Tuesday 31 March 2015
Day 165, punches, politics, poverty, sedition
As parliament is dissolved one of the last acts of the Prime Minister was to convey his support, albeit through the proxy of his daughter and her threatened hunger strike. This is clearly a stand-out moment in his Premiership.
When was the last PM to be an advocate of beating an employee that had failed to provide an evening meal? Even Thatcher had the shame to pretend that her (our) employees, the Police, had been attacked by her (our) employees the miners even though the situation was that she had sort of set the Police on the miners. In effect using the police to beat up the miners by proxy - politicians do a lot of this 'proxy' stuff don't they? Is that to prevent them being tarred with the shit, a filthy mixture at the best of times?
Putting Thatcher to one side - the case of the nations employees being set against each other is more complex than a biffing over a steak - then how far back do we have to go?
My knowledge of these sort of matters is scant at best, and as usual in these sort of situations I resort to the historical information amassed by watching all thirty-ish (including specials) episodes of Blackadder. This doesn't really help. So let's resort to making it up.
The Victorians, they were a feisty lot, often not (never?) particularly bothered about the rights of those employed. Usually those employed would have been servants, slaves, that nameless grubby bunch down at the mill, etc. Employees on similar terms to current zero hours contracts, forced or coerced to send their children to Sunday School, for which they had to pay for the privilege, otherwise they wouldn't receive the kindly eye of the employer and they would be out on their ears. Effectively 'you will conform' otherwise we won't employ you, a bit like a smack in the face and a bloody lip, sort of. Ok, so that comes from my thirty-odd year old memory of reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, a book published in 1914, slightly after the Victorians.
Some other Victorians then? Well they were a rum bunch, invading other countries, stripping the mineral assets, imposing rules and conventions for social control - religion, bureaucracy, railway timetables. They also were very vocal about philanthropy, and assisting those from the lower orders by helping tidy up the unhealthy living conditions of the slums, mainly by evicting the residents, knocking the tenements down and building railways in their place, thus it was much cleaner, "the peasants you say? No, they aren't here now, no, no idea where the went, is it important?"
So there we have it, an incisive analysis of the workers right to be punched by their employer. More power to their elbow. And the former PM agrees, even if he daren't say it himself and has to get his daughter to stick up for his neighbour and bezzie mate, by proxy.
What a rotten lot.
Monday 30 March 2015
Day 164, Silver fruit knife
Everyone should have a silver fruit knife. Handy for peeling silver fruit from the precious metal tree.
This one was made in Sheffield by Charles William Fletcher & Sons whose offices were on 'Bramhall Lane', now known as Bramall Lane. The company still exists as part of Fletcher Robinson Ltd.
The Assay Mark is a crown which indicates it was assayed in Sheffield. This crown mark was used from 1775-1975 and since 1975 it has been the York Rose.
The sterling mark silver mark is a lion.
The date letter, a lower case d in this shaped background denotes the year 1921.
The makers mark - CWF - Charles William Fletcher & Sons.
The length of the knife when closed is 6.3cm which is smaller than my little finger.
Do not try to cut anything tougher than a soft pear with it otherwise it is likely to bend.
The mother of pearl scales have a pattern carved into them part of which features a bird perched on the rivet at the bottom end. Watch out the fruit eating bird doesn't eat your kiwi.
Sunday 29 March 2015
Day 163, is it The Tower?
After many years of tunnelling, ground was finally broken in 1994. The trip was undertaken with the objective of commemorating Captain Pierre Arrondissement Flourens historic, horse based, ascent of the North leg in 1894. The timing was crucial for the subterranean odyssey to have any meaning. The exit point was exactly as planned, directly under The Tower and on the appropriate date and time.
Here we look straight up from underneath from breaking soil, right up at what on a human would be the soft delicate under-area. The four legs, or pillars, can be clearly seen. Each one of those four legs has had a great many people negotiate them, not only on horseback but also by mountain bike, pogo stick, and Segway.
A view from the outside of The Tower taken at great risk with the photographer on horseback and while changing saddles at the time - a standard navy issue saddle had been used but at this point it was realised that grip around the upper thigh region was less than adequate, greater friction and stability was achieved by the use of a Sichuan saddle with a higher pommel and cantle.
Falling from this height isn't actually much of a problem, assuming your horse has wings.
A view of the city, slightly higher than that of the typical tourist by about 15 hands.
The West leg was on strike at the time we exited the tunnel, the horse caused a few glances. For the duration of the strike The Tower leaned toward this western corner as the stripey-topped, moustachioed circus strongman had deserted their position, no longer doing leg lifts and holds for the tourists.
An artist's impression of one of the circus strongmen holding up a supporting strut of The Tower.
The Tower can self-support for up to 15 hours a day without the circus strongmen in place. If the strike were to last any longer then the Prefecture of Police of Paris has to draft in the Gendarmerie to take their place.
Saturday 28 March 2015
Day 162, It's The Arts
Good evening and welcome to another edition of 'It's The Arts'. And we kick off this evening with some cheap tat and some old rope.
Here's an important, but often forgotten, mid 90s piece by a little know artist from what was dubbed the 'Young Northern School'.
Titled, 'The rotten, hollowed out tree stump filled with water and decomposing dreams', and worked in wood, water, gouache and rats piss. This piece was said to be symbolic of the lack of representation of Northerners in the Saatchi collection of overpriced art purchased for the purpose of investment and self publicity.
Like Tracey Emin's My Bed it failed to win the Turner Prize, unlike the bed it didn't even make it as a nominee.
The earlier work 'My Lake of Teeth', a two-part piece seen below, was also a failure. Many critics failed to appreciate the work fully, mainly as they didn't travel oop north to immerse themselves in the full mixed-media experience. Those critics that did travel beyond the Watford Gap and managed not to get a nosebleed weren't as receptive as they might have been. The artist should accept some responsibility for this perhaps - part of the full mixed-media immersion involved encouraging critics to view the work from the pictured canal by means of a kick to the backside when caught off-guard. The artist still disputes this view and says that the work is "diminished by any experience other than that which risks Weil's disease".
The reason for the artist's obsession with Leptospirosis is unknown, however it has been noted that there is a desire to encourage various art critics to contract the disease as part of the process of appreciation. The artist has a desire to see an equivalent level of dedication to criticism as there is to the process, indeed the artist has regularly drunk canal water to accelerate the creative process.
That's all from 'It's The Arts' this week, next week we interview a swollen gland on their work in the production of vibrantly coloured puss.
Friday 27 March 2015
Day 161, naming convention, Narrow Walk with LED lights
This footpath lies behind houses in the suburbs of Sheffield, running along side a piece of space that used to contain two reservoirs. There is no signpost to indicate the name, there has never been a signpost. Google appears to have named the gennel as Elmore Footpath, which doesn't seem unreasonable if it doesn't have a name. It also happens to be close to Elmore Road. Elmore Road isn't actually its name. That name has probably appeared by a local human having at some point labelled the path with that name using Google.
The real name can be seen on older maps of the area. Proper maps that is, not the 'almost proper' maps such as those provided by Google. The walkway, path, gennel, is actually called Narrow Walk. And it is quite narrow.
I have nothing against areas picking up new names based on human preference and common usage, although in this case I've never heard this path referred to as Elmore Footpath. Human preference naming happens all the time, The Ponderosa somewhat further down the hill was actually called Port Mahon but the new name stuck and has been adopted. In fact people are now referring to it as Ponderosa Park, which might eventually stick as well. No doubt this happens all the time and is a feature of historic changes - although with formalised mapping by organisations like the Ordnance Survey these changes probably have slowed down significantly.
However with the advent of numerous online mapping tools and individual, un-vetted, human interaction giving the ability to name things, then it's possible for names to change as often as the tides. Perhaps place names will change more often now Google has input and by default decides that any befuddled, beer-filled fool is the authoritative source of information about something because they are the only person to have named a thing. The scope for tomfoolery and pranks is tremendous. That's almost certainly how the US city named after a European country ended up being named after the county town of Yorkshire, all part of a joke after the English took over - that's New Amsterdam to New York. Some pamphleteer in 1664 writing in the 17th Century equivalent of Google, befuddled and beer filled on the recently invented Kronenberg having a laugh at the expense of the new world.
Flickr also has examples of this, they seem to think that Crooksmoon is a place rather than Crookesmoor, which is pretty good, I've not met anyone that dislikes this error. I suspect that Flickr doesn't have the sort of clout that other services have and this will not fall in to common usage.
Here's Narrow Walk from top to bottom. The labels on each of the new LED lights also show the name of the path, that's probably the first time it has ever been written there.
Thursday 26 March 2015
Day 160, housing upgrades
In September 1994 Sheffield City Council tendered for refurbishment work to be done as part of the North West Inner City Action Plan. This work was to improve the three remaining tower blocks in Upperthorpe that had not been refurbished. These were the two blocks at the top of Martin Street and the one block on Oxford Street.
There had been much heated discussion and debate about the delay in the refurbishment of these blocks as the bottom four had already been finished. The Lib Dem council at the time didn't want to do all seven blocks at once for some reason. This resulted in two separate tender processes and a lot of duplicated work and additional expense. There was never an adequate explanation given for this.
Here's the view down Martin Street from the Oxford block as work is commencing. It is just possible to make out the pairs of pylon type structures attached to each side of the block straight ahead. This is where the cradle the width of the block was attached.
The balconies on the blocks were enclosed as part of the work. The image below shows how the waste disposal chute on the balcony was boxed in behind a further door.
The view towards Brook Hill, the Arts Tower and the yet to be refurbished blocks on Brightmore Drive.
By the time the Brightmore Drive blocks were refurbished there was a shortage of money available and so corners were cut, the improvements were not done to as high a standard. The kitchens weren't refitted and the small square window next to the balcony (visible in the top picture) was filled in.
Heating for the Martin Street and Oxford blocks was provided by a purpose built, district heating system. The heating building can be seen between the blocks near the bottom of The Ponderosa. As the heating system wasn't run by any of the profiteering private energy companies the cost to residents was (and still is) very reasonable - although given the amount of insulation the buildings have there is hardly any need for heating other than for the hot tap.
*Heating update 27-03-2015. It has been drawn to my attention that the district heating is now being set at the same rate for all 'community' heating across the city. The new rate is
Usage / Unit Charge
|
3.38 pence per kWh
|
Weekly Standing Charge
|
£4 per week
|
which was confirmed in April 2014.
Wednesday 25 March 2015
Day 159, organising data gathering
Thinking about organising data for various projects. Some of the data is in the form of research, hunting down resources on the web.
This represents one page of random Google bookmarks saved for further reference. These were all unlabelled, 72 unlabelled in total, that's 3 pages. There are over 300 labelled bookmarks, that's 24 pages.
| Cubee - Alien Grey by ~CyberDrone on deviantART - deviantart.com |
Maybe at some point these bookmarks will be revisited, if I can recall why they were collected in the first place.
Some of the labels only have a single bookmark associated with them, e.g. lighting, northern college, bread. Day to day things of passing interest.
Other labels have many bookmarks associated with them, e.g. cloudObject (36), cloudMetadata (10), cloudSecurity (13), but then these formed part of the research set for my dissertation.
And one single, second level module even had 56 bookmarks. I thought that was overkill but looking back, Shannon's equation, High Speed Packet Access, and all the other communications stuff that needed to be assimilated for one 60 credit course was immense.
There's almost certainly a better way of organising resources, bookmarks really are the cheap and cheerful method.
*Wanders off in search of the magic answer.
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