Another rambling holiday blog post

It is rather like we have all dropped off the face of the earth here. Although I am wandering about with my mobile phone strapped to my hip, the signal is sporadic to say the best, I've found some spots next to the roads where you can get a signal, but as soon as you are speaking to someone, a series of juggernauts drive past. Alternatively find a quiet spot, and the signal, always feeble at best, just vanishes.

The local call box, sits there unloved, and unworking.

Accordingly attempting to sort out anything that requires speaking to people that are not face to face, suddenly all becomes very complicated. A rather frustrating morning trying and failing to sort some stuff out, and finding that the local butcher is only open a couple of days at the end of the week. That has pretty much been the pattern for the trip so far, generally arriving anywhere the day it is closed.

I suppose that this is all part of the same package, a quiet tranquil unhurried place, won't run the same way that a busy 24/7 metropolis does. Maybe that is why people down here seem to contentedly look after their gardens and the like, there is probably rather limited scope for doing an awful lot of other things.

Pet peeve out of the way, some other random jottings.

The recent SuperBrands series was very good. Particularly struck by the episode on fashion. It was talking about how fashion seeks to create an image of genuine-ness, for example jeans were authentic workers clothing, so people wear jeans to look like authentic down to earth people. Not only that, people now get pre-worn jeans so that they can look like people who are so authentic that they actually wear through their jeans and wear them out.

I recently got a couple of pairs of Levis at the local discount outlet. All the jeans seemed to be suitably authentic, so if I wanted to look like a lesbian automobile mechanic there was a rich variety of suitable attire. Everything seemed to be pre-worn to some extent, so I ended up with jeans that look like I've owned them for years. I'm really finding it a bit odd having pre-worn jeans. To my way of thinking, this means that extra effort, and no doubt expense, has been expended in rendering my new jeans, half way to being ready to throw out. Jeans do tend to look a bit better a bit worn, so there is a bit of a point to the whole exercise, I don't want to look like Jeremy Clarkson in brand new jeans, but equally I don't want to be paying for something that won't last forever.

Still therefore a bit torn on the whole issue, browsing the Levis website does little to explain exactly what all these different pre-worn options are, similarly a lack of explanations on the internet. I think that there should be some useful guide so that people can understand that

finish A - means that you bum is hanging out, and charity shops would refuse to take it,

finish B - means that your jeans are covered in oil, you oily bum is hanging out, and vagrants would avoid you

finish C - means that formerly perfectly good jeans are now one kick in the pants or a wash away from falling apart,

finish D - means that your jeans are in need of some serious attention from a seamstress, but with a little expense they will probably be fine

finish E - means that your jeans are just a little bit lived in, and only half their useful life has been wasted in getting tumbled around with rocks in an industrial washing machine

finish F - means that your jeans are so factory fresh that no person under forty would actually realise that they are made of denim, they feel like cardboard and generate a crease that could draw blood.

Clearly this sort of clear labelling would avoid unfortunate misunderstandings, no one wants to see people over forty with their bum hanging out of their jeans, nor would factory fresh jeans be a suitable gift for anyone of those gentle teenage years.

Similarly on SuperBrands was the story of SuperDry, every other sweatshirt worn by anyone under thirty now seems to have some variation on the SuperDry logos. They even have shops, I've seen them. Never been in one, but seen them. So you can go in and buy all the sweatshirts you ever wanted with logos that look like something off a 1950's American gasoline pump.

Would any sensible person open such a shop, probably not, but someone is making shed loads of money off it just now.

And from where does SuperDry, of the gasoline pump inspired logo hail, is it Japanese, is it American, no it comes from an industrial estate in Slough or somewhere like that. I am just out of wifi range, while I type this, so I am throwing scholarly accuracy to the wind.

Presumably SuperDry is hooking into the same deep well of desire for authenticity from which the desire for pre-worn jeans sprung. So you too can wear tatty old jeans, and a sweatshirt inspired by a fifties gasoline pump, as you go into your Fine Art lecture in St Andrews University, while your deeply unauthentic parents work as stockbrokers or grief counsellors.

Most of the folk wearing all this stuff would run a mile if someone genuinely authentic were to sit next to them on the bus.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with 'authentic' but it has to be authentic in some way. Looking like an authentic 50's garage hand is hardly authentic when you are walking into your Fine Art lecture, it is just like a child dressing up as a cowboy or a spaceman.

There probably is scope for a new form of authentic. Some way of creating functional clothing that reflects the real world that we live in. To be honest we are not horny handed sons of toil, nor are we climbing up Everest with a slab of Kendall Mint cake stuck in our back pocket. But we do lead busy functional lives, and devising clothing that better reflected this would make a lot of sense.

Functionality is not just a case of sticking extra pockets on, nor of having Goretex fabric wicking the moisture way from your underarm. It should be about clothing that has an appropriate weight and heft, and appropriate life and adaptability. For me, I need clothing that is easy to wear, and maintain. I've already moved to one standard sock, so all my socks automatically match. I need waste no time on matching socks, they are all the same. In a lifetime I will probably have saved half an hour! I am also onto my third pair of identical shoes, reluctantly moving to commando soles as the leather ones just led to neverending maintenance.

I suppose this is a form of functionalism that leads towards uniforms or Mao like standardisation of clothing.

An alternative form of functionalism would be clothing that actually has a functionality beyond the obvious. I'm sure it must be possible to create a combined tie/Swiss Army Penknife, or something similar. Perhaps a tie that folds out to be an emergency blanket for reluctant air travellers, or shirt collars that inflate into makeshift cushions.

There is also the whole world of arduino chips and wearable computing. Rigging up your clothing with capacitative thread. It is quite appealing to imagine clothing rigged with sensors, that broadcast measurements that are recorded by whatever wireless device you happen to be carrying. Already there is the Nike pedometer shoe, what about shirts that warn you about excess sun, or calculate how much fluid you should be taking on.

What about clothing that doubles up as a display device, teeshirts that run a screensaver, or glasses that also incorporate a heads up display of key statistics.

Rambling Holiday Blog

I am writing this on my laptop, sitting in the garden of our self catering cottage. I am on holiday. [Well actually, I will post this when I get back from being on holiday, it seems a bit pointless announcing to the world that you are not at home.]

Behind me is an apple tree, a venerable old thing with hundreds of apples, there is another tree to my right, it looks like another apple tree, but I've not yet spotted any apples on it, so I cannot be too sure.

The church bells are ringing, rather mechanically calling the faithfull to worship. The sun is out, there is a cock crowing, alternating with a dog barking, perhaps they are in conversation. I am sitting in a rather nice garden, all the nicer for not requiring my attentions, now or at any time in the future.

We are staying in Wales, Newbridge on Wye, not far from my uncle, also taking the opportunity to catch up with other relatives while we are here. We actually had a stay-cation last year, and were down at the same cottage the year before. We were down by Talgarth a couple of years before, so this is our third holiday hereabouts. Accordingly we have done most of the big ticket things to do down here. This year we are rather purposely not doing much.

My everyday life is very much part of the rat-race. Schlepping into work, trains, buses and grumpy folk, then ninja style trying to get through work that I don't have time to do properly.

I have just come back from buying the Observor, do they still print that, I remember that it was the paper with Peanuts and Charlie Brown when I was young, and the Independent on Sunday. Normally I would get the Sunday Times, but it seems pointless to boycott the News of the World, which I don't normally get, it is only really a boycott if it hurts, so I will boycott News International in total and buy something/anything other than the Sunday Times.

We got down here yesterday. Set off on Friday, drove as far as Warrington, stayed at a Premier Inn there overnight on the Friday, then drove the remainder to Llanndridnod Wells on Saturday morning. Like a fine wine, I do not travel well. After a few hours in a car, I start to go green, well probably not much a fine wine then. Hence a rather leisurely trip down.

Driving down there was the usual battle over the music, I am constantly trying to expand the musical consciousness of other family members, they are constantly complaining that my music is dreadful, or a new complaint, that it sounds like there is something wrong with the car whenever I play something.

We ended up compromising with REM which currently seems to be the sole common ground that we can all accept.

I suppose I like something that is a bit out there, unfamiliar and a bit difficult, whereas most other people want something that is familiar and not challenging. Maybe something that can be expanded beyond just musical tastes. Most people do like the safe and familiar, but if everyone did, nothing would ever change.

Daughter number two laughing at our conversations on the drive down. We were talking about how sometimes a boy racer will crash into someone's house while they are asleep. Generally without anyone coming to any harm. I was explaining how the conversation would go if this ever happened to me,

Me - are you okay?

Boy Racer - I think so, nothing broken,

Me - thank goodness for that,

Boy Racer - uhh

Me - let me help you out of the car, thank goodness that you are not hurt, that means that it will hurt all the more, when I kick the living daylights out of you you little scumbag, think you can trash my house, .....

Habitat revisited

So, it would appear that Habitat is not done and gone, it has got a reprieve. I would be sorry to see Habitat go, but this does all feel like the very British sort of sentimental compromise. We can never just bring ourselves to kill off something and move on, because we like the familiar and we are scared of the new.

So we limp on with all these old things, for sentimental value, but just really are not that good or useful any more.

If Habitat is to continue it should be bold, new, unafraid, this should be a radical new beginning.

Habitat

I have just heard that Habitat is to close down. Well, three shops in London are to remain, and the trading name and website have been bought, but for folk like me, out in provincial Britain, it would appear that Habitat is no more.

I remember hearing that the Bank of Scotland was getting subsumed within Halifax, and being saddened that something that seemed to have been part of my life forever was going. Along with my brother and sisters I had a little Bank of Scotland piggy bank, in the shape of a globe. It did not hold much money, and they all had an identical key, but it was a hint of a world of finance and sophistication that seemed beyond my everyday life.

For me, Habitat has always been an icon of design and style. Habitat was the first port of call for furniture and household items. Granted most of the time I was looking rather than buying, but with its white walls, and iconic products, it felt like a museum for hushed reverence at good design.

That is not to say that it was perfect, I bought a mug there in the eighties, the handle fell off almost immediately, often they followed taste, rather than setting it. They did make misteps, forever producing mountains of matching stationery, selling it off at the end of the season. The catalogues were either a design bible or slipping over the edge into impractical style over substance, entire furniture ranges displayed on a French beach.

But for me, it was impossible not to love and admire Habitat, and because the shops felt like museums, it seemed to stand apart from retail, just there, iconic and tasteful.

I am not sure where I will go to now. IKEA is okay in so far as it goes, but it is basic, cheap and cheerful. Although the quality is improving, there is very little there that you would look at in hushed reverence, awed by its perfect design credentials. It is a sad day when places like Marks and Spencers, John Lewis and the departments stores are where you go to buy furniture.

I write this sitting on a Habitat bed sofa that we bought in the eighties, it is getting a little worn now. There is a garland of blue lights around the mirror above the fireplace. I loved the box they came in so much that I kept it for weeks. The room is lit by Newton lights, two floor lights and a desk light. They have a simple minimal design, the shape of the shade balances but does not duplicate the counterweight, the base is reasuringly weighty, while the switch is placed on the shade, where logically your mind thinks it ought to be. The packaging was a masterpiece of understated ingenuity, that so much care had gone into designing something that would just be thrown away.

There is something about really good design that lives on, something that has a sense of rightness larger than itself, that hints at some alternative world where thought precedes action and less is always more.

[I have illustrated this posting with some photos of things I've bought from Habitat that I really love.]

we were promised rocket packs

I like to read about futuristic architecture, speculative buildings that seem to push at the edges of what is possible or indeed sensible.

For example I've just started reading Visionary Architecture - Blueprints of the Modern Imagination by Neil Spiller, but I am struck by the contrast with what is actually happening in Scotland.

The Edinburgh trams project has in rough terms, already spent nearly half a billion pounds, spending 80% of its budget on only 20% of the infrastructure. An earlier Edinburgh project by the Catalan architect Miralles, resulted in huge cost over-runs and a controversy that hung over the emergent Scottish Parliament, building and legislature like some doomy haar for its first decade.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about a trams project. Granted they are vastly more heavy than they were a hundred years ago, but plenty of cities have trams, the technology is hardly cutting edge. The Scottish Parliament is a big concrete building, similarly the technology is nothing all that remarkable, the Romans had concrete after all.

What happened to our future, we were promised rocket packs and moveable cities. We cannot even deliver technology that is over a century old on time and on budget.

Perhaps we need to get better at recognising that merit lies in delivery and not creativity in some garret. We need to celebrate people for getting things done effectively, and not for being lone creative voices in the wilderness. Perhaps the Scottish pantheon of greats needs to be realigned to emphasise people who were consistently capable of delivering projects.

my new iPad

Just posting some first impressions of my new iPad. Although I am a huge fan of all things Apple, I was not convinced on the merits of the iPad. My daughter has one, and uses it fairly regularly, often for games, but she was finding it limited and of late she has been tending to use her laptop more often.

My few attempts at using her iPad were a mixed bag, I was impressed with how easy it was to set up, I was less impressed with trying to navigate the web, fat fingers syndrome, but more impressed with some of the games and apps, such as Elements, and of course Angry Birds. All in all my impression was that it was an interesting device, but fell short of something that was actually particularly useful.

I also have been to the Apple Store a few times and been impressed by the futuristic way in which the staff wander around with an iPad keying in details.

With the advent of the iPad 2, I was convinced that previous models of the iPad would start selling at a good discount on the Apple Refurb Store, so I decided to bite the bullet and get one. The main selling point for me was that the iPad runs on a solid state drive, getting an Apple laptop running on a solid state drive would cost nearly a thousand pounds. Much of my computer/IT usage is actually while commuting, basically passing the time. I might be paranoid but I really do not like the idea of using a laptop with a hard drive on a rattly old train.

Anyway, sure enough there was a hefty discount on iPads and I ordered a wifi model with 32gb of solid state drive capacity. Unpacking the thing was impressive, it looked gorgeous, with decent heft, but practical and portable, it certainly felt like something expensive and usable. After an initial hiccup or two, it was reasonably easy to set up, and using it was a real pleasure. However it quickly became apparent that my iPad had hardware problems. It crashed regularly and creatively, often only running for half and hour before crashing. I ran the limited number of diagnostics and fixes that are available, to no effect. I gave Apple a phone, and they agreed that it was a replacement job, so I simply agreed a Genius Bar appointment at the nearest Apple Store. The appointment took a few minutes, they accepted my story, gave me a replacement from the cage, and I signed something on the Genius's iPhone. And off I went home with my new iPad. Setting up this one was trouble free - almost.

Being a worry wart by nature, it is worth enumerating the small number of things that were of concern

# my headphone jack did not instantly fit into the socket, leading me to think that I might need specific iPad headphones, but checking the internet it was a standard jack, and giving it a bit more of a shove did the trick.

# I could not set up my Demon email account on the iPad, I had to online chat with Demon technical support and they talked me through it.

# there was a bit of a loop registering for iTunes, it wanted me to confirm financial details, but did not provide the relevant screen. Got there eventually.

# if you are not internet connected, then the functionality is very curtailed. We are an always connected culture now.

# the Apps are a mixed bag, some are great, some are rather poor ports from the iPhone and can be rather blocky. Not every application lends itself to what is basically a pointing interface. A better way of finding good Apps is overdue, but by and large they are cheap and mostly work.

These are pretty small niggles for a device that is so different and cutting edge.

The other impressions are overwhelmingly, wow, that is amazing.

# it boots up pretty quickly, not instant on from off, but vastly quicker than a laptop.

# it is so easy to use, you really don't need a manual, you can just figure it out.

# the email is a real joy, it is a pleasure to access all my email accounts on the same application, and be able to send and file emails for the account too.

# the apps can be downloaded repeatedly from the App Store, so if like me, you paid for something, but the iPad crashed and it was lost, even if you have not backed it up to a computer, then it can just be downloaded again.

# the screen is a real pleasure to use, compared to an iPod Touch it is vast.

Overall, the iPad is a very personal device, it is like having a notebook or favourite book that you can carry about everywhere. I use it all the time now, albeit in a passive way, browsing emails and my RSS feeds. Serious text input really requires my laptop.

In terms of whether someone should buy one, it really depends on what you spend your time doing. The fact that you are limited to using a finger or two for an input device, means that highly featured and technical applications often do not translate down to an iPad.

Some applications work really well on an iPad, playing light games works well, Angry Birds and logic games work well.

Browse and click stuff like emails and RSS feeds work well too.

Where you are reading something feature rich, like the Phaidon Design Classics or Elements, it is great, just reading a plain vanilla book, you would be better off with an ebook reader or even dare I say paper.

It lacks a CD/DVD drive, so you are limited in what you can watch, there is plenty of freely downloaded content on iTunes but stocking up on stuff to watch will likely lead to you buying stuff on iTunes that you might otherwise have watched for free.

My final point is that amazing as all the hardware is, it is the software that makes the iPad great. It is incredibly easy to use, you are barely aware that you are down to using a few fat fingers as input devices, the machine is so capable and responsive.

rambling blog entry

It strikes me that it has been a while since I did a rambling blog entry, in fact my blogging has become decidedly sporadic of late. I suspect that blogging is currently going out of fashion, to be replaced by tweeting or somesuch. [What a fashion victim I must be.]

As ever with a rambling blog entry nothing much to report on. I am continuing to post reviews to Amazon, now having got to around 2400 in the new reviewer Amazon rankings. However the higher you ascend the tougher the competition. As far as I can tell your ranking is based on recent activity and favourable votes, but I have passed the stage where simply posting additional reviews will raise me in the rankings, it is now more of a numbers game, the more reviews I have out there, the more likely they are to attract favourable votes.

Initially I had hoped to get into the top thousand, as you then get a wee badge next to your reviews announcing that you are a top one thousand reviewer, but getting to that level currently seems ridiculously unobtainable. I suspect that my tastes are probably too obscure, or by the time I get round to reviewing anything popular, it has already been reviewed by millions of people.

In any event, an interesting diversion.

Otherwise, I am taking advantage of the release of the new iPad 2, to get a refurbished iPad 1. I have gone for the mid-range 32 gig wifi version, as that seemed the best mix for price and capacity. I am not a huge fan of touch screen interfaces, but I really don't want to use a laptop with a hard-drive when commuting, and the SSD air laptop is absurdly expensive, so an iPad seems a logical alternative. The iPad should arrive next week, so I am looking forward to setting it up and configuring it. I don't have any iOS devices myself, I am still on a clickwheel iPod, so it will be interesting. There is a whole world of iOS applications that it will be interesting to dive into. Early thoughts are to explore the Brian Eno music apps, the Phaidon design book, voodoopad, and I suppose you cannot really have an iPad without installing Angry Birds. I think that is actually the law.

At work they are currently running a book on hideously insensitive things that I say, though they seem to know me well enough to know that they are not meant unkindly. I am wondering whether some of these might be turned into humorous greetings cards. Another vague idea to add to my vast mountain of potentially interesting ideas that I never get round to actually doing anything about.

Otherwise at work, which I realise I really don't blog about, I am currently analysing a consultation exercise. I am now at the slog stage of pulling stuff together, or rather just transcribing it all onto spreadsheets or tables and then figuring out what all was said about any particular topic, then figuring out what to do about it. I have also been out interviewing people, which is actually a lot more fun, and probably a lot more useful. It does make the sort of evidence gathering carried out by our elected masters look decidedly sketchy. They just basically wait for folk to come to them with their opinions or maybe ask the odd person, and then think they know something about the topic. To call this sort of self selected sample limited is putting it kindly. It does mean that small and active stakeholder groups can wield a disportionate weight if the silent majority is not putting forward balancing arguments. The small and active groups are not only non representative, but they tend to be congregated at a particular end of most debates.

Otherwise, feeling constantly guilty at not being out in the garden, but it is actually a bit cold and miserable out and I am feeling too lazy.

Also swithering buying a load of Eames dinner chairs to make our house into the complete design victim pad. Lime green is so in. For some reason lime green always catches my eye and seems a lively happy colour.

Currently reading Cousin Basilio, S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhaas and Zeno by Italo Svavo, though I am tending to cut down my reading as my eyes are tiring more easily these days.