tales from the countryside

In need of strawberries, blackberry vinegar and maybe some spicy chutney, we headed along to the farm shop on Saturday. We were surprised to see the volume of traffic along what is usually an obscure country lane. Some was being turned away to an adjacent overflow field.

It turned out to be some sort of special event, and fortunately I knew a walkable short cut through a field and under a bridge where I sometimes cycle. We cut past the stream, which had duck racing in progress, and into the event, which was in full swing.

Pretty much a feelgood sign of summer. Pimms in abundance , smokey barbecues and ice creams all round.

oops something went wrong

I suppose it was inevitable that after Windows 8 said it needed to perform an urgent update, that something would stop working.

I ran the update and aside from the speedy rush to 91% complete, followed by a five minute pause, everything seemed to be fine.

Reboot and back to normal.

Until I used the usually immensely reliable Netflix in that machine. "Ooops," it said,"something went wrong." Or words to that effect.

Groan.

It gave some kind of lengthy error code and said the computer wasn't connected to the internet, implying it was my fault and that I'd unplugged something.

I checked. Yes, it was connected to the internet. I rebooted the router to be sure. No change. Then I switched off all the Norton stuff and tried again. Nope. Reboot. Nope.

By now I've spent 45 minutes on systems administration instead of entertainment. This is all wrong.

And it worked yesterday, before the important system update for Windows 8.

In desperation, I decided to try the clutching at straws approach of re-installing Silverlight, which is a piece of Microsoft extra-ware used in some video setups. None of the instructions or diagnostics suggested this.

It worked.

I don't know what I'd do if I was a regular consumer level user.

incensed?

No one has commented on the similarity of the new Apple Time Capsule to one of those fragrant candles used to instil a sense of well-being.

I had the older type Time Capsules, but also an unfortunate track record with them, where they overheated and then expired. I lost two of them that way, before I eventually discovered it was (allegedly) a well known fault. Apparently the non-cooled power supply would get too hot, a capacitor would pop and that would be the end. For a time there was a web-site dedicated to the problem, which appeared to happen after an average if 19 months and 20 days

When it first happened at rashbre central, I took one apart to have a look, and noted the absence of ventilation. Instead of making some holes in the base, it was covered with a rubber compound, no doubt because of the internal mains supply. I still have a 2009 picture of it in the bin sans disk. The internal metal layer was perforated, but the engineers didn't have the last word on this industrial design.

It caused me to reconfigure the rashbre central backups to a separate disk system, instead of using the disks inside the units and I added a large metal heatsink (an old disk drive) to the outside of the remaining capsules to radiate away the warmth. Fortunately they were out of sight.

The interesting advantage of the newer type seems to be their increased speed. Even with the old ones, the wireless communication between them was more reliable than using a wire-based LAN connection across the mains supply (from upstairs to downstairs.

I'll try a couple as a Wifi extension to see whether I can get the higher internal speeds advertised.

a small South Bank sign of summer

. .

In which Glastonbury reminds me of the need to sit in a field

Watching some of Glasto on telly this weekend, I realised that we're not booked into any festivals for the whole summer.

This year the closest I've been to the live Glastonbury experience was an escalator behind a lone camper at Paddington station. She had what looked like all new camping gear, a fancy backpack and a 10 litre water bottle with maybe 4 litres in it. I couldn't help thinking it was a lot of heavy gear to be carrying, let alone from the train station and the likely long walk into the festival. Tomorrow I'm sure I will wistfully notice the (presumably) big round car park stickers as people return towards London.

Usually we're are at one or two big field gigs in the summer, so I suppose there's still time for something to turn up. Maybe a small field this year.

It's interesting to watch some of Glastonbury on television. There's good coverage of some of the live bands, but it can't really capture the experience, despite all the cutaways and TV presenter inserts.

Similarly the scale gets diluted, even with the ranging overhead cameras. The 45 minute walks from one area to another, strange blisters from wellington boots, the street food, beer and cider diet, random weather and even more random experiences with strangers.

Sunday's headline act is Mumford and Son. The top picture here is when we saw them at Glastonbury playing The Park. We sat on the grass in front and I could casually wander to the front for a few snaps. I doubt if it will be like that this evening on the Pyramid Stage.

sign of the vines?

A few of us had a meeting close to Leadenhall Market on Friday. I was early and wandered into the main market area ahead before heading to the assigned plate glass office block.

It was mid afternoon and I was struck by the lively bustle from the various pubs. When working around the City, there's an oft quoted saying that economic conditions can be determined from the pubs and wine bars. When graphs dip down the pubs are quiet.

This was 3.30pm and most of the pubs were jammed and standing room early.

Too early for it to be those finished for the day, so more likely to be extended lunch-times? And Leadenhall Market is hardly an upstart area. Slap bang in the middle of the City, the original market dates back to the 14th Century. It's served its share of liquid lunches.

I'm wondering; the dilemma that if this extended Friday tippling really is a sign of economic improvement, then is our money safe in their hands?

a visit to the sugar factory's legacy

I was in Tate Britain during the week, as a break from my office-based side project.

The recently completed massive re-hang of works has cubed them into a sweet chronological order. Yes, Tate was founded by the importer who created those little sugar cubes.

The Tate Modern (the other London Tate) has more variability, contrasting pieces from different eras, but here in Tate Britain it is genuinely helpful to be able to select a period from 1540 up to modern day, step into a relevant room and to see how art work has developed.

It's also created a surprisingly good mix of 'Greatest Hits' type works interspersed with (to me) lesser known pieces. It's totally impossible to take it all in one go, and much better to spend time in a few areas and maybe contrast the styles and developments.

There's early portraits, then development of surrounding scenes, landscapes, social commentary, abstraction, the conventions of the painters, both formal and sometimes humorous. It's easier in the new format to see it unfold through the different rooms. There's some - like the huge picture of the Lady of Shallot after the mirror shatters and she makes her cursed way downstream to never reach Camelot. Just one picture can take an age to absorb.

To the side of the huge galleries are smaller side exhibits which can be rotated with individual spotlight shows. I visited a couple related to the main show and a couple of very specific additional gallery collections.

I've dotted a few pictures through this blog entry. That top installation is from Damien Hirst. I think I saw it first in the old Saatchi gallery, which used to be on the South Bank. The Acquired Inability Escape. A curiously familiar scene? It's odd how some of these pieces seem to travel around London, probably at dead of night.

The middle picture is the Cook maid, by Sir Nathaniel Bacon, from around 1620 and the final one is the Lady of Shalott, 1888, by John William Waterhouse. Tate have also put around 500 of the works online into a useful gallery, which is here. Dive in for a Bigger Splash.

The Drowned Man - Punchdrunk

I've been told not to say too much about the evening. There's others expecting the full range of surprises, so I'll keep this oblique.

A visit to an almost derelict building around the back of Praed Street, where a line of people formed quietly alongside one of the loading bays. No signage to indicate the purpose, just recognition from others attending.

We were there for a preview of 'The Drowned Man', the latest production from the theatre company Punchdrunk, this time set in Temple Studios, the London outpost of Hollywood's Republic Pictures.

I've been to Punchdrunk at other venues and it's a rather unique theatrical experience. In this case a multiple story building for the multiple stories of the production.

200,0000 sq ft of space to create a series of offices, movie sets and so much more. The detail is there too, look into artists' rooms and their lives are spread out before you - blending early 60's London with Hollywood.

There were around 600 of us at this National Theatre preview performance, although the unguided nature of the show meant that sometimes I could find myself alone in a broad town square, a forest, a caravan or ... I'd better not say more. Go with friends, but expect to completely lose them for at least part of the evening.

Other times there would be action unfolding with more than a hundred masked audience following a single actor as they moved to a new scene. Kind of audience as character. Or a couple of audience sitting alone on a swing. Someone sleeping on a bench. A significant and sometimes guarded barrier. A song and dance number being performed on a sound stage for the cameras. Or two shots of happy and one shot of sad.

The walk-around (promenade sounds too structured) nature of the show means there really isn't a fourth wall to break, because it's quite possible to find oneself in amongst the Tinseltown action. Sometimes quite graphically.

It's safe to say that every visitor's acquired performance will be unique. It's a type of Dream Factory, one of the old nicknames for Hollywood. It worked, both whilst I was there, and the later present of sand in my shoes and unexpected dreams when I returned home.

I'll go again, for more and a different story, when it's past the previews.

outdoor art gallery

A few days ago I mentioned the Artworks plan to spread some art around the UK during August. Of course, I realised that, at least in London, there's already quite an array on display.

The construction site hoardings illustrated are by the Tate Britain, so it's not surprising that they would be covered in paintings, but it is also fascinating to see people slow down as they walk past, to take a look at the pictures.

Not everyone does it, there's still some people in a hurry or in a phone conversation, but others will walk along just as they might in an actual gallery.

I also spotted the Yoko Ono picture hanging outside the RFH. It's just behind a well known area, but I suspect many passing people don't even spot it.

And then, quite close by is Roa's squirrel fight mural. It's part of a set of garden impressions around the concrete of this particular area of the South Bank and just a scratch of the surface of what's out there.

The people at Artworks are asking for votes at the moment, for which UK artworks to display on the posters. It's quite fun to simply scroll through the suggestions.

I voted for the Edward Burra "Snack Bar", partly a synchronicity moment because it was also on today's billboard but equally because there's such a lot going on in this picture. Of course the original version hasn't been admired by birds in quite the same way.

why shopping loyalty schemes don't work

I know there's those fortune teller types who can predict lifestyle from the contents of shopping trollies. Along the lines of 'Busy young family', 'Office worker lunch break', 'Single female' and so on, and that there's proper industry classifications for these demographic baskets.

There's also some fun mathematics and algorithms to predict missing items from shopping trollies - surely that will become one of the next things in checkout lines ('Would you like us to find you the maple syrup to go with those pancakes?' etc.)

The last century supermarket 'shopper loyalty' systems persist, but still have some very basic flaws in use. I'm suspicious that they want to appear to be being helpful whilst deliberately failing most of the time. An unspoken collusion of the programming and the store staff.

The merchants would deny this and cite the great case studies, heavy investment and use of micro-segmentation data mining to build loyalty, but it's still mainly a faff to use these things.

My recent examples (I should really have made this a Thursday Thirteen)

• The 'Match' systems used to show that I've saved money at supermarket X, compared with the others. Sure. I get a voucher if I've been charged more than elsewhere. It's like an 'I lose' ticket. I just paid £3.47 more than if I'd shopped elsewhere. Thanks.
• Refunding the same ticket on the next shop may allow me to get a saving. Goody. Except, at the end of the next shop I get another ticket saying I've just spent £2.49 more than if I shopped elsewhere. By now I'm thinking I need to be shopping at that other place.
• Didn't need to visit the store for a couple of weeks? Oops the remaining ticket has now timed out, so the store has now retained my overspend in any case
• What about those little barcodes on key rings? It's a pretty good way to collect the points without having to do much, so long as you don't mind carrying a permanent advert for the store(s) on the keyring. In my case I thought I'd use the iPhone ap instead, which also allows the barcode to be stored and swiped. Except, after an update to the iPhone, the system forgot my number. Inconveniently it wouldn't let me log on either.
• Vouchers. Yes, I get given vouchers at the end of a shop. Sometimes for improbable purchases. I normally empty them into a bin at the first opportunity. I used to be amused by those electric machines they use in U.S. Stores that issue discount tickets at the point of decision (e.g. for shampoo). I suppose at least they are relevant to the shopping, although I suppose a sign with "Offer- $1 reduction" might work just as well.
• Voucher redemption. I can't really be bothered to carry vouchers around and fiddle about trying to use them. I get sent a bundle every so often from whichever schemes I'm in, but they also go into the bin. I've seen other people with these at the checkout and it can take some time to get them processed. A kind of anti-loyalty scheme for the fast shopper caught behind someone using them in a checkout queue.
  
• A few days ago one of those booklets arrived by post, just as I was heading to the store. Experiment time. I thought I'd see what happened. There were about twenty or so vouchers in the perforated booklet. Some were for common things, like milk and bakery products. I reached the checkout and triumphantly handed a few ostensibly relevant ones over. Even that was fiddly because of the multi page booklet and the need to tear out relevant individual squares. Epic fail. The milk I'd purchased was the wrong type. The bakery products I'd picked were excluded. The coffee voucher for two packs of coffee could only be used for one pack in a single shop. The double points vouchers were not valid until July. Yes, I had become the person in the line that everyone hates. Except there was no line of shoppers.


• Disloyally, I threw the rest of the vouchers away when I returned home. I'd suspected all along it was all a waste of time.

I could go on, but I'm clearly not loyal enough for these schemes. Maybe I'm not the target market. My simple suggestion is that instead they just send me a large value money voucher each month to persuade me to shop in their store. More a transaction than a relationship, but a whole lot simpler and it might even work.

winning ways of summer?

I can't reconcile the last few days with it being around summer solstice. Admittedly, a gang of us were together yesterday evening in a bar with a sunny balcony, but for much of the time we have seen dark skies.

There's enough bad weather for it to be inconvenient, but I've still needed to rig up a hosepipe to water some freshly laid turf.

The place we met for evening drinks was on a road close to Ascot races, where we could see a stream of exotic cars mixed with stretched limos of every hue.

The pinky purple extended Hummer was one of the larger varieties amongst the mainly American imports sprinkled with a few modified Mercedes.

We remarked that the unstretched Rolls-Royces needed chauffeurs although the equally fancy Bentleys should really be driven by their owners.

Later, on the way back home, I drove past a Ferrari dealership, and noticed a couple of taxis stopped outside, no doubt with people from the races wondering what they'd have spent their winnings on, if only they'd won.

meerkat time

My cycling mileage has just flipped over 3000 miles year to date, which means I'll probably do more than last year.

I hadn't linked my cycling mileage with my car mileage, but -duh- I've noticed that my car miles have reduced. Probably 1/3 less car miles averaged over the last 2 years since my last new car. What I hadn't realised was the effect that it could also have on my car insurance, which has also gone down slightly, even staying with the same company.

That's not what happened with household insurance, which has been quietly increasing year on year. Two years ago I didn't notice their crazy adjustments and I foolishly let the new premium go through unchallenged.

This year they shot themselves in the foot, because there was also a further increase that tipped me into meerkat territory. Yes. Time to compare the market and attain a significant saving. Of course, I phoned my old company as well and they were happy to offer various reductions to the premium, which by the end of the call was down to nearly half of the original quote.

I felt I had to say 'No' to them though, based upon the huge differential. Along the way I noticed errors in their quote produced from a perfectly good quote in prior years. They seemed to know about these 'computer errors' and I can't help notice these accidents worked in their favour.

We will never know though. The policy is now with a different supplier.

And another meerkat is on the way from Meerkovo.