Mark Higginson

Perhaps my memory is incorrect but for the first seven years I spent in Brighton it never, ever snowed. Now this year and last year we've had a thick fluffy blanket. I just looked outside and this is what I saw....

       

Click here to download:

White_blanket..._tags_brighton.zip (6101 KB)

Good day out yesterday. I travelled to Silverstone for a work related meeting and visted the Porsche Experience Centre; it has a great collection of historic cars on display and I also had the opportunity to take out a 911 with one of the instructors. The 911 is an amazing car, not nearly as intimidating to drive as I assumed it to be, even with driver aids switched off. Perhaps I'm stuck in my ways but I think you need a manual box to properly enjoy a car like this but can certainly see how it would be a good fit with the Panamera. Gear changes are super smooth and responsive and I can see how under normal driving conditions it would make for a more relaxing journey. However, this is a 911 and I want to physically swap the cogs to feel as involved as possible.

         

Click here to download:

Porsche_Experience_Centre_tags.zip (1015 KB)

Brighton has a 'cultural quarter'. Who responsible this?

The last weekend of a particularly gloriously sunny September saw us visting this archetypal castle. Ironically I don't think it was constructed for serious defensive purposes; there's more on the history of the place over on Wikipedia.

Bodiam Castle

Friday started well. We all stood outside on the roof terrace at work and watched the ridiculously amazing Red Arrows perform over Brighton. So low I swear they were flying below the level of the taller buildings in town. A stunning display of skill.

Red Arrows over Brighton

We have an early winner! During a foray into Debenhams on Tuesday I spotted this display sitting proudly at the top of the escalators. No hiding away, bold as brass and in plain sight.

Christmas decorations on sale in September

This was spotted at 108 shopping days until Christmas. Let's see if anyone beats that next year.

I've had a busy August which was dominated by getting married. This was a tremendously exciting and beautiful day; blogging has thus been far from my thoughts.

After the wedding we went to Cornwall for a few days, a part of the UK I hadn't visited before. We visited the typical tourist attractions which I'm really pleased we did as both the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan are amazing. Eden had shades of Logan's Run about it, I was expecting to be summoned to Carousel at any moment.

Looking up in the rainforest biome at the Eden Project

Cornwall is geared up for tourism, there are B&B's everywhere though booking ahead is essential during the summer months. We stayed at The Avalon guest house in Tintagel and The Chapel guest house near St Austell, both of which were lovely and I'd recommend without hesitation.

On a leaf in the rainforest biome at the Eden Project

I would however mention that on our first night, shattered from a seven hour drive, we ate at a place called The Olive Garden which is just next door to The Avalon in Tintagel. Avoid. All of the worst food I've been served in this country has been at so-called Italian restaurants, perhaps because people who can't actually cook think it is an easy option.

Cornwall was lovely, but all the stories about getting there are true... it takes a day in itself.

I read on Schnews and Corporate Watch that the Big Green Gathering has been bailed out of its financial difficulties by a joint venture involving "AEG - the largest sports and entertainment corporation in the US, owning arenas, cinemas, newspapers and sports teams". It reminded me of what was said in The Rebel Sell about the counterculture being the vanguard of capitalism. The Big Green Gathering say that they:

"... developed organically in response to a desire from people within the green movement for a festival that was focused on Green issues. Now we have somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 people expected this year. Staying Green is now a bigger challenge than ever."

Quite. I'm reminded of something the character Cayce Pollard says in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition:

"It's about a group behavior pattern around a particular class of object. What I do is pattern recognition. I try to recognize a pattern before anyone else does." "And then?" "I point a commodifier at it." "And?" "It gets productized. Turned into units. Marketed."

Which brings me onto this scene that I witnessed today:

The village green of the 21st century

Your eyes are not deceiving you. There is not some visual trickery at work. This photograph actually shows people sitting in deckchairs on a piece of artificial turf on a sunny day in the middle of Brighton. It causes my brain to disengage and spin uncontrollably. This is some weird copy-of-a-copy where there was an error in the duplication process so all we're left with is this ersatz thing that has had all meaning removed. I actually saw a flyer the other week advertising events happening in this location; a place where I'm entirely unclear as to whether it is a public space or private land on which the public are permitted to roam between chain coffee shop, chain hotel, chain cocktail bar, chain sushi restaurant and chain grocery store. You can see another chain logo reflected in the monolithic front of the library, which I suppose is intended to define this 'public' rather than commercial abomination in the middle of the North Laine that is without trees, grass or any pleasing natural form. We've not only sacrificed the places where we once gathered together but have also sacrificed our very ability to gather together freely.

This month sees the launch of a UK edition of Wired, a second attempt after the version that first appeared in 1995 flamed out. Personally speaking, and as I say here, Wired piqued my interest in the web and the implications that a new communications technology held for society at large.

Looking inside Wired 1.01 from 1995

So what's changed?

• I had no internet access
• I didn't have an email address
• I certainly didn't have a laptop... but we did own a shared family computer
• I didn't have a mobile phone
• I'd never purchased anything from a website
• The job I do now didn't exist
• The company I work for didn't exist
• Google didn't exist

... I'm sure there's a lot more to add to this list, but just having a quick think makes me realise how much has shifted in those intervening years.

2 original comments:

Using and sharing digital media – photos, videos et al – is another thing you probably weren’t doing much of in 1995.
Comment by Simon Mustoe — 6 April, 2009 @ 11:25 am

I was a subscriber to the UK Wired first time round. Coincidentally doing some spring cleaning over the weekend, I unearthed the whole lot and read Edition 1 last night. It kicked off with the following statement from Marchall McLuhan:
“The medium, or process, of our time – electric technology – is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and ever institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing… you, your family, your education, your neighbourhood, your government, your job, your relation to “the others”. And they’re changing dramatically.”
One thing that struck me was that the idea of free online content was virtually unthinkable – people were preparing themselves for the inevitable subscription models once traffic hit a critical point. What do we have to lose by Douglas Adams is worth reading to give a broader perspective about this issue, from that time.
Another thing we didn’t have back then was content subscription or RSS: I think Pattie Maes got it wrong with her view of software agents being necessary to handle the unthinkable complexity. We just needed free RSS subscription.
Comment by Jason Ryan — 6 April, 2009 @ 1:35 pm

Funny haha, scary terrifying or an attempt to soften us up given I assume Google are working on this stuff already?

"Will CADIE herself at some point connect her own electromagnetic dots in some idiosyncratic manner which turns her into something we are no longer capable of understanding in any sort of productive way, much as that aforementioned toddler, waving at herself in the mirror, leaves primates forever behind in their own tragically limited world? We don't know. Did you really think we possibly could?"
The CADIE Team, 31st March 2009

One day.

Dan and Caroline get building