Day 256, Toxic cloud prompts process change

Fabrication at the soldering plant has had to take a back seat.  For the moment I'm on the lookout for a tube of some sort - from an air con device, tumble dryer, vacuum cleaner, that sort of thing - with which I will construct a fume extraction system.

Apparently inhaling the fumes of tin/lead solder with rosin flux is bad for you.  Not that I've suffered any ill effects this week, I've been soldering intermittently for around 40 years so any oddities that exist have been around for some time.  However I have been told that I contravene health and safety regulations and must change my ways, so it will be done.

The fumes are a little unpleasant.  And, having to virtually put my nose on the soldering iron to see what is happening means I do get a face full.

So that's exciting.

Moving on.

So thinking of back seats (I mentioned 'back seat' in earlier purely to get this reference in here) here's a picture of the back of a car with a bumper sticker.

The sticker seems to suggest that God's will negates the need for motor insurance.

Good luck with that if pulled over by the rozzers.

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Day 255, Invisible comedy, the new black?

What is it with comedians these days, they're never there when you want them to be.

Is this the new alternative, we cannot see them, the alternative to visibility?  Oh yes this is a funny joke I think I can carry it on for a bit - no, wait, it doesn't make any sense to anyone else due to lack of context.

My running joke, if indeed that is what it is (and if anyone other than me is aware of it) is that whenever I go to see a show I take a photo of the 'live activity' with my phone.  My phone has an Instagram filter which removes the comedian from the image, and often much of the audience may be removed too.  This is because the picture is taken before they, etc...

Yes, I know, it isn't particularly amusing.  However it amuses me whenever I'm at an event about to see a comedian and I take a picture of the empty stage which I then tweet with the Instagram filter 'line'.

My theory is that if I persevere with it long enough then it will eventually become funny.  Eventually may even be years, that isn't a problem, I'm prepared to front it out for that long, the laugh will eventually be worth it, probably.

So who is the invisible comedian tonight?

It's Stewart Lee.  And as it happens he has for many years done a similar version of this 'joke'.  Not the 'invisible comedian' but the repetition of something in itself not funny until it eventually becomes funny, then stops being funny, becomes funny again, etc.

Of course when he does the joke in that form it genuinely is funny, eventually, but then he has been doing it a long time and is pretty damn good at it.

Me on the other hand, well I'm just dicking about, and the premise of this joke is automatically time-limited by the naming of a specific technology from a world of high turnover, here today, gone tomorrow technology types.

There is also the fact that his audience understands the context of all of this and so it needs no explanation, or for the bulk of the audience that are familiar with his work at least.  This often leads onto another routine of his with regard to those that aren't as familiar with his work, but I'll say no more.

Anyway, the picture above shows Stewart Lee on stage in a packed Lyceum Theatre.  However, an intrusive Instagram filter has yet again rendered the comedian invisible, why does that keep happening?

Obviously this Instagram joke contains a subtext about technology being used to create an inauthentic representation of events with the intent of creating a response to that of something which is greater than the actuality.

Is that being overly verbose and pretentious for the sake of it, or is it because in the limited time available it is not easy to be concise?

Will we ever know?

And is it funny.

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Day 254, Resistance is useless

Bits wearing out.  That's the general impression of ageing.

Or in the parlance of an engine rebore, or of the department store comedy of the 1970s, perhaps they are wearing in.  If so then in this case it is not desirable.

Being able to see stuff far away was the first loss.  Ok, so wearing specs isn't such a big deal and like magic everything suddenly becomes crisp again - oh look, those things are actually leaves, amazing.

Then the close up stuff goes.  This is where you discover that the world doesn't give a monkeys about people that can't read small writing.  It helps out that manufacturers generally aren't interested in you seeing what crazy things they put in foodstuff, and so they make claims about it having to fit on the packaging.  Well I say hooey.

Worse though is that virtually anything you might do for enjoyment or relaxation at some time requires you to be able to see small stuff.  Sewing, reading, arranging toothpicks in to a recreation of the Mary Celeste, re-enactments of the Nuremberg trials using ants (I'm not judging you, you chose your hobby, who am I to say it's weird), all of these things require good close-vision.

And the above limitation on the eye muscles that are used to focus is what has held up my attempt to solder some components onto a circuit board.  It's possible to get close enough to see the components exist in the same postcode, but when trying to get close enough to attach them they become a blurry mass.

The magnifiers are in the post.

Harrumph.

We can't hold back these changes, resistance is useless.

Here's a Vogon to force home the point.

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Day 253, The comedy fitness conjunction of the 42p Vincent Black Shadow

The fastest standard motorcycle.

And another representation within a representation of a stamp.

Dream machine of Hunter S. Thompson.

I have never owned or ridden one of these.

If a piece of machinery could be said to be beautiful then this fits the bill.

Not subject to the transient nature of fashion.

I can smell the hot oil and get a waft of unburnt petrol just from the picture.

It had automatic timing in an era when people still used a manual advance/retard lever on the handlebars.

I've ridden much later British bikes that still had manual ignition, get it right or hole a piston.

If you can find one for sale it'll set you back anything from £17000 to £70000plus.

It'll be around long after even the most expensive piece of gaudy tat of a digital watch has gone for landfill.

Invest now.  I have twenty, yes 20, for sale, right now, hurry.

Send cash in the form of a bankers draft to purchase this unique investment opportunity.

If you can guess the meaning of the blog title you win a prize.

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Day 252, Number stations

While thinking about wireless transmission I was reminded of the number stations.

Hang on, that's a bit of an odd introduction, why any of that?

At one time I had access to a radio scanner and had listened to some pretty interesting things.  It was possible to listen to mobile phone conversations (one half at least), emergency services, police broadcasts and on one occasion this included a response to a murder.  Obviously if anyone asks then I didn't listen to any of these things and I'm making it up, much like everything else here, due to possible legal issues.  I was wondering what there was to listen to in the twenty first century now that most transmission is digital and encrypted.  Number stations were the thing that came to mind, so I set off to find some.

Number stations broadcast sequences of spoken numbers at set times on particular days.  There are variations on this in that some are in morse code and other broadcasts are sequences of tones.  There's a pretty good BBC radio programme here on the YouTube for further background information on number stations and one well know one called 'the Lincolnshire poacher'.

So how do you do this magic listening stuff then?

Well, handily there is a station schedule here giving the frequencies and times that known number stations broadcast.  You don't need any fancy equipment to listen to number stations as the website also gives a link to this Dutch website which uses Software Defined Radio (SDR).  Clicking the link on the first site launches the Dutch site tuned to the next broadcast frequency.  SDR is a method of reproducing a wireless receiver entirely in software, it also allows multiple different frequencies to be listened to by multiple different people simultaneously.

So what is this numbers stuff all about?

These broadcasts are absolutely nothing to do with spies, oh no, let me be absolutely clear.  No, not spies.  They are almost certainly special mind control tricks used by aliens, and in fact my mind, for what it is worth, is under alien control.  Oh yes.

Here's a recording I did from using the software defined radio and listening to one of the number stations.

Now I have no memory of why I was thinking about wireless transmission.

Who am I again?

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Day 251, hell's toothpicks, let me get on

Oh my, oh my.

IT is great isn't it, it's all to do with computers.

No IT isn't as can be ascertained by the one hundred and fifty minutes, that's two and a half hours, I spent searching through emails this morning, piecing together evidence from reports, asking colleagues to check payment systems, and trying to match up some random cocking bits of information to try to discover what on earth the problem was and who needed to sort it out.

Frustrating.

Doubly frustrating as there are time-intensive, hard deadline projects that need to be completed before the start of the next academic year.

"It's the summer, you must like this quiet time of the year."

Arrgggggggggghhhh.

Some parts of the job change but in no way is it quiet, and during the sort of refresh and migration cycle we are in the middle of right now it is perhaps the busiest time of the entire year, and the busiest one of those we've had for three years.

And the paperwork admin job above isn't an isolated incident, there are two or three of these sort of time-soaks a week, ignoring all of the other time soaks that interrupt the substantial piece of work that will not wait and absolutely has to be done.  A piece of work that has an impact on every member of staff and every student.  The best part of two days this week will go on admin tasks that appeared from elsewhere and that have to be squeezed into the schedule.

*BOOM*

And relax.

And a rough translation of the above latin phrase is - a long arse looks shorter when seated.

Apparently.*








*No it doesn't

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Day 250, 40p BSA

Here's a 40 pence BSA Rocket 3.

A postcard of a stamp featuring a painting of a motorcycle.

Layers of representations.

I would quite happily pay 40 pence for the real thing.

I've never ridden a BSA motorcycle.

And there's HM the Q casting her gaze over the machine, wondering whether perhaps Prince P of Greece would trade in one of his black cabs for it, she's always fancied a go.

That's all we have for you today, best regards.

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Day 249, Soundly Wired in an Half Arsed Way

It just doesn't appear possible, given the types of output and input available, to connect these devices up directly.  Hence using a mixer as an intermediary to step between connector types.  You'd think that out of all the collections of cables that are available to me here right now it would be possible to make a direct connection.

Alas no.

To connect direct would mean using cables that are being used elsewhere in the chain.  The cables that I thought I'd rarely need when I made them are actually below the required number by a factor of two.

Anyway, this set-up works.  With regard to digitising some old four-track tapes at least.

The layer of dust adds some tonal filtering in the high-eq range.

And I guess the audio fidelity from these prehistoric tapes isn't going to be particularly adversely affected in any way anyway.

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Day 248, Red, missed

Increments of dismembered breath are channelled at a rate guaranteed not to exceed that which could trigger cell-exploitation.

The skilled life-enhancement operative waves a breezy hand over the controls, "would you like to try it?"

The procedure or the control?  But before I'm able to make the weak utterance my silence is answered.

"You can control the flow rate, there is no danger as I have activated the regulator.  Just keep the dial at around 1.5, the Venturi prevents wild variation."

I was still slightly uneasy after the journey to the hospital, I'd hit a dog in the car.  Only lightly hit.  But I had had to go back to make sure.

Being a medical journalist specialising in new technology meant I was regularly put in the position where I could take a tour of new equipment, and often operate controls.  This didn't usually occur with a real patient, but there was little risk due to protection measures in place.

I was keeping focussed on the task in hand, the headache wasn't affecting me too much.  I really should see the doctor about that, it's been two weeks and it is becoming more intrusive.

The patient was making a slight wheezing sound, rather like that of the dog.

There was a light shining around the operative, a rich red.  Perhaps it was another piece of equipment causing a reflection.  It reminded me of something I'd seen earlier in the car.

I put my finger over the Venturi balance hole, the number on the dial started to slowly climb.

The redness of the room increased.

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Day 247, I'll not take me coat off, I'm not stopping

Rather like Spike Milligan and his wish for the epitaph on his grave to be "I told you I was ill", there are phrases that encapsulate elements of human existence.

Before almost everyone had colour TV, and before almost everyone wanted to own their own house, there was this thing called music hall.  Chock full of all sorts of acts, comedy, singing, sword swallowing, dog juggling, all sorts, a mishmash, hence the term 'Variety'.  And bloody awful some of these were too according to anecdotage.

Having never experienced music hall, due to the bonus of being born long after it stopped being a thing, my knowledge is slim beyond that picked up from archive material and the documentation of events of the time.  However, I have seen, live and in the flesh, actual music hall acts.

A trip organised by Kelvin Flats residents association (I think) took a load of us to that hotbed of entertainment, Barnsley.  To the Barnsley Civic in fact, a Grade II listed building and old music hall theatre where we were to witness a pantomime.  The Civic has been shut for quite a while in recent time and it has now had a change of use, although it still contains a theatre.  The capacity is not what it was back when it was a proper theatre, before it was lobotomised and denuded of internal dimensions - I'm just saying this as I have no idea what it is like having only motorbiked by it in recent years, it may be delightful inside.  Once we arrived at the house of fun we saw a version of the story contained in the Ladybird book below.

I have no memory of any of the event other than the proximity of the ceiling to my seat, due to being up in 'the gods', and the gaudiness of the gilded mouldings.

Actually, what I do remember is queuing up (herded up to do so even) afterwards to purchase the above book from the music hall stars whose pictures and signatures appear on the back.  I never read the book, I was 9 and beyond 'easy-reading' by some distance, I'm slightly mortified by it even now.  I had no idea who these people were other than they had somehow been involved in the performance.

The transience of fame stares out of the back of the book.  There are some that will remember Ken Platt and possibly even some that remember Jack Storey, and indeed Ken Platt has a few lines of text in wikipedia.  We even know, from obituaries and the wiki, when Mr Platt arrived on earth and departed.  But there is little evidence to say Jack Storey existed, other than this book or as a name that is mentioned in relation to other performers.

Being music hall there are of course catchphrases associated with these people.

Jack Storey had a couple of gems - "I told you didn't I?" and "Well yer do, don't yer."  They could stand right up there with any washboard reference.  I've no idea what he told us, but I'm pretty sure I do, don't I - and that's some sort of paradox, all the parts are true but only with assumption and the availability of cultural knowledge, maybe he deserves more recognition.

Whereas Ken Platt, host of the precursor to Name That Tune, had this belter, "I'll not take me coat off, I'm not stopping."  And to be fair, he didn't.  Likewise for the rest of us, being mortal an' all.  

And that ladies and gentlemen is where we came in.

Curtain lowers.


Listen, there's only 15 minutes spent on this so it's bound to have holes, it took almost as long to do the picture...

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Day 246, Frictionless chain link

The body is being sustained by energy harvested from a late night, beer and Pringles.

Browsing The YouTube and tickling the grey matter to be informed, educated and entertained.

The things that weren't recorded as there was no means available, and that were lost as memory faded.

Eyes shut, reality shifts, and the canal in the front room carries away precious things.

WAKE, WAKE.

Stand up and get on, there is chocolate to be washed and shirts to be eaten.  Come on, come on.

What's that?

Running in the shadows?

Never break the chain.

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Day 245, Oh Bobby

I'm sorry you gotta head like a potato.

But, if you have a potato head then be happy, for the potato is a most wonderful and versatile of the starchy foods, if not of vegetables.  Unless you count it as a vegetable, then it is that thing that was just in the previous sentence.

And there are so many varieties to choose from.

Oh yes.

Let's hear it for the potato.

What a great gift the Americas have given us.

Not only is the potato a wonderful edible delight but there are many songs that refer to the apple from the earth:

• Vi Azoi Trinkt Der Kayser Tey? (How does the Tsar drink tea?)

• Don't slay that potato

• One potato, two potatoes

• San Ber'dino

Here's the one referred to in the blog title.

Maybe that's a spud 'u like?

Oh, and garlic is pretty good too.

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Day 244, Patch and run

Somewhere in this blurry morass are some bits of data that are being altered by me right this very moment.

Strictly speaking they may not be within the morass as since the photograph was taken there have been many more disk shelves added.  But even so, the bits would be there.  Or, it would be the mirrors of the data bits that is being changed.

It is all very exciting.

The data that is being changed by me in this instance is that of some linux virtual machines.  

So there we have it.  An insight into just one of the millions of tasks of an IT worker.

My view of my own monitor here at home at 18:24 in the evening is much clearer than the image above, the image only appears here for artistic purposes.

As already said, very exciting.

Perhaps it's time to give it all up and become a train driver.

Except due to my defective colour vision that isn't an option.

Oh well, never mind, I quite like doing this anyway.

(Is that deadpan enough?)

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Day 243, Alien visits, droppings, evidence

A lot of people are very dismissive of the idea that aliens have visited us.  This is surprising as there is so much evidence available.  You may choose not to believe some of the more outlandish claims of David Icke but there is actual, tangible, physical evidence to be seen in our environment.

Well, some evidence at least.

Witness these markings I discovered today in a local park, among the song thrushes and pied wagtails, look, look, look.


Here, clearly the landing stage of some crude low-atmosphere entry device.

There, obviously a thermal refractive generation plant marker.

Here too, evidence of triangulation units crudely created using thruster style objects.

And here, sub-surface oxidation due to leakage from liquid propellant tanks.

And finally, most telling of all, traces of the launch ramp.

You may say, and who am I to suggest that what you think is nonsense, that these are burn marks left by people that can't read the signs that say "Do not use disposable barbecues."  Well, that's obviously ridiculous, almost everyone can read now and who would want to create such a mess?

Nobody, of course.

And, and, and, what's more, my mate 'drunk Barry' who lives in the duck hut on the pond told me he'd seen the spacecraft.

And, he is never wrong.

Apart from that time he believed that not paying rent wouldn't be a problem, or the time he said it was perfectly acceptable to take the lead off the roof of the house that belonged to his neighbour, and the other few times.  Look, he meant well, and his medication had been helping him right up until the psychotic episode.  But he never sees things that aren't there, so it's all true, take note.

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Day 242, Television, the drug of the nation

It's said so often that it's become a hoary old bag of wind, that TV is not as good as it used to be.  A generalisation that masks truth and falsehood in the way that any simplistic statement masks the nuance and complexity of an argument.  The meaning is loose, the physical object here in front of me is superior in every respect to that of those old CRT monsters we used to have, but that isn't what is being referred to.  It's the programmes.  But even knowing that doesn't help.  If it's 9pm on BBC2 in 1980 then it was brilliant (Not the None O'Clock News), or any date and time that featured the thing you loved.  But however good these things are when covered in a slimy layer of nostalgia it is often much different when we revisit.

Opponents of the view that TV used to be better have a simple response, they can rightly point to shedloads of quality drama that has been produced across broadcasters in recent years.

Proponents of the opposing view can rightly point to 8.7 million hours a year of low-rent, intelligence insulting, reality TV.

With regard to news, current affairs, the arts, there has been a loss of depth of debate.  The BBC has become so scared of the govt that it appears to accept the party line on any subject, and doesn't question statements or expose them to any meaningful level of analysis at all.  This renders almost all news programmes into shouting matches or meaningless and artificial constructs where a completely bonkers viewpoint is given the same airtime and assumption of credibility as the sane view purely so there is this thing called 'balance'.

In other programme areas there have been changes that have lead to greater equality of opportunity.  It has been possible to ditch some fuck awful things such as the Black & White Minstrel Show, The Comedians, and almost all of the racist/sexist/homophobic TV.

It is clear that there are areas of positive change and areas of negative change.

This leads me on to my in depth study of some old TV (nothing in-depth has taken place, just stuff I happened to recently watch).  To give me something to do while on the Turbo Trainer (effectively a glorified exercise bike) I've been watching James Burke's Connections on the YouTube.  These programmes, the second series from the early 90s, discuss sciencey stuff in an accessible way.  They are an entertaining introduction to a wide range of topics and explain how disparate, distant, and different ideas have worked together to make something much greater.  This type of programme, while not of any great depth, is something that we still have today.

Then a conversation raised a name and sparked an interest in an arts programme from 1972.  This was John Berger's Ways of Seeing.  It wasn't just about art, it was about much more, there was a great deal about the hidden ideologies contained within visual images.  Unpicking the hidden ideologies and suggesting what they represented was a key part of the programme as well as questioning interpretations, including his own interpretation.  I watched all four 30 minute episodes back to back, a rarity, and it appeared to me that we don't have anything as good as that right now.  Well, we don't have programmes which discuss philosophical questioning about meaning and our environment.  And we really should.

While some narrow fields have become very good, other fields have become less well covered.  Either through reluctance to challenge viewers with those ideas, fear of loss of ratings, or some other reason.  Which is a shame.  Sort it out TV, sort it out.

There are a lot of bees in this image

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Day 241, Pubs, beams, missing structure

Pubs, yes, pubs.

What are they, where are they, why are they?

Those and other questions may not be answered right here today, here, today, in this informal missive.

Let's dive in, so what exactly are they?

From the point of view of the human entity they are a commercial business premises on which it is possible for those desiring it to buy and consume beverages, typically beverages of an alcoholic nature.

And where might these places be?

In the UK they are fairly widespread.  It did used to be the case that in our city centres there were many more of them, and they were of greater variety.

Let us use some outmoded terminology to outline what it used to be like.
If you were a bit of a square there would have been plenty of places to stand and spill nasty lager, get in fights when someone looked at your pint, and then cry if rejected by a member of your gender choice for companionship, or cry if someone had spilled something on your Ben Sherman (specifically excessively drunk males).
If you were a bit of a Townie then see previous sentences.
If you were an alternative sort, hardcore punk, goth, electro-technabod, hippie, biker, baker, hipster, flipster, or finger popping daddio then there was some cross-fertilisation, and although there may not be as many places it was always possible to be somewhere.
If you were into hip-hop or rap then that was something else entirely, pub culture isn't really a big part of that scene.

This very building here, The Washington, used to be one of the mixed places where all the freaks and spooks that were mainly not squares used to go.

Inside it was a pretty bog standard ordinary pub.  Apart from the millions of teapots that lined the shelf near the ceiling.  The teapots were a kitsch touch that really made the place.

Other groovetastic mixed places were the The Hallamshire just round the corner, and The Hornblower which was further up the same road as The Washington.  The Hornblower now sadly gone, The Hallamshire vandalised beyond recognition, and The Washington now a shadow of the former incarnation.  With The Washington I think it was the loss of the teapots, nothing to do with it being owned by a member of a local popular beat combo, nothing to do with that whatsoever.

So, why are they?

Good question, and too long to answer other than that all those hundreds of years ago one of our few sources of potable water was that that had been through the brewing process.  Brewing was done at home, often done by an alewife, and these places gradually developed into meeting places that became pubs.  Eventually capitalism started sniffing around, made some changes, improved the brewing process so that it could be made more cheaply and quickly, and standardised the product.  This had the effect that they brewed shit beer, they advertised an image that would appeal and distract from the shitness of the beer, they went on to remove most of the walls inside formerly nice pubs to make more room for people to stand and spill their nasty lager.

And so there we are, pubs in the main are now built for squares.  Don't be a square, go somewhere that has good beer and a good atmosphere, and be whatever you want (not a square though, remember that... oh well, okay, if you really want to be, be a square).

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Day 240, Techno junk

Featuring the AK4528 converter chip the Audiophile 24/96 was a reasonable priced bit of sound-acquiring technical gubbins.

The AK4528 appears identical to the AK4524 but with an 8dB improvement in chip-level dynamic range.  We can only assume that that is a good thing based on no evidence whatsoever (my ears cannot help given that they are as old as me and thus not fresh.)  There was all sorts of that stuff about the chips and the dB figures in the music production press at the time, I'm pretty sure it goes straight over the head of most people.

But this I/O device is of no use to me, and hasn't been for quite a while as it was long since consigned to one of the boxes of 'stuff' after an upgrade.  So it'll be going in the bin, sorry, it'll be going to the nearest WEEE recycling service.

It would be irresponsible to do anything other than recycle it.  Never mind the fact that it still works and is perfectly usable, and that the return on investment has long since been passed for me, there's the hidden environmental cost of producing all of the components on the card.

Once it is unplugged...

The rest is silence.

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Day 239, High spots

Ah the beauty of the British summer.

The joy of standing at one of the high points in the city.

Witness the glorious vista stretching almost as far as the cloud base.

The gentle pattering massage of soothing rain.

Obnubilation will diminish as the season progresses.

Just 245 metres above sea level and absolutely no metres above rain level at the peak of Lydgate Lane.

If you have the benefit of ultraviolet vision you will clearly see the city in the distance.

And in the opposite direction even with speciality vision there would be little to see.

I'm not suggesting there's nothing there, just that it is below eye level and obscured by buildings, obviously.

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Day 238, 20/20 vision

We might not all have 20/20 vision.  Although for most there are handy face-tools to help with that.

Not even everyone has 20/20 hindsight.  And there's really no excuse for that other than lack of attention, and missing out on reviewing and assessing what has gone before.

In a world of IT projects there often appears to be a lack of learning from any form of hindsight.  Major IT providers repeat their own mistakes time and again.  Don't they review the 'lessons learned' documents, maybe people aren't honest in the 'lessons learned' documents, maybe they don't actually document where problems occurred.  Why wouldn't they document that information, it's the most valuable of all the information, that where failure happens.

Perhaps the difficulty in IT projects lies with the expectations of those wanting a solution.  The complexities of integration with other systems is usually underestimated if it is ever considered at all.  It isn't just a case of "this product matches our requirements", there should also be "how well does this product integrate with our environment", and what happens if it doesn't.  Somewhere in there is a consideration of cost, which includes managing, maintaining, and updating - are the resources available in-house and if not how much does it cost to have a third party do the full administration job.

If only we'd considered that on our latest project here at home.  We got all the flashing lights, the trombone sound plays at exactly the right point, the lid goes both up and down, however when drained the outflow isn't connected to the waste water outlet.  That's the last time we have Crapita fit a toilet.

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Day 237, Post structuralism

It clearly has structure, and you might be inclined to say that they are posts.  Nice and shiny concrete examples of the physical manifestation of the architect and quantity surveyors abstract musings and calculations.

Implementation is now taking place, the organisation of discrete assets and mobile operative objects, agents, and entities coalescing and giving coherence to the formerly hypothetical codifications.

Our existence, experience, and context gives clear meaning that unless some deeply rooted analysis is taking place that this is not deconstruction.  Unless there is a difference, and it is not possible to say without positive terms, then let us defer to prior knowledge.

And so we are reduced to discursive practices, lacking meaning, content, or nourishment.  It is a benefit, although not as fundamentally challenging to conscious thought or practicality, that this paradigm contains a recognised system of the order of things.


A - What is it?

B - No idea.

A - Anyway, I don't know much about art but I know what I like.

B - Oh, it's a car park.

Pseudy commentator - Excuse my existence, please step aside.

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Day 236, POLITE THINK!!

There's a new branch of Orwellian language.  Forked from the original 1940s version.

POLITE THINK!!

Yes, clearly it is designed to be misinterpreted.  The checked pattern at the top, and the word POLITE in huge capitals are meant to put people in mind of, and be directly mistaken for POLICE.

So schools have taken to putting their own grammatically dubious signs in the street - assuming it is the school - how many exclamation marks do you need, usually one is too many.

Much more appealing, to me at least, is that the law is enforced in some low cost and not at all over the top way.

There are double yellow lines clearly visible, and that means that parking on them could result in you being towed away.

Monitoring of the street should take place at all times, cameras mounted with laser cannon could be used to deploy heat-light destruction for any infringement greater than 5 seconds.  Graffiti artists could be employed to spray paint any vehicle that stops in the controlled zone, images or words could be painted, 'cock piss partridge' for example.  A gang of urchins could be taken under the wing of a local Fagan type character who will arm them with spikes to puncture the two offside tyres of any car which stops in the zone.

These are all reasonable suggestions.  But perhaps all it needs is a collection of Traffic Wardens repeatedly patrolling the street from one end to the other until it becomes a no-go area for selfish arses. 



Toodle pip!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Day 235, Underside climbing

A - Here's the set of stairs you ordered.

B - Hey thanks, oh wait, they're the wrong way round.

A - That's what you ordered.

B - But...

A - Here's what you asked for, it clearly says set of stairs, foot at south, width of gap, top to bottom.

B - Yes, but the interpretation you've put on it is completely counterintuitive.  Surely you must have expected them to be usable?

A - Just giving you what you asked for, not my problem.

B - But that's not useful as anything other than an art installation, I wanted stairs.

A - Yeah, well, I've delivered what you ordered.

Not wilful misinterpretation.  Not deliberate misunderstanding.  Not trying to be difficult or awkward.  Although it might appear that way if the overall objective has been lost somewhere en-route.  Maybe there are other pressures that have the effect of narrowing vision to block out the overall objective.

Things should be simplified, partners should both understand what their responsibilities are.  Be clear and concise about requirements, objectives and boundaries.  And if you're charged with creating the product then be prepared to run away once you've delivered it completely inside out and with the contents on the outside...

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Day 234, pedal for the metal, blues legacy

Way back in time when the Delta blues was in its infancy and the backwaters of the Mississippi was alive to the sound of the new music there were no pedals to change the sound.  The instruments were un-amplified.

Here we have a Dunlop Cry Baby, there are various models often used in funk and blues.  When Robert Johnson made the mythical pact with the devil he was told that if he hung around long enough there would be great new wonders.  Of course he didn't live to see such things.  And I almost certainly made all of that up.

We can only guess at what sense Robert Johnson would have made of the classic Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi.

Unfortunately my prowess in using these devices was in no way helped by shaking the hand of David "Honeyboy" Edwards, a friend of Robert Johnson's who was present the night that Johnson was poisoned in 1938.  Edwards was only about 80 when I tried to absorb some of his skill, and he was still very, very good, and didn't claim to have made a pact with anyone.  None of that class rubbed off or was transferred to me directly, indirectly or from Johnson either by any degree of separation.

Maybe I should go down to the crossroads at midnight and attempt to make a pact with the devil, or the modern equivalent in government.  Though I suspect the only thing I'd get down at the crossroads now is run over.


Will this do?

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