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.

2009 in photos (part 2 of 3) - The Big Picture - Boston.com

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/12/2009_in_photos_part_2_of_3.html#photo27
Just some wonderful images. The 'Palestinian hail' is particularly amazing.

Can anyone recommend an online photobook place?

Someone (mentioning no names) is getting a photobook for Christmas. I decided this at the weekend. Can anyone recommend a photobook service? There seem to be lots. 

Nawrimo 09 - c'est tout c'est fini

Once again, with scant seconds to go (well, all right - a day) the word count reaches 50,000 words... and so I get my 'winner' badge from the NanoWriMo website. Oh, the relief.



Sadly, unlike last time (can I link to it again? Please?) this one slightly ran out of control... so although I reached the 50k word limit and thus am considered a 'winner' of the NaNoWriMo thing, this victory is marred slightly by the fact that I am only about two-thirds of the way through the plot... so there will be more writing. So, no, you can't read it now. Which I know you're all just gutted about. Yes, you are.

So work must continue. Urgh. Really don't have much enthusiasm for the prospect right now... but who knows, hopefully sometime in the new year I will be able to post the complete manuscript for my latest oeuvre - 'Rain over Xanadu', a trashy bit of science fiction from the people who brought you (here's the link, here it is here it is! Yay!) 'Government Joe Must Die'. This one is rather darker, though, and for sci-fi buffs, it owes more to Alastair Reynolds and Kim Stanley Robinson than... whoever I said GJmD owed a lot to, I forget. Someone slightly more frivolous, probably.

So, that's it for another year... except it isn't. Because I will finish the damn thing. Argh. I leave you with these words from our sponsors:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I am saving this image as someday soon it wil be very useful

http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html


As core77 said, stop what you're doing and go read this. V. amusing.

Nanowrimo - hacking through the verbiage jungle

Urgh. Okay, so - so far I am managed 2,000 words a day - if I keep this up then I should just about make it to 50k. I seriously doubt that the story will be complete, though, and then what? Don't fancy spending December writing more. That sounds too much like masochism.

Two hours later and they were all rigged up in their best clothes – or at least, their cleanest clothes – collecting up the plates of those around them and taking turns in the kitchen. It had been, they had all agreed, a fine meal, considering. And now, as they sat around and contemplated how much better the human digestion system worked under gravity, their guest of honour rose to make the traditional remarks. The Tigerwinds were, according to the commissar, an ancient and illustrious dynasty on Mars, and their involvement in the politics and administration of Humankind’s oldest colony stretched back beyond living memory. However, the crew had been quick to notice that he was slightly vague on how he came to be sent with a colony ship to Mars.

“If that’s not a punishment posting, I don’t know what is.” Freda had cackled, as they discussed it in the dormitory, with all the excitement of girl scouts on their first night away from home.

But now, the old commissar rose and shone his steely smile at them. The lights in the canteen had been turned down, and each table had a night light placed on it;  under their spell, the man’s blue eyes glinted with all the jolly bonhomie of a shark.

“Ladies and gentlemen – crew and captain of the good ship Wednesday’s Child…” he spread his hands in welcome, “…my friends. I am most grateful for the wonderful welcome to have given me to your humble vessel, and proud to have shared this wonderful meal with you.”

“I have called you friends, and I am delighted that I can do so, so freely. To be as welcoming and civilized as you have been, at the end of an epic journey such as you have taken-“
Chris leaned over to Panab next to him, and murmured, “Steady on, pal, it was only three months-”
“-is a credit to you and to your society. Truly, Ganymede has much to be proud of in this ship and its crew.

“You left your homes behind and embarked on this perilous voyage in the hope of planting the flag of humankind on another world. I can only wonder at your emotions when you discovered, as I’m told you did, halfway between planets, that this goal had already been achieved by my own small team. I am sure, had our positions been reversed, there would have been some amazement, some anger, and a great deal of bewilderment on my own ship if we had discovered you already here. Bewildered, yes, we would have been bewildered – when one’s purpose is suddenly rendered unnecessary, how does one feel, how does one react? I do not envy you your position. But as a friend, I hope I can offer some advice.

“My view of your situation is, I’m afraid to say, an unhappy one. You travelled here hoping to claim a new land for Ganymede, to throw off the yoke placed upon you by the intransigence of your bullying neighbours Europa and Callisto. Yet when you arrive here, others have already claimed the land; and your mission has been thrown open to those whom you hoped to outmanoeuvre, your enemies! So you are caught between a rock, if you’ll pardon the pun, and a hard place. Your mission is compromised, its function redundant, its intention infiltrated by your rivals. Europans and Callistans will arrive here just in time to take the benefits of your hard labour.

“My friends… we can help. Our colony is young, and needs your help, just as you need us. Mars can be your ally against the rivals who have compromise your mission. We have an established land base, with an established administration which can easily take you under its wing. With your help, our colony can be firmly established beyond all doubt, and Mars and Ganymede united as friends.”

He sat down, to polite applause – but even as he did so, there was a low murmur round the table.
“That cheeky bastard…” Chris murmured, half-admiring.

Phil rose to make some polite answering remarks. Frankly, Panab didn’t really pay much attention – but he did hear Phil turn to his guest and say, “Of course, our rivalry with Europa and Callisto is common knowledge; but sibling rivalry is part of human nature, and a healthy part.” And woe betide the stranger who tries to intervene , the commander didn’t have to add.

Nanowrimo - quota central

Okay, so it's a day late and maybe a dollar short, but I'm getting my quota in now. I figure, all I have to do is write 2,000 words every weekday, and 10,000 words each weekend, and I'll sail past 50,000 with a couple to spare.

So today, I Reached my target of 25,000 words. In fact, I went past that and reached... 25,007. Woohoo.

I went back and re-read 'Government Joe must Die' last night. I wa surprised - I remember it being pretty clunky, but it was actually pretty readable. Okay, the plot is a tad flimsy, but I was pleasantly surprised by how readable it was. This one, though, is taking a long time to get going. The problem is, I know what's going to happen. Last time I really didn't, which made it easier; this time, I have a plotline which I ahve to stick to, and it's taking a long time to play out. I may not even reach the good bits before the end of the month!

“Hey, Panab.”

“Hmm?”

It was Chris, from the acceleration couch next to his. They had been relocated to the briefing room; theirs were the only two couches in here. It felt lonely.

“You think the Martians could’ve sabotaged our route?”

“What?”

“You know, mined it or something. It’d be awfully easy – I mean, we haven’t exactly been silent in our approach, they’ve known we were coming for a month at least.”

Panab pondered this. “It wouldn’t take much, would it,” he agreed sombrely.

“A few pebbles in the upper atmosphere, a low orbit maybe. Crack that heatshield and we’re toast.”

Panab grimaced. “Well, thank you for that happy thought.”

“Sorry.”

A long pause. They were about twenty minutes away from Titan’s upper atmosphere now; the view from the few cameras still pointing forwards showed a distant curve of the planet’s horizon. Panab knew that that horizon line was slowly flattening as they approached – but it was happening too slowly for him to be sure he was seeing it.

The canteen smelled faintly of old meals, of greasy meat and boiled cabbage, of cold coffee and ageing plastic.

“Sorry, buddy.” Chris said eventually. “just this silence makes me nervous.”

Panab turned his head to look at him. “Chris, my old friend,” he said, surprised. “It is out of our hands. If God wills it, we die here. If not, then we continue. We can never know the time or the place. How many times in your life have you, could you have been killed by some careless movement from someone else?”

Chris gave him a look of disbelief, then laughed shakily. “Thanks for those encouraging words, pal.”

Panab shook his head, frustrated. “Sorry, I expressed that badly. But if you are worried because it is now up to fate, or God, or whatever you wish to call Him, well – it has always been so. As God wills it, it will happen. Once you accept that thought, well, you still get scared, but at least now you have a handle to help control it. A handhold on the precipice, if you like.”

Chris considered this. “I never took you for the religious type, buddy.”

Panab laughed. “Well, that’s the way I was brought up. My parents were Moslems of the Ohio Heresy. They left Earth when the Middle Eastern Moslems began their purges, and… stop me if you’ve heard this.”

“No, really, go on. What’s Ohio?”

“It was a town in America. There was… well, that’s beside the point. Anyway, my parents left Earth, stopped on Deimos for a while, but never really settled. When my grandparents died, they inherited some money, and came on out to Ganymede. I think they hoped there’d be religious freedom there, but-“

“There is. “Chris looked confused, his baffled frown looking perhaps offended.

“Yes, of course there is… but back then, well, there was religious freedom, but there was a lot of stuff to do it was a hardscrabble life. So although they were practising Moslems, many of their practises had to be curtailed just because it wasn’t possible. I mean, praying five times a day when you’re-“

“Woah! Five times a day?! I don’t even eat five times a day.”

Panab frowned a little at that, but carried on. “ – when you’re in a spacesuit, or teleoperating a robot for nine hours straight, it simply isn’t possible.”

Chris chuckled. “Sure, I can just see some big construction rig getting down on its knees in the middle of a building site!”

“Precisely. So, they remained Moslem in their hearts, and hoped to get back to practising their full religion… but, well, to cut a long story short, they brought me up with the theory, but not much practice.”

Chris absorbed this, staring up at the ceiling – which is the only truly comfortable position in a proper acceleration couch.

Suddenly the room shuddered. The ship creaked and groaned alarmingly, popping noises came from all around them. And a thin thunder started somewhere behind their backs, echoing round the ship until it was impossible o tell where it came from.

“Relax, my friend,” Panab said loudly over the increasing noise. “And remember, we have a job to do as soon as we come out of the other side.”

Then, gradually at first, the weight began pressing down on them. It felt like someone was pressing them into sand, burying them alive. Breathing was a great effort. And all around them, the ship thundered and groaned. There were a couple of distant bangs… but they weren’t suddenly engulfed in a fireball, so Panab told himself that it was something none-essential, and concentrated on regulating his breathing.

In the flight plan, the aerobraking manoeuvre was supposed to take just over half an hour. In reality, it seemed an eternity. Panab had just about got used to the noise by the time it began to subside. Gradually, his joints ceased to feel as if they were being put through a mincer, and became merely painful; then, blissfully light once more.

Phil’s face flashed up on one of the screens in front of them. He looked pale and strained, but composed. “Panab, Chris: have you established contact with the probes?”

“Not yet… ah, there it is. Probe 1 now online, probe 2 still not responding… okay, we have probe 2 now. “ Chris sounded as fresh as a daisy, in total control. Panab had to look over at him to see the sweat on his pale face, to see how much he’d been affected. “They’re all nominal, Phil. No sign of a response to our re-entry from the Martians.”

There was no response.

“Phil? Come in please. Anyone on the bridge?”

Finally, Phil’s voice came back on the line. “Chris – you may not see a response. But we’ve got one up here.”

“Bridge?”

Phil was suddenly brisk. “Yep, okay, probe team. We’ll fill you in on the details later. It’s just… the Martian commander has transmitted a brief, voice-only message to us. Hello and welcome to the system, sort of thing. We’ll replay it to the rest of the crew when we’re fully squared away with parking the ship.”

“Roger that, bridge.” Chris said formally. “We’ll continue to monitor the satellite surveillance. Probe team standing by.”

It took a good ten minutes for the post-manoeuvre checks to be sort out. The bangs Panab had heard turned out to be a camera which hadn’t retracted fully and had sheared off, hitting one of the ultra-low frequency antennae and taking it with it.

“Nothing serious, then.” He said with relief.

Freda was down with the EVA team checking out the damage. Her voice sounded intimate in his ear. “No, not at all. The ULF antennae was really only there to be used if we got submersibles into the sea – but even then, we may not even have wanted to talk to the ship in orbit, we may have had some support vehicle much closer. So it’s pretty academic. And the camera was just an inspection system, we can replace that easily. So pretty light damage, in all.”

It's called 'Rain over Xanadu', by the way

I have to say, this time around I'm a bit disappointed by the quality of my writing. Am I always such a lecturer? It isn't flowing, it's sheer hackwork. Hey ho. Bash on - hopefully the next 18,000 words will come a little easier than the last lot.

Approval was granted swiftly, and suddenly everyone was talking about it. Panab didn't remember them having made an announcement, but Drew stepped up and revelled in his new role as official spokesman of the Steeplechase Committee. This was good, becaues Panab didn't really have that much time to spend on it - he was still being worked hard by Phil in an effort to get as much intelligence on the Martians' activity as possible. It was tiring, wearing work - but at least he had something else to talk to people about. It was funny - he'd gotten so used to people sidling up to him and gently trying to tease clues about surveillance out of him, and now they were doing the same thing to try and get some clues about the steeplechase course! The first time it happened he laughed out loud, just from relief. In fact, it got slightly out of hand: deprived of group entertainment for such a long time, the crew of the Wednesday's Child fell enthusiastically upon Panab and Drew's idea like a pack of starving hyenas. It was strange fro Panab, though; his work with Phil was intensely private and quiet - nobody was allowed on the bridge while they were up there, and with just the two of them working in the darkened room, it was a very intense experience... and then he'd come offshift, and be surrounded by people wanting him to make decisions, or help out with the course, the competitor lists, even choosing the font for the runners' numbers.

In fact, interest in the steeplechase got to such a fever pitch that the steeplechase committee began meeting at night, and even then its first three attempts to choose a course had to be called off because people had gotten out of bed specifically to follow them around the ship and try and find out where the race would be held. In the end, Phil ordered the virtuality kits to be broken out of deep storage so the the committee could walk around a model of the ship and pick the course that way. Breaking out the VR kits was a major undertaking; it hadn't been expected that they'd be needed until quite late in the settlement process, so they were buried underneath everything. At least one spacewalk had to be undertaken just to reach them. This seemed rather melodramatic to Panab, and to many others, and caused some debate about whether the whole steeplechase thing ahd been blown out of all proportion - but Phil was quite firm that it was necessary, and even encouraged the whole process. When he mentioned this to Drew, though, the big engineer laughed.

"Well, sure. He's adding to the theatre of it, the whole media fuss."

"Why?"

Drew punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Because it's taking people's minds off what we're heading into, dumbass! The more fuss there is over the Race, the less they're fussing over evil Martians with ray guns waiting to blow us out of the sky."

"There aren't any evil ray guns, do not be foolish."

Drew adopted a shocked pose. "Woah, man, did I hear that correctly? Was that a top-secret military secret that just fell from your big secret agent mouth?"

Panab hit him, and Drew drifted backwards, laughing. "Dude, you're one hopeless secret agent. Can't even keep a secret - and anyway, where are all your secret gadgets? No invisible spaceship? Does your watch have a laser beam in it? Is there an AI on your shoulder telling you secret stuff? Is that why you have that vacant look on your face the whole time? Oh, no, sorry, that's just your expression."

"Ha ha."

"And, dammit all, where all the hot chicks? If I'm hanging out with a secret agent dude, there should be good-looking ladies practically dripping off me! You're a failure, Khaledi, a failure. More secret squirrel than secret agent. It's all very disappointing. Let's hope you're a better running-mate."

"What? I'm not taking part."

Drew stared at him. "Of course you are, man! Everybody else is, you have to too."

Panab was about to protest, but hesitated. "Everyone? Even Phil?"

Drew nodded. "Yup."

Aargh Nanowrimo encore une fois

More trashy science fiction, from the author who brought you "Government Joe Must Die"- hurrah! Except we're nearly halfway through the month and I've only written 7,500 words - bugger. Only 42,500 to go! Ulp.

Phil stirred in his seat. “Okay, people,” he intoned, “RPC2 coming up. AIM takeover engaged?”
“Engaged.” Panab replied. Inwardly he heaved a sigh of relief. He knew Phil’s old-school ethos made the skipper insist on human supervision wherever possible, but as far as Panab was concerned this whole thing could have been handled by the computer, and they all could have been… well, he could have been in bed, damn it. Automatic Insertion  Mode was important now, though – if Titan’s orbit proved to be harbouring something hostile, it’s doubtful the humans in the loop would be able to react quickly enough. Panab could hand over to the ship’s systems with a clear conscience, and would do so gladly; he hated feeling like the weak link in the chain. But there was still the RPC2 checklist to go through… and as he worked his way down the task list, he couldn’t let his mind wander. Somewhere out there, four weeks ahead of them, the Ganymedans’ first probe to Titan was about to give them a first hint of what they were really in for.
This was obviously on Phils’ mind, too.  “Panab.”
“Skip?”
“Looks like a quiet couple of minutes – you’ve got the conn.”
“Yes, sir.” He replied automatically.
Phil grunted – Panab heard him doing something, then suddenly Phil’s voice boomed out across the ship’s PA.
“Crew of the good ship Wednesday’s Child, listen up.
“We’re about to get our first good look at what Titan has in store for us. It’ll be a peek through the keyhole, no more than that, but it should help resolve a few, uh, issues that I’m sure have been weighing on your mind as much as they weigh on mine.
“As you all know, Jovian Combined Security satellites picked up a ship from the inner system making a course change towards the Saturn system six weeks ago. Since then we’ve been under a communications embargo, which I know has not made things easy for you, and I’m very proud of the calm, professional way you’ve all conducted yourselves under that burden of silence. Obviously, whoever launched that ship did so under conditions of great secrecy. Our own launch was as secret as we could make it, and at this time I’m informed that whatever happens out there, in our little backwater of the solar system, will be between us and whoever else is in Titan orbit.”
He let that sink in for a moment. To Panab, the implication was obvious. This little game has no referees – it could get rough..
Phil continued. “Now, I know it wasn’t what we hoped for, but this is one outcome that received planning attention, and I’m confident we are not underresourced. More importantly, though, I’m confident that I’m facing the future with the best crew I could possibly have. I’m very proud of the way you’ve conducted yourselves to this point, and I have no doubt that we can and will surmount all obstacles to achieve our goal – a goal, I’ll remind you, which could have enormous benefits for us and for all those we left behind on Ganymede.

So let’s go to it. God bless us, and our cause.”

There was silence throughout the ship for several seconds. Then Panab heard a distant noise like waves breaking, drifting up from the depths of the Wednesday’s Child. It took Panab a moment to place it; down in the canteen, one hundred and fourteen people –  the entire crew -  were applauding.
 

It was time. Panab gave his checklist a quick onceover, then tapped in the AIM arm codes. On the screen in front of him, the animated top hat perked up, and shook gently. One oversized eye peeked out from underneath it.
“Heatshield temperature decreasing – all systems nominal for heatshield sep.”
“Roger that. You have a go for heatshield sep.”
A few moments delay, then the top hat was magically lifted off the little logodog. It blinked one eye sleepily. As more sensors came on line, it cocked an ear, then opened the other eye, until finally it was awake and alert, wagging it tail and glancing from side to side – waiting for something to happen

It didn’t take long.

The little animation sprung up, it’s cute little nose in the air, one foreleg poised over the ground in alert. “Okay, we’ve got a transmission, it’s weak but readable, 113 kilohertz. I’m buffering it now,” Chris announced. Panab could hear him tapping away. “Seems safe enough – broadcast English, mono audio, no band outliers. Wanna hear it?”
Phil waved a hand. “Just to the bridge.”
The sound of tapping again, and then a deep, jovial Santa-Claus voice began to declaim across the room, its mellow tones thinned by the crackles and pops of distance and of Saturn’s savage electromagnetic field. To Panab, its measured, loving tones perfectly evoked feelings of happiness and security, of trust and faith, of some pre-Diaspora happy family on Earth, a fire crackling in the grate, loved ones all around. It was undoubtedly machine-generated.
“…know the vastness of space to be an inexhaustible treasure house of knowledge and riches, beyond the imaginings of the Capitalist Roaders and their oppressive dogma! Titan can be so much more than merely another world to be exploited and oppressed by the megacorporations! Titan can be red! Titan is red! Titan is red! Titan is red! Message ends. Message begins: All those in Titan space, it is imperative that we make all efforts in our mission to create a scientific paradise on Titan, a world as yet-”
“Okay, that’s enough Chris. Turn it off.”
“-of human capitalistic exploitation, by the murderous cancer of humanity’s bourgeois demands for lebensraum! We must strive to preserve, and-“
There was an audible click, then silence. Finally, Phil sighed.
“Oh man,” he muttered wearily, ”it would just have to be, wouldn’t it?”
Panab looked over in surprise. It was the first time he’d ever heard Phil sound disgusted, or angry.
“It would just have to be the fucking Martians.”

If it's good enough for Telly Savalas, it's good enough for me

http://www.baimfilms.com/clips/
Birmingham - that's my kinda town.

(Tragically, Mr Savalas recorded the script in the US and never went to Birmingham - but I'm sure he would've loved it anyway).

Stuff like this always exposes the seamier underbelly of the internet - where else would one seek delights but in bus-spotting?

Discount preselling - it's the way of the future, in advance.

http://www.moq7.com/
(via core77...)

One of the problems for a young designer is that it costs a lot of money upfront to create a product. In particular, for small, mass-produced items, sometimes it's simply impossible to get anyone to supply you with components unless you order a minimum order quantity, or MOQ.

This site helps get designers there. The MOQ target is displayed next to each product, and you get to order your item at a steep discount in return for not really knowing when it's going to be delivered (if ever, I guess). It's a great idea for getting young designers' stuff before they get famous, and allowing them to jumpstart their idea into mass production.

There's not a lot there, yet... and most of them are fairly batty (except for the oddly tedious one or two that smell like some fishfood company taking advantage). My favourite, though is this one - a toothbrush which redirects the water flow up into a nice arc for you to drink from. Inspired.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Jail threat for donkey bloggers

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8233598.stm
Tell your friends! Donkeys live well in Azerbaijan... but bloggers who post videos sending up the government get beaten and arrested. Naughty government! Go and sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | 'Artificial trees' to cut carbon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8223528.stm
Gott in himmel.

Under normal circumstances I'd dismiss this as the usual Silly Season padding - but for the fact that the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the representatives and standard-bearers of my profession, have pinned their name to it. So now it's no longer a farce - it's a tragedy. This is just the kind of moronic mega-engineering bloke-in-a-shed sort of stuff that we should be avoiding - one of these might be far more efficient than a real tree, but the technical problems are still vast, the outcome is uncertain, and the cost (both financial and environmental) is going to be high.

My message to the IMechE is: be ashamed of your pompous, overstuffed selves. Drag your sorry asses out of the Victorian era and recognize that the world will not be saved by giant steel structures, but by doing small, boring things on a massive scale - like, for example, insulating houses. The IMechE could do so much more by mobilizing its members to voluntarily go and install insulation in houses. But no, it pays academics to come up with dross like this instead. Lordy lord. Good grief. Engineers are supposed to be down-to-earth types! This is so typical of the IMechE - technically sexy but completely otherworldly. Idiots.

Lost Foam Metal Casting

http://www.buildyouridea.com/foundry/lost_foam_howto/lost_foam_howto.html
Someday, when I own a farm with several abandoned outbuildings and a rusty Land Rover, I am so doing this, oh yes.

Translation Party

http://translationparty.com/#2418074
Oh, this is fun.

I like the fact that 'too many cooks spoil the broth' ends up as an instruction.

Multiply is broken

For me, at any rate. My inbox is blank, and none of the buttons work at all. I tried posting a network message, and that failed. It's been like this since they did the upgrade, but I've only just got round to attempting to fix it.
Can anybody see this? If so, can they please tell Claude or Clive or whatever his name is? And can they tell me, too? It's lonely out here,

Spirograph business cards!

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/25/adafruit-business-cards-laser-cut-spirograph-cards/
If you'd been to Maker Fair, which was... somewhere, recently, then you might have been lucky to get your hands on these adorable business cards: How cool are they?

From Adafruit, who also have on their website a multitidue of small wonderful electronics projects, including the Minty Boost, which I think I might have to have...

ABMU April 2009

Okay, so I guess I've been meaning to update the Boring Medical Updates for several months now, and I see that the last one was posted in September... well, a lot has changed since then, and a lot has stayed the same.

As the saying goes.

So: at the end of the last installment, I was about to go in for my first infusion of infliximab, and suffering from a sore bum and generally feeling crap. It turned out that the sore bum was nothing to do with the drugs - it was the Crohn's inflammation which had worked its way down to my anus and was spreading onto the skin around the outside. If anything, it was worse than the anal fissure because it was always there - you couldn't make it go away by sitting still.
But back to the medication: the infliximab worked. It WORKED. Shout it from the rooftops, it kicked in and made me FEEL GREAT. Not full of beans, but you know, normal. Able to consider the possibility of doing things like going skiing, going cycling, sailing, etc. Wonderful!  It was not without its downside, though - for one thing, I was still injecting myself with methotrexate, which I absolutely hated and which made me feel slightly nauseous for days afterwards. For another, there was the matter of an annoying skin sensitivity which has hung around persistently. More on that anon.

Infliximab is administered via what is known as an 'infusion'. If that puts you in mind of soothing herbal tea, possibly handed out by nurses on some sunny verandah somewhere... well, stop. Stop it right now. In actual fact, it is better known as being 'on a drip' for a couple of hours, with a needle in the back of your hand and some beeping bit of machinery gradually introducing this new toxicness into your system. Western General does have some nice leather armchairs (courtesy of the drugs company - thanks, drug company) for you to lounge in during this period, which is another reason why the stuff is way better than methotrexate. Happily, come Christmas I was able to leave the methotrexate stuff behind - no more plunging inch-long needles into my own belly, yay! Now it's just me and the infliximab...

First, the benefits - it works. The Crohn's inflammation round my arse cleared up, my anal fissures healed in double-quick time, and everything coming out was suddenly solid! I had more energy - in fact, for the first time in a long, long time, I was able to conceive of taking on more activities of an evening! No longer was I limited to working, eating and sleeping! Whoopee!

Next, the drawbacks. Most prosaically, this sudden firmness of the stool was a bit of a shock, and my bottom struggled with it for a bit. However, feeling a bit stretched every so often was a small price to pay, frankly. The other drawback, however, is a little annoying. For some reason the infliximab makes my skin much more sensitive, and itchy. Unless I'm careful, I find myself scratching it to the point of causing a nasty rash on my arms. However, I've started taking these one-a-day anti-histamine pills, which keeps it under control - although I still find myself occasionally giving the upper arms an absent-minded rub. Just got to keep an eye on that.

There is one final problem with this wonder-drug. For the first few infusions (so, call that three months), it seemed to work flawlessly, and I was completely solid and symptom-free from one session to the next.  However, since January, I've noticed that the effects are beginning to wear off as I approach the next infusion. Now, this also coincides with the point at which my former employers started talking about a redundancy program, which I will freely admit made me rather stressed (and not just me, either - but that's a different story). So there might be an element of stress-related flare-up in there. It's not uncommon. However, over the last two infusions, it seems like the last two weeks before a session have seen me on a decline. In fact, last time I ended up in bed for the entire fortnight!

In response to this, the hospital have reduced my infusion interval from eight to six weeks. This is my first six-week interval; right now, it's four weeks since the last one and two weeks to go before the next. Right now, I feel pretty good. This is a good sign since I am in the middle of moving house, selling my flat, and finding a new job - all very stressful undertakings, I'm sure you'll agree. What's more, I'm changing hospitals - so my next infusion will (if they ever ring me back) be in Addenbrooke's, and not anywhere in Scotchland.

So right now, we stand on the eve of great changes, and only time will tell...

Built from VW parts and gas canisters - the Hotpod

http://www.hotpod.co.uk


Came across this while I was at the Grand Designs Live exhibition which is on in London this week (and yes, I am now full of plans to build my own house on a piece of land the size of a postage stamp somewhere desirable)... this is a stove made by 'artist-blacksmith' Daniel Harding, when he needed to keep warm in his camper van while on January surfing expeditions. Pretty, no? And entirely recycled. And finished to a high standard, which makes a change.

And now for something completely different - RUGBY

http://www.arcrugby.co.nz/
It's commentary, Jim, but not as we know it. What I especially like about the ARC, though, is the imagination that goes into soe of the animated sequences.

Beyond the Schlock of the New: a design essay on core77

http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/beyond_the_schlock_of_the_new_eight_strategies_for_design_and_foresight_by_kevin_mccullagh_10912.asp
Strange how some things seem like complete common sense, and yet rarely get articulated...

Vases made from cardboard! Yay!

http://www.cardboarddesign.com/liquidNO3.htm
Just doing some spring cleaning of my inbox, clearing out some links...

Somebody has made monochrome paper lanterns and called them vases. They are pretty. That is all.

Shapeways | creator

http://www.shapeways.com/creator/
In reality, this is more of an introduction to rapid prototyping rather than a serious way of getting stuff made... but it's pretty cool.

Best of Green: Design + Architecture

Simpy gorgeous Green + Design (architecture really)

You all know I'm a sucker for this sort of stuff.

Labanotation - nothing to do with anything you'd expect

http://www.dance.ohio-state.edu/5_resources/labanlab/index.html

Nothing to do with Lebanon, labia, laboratories, Los Angeles Bathyscape Association, oh no - this is a notation of movement, specifically dance movement. Came across it reading this article in core77 about incorporating movement into design - v interesting.

A Tale of Two Committees: an article wot I wrote

I've been toying with the idea of applying for a course in Science Communication (a one-year MA at Imperial, since you ask), and even went to the trouble of preparing some material for my application... but in the end, I got fed up of the whole thing, and decided I wasn't that attracted to any of the career possibilities (I'm enjoying doing stuff rather than writing about it at the moment).

Nonetheless, one of the application requirements was to write an article of 400 words on a subject of my choice, either science or science policy. Why I chose the deeply dull topic I did - well, future generations will be arguing over that for centuries to come. But since it seems a shame for all that effort to go to waste, I post it here. That's what a blog is for, isn't it?

Here goes:

A Tale of Two Committees: a Brief History of Presidential Science Advice

One of the exciting things about science policy under Barack Obama is that history has stopped repeating itself. Up until now, the history of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was looking depressingly similar to its only predecessor, Eisenhower’s “President’s Science Advisory Committee” (PSAC).

Eisenhower convened PSAC in the gloomy days following the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1. Initially, the committee had serious influence – scientific prestige was a key battleground of the Cold War, and the post-war belief in scientific progress was untarnished. Eisenhower valued ‘his scientists’, and the free-for-all discussions that took place mark the Golden Age for scientists in the White House. Under Kennedy, though, PSAC began a long journey into eclipse. The Apollo programme shows how estranged the Committee was from policy – PSAC only agreed not to criticize it as long as Kennedy never claimed the programme was meant to advance science. Finally, Nixon disbanded the Committee in 1974, suspicious of the scientists’ peacenik attitudes towards Vietnam, and incensed by their criticism of a proposed anti-ballistic missile system.

For sixteen years PSAC had advised the President: it was to be another seventeen before it was reconvened, this time under George Bush senior. The relationship was never going to be as close as with Eisenhower, but it was still warm - Bush senior did invite the whole committee to spend a weekend with him at Camp David. But as with Kennedy, so with Clinton; and George W Bush showed himself at least the equal of Nixon in his distrust of scientists. Maybe it is fitting for a committee born of the Cold War that it was the anthrax scares during the War on Terror where history begins to diverge. When Tom Ridge, head of the Department for Homeland Security, picked up the phone and yelled, "I need scientists!" it was John H Marburger, head of PCAST and the President’s science advisor, at the other end of the line.

Now PCAST approaches its 19^th birthday. John P Holdren – a man whose CV seems tailor-made for the post – will succeed Marburger. The position’s official access to the President has been restored. And for its co-chairs, PCAST has swapped one venture capitalist for two respected scientists in Eric Lander and Harold Varmus. It only remains now to see whether this ‘dream team’ will truly have the ear of the new President.

Length: 395 words

Logging: one for the grammarians. Or possibly grammaticians.

Logging: why the timber industry is trying to take over the internet for nefarious but as yet unclear purposes.

on/off

 

 3

in/out

 

 5

shake it all about, stick in some ice, hey presto, a rat's arse cocktail.

 

 4

sign please

 

 0

Question:
(I've just been simultaneously on the facebook and HSBC websites, which have different approaches to this)

Does one log on? And then subsequently log off? Or does one log in, then out? And having logged in, is it then possible to log off? Does logging on preclude logging out? 

Should we all be signing in, instead?

Call for suggestions: what to do with plastic bottle tops

I've been collecting the tops from milk cartons at work for some time now, mainly in order to use them to mix glue in. But even after taking out a certain number for glue mixing, I've acquired a slight surplus. the question is, what do I do with 420 green plastic caps?


Some vital statistics: they are almost all green, and almost all (98.5% by my reckoning!) are the same size, which is about 40mm in diameter. That's enough, if you pack them in a straight square formation, to cover an area about 80cm x 80cm.


Two obvious ideas:

Floor mat (although an 80cm square one isn't that big really)
Lampshade

...?

The Years of Rice and Salt

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Kim Stanley Robertson

I've been thinking about books for Summer Girl, books I can lend her. Since my library is almost entirely science fiction, and she only likes the more level-headed ones (no men with wings allowed), I've been wondering what to lend her... and it's only recently that I thought how perfect the works of Kim Stanley Robertson are. KSR has to be one of my all-time favourite authors. His characters are easy to identify with, have depth and meaning, and are central to his books in a way which the trashier end of the market would do well to emulate. His science is always level-headed and believable. In fact, I would recommend most of his works, but most especially I have to go for the Mars trilogy, which is utterly brilliant right until the end (the final book in the trilogy still has my favourite last line of any novel); Icehenge, which is short and elegaic (sp?) and beautifully unresolved at the end; and this one, The Years of Rice and Salt.

Briefly, now: this is an alternative history, based on the premise that the Black Death killed off 95% of Europe's population instead of about 30% (is that right?). In this history, Islam and China grow to fill the void, and Europe is relegated to an Islamic backwater of bickering Taifa states (love that word - don't know what it means, think it's a type of rock, but love it anyway). The backbone of the book is a group of characters who are a sort of cosmic family, a jati, who are reincarnated over and over again and always somehow find one another, without really knowing why or who they are. It's a brilliantly told fable. There are a few rare occasions where KSR gets out his broad brush and starts lecturing, but these are truly rare, and for the most part the stories are well told, the characterisation is splendid, and each episode is touching in its own way.

Highly recommended.

Concerning American politics and the current worldwide financial woes (2)

Seriously, I've never lived anywhere which HAD a Main Street! High Streets, yes, lots and lots of those. Even Inner Ting Tong. But never, ever a Main Street. So shut up about Main Street, where the heck is it anyway? I demand photographic proof it exists.

Concerning American politics and the current worldwide financial woes

If I hear the words 'Wall Street' and 'Main Street' in the same sentence one more time I shall scream.

Hanging about at the interface - conceptships.org

It's my humble opinion that there is a strong overlap between science fiction and design - especially between sf graphical work and vehicle design. This is maybe because vehicle design is one of the most purely graphical design fields, or maybe because our vehicle purchases - especially our cars - have become so heavily loaded with meaning, or maybe because our vehicles (again, especially cars) come with that idea of 'props for living in the future' built in to them... or maybe it's simply because there's a big graphic design community and only so much inspiration going around... anyway, with all that in mind, here's a website devoted to science fiction representations of vehicles. It calls itself 'Concept Ships'.Go look at it, because someday they will be your ride. Or at least your ride will be trying to look like one of 'em.

Prague

View out across Charles Bridge

No doubt I will get in massive trouble with Summer Girl for including none of her favourites from the four hundred or so photos we took in the week we were in Prague, but here's a sample, more or less chosen at random.

Hey, what's that?

http://www.heywhatsthat.com/

Right now this is a very flaky beta, but it's still a great application. What it does is, takes a location you specify (click on Google maps, or lat and long, or whatever) and works out what you can see from there. However, I think they've missed a serious trick here. Focus seems to be on creating a system which will calculate and display the views from mountaintops - but what this reminds me of most are the coastline sketches you find in pilot books for yachtsmen (and women, no sexism intended). These sort of sketches are really seriously useful if you're down at sea level looking out at unfamiliar coastline... sadly, though, when I tried to get the view from just off Holy Island (the Lindisfarne one), it - well, it struggled. Sea level kinda blows its little mind right now, I guess.

Watch Skyscrapers having a tug of war, and other shininess

Just doing a bit of housekeeping here, posting a few links I sent to myself ages ago but felt too sh1t to sit down and post (been going through a bit of a rough patch lately).

First up is a video from National Geographic, about designing small homes that feel big. Interesting. Inevitably, it's about a house in Tokyo; there are some nice ideas about out perception of space in there, though.

 

Next up: watch skyscrapers duke it out in a tug of war! Virtually, obviously. One of a series of really cool-looking procedural animations by the obviously nom-de-plume'd Brandom Morse.

ABMU the next

ARGH! I just wrote a pretty epic Boring Medical Update which X has lost. Dagnammit. %$&%*$! %*$&%*^^^^^!
I seethe.
So, the short version now, as I am thoroughly pissed off. A lot has happened since October. The anal fissure that seemed to be on the mend persisted, and persisted, and persisted, until EASTER. At that time my colitis was so bad I spent the Easter weekend in bed (at my girlfriend's parents - great impression, huh). So, a change of medication was called for, and I've been on methotrexate, which makes me feel nauseous two days every week, and requires some considerable time off work for getting the necessary blood tests done (every week) and going to get The Jab. Even better, the anal fissure RETURNED after about a month. Even better than that, the skin around what the hospital staff rather charmingly persist in referring to as my 'tail end' has become very swollen and sore. Since there is no sign of an abscess or fistulae, my current theory is that this might be to do with the methotrexate, which can apparently be detected in patients' rectal mucosa (whatever the heck that is), and is also a skin irritant. So I'm thinking, either due to the fissure or my own deliberate attempts to keep my botty relaxed (trying to keep good blood circulation), there might be a small amount of discharge which is getting onto the bumskin and making it go bananas.
The main alternative theory is that it's an infection of some sort, which would suggest infliximab treatment can't start until it's fixed.
Tomorrow I go into hospital for my first infusion of Infliximab, which may or may not work, but sounds rather scary anyway. Right now, though, I feel like I've hit a bit of a low point. Frankly, the bottom soreness eclipses both the anal fissure and the colitis (which is actually Crohn's Disease, according to the latest colonoscopy). I don't know how I will manage when I go back to work on Tuesday, because I just feel so low and feeble. To top it off, I've been back from holidays for a couple of days, the weather is miserable, and half my windows are obscured by scaffolding, making the flat a very dingy and dispiriting place, especially for someone whose sore bottom really means they should just stay at home.
All in all, pretty miserable.

Milkcrate Digest

http://milkcratedigest.com/
Isn't it a relief to know that important, dedicated people are keeping a watchful eye on those things that really matter?

I wonder where they are...

Meanwhile, here is a picture of a sofa. Or an armchair. Or maybe just a chair. Okay, it's a chair.



The brainchild of Miss Lila Jang. I think it's great. Just the thing for a small flat which needs an armchair but which would secretly like a sofa.

Weird fact of the day

Britain's hairiest man is bald on his heid.

The Slow Movement goes, um, planetary

http://www.slowplanet.com/


It started with Slow Food; now those who would make a plea for a slower, more meditative pace of life are going global with their new beta site Slow Planet. The site has four main subdivisions, of which Slow Food is not one; instead, there is Slow Travel, Slow Sport, Slow Work, and (obviously the one I'm most interested in) Slow Design.

I understand the others - but Slow Sport? What? I don't think it really fits. Rushed travel, rushed work, rushed design - I understand why these can be argued against... but rushing around playing sport? Why not? If you prefer yoga, then by all means. But why favour one over the other?

Anyway.

This is from the core77 blog entry on the topic:

They've got some interesting things to say about design, notably a framework of six principles for slow design from their friends at the SlowLab:

1. Reveal: Slow design reveals spaces and experiences in everyday life that are often missed or forgotten, including the materials and processes that can easily be overlooked in an artifacts existence or creation.

2. Expand: Slow design considers the real and potential 'expressions' of artifacts and environments beyond their perceived functionality, physical attributes and lifespans.

3. Reflect: Slowly-designed artifacts and environments induce contemplation
and 'reflective consumption.'


4. Engage: Slow design processes are 'open source' and collaborative, relying on sharing, co-operation and transparency of information so that designs may continue to evolve into the future.
5. Participate: Slow design encourages users to become active participants in the design process, embracing ideas of conviviality and exchange to foster social accountability and enhance communities.

6. Evolve: Slow design recognizes that richer experiences can emerge from the dynamic maturation of artifacts and environments over time. Looking beyond the needs and circumstances of the present day, slow design processes and outcomes become agents of positive change.

Humphrey Lyttelton dies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7368356.stm
Oh so sad.

The phrase 'a national treasure' is overused, but Radio 4 is the most common accompaniment to my life and I can't think of any voice I welcomed more than his. 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue' was/is quintessential Radio 4, and has been a fixture on my radio for as long as I can remember, right back to sitting listening with my family over dinner as a child. To be in the audience was one of my lifelong ambitions. As any Radio 4 aficionado will tell you, no comedy show was ever more lustily cheered, or more fondly remembered - and at the centre of it all, the unchanging institution, was Humph.

It was a long time before I discovered that Humph was more celebrated as a legendary jazz trumpeter than as a merely brilliant comedy presenter, but when I did I was blown away. What a guy.

He will be missed.

What do you want? I don't know

Question: What do you want?

Answer: I don't know.

David Barringer muses on the essential grinding necessity of desire which underpins capitalism. It's a very interesting article in Voice, the AIGA Journal of Design. I don't agree with his last paragraph about a mature economy having transcended the need, though; after all, the Japanese economy has the worst case of novophilia of pretty much anywhere in the world, and that's what drives design there. And besides, I live on a crowded island and I'm not seeing any sign of moderation. I don't think this is geographical, or even linked to anything as concrete as material resources.


Nonetheless, I totally agree with him on one point: we don't know what we want.

Failing that, maybe we need some lessons in how to want.

garfield minus garfield

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/
This has been doing the rounds recently - somebody tell me if it's already been posted by someone.

"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb"



Genius.

A rant on computers and cadence.

WhatIwantedtotalkaboutis

computers

and               their

profoundlyinhumanspeedofuse-it'snotthattheygoinhumanlyfastnecessarily-weexpectourtaskstobecompletedinstantly

but

whathappenswith  all     the             software           I've

everknownisthattheimmediatetasksyou'replacingonthecomputerareonlyonepartofthedemands
placedonthemachinessystems;theantivirussystemthepowermanagementsystemandfranklygodknowswhat
all

conspire to

createtheseburstsofnearinstantperformancecoupledwithstrangelullswhichhavenorelationtowhatI
Imightbedoingorthinking...andasaresultIfeelalternatelyrushedthenfrustratedinaclassic"hurryupandwait"
situation.Thisbleedsoverintomylifegenerally,andIfindmyselffeelingtheinternalpressurewhichseemstobe
referredtoas'paceoflife'-thisinternalpressure(maybethewordI'mlookingforis'stress')spikessuddenlyassoonasacomputerisswitchedon.

(I'm just listening to this program on Radio 4, about pace of life; ironically, I'm simultaneously writing a blog entry. 

It reminded me, though, to write the above, which is something I've been wanting to write about for a while now; the effect heavy computer use has on my perception of pace of life. Which, incidentally, is a very clumsy phrase for the feeling of internal pressure which I, personally, feel when I think of 'pace of life' - a perpetual driving force, an unease I feel when I'm sitting still. 'Pace of life' doesn't quite cut it, somehow; it feels a sufficiently important concept to have its own word. I bet there's a word for it in German, or French.)

Does anyone else feel this? I'd like to make a plea to OS programmers - investigate 'cadence' and please make an effort to make the actions your programs' users experience work at a more human speed. Let's face it, compared to computers we are pretty slow beings, and it seems to me that a truly elegant design would space out the things that people see with activities which the program undertakes, but the user doesn't see - and thus create a computer which works with a steady rhythm and cadence. This may just be my age talking, of course - I've notice even people only a few years younger than me seem to use their computers so much more quickly than I do. On the other hand, they do seem to miss when they try clicking icons, so maybe I just make them feel nervous. Does anyone else feel this, though? This high-stress feeling which coincides with the high-pitch, high-frequency whine of a computer fan? This lack of a human-sized cadence?

Playstation 3 as media centre (bit long, sorry)

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Computers & Electronics
Product Type:	Video Game Systems
Manufacturer:	Sony

A couple of weeks ago (just before the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war was proclaimed to be over), I bought a PS3.

Actually, no, we need to go back a bit further.

Just after Christmas, I splurged on a flatscreen TV. It's not enormous, but it's sufficiently nice that suddenly it showed up all the flaws in my TV signal (of which more in some other rant), and I started to feel the need to buy a DVD player, or something - something that would do this staggeringly expensive bit of kit justice. I looked into building a Home Theater PC (HTPC) - a computer which would run as PVR, DVD player, and home media server - and would have built one, too, but for the fact that someone suggested I look at a Playstation 3 instead. And in my research, it really looked like it ticked all the boxes. The boxes look like this:

Box 1: Play DVDs.
Box 2: Play DivX and Xvid movies which I have, ahem, acquired.
Box 3: Be DLNA compliant so I could use it as a server for my Pinnacle Soundbridge, which is my only way of getting music to my 1974 Tandberg amp. (note to hi-fi buffs - it's an early transistor one, not one of the legendary valve ones)
Box 4: Act as a PVR.
Box 5: Also, it would be nice to be able to get media off it in some way so I could watch movies on my laptop in bed.

I should say at this point, for God's sake please do not tell me what I should have bought. I work in a very geeky office. I have already had that conversation about a zillion times. I have what I have, okay? Move on.

That caveat aside, a PC can obviously do all this stuff and more besides... but it's a hassle to build one, and I struggled to find a box thin enough to fit under my TV (and the ones I did seemed to have their own foibles when it came to putting stuff inside them).

So much for the shopping list - does the PS3 tick all the boxes? Well, no. It hews closely to that venerable motto of the Sony Corporation : "Great hardware, shame about the software".

First off, I did not buy the PS3 to play games on it, so right now I do not own any games. This review is not about the gaming, which I'm sure is wonderful. I bought it as a media centre, and in this respect the PS3 has a number of stupid little flaws which really hobble it. First off, and most importantly in terms of my aforementioned boxes, it is DNLA compliant - but as a client, not a server. So it won't talk to my Soundbridge. So the laptop is still doing duty as the repository of all my meedja, which was kind of what I wanted to avoid. For the same reason, the laptop cannot see whatever media is stored on the PS3's hard drive. So strike Box 5.

There's another box which we can't tick quite yet - the PS3 will Real Soon Now have an extra box which can be attached to it which will turn it into a PVR... but the PlayTV box is still slated to be released 'early 2008'.

So, in terms of network capability it has to be regarded as a bit of a flop. As far as I can tell, the logic behind this lack of functionality lies in a couple of hardware foibles which makes the PS3 unattractive to those with large home networks - in particular, the small amount of RAM in the box (256MB) means that, as a multitasking media server, streaming video to several places at once in someone's mansion somewhere, the PS3 ain't gonna cut it.

Of course, since it's just little ol' me here and I can't watch movies in bed and play games in the lounge at the same time, it'd probably be just fine, but let it pass.

Okay, so it won't serve stuff up to other machines, but it'll play everything, right? Right?

No. Nearly, oh so nearly, but... no. Again, Sony' software engineers have excelled themselves. The PS3 will play DivX stuff unless it is DivX 3.1.1... and even then it is weirdly fussy about aspect ratios. For example, I have all 6 star wars movies that appear to be encoded identically, except for their sizes. 2 out of 6 won't play. In general I estimate that around a third of my entire movie collection will need to be re-encoded.
[EDIT: Firmware 2.20, which was released this week (26/3/08) does seem to have helped, a bit - but I still have a big swathe of movies that won't play.]

Finally, there's one other area where Sony's software engineers have snatched defeat form the jaws of victory, and that is with the front-end software of the PS3, the so-called Cross Media Bar or XMB. This is very pretty, and seems sensibly laid out - but let's say, for the sake of argument, that you attach a USB hard drive to the machine. First off, unless you have all your stuff in the PS3-approved folder structure (that is to say, music in a folder called MUSIC, movies in a folder called MOVIES, and photos in a folder called something which doesn't appear to work) then the standard viewing setup won't see anything at all. What's REALLY irritating is that even if you do rearrange your media to accommodate this little foible, then the PS3 will only look in one level of subfolders. So for example, each album in my classical music collection is kept in a separate folder, and they are all kept in a 'classical' folder inside my music collection. The PS3, bless it's freakish little semiconducting heart, will look as far as 'music\classical\' and no further. So anything in a subfolder of 'classical' - which is pretty much everything - is invisible.

There is a way round this - pressing the green triangle button and selecting the 'view all' option means you can browse the entire folder structure - but really, this is very poor interface design.

Anyway, that's enough of a rant. It works great as a DVD player, though. And I kind of like it, for reasons which are not really clear to me - I mean, the interface is only moderately good, and aesthetically the external design is weirdly unresolved. So I won't be sending it back. But I'm pretty disappointed. I can only live in hope that Sony's software engineers will remedy some of these failings in future firmware updates.

There is still one radical alternative. Sony actually provide official support for those who wish to install Linux on the PS3 and use it as a computer. I could, if all else fails, install Ubuntu or Yellow Dog Linux, and use the PS3 as a media server that way... but I have one question which I have not yet found the answer to, and that is this: Linux and the PS3's native operating system need separate partitions of the internal hard drive. If I put movies etc. on one partition, can the other OS see it? If I put all my stuff on the PS3 side, will a Linux media server be able to find it? I don't know. In any case, turning to Linux to avoid fiddly little OS foibles seems like going from the frying pan into the industrial furnace.

So, I'm putting my faith in Sony's software engineers. Oh dear.

UPDATE 26/5/10: I went out and bought a network storage box int he end - rather a fancy 2-disc RAID thing. And the PS3 is linked via cable to the router. And in general, I keep my movies on the PS3... but nowadays, I never see any video lag.

However, the Playstation has developed an annoying cooling fan noise something like a very quiet hoover. It appears the cooling fan has several set operating speeds, including one which is obviously labelled 'PANIC'. And it runs in that mode most of the time, now. I've even taken the thing apart and replaced the thermal grease on the chips - something I will probably repeat when I find the time, as well as trying to ram a better heat exchanger inside somehow. It's annoying and somewhat distracting. It's quite a common problem, apparently - something below the total Yellow Light of Death failure which many PS3 owners complain of - none-fatal, but annoying.

Land of the Headless

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Adam Roberts

Imagine turning over the paper in your Pub Philosophy exam, and seeing the following question:

1. A fundamentalist government may well use severe punishments such as beheading. However, future medical progress may make such punishments less terminal. Discuss.

'Land of the Headless' is Adam Robert's answer. It's also a nice novel following a rather foolish, impetuous man who has his head cut off and then has to deal with becoming part of an underclass in a rather stilted fundamentalist society, but who eventually finds love, escapes, and lives happily ever after. As ever with Mr Roberts, you kind of get the feeling that the plot is almost incidental; but what it lacks in drive, it makes up for in sheer wonder. The characters are typical Roberts creations - stupid, stiff-necked, misunderstood creatures whose paths through life is complicated by their own mistakes, they are all the more human for their so-obvious failings... and that delicious central premise, that beheading is no longer a final judgement but leaves behind a rather embarrassing human residue, is a nice satirical comment on the current rise of fundamentalism in our Age of Technology. I enjoyed it enormously.

All in all, Land of the Headless is not the B-movie gorefest it's title might suggest (sorry Tara), but what they call a 'high-concept' novel - presumably because the plot has been kicked out to leave more room to explore ideas. Another novel which I've been wading through recently also claimed to be 'challenging literary concepts', but Hal Duncan's Vellum is at the other end of the scale. Frankly, I wish I'd paid more attention to that phase about literary concepts when I'd read the blurb on the back, as it might have set some alarm bells ringing. Hal wants his story to transcend time (And maybe space, too); his protagonists are archetypes, replaying the same story in different worlds at different times. Done well - as a series of short stories, perhaps, in a Michael Moorcock style - this could have been an interesting concept. As it is, however, it makes for a choppy read. The scene/story changes happen so quickly it's tiring; flipping between ancient Sumer/twenty first century Bible Belt/the trenches of the Somme/deserted beach hut on the brink of the Apocalypse every paragraph gets dull quickly, and most of the backdrops felt like cliches. That's not to say there aren't some nice set-pieces; but they're not enough. What's worse, the plot doesn't make a great deal of sense - presumably it will be explained in the sequel, but really, I won't be bothering. It was hard enough slogging through the first volume.

Happy birthday Lego!

http://cache.lego.com/2057/anniversary.htm


Best toy ever! I don't think I asked for any toy other than more Lego between the ages of six and twelve. Okay, thirteen.

Downing street petition - Restrict use of 'Engineer' title

 http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Engineer-Status/

Sign! Get everyone in your office to sign, too. Everyone should sign, dammit! Everyone in the world!

It's a long time since anyone mistook me for a car mechanic, but that's probably just because I look too sickly.

Nanohazard Symbol Competition

http://www.etcgroup.org/gallery2/v/nanohazard/
Because it's important, people!

Or at least, fun.

Whatever little competition this is seems to be run by some sort of ecological group... but whoever they are, I don't think much of their graphic design nouse. Their selected finalists are, frankly, rubbish. With the possible exception of the buckyball, although it looks kind of fiddly for putting on small stuff, and is also not very scary.

In a fit of extended, finger-twitching boredom, I trawled through the entire archive (coz that's the sort of sad person I am), and thought these were much better: too bad you can't vote for them any more...





(this one in particular looks to me like something it would be unwise to gargle with)

(yeah, maybe a little too friendly, I dunno).

via Bruce Sterling.

d3o hats

FINALLY available in the UK! Yay!

http://www.snowfusion.co.uk/sc/367/Ribcaps.htm

Somewhere there's a rather alarming video of someone swinging a baseball bat at someone's leg encased in this freaky stuff, d3o. Failing that, though, here's a link to a news story about it:

http://www.skiclub.co.uk/skiclub/news/story.asp?intStoryID=5015

Anyone fancy buying me a hat for Christmas?

(btw, sorry a out the NY Times links in the previous post. I was able to see them for a bit and only after I posted the link did they blank out and do their usual 'subscription only' thing. I forgot.)

Two Cats Mad or just Two Cats Ill?

For months now I've been banging on about a disease which makes you more amenable to cats, and people have been looking at me strangely. Now at last, some proof it really exists.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09_10_catcoat.html?ref=magazine

It's a parasite rather than a disease, and its called Toxoplasma gondii, and it makes you more likely to be eaten by cats. The last line of the article does make it sound like a send-up, but I think he measn, like big ones. Lions and Tigers and other Kenya-based animals (although not giraffes or zebras).


From an (actually much more interesting) article in the NY Times:The Year in Ideas

Moom in concert - Friede auf Erden

Start:	Dec 1, '07 7:30p
End:	Dec 21, '07

It's that time of year again. No snippets to whet your appetite this time round (sorry) - hopefully we might have a snippet or two of us singing when we've done the concert. This term it's Schoenberg, Britten, Poulenc, and some Swiss dude who has a christian name for a surname. They're all kind of tricky, but they're also all very rewarding. "Friede auf Erden" is an archaic German phrase meaning 'Peace on Earth' - unfortunately the first batch of tickets I printed out had a minor typo on them (I missed off the final 'n'), which apparently meant they translated as 'Peace on dirt' instead. Hey ho.

St Pancras

I had a few minutes before my train left (from Kings Cross), so I persuaded Summer Girl to let me scoot around the new refurbished St Pancras station. I only had a few minutes, so I didn't get time to really do it properly, but I just wanted to get some snaps of the refurbishment, which has been hailed as a great success.

Watching the X-factor last night

...for the first time, and (apart from reminding me to buy a Pet Shop Boys album, just for those damn catchy tunes), I couldn't help but be struck by how much Rhydian looks like Arnold Rimmer. Maybe it was just the ridiculous uniform they made the poor boy wear.

ABMU (2)

    (stands for Another Boring Medical Update)

It's been a while since I posted anything, mostly because I've been a bit poorly for the last few weeks. Five weeks, in fact. It started with a fairly normal, if rather severe, colitis attack - stomach cramps, diahrroea, feeling completely washed out. After a fairly prolonged period of liquid poo, I felt so washed out that I decided to take some iron tablets - something which is normally pretty good at perking me up.
However.

Iron supplements do have a tendency to make you constipated - not such a problem, you might think, and even a bit of a relief. This time, though, I found myself in considerable discomfort, which got worse and worse. After a couple of days, I was having to sit quietly for five minutes after going to the loo. After five days, I was in continuous pain from my rear end, and going to the loo was utter torture. A visit to see Kindly Consultant was quickly arranged, and that same day I was able to get a considered medical opinion on my problem, which was that I had an anal fissure.

What had happened was this: my arsehole had endured such a lengthy period of diarrhoea that it had softened somewhat, and the sudden introduction of small, hard things through its little maw was too much. It tore. It was probably only a tiny cut, but blimey it hurt. And it has hurt, ever since. Not only is the area incredibly sensitive, but any scab that forms has to undergo a battery of sh1te twice (three, four, five times) a day, making it very very slow to heal.

I was given some muscle relaxant cream (which goes by the rather charming name of Anoheal) to counteract the natural impluse to clench and cut off the blood flow around the offending area, thus hindering the healing process. In addition, I've found regular hot baths (regular like, every night) and sleeping with the electric blanket on (warmth increases blood flow, improves healing) have helped enormously - as has a big foam ring-shaped cushion, which sits on my office chair at work.

I'm definitely on the mend now - last weekend I discovered I could cross my legs again! Ah, the bliss of simple pleasures. But it will be a few weeks still before I can move freely, and in the meantime I am a very sedentary bunny indeed.

For the record, at the moment I am taking: mercaptopurine, Budenofalk, Alendronic acid. That may all change in a couple of weeks, though - I'll be going into hospital for a sigmoidoscopy, and if the results show a lot of inflammation (hmmm, d'you think that's likely? Maybe?), then the chances are I'll be put onto Infliximab - even stronger magic than 6MP, although the odds aren't great - something around 60% of patients respond to treatment. Hey ho.

Caption me: Sketchy

A couple of interesting links about colour and presentation

Thee have been sitting in my inbox for ages, so it's high time they were posted.

The first, livelgrey.com, is the work of a certain Igor Asselbergs, who as well as working as an illustrator and CEO of a company making digital colour design tools (whatever the heck they are), lectures and writes about colour. It's not that frequently updated, but what he says about the use of colour in design is interesting.

The other one is a bit more fun: infosthetics looks at how information is presented, and the aesthetics at work. 'S good.

It also has, I notice, a post about gapminder, which has to be one of the most fascinated and brilliantly presented look at international economic and social trends ever.

NaNoWriMo revisited: Pan and Titan revisited

I've been thinking about NaNoWriMo again.

I was planning to focus on the story of the first colony on Titan, that I alluded to in Government Joe Must Die - the disastrous settlement which collapsed and resulted in the Howl which haunts the Saturn system in GJMD, and which gave rise to Government Joe itself. But I decided that there probably wasn't enough material there to let me reach the magic 50k word count. So I've been thinking about the other real character from my first NaNo novel: the Bantolith.

The Bantolith in GJMD doesn't talk. He manipulates people like automata, and anyone within the boundaries of his domain can never be sure if their actions are the result of free will or the Bantolith's machinations - so subtle are the AI's directives that it's impossible to tell the two apart. But why does it operate so obliquely? How did it come to be so silent, so unknown?

I'm thinking that the two stories - the birth of Government Joe and the creation of the Bantolith - are maybe not so far apart. Perhaps they were both created by similar events - failing colonies which demanded drastic action. And while Government Joe was created by a terrible act of treachery, the Bantolith's silence might have been some sort of self-sacrifice - a last-ditch attempt to save an ailing colony by assuming near-direct control of the people within it.

So what we have then is an interesting contrast. Two failing colonies, a few decades apart: one damned by the treachery of an out-and-out baddie, the other saved by an unselfish act of deliberate self-mutilation.