no2self.net

About a week ago I was driving in to work when I passed a pick up truck belonging to the new Kerrang radio station. I decided to ditch the Today programme and tune in. They were about to do an outside broadcast that involved reading out the number in a phone box and the first person to ring it won a prize. It didn’t quite go according to plan, as they managed to read out the number for wrong phone box. As he stood there waiting for the call, you could hear another phone box ringing in the distance. Not a very impressive start.

Nevertheless I stuck with it for a few days and found that if I just listened to the music and not the DJ’ing inbetween it was a good station that played some great tracks.

Yesterday, I got in the car at about 7:30am, turned on the radio and listened as their roving reporter described how he was stood in Wolverhampton city centre dressed in lederhosen. Apparently it was International Lederhosen Day. He was just about to explain what his plan was when he was suddenly cut off mid-sentence.

There was a scuffling noise.

A pause.

Heavy breathing.

Someone was running.

More heavy breathing, footsteps darting quickly over concrete.

In the background was a voice, ‘Oi! Stop!’.

He was running down the street chasing the kid who’d just stole his phone live on air.

In lederhosen.

Back in the studio they were as stunned as everyone else. They managed to get through to the second reporter, who confirmed, breathlessly, that they’d been running through the streets of Wolverhampton after a kid in a gray hooded top, but they couldn’t catch him. The rest of the show was devoted to the story of the two of them searching the city for the mugger. They even managed to get him to answer the phone, whereupon he proceeded to grunt a few times in an effort to claim innocence and say that his name was ‘D’.

It was great radio. For once, the bits in between the music were more compelling than the music. There may be something of great importance to be learnt from this story, but for the moment it seems that the most obvious moral to this tale is not to make a phone call from Wolverhampton at 7:30 in the morning when you’re wearing lederhosen.

• Architect sketch from ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’
  

  perilously close to the real thing (found via thingsmagazine.net who found it via plasticbag.org)

• ThinkGeek :: USB Cup Warmer
  

  It’s my birthday on August 7th – all gifts kindly received!

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

A little housekeeping before I go away for the weekend. It’s been quite rightly pointed out to me that I’m guilty of something I swore I’d never do: neglecting the humble 56k modem. Apologies to any readers who’ve been cursing at the number of graphics on the page of late and the time it takes to download. I couldn’t resist posting the paper bag as a GIF file so that I could use transparency around the edges – I’ve commented enough about the perils of form over function, so you’d think I’d have the good sense to follow my own advice. Anyway, I’ve adjusted it to a JPEG now so it should move a little quicker (Peter – the one you have directly linked is still in place so your post will not be broken).

Notes from the stats:

1. I hope that the 22 people who’ve downloaded my RIBA exam paper have taken heed of the warning I posted with it.
2. Somebody got here via a Google search for Alexis Butterfield – friend and fellow author of the Deconstruction and Tea entry. Alexis, if that’s you Ego-Googling, shame on you – drop me a line and say hello.
3. My error log tells me that quite a few people have been frustrated by some broken links in my Pigs in Space project site – all fixed now, do your worst.

Except for the automated linklog in an hour or so, I shall be offline until Monday. See you* next week.

* metaphorically speaking of course, since this damned online existence means I never actually see anyone. Ask Joel if you don’t believe me, he’ll back me up.

A pen is so much easier to carry than a PDA or a laptop. Whilst that remains true, you’ll have to suffer the occasional hand written entry.

I’ve just started reading Time and the Hunter by Calvino. Peter has also bought himself a copy and he and I have agreed to do some inter-blog notes on it. We haven’t actually worked out how best to tackle it yet, but I scribbled down a few thoughts yesterday that I might as well post here – even if they are almost incoherent. I was a little unwell yesterday and not exactly thinking straight.

It’s possible we’ve set ourselves up for a fall, as I often find that Calvino’s work can be so breathtaking that it leaves you speechless.

When I find the words to express myself properly, I shall make some notes in my wiki: TimeAndTheHunter.

• Antique Phonograph Music Program
  

  Every Tuesday evening, 7pm to 8pm, on wfmu.org

• growabrain: Radio Archives
  

  blog category listing online and independent radio stations

• BlosGate – The Email to Blosxom Gateway
  

  …an email-to-blog gateway that allows you to publish to Blosxom via email without procmail rules and/or root access to your server

delivered (almost) daily at (almost) midnight via del.icio.us.

So there’s this dog. And he’s chasing a Frisbee. The former bounds across the open field making an almost incalculable number of micro-adjustments to its speed and direction. The latter glides across the open sky receiving an almost incalculable number of micro-deformations to its speed and direction. The space between them is carved and re-carved by the interconnectedness of their destinies.

Any single point on the topography of the diagram created by their interconnectedness is a dynamic stability linked to all other points.

The energy invested by all previous environmental conditions is converted into the noise of teeth on plastic.

Chomp.

written after Matt Webb‘s trackback hack reminded me of something.

‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller’ by Italo Calvino

How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone’s ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks of the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes…

An artist under the influence of LSD (found via biroco.com)

Outlines seem normal, but very vivid – everything is changing colour. My hand must follow the bold sweep of the lines. I feel as if my consciousness is situated in the part of my body that’s now active – my hand, my elbow… my tongue.

I deserve a slap. I missed this one first time round. Tonight, via City Comforts, through to John Udell and then finally on to Keith Pleas, I’ve found a great article on the much talked about Seattle library by Rem Koolhaas.

Keith Pleas is a software architect. By making comparisons with an enthusiastic Seattle Times article, and assessing the detail rather than just the grand gestures, he punches gaping wide holes in the supposed success of Koolhaas’ design. It’s a great, but depressing, read. Seemingly obvious design flaws abound and he has pictures to prove it.

I’m taking solace in the idea that it’s character building to learn that one’s heros can make mistakes too.

Here’s a quote from his summary (my emphasis).

Some parallels between the worlds of construction and software architecture are obvious. Starting at the top, a truly creative architectural design needs people all the way through the hierarchy to implement it. We also have similar “materials” issues in terms of the infrastructure, tools, and libraries that are available. However, we have one fortunate advantage over the construction world in that you can write literally anything in code if you have enough resources, whereas there are some absolute limits in the construction world.

Only last night, I was telling another software architect that I’m interested in how the recognition/negotiation of those limits is the point at which Architecture as opposed to Building takes place. There are certain immovable forces in architecture, such as the laws of physics and building control inspectors, that mean compromise of one’s aesthetic vision is inevitable at some point. In my experience, well executed solutions to those compromises become the defining moments in the success of a project.

From the looks of some of the issues raised by Keith’s write up, it seems Koolhaas has ducked the need to tackle a few glaring compromises. To give some context to why this is such Bad News, here’s an anecdote to demonstrate how highly regarded Koolhaas has been over the last decade or so.

A few years ago I attended a lecture and discussion given by Lars Spuybroek from NOX and Winy Maas of MVRDV. It was chaired by the author of ‘SuperDutch’, Bart Lootsma. His book discusses the history of Dutch architecture.

The pragmatism required for land reclamation, the self-assessment that has occurred through the forces of internationalization, a history of welfare state politics, it’s cultural institutions, the cautious nature with which it approaches economic success and the growing culture of public consultation are all cited by Lootsma as instrumental in forming the present Dutch architectural attitude.

Also examined in the book are the influences of Rem Koolhaas’ approach to undertaking research and theoretical work and the financial support provided to upcoming students by the Dutch government.

It’s widely recognised that Koolhaas is the Father of contemporary Dutch architecture. This is partly because of the influence his work has over his peers; but also because many of the Netherlands’ new practices are started by ex-employees of his office. Winy Maas from MVRDV is one such example. During the lecture, to demonstrate the importance of Koolhaas’ work in Dutch architecture, Lars Spuybroek proposed that;

“There are two forms of postgraduate architectural education in the Netherlands – the grant system and Rem.”

I’m going to go and load my dishwasher in an effort to take my mind off badly executed architecture. Let’s hope I don’t come across too many design flaws whilst I stack the plates.

*smash*

Damn.

We have a winner! James gets in first with a combination of vague memories and Google. The text in question is the lyrics to Grandad – the #1 hit from 1971 sung by Clive Dunn.

For reasons I’m not prepared to explain, it popped up via the Winamp shuffle button at work this morning and I decided to post it here. I took out the giveaway chorus to make it a little trickier.

Congratulations James, you’ve won…absolutely nothing.