mixing trophy water with a whine

I'm still at the conference, which is talking about all manner of new ways to connect the world. Curiously the jargon level seems to have stopped at about 2013 levels and I'm not noticing too many new expressions around.

Sure, there's Internet of Things and gamification, but I don't really count them as new. The nature of the sessions here means there's more talk about the ideas than practical examples, what I call PowerPoint-powered rather than live demos.

It raises a few side questions about the reliability of the future too. The premise of the discussions includes devices talking to one another and the information and intent being properly interpreted.

We've all seen those movies where the protagonist walks along the clean streets of a future where the billboards change automatically to the right kind of advertising. Those intelligent mirrors that give time checks, fashion tips and news extracts whilst one brushes the teeth.

Well, I had a glimpse of the real-world state of the technology after I'd left the sessions today.

I dropped into a well-known chain shop to buy a drink. The huge shelves of water were part of a promotion linked to a particular newspaper, which I don't usually read. I reluctantly scooped up this 'deal' and headed to the automated checkout.

You already know what I'm going to say?

Yes, it didn't work. Now I am a regular user of automated checkouts. I get the occasional 'unexpected item in bagging area' or 'an assistant will be with you shortly' messages, which comes with the territory.

But this just didn't work. Two items; a newspaper and a water. I put the water through first.

Message to me: Did I know that there was a special offer and I could get this water 'free' with a certain newspaper?

Oh yes, that'll be my next swipe. After I've dismissed this message.

Scan the paper.

Message to me: There's a free water with the newspaper.

I know, I've got it. I'm thinking this isn't a very good advert for Internet of Things, cross selling or automation.

Subtotal for my 'wave and pay' appears. I almost pay it but notice an amount that can't be right. I realise that I've probably put the items in the wrong sequence and that the robot can't cope.

I decide to abandon the automat and head for the staffed till. But No. I arrive 1/24th of a second too late and a large group of school children buying assorted items beat me to it. This could be some time.

I look back to the automatic systems. There's one of the assistants with a tattered piece of paper printed with a bar code standing next to an unused automat.

I approach and explain my problem. Helpfully, he takes my two items as I do that walk of shame back to an automated till to be helped with my purchase.

Ahah. He has the same problem. These two items won't go through, at least not for the reduced price. He admits that they have been having some problems.

Then he does a sort of paper shuffle using his special tattered bar code. He puts the items through for a second time and then removes one again. I can't follow this card shark sequence exactly, but the amount at the end looks about right.

I wave my payment card in the designated area, pickup the receipt and exit.

I suppose the presenters at my session would say this is a perfect example of why the Internet of Things is needed? Contrariwise I'm thinking that if we can't get a simple 'special offer' right, then what chance of the new stuff powered by RFID, The Cloud, Big Data, heuristics and intelligent beacons?

As I gulp the water I'm musing about the sessions earlier where people are talking about monetising the new object platform and augmenting the user experience and I wonder if I'm standing in another parallel universe about to split from the current one.

Wordless Wednesday

Light shining in Buckinghamshire

I happened to be in the front row for Light Shining In Buckinghamshire at the NT's Littleton. It meant I was a metre from the closed industrial strength safety curtain before the play started.

Then a real "Whoa!" moment as this huge shutter lifted to reveal the enormous stage. Now it was as if I was seated at a sumptuous banquet of the nobles of 1640s.

Conspicuous consumption, as these 17th Century noblemen feasted and talked with detachment of the problems of their peasants.

The timeline is around the Civil War, when Oliver Cromwell rose and Charles I fell. The narrative is mostly of the ordinary folk of the time.

Farming Saxons ruled by warrior Normans. Name the animals in the Saxon language, eat rich food named with the Norman language. The poor and disenfranchised left without homes, bartering for food and places to stay.

The nobles waste little time in ejecting any itinerants encroaching their area. A ghostly Charles I presides over a distant throne in parts of the early action.

Caryl Churchill's original play was written in the 1970s and uses a mix of ideas from the 1600s and the 20th century.

From early in the play, there were chuckles from the audience recognising enduring themes, particularly after some of the debates in last week's UK election.

The play also uses verbatim technique, in this case from notes taken of the Putney Debates in 1647. There's aspects that wouldn't seem out of place across the House of Commons in modern times.

That's where this huge production (Maybe 40 plus players on stage at some points) still has some sensibilities of a small play. In places the lighting and staging achieved qualities of a minimalistic set and shows at somewhere like Theatre 503, where an altogether more intimate style of production can be achieved.

The mix creates a strange dynamic in this play. There are engrossing scenes with five or six main actors in dialogues, watched on by another 20 or so spectators. As I think back from my rather special front row seat, there was probably enough going on in the interplay of the few front actors to render the set less necessary.

But that is nit-picking, overall there was much to take in, with this world turned upside down.

Recruitment to an army to fight the antichrist. The emergence of the Levellers and Diggers to reclaim the land for the commoners. The insidious influence of the Church. The pervasive religious overtones of the anticipated End of The World.

Fascinating too that these discussions of the 1640s covered proportional representation, creation of common lands, aspects of welfare and other similar themes.

I wondered how this play would look viewed from further back in this, the National Theatre. By accident of ticketing I was almost thrust into the action, could see the individual fibres of the earth when the diggers tore up the land, could feel splashes from the rain in the closing scenes.

Further back this intimacy could possibly be lost creating spectacle over the detail of the messaging.

Another theme for today, perhaps?

following the white lines to the way ahead

I'm at a conference at the moment. It's about the future and includes plenty of whizzy technology. Some of it could be quite interesting, like home healthcare telematics, but other items seem faintly redundant.

An example was something that looked fabulously styled for monitoring water loss from around the home. It used a special digital control box, short distance signalling (maybe Zigbee?) and individual sensors on all appliances.

I couldn't help thinking that monitoring water consumption at the meter might be a simpler approach? If the amount starts to look out of kilter, then there's a leak somewhere and someone can come in to detect it. A bit like when we had a small leak which the plumber found in about 10 minutes. Come to think of it, that was first picked up by the metering.

Another session related to changing supermarket shopping patterns. We've tried those services that ship a box of handpicked ingredients to make meals based on predefined recipes. They also get advertised on London's local television channel and the tube. Recently I've noticed Amazon Prime also putting third party adverts into the delivery boxes. Whilst it sounds counter-intuitive, it's surprisingly efficient because everything gets used and the recipes almost always taste really good as well as being fresh and organic.

The counterintuitive part is because the conventional idea (promoted in supermarkets) is to buy lots of fresh ingredients and then be inspired to make things. Sometimes this is great, but the box of goodies that arrives once a week provides either 3 or 4 dinners and includes things that might be outside the normal recipe list. Its fairly faff-free on a busy or slightly tired midweek evening too.

So when the supermarkets talk about the shift from mega-shopping to home delivery and fill-in shops with DIY phone-based bar-code reading, they are still in a sort of catch-up with the emerging trends.

I suppose home delivery is still largely dependent on someone being around to answer the door, although Doddle, Click and Collect and similar services are chipping away at that aspect too. Those 'follow the white line to Doddle' things have already been around for some time.

But its only Day One, so I'm sure I'll have further comment as things progress.

rearranging the furniture

We're rethinking our kitchen design at the moment. Mr Cameron is also rearranging a few things, although they were not so prominent in the lead up to the election.

One of the more notable is to speedily rearrange those pesky constituency boundaries. A few minor tweaks could have an effect on both (next year's) EU Referendum and also the 2020 election, where the Conservatives might just have a few more advantageous boundaries.

The other part of the deal is to keep the number of MPs static at 650, rather than the earlier suggestion to reduce it to 600. I gather this change (but not a Proportional Representation one) is to be sped through in the first 100 days. For most people the esoteric nature of a PR debate means it will soon sink down the priority list.

Another early and determined candidate for change appears to relate to the future of the BBC. Under the current Charter (which expires in 2016), the Beeb gets £4bn per annum from the licence. The buzzword 'spin-offs' seems to be in vogue, as well as plenty of -er- small cuts.

screentime

Every so often my sound system will play that message:
'You have 937 Messages, all of which are marked urgent.'

It's one of those little sound clips that is worth keeping to raise an occasional smile.

Today I looked at the lonely phone that is not connected to the screening system,

It showed 51 messages. I will need to find the delete button.

tax efficient motoring?

A wry smile today in the underground car park when I parked next to a neighbour's newly acquired car.

Is it an instant sign of the new economy, the election result cash-in, tax efficiency or a pension liberation strategy?

Anyway, it's a Lamborghini Gallardo, the special Superleggera kind with the extra lightweight carbon fibre body.

I notice the white car behind it is a Maserati. Perhaps I missed the memo?

smile at the sky

Through a pretty garden, musing about the difference a day makes.

Probably the walk's rustic influence, but the increasing list of resignations reminds me of Gabriel's sheepdog in Far From the Madding Crowd, driving the sheep over the cliff.

Farage, Clegg, Miliband. Whole parties. Fresh petals.

The silent majority followed their instructions, so meet the new guy, same as the old guy.

X marks the spot

Even at quarter past seven our own polling station was busy with lines of traffic into the adjacent car park and queues forming at the desks to get ballot papers.

I noticed that most of the party leaders were also early voters, presumably to ensure the press coverage.

Not all of them though, with the Reuters feed below showing Witney's polling station at around nine o'clock which seemed to have far more press than voters.

Look carefully and you'll see that a temporary chicane has been placed on the road. It's so that a Jaguar and Range Rover can arrive uninterrupted.

The single unsuspecting normal voter that tried to get into the polling station whilst the special voters were inside discovered that the doors had been temporarily locked.

I guess the surprise of meeting the P.M. leaving made up for it. The P.M's entourage was soon noisily on its way and the rest of the press could emerge from the bushes.

another delivery of dark shadows?

I was planning to post about something else today, but then I heard this morning's interview with the Prime Minister. It struck me as both a great lesson in answer avoidance and a great example of the use of FUD.

I remember the whole Good Things and Dark Shadows approach to Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, from being marketed to back in the last century. It used to be applied mainly to large-scale computer sales but has drifted across many other areas.

The prime incumbent's campaign has gone negative, resorting to slagging off the competition rather than extolling its own virtues. And, naturally, don't tell the electorate what to really expect after the results are in.

Perhaps it will be the betting shops that give the best view of outcome, although even they seem stumped by this one, judging by this summary extract.

In this social media era, politicians still use the air war of radio and television for their simplistic sound bites, along with tokenistic sponsor-paid visits to far-flung corners for their ground war missives.

The so-called direct social media experience seems to comprise mainly of requests for money to support campaigns, in some cases with the possibility to get into a raffle to win something or someone for a dinner.

Judging by the predictions for who will govern, there's still a good further week of news stories to follow as people start to haggle over the meaning of the words on Page 14 of the Cabinet Manual, produced by David Cameron and Gus O'Donnell.

I'll be voting tomorrow.

It is likely, of necessity, to be a tactical vote and I shall probably wear a Mickey Mouse tee shirt to the polling station.

Alternative tee-shirt serving suggestion?

down by the canal

The canal paths around parts of London can also be useful short cuts between areas, like my route from St Pancras to Camden.

There's the added dimension that the routes can be relatively calm compared with main thoroughfares, although there's always the need to listen out for bicycles which can be surprisingly stealthy.

Like the normal cycle routes, there's increasing amounts of TfL style signposting which can also encourage travel.

Bank Holiday?

Bank Holiday weekend, which included spending part of yesterday out of London in one of the most badly designed town-centre road systems in the country.

Today it's been easier, as we've been out on twisty lanes. Our original plan for the Bank Holiday was to become short term exerts on kitchens. It didn't work though. Counterintuitively for a Bank Holiday, I noticed that some banks were open although the kitchen showroom we'd targeted and its near neighbour were not.