No. 3) and, er, No. 18. Could some day these all be bowls with their own ticketing arrangements? (Is there enough interesting tennis to justify it? That's why junior tournaments, invitational senior tournaments and the like have been added to the programme, after all.) Only the first four of those feature Hawkeye, for instance, so it's worth wondering if there could be the scope to promote another court or two into a bowl. Such a move would start to impinge on the number of side courts, which might have an impact on the quantity of tennis that could be played, but this might not be insurmountable.
A slightly old aerial view suggests that options might include adapting the non-grass courts at the south end (extremely unlikely, as these are converted into marquees for retail with considerable commercial value), the grass courts to the north of Court No. 1 (isn't this where players warm up?) or Aorangi Terrace (also known as Henman Hill or Murray Mount; about as iconic as No. 1 Court these days). There do seem to be other green spaces around, but I suspect these may be used as car parks during the Championships. It's all a very tight fit. I suppose the most plausible solution could be to dislocate more of the support buildings and infrastructure outside the regular confines of the territory to create room for another new facility. Potentially a move to further encourage public transport use might free up car parking space, but with car park tickets sold at £25 per car per day, parking is a strong revenue stream already.
3. Recently, I enjoyed reading that the school I attended between the ages of 11 and 18 has been granted planning permission for a major new redevelopment. The school admitted its first pupils in 1978; I attended from 1986 to 1992. This timeline mentions new buildings going up in 1988 and 1992, both of which were exciting and new during my time there, but whose predecessor woodland I can still remember. I've only ever visited the premises once since university (earlier this year, taking Meg to a craft fair there) and haven't had the chance to look around the major new science and technology centre opened in 1996, and I have no clue whereabouts the Music School opened in 1997 even is situated on the grounds.
The plans involve the demolition of the old maths wing and the old dining hall - which, itself, proved insufficiently large and required a semi-permanent marquee as an annex. This space will be used to host a 750-capacity auditorium, with other land being used for a new block including a small hall, a dance studio and ten classrooms. The building in 1992 included what seemed at the time to be a vast new theatre, where the school would assemble en masse for whole-school announcements; while it still seems so new to me, it is going to be repurposed for three more new classrooms and a new dining hall to replace the demolished old one. This is hard to believe, considering how exciting and new the theatre was. On the other hand, it will have served its job for close to twenty years, almost half the life of the school; there will have been two cohorts (and more!) going through a first-year to upper-sixth existence knowing nothing other than the existence of the theatre. Job done, but it's a surprise to someone used to thinking in scholastic terms that the theatre's life cycle is not just finite but relatively short.
All told, fifteen new classrooms will be built, "for mathematics, languages, and business and religious studies". The need to replace the mathematics wing is clear; it is not clear whether computing remains a subsection or not. Business studies and economics only ever had half a home previously; Latin, Greek and Classical Studies were originally taught in the same corridor as modern languages, but when some new modern language classrooms were built at the same time as the sports hall (the 1992 building!) art kicked out the old modern language facility and it's completely unclear where the classics ended up. (I saw hints that the attic may even have come into use - though whether this is for music, classics or something else is unclear. I had a covert poke around the Friarage when the craft fair was in progress, which brought a few memories back, but left a few questions open.) The Independent Schools' Inspectorate report hints at migration that has taken place relatively recently.
It's unclear how the school sees its future. Each year had around sixty students in my day; by the time I left, year sizes had grown to around eighty and may now be closer to ninety. The school was all-male from 11 to 16 when I attended, but since then has become co-educational throughout. (Possibly still more than 2:1 male, though.) Building an auditorium to seat 750 may suggest that they don't expect to expand above a hundred or so per year in the near future. The open question: will the fifteen new classrooms be enough? I suspect the science and technology facilities may start to struggle to meet demand, but there may be more to the situation that I do not currently know.
School fees were high, but barely manageable with the assistance of a scholarship, for our one-public-sector-professional-parent family when I attended. They rose by just a little over inflation (technically, the RPI measure) while I was there. Since then, I reckon they've increased by inflation and another 50% over the last sixteen years or so. As the school's reputation has grown, and as they have taken girls alongside boys, they have been able to set the bar in terms of parental funding higher still, and I believe their catchment area has increased over time. Sadly, there is not even a hint of the magic phrase "needs-blind", which is surely the ideal way forward. Even with the scholarships and bursaries that are advertised, should we ever want to send offspring there - and the whole fee-paying school issue is not one we have discussed - I think we would have to look for some unadvertised, anti-meritocratic, artificially socially immobile legacy assistance to send a second generation of Dickson there. A shame.
4. In Beavis and Butthead-style news, I was charmed to hear that MLB's Philadelphia Phillies have recently given a number of starts to 23-year-old pitcher Antonio Bastardo.
5. Please might I borrow a Windows XP Home Edition DVD from someone? I have a valid licence but no disc and need to reinstall. I am not ruling out installing some other OS at some point in the future, but need to extract years' worth of specifically formatted data from my Windows-only (?) mail application first. Mac OS X is not on the cards. I've used it on Meg's Mac; while I like it, I think we all know that, in the style of the British version of the "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" campaign, I'm a Mark rather than a Jeremy.
2. Few sporting tournaments take place anywhere as euphonious as Wimbledon, whose annual lawn tennis championships are in progress at the All England club. I'm not a particular tennis fan, but I've been enjoying this year's championship. It's certainly exciting that Andy Murray has reached the semi-final and has at least as promising a set of prospects as Tim Henman ever did. The only thing to grumble about is the rather fussy and slightly pretentious typeface used on all the electronic scoreboards, which I suspect is a new development compared to last year.
I'm particularly enjoying the developments in the infrastructure, though, and this year's event has two excellent developments. The new roof over the Centre Court is an instant smash hit, so to speak, and already has demonstrated its worth in preventing a Bad Light Stopped Play incident, even if not yet a Rain Stopped Play incident. It's also a pretty solution, as well as a practical one, and I think a counterpart roof over at least No. 1 Court is more likely than not within the next ten years. The new No. 2 Court has also got off to a fine start; while it is physically just a roofless bowl, it is an aesthetically pleasing one, and the camera angles with the outside of Centre Court in the background make us feel at home straight away.
I look forward to the redevelopment of the old No. 2 Court into a new No. 3 Court, though the suggested three-year timescale strikes me as rather leisurely. It seems strange that the old No. 2 Court had a reported 2,990 capacity and the new No. 3 Court will be cut down to just 2,000. If this is the result of turning a set of stands into a bowl, it's got to be considered a step up. Commercially, the impact of the new No. 2 Court is immediately very beneficial in terms of ticket revenue; I stand to be corrected, but previously I remember Wimbledon selling (in previous years) specific Centre Court tickets, specific No. 1 Court tickets and general grounds admission tickets. This year, a new tranche has been added in terms of selling specific Court No. 2 tickets - and a good number of them, too, for those who want to see nearly-the-best-of-the-best tennis. It's plausible that specific Court No. 3 tickets might follow in future years. The value of the general grounds admission drops slightly each time, but it's still an attractive proposition.
In some regards, the new No. 2 Court is overdue. Compare Wimbledon's facilities to those of the other Grand Slams, all of which have at least three show courts. Melbourne Park, which hosts the Australian Open, has the 15,000 capacity Rod Laver Arena, the 10,500 capacity Hisense Arena and the 6,000 capacity Margaret Court Arena. The French Open's Roland Garros stadium has the 15,000 capacity Philippe Chatrier Court, the 10,000 capacity Suzanne Lenglen Court and a rather good (3,500 capacity?) No. 1 Court as well. (One source suggests there may be a new 15,000 capacity centre court coming, though it's unclear whether it would be an addition or an expansion.) The US Open's National Tennis Center, to excerpt the name, has the 24,000 capacity Arthur Ashe stadium, the 10,000 capacity Louis Armstrong stadium, the 6,000 capacity Grandstand Stadium, as well as three side courts with capacity into four figures. Wimbledon really lagged behind in terms of having two big courts and not much else; No. 2 Court is a step forward, and No. 3 Court will hopefully be another in time.
The best thing about the Wimbledon facilities is that they all look pretty on TV. Centre Court will never compare to the Ashe stadium, but Centre Court looks nicely designed on TV, whereas Ashe stadium just sprawls and sprawls. I claim I'm not being jingoistic here; the new Wembley stadium - while it looks great from the outside - has an inside that suffers in exactly the same way. It's not a size issue, it's a design one; Barcelona's Camp Nou is bigger than Wembley but looks really put-together in a way that Wembley does not, and the San Siro is formidable and brilliant while being not much smaller. Now it may well be that Wembley's much-vaunted "no bad seats" policy is a natural consequence of the degree to which it sprawls, and stadiums which might look better from the inside, to my eyes, turn out to have problems. It's a balancing act, but more people will see the inside of the stadium on TV than ever will see it in person.
It's also tempting to wonder what might follow for Wimbledon after a new No. 3 Court. After all, the All England Club claims to have six show courts: Centre, No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 (the old No. 2), No. 4 (the old No. 3) and, er, No. 18. Could some day these all be bowls with their own ticketing arrangements? (Is there enough interesting tennis to justify it? That's why junior tournaments, invitational senior tournaments and the like have been added to the programme, after all.) Only the first four of those feature Hawkeye, for instance, so it's worth wondering if there could be the scope to promote another court or two into a bowl. Such a move would start to impinge on the number of side courts, which might have an impact on the quantity of tennis that could be played, but this might not be insurmountable.
A slightly old aerial view suggests that options might include adapting the non-grass courts at the south end (extremely unlikely, as these are converted into marquees for retail with considerable commercial value), the grass courts to the north of Court No. 1 (isn't this where players warm up?) or Aorangi Terrace (also known as Henman Hill or Murray Mount; about as iconic as No. 1 Court these days). There do seem to be other green spaces around, but I suspect these may be used as car parks during the Championships. It's all a very tight fit. I suppose the most plausible solution could be to dislocate more of the support buildings and infrastructure outside the regular confines of the territory to create room for another new facility. Potentially a move to further encourage public transport use might free up car parking space, but with car park tickets sold at £25 per car per day, parking is a strong revenue stream already.
3. Recently, I enjoyed reading that the school I attended between the ages of 11 and 18 has been granted planning permission for a major new redevelopment. The school admitted its first pupils in 1978; I attended from 1986 to 1992. This timeline mentions new buildings going up in 1988 and 1992, both of which were exciting and new during my time there, but whose predecessor woodland I can still remember. I've only ever visited the premises once since university (earlier this year, taking Meg to a craft fair there) and haven't had the chance to look around the major new science and technology centre opened in 1996, and I have no clue whereabouts the Music School opened in 1997 even is situated on the grounds.
The plans involve the demolition of the old maths wing and the old dining hall - which, itself, proved insufficiently large and required a semi-permanent marquee as an annex. This space will be used to host a 750-capacity auditorium, with other land being used for a new block including a small hall, a dance studio and ten classrooms. The building in 1992 included what seemed at the time to be a vast new theatre, where the school would assemble en masse for whole-school announcements; while it still seems so new to me, it is going to be repurposed for three more new classrooms and a new dining hall to replace the demolished old one. This is hard to believe, considering how exciting and new the theatre was. On the other hand, it will have served its job for close to twenty years, almost half the life of the school; there will have been two cohorts (and more!) going through a first-year to upper-sixth existence knowing nothing other than the existence of the theatre. Job done, but it's a surprise to someone used to thinking in scholastic terms that the theatre's life cycle is not just finite but relatively short.
All told, fifteen new classrooms will be built, "for mathematics, languages, and business and religious studies". The need to replace the mathematics wing is clear; it is not clear whether computing remains a subsection or not. Business studies and economics only ever had half a home previously; Latin, Greek and Classical Studies were originally taught in the same corridor as modern languages, but when some new modern language classrooms were built at the same time as the sports hall (the 1992 building!) art kicked out the old modern language facility and it's completely unclear where the classics ended up. (I saw hints that the attic may even have come into use - though whether this is for music, classics or something else is unclear. I had a covert poke around the Friarage when the craft fair was in progress, which brought a few memories back, but left a few questions open.) The Independent Schools' Inspectorate report hints at migration that has taken place relatively recently.
It's unclear how the school sees its future. Each year had around sixty students in my day; by the time I left, year sizes had grown to around eighty and may now be closer to ninety. The school was all-male from 11 to 16 when I attended, but since then has become co-educational throughout. (Possibly still more than 2:1 male, though.) Building an auditorium to seat 750 may suggest that they don't expect to expand above a hundred or so per year in the near future. The open question: will the fifteen new classrooms be enough? I suspect the science and technology facilities may start to struggle to meet demand, but there may be more to the situation that I do not currently know.
School fees were high, but barely manageable with the assistance of a scholarship, for our one-public-sector-professional-parent family when I attended. They rose by just a little over inflation (technically, the RPI measure) while I was there. Since then, I reckon they've increased by inflation and another 50% over the last sixteen years or so. As the school's reputation has grown, and as they have taken girls alongside boys, they have been able to set the bar in terms of parental funding higher still, and I believe their catchment area has increased over time. Sadly, there is not even a hint of the magic phrase "needs-blind", which is surely the ideal way forward. Even with the scholarships and bursaries that are advertised, should we ever want to send offspring there - and the whole fee-paying school issue is not one we have discussed - I think we would have to look for some unadvertised, anti-meritocratic, artificially socially immobile legacy assistance to send a second generation of Dickson there. A shame.
4. In Beavis and Butthead-style news, I was charmed to hear that MLB's Philadelphia Phillies have recently given a number of starts to 23-year-old pitcher Antonio Bastardo.
5. Please might I borrow a Windows XP Home Edition DVD from someone? I have a valid licence but no disc and need to reinstall. I am not ruling out installing some other OS at some point in the future, but need to extract years' worth of specifically formatted data from my Windows-only (?) mail application first. Mac OS X is not on the cards. I've used it on Meg's Mac; while I like it, I think we all know that, in the style of the British version of the "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" campaign, I'm a Mark rather than a Jeremy.
As for accessing the mail itself: I believe that most of the older PC-based mail program - and certainly, as I recall, the most popular such as pegasus mail and eudora - use the same format that the earliest microsoft mail program does, and I'm fairly sure that Thunderbird would be able to import it, regardless of what platform it is run on.
If it's a short term thing, have you considered the Windows 7 beta? You'd have it for just under a year. More Info. Or is it an old machine?
On the other hand, some of those matches do get full and you need to be organised and get their advance to see them. The system of losing your seat as soon as you leave for any reason if it's full is also a bit annoying (and possible not a good idea in this hot weather if it discourages people from going to get more water) although understandable.
A compromise might if they ticketed the other courts for the first week but not for the second week when there are less likely to be good matches on them and are less likely to get full.
Don't think either Centre Court of Number One Court really have any 'bad' seats, other than ones not in the shade :-) (and pairs of seats with an aisle between them as we discovered earlier this week!)