I bought some Lego

I'm a bad person. I did a bad, bad thing.



I bought me some Lego.



(heeheehee)



I marched into ToysRUs, wandered up and down the place for a bit,
pretending to be interested in the Batman action figures (pah) before
returning to the shelves, grabbing a couple of the (bigger) boxes, and
marching out. (there was a paying bit, but that's boring so I'm not
mentioning it).



There is method in my madness, however. I have as a little pet project
the intention of making a solar-powered sweeping robot to clean the
(wooden) floors in my new flat (which I move into in two weeks). And I
shall make it out of Lego. But the lego robot unit I want to use
doesn't come out until mid-September (I'm waiting for the new one), so
I figured a radio control version would be a good halfway-house - I can
do the prototyping work on it, then build in the robot bit later.
Granted, a radio-controlled floor-sweeper won't make the job any less
time-consuming, but I figure it'll be kinda fun to zoom it round the
house from the comfort of my sofa (which I don't yet own).



Lego sure has come a long way in the last..er... fifteen years. I'm not
sure I approve wholeheartedly... but I was once again struck by just
how sublimely flexible the whole system is. And I was doubly struck by
the extreme cleverness of the people who put together these kits. All
of a sudden, some apparently-random components (which elsewhere in the
design are used for mechanical transmission, or bridging a gap)
suddenly coalesce into a pretty good-looking engine grille!



But I am feeling a leettle bit thwarted. The radio controlled car comes from a series called
'Racers', which is clearly designed to be rather meatier than the
normal stuff, and is only just barely compatible
with the regular bits. In fact, the regular Lego Technic dumper truck I
also bought looks rather tiny and pathetic next to this brute. And then
there's the tiny problem that the radio-controlled car goes about
twenty times as fast as I want my floor-sweeper to go... and
all the gearing and steering bits for the RC car are inside a
sealed unit! This is Lego built for brutality, and not for
flexibility. I disapprove. I'll just have to take it into work and open
up the sealed unit, that's all. Irritating, though.



Nonetheless - Lego! Mine! Fun! And total guilt, of course. I mean, a thirty-year-old man, playing with Lego...



On unrelated topics, the TV in my flat has died. This is very annoying,
as it's not mine, and the owner is in India and comes back in two
weeks. I'm mildly annoyed at the idea of living without TV for that
time, but what am I supposed to do? I could try and get it fixed, I
suppose - but she might want to buy a new one, and anyway, I'm
reluctant to spend my money on something which was clearly on its way
out (it's been playing up for a while).



No, you're right, I should try and get it fixed. Damn. How annoying.



And... I'm still ill. Damn these useless freakin'
drugs, they're hopeless. Look - on Sunday I got up late, I went to
ToysRUs on the aforementioned mission, I went for a bit of a drive
around for an hour or so, then I came home. I felt tired and went to
bed - at SEVEN. And I stayed there 'til NINE this morning. That is
all it took to completely exhaust me. That's not
good at all. This is one reason why I went out and bought this stupid
stuff - to make me feel a bit better about feeling tired all the time.
This really sucks.

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.

Is design political

Core77 article on the polticial impact of design, and how it can be democratised. Keep the faith!

Bored

So I've been talking to the little people who live in my monitor stand,
and they claim that their crusade against the ring binder reinforcement
rings is over. I must say I think they're right - I certainly haven't
seen any at my desk in a long time. I must admit to feeling deeply
uncomfortable about this sort of Stationery Cleansing, though.

Now, claim the little people, the whole world is theirs, and they are
pledged to be good stewards of it and look after it. I think they're a
little bit worried about the environment, although I've promised to
tidy up all the paper.



Right now, I'm trying to encourage them to expand. I've explained to
them about Other Desks, but their reaction was extremely sceptical.
"How do we know other desks exist?" one of their mini-scientists
demanded, waving a shaving of pencil lead at me. "And if they do exist,
how do we know they will have breathable atmospheres?" I did point out
that if you go right out to the extreme limit of The Desk, it is
possible to catch sight of other Desks, but their eyesight isn't very
good, and their telescopes are laughable. They also demanded to know
how they were supposed to get there - I explained about rubber bands,
and elicited only a shocked silence.

"How fast?"

"Um. Thirty miles an hour?"

"And how big is a mile?"

I had to look it up. "It's about 170,000 centimetres." Too late I
remembered about their weird units. "Wait! A mile is... 224,000 U's.
Ish."

They laughed like hyenas at this one. At the moment, they're convinced
that they'll die if they travel more than about 30 U's an hour. One of
them managed to clamber to his feet to ask, "And how does the man with
the red flag stay in front?" Then they all collapsed back into laughter.

I waited patiently, but to no avail. They'd clearly had enough of my
nonsense. Still giggling and wiping their eyes, the little delegation
crawled back into the monitor stand.

A blue-sky thought (warning: requires socio-political criticism)

It was stupidly early in the morning, and I was on my way to Phil's
Bankruptcy Party. And I was in a filthy mood. Why I should get
out of bed at this godforsaken time, just so that the Asian half of
Phil's network could join us in a celebration that (judging
from their replies) they still didn't completely understand... well.
Idiotic. I smacked my lips together, blearily. Yuk. No prospect of
being allowed to stay on orange juice at this do, unfortunately, but
the last thing I needed was more alcohol. I swayed wearily, and let the
clatter of the tube train shake its way through my bones.



There's a definite clientele on the tube trains at five-thirty in the
morning. A few shattered clubbers, their faces leaving glitter imprints
on the windows; but mostly small men in leather jackets or industrial
high-vis tops, their chins ducked inside their collars, trying to get
to work before the world wakes up and notices them. I couldn't care
less, frankly. I hunched down and gloomily contemplated the ordeal
ahead of me.



I've been to five Bankruptcy Parties in the last month alone, and every
single time I go the bankruptee is a little more smug than the last
one. Phil would be intolerable - and I knew from bitter experience that
Phil's 'intolerable' left everyone else's far, far behind. He's a
relentless queen, a relentless, intolerable, screeching fucking pain in
the... Well. I disapprove, that's all. I'm a solvent, young, straight,
single guy, and I seriously disapprove. Call me old fashioned, but if
you can't handle money then you shouldn't be allowed any. I have had
this argument with Phil before - I think it was at his second or third
Bankruptcy Party.

"Paul, how can you be so square?" I remember him asking, wrinkling his
nose in distress and making cow eyes at me. "It's the death of the
system, that's all. How can the economy keep going if I'm not allowed
to spend money?"

"How can it operate when you don't pay your bills?" I shot back.

He looked shocked. "I do pay! I pay until I can't pay any more."

"And then some poor schmuck's business goes under."

"If I didn't pay, if I " his nose wrinkled in distaste,
"saved, then even more businesses would go under!
That's what the government says, isn't it?"

I had to concede this. That's what they were saying. They were making
it easier to declare personal bankruptcy, too. And at the same time,
they were wringing their clammy hands about the vast amount of personal
debt we were all carrying around, and trying to clamp down on the
non-money netsuke networks, where the whole thing operated on favours
and no money changed hands at all, so nobody paid tax.

I resented this. "Look, someday your debts are going to be called in, and you'll be in serious trouble."

"No I won't. I'll be bankrupt." he giggled. "Again!"

"Someday," I said darkly, "that won't be an excuse."

Phil pouted again. "You're wrong, my hirsute friend." (I had a
moustache then.) "Nations have been doing it for decades. The personal
debt market is just catching up! And goods are all made in robot
factories, so they cost next to nothing! The rest of it is money
chasing money in a panicky spiral. Well, I just stepped off the spiral
for a bit, that's all. I can get back on. Not like you, my economic
neanderthal. 'someday they'll be called in'... listen to yourself!
Someday there won't be any money at all, and I'll bet you my entire net
worth that that day will come before the day they decide to call in the
debts."

I leaned back, smiled. "And what is your entire net worth, worth?"

Phil threw back his head and squealed with drunken laughter.





Regular bankruptcy as a stepping-stone to a non-monetary economy? Any thoughts, anyone?

Half-heard/half-seen (1): Om Ianks talks to Aga magazine.

Om Ianks ("It's pronounced 'Yannax'", he adds with a twinkle in his
eye) readjusts his poncho and offers me another yak's milk cookie. His
dojo is a light, airy room; serenity oozes from the wood panelling -
where it isn't obscured by enamelled pasty adverts. Om gives a genteel
belch. "Just as the kitchen is the centre of the home, the Aga is the
centre of the kitchen. Therefore, to feel as centred as possible, all
the acolytes who visit our retreats are encouraged to spend time at the
Aga. As meditative practice, we seek the perfect shortcrust pastry."

Pastry?

"It's like life - the search for ingredients, the travelling and
exploration of the external... then the moving inwards, the alchemy of
creation, the combination of the external and the creative spirit to
perfect the internal and complete the circle. Here, we communicate that
by the creation of pie." His eyes twinkle. "Our Agas are fundamental to
our way of life."



Om has Agas to thank for some of the most meaningful moments in his
life. When he started out as a freelance sculptural welder, travelling
through the artist colonies of the Yorkshire Dales, he never intended
to become a modern guru. "My life then was simple," he muses. "I'd get
up, reconcile modernism and sculptural demonstratism, negotiate a
price, then get out the welding kit and bash on. But it was all so
shallow. I was all steel sheet - I lacked ballast. Now I've added some
cast iron to my life - and I'm trying to bring that lesson to as many
people as I can get 'old of." He shifts gently - I must admit,
two hours in a position he calls 'the Durham Lotus' are starting
to take their toll on my elbows.



It may seem a revolutionary concept - the shortcrust path to
enlightenment - but in fact it has a noble tradition. Or would, if I
could be bothered to think of one. But I can't. And I'll bet this is
still a more interesting article than the one in Saga magazine about
Tom Hanks, which momentarily confused me in the hospital waiting room
this afternoon.

Mugs - scientifically, like.

There clearly isn't
an optimum shape for a mug. Otherwise we'd have found it by now.
But...

...there must be a
shape which makes sure that the tea (or other hot beverage, take your pick - for
the purposes of this discussion let's assume it's tea) (Earl Grey - in fact,
let's assume it's Green Earl Grey because I haven't had any in a while and I
miss it). (Mmmm).

Where was I? Oh
yeah.

There must be a mug
shape which first cools the tea quickly, then keeps it drinkable for the longest
period of time. Let's make some assumptions (yay! I like this
bit):

1. There is a range
of 'drinkable' temperature - say, 45-30 degrees celsius. Below this, tea is
tepid and nobody wants to drink it. Above it, the tea is too
hot.

2. People's rate of
drinking is related to temperature. Let's assume they drink it fastest at about
40 degrees.

3. Let's assume that
the profile is not allowed to 'bottleneck' - for the purposes of cleaning, the
mug isn't allowed to narrow at the top. Actually, that's a bit harsh - I have
several mugs at home which do just that. But it makes the maths trickier - is
there reflected heat from the insides? - but I guess we'll have to allow it.
Okay. But only a little bit. Great. Now we're going to need a computer to work
this out. Sheesh.

4. Also for the
purposes of practicality, the mug isn't allowed to narrow down to less than an
inch in diameter.

5. But it can be as
tall as you like (you can take practicality too far, you
know).

So the aim of the
game is to keep the temperature of the tea within the drinkable range until it's
all drunk. Now, I reckon it should go something like this: the top should be
flared, like a trumpet. That way, you start off with a big surface area and the
tea will cool quickly. Then, assuming that the drinker starts to sip it while
it's still technically too hot, the mug should narrow down fairly quickly to the
point where the tea is now at the top edge of the drinkable range. Then, the
belly of the mug can maybe open out (just a bit)... although that will increase
the surface area so it might increase the cooling rate (damn), so maybe better
to just go vertically down... until we reach the bottom, when the tea could be
nearing the bottom range of 'drinkable', when the surface should start blending
in to a nice, curvy bottom.

It's possible that
the best shape might involve having a mug that as narrow as possible, so we'll
end up with something like a trumpet balanced on a straw... but hey. It'd be a
fun investigation, anyway. Anyone know any students looking for a project?
There's plenty to do. Yo'd have to find out about the drinkable range. Then
measure people's rates of consumption at different temperatures. Then there's
some juicy simulation work to determine the reflected heat (if you're going to
include narrowing at the top - otherwise you could probably get away without
it). Choice of materials, colours, etc. Finally a bit of design work to pretty
it up a bit.

What fun... for
someone else!



(PS Denby make my favourite mugs - see below!)

Designing for the super-rich

There's an article
in February's Engineering (a publication noted normally only for its extreme
glossiness and abysmal grammar) on a design team refitting a standard jet plane
(an Airbus A319, apparently) into a pop star's luxury flying machine, complete
with games room and bar. My first reaction to this, I must admit, was disgust.
The amount of pollution which this thing will pump into the upper atmosphere in
order to transport one over-preened youth and twenty of his closest sycophants
around the world should make any environmentally-aware person cringe. It's like
a stretch Humvee - there's really no excuse. Surely, it would be more
responsible to guide the young super-rich into blowing their money on some sleek
dart of an "uber-Lear Jet", which will be cleaner and quicker, as well as
smaller and more elegant?

But then I had
second thoughts. For one thing, celebrities have a rather short shelf-life, and
rather a lot of money. Commercial jets cost a lot of money, but have a much
longer shelf-life. Presumably these planes could be refitted as standard
airliners, once Zoom Bo'Dansa and his buddies have stopped selling records? Or
maybe they could be refitted for each pop brat in turn with only minor tweaks.
So the idea of using a durable, workhorse shell with a frothy interior has some
merits - afer all, something sleeker might not have quite the same commercial
afterlife. Or at least, its afterlife will remain as carting small numbers of
rich people round the globe. Per person-mile, might the Lear Jet not end up the
more environmentally expensive?

In general, one has
to own up to the fact that these people have money and they want to spend it. On
the face of it, the most ecofriendly advice would be to spend it on services,
rather than products - designers, masseurs, butlers, bodyguards, etc. Spend your
money on people rather than things. (Of course, then these people go out and
spend their money on things, but they're more likely to spend it on
mass-produced, low-ecofootprint products, rather than bloody great planes. Or
stretch Humvees). But isn't this sort of personal-service culture one which died
at the end of the First World War? In social terms, wouldn't it be a massive
retrograde step, a return to the days of 'below-stairs' servitude? Well,
probably not - for one thing, personal service has always been around, and as a
way of making a living, aromatherapy is a lot more fun than, say, assembling
electonics. Supply and demand will dictate the levels of personal service
provision - and todays service providers aren't the downtrodden daughters of
housekeepers, but qualified professionals backed up by chartered institutions
and knowledge transfer networks.

I bought a book

...this, in itself, is no great surprise. What is a surprise is this
one wasn't science fiction - it was a collection (and I quote) of
'small rules for little problems'.



Sounds like another checkout-book, doesn't it? One of those little
books hanging around at the counter, lurking, waiting to pounce on any
poor shoper addled by the bright colours, and weakened to the point of
impulse buying. The Little Book of Feng Shui ("For good luck, put a
fishbowl with thirteen goldfish in it in your hallway. If one dies, do
not worry - simply replace it") was the last time I made such an error.




This, though, caught my eye with the following, on the question of
tidying up: "Everything in life has its proper place. If it's not in
that place it's officially untidy. If the thing doesn't have a proper
place in the first place then it's officially rubbish." Speaking as
someone who has spent the last two months climbing over boxes, this hit
me with the force of some great revelation. I couldn't have been more
impressed if a burning bush had appeared right there in Fopps.
(Preferably in the r'nb/hip hop section, where it could do the least
damage. Culturally, anyway).



Wot the blazes is it called, anyway? Oh, right: 'Never Push when it
says Pull', by some bloke called Guy Browning. A modern-day guru, by
anyone's standards.

I want one of these (1): Lumen

Gorgeous, simple, clever. what's not to like?

The guy has several different designs - I particularly like the seagull one.

The Great Jaffa Cake Cake-off

Introduction

While I was in the
supermarket the other day, I noticed that Mcvities, that great purveyor of the
English biscuit, have introduced several new flavours of the renowned Jaffa
Cake. In addition to the original orange, there is now Lemon and Lime, and
Blackcurrant. I resolved to test these new flavours, and also to determine
whether there was any difference between the supermarket own-brand Jaffa Cakes,
and Mcvities originals.

Method

First, Jaffa Cakes
were purchased from a Sainsbury's supermarket I went past on the way home.
Flavours purchased were: Sainsbury's basics Jaffa Cakes (orange flavour,
obviously), Mcvities orange, lemon and lime, and ribenaberry*. These were then
displayed, and test subjects (everyone at my work) were invited to sample them
and were asked:

1. Compared to the
smashing orangey bit, how smashing is the lemon and limey bit? Or the
ribenaberry bit?

2. What's the
difference between the Sainsbury's value and the original orange
ones?

Apparatus

Jaffa Cakes. (NB
this test did not include the rumoured milk chocolate Jaffa Cake, as these are
an offence against nature).

Plates.

Cups of tea (or
coffee).

Results

Answers to the above
questions varied. On the question of smashingness, reaction to the two new
flavours was muted. Pretty much everyone preferred the original (which
incidentally has an extra calorie per cake - make of that what you will). The
lemon and lime scored well, but the blackcurrant was not considered a success.
However, what was interesting was that the first box to be finished was the
blackcurrant flavour. Hmmm...

On the question of
the difference between the Sainsbury's value and the Mcvities original, almost
everyone agreed that the inside of the cake was a different colour. Most people
could not detect a difference in overall taste, although a few claimed to prefer
the original, and one person preferred the Sainsbury's. This may have been out
of confusion, however, as some joker mixed up the packs early on in the
experiment (he knows who he is, and everybody else does, too, don't they,
Keith). The Sainsbury's 'basics' cakes were noted
to have marginally less smashing orangey bit (SOB), but the smashingness of the
orangey bit was considered comparable to the Mcvities SOB. When the
components were nibbled off individually, the Mcvities cake was considered
superior, while the SOB in each cake was considered identical, as was the
chocolate.

Discussion

I'm really liking
the BBC's theme tune for their Commonwealth Games coverage. It's imbecilically
simple, but I like it. It gets me all excited whenever I hear it (probably
shouldn't tell you that).

Conclusion

Considering that
Sainsbury's basics Jaffa Cakes are half the price, you certainly get more
smashingness to the pound. However, the authors of this paper suggest that there
is a Law of Diminishing Marginal Smashiness, since prolonged exposure to
Sainsbury's jaffa cakes did appear to increase the subject's appreciation for
the Mcvities ones.

Don't bother with
the blackcurrant ones, either. I ate a whole one without ever realizing what
flavour it was.

Oh my God! I went to
the nicecupofteaandasitdown.com website looking for a diagram of a Jaffa Cake,
and what do I find? They've just done their own review! Love those Bahlsen
Messino ones, by the way. Didn't have 'em in Sainsburys, but they are very
scrummy.

*For those unaware
of the Ribenaberry's taxonomy, in the Linnaean system you will find it as
follows: Kingdom Fantastico, Phylum Anthropomorphica, Order Cutesi, Family
Advertisa, Genus Ribena, Species Ribenaberry. There may be subspecies. I'm
pretty sure that's it, but my Linnaean isn't really very good. I don't even know
where Linnaea is.

My feng shui dilemma

Should I stay or should I go now?

The rescue teams know where you are - your best bet is to stay put.

 

 2

My horoscope says a change is as good as a rest to a blind watchmaker learning new tricks. I think that means you should move.

 

 9

I have a dilemma.

The desk next to
mine at work has been free for a while now, and I can't decide whether to move
over to it or not. My current hovel is quite exposed - I basically work with my
back to most everybody, in an open plan office, so everyone can see when I'm
looking at whatever dumb website peter's posted recently. What's more, my back
is to the door and there's a clear line of sight straight to my desk - so the
first sight confronting any visitor is my desk, which is always covered in shyte
(that's how I know I'm a creative type). The other desk, by contrast, has its
back to the wall and surveys the rest of the office. It also has control of the
thermostat (mwah ha ha). The only person who would still be able to see that I'm
looking at Barbie collectables on eBay would be my boss (can't get out of that
one, unfortunately. Boss-man will always be able to look over my shoulder, at
either desk).

On the other hand,
from my current desk I can look out over to the hills south of Edinburgh (still
some snow on them). The other one doesn't have much of a view of anything.
What's more, my office is ludicrously quiet, and the only people who regularly
converse are me and the guy I sit next to. If I move, I'll be moving away from
him and that could make the office even quieter (if that's even possible).

So, to
summarize:

Current
desk:

1. Better
view

2. Don't know what's
going on behind me (and everything happens behind me).

3. Bad feng shui
(exposed back)

4. Covered in
junk

5. Conversationally
enhanced

Other
desk:

1. Much more
snug

2. No
view

3. Control of
thermostat (extra responsibility - probably not worth a pay raise,
though)

4. Would immediately
become covered in junk when I moved there, but no visitors need ever
know.

5. Better feng shui
- with my back to the wall, I would be able to observe my fellow workers and
take appropriate steps in the case of any of them going
postal.

On the mediated experience

I was singing in a
choir concert at the weekend - and we were awesome, thanks for asking. Britten
and Tippett aren't the most easily digested composers, and a whole concert
unaccompanied was pretty scary, but damn me if we didn't drop a semitone in an
hour and a quarter, and we - well, we kicked ass, frankly. We were
fantastic.

But that's not what
I wanted to talk about. I was listening to the girls singing their girls-only
bit, and it struck me that I never go to choral concerts as audience. I just
don't find them exciting. I love singing, and I love performing - there's a real
rush to be had from being in amongst a group of great singers when you just know
there's a big moment coming up - but as something to experience from the
stalls... well, not really my bag, thanks. So I was wondering why this was,
and how I'd change the performance to make it more interesting, and I came up
with an interesting concept:

If you built a big
wall between the choir and the audience, I'd find it a lot easier to empathize
with the choir and get excited about the music.

As a spectacle, you
see, a choir is essentially a bunch of people standing still, with just their
mouths working. There's immense effort going on, but it simply doesn't
communicate visually. At least an orchestra looks like it's working a bit - all
those violinists with their elbows pumping - but a choir is a very boring thing
to watch. And if you get it right, choral music (especially churchy stuff,
which it mostly is) is supposed to sound transcendent, ethereal - other-worldly.
Beyond the experience of medieval peasants. Inhuman, perhaps. For me, that makes
it a difficult thing to empathize with, and if there's no empathy with the
performers, then there's no performance.

So the pure
unexpurgated experience of watching a choir sing is pretty dull. I need
something extra to mediate the experience - in my case, a six foot high wall. My
ears and my imagination understand the effort and skill going into the
performance; my eyes just don't believe it.

So it's only just
occurred to me that this is what mediated experience is - it's removing stuff
from the original (leaving bits of movies on the cutting room floor, retouching
colours, cleaning paintings, digitising sound) in order to enhance the
experience. It's reductive. It's distillation. It's funny, but I've never
thought of it in those terms.It's not the only way, though - I was discussing
this with one of the other guys in the choir, and he was telling me about a
singing group he belongs to who make a point of moving around while
they perform. That sounds like a good option - a way of energizing the
performance, of humanizing it.It's also additive - movement gets added to the
singing to enhance the experience.

But I'm drifting.
I wanted to talk about one particular form of mediation which some of us
experience twenty-four seven. I'm talking about those people who wear glasses.

It's always a shock
to me to take my glasses off. Being very shortsighted, I wear glasses* all the
time, and most of the time I don't notice that my experience of the world is
mediated by two bits of glass (and a light misting of dirt and grease - I'm very
lazy about cleaning them). But it does mean that my view of the world has a
frame around it, and sometimes this can be a bit of a surprise. Wearing glasses
puts a distance between you and the world, as any psychologist will
confirm.Obviously they enhance my visual experience (which is otherwise
a wobbly smear). But the point is, they're a form of mediation of the visual
experience, and I'm wondering: what other effects does this mediation have on my
view of the world? How does it make my experience different from someone with
20/20 vision? I dunno - does it perhaps make movies more believable (after all,
my world normally takes place in a square frame already)?

*Contact lenses make
my eyes hurt, okay? Don't think I haven't tried.

I am ill

Not life-threateningly ill. Not even stuck-at-home ill. But I'm ill
nonetheless. I say this because I've actually been ill for more than
nine years, but it's only in the last six months that I've actually
admitted it to myself. I have ulcerative colitis, which normally gets
lumped into the rather broad group of illnesses that get called
Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It's basically an inflammation of the lower
intestine, which causes pain and prevents you from really digesting
food properly. It's also one of those diseases which until you've got
it, you've never heard of, but suddenly when you start to talk about it
you realize there's a huge number of sufferers.



One of the problems with being ill over a long period is that you
forget what being truly healthy is like. I'm generally okay - a few
weeks ago I went skiing, and managed to out-ski almost everybody there.
When I got home, however, I crashed and burned for about two days,
because unlike most people I simply have no reserves of strength; when
I start to fade, I go downhill rapidly. When I had no peripheral
worries and could concentrate on skiing, I was fine - but as soon as I
was home, and I had all those normal niggling worries of life gnawing
at the edges of my attention, I struggled. I tire easily, I get bored
easily, I get emotional and fractious. I get abdominal pains - mostly
nasty trapped wind, but sometimes genuinely ominous stabbing pains with
no apparent cause. I have one particularly delicate point in my
gut, near my left hip, which always hurts if I press it. Just
recently a new and alarming symptom has reared its ugly head - anemia.
I spent a week in bed, unable to do anything more strenuous than the
washing up without feeling dizzy.



So what do I do to control my condition? Easy: nothing.



To be honest, there's not a lot I can do. I've tried different diets,
and basically come to the conclusion that my condition is 100%
stress-related. Now, the weird thing is that anyone looking at my
lifestyle would assume that I am under very little stress indeed - my
job is very very low-stress, I do some exercise but not an excessive
amount, I sing in a choir and I play lacrosse occasionally, I drink and
dance in moderation - so I have a very quiet, well-balanced lifestyle.



And yet there it is, a stress-related illness.



Partly, I can pass it off as genetic - my family suffers from a range
of diseases which (this is my theory, anyway) can be put down to not
handling stress gracefully. My mum has... thing with scalp, oh, damn,
forgot the name... psoriasis! My sister has psoriatical arthritis
(yeah, I got off lightly). I get ulcerative colitis. It's my theory
that there's some sort of link between the three. But it
must also be to do with the way I live my life, and
that really undermines my self-confidence, because I worry about the
direction my life is going. I worry about the big things: I have a
professional career as an engineer, but I'm not really very good at it.
I live on my own, and I've been single for a while now. I live at the
opposite end of the country to most of my family. Finally, I'm not one
of those people who makes friends easily.



The question is: what is my body trying to tell me? Where did I go
wrong? Did I go wrong? How the hell does my body
know, anyway? If I quit my job and moved back in with my parents, did a
degree in journalism and started all over again, would my health
improve, or worsen?



I just can't help thinking that my health is strongly intertwined with
my lifestyle, but I can't find the crucial thread. The only options
left seem pretty radical, and pretty terrifying. So I content myself
with doing little things (current project: buying my own house) in the
hope that some little extra comfort will lull my digestive system back
to sleep.



But I can't help feeling that I should be doing something radical. If only I knew what.

Where is this going? A fragment a la Calum (but a bit longer)

    "Do you fancy going somewhere else?"

She laughs, throwing her head back. She's wearing a velvet choker, with
a bell on it, like the collar on a cat. I like that, it's a nice
conceit. But I can feel the moment slipping. She leans into me, shouts,
"Now? But I've only just got here!"

I shrug, "Is it cold out?"

She looks at me, then nods, vigorously.

"Then let's go somewhere warmer!"

She draws back, looks into my eyes, laughs. Then she kisses me. I draw
her face in, sliding my face past her lips. They feel wonderful on my
smooth cheeks. That's something I never get used to, the late-night
smoothness. It's wonderful.  

"Boy, you're in a hurry!"

I smile, nod, look away. Yes, I am. A desperate hurry.

"I'm Cinderella!" I shout back. "After midnight I turn into a pumpkin!"

She laughs again, shakes her head. Looks into my eyes with a half-smile. "Is it something that a fairy godmother can fix?"

I smile and shake my head. No.  " I'm catching a plane!" I explain. "Have to be at the airport by midnight."

She nods., leans forward, throws an arm over. "Well," she breathes, "I
guess I'd just better make the most of you while i've got you.."



So we kiss, which at this point is all I could even dream of. Lust has
weakened, shifted; moved an octave higher. And unless I'm not quick,
it'll soon be joined by other things.



I disengage breathlessly, blow a last goodbye kiss (she gives a little
moue of disappointment, but smiles when she realizes she can't persuade
me to stay, and turns back to her friends), and head out. I make sure
I'm shucking on my jacket as I pass the bouncers - I don't want them to
get a clear view of my face, not now.



It's not a steady thing, my condition. Every cycle's the same, but
within each cycle it's patchy. It's like some sort of dance - quick,
quick, slow, quick, slow. That's probably a good thing, because
otherwise by this time of night I'd barely be able to walk. As it is,
I'm nervous and feeling vulnerable. I tuck my chin deep into my jacket,
and dive from sodium patch to sodium patch, trying not to accelerate as
I skirt the darkness of the Meadows.

I've left it late tonight (and underneath the collar of my jacket I
grin - boy was it worth it), and I can feel the occasionally curious
glance thrown at me. I can feel people wondering: who'd let their child
out so obviously past their bedtime?



I went to a doctor once. At first he didn't believe me, so I went away
and came back an hour later. Then I practically had to break his arm to
get out, he was so excited. Thirty seconds in there was enough to
persuade me that the 'program' he was mapping out was an
extraordinarily bad idea. Specialists, tests... world fame, a life as a
freak. Guaranteed. I'd never survive. I left; I didn't answer his
calls. When social services came round, I let them in, was very polite,
told them I was my own grandfather. Who wouldn't believe it? The truth
is too stupid to be true.



In ancient times, communities (I think this is in the bible, but I'm
not sure) used to get together and symbolically heap all their sins
onto a goat, which they'd then kick out of the village to wander into
the desert, taking everyone's sins with it. That's where the word
'scapegoat' comes from. I sometimes wonder if that's what happened to
me, that I've become sort of a scapegoat for everybody., for my whole
society. That somehow we've been guilty of some sin of time - there's
plenty of condidates. The whole Cult of Youth, banishing signs of
ageing - mine woujld be an excellent punishment for that, although
probably the wrong way round. Or possibly the sin of trying to cram too
much into our lives; definitely appropriate, although I've never been
particularly good at that even before.

Sometimes, when the feeling that I'm being punished lies heavily on me, I simply wonder whether this is what hell is like.



I reach the flat - blessed relief, sanctuary. My space, where I can be
as weird as I want. Well, no, that's not right - after a lifetime of
this you think I want more weirdness? No. Here, I can just be as weird
as I am. The cat miaows reproachfully, unused to being left alone for
so long. I pick here up and fuss over her for a bit, but I'm startled
to realize she's getting heavy - a really bad sign. I hurry to get to
bed.



I tried, for a while, to stay awake through the night, to witness my
own metamorphosis. How do I go from a newborn to an old man? How does
it happen? I still don't know - never mind the question of staying
awake, how much do you remember from your first few years of life?
Every morning I wake up too startled by the muddying aches of age to
really focus on it, and by the time I've thought 'how did I get here?'
It's already started to fade, dissolving like a dream. So I don't know.
I  think there's a light at the end of a long tunnel, and I can
hear voices... nah, I'm just kidding. I have no idea. When I go to bed,
I’m a child of somewhere between twelve and six. When I wake up, I’m an
old man of about eighty. I simply come to, out of a dreamless sleep. My
soul dragged from the depths for another go round. I wonder if it goes
anywhere in the meantime. Maybe it just hovers for a second, so that if
I woke up at exactly midnight, I’d open my eyes to find myself looking
down from the ceiling, like one of those out-of-body experiences people
say they have. Looking down on maroon walls, the black-iron bed, that
ludicrous duvet cover with the fish on it (really must get rid of that
– my poor soul must writhe in embarrassment. Serve it right, the
bastard thing). A moment floating free between childhood and being
rammed into some disccated hulk of wrinkled flesh



I sleep naked; I'm too scared of throttling my young self (or fatally
constricting my older version) to wear anything. The bed seems huge,
the room cold, impossibly adult and unwelcoming. I turn on the
nightlight. I blush as I do it, I feel so utterly foolish; but I know
I'll be glad of it if I wake before midnight. I never liked the dark
when I was a kid.

I know the morning will be a struggle. At least old people don't need
much sleep, so I normally wake up early. A good thing, because it takes
me a while to remember where I am, and who I am, and what's
happening/happened/will happen to me.



But hey, I found a girl, talked to her, had a snog. That was worth a
lot. That made my day - made my week, hell, it  made my month,
frankly. People say you get used to living alone - I think you can get
used to poverty of all sorts, and this is just another. It doesn't make
you any less impoverished.



It came on gradually, my... condition. I was in my late twenties. At
first I didn't even notice, then I told myself that this was just
natural ageing, that I was not very good at mornings. I'd be very
lethargic early in the day, haggard and creaky, but by seven or eight
in the evening I could take on the world. It was great, and I abused it
to the full. Mornings were discounted as hangovers, evenings were a
long round of barely-remembered drunken exploits. But it didn't take
long for the hangovers to really seriously take their toll, and I’d be
struck down by hangovers that seemed to have matured and fermented for
thirty years, distilling their pain and weakness until I called a halt
to the whole thing. Then I improved (surprise), but it was temporary.
By the time I was thirty-two, I could see the differences between
myself and my friends. They were able to go for longer (I'd be
completely legless by ten o'clock, and if I insisted on staying up I'd
end the evening throwing up and crying until some random girl's
maternal instincts kicked in and they bundled me into a cab). I would
always have recovered by lunchtime, but the early hours of the morning
were full of heart palpitations, spots before my eyes, palsied shaking
and generally a total inability to move. So I knocked the drinking on
the head, and it got better for a while. But then I began to descend
again, and by now I couldn't pretend this was anything normal. Thus
far, I've had no explanation. I probably shouldn't complain too much
about that, seeing as I've hidden from the doctors who might have come
up with something, but I can't help the occasional, sneaking feeling
that I'll wake up some morning and find a bejewelled demon sitting at
the bottom of my bed with a clipboard, who'll take one look at me and
say, "Well, how do you feel? Pretty sorry for yourself, I should hope.
Last week was for stealing plums from Mr Petwin's greengrocers when you
were nine. From today we'll be moving onto the next deadly sin, which
is, ah yes, sloth. Oh deary dear, quite a list in this category..."

...but it never happens. Metamorphosis, huh. At least Kafka's sorry bugger had some family to kill him when it all got too much.



Presumably, I'll get to the point where my morning reincarnation will
be into a body which is so old that it'll already be dead, and the
whole charade will be over. Until then, though... well, I’ve got a job,
I've got a life. I own my own flat, I have friends. I get by. I don't
get out as much as I'd like, but hey, who does?

Surface Roughness Testing 2006

Opportunities for Cowardice (1) - househunting

It's a terrible thing, to be a bright, self-aware, creative person and
at the same time a complete coward. Less intelligent people might be
able to excuse their behaviour by saying they simply didn't spot the
opportunity to do something, but I can't honestly allow myself that. I
notice opportunities for cowardice more often than I like to admit.



For some reason, house-hunting shows up my yellow streak more than
almost anything else. I hate it. When I think of having to poke around
someone else's home, a wave of exhaustion sweeps over me.
Intellectually, I know that the sellers want people to look round; they
want people interested, they'd be delighted for me to turn up on their
doorstep. And it's not even as bad as that; up here there are specific,
agreed-on times for public viewings, so I'd just need to turn up on a
Tuesday evening and the whole process is well-understood. It's actually
quite difficult for me to get it wrong: and what would 'wrong'
constitute anyway?



So why do I loathe it so?



It's not even as if I haven't been through it before - although I am a
first-time buyer (heinous phrase), I went through the process of buying
a flat in Bristol, which only fell through at (almost literally) the
last minute. So I understand the process of purchase.



Is it the pressure of having to deal with lots of people? Perhaps.
That's probably the most likely reason. I'm terrible with
confrontation. House-hunting is, perhaps, the most confrontational thing
I am currently doing. The weird thing is that I am very competitive in
sports and games, but for some reason that isn't carrying over into
real life. Why? I don't know. Low self-esteem? Lack of inter-personal
contact? Well, duh. I'm entrusting this to the internet - what makes
you think I have a lack of inter-personal contact?



But it doesn't feel like I've hit the root of the problem here. Is it
something to do with the compromises involved? That's probably
something to do with it. I'm a terrible perfectionist, and I have great
difficulty in choosing what to sacrifice when it comes to compromise.
And of course I'm looking for exactly the same things as everyone else,
and on a single person's income it's difficult to compete. But money
isn't the concern.



Maybe it is the competition aspect of the whole thing. I don't honestly
know; but I shall be asking myself once again tomorrow - Sunday
afternoon is House-hunter's Time in Edinburgh.

Bye Bye Broadband

Well, this is it. Finally moving out of my beloved (but ludicrously
expensive) rented flat in Stockbridge, to go housesitting for three
months in far less agreeable surroundings!



Good news: It's cheap. Very cheap. Which is good, because I can't
really afford to live where I have been up to now. Not really. I can
afford to survive here, but only as long as I don't
do anything. That's no fun.

Bad news: It's exactly the wrong side of town for work - fifteen minutes less in bed in the morning! Boo!

Good news: It has TV. This is a novelty for me. In fact, it has digital TV. Interesting.

Bad news: NO INTERNET. Wah! How'm I going to survive?



Of course, I will still have internet at work, but it won't be the
same. So what I'm saying is, y'all will be seeing a lot less of me for
a bit!

Feelings

The feeling that your life is somehow several sizes too small.

I'm so very sorry that... (call for list)

On BBC Radio 4's News Quiz this evening, the topic of obscure apology
cards came up - the point being that while shops might stock cards
which say 'I'm sorry I missed your birthday', it's harder to find cards
for things like 'I'm sorry I dressed up as a suicide bomber and took
part in a demonstration while on parole for a drugs offence.' And it
occurred to me that in this era of home printers, cafepress,
etc., there's really no need for some of these awkward apologies
to be left off the shelves. So I tried to think up a few more common
ones that Hallmark don't seem to have covered:



"I'm sorry that...



"...I bullied you at school.

"...I took you to see that terrible movie.

"...the apple I offered you at break had a maggot in it.

"...I borrowed your house while you were on holiday and had wild parties in it.

"...I didn't really buy your a Ferrari for your birthday.

"...I told you The Biscuit Joke.

"...I stole the car, drove it to Vegas and sold it for gambling cash.

"...I stole your milk.

"...I stole your cat.

"...I stole your husband. etc., etc....

"...I'm not taller.

"...you're not taller.

"...being so damn apologetic all the time.

"...I threw a plate at you. (You still deserved it, but I'll apologize anyway, because I'm a lot nicer than you)

"...I'm sorry your ancestors were abducted and sold as slaves by my ancestors.

"...I'm sorry my ancestors were Welsh.

"...I'm sorry you're Welsh.

"...about the Welsh.

"...we hired a complete stranger to tell you you were adopted.

"...I walked through the house wearing my pig-slaughtering clothes.

"...I scared you with that gag with the teeth.

"...I was born.

"...you were born.

"...I wasn't born richer.





more generally:

"I'm sorry my ancestors did bad things to your ancestors."

"I'm sorry about the uneven drift of technological progress since the Renaissance.



And of course:

"I'm so sorry about the baggage retrieval system they have at Heathrow."



Any other possibilities spring to mind?

Personal mythology (1): the Basilisk

When I used to live in Bristol, there was a particular square in a
particular shopping precinct which I really didn't like:



The square is a lifeless space; the buildings around it are
tired and sullen, brutal in showing their age. The place smells of cold
and concrete, with the occasional whiff of sugar nuts from a stall on
the far side of the square. All around the square, glass separates the
crowd from the merchandise; shoppers step around one
another, no eyes for anything outside their own private communion
with the glossy mannequins. Their unseeing movement, their total lack
of
care, their eyes and thoughts constantly on the other side of those
generous panes of glass… this is where it lives, where it can feed off
the unconcern. Where it can lounge in plain sight and still nobody
notices, their eyes tuned to merchandise, their minds turned inwards.


This is the home of the basilisk. I can feel it. I can practically see it. It
fills the entire space, curled in on itself, dozing.



I can feel its satiated eye as it lazily watches me.

Capitalism

(One thing about flying - the overall experience might suck, but the views are great)



So! Capitalism. Yeah.



I have a glib little theory about capitalism, which is this: capitalism is a system for creating monopolies.



Here's the way I see it. Capitalism is based on competition. That's all
fine and dandy, but competition is an inherently unstable state.
This seems to suit certain industries (plumbing is the one I keep
thinking of), but in other areas, competitions have a tendency to be
won. And then monopolies are created. I'm guessing this is to do with
the costs of entry into an industry - where they re high, you have a
natural tendency for monopolies to evolve. This is natural, and
unsurprising. I'm pretty sure I was taught this stuff at school.



Ooo, look! Snowdonia!



Sorry, got distracted by the view. Anyway, what I find surprising
is the regularity with which competitions are being won right now.
Maybe it's me, but there seems to be a tendency at the moment towards
consolidation, and few starter companies muscling in. Maybe this is
just because mergers make headlines, while startups don't...



Ew. Big black smear in the sea suspiciously close to that power station. Grim.



...Er, what was I saying? Oh yeah.



Okay, forget all that. What I was trying say was very simple: just like
pure oxygen, pure capitalism kills. Well, duh. People win competitions.
Our society is inherently unstable, but at heart its basic unit is not
the dollar, but the human being. We're surrounded by lots of
imperfectly working
systems, which we patch constantly. If we occasionally lose sight of
this because of the complexity of the systems, then that shouldn't come
as any surprise. Complexity is rarely a good survival strategy.



So that's that. Gosh, that was easy.



I wrote this a few days ago - looking
back, it seems like the most incredibly disjointed nonsense! Never
mind, there's truth in there somewhere. Off you go, little blog entry,
and good luck in the wider world!

Faults

I find it's my own faults that are most intolerable in other people.

Somewhere between apathy and death.

The website was sinister in its simplicity. In large letters, "8.45am
24th October 2009". Underneath was message exhorting readers to post
this date everywhere, and finally, an explanation of what was expected
to happen.



"We can bring a western nation to its knees without killing. To give
oneself to Allah is the one true calling, but those not ready to take
the Final Step can still help their brothers in countries where their
persecution continues. The decadent infidels will learn what it means
to be occupied! Get on a train, and at 8.45am, pull the emergency stop
cord. Book a flight, then ground the plane by whatever means you can -
even by simply refusing to wear your seatbelt. Park your car across a
busy street. Stand in the doorway to a shop or a bank. Spray paint on
the windscreens of cars stopped at traffic lights.



"The decadent infidels prize money more than life - how else to explain
the slaughter our brothers and sisters have undergone in the West's
quest for oil? One suicide bomb can achieve great things - but make no
mistake, you are part of a community. And a community can achieve far
greater. We have thousands of soldiers! We can stop every plane, ground
every flight, block every road. A million acts of defiance can destroy
a society which demands absolute, mindless compliance. We will flood
their prisons. We will sneer at their pathetic demands for fines. Three
stolen cars parked across the motorway round London will cause misery
to millions of people if we do it once - but if we do it every day for
a year...



"We can do this. And then, next day, we can do it again. And again. And again…



"First we will target the UK. It is dangerously close to gridlock
already. We can stop the whole country up for months. Many will come
from all over the world, posing as tourists..." and so on.



When this occurred to me, this morning in the car, it seemed like the
most sinister thing ever - civil disobedience using a vast,
international, mobile population to bring a nation to a complete
standstill. After all, if there are hundreds of angry young men willing
to die, how many more are there who would laugh at a mere monetary fine?



In the cold light of day, it seems a bit less terrifying.

"Interesting Bloke. Crap Tea."

Rating:	★
Category:	Other

I was looking through my stuff, wondering how on Earth I'm going to pack it all (I'm moving house next weekend), when I realized I've got rather a lot of tea. Not sure how much, to be honest. I know I've got less than my all-time high of 27 varieties, but I'd guess I'm at maybe seventeen? Somewhere between... oh. Twenty. Okay. The problem is I will forget which ones I like, so I'm writing it all down. And I might as well share this information.

Most of them come from either Nothing But Tea, or Whittards. Some I haven't tried yet, some I haven't tried in years. In between though, are the following:

Green Assam TGFOP Khongee - A nice green tea. I like Assam. Good for breakfast. Incidentally, if you think green tea is bitter, then you're probably making it with water which is too hot.

Tesco Scottish tea bags - now, this may just be because I'm English, but this tastes really odd. Wave it at the mug, maybe, but then put something else in. Bleuch.

Fairtrade Teabags - this tastes to me of fish. Buy it only if your conscience is very very insistent.

Earl Grey - Ah, the old favourite. Don't like the Twinings one, but Whittards and nbtea are both yummy. Prefer it black, but will drink it with milk. Or lemon.

Green Earl Grey - my breakfast staple. Really very fond of this. Not always available, so I buy in bulk whenever I can find it. Fragrant, with lots of lemony bergamot smell. Delish.

Jasmine - I like jasmine, but I don't drink it very often. Also have some Jasmine Phoenix Eyes, which are kind of cool (they're like little rolled balls of tea leaf, which look like little eyes), but they're quite impractical.

Lapsang Souchong - another tea which is fairly common. Again, I don't drink it a lot, but I have some at the back of the cupboard. I mention it for calibration purposes, I guess... if you know how you feel about lapsang, then you can judge if your tastes are likely to be close to mine... on which subject, I find it a bit too harsh. A tea that tries too hard!

White Dan Lei - This came in a sampler from NBT, and it's gorgeous! Really very exotic, with this fragrant and fruity thing going on. More body than jasmine - more spicy, too.

Special Aged Pu Ei - this is another sample, which I love. It turns the water a lovely pink colour, and tastes really nice - it's the tea equivalent of a rose wine, both in colour and taste. Somewhere between a green tea and a black one, but sweeter than both.

Georgian Old Lady - an NBT number. Exaclty what you'd expect - a reasonable, middle-of-the-road black tea. Feed it to your Gran.

Sikkim Temi - This is long gone, and all that remains is the little tin, sitting on my shelf in mute reproach. Really liked this tea, but I'm blowed if I can remember why.

Darjeeling TGFOP - very delicate. Boring, frankly.

Nilgiri BOP - Black tea . A tiny bit too delicate for my taste, but not as bad as the darjeeling.

Nepal Maloom - is a crazy name. Can't remember anything about the tea, though.

Chai - um, I have a couple of these. Twinings as always is bottom of the pile. The organic one is nice, the Whittards one is better. My method of making it is a bit erratic - I know you're supposed to brew it with the milk, or something, but I tend to skip that bit. I love chai. It's great for winter evenings, hot and spicy - use some frothy milk, and it's like a tea cappucino. Yum.

Orange Blossom Tea - Tried it. Couldn't see the point, frankly.

Cranberry Tea - a black tea with a bit of cranberry in it. Rubbish.

Nettle Tea - a very traditional cuppa, I found this in the supermarket the other day. What I didn't spot until I got home was the bit on the packet saying 'Nettle is valued for its properties as a diuretic'. Flippin' 'eck - I don't need anything else that'll make me pee more! Consequently I've only tried it once. It was remarkably strong and dark, and tasted a lot like lawn clippings.

Fruit teas - everyone is so down on fruit teas. The first comment everyone says is 'smells lovely, tastes like water.' At this point I have to prevent myself sighing and rolling my eyes, and limit myself to suggesting a few that they should try. Whittards do some lovely ones. Current favourites are Plum Pudding, and the Breakfast Fruit one. And another one, which I poured into a tin and threw away the label. Damn.
Also, orange, cinnamon and rooibos. Is very very nice. Like a fruit version of chai.

Finally, you have got to visit this charming site for a Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down. That Stuart, he seems like a nice young man.

Thought for the Day, Feb 2nd

Normally, Radio 4's Thought for the Day is just background noise as I
drive to work - some bishop or Imam babbling about peace and goodwill.
Today's, though, really did manage to move me. More powerful as spoken
word, of course, but here's the script

A list of projects

Not a particularly engaging title, I admit... ;)

1. 3D laser scanner. I
   do a bit of this stuff at work, but I came across a couple of websites
   with some fascinating homebrew laser scanners, for making 3D models of Things around the Home. I would love to make
   one. No practical reason, other than the learning experience, I guess! As examples we have crazily homebrew, or slightly more sensible homebrew.


2. Political cartoonery. I
   had this great idea for a cartoon of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. (This
   will be completely meaningless to anyone outside the UK, but what the
   hey). Entitled 'the Carrot and the Stick', Tony will be this Ken
   Dodd-like figure, grinning maniacally and brandishing a tickling stick
   (note for those lucky enough to live outside the UK: tickling stick = a
   feather duster). Gordon will stand just behind, wearing a bulky rabbit
   costume and a face like thunder, and generally looking extremely
   threatening. Cradled in his hands, where a nightclub bouncer might
   cradle his baseball bat, will be an enormous carrot.


3. Design Dream House. My
   parents built their own house. I seriously want to do that. I know I
   could, and it would be brilliant. I wish I'd done architecture instead
   of design.


4. Write book.
   Actually I've
   already done this once; it was science fiction, and I wrote it for the
   Games Workshop people. They didn't publish it; the plot got a little
   complicated. I found it way too difficult to write a straight-up
   blood-and-guts gothic heroism story - hey, I'm a complicated guy. My
   characters were complicated, okay? My hero went mad. That just doesn't
   do it for your basic nine-year-old Space Marine fanatic. Someday I'll
   come back to it and rewrite; more likely
   I'll try and start from scratch again.


5. Lego robot for sweeping floors. Preferably
   solar powered. Got all excited about the new Lego robot sets which are
   coming out in August (ish). Need to justify it somehow. Since I have no
   carpets, a simple sweeping robot that I could fire-and-forget (like,
   forever) should be adequate. Can't afford to go out and blow the
   necessary cash right now, though... but you can now download design software for
   designing stuff in Lego . How crazy is that? (Mind you, the software doesn't get a stunningly good press).

Youth

Listening to the radio, they were telling the story of Simone de
Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre. Simone de Beauvoir is having an affair
with one of her young students - at the "ripe old age of thirty, she
felt like she had recaptured her longlost youth."



I nearly fell off my chair. "Longlost?" At thirty? The
hell with that. They can have my youth when they pry it from my cold,
dead fingers.