notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

2010-08-24

post/1003599405

quote 15:18:45
“ Everything we put on the Web is both ephemeral and archival — ephemeral in the sense that so much of what we post is only fleetingly relevant, archival in the sense that the things we post tend to stay where we put them so we can find them years later. ”

Scott Rosenberg: Why trust Facebook with the future’s past? (via Phil Gyford).

He goes on to compare the way that older sites - like Flickr - expose an archive, whereas newer ones - like Facebook - don’t, despite the fact that some of the promotional commentary for the Places feature has been about looking back in twenty years. In other words: “Facebook could be such a repository today, if it actually cared about history. It has given no evidence of such concern.”

2010-08-01

Death of a London Icon

text 22:25:52

This is a London taxi.

It’s iconic, and suited for London’s streets. It has a short wheelbase and hence a tiny turning circle; handy for the City’s narrow roads. The shape is internationally recognised. Sadly, they’re no longer all black - advertising wraparounds did for that - but they’re still a design classic.

Unfortunately, nowadays, this is also a London taxi.

This is a Mercedes van, compete with a horribly ugly stripe paintjob. It doesn’t have the same narrow wheelbase, and it certainly doesn’t have the iconic design.

This isn’t exactly a new change, though. I believe the regulations were changed to allow Mercedes to enter the market at least a year ago. Nonetheless, there’s been far less outcry of this change than there was when bendy buses replaced double deckers (sometimes, replacing the much-loved Routemasters on the same lines).

Personally, though, I’m far more annoyed by the presence of these ugly new taxis than I ever was by the (now doomed, thanks to Boris) bendy buses. At least they still looked like a London bus (since there’ve always been a few single-deck services, admittedly more commonly outside the centre). By contrast, t here’s something offputting about these new taxis.

I wonder what accounts for the lack of complaint. Is it the fact that taxi drivers are each their own little companies, so there’s no overarching bad guy (TfL, or London Buses, or Ken) to pin the blame on? Perhaps it’s the aforementioned dilution of the homogeneity of the taxi, because of advert wraps and different colours, which has been going on for a couple of decades? Is it that the new taxis are accessible? (If so, there’s one hell of a double standard there- bendy buses are far better for wheelchairs and pushchairs than Routemasters, and generally better than modern double deckers). Probably it’s a combination of all of the above, and other factors I haven’t thought of.

Still, every time I see a non-standard taxi, a small part of me sighs, and I suspect it always will.

2010-06-22

post/724752842

quote 09:11:33
“ Ironically, it was I, and not my German roommates, who suffered from that famous German syndrome: Mauer-im-Kopf, or “wall in the head.” I knew the path the Berlin Wall had traced only two blocks from our Kreuzberg apartment; my roommates did not. They took their out-of-town guests to the natural history museum; I took my bewildered visitors to barren patches of park where the concrete Mauer used to stand. I got the distinct sense during my year in Berlin that the preoccupation with history’s physical imprint on the city was an Auslander phenomenon. ”
Amelia Atlas in n+1’s Berlin Trilogy, a worth-reading review of three books set in (and, more or less, about) the city. I’m definitely keen to read Book of Clouds, and I wish I could read enough German to make sense of Treffen sich zwei.

2010-06-09

post/679670012

photo 10:39:35
headlessness:

Had cause to locate some aerial images of star forts today. Star forts are an architectural response to the age of gunpowder, and a good example of technological determinism at work — at least in my opinion. This one, Boutrange is one of my favourites.

This is a nice post, but the discussion on the version on Metafilter is really where it comes alive. I never realised how many there were in the US; there are even two in New York City.

headlessness:

Had cause to locate some aerial images of star forts today. Star forts are an architectural response to the age of gunpowder, and a good example of technological determinism at work — at least in my opinion. This one, Boutrange is one of my favourites.

This is a nice post, but the discussion on the version on Metafilter is really where it comes alive. I never realised how many there were in the US; there are even two in New York City.

2010-04-18

2010-04-15

post/522851552

photo 09:06:41
teflon:

Post Office Tube Railway: artwork for a  poster, by Edward Bawden, circa 1935 -from The British Postal Museum & Archive

Oh, this is nice.

teflon:

Post Office Tube Railway: artwork for a poster, by Edward Bawden, circa 1935 -from The British Postal Museum & Archive

Oh, this is nice.

2010-04-12

post/515326102

quote 10:19:08
“ If I’d waited for some miracle I’d still be up there. ”
Jim Lovell, mission commander, quoted in a piece on BBC News: Apollo 13: Nasa’s finest hour?

2010-04-02

post/490934766

quote 10:46:00
“ For those of you blessed with senile amnesia or youth, CD-ROMs were the first wave of “interactive media” in the mid-eighties, and the great hope for publishing houses struggling to understand what it might be doing in the 21st century. ”
Danny O’Brien: cd-roms and ipads. And that’s just the introduction to an amusing and insightful post.

2010-03-10

Attaining Hampstead

text 21:48:43

While researching the proper way SCREEN$ load on a Spectrum, I was distracted by somehow running across an old adventure game.

Hampstead was by Melbourne House, who put out a fair few classic text adventures in the 1980s. As the instructions put it:

Hampstead is a quest, but not for gold. The aim of it is to reach the
pinnacle of social status, and acquiring wealth is only one part of
the problem. If you wish to go up in the world you also have to gain
the admiration and respect of your fellow men, and there's more to
that than a fat bank balance.

There’s been a flickr of rediscovery in the past: Aleks Krotoski wrote about it in the Guardian Gamesblog in 2007, as did Anna Black earlier this year. Personally, I find it interesting for a few reasons. For one thing, it’s one of those games during the flowering of 8-bit home computers that tried to reflect everyday life, and perhaps even comment on them (as did Manic Miner and Skooldaze/Back to Skool). For another, there’s this comment in the Crash preview of the game:

It is different to most adventures, in that its purpose is to amuse people rather than provide a hard adventure. Indeed, the adventure is extremely simple, which the authors say is so that anyone can complete it, and so reap more enjoyment from it.

That’s a sentiment that’s getting traction again these days, at least amongst certain people I know. Perhaps I’ll even download the game and give it a go. After all, who doesn’t want a bit of Hampstead once in a while?

2010-03-05

post/428153070

quote 11:58:46
“ Tories might reread Labour’s 1983 manifesto and accept that although the big economic argument of that year (private ownership or public ownership?) has been won, the big sociocultural argument (Christian traditionalism or secular pluralism?) has been lost. Given its stress on economic planning, Labour’s 1983 manifesto does look archaic. But so does the 1983 Tory manifesto, given its stress on marriage-based households and its reluctance to admit alternative family structures. ”
Richard Kelly, writing in New Statesman in 2003: Not as daft as you thought, on the only Labour general election manifesto while Michael Foot was leader.

about

pages

options