Let's play videoconferencing

The rise in video conferencing over the last couple of days has been extraordinary. Here's my experience of a few varieties.

APPLE FACETIME GROUP CALLING

This is the easiest one to use, but it only works for people with Apple hardware. It's so easy to just add extra people to a call and doesn't cost anything. Need to pursuade the rest of the WIndows-owning or android-owning family to shift allegiances.

SKYPE

Ah. The venerable skype. Also relatively easy to set up and on many computers already. Works across multiple platforms (Windows/Apple etc), but can be troublesome to get the right version which needs to interface with the right browser. Can have a tendency to sound like it is underwater.

Still, it fairly reliable and also cheap. I particularly like the blur background feature with this one. We are using it for the German Group.

ZOOM

For the cool cats. It used to cost about £11 per month, but there's a free option now which gives 40-minute calls. I like Zoom and it is very simple to set up and use with simple big buttons. Used by thesixtwenty.com and the local choir.

Good audio and can handle many dial-ins. I like the fun ability to change the animated backgrounds - swaying palm trees and surf rolling in.

TEAMS

Microsoft Teams come with Office 365, although it is hidden and does not show up as an option for download. It think itused to be called messenger. It is one of the least friendly systems, and contains some amazing error messages, which are okay if you are a systems developer, with good internal knowledge of Azure Active Directory. We are attempting to use it as a family facility.

Of course, there's more than this list - Google hangouts and Facebook are a couple of examples, but I think I've picked the common ones, at least the ones that get used around here.

sign O' the times

Yesterday was a tricky day for me. I made the 378 mile drive from Newcastle in the North East to Exeter in the South West, planning to go to my German Stammtisch in the evening.

I was back in time to meet at the pub, but during the journey, the bluffer came onto the news and advised that we shouldn't go to the pub. It left me with something of a dilemma because I knew that several people would make the effort to attend, and so I decided to go, making it an exceptional visit ahead of the new lockdown.

By today we are operating in new times. Any sense of control from the government is illusory, with markets tanking, insufficient healthcare provisioning, and fibs from the people at the top about such things as liaison with supermarket chains.

We can recognise the moves too. It is covering up the unpreparedness for the emergency. The flip-flop of decisions and the background scrape of whiteboard markers dreaming up new charts to show how things are All Right Really. Our frontman claims that the UK is leading the world in handling the emergency. Bunkum. The UK is trying to catch up.

The picture shows 2020 gift suggestion of loo rolls, pasta and hand sanitiser

Redcoat and Last Seen Bensham Road

I managed to get to the theatre one more time before the hammer came down and everywhere closed. It was at the excellent Live Theatre’s Elevator Festival which offers a platform for new work. I was lucky enough to see solo shows Last Seen Bensham Road and Redcoat, which were presented as a double bill.

Last Seen Bensham Road, written and performed by Samantha Neale, tells Tanya's story of a struggling single mother who considers herself inadequate as a parent. She explores themes of being without money and unable to calm her screaming son. There are other mums at her son's school who are better off and Tanya wants to hide away from their stares and judgements. She wishes she could just disappear until one day, she literally does.

Then there was Redcoat a partially autobiographical piece, recounting writer and performer Lewis Jobson’s experiences working as a Redcoat entertainer in Bognor Regis "Once a Red, always a Red."

He bursts onto the stage and radiates kilowatts of energy and charm as he indulges the audience in a day in the life of a Redcoat.

Sparse staging gives Lewis more room to perform, and we get some real Redcoat crowd-pleasing mixed in with the life backstage. I thought it was a tour-de-force, blending physical comedy, sketches, singing, dancing and -er- balloon modelling, all performed with fun and a kind of cheeky craziness.

There's almost too many 'That bit's' in it...That bit where the audience fills in on the Karaoke...That bit where Pingu turns up at the night club...That bit where he has to describe and mimic each of his co-singers...and so on.

Lewis shows the other side of the life, too, with comments about having a smile permanently welded to his face, the hangovers from the nights out/days off and the gentler moments as he entertains the smaller guests.

Amazing.

influencer?

I know we're supposed to take the Covid-19 seriously. Wash our hands, drink hot salty water, be prepared to self-isolate. But I can't quite get my head around the latest Boris television broadcast. I know he wants to be the statesman and to keep calm in a crisis, but it all rings somewhat hollow with me. Like he's skim-read the text and is now reciting. it. with. long. pauses. for gravitas.

Yesterday the Stock market crash-landed and the day before Boris's chums shoved out a budget which was a U turn against the ones that George Osborne had been pushing for the last ten years. Austerity, no, strike that, Spend.

As for taking back control, the markets seem to be saying no to that. And now the 50,000 nurse vacancies illustrate the hole that the current regime's previous leadership have got us into.
Boris is slightly better at reading than tRump, but they both have the aura of spray-on golden autoprompter stunts, fed from a back-room somewhere.

The market may be blipping positive again today. Not the 2200 points positive that it needs to recover. The media quoted daily percentage loss is no true reflection of the 27% loss which has occurred over the last two weeks. That's more than a quarter off the valuations of everything. But at least the heatmap has turned positive again.

Well, despite the rumours, Dilyn the Dog manages to hang in there.

42 - don't panic

How cruel and cynical when people monetize COVID-19? We've seen the FTSE100 drop by 2000 points and wipe billions from share prices. It's supposed to be about virus uncertainty. Nope. It's about profit taking.

Fat cats have done okay out of this on the way down and can now buy cheap equities on the way back up again. Kerching.

Now the Russians, Saudi Arabia and Americans are squabbling over oil prices to mix in more uncertainty. The Americans can wash their hands in messy shale oil production $65, with Texan oil needing to be around $50, Russian around $42 and Saudi around $80 per barrel for break even. The sustained low prices ($35?) will crash smaller players out of the market as big players buy market share. tRump will say it's good for the motorist, of course.

I've been travelling recently and I noticed one UK hotel I was booked to stay had closed. It was preparatory work for a National Isolation Centre, where travellers could be booked into isolation. The men on the gate in yellow hats were very pleasant and handed me the three-page explanation.

Never a dull moment.

Þingvellir in Bláskógabyggð, site of the Althing Parliament

We travelled to Þingvellir, which is in Bláskógabyggð, southwestern Iceland, near the peninsula of Reykjanes and the Hengill volcanic area.

Þingvellir is a site of historical, cultural, and geological importance and is the site of a rift valley that marks the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

When the Icelandic Parliament (the Althing) formed, in AD930, where better to assemble the entire population of 60,000, than at this site?

blue lagoon

An essential visit during time in Iceland is to go to the Blue Lagoon. I was unprepared for the luxurious experience that greeted us. It is a myriad of intercoinnected lagoons, with their water heated from the nearby geothermal rocks, and utilising drill holes that go down 2000 metres.

But oh, it is so much more. Covering an area of 400,000 m² in the heart of the Reykjanes UNESCO Global Geopark, Blue Lagoon is a place where nature, science, design, and wellness converge, creating a world of 'warmth, wonder, and wellbeing'.

There are paths connecting all of its experience areas, although the best plan is to walk along blue waterways through landscapes rich with geothermal, geological, and floral phenomena.

It is pamper central, with fluffy bathrobes, and two or three skin creams to apply to help shed those years.

There's the bar in the pool, where one can partake of beverages, and the lagoons go on seemingly forever. Yes, it is vast and heated to a very warm temperature, which makes wandering around in the icy winds very enjoyable. Just remember where you've left the dressing gown for any short walks in the air!

Harpa

Strolling around Reykjavik, this time to Harpa, the grand concert hall opened in 2011. It has the name of a pagan season, voted for by the people of the city. There is a granduer about the architecture with sweeping internal vistas and views across to the glaciers.

And then, at night, it illuminates, with flickering lights running along the glass shape. And check out that long staircase.

our only goal will be the western shore

Yes, I've a video of this as well. Horizontal snow at the western shores of Garður, facing out towards the Greenland sea. It is cold enough when the snow blows like this, although in a single day we seem to get a change of weather every couple of hours.

Layers are good.

I come from the land of the ice and snow

From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow
The hammer of the gods
We'll drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, and sing and cry
'Valhalla, I am coming!'

Okay, maybe not quite so dramatic, but a bracing trip to a home of the Norse gods seemed like a good idea.

So here we are in Reykjavik, where the snow blows horizontal and the shop signs are written in a undarleg elven tunga.

In practice, the Norse gods were phased out in AD 1000, when the Þjóðkirkjan (Lutheran Church) was imposed by an act of Parliament.

Indeed, the pagan idols were chucked into the Goðafoss waterfall, and most of the country was made Catholic for five centuries until the Lutherans came along.

There's still plenty of references to the pagan gods around the town too, and I couldn't help noticing the tee-shirts worn by locals with various Jimmy Page and Robert Plant lyrics. Led Zep visited Iceland on a cultural mission, encouraged by the Icelandic government and penned the hammer of the gods' line which became a model for all of heavy metal.

We are staying in the middle of town too, which is a surprisingly short walk to anywhere. More of that later.

Parasite at the movies

I know that the Parasite movies cleaned up at the Oscars, which automatically deems it a good movie. I was more circumspect. A great premise. Set in South Korea, a likeable-roguish family living in squalor get to trick their way into the home of a sleek super-rich family.

Light touch humour progressively darkening, blended with social commentary and cinematically shot.

The poor basement dwellers get free fumigation, when the man with the spray walks the street while they deliberately leave their windows open. They get free wifi too, from the adjoining businesses, so long as they sit on the loo to receive it. Then a lucky break to go tutoring at the rich house. A fake University certificate is all that is needed. 괜찮아요 - gwaenchanayo - no problem.

It makes a change from the family's routine of folding pizza-boxes for piece work rates. We see the whole family is able, through deception, to gain employment at the rich house, with its hissing sprinkler-fed lawn. Yes, the understated class struggle.

Ki-taek: Rich people are naive. No resentments. No creases on them.
Chung-sook: It all gets ironed out. Money is an iron. Those creases all get smoothed out.

The Micawber-like father of the subterranean poor house has an aroma, noticed by the rich family's child who innocently pairs it with the aroma of the replacement housekeeper. That's a portent to the unhinging of the plot. There are no rich monsters in the rich house, but a claustrophobic and twisted situation leads to a striking denouement.

The pace of the ending was at odds with the prowl of the first three-quarters of the movie. I can't say more, although I'm intrigued at the fashions of movie selection when this subtitled piece grabs so many of the main awards.

catching a cold in the markets.

There I was, walking around Chinatown in Soho. Meantime three miles further east, a euphemistically named correction was taking place to the stock market.

Correction makes it all sound scientific and numerate, doesn't it? Not just a load of algorithms and (mainly) lads with commission targets trying to get rich quick.' drunk on youth, fueled by greed, and higher than kites,' as Jordan Belfort's Wolf of Wall Street put it.


The market's record-breaking drop of 10% is the definition of a correction, and it means that for every £100k invested in a pension plan, there's now only £90k and someone has liquidised the gap.

A nice commission? Yes, and another one when the markets start to go up again.

It's all a bit panicky really, but no-one understands the impacts. A quick look at the CDC data from John Hopkins University in the USA shows that Coronavirus pales into insignificance compared with regular influenza in the USA, yet it has allegedly created the market mayhem.

Our part-time Prime Minister is hiding in the fridge in miscellaneous grace-and-favour mansions (Chevening & Chequers) until Monday when, after another ;-) announcement, he'll finally run a Cobra meeting about the Chinese flu, which is being used as the scapegoat for all of the market shenanigans.