malcontent at the mall

A trip to the mall on Sunday. The big stores don't open until midday, although the smaller ones are open from 10am. We drove through sleepy London streets and parked ahead of many other shoppers, although by the time we returned to the car the surrounding car park had filled.

I discovered a few of the reasons for a decline in walk-in shopping.

The malls have long taken a kind of Las Vegas approach to the internals of the individual stores. Walk around a casino in Vegas and it's impossible to see daylight or the exits. A deliberate design to keep you there longer. In general the mall stores adopt a similar approach, except they don't serve free beverages.

Keep em guessing about where the checkout is. A stupid idea, which this weekend cost D*******s some sales created by the frustration of having signage pointing to non-existent checkouts.

Don't put staff in areas where there might be questions. Another large store favourite. I did see a few personal shopper types being escorted around, but they would have had a somewhat grander budget.

Display goods in the windows which are out of stock. The objective is to get people inside, right?

For clothing, include long racks of clothes with a 'From' labelling on the head of the rack. Ensure one item remains on that rack at the stated price, but boost the price on all the other items.

The above methods are laughingly called retail science, but the ironically named Gruen Transfer and similar tricks don't seem that far removed from snake oil sales.

I could go on, but I think I'll have a coffee and then hit online shopping.

lifestream (anywhen)

Anywhen* I look at twitter nowadays I start to see the first claimants of the '10 years and counting' tweeters. The early adopters with low serial number accounts.

And opinion is divided as we see their reminiscences of the altogether simpler times, 140 characters, no emojis, nothing fancy. A limited audience and maybe 50 followers apiece and that specially delayed refresh time in the early days.

I still follow some of those early day twitterers, before the days of the managed hashtag, mute, advertising, GIFs and the progressive incursion of noise to the feed.

I recently sat in the Turbine Hall and looked at the installed screens, which are part of Phillipe Parreno's current work. An initial simplicity as I tuned in. I could sense alien spaceships, jet aircraft landing, a clicking language, some kind of industrial mayhem, water and birdsong. The sound and light scape ebbed and flowed. You really do have to be there.

I'm told that the room at the far end of the hall contains the science that makes it all happen. Sound and vision driven from a series of microphones and probes around the building, plus a life force that filters what we see manipulated by a living container of yeast.

Like many, I dallied awhile, but didn't feel the need to break open a laptop or smartphone to distract me from the experience. Others had more complex life streams and would be tapping away on virtual keyboards in the midst of the experience, tweet-echoes diminishing their attention towards the installation.

I, like many others, was caught in the moment and wonder of this vast and curious installation.

Anywhen is a South West of England expression. Perhaps I should move there?

in which i go #konmari with the book line

I've been going through that tidying thing, with yet another skip about to depart from outside the house. Each one takes away another 6 cu meters of stuff and I'm now just around the point where something like the Kon-Mari method becomes practical.

I'm struck by the delightful Marie Kondo approach to tidying, which fundamentally involves only keeping things that spark joy. An obvious early part of the method is to discard things.

Yep. Hence the skip(s).

Then to work through various categories for tidying, in a specific order. That's about where I am now, although there's another part that says put all of a certain category together in one place. Okay. Could be difficult because of the sometimes haphazard nature of the prior 'filing system'.

My modest success so far has been to remove many items from indoors, hence the overflowing garage.

However, I could, with a little bit of re-arrangement, re-park a car in there now. I won't though, because I need the floorspace for 'sorting'.

Maybe I should get one of those hats?

Although, come to think of it, that'd only bring a short term spark of joy.

And that brings me to books. For some years now I've gone mainly digital with books. That's except for gifts or books requiring obvious pictures or diagrams. The Kindle works well for me and the ability to swap between devices like Kindle to iPhone to MacBook, creates a great flexibility, with the Kindle giving a pretty good reading experience as well as an ability to change typeface when the going gets tough.

So what to do with the thousands of real books? I decided that most can go. A few have a special history (spark joy), some are immensely practical and used, but many of the rest have already made their way to the local charity shops. I tried using a couple of those recycling points for books. One was completely full and the other only allowed books to be posted in about two at a time. Perhaps a sign of the times?

I can understand the TV cliché of ostensibly learned people sitting in front of big bookcases, but the digital native in me doesn't operate like that.

By the time I've stored, say, 1000 books, that's a lot of space consumed with paper.

I had several ex-indoor bookcases in the garage filled to the brim with stuff, but in the end decided it was better to also add the shelving to the skip.

Curation over quantity. Sparking the Joy.

seasonal central London beach scene

Here we are mid-way into December and the external thermometer is showing 12 degrees Centigrade. No wonder there's people on the sand along the edges of the Thames. I took this picture looking right across to the middle of the City. Spot St Pauls, The Cheesegrater and Cannon Street Bridge.

It's a contrast to indoors at home, where the central heating pump has packed up and needs to be replaced. The local plumbers are all saying how their phones are 'ringing off the hook' at the moment, so it's time for fan heaters to make a short term come-back.
Nevertheless, as I type this from a currently unheated part of the house I'm still getting a 20.6C degree readout from the digital thermometer on the smart meter.

Although, come to think of it, it's also showing 3.345 kW of power consumption, so there must be at least one heater running somewhere.

EdgeGame in Westworld

Part of the programmed endgame of Westworld's first series again reminds me of the conclusion of Punchdrunk's 'A Drowned Man'.

For the avoidance of direct Westworld spoilers, the above picture is from the Punchdrunk show and shows the couple outside the caravan, behind which is a forest where onlookers can walk across the trampled leaves towards the small hilltop where a conclusion plays out. Punchdrunk's world for the show was huge, set across all the floors of a defunct Paddington Post Office sorting office.

Of course, it's still tiny compared with Westworld, although the viewing construct is fairly similar.

Back to Westworld and I also see the overlaps with the second series of Humans. We have robots breaking through from their programmed mind to discover some form of a conscious state. That's in both shows. It takes slightly different paths, one of which is more routed in the inner voice being developed as the result of catastrophe (Westworld). In Humans there's some hidden programming code which can flip the robots up to a higher level.

Westworld positions the idea of a bicameral (two-chambered) mind where an outer reactive being is able to modify behaviour (think) based upon discovered consciousness. Julian Jaynes' bicameral consciousness theory supposes that great catastrophes were the catalyst for the discovery of inner self. Jayne's theory uses the non inward looking Illiad as a reference point. I'm considering the Odyssey-like quests in Westworld too: Homecoming, Wandering, Guest-Friendship, Testing and Omens, maybe?

A scratchy description of this inner self discovery appears in the Westworld story using the consultants' favourite triangle diagram depicting a simplified Maslow hierarchy followed by a magician's trick turning it into an onion diagram. A-maze-ing ;-)

What is also interesting is the idea of the language processing needed to express the feelings that emanate from inner self. The stuttering broken synth called Odi in Humans discovers consciousness but struggles with its extended vocabulary.

Both stories could develop the idea of the other structures needed to make a synth-world which doesn't simply end in all-out conflict.

Anyway, here's Laurie Anderson with Language is a Virus, from the William S Burroughs 'Ticket that exploded' cut-up/fold-in novel about creating insoluble conflicts for the life forms on Earth.

In Burroughs' story the conflicts were put there to destroy, but maybe Westworld ascribes to Nietzsche along the lines of that which does not kill us makes us stronger?

my cardboard virtual reality

I was at a gig recently which had professional VR filming set up using a cluster of GoPro cameras. So far it hasn't been released, but some of the people attending are already looking into the necessary equipment to get that immersive feeling.

Something like the Oculus Rift costs about £550, needs a separate PC to run and probably requires the hand controller to be upgraded for the serious aficionado. It makes going to the original music gig seem like very good value for money.

Then there's the HTC Vive, at a cool £685. It is probably close to the benchmark, although some of the demos are a little bit sketchy.

I decided to start at the other end and see what could be done for almost no money, to get the effect until the technology properly matures. Roll on the Virtoba Reality Viewer V2, which cost me the princely sum of £5. Yes, five quid.

Admittedly there is some modest assembly of the cardboard structure required, but it does include all the velcro, elastic straps and even a rather basic control button. It took me about 2 minutes to get a fully functional unit, including setup of the VR environment via my phone.

The system works by putting a smartphone into the box, and effectively using it to provide the stereoscopic moving pictures, much like a Viewmaster from the olden days.

And it works rather well. I'm sure it's not as good as the expensive models, but at circa 100 times less, its not only 1/100th as good.

In fact, I booted up a 360 degree version of a Mr Robot episode and it was eerily realistic sitting in the room next to Elliot. As I turned my head I got the corresponding change to the view of the room. This example plays with the format too, with the start looking like someone has taken some video on a phone in portrait, before spilling into a 360 degree room (look behind to the open window, or spiral up in the air to look down on the action. Later the same storyline goes outside to Coney Island we are soon on the chairs in that big wheel that features in the TV show. And right in the middle of the conversation.

I've showed my cheap as chips VR to others and had various reactions from 'Yay' to 'I don't like the way it is moving about'. Most people comment on the pixels, which are more visible than, say, watching the same kind of thing on television. It's a factor of the iPhone's resolution, which, despite retina, still needs a further boost for full-on VR.

Here's the Mr Robot 360 unwrapped, but it's much better to watch it properly immersed on a headset viewer like with.in.

So here's a few more with.in viewable extracts: They do boot onto a regular browser and give 360 viewability, but the headset version with the stereoscopic sound is still much better. Even if it did cost £5. And even if it does look rather silly watching VR with a cardboard box.

ungardening

It was time to plant some crocus, snowdrop, daffodil and tulip to boost the garden for the spring. I say that, but it was really time to plant the bulbs about a month ago.

General guidance is to plant between October and December. I know it's December now, but the challenge isn't so much that the bulbs won't grow (they were already sprouting) so much as the civil engineering required to get them into the ground.

I'd managed to pick a sub-zero day to attempt to plant them, knowing that over the next few days it will actually get colder. I tried the usual gardening implements, which just glanced off the ground. I think I only imagined sparks, but suffice to say it was all rock hard.

I've previously mocked a distant neighbour who sometimes drills into the ground to plant bulbs, but that would be one gadget too far.

Instead, I headed to the garden centre to get some compost. How difficult could it be to plant the bulbs in a lovely fresh covering?

I heard that 'neep' sound as I headed to the stacks piled in the open air in the garden centre. I could have worked out that this wasn't a great idea when the door to section had to be specially opened.

Sure, there were plenty of bags available, but rock solid frozen with the bags welded to one another with ice. I hopped between feet, fiddled with the trolley and I tried to look as if I was in the wrong aisle. I could see the man who runs the place looking at me but deciding not to intervene.

Undeterred, I found another type that seemed to be in a more sheltered spot and, yes, I could even lift the bags. Some felt squidgy in a not full of water or ice kind of way.

Then to drive back home with the bags stashed in the car. 24 hours of shelter before deployment and yes, the next day I was able to identify and plant the various bulb types. For my purposes the crocuses look like small electric transformers, snowdrops are tiny, daffodils are like little onions and tulips are thin skinned and white.

Either that or they'll all come up in the wrong place.

just before the meteor hit

My deliberately flared picture today was taken on the South Bank a couple of days ago. It could show the sunshine, but I can't help thinking it looks a bit like one of those meteor pictures in this case headed towards Parliament.

And kind of prescient, given that the stock market seems to be taking a bit of a tumble today, as more odd news creeps out.

Over in Trumpton, first we get the bankroller of Mad Max:Fury Road and Suicide Squad, Steven Mnuchin, to run the Treasury. Not enough? The President Elect has now appointed Mad Dog Mattis to be his Defense Secretary. There was much whooping' and a'hollerin' at the rally in Cincinnati where it was pre-announced.

Mattis is the one who made the quote: "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." His favoured call sign is "Chaos".

Then there's the oil price 'agreement' with Saudi Arabia, which was supposed to bring stability to pricing, but has instead caused investor speculation everywhere. Add in the American payroll announcement which sets the stage for a rate increase in a couple of weeks, so maybe Trump should inherit Mad Dog's callsign? Mattis can revert to Warrior Monk.

In Europe the Italians are getting ready for their referendum at the weekend, which, if Matteo Renzi resigns afterwards, could further destabilise the already frail state of play in that country.

And here in Britain the news is finally sliding out via Hammond and Davis about the expected payments to the EU to remain able to trade. Quelle surprise. The EU has got used to the money from UK and is now looking at ways to continue having it post-Brexit.

Perhaps the Italian referendum or Austrian election this weekend will push another country towards a form of EU-exit? It's certainly knocking the shares around.

counting cranes

Some times if I pause Apple TV when watching something, it will jump into the generic screensaver. One of the views it shows is that flight along the Thames from around Isle of Dogs to Waterloo Bridge.

It's interesting to pick out the landmarks, but also the ones that have already changed since the fly-by was produced. A case in point is the area around the Shell Centre, which is shown intact, although it has been a hole in the ground for more than a year.

Walking past it right now it is clear to see the the replacement apartment blocks going up fast with a commensurately high crane count. Just visible through the gap is the London Eye.

The Radical Eye #Tate #EltonJohn

I managed to drop in on the modernist photography exhibition at the Tate.

The photographs are from Sir Elton John's collection and part way around the show there is a short video of him explaining how he first got into collecting photographs and some of his favourites. The video shows around Elton's Atlanta home, where it looks as if nearly every inch of wall space is covered with photographs.

There's no end of 'greatest hit' type pictures from the likes of Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange. Some of the pictures on show I'd seen before in other exhibitions; as examples the Man Ray Glass Tears (1932) - which was in a Portrait Gallery show a couple of years ago and some of the Lange/Weston Farm Securities Administration series which I saw in a New York show a few years ago.

Beyond the famous pictures there are plenty of lesser known gems (at least to me). A Man Ray picture of his assistant, Berenice Abbot, framed in what would still be a modern format today (below). There's a Henri Cartier-Bresson selfie with his wife, Ratna Mohini, riffing a cool Spanish vibe (top of the post).

They are just two of the many pictures worth an extended view during a browse through what must be 100s on show.

Elton has a few favourites too. The tiny 1917 contact print of the underwater swimmer from André Kertész, or the mysterious 1940 white door of Edward Weston. There's some new topics for me too. A series of Irving Penn pictures shot in an angled faux corner of his studio. Helen Levitt documenting New York in the late 1930s.

The vast majority of the show is monochrome but, unlike some web archival views, the colours of the different papers and techniques are all visible in these many originals, giving a further richness and texture.

To my great joy they have carefully carried the finishes and monochrome colours into the show's excellent catalogue, which was an unmissable item from the shop.

glossing over some P&D

Today's version of the blog theme represents the transition from black back to a brighter look. I found yesterday's black background with white text a bit gloomy - unless it's for a photography site ;)

As a part of the latest household project involves painting and decorating, I thought I'd include a messy background that is representational of the current situation.

In the home project, theoretically I'd be painting the gloss before the matt, but there's an area where it has worked out the other way around, which therefore requires extra care.

The gloss paint also has a more persistent aroma than the emulsion, but we've still managed to create an accidental white stripe along a black coat as a consequence of the redecoration. I used washing up liquid to remove the gloss, which worked surprisingly well.

So, that's the loft cleared, garage rationalisation in progress, a new home for one of the bicycles being sought, and redecoration in progress. At this rate we'll be on schedule for another stage of the process in January.

an example of the the wrong kind of social media

Sometimes it just goes wrong. I received this email yesterday and without opening it, I could see that the party in question haven't quite thought through their social media campaigning.