meet me on the corner

The evening drink could've been a lyric from Lindisfarne. Meet me on the corner at nine, kinda thing.

Hey Mr Dreamseller, where have you been?
Tell me have you dreams I can see?
I came along, just to bring you this song,
Can you spare one dream for me?

When we arrived at the pub there were still vestiges of Halloweek sprinkled around. We all selected brews and adjourned into what was still a ghostly bar. Officially closed, there were cobwebs and spiders around the edges and what looked like the remnants of a previous evening's shindig.

Perfect for us to chatter at a round table overlooked by a svelte looking Confucius holding a dragon. Possibly after first meeting Lao Tzu? "Lao Tzu is a dragon, and I’ll never understand him."

You won't have met me, and you'll soon forget me,
So don't mind me tugging at your sleeve.
I'm asking you, if I can fix a rendezvous.
For your dreams are all I believe.

I should explain that some of the beers featured names in keeping with the recent zombie season. I couldn't spot any pullable beers with normal names except one from Sussex, which somehow seemed out of character for this far north.

So I chose the ale called Inception, which turned out to be a fine selection, worthy of taking to a few levels of depth, if you follow my line of thought.

Meet me on the corner when the lights are coming on,
And i'll be there, I promise i'll be there.
Down the empty streets we'll disappear until the dawn
If you have dreams enough to share.

Later that evening, after the doors of the pub had been resoundingly shut, I headed back across what was now a slightly more bendy bridge than it had appeared earlier in the evening. I'd certainly reached the third level of inception, although the water seemed to be staying in the proper place.

Lay down your bundles, of rags and reminders,
And spread your wares on the ground.
Well I've got time, if you deal in rhyme,
I'm just hanging around.

playing to the gallery (with smudges)

After Russell Brand, another Essex-lad book I've just read is Grayson Perry's reprise of his Reith Lectures.

It's an accessible discussion about fine art, which recognises the potential airs and graces of such discourse, but then avoids them to keep a broad audience.

I listened to the original lectures and can hear Perry's voice as he walks through the themes in this book. And yes, its a physical book rather than a Kindle; there's some delightful little sketches within to illuminate some of the topics.

In another of Perry's books and shows called 'The vanity of small differences' he reviews tribes and makes a point about the tribe of Romford car tuning enthusiasts' checking out their sub-woofers compared with weekenders browsing at a farm shop. Different tribes showing their allegiances.

He brings the thinking into the world of art and the multifarious needs of artists, agents, collectors, museums and the general public.

Each to their own part in the world of artistic appreciation.

I've looked at many Grayson Perry art pieces over the years, and they generally set me thinking. I'll consider this little book to be another one.

Somewhere, he makes the point (also relevant to blogging) about irony as a hipster response to a topic; a self protection usable for a flippant quick browse or as a way to demonstrate deep thought on a topic. Apparent elitism. Roll up to join the sniggering classes. The up and down side is that this mode doesn't give much away.

I applaud his small observations which flag criticisms of arty groups posturing as an elitist club.

Somewhere else, he makes the point about well-known artists who sign things thereby enhancing their value. Dollar bills spring to mind. Curiously, this little book has a very strange dust cover; the lower half, where Perry's signature is portrayed, is printed with some kind of smudging ink. The rest of the black print doesn't do it.

I wondered if this was a deliberate gesture, in keeping with Perry's sense of mischief? It's the closest I'll get to 'owning' anything by the man. I'll happily own the mischief.

they used to call it the moon

A trip to the moon today, at least in the form of a visit to the thought provoking exhibition 'They used to call it the moon'.

Just inside the main entrance is a large shiny satellite, gleaming and pristine, the stuff of dreams. Today, this is art not science. I must remember it's an installation, not a propellable device.

Onward to one of my favourites, it's part of a collection by Marko Tadić and comprises found postcards which support the earth's second moon theory.

Compared with the full series, this is a cut down version, with scenes from all around the world, sometimes showing two moons and sometimes just showing one or another.

The above view is from the larger show which is also here.
More recently, there's been the launch of the Russian satellite, which is almost the size of a small moon, so there's a maybe more truth that one might imagine.

And then there's Joseph Popper's space pod.


It's just like you'd expect from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Gravity or Interstellar. I remember visiting some of the space equipment in NASA and being amazed at the simplicity of some of the construction. Forget about semiconductors, part of the technology used electromechanical relays. Yet somehow it all worked.

This space pod is similar. A closer inspection reveals it's made of polystyrene blocks, the small black round precision controls are coffee cup lids and the press buttons are from sports water bottles. Look behind it (I'll have to go to this again and try to remember to take a picture) the panels are clipped together with bulldog clips.

There's Katie Paterson's moon bounce Morse-coded music score sent Earth:Moon:Earth and into a shiny black piano playing "Moonlight Sonata" with some missing notes detained in the craters. Appositely across the way is a selection of Kubrick's effects cards from the original 2001 movie.

Yesterday's Doctor Who episode echoed part of the Stanley Kubrick/Arthur C Clarke theme that behind every person alive stands ghosts, and in Clarke and Kubrick the ratio is thirty to one as the ratio by which dead outnumber the living.

It runs that since the dawn of time, a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. An interesting number, because there are around a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way.

So in the 2001 story-telling, for every man and woman who has ever lived, in this universe there shines a star.

But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And most of those alien suns have planets circling them.

So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first apeman, his own private world-sized heaven—or hell.

How many of those potential heavens and hells are inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest of them is a million times further away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of interstellar generations.

As the few trips to the moon signify, the barriers of distance diminish. Another part of this arty exhibition presents a one way space mission, mysteriously blueprinted for 2016.

clanking chains and crunching cobblestones

A fresh crunch of glass underfoot this morning as I made my way across the high level bridge.

Yesterday evening was, of course, part of the local Halloweek and something of a limbering-up exercise for the plans of the weekend.

I'd seen sombre zombies roaming London's streets a couple of weeks ago for Zombiefest, and my current location's efforts seemed similar albeit with less clothing.

I may decide to find fortification before tonight's mayhem descends.

branding a revolution

I've just read that Russell Brand book about revolution. I can imagine the book is an easy topic for reviewers to snipe because of its style. There'll be plenty of contradictory offcuts to illustrate whatever point an establishment reviewer would require.

I was interested in it because of the underlying big premise - that the UK (and elsewhere) doesn't really have good electable options in the political classes. The reductionist tabloids create a "don't vote" agenda from Brand's points. I don't think he is saying that - more he is saying there isn't really a good votable choice.

The book also argues that wealth and control is vested in a tiny minority and that these people can buy the results of any election, notably the U.S. where the most well-funded party has won every time.

Brand is from Grays in Essex with a 'local bad boy makes good' backstory of his addiction raddled rise to famed Beverly Hills living. Then a clean 12 years whilst balancing Mercedes chauffeured wealth and a hybrid spirituality.

There's plenty of big thinker writers on similar topics, but its good to get a more laddish voice as a contrast.

Brand's style makes an interesting read. It's populist chatty with frequent diversions during the points being made. Sometimes it goes into overdrive with extended curlicued sentences. There'a a bundle of summary replays from other free thinkers and an underpinning message about institutionalised manipulation of economics and the world stage in the interests of big business.

Stripping away some of the surplus verbiage, there are good points about some what is wrong in the ruling mechanisms.

I can't claim to be a Brand fan, but will credit his effort here to say some things that need to be said about the state of things. Sadly, the main messaging is already being rapidly diluted by the same establishment systems he rails against.

bumbershoot

Just after midday, rain and wind emphasise the change of season.

Time to flip the rain hood back into service on my coat. Tomorrow they're saying the day will start at 4 degrees Celsius.

up north again

Red sunrise this morning from around Saint Albans. What's the old saying about red sky in the morning?

Then further north and by tonight I'm walking through shadows and alleyways of an area under redevelopment.

It'll be my base for the next couple of weeks.

snap, crackle and popping around London

A quick spin through the Chelsea tractors over to Balham during the day through unexpectedly heavy traffic marking school half-term holidays.

Little chains of red cars all over the sat-nav and some ultra-mad drivers around.

One of the worst was a black Bentley that decided to accelerate as fast as possible to catch the lights at Pont Street when I was turning right onto Sloane Street.

Earlier I'd seen the usual screechy BMW M something-or-others around by Hyde Park and I was increasingly intrigued at seeing five separate black Maseratis in different points around the same area. Maybe one or two, but five? Has no-one read the memo?

Then I passed one of those £100k BMW i8 cars which tokenistically run partly on electricity. Only for 22 miles, though, according to the manufacturers. Add petrol and it'll do 375 miles - and despite BMW's claimed 135mpg, its three cylinder engine real world result is more in the 50-30mpg range. Hardly economic, but I suppose they'll be joining the Hyde Park gang as soon as there are enough of them around.

I also spent a long time in a jam in the lane next to another electric BMW.

One of those strangely shaped i3 cars, which is a sort of novelty BMW also running on electric power. This one has all the hallmarks of a committee design and somehow has managed to avoid BMW styling cues altogether, except for a slightly bolted on looking front grill. Plug it in at home to a new circuit rated at the same wattage as a domestic ring main and it'll be 80% charged in under 3 hours to give a full 100 mile range. Or add the £2.8k optional extra called 'range extender' which is actually a petrol engine which doesn't directly power the car. No, it makes electricity to charge the battery.

They still haven't quite got the electric car thing right. Further on I saw a small electric car parked with a yellow power cable snaking to a big Audi SUV in front. The smaller car was obviously being recharged by the side of the road - no doubt using power from the bigger car's diesel engine.

in which the garage computer briefly returns to captivity

I finally got around to updating the red computer to Windows 8.1. It's been pestering me to do it for many months. I do have W8.1 occasionally running on the iMac, as a virtual service, so I know it can work.

The red computer doesn't get into captivity very often, because it's the one I use with the bike, as a kind of docking station for the ANT+ and similar. It's the inexpensive computer I bought with the grocery shopping some time ago and sits on the wifi in the garage. With the approaching chilly season, I predict the bike turbo will be back in regular use soon, so it make sense to update this dedicated PC that I use with the turbo.

Now I've just updated several Macs to Yosemite, which was a fairly quick and painless exercise, but I was kind of irrationally dreading the Windows update, in case it went wrong.

Actually, it just took a long time.

Several hours by the time it had downloaded around a Gigabyte of update and rebooted itself several times. Suspiciously long for a Gigabyte, if truth be told. The Macs all downloaded several Gigabytes in noticeably less time.

The red computer did provide a few messages, which someone had told the developers to make seem chatty. Along the lines of "We're setting up a few things for you" etc. It makes a change from "Please install the new XYZ device driver", I suppose.

I'm delighted to say that the machine still works. The bootup time is about 2 minutes, which lets me grab a coffee. It has redesigned all the wallpapers, in case I didn't like the ones I had before. Magically, the erstwhile uninstalled Norton pester screen has mysteriously returned, despite my previously removing it with the Norton Removal Tool.

Fortunately, the TACX turbo still works with its ANT+ connection and I can still dial up Trainerroads and Netflix, so when I'm using it with the bike turbo, it will still do the trick.

The slightly unfortunate news is that the actual TACX trainer software has stopped working. I can get the program started, but attempting to use it with any form of video playback has died. Maybe those device drivers do still need to be installed?

I've put it back into the wild in its partially functioning state. Maybe I'll try to fix it again on a particularly rainy day.

flash and flare

The replacement rubber band arrived for my bike lights, so I'm back in business with the extra bright back light again - just ahead of when it is really needed.

I could have fixed it with a plain silicon band or some tape, but somehow the proper red band looks better, and is easier to remove.

I've had these tiny but powerful Flash and Flare lights for a couple of years now and they are generally pretty good - although nowadays there's even brighter tiny lights around, so I may have a glance at some when I'm away next week.

The Flash and Flare use CR123 rechargeable batteries that last several hours between charge and I keep a couple of spare 'normal' batteries in the saddlebag as well, although haven't needed to use them. The only careful thing is re-aligning the lens to the body when swapping the battery, to avoid mis-threading the lens.

I still also keep a couple of Knogs wrapped onto the bike as well 'just in case'.

can Jibo out predict Nest for the right temperature setting?

Alongside all the sci-fi movies it is interesting to see the march of the real robots.

I'm happy enough about using the little nest heating thermostat that runs on ZigBee and provides extensive sensor based energy management. It is also brilliantly simple to use for something quite sophisticated.

Nest/Google don't advertise its innards, but a quick look via iFixit reveals a Texas Instruments AM3703CUS Sitara ARM Cortex A8 microprocessor, 512 Mb mobile DRAM, a 2 Gb NAND flash memory, an Ember EM357 integrated ZigBee/802.15.4 system-on-chip, a Skyworks 2436L high power 2.4 GHz 802.15.4 front-end module and a TI WL1270B 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi support. Instead of a conventional bimetallic strip, this is a full fledged computer.

Of course, it's powerful enough for the current duties, but I'm more interested in the extensions, as it starts to integrate with Jibo and other domestic products.

I can already run the heating, fireplace and some lighting from the simple-looking TV remote. The same Harmony remote also sends an 'at home' signal when it is moved or it senses someone walking around. We've played around with a 5km Geofence too, so that the system knows when we are returning home and can flip itself out of 'away' mode. I'm not so convinced about that one actually.

A mundane and slightly daft test case I've been using is a bin collection reminder, via IFTTT, which sets a notification on Tuesday evening, and also selects the correct bin to be collected. Add 'voice' to the notifications filter them to relevant devices and it starts to get interesting.

At one level this could all be kind of spooky, but at another it is probably the start of the 'beyond smartphones' technology twist.

There's some interesting problems too, as one autonomous system requests service from another. Ask the Jibo to adjust the nest heating. Nest knows better and refuses? Then what? Robot wars?

rainbow, but no unicorn

They said Tuesday would be a rain-lashed day of huge winds and general mayhem caused by the remnants of Hurricane Gonzalo moving across the UK.

On a car journey, we had our share of those wind tunnel tubes of spinning leaves, but an altogether brighter overall day than I was expecting.

A song about rainbows and unicorns had just come on the car radio as we approached this road junction although I'm sure the animal I spotted was a white pony, not a unicorn.