About SJPONeill

Retired(ish) and living on the side of a mountain. I love reading and writing, pottering around with DIY in the garden and the kitchen, watching movies and building models from plastic and paper...I have two awesome daughters, two awesome grand-daughters and two awesome big dogs...lots of awesomeness around me...

What’s on at the movies at 38,000 feet?

Posted on 30 September 2009 by SJPONeill

I did promise some people I would do this so here it is today – I do have some more TFW ideas to punt up but left one of the source docs behind this morning so will aim to do that tomorrow (social schedule allowing!!)…

Singapore Airlines do everything with class and style and their entertainment capability is no different…in two legs I was able to catch up on six movies that have yet to screen in National Park (yeah, really…) as well as have dinner and have a damn fine snooze as well…

First up from the selection of 60-70 movies was Star Trek which I enjoyed immensely but was somewhat annoyed at the seemingly pointless and unnecessary departures from established Star Trek canon (no pointy ears here but I do like consistency in a universe). I hope that a further release in this series will somehow re-establish the accepted timeline (noting that James Tiberius and Spock didn’t actually experience distortions in the space-time continuum til The Original Series. If William Shatner (writing almost autobiographically) can skillfully blend TOS, TNG and the movies (even the real bad ones from later in the series) together in a consistent manner, I saw no reason why this film could not also conform without deviating much at all from the actual story line. It was like it was trying to shock the audience and I for one wasn’t shocked just pissed off…

Angels and Demons on the other hand was great: not great drama or earth-shattering story but just a good story well-told with no aspirations to be anything else. It is not time-tied to The Da Vinci Code so it doesn’t matter which one you watch first – some nice twisty bits near the end just in case you think you’ve worked it all out ahead of time…

Night at the Museum II: The Smithsonian – more of the same, light entertainment only…

Terminator Salvation – the storyline is finally back of track after the crap Terminator 3 albeit with yet another John Connor – good connections back to the first two movies but nothing really earth-breaking in terms of the story – at the end it felt like a long TV episode than the revelatory feel of 1 and 2…

X-Men Wolverine…great stuff, even as a prequel, it isn’t cute and doesn’t dick around with the accepted storyline…

The Battle for Terra – a real disappointment that I only watched because it distracted me from the potential effects of a dodgy curry at Changi just before we boarded – an animated movie will a weak story line clearly churned out now in order to be on DVD as a stocking stuffer by Christmas – don’t buy it, get another copy of Toy Story or Monsters Inc instead – the kids will love you more for it…

Beautiful summer’s day in Shrivenham and the CLAW is in full swing now….

Checking in….

Posted on 29 September 2009 by SJPONeill

…only a few minutes before icebreaker drinks and dinner so only a quick update on life at CLAW 09.

This morning was a series of admin and intro briefs followed by a couple of very good briefs by the guys who conducted some of the operational lessons collection efforts this year and then a fascinating insight into lessons that the UK is identifying from its time in Iraq, Op TELIC. A ton of great material for some more Thursday-Friday War papers on homecoming…This afternoon saw the first cut of OIL sorting and analysis which turned out to be quite painless so I think that the CLAW processes are slowly osmosing out into the wider community – definitely our hosts have done a top job of setting it all up and have fallen on their feet on Day 1…

They have a assembled a great and very diverse group here for this CLAW and it’s very exciting to see ASIC representatives for the first time – here to observe CLAW processes as part of an air drive into the lessons world as well. It’s also been great to catch up with the old CLAW hands from Oz, Canada and the US and t0 hear of developments and intentions for next year’s International Lessons Learned Conference.

We all had a bit of a session in the mess last night (yep, much as I swore not to this time – well, not every night anyway!!) which was quite quiet but entertaining and certainly sleep was no problem (nor rising this morning!) when we finished up around half 11.

Tomorrow, the real work starts…

London calling….

Posted on 26 September 2009 by SJPONeill

…obviously made it safely to the other side of the world with a painless passage through London Heathrow at 0555 this morning…first thing I need to do is address my my bad from last night and post the link to Josh’s Interbella brief from the other night….and here be the original Interbella paper published in Colloquium in June…[note: in its infinite wisdom, the US Army has taken down the excellent website that was the COIN Center and its journal Colloquium – a great body of work lost…]

Have already developed a healthy dislike for UK roundabouts but other than that have settled into new digs for the next 10 days or so – is quite nice but not a stellar room; the mess is good and the bar looks promising. I expect things will start to warm up once the other contingents arrive tomorrow and Sunday – will be good to catch up with oppos from Aussie and Canada again.

What am I doing here again? It’s this thing called the CLAW which stands for Coalition Lessons Analysis Workshop. What does a CLAW do? Over the next week, reps from the ABCA network review and analyse interoperability-related observations, issues and lessons (aka OIL – yes, it’s all about OIL!) from the last twelve months to identify trends, themes and insights for further work…It’s a pretty good process and has been running since 2005 – it is still the only robust and consistent lessons analysis process which I think really works in evolving OIL into actions required…

Plan A to actually do some real Top Two Inches work in my spare time here is looking pretty good and even having coffee after lunch found a couple of good cues in a couple of magazines for The Thursday-Friday War – they reinforce the idea that success is about being in for the long haul and also of the dangers of allowing old wounds to fester.

In the UK papers today, there is a new spin on the UK MP Troughgate scandal as it has now been linked to the UK Government’s unwillingness to invest in decent kit for its soldiers in Afghanistan – even more embarrassing when it comes out that soldiers have been moonlighting as security guards in the very office responsible for censoring the files on MPs’ accounts and it was apparently their comments over smoko that led to the original leak. This topic takes up the first five pages in one of today’s papers and is in stark contrast to the big front page write up in the DomPost last week or the week before on all the new personal soldier equipment our Government has just invested in…

While YOU were sleeping…

Posted on 25 September 2009 by SJPONeill

Amir stirred at his post and sat up…he always hated this last stint before Salatu-l-Fajr…with the Americans, bad things always seemed to happen when it was dark. All the faith in the kingdom couldn’t overcome their cursed technology.

A faint rumbling filtered through the mist. Probably the brothers in the next valley getting a bounding from NATO aircraft again – he hated the German Tornados with their time-expired MW-1s that scattered a deadly rain over the fields for a kilometre or more. A intermittent groaning rose through the rumbling – it sounded nearer. That, whatever that was, wasn’t in another valley, it was here!

He should wake the others but what would he say? What if it were only the wind – they would laugh at him and make him do more sentries, like the time he had mistaken chickens for soldiers crawling towards their position. He squinted thought he could make out a dim shape, or was it just a shadow? There, again!

A squat shape emerged from the mist, carrying the distinctive H antenna of the New Zealanders. Had they deployed a new secret weapon? Over the sandy camouflage, he could barely make out a word stencilled on the hull: What in Allah’s name was Interbella? A head that could have come off a Roman coin 2000 years ago emerged from a hatch. The devil El Josh! He had heard whispers of this wily foe from the elders but it looked like that day had come….

The Kiwis had deployed their Think Tank…

In a war of ideas and ideologies you have to come to the party armed. There is also no monopoly on good ideas and the US Army in particular has realised this. As a result it was a Kiwi conducting an online presentation to a COIN Center audience at 0300 this morning…the topic? An alternative method of considering issues and influences in the complex environment we now live in…

It’s name? Interbella…

And now the embarrassing bit – I’m in Singapore at the moment and have just realised that I brought the wrong flash drive with me so don’t have a copy of the presentation to post here – will fix this as soon as I can get a new copy sent up…

Churning the grey matter…

Posted on 22 September 2009 by SJPONeill

…it’s been a good day today in every way: forecast rain never turned up, packing has been painless i.e. haven’t had to ransack the house for anything, and have been coming to grips with stringing words together into coherent chains and I re-establish contact with the world post my silent time…as always there was some stimulating new content on both The Strategist and the COIN Center blog…and I have been able to start catching up on all the ‘gunna’ things that I let slip over the last fortnight…

I’m not taking a laptop with me because it is just something else to lug around but I am very keen on using any down time over the next couple of weeks to scope out some papers for fleshing and completion on RTNZ – often it is quite stimulating to rely on the good old long hand drafting techniques to get the creative juices flowing and get ideas down in a logical manner – the whole backspace/delete edit thing sometimes makes me (I’m sure it’s only me) a lazy thinker so this is a chance to get back on track…

Feral is going to get a thumping soon – after being evicted from the bedroom last night after deciding to play mad cat on 1-30, he ferreted a golf ball off the top of the pool table where it had been hidden from the twins (who can’t or won’t tell the difference from a golf ball and the foam ball in their indoor golf set for tinies) and bounced it up and down the wooden floor for 20 minutes…I’d come stomping down the stairs, he’d hide under the couch, I’d put the ball away, he’d find it again – or something similarly hard and not bouncy and away we’d go again – the temptation to let the big dogs in was mega…

Still no Feral for two weeks + I get to miss out of reruns of BSG Series 2 and 3 while Carmie works out where she got up to…

On the road no late than 0530 tomorrow – the journey begins…

Normal services have been restored

Posted on 21 September 2009 by SJPONeill

Well, laughter MIGHT be the best medicine but that’s the last time I’ll try to laugh off a virus!! I’ve pretty well been on my back since 9 September and only really felt human again yesterday – and this from someone who normally fills up with Panadol and Dispirin, has a crappy night and bounces back in the morning…so if anyone tells you that this swine flu thing is just another ploy by the big pharmaceuticals, please give them a poke in the eye with lots of love from me…

So what’s been happening in my world in the fortnight or so since transmission was so rudely cut-off? The mancave has proven stable on its piles but roofing will have to wait til I get back from the UK next month: just shifting the roofing iron down from the top of the house drive to the site put me on my back gain last week – so much for trying to get out and about in the fresh air. Replaced the spouting along one side of the guest house today and felt quite sprightly about it so am really hoping the bug is gone for good – has been a great day for that sort of thing – looks like the weather is about to go down the gurgler tomorrow but that’ll allow for a decent systems test of the new fittings. And the spurt of water from the downpipe when we ripped away the rusting spouting is a good sign re the water levels in the tank – especially leading into spring and summer when tank levels can become kinda problematic.

The UK…really had hoped that the virus might have been my way out of this trip but couldn’t bring myself to BS the doc on Thursday when she cleared me to travel pending another 3-4 restful days…so while the lessons workshop will be professionally enlightening and possibly even challenging, the travel plan means I get to miss both the Interbella presentation at Ft Leavenworth on Thursday morning Kiwi time and tDavid Kilcullen’s presentation in Wellington next month. Still such is life and hopefully (not for the lack of pleading and hint-dropping on my part) both will be recorded for enjoyment at a later date.

And on the topic of flu, avian this time not swine, what is it that possesses chickens? We have 7 (down from 10) chicken who have 1.1 hectares over which to free range at the moment. If Darwin was right, then the nature of the surviving 7 is a real insight into why ‘birdbrain’ is quite definitely an insult of the highest order…all this space over which to roam, chock full of seeds and bugs and other chicken delights and the Death Wish Chickens (DWC) would rather stray on this side of the fence where the canine forces of darkness roam…if nothing else, I don’t think we have to fear global takeover from chickens anytime soon…

We watched The Rock (Dwyane Wassissname)’s version of Walking Tall on telly the other night. I have to ask myself why would you bother? The original story is so much better, if you have to remake it as a platform for some up-and-comer, why not just remake it? Like the old folk are always saying, if it ain’t broke, it don’t need no fixin’ – how to take a great true story and degrade it into a crappy beat’em up in an hour and a half – anyone who is interested should Google for Buford Pusser and read up on the real Walking Tall story…it’s worth it…

I really struggle with this predilection so many have with taking something old and trying to make it better for the modern day and just so totally dropping the ball on it…the original The Four Feathers is a true classic, even in grainy black and white, the triumph of a man over his environment and himself – does he need a trusty native helper? No! So why bother…newer is NOT always better and 9 time out of ten, I’d probably go for the source, the original…

The superficiality of many modern productions seems to echo the lack of deep thought we see so often in other areas – just skim the surface and hope she’ll be right – so ironic when in the 30s, 40s and 50s when so many of the classics were produced, life actually was pretty simple. Now we up to our ears in complexity and our main philosophical approach to it is the embrace blandness….

In terms of the rare one in ten, I would have to rated the ‘re-imagined’ Battlestar Galactica as a plus plus success, not so much a replacement for but a great complement to the original 70s series – Lorne Greene will always be the best Adama (probably all that experience with wagon trains and Indians from Bonanza) whereas Edward James Olmos, while very gritty, is still the small team leader, Castillo, from Miami Vice…

Unlike the original which left fans hanging for decades (the less said about the second season the better), this story does come to a definite conclusion. What it is you will have to sit through Series 4 to find out – and the preceding series – otherwise it will make little or no sense so no cheating sneak peeks – it does mean though that I will have to go back to the drawing board for a back story for my epic as other writers keep beating me to the draw on getting my ideas out in the open; really just a case of great minds….I have a new spark that I hope to flesh out while overseas, probably in some dodgy 600 year old pub where my muse will appear through the bottom of a pint (or a number of them)…

Having now restored normal services, the plan is to keep up daily updates using the combination of Blackberry email to blog tools once we go wheels up on Wednesday…

Ethos, values and culture

Posted on 13 September 2009 by SJPONeill

ArmourGroup. Kabul. Kiwi blows whistle.

Time and again, we keep picking up on the absolute necessity of ethos, values and culture for success in the COE…woohoo, another propaganda victory for the opposition…onya, ArmourGroup!!

Enough said….

Mad cat catches rat

Posted on 10 September 2009 by SJPONeill

No, sorry, not another chapter in the life of Feral (who has yet to catch anything but a bit of a following via the blog)…

Real life work stuff has been getting in the way again hence the lack of updates (at least I didn’t break my arm like a well known Aussie blogger…) so trying the remote upload-via-email tool today.

As you all know, I’m a bit of (well, OK, then, an avid, even rabid in some [domestic] eyes…) a modeller (well, IC acquisitions anyway) and spent last weekend at the Scale Model Expo in Wellington (have uploaded most of my pics here or here depending on whether you’re a paper or plasticy type – I still have a few to go so it may pay to check either in a day or so as well). Come end of the show on Sunday afternoon and I’m packing up my contributions to the “Range of Model Manufacturers Display” when the guys packing up next to me says “Hey, what’s that mad cat like?” Well, being the helpful chap that I am, I offered to open it up for him so he could have a look at the pieces…first that rolls out of the box is a very dead but very well-preserved rat…

For those who take the time to have a look at the links to my pics above, you’ll probably notice a couple of things. First up, the show is pretty busy and that’s what it was like most of the weekend. Most marketing was the bro-net, word of mouth variety which says something about the osmotic nature of information when people are interested. Attendance ranged from under-5 tearaways (“Don’t run, don’t touch, I mean it about the not running and touching!!!!“) to octogenarians and everything in between, from all sexes too.

The other thing is that the vast majority of models on display were military in nature from across history and into the future. Many of the aircraft, ships and vehicles were tied to a specific point in time or a specific individual. I’m just wondering what this says about us. Is a fascination with war fighting and its machines just part of our nature? Is it because often these times bring out the best in us and we seek to remember? Is it because subconsciously we know that conflict drives evolution (or intelligent creation if you’re from that school). Or is it simply a fascination with interestingly-shaped and -coloured machines. A 5 year old nephew staying with us was equally as fascinated with Thunderbirds (original series – none of this animated or live action crap: Jonathan Frakes you have a lot to answer for!) as I was some forty years before; and still am, although possibly using a Thunderbirds analogy on the COIN Center blog may have been taking this beyond the bounds of normality?

Perceptions…

Posted on 5 September 2009 by SJPONeill

District 9…15 minutes into it, I’m going “Uh-oh, another Quarantine“. Carmen, meantime, only a seat away and watching the same movie is saying “Another Quarantine – Excellent!” But the end of the movie, we both arrived at “That rocked!!” It’s an interesting movie: the trailer gives absolutely nothing away and the first hour or so is like up-market Blair Witch Project – sorta kinda interesting but once you’ve seen it…y’know? The second hour takes it all some place way above that. Taken at face value, it’s a scifi non-hero yarn that you can take or leave; dig a little deep within the pain of the South African context and it has apowerful message about doing the right thing, making the right decisions, being the one voice that in the end says “Enough!” And that it doesn’t take a hero…

I’ve listed this under the Thursday-Friday War because time and again, values emerge as a key enabler in complex conflict. When the heat is on, we will act as who we are inside, follow the heart…

Never say never…

Posted on 4 September 2009 by SJPONeill

…007 got that one right…The cat never goes outside…nope, not til this morning – all packed, ready to go..where’s the cat? Oh there’s Feral – outside – stalking something out by the compost heap…finally managed to entice the bloody thing inside and while I was chasing it around the house trying to get into the cat box, the dogs, who I’d let out to stretch their legs before we left decided to go for a walk…and here’s us having to have them at the kennel by 1200. Made it with 5 minutes to spare – an hour 50 from home to Sanson and fortunately nairy a cop in sight…

A couple of plugs from the trip down…we’ve got people staying in the Lodge this weekend and just after I left I realised that I had given them the wrong number for the keylock – uh-oh – didn’t have time to go back due to the kennel drop-off deadline and couldn’t quite get any of the email addresses right – why did I stop using a PDA, remind me – I was trawling through Levin looking for an Internet cafe and found a very helpful lady in Computer Whys who got me online to do my business – only been open since Tuesday; stopped for brunch (at 2 in the arvo) at the Paraparam Mall and a most helpful lady in the McDs put me onto the Angus burger (AWESOME!!) and then took the trouble to get my opinion afterwards – good service; and finally, after a year’s absence, I finally got back to Charmaines on Royal in Upper Hutt for a decent haircut and a catch-up gossip with the ladies. I was a regular there ever since I first moved to Wellington mid-90s and still remain loyal after shifting up the Mountain.

Had hoped to catch-up with Jim Veitch at Vic this weekend as a prelim to the Kilcullen visit next month but we couldn’t quite get it sorted – think I will have to make a trip to Welly in the next couple of weeks before we go to the UK on the 23rd. Have a growing list of commitments for the Thursday-Friday War including While YOU Were Sleeping for Josh, collating my thoughts on future war as per the challenge on Cheeseburger Gothic, and scratching out some thoughts on Amanda Lennon’s premise from Wednesday’s conference that Coalition interoperability promotes conceptual laziness…had high hops of doing some work on these tonight but it’s such a cozy little place we’re staying in, with a decent collection of movies, and I got in latish from setting up the Expo that nup, that ain’t going to happen tonight…have already been through Star Trek: First Contact and have The Dambusters on now…

And a final word from our sponsor on Guy Gibson’s dog’s name…I wonder how many of the apparently-outraged also picked up that great classic kid’s story Huck Finn is chock-full of the N word…