but she’s a girl…

Some thoughts about coffee

2012-02-09T18:48:00+00:00

Coffee is an amazing drink, isn’t it? I can think of few other drinks that can take on such a spectacular range of flavours and change so dramatically in character with tiny changes in preparation method. And that’s before you think about changing the way in which the beans are roasted.

I have been steadily learning how to get good espresso from my Rancilio Silvia, but while the coffee has become much more consistent and pretty good, I knew it could be better. The fruity, acidic, winey flavours of the beans were too dominating, so that the coffee tasted a bit unbalanced. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, but I personally like the more earthy, chocolate, caramel and spicy kinds of flavours to be a bit more prominent. I had got to the point where I could produce the same quality of coffee pretty consistently, which when you consider all the variables involved (grind, dose, distribution of grounds in the basket, tamping pressure, water temperature, extraction time and so on), is something I view as quite an achievement in itself. How could I get more of the rich and sweet flavours in the coffee?

After reading what felt like every article ever written on the internet about coffee¹, I stumbled on a suggestion that higher brewing temperatures can bring out the ‘darker’ flavours, while lower temperatures emphasise the more delicate, fruity ones. I had to try it out. Keeping all the other variables as constant as I possibly could, I changed the set point of my PID to 3°C higher than its previous setting. I did this in the evening before going to bed, so that I wouldn’t forget to make the change in the morning. It’s an indication of how sadly nerdy, I mean, deeply fascinated I have become with the whole process that I fell asleep thinking about what the coffee was going to be like, and bounded downstairs the next day like a child on Christmas morning.

Well. It was like night and day. I could tell it was going to be good from the way it was rolling languidly from the spouts of the portafilter and by the heavenly smell, but the first sip confirmed it. It was rich and spicy with lovely bitter chocolate notes, but that was balanced by the fruity tang I had before. It was even a different texture, with much more body and viscosity. All that transformation from a change of 3°C. This morning I even managed to produce the kind of crema on the top that you see in all the coffee pr0n photos and videos: a deep, caramel or hazelnut coloured gloopy liquid, spotted with paler colours. I was so excited that I yelled at Mr. Bsag, “COME AND LOOK AT MY CREMA! LOOK AT IT!”. He humoured me with a ‘yes it’s a lovely crema darling’ look, but I could tell that he just wanted to drink some coffee. He does agree that it’s dramatically better than before though, so I know that it’s not just my wishful thinking.

Next, I will conquer microfoam!

Oh dear. I think I may be hooked. On the positive side, it does make getting up at a stupidly early hour much more interesting.

Edited to correct the temperature difference, because apparently I can’t do arithmetic when highly-caffeinated.

A number that seems to tend towards infinity.↩

Miss Silvia is at home

2012-02-05T12:40:00+00:00

Some introductions

Aren’t they a handsome couple? That’s Rocky on the left (all young and shiny and energetic), and Miss Silvia on the right. She’s not in the first flush of youth, as you can see. Her logo is a bit worn, and she doesn’t have the fancy steam knob and drip tray patterns of these newer models. But inside she’s as strong and well-made as any new machine. She’s seen a few shots and she’s experienced.

How it all began

A few weeks ago, our Krups grinder died. It had been a bit inconsistent and unreliable for a while, and despite careful cleaning and care, it didn’t seem to be improving. It has always introduced a lot of static into the grounds, but recently it had seemed to turn into a fully fledged Van de Graaf generator, so that removing grounds from the hopper was a really messy business. Then it failed completely and we had to think about getting a new grinder.

I had been pondering trying to get an espresso machine again. We had a Krups machine some time ago, and while it wasn’t a semi-professional level machine, we enjoyed using it and the coffee it produced. After a few years, the pump failed and we had it repaired, then the pump went again a few years after that, and we couldn’t really justify getting it repaired (fairly expensively) yet again. It was clear that it wasn’t made using good quality, long-lasting components. So we switched to using the Aeropress. I love the Aeropress to bits. I think it’s a great, fun and best of all cheap way to brew really decent coffee. I recommend it to a lot of people, and we’ll certainly continue to use ours when we’re in a rush, on holiday or when making coffee for one in an espresso machine seems like too much trouble. However, it has two drawbacks: it doesn’t make real espresso¹, and you need to use roughly double the amount of coffee that you use for espresso. Since we buy fairly decent coffee beans, this was beginning to get a bit expensive.

Rocky

So when the Krups grinder failed, I decided to replace it with a model that was going to be much longer lasting², and which would also be suitable for making espresso if we decided to get a new machine. I did some research and the Rancilio Rocky grinder seemed to be one of the best models I could get on my budget. It’s made of solid, heavy components, and is sometimes used in small-scale commercial settings, so it can withstand heavy use. We’ve been really pleased with it, and after the hash our failing Krups made of beans, it’s a bit of a revelation: a fine, consistent grind with no static in the grounds.

I spent ages trying to decide whether to get the version with or without the doser. There are advantages and disadvantages to both forms: with a doser you can leave the grinder running for a while unattended, which is particularly useful if you also use it to grind coffee for something other than espresso, and the vanes of the doser help to prevent the coffee clumping. On the other hand, you get stale coffee sitting in the doser, and it’s harder to clean. In the end I went for the doser version. I confess that this was — in part — because I have always thought that flipping the lever on the doser to dump the coffee in the portafilter looked like fun when I saw people using them in cafés. I was right, it is fun. When I was a kid, I thought being a librarian must be brilliant, purely because they got to use the date stamp on the library cards. I loved the ritual of clunking it down on the ink pad and then on the card. When I told Mr. Bsag this recently, he said he’d always wanted to be a librarian as a kid for exactly the same reason, which goes to show that I picked the right man to marry. But I digress…

At the same time, I had ordered an espresso starter pack from Has Bean Coffee, which was wonderful but made me acutely aware of how quickly we were romping through the 250g bags with our Aeropress. When I was doing on research on grinders (and having found out about Rancilio through the Rocky), I came across the Rancilio Silvia (or “Miss Silvia” as many call her³).

Miss Silvia

The Rancilio Silvia espresso machine is a very sturdy unit, made of stainless steel with a brass boiler and other components. It’s a single boiler unit (that is, one boiler provides water for the group head to brew coffee and also the steaming wand), so it isn’t ideal if you mostly drink cappuccinos or lattes (I don’t). However, what you get is a machine with almost commercial-level components in a small, easy to maintain package which is ideal for home use. They have been making the Silvia (with only minor changes to the design) for many years, and as it is a popular model, there is an enormous amount of information available about how to use it, care for it, and how to modify it to improve performance.

Most of the reviews and articles agree that the Silvia can be very exacting. You can make excellent espresso, but your technique needs to be good and consistent. While it is bound to lead to a little frustration, I think that’s a great quality in a machine to learn on, because it forces you to understand all the variables involved in making espresso, and how to control them. The articles also agree that one of the most difficult aspects of the Silvia is the rather broad ‘deadband’ in the boiler heating cycle. Rancilio used a fairly cheap thermostat, and in consequence, the water temperature can vary by as much as 10°C while brewing, which makes it difficult to get consistent results. As a consequence, many Silvia owners end up fitting a PID controller, which greatly reduces temperature fluctuations. It also allows you to read the temperature of the top of the boiler continuously, so you have a good idea what the water temperature is at every stage. I was pretty sure that I would want to fit a PID at some point, so I decided to look for a second-hand machine which might already have one fitted. I would be getting the machine at a bargain price (and since the longevity of the machine is good, buying a used one isn’t a problem if it has been well cared for), and I would save the money and hassle of fitting a PID myself.

By chance, I saw an advert for just such a machine on one of the coffee forums. It had been posted a while ago, but when I enquired it was still available. After seeing it working (and more importantly, drinking a coffee made with it), I bought the machine last weekend, and have been having an enormous amount of fun with it ever since.

Experimentation and over-caffeination

On the first day, I drank too much coffee. Far too much coffee. I was engrossed in trying out the machine, tweaking the grind and the dosing and tamping and before I knew it, I had gone a bit over the top. At some point, I wondered why the world was jiggling around, and then realised that it was actually me. Perhaps I had drunk enough coffee for the day.

It is addictive though: not just the coffee itself, but also the experimentation and the pursuit of the perfect espresso. I know that some people think making espresso is too much of a hassle, but I’m really enjoying it. Even on the days when I’m rushing to get to work, I like the meditative aspects to the routine of turning on and warming the machine, grinding the coffee and evening the dose, then tamping and pulling the shot. I’m a geek and a scientist and I love measuring and tweaking and trying different things out. The Silvia is a pleasure to use in this respect. It’s solid and heavy, and you get that indefinable satisfaction to be found in using well-made things.

Amazingly, I’ve made very few shots fit only for the sink. Some have been really lovely, and I’m gradually improving all the time. I’ve got the grind right now, so that a 1oz shot takes about 25 sec to pour. I’m working on getting a more even distribution now, because I’m getting ‘blonding’ a bit early. That usually happens when fissures or holes open up in the puck of coffee, allowing water to rush through without extracting properly. I could do with developing a slightly thicker crema too, but I’m sure it will come. Sorry, but I’ve been boring Mr. Bsag to tears with all these geeky technical details all week, so now it’s your turn…

Anyway, I’m really pleased with Miss Silvia and her partner Rocky. I’m learning all the time, and enjoying some really great coffee, which is the ultimate point of the exercise. In time I hope to be on first name terms with Miss Silvia, but I’m not quite there yet.

It doesn’t claim to make real espresso, to be fair. It makes its own unique kind of coffee which is very enjoyable, but it’s not espresso.↩
I’ve made it a personal policy recently to try to buy very well-made, long-lasting things. They cost more to start with, but in the long run you (and the environment) benefit by not having to throw them away and buy a new item.↩
Yes, she is a ‘she’.↩

Flying deckchairs

2012-01-26T19:05:00+00:00

On Monday, I watched a really wonderful documentary: The Real Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. There’s still time to watch it on iPlayer, and I heartily recommend doing so, even if you have no interest in microlights. It was the kind of documentary I love, in which you let people with a passion for something tell their own story.

In this case, the cameras followed several participants in the ‘Round Britain Rally’, a gloriously Wacky Races event, in which the aim is to rack up the most points over three days by flying over designated waypoints dotted around the UK in a microlight aircraft. Some of the microlights looked quite fancy with semi-rigid wings and enclosed cabins, but all of the aircraft piloted by the three teams mentioned were rather more basic in design. Indeed, the vintage model flown by Antony Woodward and his team-mate appeared to feature rather alarming quantities of gaffer tape and string. Antony described a microlight as “essentially a chainsaw attached to a deckchair”. Or in their case, a chainsaw attached to a deckchair with string.

Anthony had suffered a dreadful crash in a microlight some years before while participating in the same race when his machine hit a powerline. I can’t help thinking that he was a bit crazy to want to get back into a microlight and compete in the same rally, but that’s what he did. Anthony and his team mate (whose name I can’t remember) were simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Anthony cheerfully admitted that he has absolutely no aptitude for flying, and demonstrated that rather ably with a series of ‘interesting’ landings and haphazard map-reading skills, much to his team mate’s fury. In the end, they decided not to take the competitive aspects so seriously, and had a wonderful time. Antony even managed a good landing to end the race.

Paul flew his microlight with his teenage son Mikey from their home in Ireland across the Irish Sea to the start point. Mikey was determined to go with his Dad, but was visibly (and quite understandably) terrified by the prospect. Their relationship and the way they bonded during the rally was such a touching thing. Paul tried to take Mikey’s mind off the possibility of plunging to a fiery death by singing some rather excellent bawdy songs at top volume or playing ‘I Spy’, and Mikey was determined not to let his Dad down.

The final competitor was Richard Meredith-Hardy, for whom the rally must have seemed like a stroll in the park. He has flown a microlight from London to Sydney, and even flown over Mount Everest. Richard is brilliant. He’s a quiet, smiling man with an extraordinary pair of eyebrows, who does absolutely insane things in a microlight. At one point, he demonstrated his mid-air refuelling technique. When Air Force pilots do this kind of thing, they have millions of pounds worth of military hardware to help them. Richard had a few jerry cans full of fuel where his co-pilot would have been, and a bit of tubing. In a scene that I watched through my fingers, he undid his seatbelt so that he could twist around and fiddle with the cans and tubing, all while trying to hold the craft steady. Microlights — it hardly needs saying — don’t have autopilot, just a wibbly bar that you have to try to keep steady while the open cockpit in which you sit hangs and sways from the wings. Terrifying.

The views from the microlights were stunning but the pilots seemed so vulnerable. I can see the appeal, though — you really experience flying in a way that’s just not possible in any other kind of powered aircraft, but I don’t think I’m brave enough to actually try it.

On not following fashion

2012-01-08T16:27:00+00:00

It’s not news to regular readers of this blog that I dislike buying clothes. I have no interest in following fashion, and tend to wear clothes until they literally fall apart. Sometimes I continue to wear them after they have fallen apart, if the structural integrity of the garment is sufficient to keep the weather out or to avoid showing too much flesh. My rules for buying clothes are as follows:

Do not buy clothes unless it is absolutely necessary.
Never buy clothes from a bricks-and-mortar shop unless it is strictly unavoidable (see previous debacles here).
When buying clothes from online retailers, try to stick to companies you have bought from before and buy the same items in the same sizes as your current (now worn-out) items. That way you know they will fit.
If feeling daredevil, buy the same items in the same sizes, but in different colours.

My jeans are on the verge of falling apart, so I had to think about buying some new ones. Of all the clothes to buy, jeans are some of the worst because the current fashion dictates the shape of them so strongly, making it difficult to get what you want, or to judge what size you need. Still, I thought, fear not! I bought my last couple of pairs online, and it seemed as if the company still stocked the same style. So all I needed to do was order another couple of pairs in the same style and size (see Rule 3) and everything would be fine.

The package duly arrived, and I tried the jeans on. Horror. They had changed the style and the way it fitted, without making it at all clear on the site. The waist was lower¹, and the fit was much tighter on the seat and thighs. I know that the old pairs had shrunk (because the inside leg was 1 inch shorter than when I bought them), but even so, they were a looser fit than the new pair which were ostensibly the same size and style. Grrr.

I’ve returned them and tried another company that I’ve bought jeans from before: another style/size that is apparently the same as a previously purchased pair. I hope that they really are this time, but I have a bit more confidence in this company, which stocks other items they have been making for years. My point is that I wish there were clothing companies that realised there is a market out there for basic, well-made clothes in reliable sizes, which don’t change with the fashions. If a company made exactly the same, classic clothes, year-in, year-out, I would happily keep buying them. The only other alternative is to do a Steve Jobs: when you find an item of clothing that suits you and fits you, buy a supply that will last you a lifetime. However, it’s not easy to justify the expense or the storage space unless you are very rich and have a huge house.

The idea of a company continuing to make the same styles from year to year only sounds crazy because the clothing world is so driven by fashion. Other companies make a good living out of this strategy (and have it as a key selling point). For example, the shelving company Vitsoe (designed by the iconic Dieter Rams), has been making the same modular shelving units since 1960. They are proud of the fact that people who bought the very first units still have those pieces and mix them with their current stock. They add a few new items now and again, but they all work perfectly with the units made since the beginning. This solves the ‘having to stock up’ problem. If you are confident that they will still be making the same shelves in 20 years time, you just buy the bits you want now and add to it as and when you need to expand your shelving (a practice which Vitsoe actively encourages). They are not cheap, but I would happily pay a premium for having this kind of confidence, and would do the same for classic, well-made clothes if I knew I could buy exactly the same pair of jeans in 5 years time.

I just want the waist to sit on my waist. Is that so crazy?↩

Moving Comments From ExpressionEngine to Disqus

2012-01-04T18:38:00+00:00

This may be of some use to anyone else who is thinking of moving comments from ExpressionEngine to Disqus (or to me, if I ever have to do it again!). Over the past few days, I have been moving comments from the Tracks site (which used ExpressionEngine) to Disqus. I had some difficulty trying to get a format exported from ExpressionEngine which I could use to import comments into Disqus, and eventually settled on the code above after looking at Disqus’ own import format and trawling the ExpressionEngine forums to adapt other solutions which exported to Movable Type format.

You need to start off by creating a new template group called ‘export’. Inside that, you make a template called ‘index’ and paste in the following, making sure that you replace the channel name and template group name to those appropriate for your setup. This needs to be the index for the template group.

Next, create another template called ‘comments’ and paste the text below, again, replacing the channel name as appropriate.

Now visit http://yoururl.com/export and you should see the exported entries. Wait for the whole page to load, which may take some time with a lot of entries. Then use your browser’s ‘View source’ command to view the source of the page, copy all the text and paste into a text file with the extension ‘.xml’. Now you should be able to upload to Disqus using their ‘Generic (WXR)’ importer.

You may find that you encounter errors and have to try uploading several times. For example, you need to make sure that the xml declaration is the very first line of the file (the template will insert some whitespace).

Three Christmas Albums

2012-01-04T17:30:00+00:00

I can’t believe that it’s already 4th January — time seems to have flown since Christmas! I was so exhausted when I was finally on holiday that we’ve had a fairly quiet (but wonderful) Christmas. Mr. Bsag and I spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day together (eating and drinking too much, as is pretty much the law at Christmas), then I travelled to my parents for a couple of days while Mr. Bsag took care of the cats. We’ve had some lazy times and some great walks, and I’ve also been listening to the great albums I got among my Christmas presents.

June Tabor and Oysterband - Ragged Kingdom

This was a present from Mr. Bsag, and I love it more each time I listen to it. It’s a mixture of covers of modern songs and versions of old folk ballads, but they all sit alongside one another very comfortably. I like all the tracks, but I think my favourites have to be an incredibly powerful version of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, and ‘The Leaves of Life’, as well as the mournful ‘The Hills of Shiloh’. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is such an iconic song that it must have taken a bit of courage to cover it, but they bring forward the lyrics by making it into a slow and deceptively simple duet between June Tabor and John Jones. There are some superb musicians on this album, and June Tabor’s voice is as pure and deep as ever.

Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the The Harvest

Perhaps it’s a personal failing, but I really like sad, mournful songs. I’m generally a very cheerful optimistic person, so I think I need to season it with a bit of melancholy in musical form just to balance things out and to make life taste sweeter. Maybe that’s why I love Gillian Welch so much. The song ‘Revelator’ (from the album Time (The Revelator)) ranks as one of my all time favourite songs (rubbing shoulders with many of Kate Bush’s), and I think this album is also destined to be a classic.

There is hardly an upbeat, optimistic track on the album, but I find the whole thing completely beautiful. David Rawlings’ guitar playing, and the way that Welch and Rawlings’ voices mingle and harmonise so thrillingly makes this an incredible album. Again, it’s hard to pick out just one or two tracks, but I could listen all day to ‘The Way It Will Be’, ‘Tennessee’ and ‘Hard Times’. This album is really worth a listen, particularly if the current financial and political situation makes you feel like listening to music evoking The Great Depression¹.

Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow (vinyl)

Yes, I know, I already bought this album when it came out as a download. However, I was so bowled over by it that asked my brother if he could get me the vinyl version for Christmas. I’m glad I did, as it gets even more delicate, layered and spacious when you hear it on vinyl. I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised than an MP3 file (even the relatively high bitrate files you get from the iTunes Store) sounds rather compressed when compared to the analogue version, but I was slightly startled. I was also rather pleased that I can still tell the difference so easily.

I’ve already sung the praises (at great length) of the album in my previous review, so I’ll just add that the attention that a double vinyl album forces you to pay to the music (by making you get up three times to turn the disc over) adds even more to the experience. However, Bella dislikes vinyl. You see, when I sit on the sofa downstairs, she almost immediately settles down on my lap, and she was not amused at me turfing her off every 20 minutes or so to attend to the disc.

And finally…

Before I finish, I’ll mention one more thing (which has nothing to do with music). Mr. Bsag and I had a lovely walk in the sunshine on Monday, out to a country pub that we both enjoy. As we walked down a lane, I could see something flapping in a tree by the side of the road.

It made me smile and really piqued my curiosity. There just has to be an interesting story behind the deposition of an item of lingerie in a tree by a quiet country lane, doesn’t there?

Though to avoid any confusion, I should point out that these are all new songs, not adaptations of old Country or Bluegrass tunes. It’s just their sound which makes you think of the Dust Bowl.↩

Synapse Strikes Again

2011-12-23T19:04:00+00:00

I’ve written about how much I love my Tom Bihn Synapse rucksack a couple of times before. I’m probably boring everyone stupid with my adulation, but I really can’t say enough good things about this bag. I’ve had it now for nearly two years, I use it every day, and it still surprises and delights me.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to take two bottles of champagne¹ to work. In case you’re thinking that the life of a biologist is a great deal more glamorous than you had previously suspected, this is certainly not an everyday occurrence. One of the PhD students who I co-supervise with a colleague was having her viva, so I wanted to get some bubbly for a bit of a celebration when she emerged, blinking, after several hours of grilling by the examiners.

Bottles are pretty heavy and I was travelling by train that day, so I wondered if I could carry them in my Synapse on my back, rather than in a bag held in my hand. Given that my Synapse was already filled² with a considerable quantity of stuff that I take to work every day, I seriously doubted that there would be room. I already had my MacBook Air in a neoprene case, an A5 notebook in a leather case, a pencil case, camera, glasses in a hard case, a couple of pouches stuffed with random odds and ends, a packable shopping bag, wallet, keys, a large pair of headphones, and various other bits and pieces in there. Two bottles of wine would be at least another 1.5 L of volume to fit in somehow. However, in the spirit of giving it a go, I unzipped the bag and shifted the contents of the main compartment a bit before trying to slip in one of the bottles. After a bit of jiggling, it slipped in comfortably. I tried the other bottle, wondering if I could pull off this magic trick again. The second bottle was swallowed by the bag. I zipped the bag up, not really believing that it had worked. As usual, the Synapse sat there insouciantly, looking as if it just contained a couple of notebooks and thin jumper. It was pretty heavy as I was hauling it on to my back (as you would expect), but once there, it felt very comfortable.

When I removed the bottles from my bag later on in front of an audience, it was with the smugly mysterious air of a conjurer pulling a brace of rabbits from a hat. I’m pretty sure this bag breaks all sorts of laws of physics, but it’s remarkably handy.

Well, sparking wine — I’m not made of money.↩
Which is to say that when you open the bag, it seems very full. When it is closed, it never appears over-stuffed. It actually looks the same from the outside, no matter how much you have in it.↩

Spitting Image

2011-12-18T18:32:00+00:00

I look very like my my mother, and have done since I was a girl. Whenever people who knew me met my mother for the first time, or met me having only known my mother, they would invariably exclaim (to me), “Don’t you look like your mother! You’re the spitting image of her.” I would then traditionally roll my eyes in exasperation and disbelief. I couldn’t see it at all. I thought people who said we looked alike were loopy. I suppose that I knew both our faces so well that I couldn’t see the resemblance among the small details I knew to be different. Since then, I’ve seen a few photos of Mum in her teens and early twenties, and I have to admit that I can see the likeness, but it didn’t seem that extraordinary.

A few weeks ago, Mum mentioned that Dad had come across an old photo of my Granny (my Mum’s mother) when she was a girl, looking uncannily like me, and she said that Dad would email me a copy. I thought it would be like looking at photos of Mum: somewhat like me, but nothing to write home about. I was wrong. When Mum said it was uncanny, she wasn’t kidding.

I should tell you a bit about Granny. All my other grandparents died before I was born or when I was very young, so she is the only grandparent I actually remember. She also died when I was in my teens, but I really loved her, and have very fond memories of staying at her house overnight on occasion. By today’s standards, she wasn’t that old when she died, but from my perspective as a kid, she was an old lady, and that’s how I remember her.

Opening the photo was a genuine shock. It was as if someone had wrestled me out of my jeans and into a period dress, put a pair of round, wire-framed glasses on me and then taken a photo which they had processed to look like a scratchy black and white period print, all without me having any memory of it happening. Or as if I’m some kind of inadvertent time traveller, and have visited other time periods without knowing about it.

The photo shows a girl (perhaps in her early teens, but it’s hard to tell) sitting in a leather armchair with her legs tucked underneath her. She has a hardback book open in her hands (I wish I could see the title on the spine), and is reading with some concentration. Mum and Dad have a photo of me as a girl in a similar pose (not difficult, since I had my nose in a book most of the time). If you ignore the style of the glasses, her face is my face. The eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth and even the damned chubby cheeks are mine. I’ve even taken to wearing my hair longer in a bob in the past few years, a style very like hers in the photo. I also note that her hair has the same ungovernable waves as mine (thanks for that, genetics!). It’s a perfectly normal photo, but the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.

I think that I’m going to frame a print of my ‘time travel photo’ (as I’m now thinking of it) and hang it somewhere in the house to discombobulate visitors, though I’ll have to stop it freaking me out first.

On Weird Daughters

2011-12-04T12:06:00+00:00

I was amused to see the following tweet from Merlin Mann the other day:

“When I was a baby, I didn’t like the smell of buses. Now, I really like the smell of motorcycles. It’s so distinctive.” — My Weird Daughter
@hotdogsladies twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/…

It’s pretty clear (if you’ve read any of Merlin’s writing) that when he says “My Weird Daughter” he actually (quite rightly) means “My Amazing and Excellent Daughter”. However, it reminded me of an occasion from my own childhood when my mother had good reason to think she had a weird kid. I thought I would tell the story to reassure anyone in a similar position that we Weird Daughters usually turn out more or less OK.

I’ve been obsessed by animals for as long as I can remember, but the obsession was particularly acute when I was a child. I loved anything to do with animals, and would insist on going to any animal-themed films that came around. The only problem was that if there was any death and/or suffering depicted, I would cry and be inconsolable, so my mother would have to watch me like a hawk and be ready to swoop with the tissues. Interestingly, when I was younger, I wasn’t bothered much by the suffering of humans in films — only animals. I only started caring about people too as I got older.

Anyway, one day (when I must have been about 5 or 6 years old), my Mum took me with my brother to see a film called When the North Wind Blows (not the Raymond Briggs animation of the same name). It was set in Siberia¹, and involved a tiger hunter. On one hunt, the tiger attacked his friend’s son, and in trying to shoot the tiger, he accidentally shot and killed the boy². Guilt-stricken, the hunter goes on the run into the forest, assuming that he will be charged with murder. He starts to live off the land and after a series of slightly improbable and highly anthropomorphic scenes involving a tiger saving his life and him reciprocating, he befriends a female tiger. She trusts him enough to allow him near her cubs, and the tigers and the man romp through Siberian woods and meadows together. His friend tracks him down to tell the hunter that he knows the shooting was an accident, but by that time our hero is at one with the wilderness and decides to stay away from civilisation for good.

At some point during the film (I don’t remember exactly when) I started to cry. I cried all the way home, during my tea, and I was still crying when I went to bed. My poor mother, bewildered about why I was so grief-stricken, and by now slightly exasperated by the whole thing, said, “Why are you still crying? It wasn’t even a sad ending!”

Between sobs and sniffling, I eventually managed to wail, “I want to go to Siberia.”

Mum gave me a long look, which communicated pretty clearly (if very affectionately) this thought: “How in the world did we manage to produce such a Weird Daughter?”.

“I want to go to Siberia” was as close as I could get at the time to explaining why I was so moved, but I remember precisely what I felt and can express it a bit better now. It was probably the first time (but certainly not the last) that I had ever been moved to tears by the sheer heartbreaking beauty of the natural world. I saw the dark, still, pine forests, silenced by snow, and watched a man running for joy across a sunlit clearing with a huge tiger at his side. The snow they kicked up sparkled in the sun and the tiger was like a chip of amber held up to the light, the stripes like shadows cast by the trees. I wanted to be there, running with them. I wanted to feel the diamond-cold air in my lungs and reach out and touch the rough, thick fur of the tiger, to feel her warmth and the power of the muscles beneath her skin. I wanted it all so badly that it hurt. I couldn’t express any of this at the time, and the closest I could get was to explain it as a kind of homesickness.

Naturally, this incident became a family legend, and I still get my leg pulled about it every now and again. The animal-mad kid ended up as a biologist, taking a rational, objective approach to explaining the natural world, but also secretly revelling in the “beautiful ramifications”, as Darwin put it. I think I turned out OK, and Merlin — I’m sure your Weird Daughter will too.

But not actually filmed in Siberia, I now learn from IMDB. Apparently it was filmed in Alberta, Canada.↩
Thinking about the plot of this film now, I’m amazed it was rated as suitable for 5 year olds, but I don’t think there was much actual violence or blood involved.↩

The Secret of Kells

2011-11-27T19:48:00+00:00

I’ve just reviewed this film on the new site Letterboxd, but I thought I’d also copy it here, as not many people are using Letterboxd yet.

Along with Grave of the Fireflies, I think this has to be the most beautiful animated film I’ve seen. I was entranced and stunned by the sheer style of it the whole way through. The story is based around the creation of the Book of Kells — an illuminated Gospel produced around 800 AD, but weaves in elements of Celtic mythology. The hero — a young monk called Brendan — lives in the monastery of Kells, where his Uncle is trying to fortify the walls to withstand the advance of the ‘Northmen’ (Vikings). Brendan becomes fascinated by illumination when Brother Aidan arrives from Iona with the partially completed manuscript that will become the Book of Kells.

Aidan goes on a quest into the forest to find oak galls from which to make green ink, and encounters a wood spirit called Aisling. Aisling appears as a mischievous young girl, but she can also change into a white wolf, and is initially unwelcoming towards the young boy trespassing in her domain. Brendan becomes obsessed with completing the book, and ends up protecting it (together with Aidan) when the Northmen attack the monastery.

The scenes in the forest are among my favourite in the film, though I would be hard-pressed to find a single frame that didn’t astonish me with its beauty. The style is unusual and uses the swirls, spirals and knots from the Book of Kells itself. In some ways the animation has a very ‘flat’ style (again, like the illuminations), but the use of colour and movement gives it an intensely vibrant life. There’s a wonderful scene where Brendan and Aisling are climbing a gigantic oak (which has Celtic spirals and whorls embedded in its bark), that is so full of stylised detail and movement and dizzying, swirling movement that it quite takes your breath away. The dream sequences are also gorgeous and full of imaginative touches, with floating organic shapes which might be snowflakes, diatoms or decorative flourishes from the Book of Kells.

The characterisation is also wonderful. All of the characters have different body shapes and styles of movement, from the towering Abbot who is shaped like a Gothic arch, to Aisling who the embodiment of a wave or the wind. Brother Aidan also has a lovely white cat called Pangur Ban who plays an important role in the film. He is also stylised, but somehow retains the essence of cat in his sweeping, slinking movement. The Northmen are huge, rectangular, intimidating monsters, as the Vikings would probably have seemed to those under attack during their raids.

I don’t think it’s posting a spoiler to say that in the last few scenes of the film, we see pages from the actual Book of Kells. Brendan shows the book to his aging Uncle, and as he does so, the decorative elements move and take on lives of their own. It is utterly stunning and actually brought a lump to my throat because it was so beautiful. Legends say that the Book of Kells can turn darkness into light (real illumination!), and that’s certainly what happens in this film. I’m definitely going to watch this again, if only to wallow in the gorgeous images and take in more of the detail.

50 Words for Snow

2011-11-21T18:48:00+00:00

Ever since I found out that Kate Bush would be releasing not one but two new albums within a few months of each other, I’ve been waiting impatiently for 50 Words For Snow to be released. As it happened, I was working from home today (the day of release), but I was determined to get my work done before I succumbed to wallowing in the pleasure of listening to the new album. This proved to be very hard, particularly as certain people on Twitter (@HelgeG and @m_s, I’m looking at you!) kept talking about how great it was. Anyway, by exercising inhuman levels of patience and resistance, I managed to hold out until I reached a respectable time to stop work. And then I listened to the whole album. Twice. Then I pulled myself together and started to write this.

Regular readers know how much I love Kate Bush’s work. Anticipating a new album is a curious mixture of pleasure and terror: of course I’m looking forward to hearing her new work, but I’m also terrified that the latest album will reveal that she’s completely lost her touch. So far, this hasn’t happened and 50 Words For Snow has just taken my breath away. Twice. I’m going to be listening to this album a lot.

Where the last album Aerial was all about summer and warmth, lightness and happiness, 50 Words For Snow deals with icy whiteness, cold and longing. It’s not just that it has a winter theme — the whole album has a particular emotional tone which is thrilling and utterly beautiful. I haven’t relistened to Aerial back-to-back with this album, but I think that the two together would be electric, like jumping out of a sauna into an icy lake.

‘Snowflake’ features Kate’s son Bertie, who actually sings the majority of the melody as a snowflake falling to Earth and calling out to Kate. We’ve heard from Bertie before (a few spoken words on Aerial and a vocodered part on Director’s Cut as the voice of the computer), but I think this is the first time we’ve heard his proper singing voice. It could be horribly twee. It could be like an indulgent mother earnestly showing you her child’s latest splodgy finger-painted work and trying to convince you that it shows an advanced appreciation of colour and form. Thankfully it isn’t either of those things. Bertie actually has a rather lovely voice, which is a bit other-worldly, and he has a great sense of restraint and drama. I think he’s going to be a pretty good chip off the old block. It’s also a heart-breaking song. He continually calls out to her to come and find him, and she repeatedly sings:

The world is so loud. Keep falling. I’ll find you.

It might be my over-active imagination, but it seems that this refrain gets more weary and more despairing as time goes on, and the two never actually find one another. I’m not ashamed to say that it reduced me to tears (twice). There are so many beautiful parts of this track, but the part where Bertie delivers the following lines completely undoes me for some reason:

I think I can see you.
And your long, white neck

The title track is — on the face of it — a typically wacky Kate Bush attempt to turn an unlikely subject into a great song: Stephen Fry literally recites 50 words (most of them invented) for snow, while Kate counts them and eggs him on. It is certainly playful, and revels in the beauty and complexity of words, but it’s also rather hypnotic and becomes (if you’ll allow me to put on my Pretentious Hat for a moment) a kind of shamanic chant that is rather transporting.

‘Lake Tahoe’ is extraordinary, with its chorus of tenor and counter-tenor and its rather creepy story about a woman searching for her lost dog. It’s so beautifully constructed: quiet and chilly and using silence (which is then filled with crow calls) really effectively. I also love ‘Among Angels’ which is also pervaded by the same sense of just missing out on the love and comfort which is there but out of your reach.

‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ is a duet with Elton John. I’m not an Elton fan, and so that filled me with the kind of quiet dread that has previously been reserved for the phrase “featuring Rolf Harris”. However, I’m glad to say that he’s pretty good. Obviously, I would have preferred Kate to duet (again) with Peter Gabriel, but I can’t always get what I want. The song is a kind of time-travelling love story, with our hero and heroine constantly slipping out of each others’ arms and missing one another. Are you sensing a theme here? Again, it’s the kind of thing that only Kate can really pull off.

That brings me to the track which has probably elicited the most comment (and sniggering) among the reviewers: ‘Misty’. In this song, Kate has a one-night stand with a snowman. Really. Imagine, for a moment, that you are a songwriter of a lesser talent than Kate Bush, and you’re composing a song about a night-time assignation between a man and a woman. What kind of imagery would you bring in? Well, how about warmth, heat? Yes, ‘hot’ is good, ‘hot’ is sexy. If you are writing the song from the perspective of the woman, you probably also want the man to be strong and — I don’t want to be indelicate here — have a certain firmness about him. Certainly, you don’t want to have him “melting in my hand”, as that is usually considered… undesirable. Kate manages to invert every sensible thing you would put into a song of this kind and make it extraordinarily brilliant and really rather erotic, even though it is all wrong. She describes the snowman’s mouth:

His crooked mouth is full of dead leaves

It instantly makes you think of that smell of wet, dead leaves, full of rich, sweet humus and a touch of decay. You also remember the cold breath of the start of winter on your face, like kissing “ice-cream lips”. That’s a fairly startling image in such a setting, but somehow it works. Retrieving my Pretentious Hat again, I see it almost as a companion song to ‘Song of Solomon’, as you can read it as being about the difficulty of men opening up to women. Perhaps I’m just reading too much into it, but it’s that kind of album, full of allusion and things shifting away from you.

That brings me back to what I see as the theme of this album: the sense of never being able to quite find someone or something, of them being perpetually just out of reach. Whether it is the impossibility of hearing one particular snowflake fall, or of holding on to your one true love as you travel through time, or even of having a relationship with someone with whom you have incompatible thermal requirements, it’s all about longing and loss. Even 50 Words For Snow can be thought of in this way — you can use all the words you like, but you can’t really capture what snow is like, or how it feels.

I am probably reading far too much into this album, but that’s the way it struck me. It’s as chilly and beautiful and beguiling as the pattern of frost on a window, and you can see all sorts of pictures in it. Just remember to put on a jumper or two before you listen to it.

I Can See Clearly Now

2011-11-12T16:21:00+00:00

We’ve been meaning to do it for ages. Every time we looked at our ratty windows, we thought, “We really need to replace those windows.” But, for a long time, we didn’t. It was a big hassle, an upheaval, and most of all, it was going to be expensive and we had to save. Then we had to get our soffits and facias replaced before the mouldy, rotten things started to let water into the roof and cause us even more expense. That was also a hassle and upheaval (though confined to the outside of the house). However, when it was finished, the suddenly gleaming facia boards threw our rotten windows into stark relief. I’ve come to think of it as a kind of alternative Right Said Fred process, in which every improvement you make to your house necessitates further improvements because the rest of your house now looks much worse in contrast.

The windows were probably installed when the house was built. They were in fact double glazing units, but very thin and poor insulators by modern standards. What’s more, at some point, the seals on the units failed, so they collected condensation between the panes. They had wooden frames, and while I generally like wood, these were apparently cheap pine doing a bad impersonation of very dark mahogany, and they made the house look even more gloomy than it actually is, inside and out. They had been poorly maintained, and although we tried to patch up the rotten bits, it was a losing battle. They were warped and swollen and you had to put your shoulder to the windows to open them, running the risk of plummeting from an upstairs window every time. The time had come to pay the money and get them replaced with modern, white UPVC units. I’m not really a fan of UPVC, but we certainly didn’t have the money to install eco-friendly windows with nice oak frames, so UPVC it had to be.

We had the windows installed last week, and it has made an amazing difference. It’s incredible how much lighter it seems in the house, just because the frames are white rather than dark brown. The windows open easily and lock securely, and when I approach the house from outside, it actually looks like a nice, well-maintained house rather than a bit of a dump. It’s also a lot warmer (and quieter) in the house, we we’ve been able to turn the heating down. I can’t believe we didn’t do it earlier.

We did have to put the cats into the cattery for a couple of nights. They are house cats with absolutely no road sense, and it would have been really stressful for us trying to confine them in the rooms that still had windows, not to mention the fact that all the drilling would have freaked them out. The cattery is a very nice place, run by a lovely woman, and they don’t seem to mind being there too much. Their initial reactions are always hilarious though. Bianca trots straight out the carrying box, sees the cat activity centre thing and roars straight up it, really excited. Bella, though she acts the alpha cat, is a total chicken at heart, and reluctantly slinks out of the box. When we closed the door of the run and got ready to leave, she looked up at me with enormous eyes and droopy ears (exactly like this), and if you’ll forgive a bit of LOLCAT anthropomorphism for a moment, seemed to be saying “WHY U LEEVE ME HEER IN THIS PLACE WIV NO CARPET?”.

When we got back after the work had been completed, they both were magnificently unimpressed with the new windows, but very pleased to be home. Bella snuggled up on my lap at the earliest opportunity, and when we temporarily misplaced Bianca later, we eventually found her snuggled under the duvet on our bed, with just the top of her head visible as it rested gently on Mr. Bsag’s pillow. They were glad to have their home back, and so are we.

War of the Worlds

2011-10-30T16:07:00+00:00

No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.

If you spent big chunks of your childhood in a cosy living room, being enjoyably frightened by Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, then the chances are that you heard the paragraph above in the oiled saddle leather tones of Richard Burton. You may have also mentally appended a couple of beats of silence before hearing a dramatic orchestral chord, not unlike the opening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. I know I did.

A couple of weekends ago, my brother came for a visit, and in the course of a wander around the city, we ended up at the The Diskery (an excellent second-hand record shop and Birmingham institution) for a browse. The Diskery has an unbelievable volume of stock, and while it is categorised into genres, the best thing to do is just to flick through the vinyl and see what catches your eye. We had been doing just that for quite a while, and was thinking about seeing if my brother was ready to go, when a flick uncovered that unforgettable sleeve: The War of the Worlds! I had been looking for a vinyl copy for ages, having stupidly decided against buying the copy my brother and I had found in Swordfish a few years earlier¹. This time, I wasn’t going to make the same mistake, especially as it was only £6. Uttering an exultant ‘ULLA!’ (in my head and not out loud, you’ll be glad to hear), I checked it over quickly for scratches and warping and paid up.

Progressive Rock (or Prog Rock) is somewhat ridiculed for being pompous and overblown. The War of the Worlds is both of those at times, and yet I love it to bits. My brother and I used to listen to it on winter evenings, learned a lot of the lyrics off by heart and made fun of David Essex (“Bows and arrows against the lightning!”). We hadn’t read H. G. Wells’ book, so we thought that the Martian’s war cry was ‘OOO-LA!’ not ‘ULLA’, which made the spine-tingling moments slightly more camp. Or French. Nevertheless, we loved it in all its over-the-top symphonic glory. I hadn’t heard it for many years, so I was curious to see how it had held up. Well, I’ve been listening to it quite a bit, and it seems that my affection for it hasn’t dimmed.

I think that Richard Burton gave the whole enterprise a lot of much-needed gravitas. His voice is so rich and wonderful and authoritative, that it tends to act as a kind of counterbalance when the twiddly synthesiser parts get a bit out of control. However, I do like the twiddly synthesiser parts. One of the things that surprised me, hearing it again, was how rich and layered it was. I enjoyed the repeated musical themes, and there is a wonderfully sinister ambience about the whole thing. The performances are great too, though my favourite is the incomparable Phil Lynott as Parson Nathaniel, ranting about how the Martians are really demons to be exorcised. I’m sure that my enjoyment is somewhat coloured by my affection for the album, and associating it with with cosy winter evenings, but I’m really glad that I didn’t let this copy get away.

Yes, we do often end up in record shops when he visits.↩

Mirra Chair

2011-10-22T18:50:00+01:00

Several years ago, I bought a cheap saddle stool for working on the computer, because I had been having problems with back pain. It was a fairly cheap copy of better made models, but it did the job reasonably well. Saddle stools are — as the name suggests — modelled on horse riding saddles, and maintain a more open angle between your torso and your thighs. They also tilt your pelvis in such a way that your back naturally assumes a more upright position. I found it quite comfortable, but also rather limited: it was fine for typing, but if you wanted to change position and lean back a bit (when reading from the screen, for example) there was no way to do that. Recently, my saddle stool became really uncomfortable because the foam padding had compressed severely, and a couple of bolts holding the seat to the base were digging into the back of my legs. I tried to fix it by adding extra padding, but that didn’t work properly, so I had to think about getting a new chair.

For a short person like me, buying chairs brings with it the same trials and tribulations as buying clothes: nothing made for the ‘average person’ fits me. Of course, since very few people are actually ‘average’ most people have this problem in one form or another. I looked around at what was available, but most of the chairs had very limited adjustments available, so I knew immediately that they would probably not be comfortable. I also wanted something that would provide a bigger range of movement and seating positions, so that I could stretch out and move around at my desk. I’ve coveted a Herman Miller Aeron chair for ages, but I couldn’t find one at a reasonable price in the UK. Then I came across the Mirra chair, also made by Herman Miller. It had a great range of adjustments, and I managed to find a supplier that stocked it at a heavy discount from the recommended price. I thought about it for quite a while because it was still a lot of money, but I’ve been trying to avoid making false economies: buying cheap products often means that you end up spending the money again in a couple of years, and contributing to landfill along the way. I wanted a chair that would last many years, and since I spend a lot of time working at my desk it seemed like a good investment. The Mirra chair has an amazing 12 year warranty, so I could be fairly sure that it was going to last.

In the end I ordered it, and I couldn’t be happier with it. Some of you may already have fancy adjustable chairs at work, but the chair I was provided with at work just has seat and back height adjustment, and that’s it. So I was amazed by how much difference it makes when you can actually adjust all the elements of the seat to fit your own body. The Mirra has adjustable seat height (of course), but the depth is also adjustable, which is really handy for people like me with short femurs (otherwise known as Stumpy Legs). You can change the height and width of the arm rests, and also their angle, so you can angle them in when typing, or tilt one out if you want to support your mousing hand. The lumbar support is very clever, and you can easily adjust the height and the depth of the support it provides.

The Mirra also allows you to move around when you are seated. You can tilt back in the chair if you lean backwards, and almost recline it if you want. The resistance for this facility is adjustable so that you can balance it perfectly against your body weight. You can limit the range of tilting if you want to as well. I really enjoy the reclining, as I find I naturally raise my arms above my head and stretch backwards at intervals while I’m working, so the chair allows me to do that, but remain properly supported. Another aspect of tiling is the Forward Tilt: this tips the seat at a slight angle and places the backrest in a more upright position, which is perfect for keyboard work. You can engage this easily be leaning back slightly and then flipping a lever, and I find that as well as providing a comfortable postion, it also helps to mentally flip me into “writing mode”. It’s ridiculous really, but flipping a lever to change my seat position actually helps to remind me that I should be focussing on what I’m doing, like pressing a mental ‘Turbo Charge’ button. Sad, but true… The back is solid, heavy plastic, but the perforations provide both ventilation and a degree of flex. The seat is made from Herman Miller’s AirWeave material which is nicely supportive and flexible, but also allows ventilation.

I’ve had to make a couple of other adjustments to my working set up. I have a desk made from a chunk of Ikea kitchen worktop with adjustable legs. When I originally set it up, I was using the saddle stool which naturally raises you up higher because your legs are more extended. Consequently, with my feet flat on the floor using the Mirra, the desk top was too high. I could have fiddled with the legs to lower the height of the desk, but when I measured it out, I realised that the desk would look as if it ought to be hosting small children in smocks for finger-painting activities. In the end I took the lazy (and vain) route of getting a cheap footrest instead of altering the desk. It works fine, but I might eventually lower the desk if I can withstand the mocking from visitors¹.

I’m really glad I decided to spend the money, because for me, the extra expenditure to get a chair that actually fits me (the first I have ever had that actually fits me) was worth it. It’s a solidly-made and very heavy chair, using good quality materials, and with the guarantee, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be enjoying it for years to come.

For example, “Remember to get an adult to help you with the cutting out, won’t you?”↩

Default Folder X

2011-10-09T11:49:00+01:00

Before I upgraded to Lion, I had a bit of a digital clear out. I uninstalled various bits of software that I had idly installed at various points to try out and then abandoned. I tidied up my directory structure and carefully considered whether or not I needed all the applications I have installed. To some extent, I had already gone through the same process when I got my MacBook Air. I started with a blank slate with that machine and only installed things that I couldn’t work comfortably without, in order to avoid filling up the comparatively small SSD. For example, I stopped using the excellent Path Finder on all my machines for consistency, just to see if I could manage with the Finder without getting frustrated beyond endurance. Although I miss many things about Path Finder (tabbed windows and the Drop Zone for collecting together files in particular), I have managed to get along without it by using LaunchBar (which I certainly can’t do without) to take over many of those useful jobs.

I had also uninstalled Default Folder X for the same reasons, despite having used it for many years. For those of you who have not come across it before, Default Folder X improves the Open and Save dialogs of all applications by adding various features and shortcuts. You can save your favourite folders to a quick access menu or access recently visited folders. It has hierarchical menus so you can navigate where you want to get to quickly and easily. You can even change the current folder in the dialog to match your open Finder window with a single click. There are lots of keyboard shortcuts and you can add your own custom shortcuts to favourite folders and so on.

It also allows you to easily view and edit the metadata of files. A panel below the dialog allows you to edit the Spotlight comments, add or edit OpenMeta tags, add a Finder label or preview the contents of the file. It’s really handy to be able to do that while you are opening or saving a file rather than having to switch to the Finder. Best of all, you can set a preference to rebound to the last opened folder, and/or to default to the folder of the currently open document. Those two preferences alone save an enormous amount of time when you want to save a copy of the current file in the same directory, particularly if you are in some deeply nested folder. Oh, and you can set a default folder for an application, too: I set Keynote to default to ~/Documents/Talks since I almost always want to save a presentation somewhere in that directory.

I tried living without Default Folder X for several months, but every time I had to open or save a file, I got irritated by the amount of time I wasted manually navigating around folders in the dialog. Again, I tried using LaunchBar to find a directory and paste the path into the dialog, but it was a bit long-winded and clunky compared to Default Folder X’s elegance. In the end, I cracked and reinstalled it, and I’m a happy dialog navigator again. It’s one of those utilities which becomes such an integrated part of your computing experience that you barely notice it, but living without it quickly reveals how much you rely on it.

The Tale of the Lost Shoe

2011-10-05T19:03:00+01:00

Settle down, while I tell you a tale full of intrigue and mystery. Well, some mystery, anyway.

As I set off for work yesterday, I looked around for the heavy walking shoes that I usually wear on my bike. We don’t have any fancy dedicated shoe storage, so I usually put them on the floor of the hall, next to the stairs. One of the pair was there, where I expected it to be, but there was no sign of the other. Cursing a bit because I was already late, I lifted bags and other stuff in the hall to see if it had somehow got covered up, but there was no trace of the missing shoe.

I couldn’t understand it. I must have come in wearing both shoes the last time I wore them, because they are pretty chunky. Tired as I am when I get home some days, I’m pretty sure I would remember if I was clomping around shod uni-pedally. In the end I wore another pair and cycled to work trying to reconstruct when I had last worn the shoes. We’ve had a bit of a mini-heatwave the past week, so I’ve been wearing my Crocs on the bike instead of the walking shoes. Nothing unusual popped out of my memory about the last time that I had worn them: I knew that I hadn’t, for example, absent-mindedly taken off one shoe and placed it in the fridge. Hmm.

Later that day, I phoned Mr. Bsag and asked him if he had any luck finding the lost shoe during the day. He had looked everywhere I could think of, but hadn’t turned it up. Now I was feeling rather disconcerted. Surely a burglar wouldn’t break into the house and steal only one very worn and grubby shoe?

When I got home, I took off my footwear and glared at it on the floor of the hall, daring one of the pair to disappear. Still pondering the conundrum, I went into the living room and closed the curtains at the front. As I did so, I glanced down behind the TV, which sits on a large media cabinet. You can probably guess what’s coming.

There, nestled in a large and fluffy cloud of shed cat hair¹, was my lost shoe.

Suddenly I remembered Bianca playing with the laces of this pair a few days previously. The only explanation that I can come up with is that she started playing with and when she had ‘killed’ the shoe, dragged it off to her furry secret lair behind the TV, which is where both our cats go to escape the Terror of the Vacuum Cleaner. At least now I know where to look when footwear goes missing for no apparent reason.

My housekeeping leaves something to be desired at the moment.↩

Pseudonymity and the Internet

2011-09-24T15:51:00+01:00

Over the past few months there has been a resurgence of arguments about anonymity and pseudonymity¹ on the internet, sparked off by Google Plus’ faintly ridiculous policy of requiring ‘Real Names’, where their idea of a Real Name is somewhat narrow and excludes many names real people have on their birth certificates. As someone who has participated and interacted online under a pseudonym for nearly 9 years, I obviously have a keen interest in this debate.

A lot of very intelligent people have written eloquently on this topic, and a whole site called My Name is Me has sprung up, featuring testimonies from people who — for many different reasons — wish to use a pseudonym online. For example, danah boyd wrote about the importance of pseudonyms for women, young people, victims of violence and abuse and LGBT people, among others. Kee Hinkley wrote a long and very interesting piece covering many issues raised by the policy and the general debate. I’m not going to attempt to rehash the whole argument about why Google is misguided, since so many other people have done it so well, but I wanted to write a bit about my own use of a pseudonym.

I’ve written before about why I chose not to use my real name in a post on Anonymity. The thing is, that was back in 2004: over time if you use your pseudonym liberally and consistently, it becomes as real and substantial as your ‘real’ identity. It has a life intermeshed tightly with your own life. As Kee put it:

I have a pseudonym I use on the Internet. It has a blog, a paid Flickr account, a YouTube account, over 1000 Twitter followers, over 40,000 tweets (that’s about 1000 pages of writing). It has its own domain name, and three years worth of 50,000 Google references associated with it (twice as many as I have under this name). Why does that account, with it’s obvious pseudonym, have less accountability than some guy named “John Smith” who lists no location, links to no other info, and shows no connections to any other people on the Internet? My persona lives and dies on reputation alone.
Kee Hinkley On Pseudonymity, Privacy and Responsibility on Google+

I’m in a similar position on a smaller scale. I’ve been posting online as bsag for nearly 9 years (next month), I tweet, post photographs, comment on other people’s articles, have developed open source software and so on, all under that name. In contrast, the material linked to my real name is very minimal and exclusively linked to my work (which is a very small part of me and my interests and enthusiasms). If you met me in real life (a few people who read this blog have), I think (and hope) that I would be pretty much the same as the person you know from my writing. I’m slightly shy in person so I tend to come across as a bit more confident in written form, but otherwise what you see here is what you get. I didn’t adopt a different persona along with my pseudonym — this is me. I try to treat people with civility and respect in person, and I do the same online.

In fact, I’m a little bit more me online. I like the act of communicating through writing, and I express myself better like this than I do talking in person because of my slight shyness. I’m also interested in lots of different things, many of which (particularly the geekier interests) are not actually shared with my friends in real life. If I start enthusing about computers or hifi or even music to many of my friends, I can see their eyes start to glaze over, so I stop, not wanting to bore them to death. I’m sure that most of you who read this blog aren’t interested in all the things that interest me or vice versa, but I can write about that here because I’m not imposing these things on you. You can choose to read or not, and I take no offence at all if you decide a particular article (or indeed my whole blog) is not for you. On the other hand, if you do find something interesting, we can both enjoy sharing and discussing it.

I’ve come to think of bsag as a semi-secret nickname, and have even caught myself using it in my own head to refer to myself². So why is that not every bit as valid as my real name?

The ‘nymwars’↩
Is that odd? Probably a bit. I have to be careful not to use it out loud.↩

Piolo

2011-09-18T12:12:00+01:00

A little while ago, I bought a couple of nifty stands for my iPhone from Piolo. There’s not much to them, really: they are just a nicely molded piece of plastic with a slot in one end just wide enough to grip the edge of an iPhone 4 without a case. The idea is that you attach the Piolo to the edge of the phone and you can prop it up in either portrait or landscape mode. It’s simple, sturdy, light and just works. The nice thing is that you can slide the Piolo up or down the edge to adjust the angle of viewing, and it works well in lots of different situations.

They are pretty cheap (and made in Sheffield!) so I bought a twin pack of yellow and cyan so that I could keep one at home and one in my bag to take to work and so on. The stands are small and light, and even have a hole in one end so that you can attach them to a keyring or something similar. Sometimes the simplest little tools can be very satisfying.

Rex Whistler Mural

2011-09-11T12:24:00+01:00

On our way back from Anglesey, we stopped off at a National Trust Property called Plas Newydd. A very beloved Godmother of mine gave Mr. Bsag and I a Lifetime Membership to the National Trust as a wedding present, which was a generous and wonderful gift that we make use of frequently. National Trust properties are often fascinating, but the entrance fees can also be expensive, so you sometimes wonder if the trip will be worth the money or you end up staying longer than you really wanted to, just to get your money’s worth. Having the membership has solved all that for us as we can just pop in on the off-chance that we’ll find something of interest¹.

In this case, we had actually planned the trip on the recommendation of a friend who said we had to see the stunning mural by Rex Whistler which is in the dining room of the house. Rex (no relation to the Whistler of ‘Whistler’s Mother’ fame) Whistler was commissioned by the 6th Marquess of Anglesey to paint a mural for a long wall of the dining room in the 1930s. The dining room is rather an awkward shape, being very long and rather thin. The idea was to cover the whole of the long wall facing the windows with a painting, presumably so that those seated facing the wall had a view that was just as interesting as for those facing the windows. Strictly speaking it isn’t a mural, because it was painted on an enormous length of canvas which was stuck to the wall, rather than being painted on the surface of the wall itself. It is, however, stunning.

One of Whistler’s artistic talents was in painting stage scenery (though he was also an excellent fine artist and illustrator too), and he created a beautiful and dramatic sea- and cityscape for the dining room. He painted an imaginary city — which incorporates some of his favourite buildings from the UK and other countries — and peopled it with imaginary figures and also members of the Marquess’ family. As the viewer, you appear to be standing on the quay of a grand harbour, with cities to your left and right and mountain ranges in the background. Rex cleverly wrapped the painting around the corners of the room, so if you look left or right when facing the painting, you seem to be looking down the line of two long colonnades.

The painting itself is almost photo-realistic, and Whistler played incredible tricks with perspective and trompe l’oeil effects. When you are at one side of the painting the mountain ranges on the left appear to reach about the middle of the picture and the city on the right is tiny. As you move to the right, the mountains recede and seem to take up only the first quarter of the painting, and city on the right expands into incredible detail. There are also very odd effects with a rowing boat and an anchor in the foreground which appear to rotate as you move along the picture. It’s impossible to describe the impact that it has. I could have spent hours looking at all the details.

Immensely talented though he was, Whistler’s story is a rather tragic one. When he was working at Plas Newydd on the painting, he fell in love with the Marquess’ daughter, Lady Caroline Paget (you can read more about the story on here). By all accounts, his love wasn’t requited. The guide pointed out that Rex painted himself into the one of the side colonnades, sweeping up red rose petals to symbolise his unrequited love, since he had previously painted a portrait of Lady Caroline holding a red rose. When war broke out, he joined the Welsh Guards. In 1944, he was commanding a tank in Normandy when the tank became entangled in fallen telegraph wires. The crew were fired on by German machine gunners as they tried to free it, and when Whistler ran to another tank to request covering fire, a mortar exploded close by, killing him instantly.

One of the little details pointed out by the guides really got me. On the steps of the right-hand colonnade, Whistler painted a half-smoked cigarette. Rex smoked and painted it in as a visual joke and a token that he had just stepped away and would be back to add more details to the painting. He never came back.

We even sometimes (rather guiltily) use National Trust properties as posh service stations on a journey. We use the toilet facilities, have some tea and lovely cakes in the tea rooms, then wander through a bit of the grounds before getting back in the car.↩

Contrasts

2011-09-06T13:23:00+01:00

We’ve just returned from a holiday in Anglesey, staying in the same cottage that we used last year. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, and had a near-miraculous (for Wales) three consecutive days of sunshine and no rain. The Thursday was particularly Mediterranean (you can see the evidence in my Flickr set), and after we returned from a lovely walk on Holyhead Mountain I decided to go for a swim in the sea.

The late afternoon sun was still warm, and it made everything the colour of honey. The tide was out and the sea was very calm and smooth. I set off from the cottage in my swimming costume, a towel wrapped sarong-style around my waist and waded through the sea of marram grass to get to the beach. When the tide is out, the sand is firm and gently ridged like the palate of a yawning cat. I left my towel and sandals on a rock and walked over a huge expanse of sand to reach the water’s edge. The beach here slopes so gently (at least at first), that you feel as if you could walk to the horizon and still be only thigh-deep in the sea.

I don’t like swimming in warm seas — something feels deeply wrong about it — but the seas around Wales don’t let you down in that respect. The water was sharp and cold. I know that the best way to get into cold water is to submerge yourself immediately and get it over with, but I’m not that brave. I tend to wade in slowly until the water is near the top of my thighs, and then wait for the waves to come and cover more of me. Once I’ve got over the gasping-with-shock phase¹, I dive in properly.

The shallow water was beautifully clear, and I could see the sand on the bottom illuminated by golden ripples of light. As I performed my signature slow and stately breaststroke with a slight screw-kick, I watched my wedding ring flash in the sunlight under the water. I thought about its brother, The Lost Ring, and wondered wryly if my ring was signalling to its counterpart, wherever it is in its snug bed of soil. I find that I can smile about it now. There’s still a residual tinge of sadness, but it’s the kind that sharpens the focus of happiness.

As I swam, the exercise began to warm me a little, but the water was still cold. The sun’s warmth on the goosepimpled skin of my arms and back was wonderful, and I revelled in the delicious contrast of temperatures. After swimming for a while, I played in the little waves, body-surfing and letting the movement of the water roll and turn me. I floated on my back and stuck my toes out of the water, so that they became small pink sails on the horizon.

Eventually — reluctantly — I got out. I usually feel a bit self-conscious wearing my swimming costume, and scurry for my towel to cover up. However, for some reason this time it didn’t bother me at all. I pulled myself up to my full Hobbit height and walked slowly up the beach, beaming ecstatically at everyone I passed. I was a tiny figure on a huge expanse of sand and sea and yet I felt as tall as an Ent, with my roots in the sand and my crown in the sky.

I tend to wait until the ninth wave, just because I like Kate Bush so much.↩