Making phones more... personal

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/smartcall_and_skindisplay_offer_new_forms_of_phone_etiquette_17856.asp


Wouldn't it be nice to know at least roughly what the phone call you're about to take is about? How about having it written on you hand?

via core77.

Overland to China Episode I: Europe

We had about an hour between trains here - long enough to sample the food and watch the antics of the many stag parties!

I've been putting this off, but now we've managed to trawl through the 3000-odd photos we talk on our big adventure, and narrow them down to a few hundred... and I thought I'd post the first little batch. We crossed Europe in two days and two nights, via Eurostar, Burssels, Cologne and Copenhagen, then on to Stockholm and Helsinki. Helsinki was the first place we actually stopped, hence the majority of phots are from there.

Next stop St Petersburg...

Heat Your Home With SolTech Energy's Beautiful Glass Roof Tiles | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

http://inhabitat.com/2010/10/14/heat-your-home-with-soltech-energys-beautiful-glass-roof-tiles/
Now that I am a homeowner - picked up the keys on Friday - I am once again ogling stuff like this. Aren't they purdy?



What I'm wondering is, if they work by heating air instead of water, why bother using the hot air to feed the hot water system? Why not pipe the hot air directly into the house and cut out the middleman? Admittedly in summer this wouldn't be so great, but in winter, why not?

Beyond Beijing:

...um, yeah, where was I, last week? Or was it the week before?

 

Moscow, wasn't it?

 

Yes, Moscow. Very roughly, about 75 degrees longitude, fifteen degrees latitude and twenty degrees celsius away from our current position. The weather has swung from being unseasonably cold in Russia to being slightly on the warm side in China, so we can at least console ourselves that at least our we packed for the right mean temperature, if not the full range.

 

...urgh. Beijing is a very frustrating place to try and recover from a six day train journey. Russia felt like a slow and steady slog - Beijing, though, is a different order of speed, and right now I feel rather outpaced by it all. the problem is, I think, that i haven't fully reconciled myself to feeling (a) like I'm leaking money all over the place like the ridiculous laowei tourist that I am, and (b) that the actual sums involved are ones that I wouldn't concern myself over if I was back home. Right now, I can't help focusing more on (a), so I am grumpy.

 

So, anyway, this will be another brief-oh-so-brief update, as I am tapping away about two feet from Summer Girl's head as she is trying to sleep. It is about 10pm here, and we are tired. I am beginning to recover from a streaming head cold (another reaon why I feel grumpy and slow), and Summer Girl is only a couple of days' recovery ahead of me having got the bug first.

 

So, a few words about the train... take my advice and fly to Irkutsk. The scenery between Moscow and Irkutsk is basically silver birches, with a bit of industry and unloved concrete thrown in occasionally, just for a change. We mostly ate what we could buy at the platforms, having been warned off the buffet car (although i have a sneaking suspicion it wasn't that bad, really).

...

Okay, so that was a few days ago now, and we're now in Chengdu after a pretty tiring 30-hour train trip from Beijing. Looking back, I was a little downbeat in the above paragraphs and sort of implied we haven't had any fun at all. That isn't the case, of course. The train trip managed to be both unvarying and at the same time not at all boring, if that makes any sense - Russia has a vast, vast hinterland which seems to trail along behind the European end of the country like the tail of a comet, seemingly unloved. And then Mongolia I found surprisingly distinct - I expected it to be more overshadowed by its powerful neighbours, but it is a profoundly unique place. Crossing it meant crossing desert, which on the train made a very welcome change from forest - at least until we began running low on water...

Beijing... 

Sorry, my impressions are all jumbled up - it's been too long between updates, and knowing I don't have long on this computer my brain struggles to get things into a sensible order. If I could fathom Picasa enough to downscale some photos I would post them but even that seems to be beyond my capabilities right now, so again, you'll probably have to wait until we get home now - sorree! Not what I'd hoped, either.

Anyhow.

There are two quotations which i've been reminded of while we've been in China, and in Beijing in particular. One is Paul Theroux, in his book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, who referred disparagingly to the new China as a peasant's version of modernity - and almost every day I've seen something which has reminded me of that. Modern China is brutal in its use of concrete; neon signs partially obscure the painted slogans of the communist era, which seem to have been left alone to bury themselves in the ever-present dust of the metropolis.

At the same time, there's a quote which I think is Yeats, who described Rome (yes, the Italian city) as being like a man who made a living selling tickets to see his dead grandmother. Beijing has the same embarrassment of riches when it comes to the ancient - but there's no suggestion that this is Beijing's main source of income. At the same time, though, you get the impression that not only are they selling tickets, but they've dressed her up in her best clothes, plumped her up a bit, put on a bit of makeup... in short, there were Toyotas in the dusty streets of the hutong we stayed in that had more of a feeling of antiquity than the bit of the Great Wall that we walked on.

It's all still impressive, all right - especially when you remember that it was all done by human hands, thousands of them, under an imperial regime careless of their lives... it's a massive achievement. No, that's not right - it's a relentless stream of massive achievements. But it's the scale, rather than the age, which is what impresses, even now.

And talking of scale... Beijing has the same feeling of vastness as St Petersburg, that same sense of having been built at a slightly-larger-than-human scale - but in Beijing the effect is multiplied because it is a relentlessly sprawling place. Don't try to walk anywhere - the nice, neat grid pattern looks appealing on a map, but it's just too damn big. And the effect is heightened by the pollution, which means the vast buildings fade rapidly and then simply loom in the haze.

Anyway. We are now in Chengdu, after a 30-hour train ride (did I mention that?), and we go to start work at the Panda Reservation here tomorrow. Our fellow volunteers seem a motley bunch - the usual teenagers and post-teenagers, but we're starting at the same time as a mother with her teenage son, so who knows what we'll be doing?

Three minutes about Moscow

A very quick note today, as my half-hour on the computer in the Russian Post Office is about to end! Moscow has, like St Petersburg, been wet - yes, their heatwave ended the day we arrived and it's been 13 degrees C rather than 30 for the duration of our stay... Moscow has been strangely unimpressive in comparison to St P. Although it has much that is monumental in scale, many of the monuments were rather disappointing once you got in. The Orthodox cathedrals are tiny on the inside, although highly decorated... and the VDNKH, which was once Stalin's massive park devoted to progress in the Soviet Union, is now an emtpy husk of a place.

 

Oops, time to go!

St Petersburg (no photos yet, sory)

Well, it's another damp day in St Petersburg. Rather like yesterday, in fact - frustrating when you're only in a place for three days!

I will post pictures soon, but right now all we have here is the pastel confections of St Petersburg under threateningly dark skies, while we scurry from one tourist must-do to another! I was in St Petersburg about... ten years ago, and my abiding memory of that time was the difficulty of finding anything which resembled a modern, western shop. Looking back, we must have wandered up and down Nevskt Prospekt, St p's main commercial sreet, without even realizing it was anything more than a residential backstreet! No fear of that today - it's Oxford Street ransplanted, heaving with people and neon and global brands. But over it all still broods the original baroque buildings, and even the glamour of modern marketing can't quite shake the impression that modern St Petersburg is shoehorned in, that it is trying to find the cracks in Peter the Great's diktat. Perhaps as a result, the place has the feeling of make-do and mend. Here and there are signs of it - the Russian Mint being run out of the incongruously candy-coloured confections of the Peter and Paul Fortress... a decidedly aged antenna strung up over a baroque spire on Nevsky Prospekt... the glitter of the west, thrown over a dustsheet of poverty, covering the original, brutishly-powerful nouveau-riche power-architecture of Imperial Russia...

Okay, enough nonsense. There's a girl in a hotel room waiting for me to get back so we can go eat! 

The Big Adventure

 

Stupid google maps, can't get directions from Cambridge to Beijing. What's the point of it, then?

 

Well, Google might not be able to tell you how to get there, but I can. Trains. Oh, all right, there is technically one ferry involved, from Stockholm to Turku, but after that, it's trains all the way to Beijing. Haven't decided how we're getting to places after that, but right now, from the comfort of home, it seems a shame to go all that way and then hop on a plane.

So, on Saturday we shall walk to Cambridge railway station (I love that bit), get on a train which will take us to London, get on another train which will take us to Brussels, then to Cologne, then an overnight train to Copenhagen, then a quick hop (in a train) to Stockholm, then an overnight ferry to Turku. A brief train journey takes us to Helsinki, where we shall spend our first night in a hotel, before heading over to St Petersburg. By train. Three days there, then another overnighter to Moscow. Three more days there (unless it's four - I forget), and then the Big One - a straight six day train journey from Moscow to Beijing. Originally, there were going to be stops along the way, but my health and hospital treatments mean we are limited to six weeks, so there's a lot to cram in!

So after three weeks of travelling we shall arrive in Beijing, where we have a week of sightseeing. Then we go to the Panda Conservation Thingy Place in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, where we have volunteered to muck out pandas for a week... then onwards to Shanghai for a quick look at the Expo, and finishing in Hong Kong, from where we shall fly back to the UK.

Phew. I feel tired just writing it all down.

So, yes, our Great Adventure - Overland to Beijing, and Beyond. Hence the test - I wanted to see if I was going to be able to keep y'all updated (and you never know, send out emergency messages too when we get arrested for wearing disrespectful socks in Mao Tse Tung's tomb, or something). 

Test from China

I'm just seeing if this works, so that next week when I go on holiday I will be able to send updates to all you lovely people from wherever the heck it is I am.

This Just Inbox: Cardboard Interior - Core77

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/this_just_inbox_cardboard_interior__16991.asp#more


Note sure I like this particular incarnation, but I like the idea of cardboard furniture. We had a crack when I was in uni, making surprisingly sturdy chairs. Just think - it's already 100% recycled, it dents before your child does, and you can design it yourself to exactly fit the space available! And when it gets a bit tatty, or you get a bit bored with it, just make some more!

Invention of the Day. Week. Month. Year, possibly

http://www.spiraleyeneedles.com/
As core77 points out in their much more attractive article, the website needs a little work... but as an invention, I think this is just awesomely brilliant.



I've always struggled with threading needles - heck, who hasn't? - but it took an enthusiastic Mum whose eyesight was failing her to come up with this. It's still at the "garden shed" stage of production, but I can't help feeling it's only a matter of time before this goes global. I hope this woman gets herself some decent IP protection for when that happens.

Anyway, it's v impressive.

To Change Hearts and Minds...Change Their Chair! - Core77

http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/to_change_hearts_and_mindschange_their_chair_16836.asp#more
This was what I was going to link to today - a classic case of tactile feedback! Hard chairs make for hard attitudes.

aesthetics of joy

http://aestheticsofjoy.com/


This isn't what I was going to post, but Ingrid Fetell's "Aesthetics of Joy" is a charming blog of the genus "I wish I'd written that". Packed full of really interesting posts and links - marvel at the cubist art of the Dutch tulip growers, and discover what noises children in different countries think animals make! Brilliant. And that multicoloured cake looks just too good not to copy...

Breakthrough - now scientists are too lazy to do their own damn origami

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100628/full/news.2010.317.html

NASA: Civilization will end in 2013 (possibly) • The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/16/solar_storms/
Invest in Agas and oil lamps (incidentally, Summer Girl's Dad sells oil lamps, if anyone's interested) - electricity might be a bit of a liability around the house in - holy crap, just a couple of years!

Given that solar storms have been spectacular - and only as long ago as 1989 - this is worth keeping an eye on, I reckon.

"The politics of happiness" Think-tank report on sustainability & society

http://demos.fi/files/Demos_Politics_of_Happiness_A_Manifesto_Eng_Draft.pdf
Recently, I've been reading Paul Theroux's follow-up to The Great Railway Bazaar called "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star". In it, he retraces the route he took in the Railway Bazaar after an interval of thirty years, across the Middle East, through India to the Far East, then back via Japan and the Trans-Siberian Railway. They are both fantastic travel books; I recommend them. One of his musings that most caught my attention was his desire to travel without luxury. Luxury, he complains, is the enemy of observation - comfort reduces your alertness to the world around you. and besides, he adds, rich people are deathly dull to travel with - all they talk about is how poor they are.

This last observation interested me. It seems to me that as a nation - perhaps as a civilization - we are caught in this trap: we are massively better-off than our grandparents were, and yet we seem more and more concerned with poverty. The idea of 'fairness' was a political touchstone in the last UK election - but when we all have so much, it seems strange that we are so fixated on this concept. Oh, I know, we're all struggling to keep our heads above water - as a wise man once said to me, 'job' stands for 'Just Over Broke', and that's the way it is and will always be... but if I look at the amount of material possessions that I own, I can't claim to be impoverished. And when I walk down the poorer streets round me, the plethora of satellite dishes and heavily modified cars suggests that poverty is not the simple "lack of money" concept we sometimes assume it is.

All of which leads me to the above report. I haven't read all of it - as usual, one of the reasons I'm posting it here is in the hope that I'll get around to reading it thoroughly later - but it seems like a really interesting discussion of the problems of running a sustainable, happy capitalist economy. Here's what core77 had to say about it

Technology is chopping up your brain!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology&src=me


...or maybe your attention span. Interesting article in the New York Times... I've just thought, is the NYT one of those which chucks you out after you've seen 3 articles, or is that the Washington Post? Anyway, if you can get to it, it's very interesting. I've often felt that my attention span is not what it once was, and that my thoughts felt all chopped up... I'm willing to bet this is the reason. The alcohol was blameless all along!

My bright idea: Cory Doctorow | Technology | The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/23/cory-doctorow-my-bright-idea
Cory Doctorow is promoting his latest novel, which apparently deals with teenagers and privacy. He makes some interesting points, which will chime with anyone who (like me) knows far more than they'd like about the private lives of their younger relatives thanks to facebook. Thanks facebook.

"Kids' relationship with privacy is really confused; they're told by teachers and adults that their privacy is paramount, that they should stop disclosing so much information on Facebook and so on. And then they go to schools where everything they do is monitored; there's mandatory spyware that takes every click they make, every word they utter and sends it back to teachers and headmasters for disciplinary purposes.

When they go out in public, they're photographed every five minutes and there are signs that prohibit taking any affirmative step to hide themselves from scrutiny or maintain any privacy."

Wow. It really sucks being a kid, doesn't it? Mind you, I recently found my name, address and email are publicly available on the internet. No wonder I get so much spam. Really should do something about that.

IWOOT - in my dream home...

http://blog.mckayflooring.co.uk/whisky-flooring/
Somebody makes flooring out of whisky barrels. Apparently they don't smell (muc) and there's no point licking them. But they look pretty. When I build my own house (in this alternate reality I'm building at the bottom of the garden), I quite fancy some of this about the place.

M. Kawaguchi at TEDxTokyo: "Peace on Earth via the Japanese Toilet" - Core77

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/m_kawaguchi_at_tedxtokyo_peace_on_earth_via_the_japanese_toilet_16593.asp
Again this is more a reminder to myself to have a look at this - but you might find it interesting, I don't know.

New Bus for London unveiled, and look who it isn't...

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/new_bus_for_london_unveiled_and_it_looks_pretty_sweet_16585.asp
Yes, my favourite designer is back, hurrah! The Heatherwick strikes again. I'm a tad suspicious that this thing might be a bit longer than the ones it's replacing, but damn if it doesn't look good. Two staircases! Three doors! How do they manage to fit people in?

Here's the official London Transport announcement. Damn you Thomas Heatherwick, you're so curly and brilliant.

Doors of Perception weblog: at Crossing The Line

http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2010/05/post_54.php
An interesting (if rather alarmist) musing on the role of the designer in a declining civilization. Whether or not you enjoy this article will probably depend on whether you think we might be living through the fall of Consumerist civilization... but its core theme of designing fewer individual products and being more respectful of existing networks and knowledge resonate very strongly with me.

More Expo 2010 trivia - UK Pavilion designed by THOMAS HEATHERWICK, woohoo!

http://www.heatherwick.com/uk-pavilion/
For those who don't know who Thomas Heatherwick is, he is (in my humble opinion) probably the most exciting designer working in the world right now. I may have mentioned him before? Let me see if I can find a link... Ah, here we go.

Certain tribes in the less accessible areas of Greenwich village worship him as a god, and his name is whispered in the hallowed halls of... oh, never mind. As a great, er, mammal once said, He. Is. Fully. AWESOME.

From his studio website: The Seed Cathedral is a 20-metre high building, constructed from 60,000 transparent 7.5-metre long optical strands, each of which has embedded within its tip a seed. The interior is silent and illuminated only by the daylight that has filtered past each seed through each optical hair; a quiet space in which to contemplate this formidable collection of the world’s botanical resources.
All those spines... they're glass! GLASS. (well, okay, probably not glass, probably some sort of transparent plastic, but still) Holy crap! (giggles manically). I am sooooooo going to see this. Oh yes. This is worth a trip to China all on its own.


Here he is being interviewed by the Chinese for the Expo website.


I must admit, though - while I still worship the ground the guy works on (see what I did there?), he is showing a bit of a preference for spiky/furry stuff. This is fine... so far. But don't let it become a cliche, Thomas!

Shanghai's Boulevard of Evil

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8648833.stm
Interesting fact of the day: On the 2010 World Expo site, North Korea's pavilion is right next to Iran's.

Colours In Cultures

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours-in-cultures/
This is one of the best things I've seen on the internet in ages. I'm sure it's terribly simplistic and generalizes wildly, but what a fantastic thing! I love it and will refer to it in every technical report I do from now on, ever.

Hoodie Origami: gotta try this

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/hoodie_origami_fold_your_sweatshirt_into_a_laptop_bag_baby_carrier_etc_16131.asp
I haven't yet fully got my head around this - for example, in that video, where does the hood go? The only hoodie I own doesn't have a zip, either - I worry this may be a problem...

Still fascinating, though.

70+ of the Best Free Fonts for Graphic Designers.- unstage

http://www.unstage.com/2010/02/70-of-the-best-free-fonts-for-graphic-designers/
Again, just really bookmarking this for my own use, but some of you may find it interesting.

via core77, my source of all design-y goodness

The Best of Core77: Our Favorites from 2009 - Core77

http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/the_best_of_core77_our_favorites_from_2009_15617.asp
Really I'm just posting this here to remind myself to read some of these at some point.

Designer creates iPlant - but does it work?

Is this the ultimate in air purification for the concerned, modern eco-aware young affluent parent type person, or an idiotic waste of the earth's resources?

Genius!

 

 0

Hmmm.....

 

 2

What a piece of cr@p.

 

 0

This would be the perfect receptacle for some rodent posteriors.

 

 2

This is simply too good to miss. It's called Andrea. Everybody say hi!

Based on experiments performed by RTP Labs, Andrea improves the efficiency of formaldehyde removal from the air relative to plants alone by 360%. Relative to HEPA and carbon filters, comparison between the RTP Labs data and literature data show an improvement in formaldehyde filtration efficiency of 4400%.

What do you think? It seems he's using the soil as a filtration medium by forcing air through it, as well as whatever the plant is doing (respiring, photosynthesising, one of them). When you read the Science Bit, it seems plausible - but I admit, I'm completely sceptical and so I'm going to query the fact that he talks about efficiencies rather than total throughput.

So, is it an effective tool for the concerned modern... person, or an idiotic waste of the earth's resources? Damn, I should've turned this into a poll.