waze of connection

We were using two sat nav systems simultaneously. There was the one in the Italian car, which was based upon TomTom, but used Stephen Fry's voice. The other one was Google Waze, which is actually pretty good and has the ability to give countdowns (in feet!) to vehicles parked on the hard shoulder on motorways.

Waze uses the idea of a connected citizen protocol to provide the realtime updates and is surprisingly good, considering the current uptake of users. It's almost as if it has wider access to, say, cellphone positioning, so that a non-wazer might be providing an anonymous input to the system.

Of course, Google want to monetise the interaction. Sell adverts on the map. Pizza places, coffee shops and no doubt much more.

The challenge of a Waze map will be to keep it placid enough so that it could be used as a primary source for a driver, without distractions.

How well did it work?

Excellent except for the last few metres...

It's that last vital section to a destination when the fun kicks off.

We were aiming for somewhere behind an industrial park (not the section shown on my illustration).

The roads were a mixture of established and new. "Go left", said Stephen. "Go right," said the female voted Waze.

An argument ensued for the next few turnings, but fortunately our destination was also signposted, so good old analogue roadsigns won out for the last 800 twisty metres.

Devon Belle

Time to try out the newly-restored Devon Belle observation carriage on the Kingswear line. The line runs regular services which are steam hauled along a pretty piece of the Devon coastline. Add some sunshine and what's not to like?

The observation car runs at the end of the train, so in one direction it is the last coach and in the other direction it is coupled to the engine, in this case 7827 Lympston Manor, an ex GWR 4-6-0, in a black British Railways livery.

The journey time is around 30 minutes to the other end of the line, along the river Dart and then the pretty coastal bays leading towards Paignton. Getting into the observation car is a case of first-come, first-served, with a separate modest supplement to travel in Pullman splendour. I noticed that there was a separate Champagne bar too, sensibly closed when we made our way along the line.

Chelsea in bloom

Around Chelsea during the flower show, it's a good idea to plan routes to avoid getting stuck in traffic. That's both road traffic and simply pedestrian people traffic.

An extra and fun dimension is the extra show that takes place at the same time, in and around Sloane Square and Sloane Street. Chelsea in Bloom's theme this year has been Summer of Love, so there's Haight Ashbury corners and plenty of hippy-dippyness.

Spot the VW camper vans and the inevitable red buses as well as many floral arches suitable for posing underneath.

My favourite this time was the store right on the corner of Sloane Square. Not Peter Jones, but Rag and Bone, the store diagonally opposite,

renewal?

I was looking at that Jordan Wolfson sculpture in the Tate the other day. The one where a larger than life puppet boy gets jerked around on huge chains by mechanical cranes.

I suppose its a metaphor. Something about morality teetering on a brink. The puppet boy's soundtrack is also pretty bitter. Like it wants to break free and wreak havoc.

There's a room full of spare parts too. The forces are so great that the puppet requires regular renewal.

a brief stopover in Windsor

Like many, we took a slice out of the day to watch the wedding.

It's good when the capital city and its surrounding areas are shown off in such a good light. The wedding might be partly about hereditary privilege and establishment ritual, but it's still an excellent excuse for a good time and an opportunity to reflect upon potential change.

We've already been along to Windsor and noticed that it's almost instantly resumed its normal somewhat touristy self, across the river from the the expansive playing fields of Eton. And with all of the fine weather we spotted far more wet bobs than dry bobs.

busy with the backfill

I'm rushing about a bit at the moment, and the blog is suffering from a lack of posts.

My snapshot of a favourite view of City Hall on Thursday could illustrate a kind of speed distortion, and no, I've not manipulated the angles.

re cycle

My cycling fitness is starting to rise again after a longish period of inactivity. I've even started to look up some of the cycle friendly routes around this area, although I'm travelling again and won't really be able to do much cycling for another few weeks.

To my astonishment, the Strava stats show I am only about 250 miles behind my 'year to date' pace which I define as 4,000 miles. I'll need to look into that more carefully because it doesn't feel to me as if I've been cycling that much over the last few months.

Around here I'm using my rugged bike to begin with, until I know more about the quality of the cycle paths. At least I've had a few flybys on Strava, which has given me some access to other people's routes.

Handy to trace the way that 'proper cyclists' go, so that I can find the best routes without too many false starts. Once I've tried one of the proper routes, expect (at last!) to see a map.

IKEA köttbullar without jams

The newest IKEA in the land is now open quite close to us. We had an invitation to a preview open-day on Tuesday and late afternoon we made our way along.

I'm pretty sure that IKEA grapples with the challenges of road systems and parking, with my memories of huge delays when foolishly visiting an IKEA in Southampton at a weekend and long delays at one close to Bristol. Both times within sight of the store but unable to get in for over an hour.

I gather there's 21 of them in the UK now, so presumably the pressure on individual stores reduces, although, IKEA is still an example of destination shopping, with this one 90 minutes closer to the far west than the prior one. I think the nearest one to Penzance is in Brest.

Anyway, this one has its own slip roads and traffic lights and for these early days a series of cones to regulate traffic flow. A right turn into the site has been coned off and a way to access it from a nearby housing area has also been coned.

Our own journey was therefore easy and reminded me of the simple way to access the IKEA adjacent to Metro Centre in off-peak times. I suppose IKEA have done a soft start to the store, with a friends and family day, press day, 'locals' day and 'family card members' day all ahead of the main opening.

Sure enough, there was music and balloons as we approached, but once inside it was just like walking around in any large IKEA store. Arrows on the floor. Plenty of Billy and Kallax and the cafe just before the marketplace. A feature here, which I don't remember from other stores, was the special shortcut signage reminiscent of a tube line graphics. And there was an outdoor living area in a greenhouse. By the end there were plenty of lanes open to avoid any early rumours of excessive queueing.

So far it all seems to have worked, although there's an upcoming test when The Chiefs, the County Show, the Scouts and Guides camping weekender and the new IKEA all compete for roadspace.

I must remember to stay away from that particular stretch of road.

art house?

I was trying to dig the tunnel. Not because I needed it yet, but at the end of this academic year my language course ends and there isn't an obvious follow-up. Some people do the same course again, but I'm looking for something related but different.

Stammtisch, I thought. Perhaps there's a regular pub meeting in the area where we can converse?

And yes, there is, although when I made contact, the main organiser was swamped with other things. Would I like to organise the next meeting?

Chuckle. In sich hinein kichern. Gern.

Gladly.

That's how a group of us found ourselves in the bar at the Phoenix local arts hub, having a drink und lebhaftes Gespräch before going to see a Film.

By some strange luck I'd plucked an evening for the meetup which co-incided with the venue showing a modern German language film, with English subtitles.

First, in the bar, our group arrived and chattered away. I started learning new words as we veered around topics.

And then to Studio 74, with its excellent sound system and nice bright screen, watching "Western", an F-rated movie directed by Valeska Grisebach, her third movie and this one set in modern-day Bulgaria.

It's a culture-clash drama in which she features many of the trappings of a conventional western: a stranger comes to town. A white horse. A fight in a saloon.

Intermingle 'a Germans in Bulgaria' theme and there's room for a slow burn narrative to explore and probe the people on this edge. Formally, the story is of a group of German workers who start a tough job at a remote construction site on the Bulgarian border. Oblivious to sentiment, they fly a German flag over their encampment.

The foreign land awakens these men's sense of adventure, but they are confronted with their own prejudice and mistrust.

Grisebach’s thinking deconstructs the western and reassembles it anew, updated for the twenty-first century world of migratory labour and economic fragility.

Oh yes, and parts of it were spoken in Bulgarian, emphasising the difficulty of communication between the 'two tribes'.

I think our whole group enjoyed the movie, which was strikingly different from anything on show at the local Vue cinema.

Some of us gathered again afterwards for a follow-up in the bar. I mused that I could give better street directions than I could film reviews 'auf Deutsch'.

fever in the funk house now

This council election results are tumbling in. Consensus seems to be status quo, maybe minus the 'kippers and plus a few orange and greens.

I'm still struck by how little information there was around ahead of the vote. Three of the candidates around my way didn't post any information. The other one did, but was the incumbent making sure they were retained.

In my search, I logged onto various sites to try to get information. I was at least interested to find out if the addresses given were real households rather than addresses of convenience.

Where I found some further information I neutrally uploaded it to the relevant informational web-site. To my slight intrigue, some of this information had subsequently been deleted again by another anonymous user.

My sources for information were -ahem- impeccable government web-sites so the deletions reminded me of another aspect of news management. I suppose I could, in theory, log into the same democracy web-site and put up either scurrilous information or delete factual information that was detrimental to my own candidate.

But, I suppose no-one really cares about any of this stuff any more.

Like today's minister voices recorded with bullying allegations against The Speaker of the House of Commons and then the immediately issued rebuttals, it remains pure Punch and Judy.

Putting the crazy into democracy, one could attempt to say.

blending with the curtains

I've just finished reading that James Comey book: A Higher Loyalty, which reads more as a summary of Comey's career rather than specifically about the White House in recent times.

I can see what Comey is doing, building a set of values which he recounted from other pre-Trumpian times. Comey's dealings with the mafia. Comey's dealings with people who made lies a way of life. Comey's experiences of bullies. Comey's experiences of leaders. Comey and family values. The list goes on

It set up in the reader's mind a series of inevitable comparisons with today's crazy capers at the White House.

Today's chain reaction of tweets about the $130,000 funnel from Trump to Cohen to that Daniels/Clifford woman add to the complex web. Just look at the recent tRumptweets about this and notice the style change as a lawyer prepares the exceedingly long sentences.

Comey illustrates an interesting moot point about where a private citizen's world begins and ends and therefore the boundary of an FBI Director. Given the rattled circumstances of Trump's firing of Comey, I'll go with Comey's unrestricted view of this and of his freedom to act and publish.

I've read a couple of the other books (Fire and Fury by Wolf and Collusion by Harding) which give more of the mechanics and reactions to the Trump malaise, with Comey being obtusely at arms length from much of what may have happened.

Comey's book gives more of a sense of Comey than it does of Trump, although someone who has been chasing Mafia bosses and leading the FBI may well be playing a very long game.

paracup

Around our way, a basic dishwasher-proof mug costs around £5. A fancy mug maybe £10. One of those bamboo facsimiles of a paper cup also costs around £10. I checked today. I already have a metal vacuum flask which I sometimes use on a long car journey.

Any of these could be used to buy coffee on the go, avoiding the wasted paper cup problem. But all of these shapes keep the mug and cup paradigm. (Alert! Alert! one of those danger words!)

What about a cup that doesn't take up so much space? A shapeshifter mug? A collapsible cup? I've had them before, for camping trips with a backpack, although often a plastic mug wins out in such a case.

Cue the Pokito. It may have a name that is difficult to remember, but the idea is quite clever. A collapsible cup that can be configured in various sizes. And once the beverage is consumed, it can be squashed flat again to take up the least space.

Yes, I have one.