park lane park life

In a rainy Park Lane, people watching London wrapped against the wet and cold.

Enough traffic to remind that this area of London continues at full strength, and the procession of expensive new carrier bags along the pavements sufficient to show that people were out buying.

It's the top two squares on the UK Monopoly board, so not too surprising that it seems to be recession proof.

I'd parked underground and the adjacent cars were four Porsche, a Bentley and a Roller. The adjacent Dorchester hotel entrance is a well-known spot for supercar spotting.

Judging from the noisy mobile phone calls as we walked from the car park, much of the foot traffic around the area was from overseas.

Our dining was a consequence of the many special offers in the capital at the moment. It's traditionally a February phenomenon to go to fancy restaurants on a low tariff, but this season, like the poor weather, the offers have extended right into April.

I won't describe the all the courses, suffice to say that the butter lettuce salad, avocado, shropshire blue cheese, and Champagne-herb vinaigrette topped with edible purple flowers was delicious.

And I wonder how how long it will be before Google adds an extra colour to street-view to illustrate prime celebrity viewing zones?

In London, this is a film star, rock and models area, with the Dorchester, 45 and China Tang as good spots to see people.

This Wolfgang Puck restaurant boosts the attraction for out of town Hollywood folk, looking for a familiar equivalence to Spago. It was actually amusing to see people from other tables look towards us as we left...Just in case.

Pope's Head Alley

We decided to pop into a wine bar after work, quite close to the old lanes in the centre of London's city.

The wine bar was in an ex bank head office established after the Great Fire and nowadays reminiscent of an old London coffee house, spacious and discreet.

We were by Pope's Head Alley, which is part of the labyrinthine city area where the rich and highly influential Catholic Lombardian bankers were given special dispensations to continue their faith during the reformation.

King Henry VIII had it renamed as King's Head Alley, but it later changed back in Queen Mary's reign.

Like many of the small alleys around this area, there's a ghost story too. This one is about how a catholic priest fought the devil in the alley - a kind of early P.R. job by the church.

The story now is that if it's dark and you feel the wind on your neck, it's not the wind, but someone with horns and a tail.

High up the wall a stone bust has been installed as protection. Yes, it's a Pope's Head.

the stars are out tonight

I took a look at my draft blog posts tonight, thinking I might find about 20 or maybe 30 lurking unpublished. It's those moments when I start writing something, get interrupted and then don't go back to finish it.

Or sometimes it's just that something else comes along which overtakes the original post.

I haven't checked through them in detail, but I must hold my head down in shame as I admit that it says I have 222 draft blog posts at the moment.

I clicked on a couple. The first one that intrigued me was called "You look at me like an emergency" and is about nuclear testing. There's another few that are reviews of music gigs and similar. Of course, when they get more than a few days old, they lose their currency and that's probably why they didn't get posted.

Another approach that I sometimes use is to combine two or three ideas into one post, which will kind of supersede the individual ones. I guess this post is a hasty case in point.

Since I've had my own car back, I've been listening to that new David Bowie album through the iPod, and it still has a freshness that I'm quite enjoying. I was given the album at easter as a vinyl double and it came with a CD tucked into the covers.

I used to think that the old Ziggy Stardust album sounded as if the tape had been gently speeded up on some of the tracks. It was probably something to do with Bowie's vocal register, and I still notice it on the title track.

But then, I also thought that Hugh Jackman sang quite like Bowie on some of the early parts of Les Mis.

No signs of speed-up trickery in the new album, where Bowie can still sing quite high, but generally stays in a safer vocal range. There's also a few moments among the tracks where there's little references to older material too. No doubt having some fun.

And I enjoyed the video for the stars track, with Bowie and a be-wigged Tilda Swinton playing a married couple shopping in urban America before getting to meet the neighbours.

I put it up as a this is my jam track, but I still haven't really figured out how to get any critical mass of listeners to that site.

division

I'd already left the UK when Thatcher came to power. I was living in Germany. One of the jibes from Germans was the one recent English word that every German knew.

"Strike"

Before that, I'd been living in a basement flat in Kensington, outside of which the rubbish sacks were piled to the sky because of the various public service disputes.

We'd only get power three days a week and I can still remember the regular scene of the Earls Court Road lights switching off as the next power cut was enforced.

This was consequential of the preceding Teddy Teeth regime and was around the time that I decided to see what it would be like living somewhere else in Europe.

Boeblingen, near Stuttgart, became home within the wealthy southern German Swabian area. Car manufacturers (Daimler-Benz and Porsche) and computer companies (IBM and Hewlett-Packard). Many small and medium sized enterprises and a surprising diversity of locally produced goods. There was a pretty full spectrum of jobs on offer and a managed programme of Gastarbeiter (imported) labour.

There were still the quirks of langer Samstag (the occasional Saturday when the shops remained open) and the weirdly short lunch breaks measured in tenths of an hour (you had to be clocked out for 36 minutes minimum at lunch-time).

By the time I returned to the UK, things were changing. The bins had been emptied, but the infrastructure of the manufacturing and production economy of Britain was being dismantled. The south was getting new work from the progressively deregulated financial services industry, but the 'making things' mentality was dissolving. Quick money was being made from selling things in public/state ownership back to the part of the public that could afford it.

I used to think that Thatcher was an unstable bully although the madness storyline didn't get much presence at the time. There was too much fighting in the streets/pits/factories/tax offices/oceans to allow time for that kind of reflection.

I also didn't think Thatcher had reasoned solutions, more that she was the one in position when things needed urgent change. The hardcore route she selected wasn't the only one available and unfortunately her choices cost the country decades of damage.

Most of the media has been jammed with related stories and pre-canned television shows. I decided to switch off twitter until it subsides again.

We'll get the televised event next Wednesday in Central London, with a sort of irony related to a state funeral for the arch privatiser.

Someone said the one word summary of her was conviction.

I say it was division.

tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call

Off to the land of the sheesha today. Or the West London variant in any case.

I've worked in various countries around the middle east, where the caterpillar's favourite smoking device seems to be referred to as a sheesha rather than a hookah. Adding it as a suffix to an order for coffee seems to bring the full paraphernalia.

In London it's fairly commonplace to see them around Edgware Road, mainly in those cafes that can have a sort of sheltered outdoor section, which is a kind of weather adaptation.

The system reminds me of a sort of reverse barbecue, with the coal on the outside and the smoke going downwards into the water. I was once told that a single session with one of those pipes was the equivalent of inhaling the smoke from 100 cigarettes.

We were inside the restaurant to enjoy Fattoush and maybe some Sambousek Jebneh and even a Kafta Khosh-khash whilst chatting in the early evening.

I did think briefly about that pine nut and rose water rice pudding too, but it will need to wait for another day.

waiting for the van

Domestic chores today waiting in for the replacement washing machine. It arrived with two separate vans of fitters.

Then the phone rang to say my car is finally fixed.

So a convoluted journey through today's snow to drop off the temporary white car, and then to wait around to get a lift to the garage where my own car has been resting for the last month.

"Any paperwork?" I asked.

"No just the key; all the charges go to the other company." That's the company who originally replaced the windscreen. They've run up quite a tab with the windscreen (on insurance), the making good, which I think was quite expensive, plus the hire car fees. I waited around idly watching the snow whilst they retrieved my car from the lot. It was clean and sparkly like new again.

Then the strange feeling driving my own automatic again after a month of varied manual gear vehicles. How do I activate the wipers? Oh yes, the lights do come on automatically. All those windscreen sensors must be working.

As a side-line whilst waiting in the morning I'd figured out a small adjustment needed on the red car. It was a missing a software driver. No, not a person to drive it - a piece of software.

The little button on the steering wheel really does mean the car has an embedded Windows operating system for some of its functions. And, like a printer, there was a missing software driver. It's one of those things where a dealer would just say "it doesn't work with this model." I loaded the software and the missing function started up. When did it get so complex?

It shows what a few minutes of imposed down time can do. More productively, it's given me a chance to plan a new mini-project. But more of that later.

cross town traffic, so hard to get through to you

The yellow lines and parking bays were switched off and most of the shops were closed for the long weekend.

We were on our way to a Spanish pirate restaurant for a late lunch tapas before heading south across the river for a family occasion.

El Pirata de Tapas has that casual London thing with close tables and a buzz. We enjoyed the selection and the time whizzed by. Then to the south. One of those situations where a few wrong road choices could add a penalty half hour to the journey.

We did okay though, not taxi driver precision, but still a good route south, including through some of those areas which I'd place slightly off of my own beaten track.

As always, there's little cross town routes that work better with instinct over knowledge.

car software stacks

I'll move away from talking about cars soon, but there's a few extra things I've noticed recently because of the sudden and unexpected range of vehicles that I've been driving.

It's the increasing complexity of the software required to make them work. A case in point is that a couple of the cars I've been using have that little extra 'Windows' button on the steering wheel. It helps with phones and media control.

It mainly works, but there are also some incompatibilities.

A case in point has been the upgrade required for one of the systems so that it could recognise the various phones being used.

It's a Microsoft devised solution for end users (drivers) and involves downloading a software system description from within the car onto a USB stick plugged into the car. Then plugging the USB into an internet attached computer.

The USB stick's content is then used by a web site to determine which files to download. After that completes, take the USB stick back to the car, plug it in, switch on the car ignition without starting the engine and wait for the car to update.

An 'updating' message displays on the dashboard. It is supposed to take about 10 minutes. The radio switched on and off a couple of times and then the update finished.

It worked but was hardly intuitive.

As shown in the simplified diagram, there's quite a lot of subsystems to make it all work, and even then, some of the parts like navigation are shown 'outside' of the solution.

I got the phones working, but there were a couple of loose ends, so I had a quick peek at the full manual. I know, manuals are usually a last resort. On this occasion I was also struck by how old some of the documentation is, for items that are in 2013 edition cars. I suppose it's the lag between invention and distribution.

It's making me even more impressed by space travel.

the best apps to download to the car's dashboard?

I've returned the little red and black American car now and we have back the fully functioning Italian one. I'm still waiting for my own car to be fixed.

When I returned the Ypsilon, the chap in the dealership asked me what I thought of it. I politely answered that it had an interesting personality.

I could kind of tell that he wasn't that keen on it himself.

I mentioned that the speedometer was on the wrong side. He explained that more smaller cars were being designed with the console in the middle instead of on the driver side. I could understand this if they were really trying to drive down manufacturing costs - no need to change that part of a Euro car for the UK market.

I was less sure about the safety aspect although I assume that this quirky design has passed the necessary tests. I suppose it was also handy for my passenger to be able to easily keep an eye on my driving speed.

Apparently the current generation of cars are adding even more telemetry systems beyond sat-nav and active safety. This little one had a spot to add a further plug-in sat-nav, which amusingly also featured an additional speedometer. It was connected to the inside of the driver's mirror mount.

Naturally it also had speech recognition for hands free operation.

But the next set of options appear to be to do with social interaction and that somehow feels wrong to me. There's already a facebook option on some cars and now there's the ability to add new apps to the display console.

I still see people driving whilst holding cell-phones most days. It will seem even crazier if they could be on facebook or downloading apps.

centre weighted dashboard analytics

Okay, so I've checked out the trend for putting the dials in the middle on cars. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but it is allowed so long as the dial is within direct field of view of the driver (UN/ECE R39 /2439)

Citroen have gone central and even programmed a set of computer readouts which display the speed only on the passenger side in a UK car.

I see they have reverted to including some normal dials on more recent models.

I can't understand why the Saturn Ion does it, because I thought that car was only available in US markets, where the steering wheel is always on the wrong side in any case? And they've slanted the dials towards the left hand driver.

Toyota seem to have had doubts on their Scion where they have added an offset pod still outside of the normal area. Like they forgot and had to tap it on afterwards.

Another more deserving example is the Toyota Yaris, where the dial has been in the middle of what is actually quite a small car, so I guess it's like sharing it with the passenger anyway.

Although on the new one they seem to have changed back to a set of dials by the steering wheel.

So I'm not still sure about this Chrysler trend.

ogooglebar may become a good pub quiz question

I see there's a bloggbävning* developing now that Google has taken issue with the Swedish adding 'ungoogleable' to Swedish words and is threatening some kind of trade mark infraction.

I can't help thinking it's drifting across the informal mantra of Google which runs along the lines of "Don't be evil"

I get it that Google may attain more press coverage and sliddersladder from simply making a fuss about the trade mark question, but it seems to be somewhat kuf, as the Swedes might say.

Of course, ungoogleable has been used for a long time in the UK with reference to the 'ungoogleable' round in pub quizzes, designed to stop the nomofobs from winning. And the people who bring their paddas. Some things should remain in the köttrymd.

Along the lines of these easy examples:

72 p in a b?
DSOTM by PF?
What have these three items got in common? brush, wrap and fur
Which is the odd one out? roundabout, helter-skelter, revolution, taxman

And for a bonus, What's the one word answer to the hidden missing question in the last one above?

You get the idea.

Even if Google doesn't.

* Bloggbävning = blogquake
* Nomofob = (Swed-lish for no mobile phone phobic)
* Padda = generic name for iTablets and other eTrinkets.
* Köttrymd = non digital world. Literally meat space(!)
* sliddersladder = gossip
* kuf = oddball

two loan cars and a broken washing machine makes three

"I wonder what the third thing will be?" said the washing machine repair man.

"Don't say that" I replied.

He'd looked at the machine for about ten seconds, wobbled the drum and said it was dead. It was apparently repairable, but would need new bearings, a new drum, a gasket and some other parts.

"Around how much?" I asked, secretly knowing it would probably be nearly as much as a new machine.

And it was.

At least as much as some of the new machines. This machine was eight years old and it hadn't ever gone wrong before. In the scheme of things, it's probably had a pretty good innings.

"It doesn't make a lot of difference nowadays" he explained, "whether you go for a cheap machine or a 1200 quid super machine. They are both about as likely to go wrong."

I didn't think more about the Third Thing, although by Monday it had happened.

My car is still off the road awaiting complicated parts. I still have the white loan vehicle. The blue car has been sold and the brand new red car has replaced it.

Except the brand new red car has a fault.

It doesn't go along the road very well. It's not my car, but I drove it on Monday evening to check. Sure enough, an ominous yellow light has come on. Sometimes it flashes. I had the task to phone to get the car back to the dealer.

So the red Italian car has been replaced with the temporary red and black American car. It's another type car I've never seen before. The logo on the side is squiggle. I think its called an ypsilon. Presumably the Y stops it being confused with something After Ford.

It's a curious vehicle. I'm confused that it has American branding, but it somehow seems almost too small to be Chrysler and maybe even too quirky. Kind of Euro-styling with an American grill that looks even bigger in real life than in the picture. A most un-American lack of air-con. It's engine is just two cylinders. It has secret rear doors. And unbelievably, the speedo is on the passenger side. It somehow reminds me of a stretched Ford Ka designed after too much coffee.

So two loan cars and a broken washing machine. Yes. That's the three.