Days Like These
Every day, I receive emails, newsletters and catalogues informing me about some small subset of the thousands of potentially interesting things on in London. If I’m really paying attention in the moment, I might actually get around to typing some of them into my ipaq and maybe even get around to booking. More usually, though, the moment that I see the information is a moment when my attention is mostly occupied with something else: looking though email for an important messsage from a client, or opening letters in the hope of finding a long-chased invoice. Most event invitations simply get …
Feed Me Weird Times
I’ve been looking at the practical details of open calendar services and schedule aggregation/syndication. Seems, at the moment, that there are sufficient tools to make calendar syndication possible, and a gentle bubbling-under of interest in the idea. Personally, I’m of the opinion (a more reflective post on why to follow shortly) that schedule aggregation might well be the Next Big Hyped Thing, so I’ve wanted to check out the state-of-the art. So far, iCal and SunBird seem the best mainstream tools for creation of standards-based, internet-accessible calendar information (over the web via webDAV). The best tool for web-based publication (of …
Routine Bites Hard
Stencil on White’s Row on the weekend.
Glitch
Indescribably beautiful glitch on my music server tonight, randomly time- and pitch-shifting parts of tracks as they playback. A reboot cured it, but seemed completely appropriate for a day when that idiot and by extension his wranglers ended up still in place, perverting the world…
(Not Necessarily) Talking ’Bout a Revolution
[adapted from an email exchange with Axel at SMLXL] It’s funny how bottom-up, transformative organisational change is usually portrayed as a gung-ho, networked culture youth thing… When I worked for (as it then was) Yamatake-Honeywell in Tokyo, we used to go out to places like the Nissan car factories, where the kaizen quality control systems were entirely bottom up — individual guys on the line had almost complete freedom to find ways of improving process, and the organisation had very well organised systems and communities in the corporate hierarchy to make sure that those tweaks and improvements got picked up, …
Coquelicot Jelly and Brébis Cheese
…from Cérét market for lunch last Sunday with Mary and Ann in Laroque des Albères. Can’t find the poppy jelly anywhere online. Anyone know where I can buy it in London?
Vivid
Busy week. Have been in Amsterdam (lovely) and South of France (also lovely). On Sunday we went to a hifi show in the wasteland hotels near Heathrow airport. Many average or averagely good things, and we ended up short of time, so didn’t get to see everything. But the standouts, by far were the Avantgarde Duo and Vivid speakers. The Duos demonstrated (at least from vinyl, through decent valve amplification) the most transparent sound I’ve ever heard. The Vivids, on the other hand, seemed ready for absolutely anything — not as ætherial as the Duos, but as happy with every …
Anubis and Other Automata
Since the 80s, Paul Spooner, Matt Smith and a few like-minded craftspeople have been turning out hand-cranked wooden automata which are in varying degrees witty, dark, twee and incredibly intricate. Once upon a time, their work lived at the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre in Covent Garden, now long-gone. Since then I had lost track of the whole scene, but according to the Observer last weekend, this stuff is now considered very collectable. There’s a retrospective starting at Gallery 27 in Cork Street on September 20th. Evidently Spooner’s intricate mechanisms are inspired by the four-volume Ingenious Mechanisms for Designers and Inventors, edited …
Outlook vs Newton
Back in 1995, my Newton could do stuff like schedule meetings when I made a note that I needed to, say, meet Tim on Friday, and even made a good heuristic attempt at guessing which Tim. Here we are in 2004, and if I get an email from Peter asking if I can do lunch on Friday, Outlook can’t parse that and offer to put it in my diary for me. Progress.