My career as a guinea pig (3) - two weeks down

This really sucks. Two weeks down, and I've felt terrible. This vast
number of pills that I'm taking (13 pills every morning, with another
six during the day) don't seem to be touching my UC at all. I spent
most of last week off work (too ill even to pester my Multiply buddies
- how bad is that?!), and although I've managed to get to work every
day this week, that's only by dint of not doing anything else and
getting really early nights.



So let's recap: the first day I popped the pills I was really
hyperactive - but after that, nuthin'. I had one day off towards the
end of the week. Then, at the beginning of the second week, I exhausted
myself by taking the train down to Devon (seven hours sitting still -
that's all it takes to lay me out, apparently), with the result that I
took another three days off work. Now I still feel run-down (in a very
literal, steamroller kind of way), I get horrendous trapped wind and
everything is very gurgly and liquid. This is exacerbated because my
fridge also gurgles, so we sit together in the kitchen and gurgle in
sympathy.

"Was that you, or me? Oh wait, I'm talking to a fridge."



So now, I've made it through an entire week of work, albeit by
stepping on eggshells the entire way. But the sorry truth is that I
can't do my job properly when I'm feeling this bad anyway - it's hard
being creative when your gut feels like someone put it through a
blender - so at the moment I'm just a very highly paid draughtsman.
which really, really sucks, because I hate that part
of my job at the best of times.



I don't want to drop out of the tests. I really want to help, if I can.
And even if I did, I still might have to tail off the dose slowly, so I
wouldn't be out of the woods yet.



All the same, I don't think I can take another fortnight like that. Let alone another two months.

Dazzle camouflage

Via my beloved core 77
I find this reference to one of my favourite bits of crazy military
trivia - better even than the pigeon-guided bombs and the circular
battleship. I wanted to use this for something, years ago, but frankly
I
can't remember what and it probably wasn't that important anyway... but
it's one of those fascinating ideas which sticks. Ladies and gentlemen
-
Dazzle camouflage.



"The primary goal of dazzle painting was to confuse the U-boat commander
who was trying to observe the course and speed of his target. As you
can see in the photo of the French Cruiser "Gloire" on the left,
contrasting diagonal stripes can make it hard to see just which
direction the ship's bow is pointing."



It's a shame that there are no colour photographs from this era, as
most of the patterns were done in crazy colours, too. This colourised
photo gives some idea, though. Imagine sailing in a convoy all kitted out like this!

On the subject of cars, gas guzzling, ecofriendly, etc.

A recent report suggests that a Honda Prius might not be as
ecofriendly as a Hummer (the Maybach is definitely a bad idea, though).



The full figures won't be available until May 8th, and I suspect the
report is going to be utterly discredited before then, or something,
but if it encourages others to publish their figures, then that would
be good.


Meanwhile, I came across another sexy 2+2 which  does 188mpg (or will, in 2009 - if it makes it that far) - the Loremo.
I'll have a GT, please.

I have enough (or, I wanna grok my living room)

This weekend, I've been down to Devon to have a traditional family
Easter (complete with Easter Egg Treasure Hunt). This trip had an
ulterior motive, however; I'm moving into a new flat in a months' time,
and I wanted to pick up some of the stuff I stored at my parents' more
than a year ago, when I first moved up to Edinburgh. There is rather a
lot of it. Basically, there are three categories - crockery (2 boxes),
project and design materials (3 boxes), and books - 4 boxes. After
staring at it for a bit, I've taken the tiniest amount ( barely half a
box of plates and bowls an mugs and things) and left the rest for
another time.

Now I'm on the train heading north, and I've just been reading the
despairing voice of a middle aged mother, railing against
consumerism (jackie ashley in the Guardian, Easter Monday 2006).
Beneath the reasoned argument, I suspect that she's simply sickened by
the nightmare of taking a teenage daughter to the shoe department of
Oxford Street's Top Shop, but her plea for a rational type of
anti-consumerism strikes a chord with me. This shouldn't come as any
great surprise, really. Anyone connected with design will wonder at
some point if their lives are not simply devoted to creating more
landfill. In ironic fact, this is particularly true of that sexiest
branch of design, consumer goods, and becomes more pressing the more
successful your product is.



Anyway. The point is, I've just had to confront my possessions (ahem...
okay, maybe half my possessions. Well, less than half, then. A quarter,
probably. Not including the furniture), and I have to admit one thing:

I have enough stuff.



I'm naturally acquisitive. I like having stuff. But the result of my
acquisitive nature is stored across the country in my parents' house,
in my brother' house, and finally in rented storage in Edinburgh. Most
of the books at my parents' actually belong to me.



I have one or two bits and pieces I still desire, and this will get
worse when I finally move into my new flat and decide on what furniture
I need. But it's an addictive hit, and a binge of spending is like any
other binge - the feeling you're left with, finally, is guilt.



So what to do about it? How do I cut down my spending? I already have
one tactic - buy expensive stuff. That way, at least I can't afford
that much. But it does mean I can't afford other stuff either, like
holidays.

Another easily done action; live life over a longer timescale. If you
don't have a pair of headphones with you, don't buy one when you have
three pairs at home. But I already spend a lot of time in
anticipation (life will be okay when I move into my new flat, etc.,
etc.)



Learn to delegate, or subcontract. Too many of my purchases a to do
with extending my own capabilities, because I want to do one particular
thing. For example, I bought a folding keyboard for my PDA because I
want to be able to write stuff while not carrying my laptop around.
That one has been used a lot, but there are other examples which have
been less successful. One current one is that I want a digital SLR
because I've found a piece of software that can recreate 3D models from
a series of photos, as long as those photos are all taken at the same
focus. My digital camera has automatic focusing and you can't override
it - but a digital SLR would be able to control this. Now I'm tempted
to allow myself to buy this, but only if I get rid of my conventional
35mm SLR first. So, that's going on eBay. But that's hardly breaking the
cycle of consumerism, is it?



So what else?



I have a plan for when I get to my new flat. All the unpacking will go
into one room, and I will sit and meditate in the empty living room
until I decided what the space itself requires. I will not buy furniture
before it arrives. I will not buy furniture before I am sure I know
what the space needs, and what will complement it. the kitchen can be
designed without too much reference, because it is a practical space -
but the living area has a much greater need for psychological insight,
and that takes time. So, nothing until I grok my living room.

Moom's Law of Legroom

When
I was flying, a while back, I wrote a rant about how I hated flying, how
rubbish it was compared to travelling by train, etc., etc.

I'm
on a train now.

And
I'd like to add one important proviso to my previous comments - the train is a
much more agreeable way to travel ONLY if there is PLENTY OF LEGROOM.
In fact, I'm going to go further, and propose Moom's Law of Legroom - a
journey is more enjoyable the more legroom you have. Yes, you may blame it on
the child vomited down your back on your
last Trip From Hell, but think - how much legroom did you have? Not much, I'll
bet. The fact that people don't have babies vomiting down them in first class
is because there is more legroom. No other reason. Legroom defines a
journey's pleasantness.

The
basis for this observation is simple. My journey down to Devon
was miserable; the train was crowded, and as a result I was sitting in a bog-standard
'airline' seat, with the usual minimal legroom. This time, I was lucky enough
to get a seat (still airline, so no table, annoyingly) next to the 'priority
seat for disabled people'. Thus, extra legroom. The train is still very busy,
but my knees no longer touch the seat in front. I may even be able to use my
laptop without bending my wrist right back on itself. In short, I'm having a
much nicer time. Legroom: it's the way of the future.

By
the way, came across this in the paper: “Blog-standard (n): containing an
exceptional number of anecdotes about cats.”

Semapedia

I've been watching this for a
while. Basically, it's a system for allowing your phone to read URL
addresses directly from a picture using the cameraphone. I think this
is dead exciting, although apart from putting it on your business
cards, and possibly using it in museums (instead of those little
description plaques), I'm blowed if I can think of any immediate uses.
Can you think of any? I desperately want to use it for something, but I don't know what!

I want to live near a demolition site

... if I can live in one of these.
Wow. The structure is all recycled bits from Boston's Big Dig - lots of
big fat chunks of steel that were lying around unused (it makes my head
dizzy just thinking about it). Awesome.



via the lovely Inhabitat blog

Moom's birthday

Start:

Apr 25, '06

Standby/Hibernate/Off

Reading about HP's design for the environment
stuff on their website, I was struck by the fact that there are now
three different 'off' modes for your computer. Standby retains
everything in RAM, so you get the 'instant-on' effect. Hibernate
writes the current settings to the hard drive, so you can start where
you left off after a delay of ten seconds or so. And finally Off, which
is where all programs are shut down and restart is from your basic
profile.



Of course, 'Off' isn't really 'off' at all, because most of these
machines have electronically operated off buttons (touch-sensitive
ones, for example) so there's still some residual current running
through them.But that's not my main thought.



What bugs me is this: why can't we fold 'standby' into 'hibernate'?
From the user's point of view, the only difference is that
hibernate shows you a 'please wait' screen for about ten seconds before
you can resume. Surely that's not necessary. Given that you're unlikely
to want to do anything computationally intensive for the first ten
seconds of operation, why not throw up the original screen and use an
hourglass for ten seconds or so, while the hard drive goes ballistic in
the background? Most XP users would regard this as nothing unusual, I'm
sure, and it would give the illusion of 'instant-on'.



Ultimately, I think it should be possible to create a progressive start
which enables you to carry on working in the application you were in
(obviously the point of the whole 'instant-on' thing) while it quietly
loads up the rest of your settings and background stuff. I just find
the energy inefficiency of the computer as a device to be irritating.

My career as a guinea pig (2) - day 1

I've had quite an afternoon. While I was working on some design stuff
at work (which has been going very well - I think I've got more done
this afternoon than in the whole of last week), I jotted down a little
list of T-shirt slogans. Then, it occurred to me that my usual abstract
linear doodles would be interesting as stained glass, so I doodled with
that idea for a bit, trying to work out a way in which stained glass
could be made with bits of lead suspended in it (answer: it can't..
well, it can, but not without it no longer being stained glass. I think). Then I
decided that some of the simpler ones might make interesting two-colour mosaic
tiles... but I got bored with that pretty quickly.



But I was impressed. That's quite a run of creativity for a Wednesday
afternoon! And doing good work at the same time! Normally by this time I'd have had a sh1t day and be
thinking tiredly about going home, microwaving a ready-meal and
crawling into bed. But instead, I actually caught myself thinking, "The
flat could do with a bit of a tidy-up when I get back." Blimey! I
thought. What's going on?



And then I remembered. Today is Day 1 of Matt On Steroids. Oh yeah.



I'm guessing this probably means I'm taking Prednisolone rather than the newer, more targeted one. Hey ho.

Ideas make terrible pets

They show no loyalty at all. They simply can't be housetrained. Keep
'em inside, and they grow up all wrong; let 'em run free, and they get
instantly out of control.



They die easily. They don't respond well to being kept on a leash. And
the good-looking ones are always the ones which die first.

My career as a guinea pig

I had a very odd phone call on Wednesday. It was clearly on someone's
mobile, and I could only work out every other word. The lady at the
other end had a proper Edinburgh accent (I'm hopeless at decoding
foreign languages), so that didn't help, but it was only when I heard
the words 'study', 'Ian' and (crucially) 'Prednisolone' that I finally
twigged.



My consultant was asking me to take part in a medical experiment! Cool.



I have ulcerative colitis (it's similar to Irritable Bowel Syndrome)
and when things get really bad then I have in the past gone on a quick
course of steroids to help my body heal. This is prednisolone - it's a
pretty common, all-purpose sort of steroid. I daresay a few of you will
have had it at some point or other. Anyway, apparently this is some
sort of study of a different delivery method for the stuff, which
should enable it to focus better on the affected region (and not make
me generally hyperactive). So, of course, I said yes. I like to help
out, and furthering the cause of medical science has got to be a good
thing, right? And my UC is pretty bad at the moment - I declined to go
for a twenty-minute walk at lunchtime today because I don't have the
energy. That's pretty awful.



My thoughts did stray to those poor people who had to be hospitalised
after their drug test went horribly wrong, but I didn't worry too much
about that. This isn't a new drug per se; it's the old one, repackaged.
It's not going anywhere it hasn't been before. So I'm not worried.
Plus, I get an electronic diary to note down all the effects! Who knew
- medical experiments come with toys (or possibly vice versa).



There were some disadvantages (if you don't know what a sigmoidoscopy
is, then believe me - it's not what you'd rather be doing on a
Wednesday afternoon), but hey, hopefully the world will be a better
place as a result.



So don't say I don't do anything for ya.

Canon and the Rebel - a romance

I've been ogling
digital SLR cameras recently. I have no excuse; the gadget cupboard is already
overflowing, what with the folding keyboard for the PDA and a mobile
phone upgrade (incidentally, 1712 phones are upgraded every hour in the UK alone
- how environmentally unfriendly is that?! I feel awful). But I want one
nonetheless.

Now, last time I was
considering buying one, I consulted a friend who had recently bought one in the
States - the same model I was considering, the Canon EOS300D. Except over there,
it wasn't called the EOS300D. Oh no. It was called The
Rebel.

Now, there are two
reasons I can see for this. One is to look at it from a marketing point of view,
and be rather patronising and say either (a) Americans are thick and get mixed
up with numbers, or (b) at least purchasers in the States are honest about the
fact that they're not really professionals and want a fun camera, unlike over
here where amateur photographers clearly get off on discussing specs, and the
techie-sounding name reflects this.

But another angle
occurred to me. 'Rebel' is clearly a name with a huge amount of emotional
baggage - there's a whole bundle of narratives mixed up in that word. There's
the lone maverick, alone against the world; there's the outrageous enfant
terrible, centre of the party scene; and perhaps most importantly, there's the
clear-eyed dissenter, striking out against injustice and tyranny. This last
image has got to be right up there with motherhood and apple pie in the heart of
America. It's an incredibly strong, evocative word - so what does it tell us
about the camera? That it's trying to worm its way into America's heart? Seems
like a bit of a tall order.

Every person that
buys one of these is investing in a story - a story in which they're the hero.
Are they the Rebel? Or the cold-eyed professional? Or is the story more
important on one side of the Atlantic, and the specs more important on the
other?

I guess what I'm
really trying to ask is, are Americans more romantically inclined than
Europeans? Not in the man/woman sense, but generally. About
life. I guess so - in general, Europeans appear to be vastly more cynical, anyway.

The Great Jaffa Cake-off - part deux.

Following on from our previous work in this area, ethnobiologists from
the team here at Spoonbender and Forkit have discovered new members of
the Jaffa Cake genus. Of the phylum Tesco, they are:



Jaffacakus Tescorum Apricotus

Jaffacakus Tescorum Cherrius

Jaffacakus Tescorum Strawberrio



Exceedingly shy, none of these creatures have yet been captured on
google, and I couldn't be bothered to take a photo. They look like
Jaffa Cakes (well, duh).



Smashing Fruity Bit Assessment

We can recommend the cherry ones, and the apricot ones (mmm, quite
sophisticated) - on our smashingness scale (which goes from zero to
smashing in 4.8 seconds) the apricot ones were estimated as a 0.9! But
the strawberry ones are rubbish. Like strawberry fruit teas, there just
wasn't much flavour there at all. Disappointing.



Cake Assessment

Eh.