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.

Jacques Tati

I was watching a Jacques Tati film last night, filmed in 1949 it was about a travelling show coming to a small French village.

Although there were a few cars and motorbikes featured, it was clear that in those days the roads belonged to far slower means of transportation. A cart could be held up by some ducks, or an old woman with a goat. The natural king of the road was the bicycle, speedy yet adaptable, with the cyclist able to chat and interact with those around him. The amount of livestock on the roads was surprising to a modern eye, as was the amount of property that was simply accessible or on the street.

One of my theories when I was studying prehistory was that once you got portable wealth, then you got more wars. Basically if all your neighbours had was a load of berries or was too heavy to carry, then there was not much point in trying to steal it. However once people started to herd animals, then the practicalities of stealing become much more straightforward.

So in the 1949 world without ready access to vehicles, there was little opportunity to get far enough from wherever you stole something for it to be practical.

Similarly because whenever you moved around you were still in the community, still able to speak to people or other travellers, people interacted more often and in a richer fashion.

Planners now talk about public space, but in the 1949 village most space was public in a way that relatively little space is now.

Public space only really makes sense when people are pedestrians.

However the irony is that although the bulk of our towns and cities are still laid out to the street-plan that was designed for when travel was predominantly not much quicker than walking pace, the transport routes have been taken over by vehicles that actually travel much faster and which do not allow any interaction with passers by. So modern vehicles have taken over roads that are just not set out for them.

Thinking about cars, what does a car want to do when it gets to a city, it wants to park. But roads go straight into cities, they don't respond to what motorists want to do.

If cities are designed for cars then they look like some American cities, huge spread out blocks that are too large to walk round, and sparse in detail in interest. Or like industrial estates with no pavements and nothing to see.

We have a model of urban design that is based on conflicting aims that we are not acknowledging. We need to step away from the motorist based view of planning to one that offers a richer array of options and ways of living.

on Wenders

Lately I have been watching a lot of Wim Wenders films. Well lately I have been buying a lot of Wim Wenders films, I have actually only watched a small proportion of them so far, but I am doing my best to make a bit of personal time each weekend to settle down and watch an arty DVD on my laptop. So far I have been most drawn to the documentaries, which provide some insight into his working methods. For his initial films the personal and the portrayed merged into each other, casting people he had relationships with, and using thinly disguised versions of himself as protaginists. The films were scripted pretty much on the hoof as locations were sourced. In some cases this works well, Kings of the Road is a wonderful piece. Other times it is disasterous, as with Lightning Over Water about Nicholas Ray which makes for extremely uncomfortable viewing.

However finding about more about how he operates it becomes clear that the director is really a person who seeks to make the impossible happen, magicking up money and resources out of nothing, refusing to recognise that anything is impossible, stubbornly shooting film inspite of any impediments. With time the director also becomes something of a brand, denoting something that viewers might want to buy into. Behind the brand there is a vast support network of artistic and technical collaborators who contribute as much, if not more, than the director.

The director is like the old Erich von Stroheim caricature, possessed by a messianic determination to create his vision on celluloid. It is almost a cliche that the director is determined beyond what any reasonable man would be. Although Wenders generally seems an affable sort, his determination to make films burns through relationships and friends, leaving only the celluloid.

I am not sure that many of us has the determination and confidence to pursue our vision with that degree of single minded-ness, I am not sure whether it is even truly an admirable quality.

In the end it is for each of us to find the right answer about what it is that is important in our lives.

still seeing

Looking back at my last blog it is actually far more gloomy than is justified. After a few weeks of my new glasses, things do actually seem to be settling down now. They are not nipping my ears and nose the way they used to, and beyond the usual tired eyes by evening and less than bionic vision in poor light, things are fine enough.

As ever I do tend to over-react to things, probably fine in an emergency, but a bit tiring in real life. The main problems, apart from scaring myself by googling things, was probably that I was insisting on staring at everything, all the time, expecting it to be in crisp blu-ray focus all the time, from whatever angle I was looking at it. No wonder my poor eyes were tired out. Some maniac staring through them all day like a man possessed would make anyone's eyes tired.

on seeing

I recently got my eyes tested, and unsurprisingly required new glasses. I don't drive, and with my old glasses the wider world had generally retreated into a fuzzy lack of focus. Something that by and large I did not find too vexing, unless I was specifically requiring to see something like which railway platform I had to go to.

By now my glasses are unfashionably thick varifocals, and apparently by being poor for distance they made it easier to read close too. I am very very short sighted!

My new glasses provided me with distance vision that seemed bionic in comparison to what I was used to. Unfortunately close too proved much more problematic. I need to move my head constantly when reading to keep things in crisp focus. I spend most of my time reading. The opticians also handed me a leaflet about the dangers of retinal detachment, which served to put the fear of god in me.

I've now had the new glasses tweaked and adjusted and had my prescription double checked. I suppose that my current eyesight with the new glasses is just what it is. I can read, but it is tiring and my eyes grow fuzzy by the end of the day. Generally my field of vision is a mosaic, some of it in focus, much of it not. I'm going back to being relatively contented to see little patches in relatively clarity with fuzzy margins elsewhere.

There can be few things more worrying than the thought of your eyesight diminishing. The world persists, it continues to exist out there, but unobserved by you. Even walking up to something is no guarantee that it will become clear.

Time does pass, and your time passes. You observe the world less clearly and you have to rely more on memories than observation or recent experience.

It is a time to think about what you take pleasure in, and what is valuable to you.