Mark Higginson

staccato signals of constant information

Salome at Theatre Royal, Brighton

My wife and I went to see a production by Headlong Theatre of Salome by Oscar Wilde at the Theatre Royal Brighton last night. It. Was. Just. Awful.

First off we have the image used on the poster promoting the play. To us this suggested a roaring twenties decadence. Our mistake to assume that the imagery used to promote the play actually had anything to do with the production or that the person in the image was actually one of the performers. If you set an expectation it is a poor decision to fall below it. The next immediately obvious problem that should have been fixed in casting was that apart from Jaye Griffiths as Herodias none of the rest of the cast could either act or were suitable to play the interpretation of the role they were in. Con O'Neill, "one of Britain's most exciting theatre actors" according to the blurb, as Herod could have been interesting as a despot with a Napoleon complex. As it was he just couldn't hit the notes the role demanded. He shouted. He showered the rest of the performers in a non-stop barrage of spittle. He over-acted in a way that made us embarrassed to a point of being unable to watch. Zawe Ashton, playing Salome, was similarly poor, a "star of tomorrow" according to Screen International she exhibited no star characteristics. The idea of playing Salome as a spoiled teenager should have remained just that; the juxtaposition of the description of her as "... like a dove that has strayed . . . . She is like a narcissus trembling in the wind . . . . She is like a silver flower" with the coarse and unrefined character as portrayed fell flat. The Dance of the Seven Veils, performed here as a fumbled striptease, was the prime example of ideas that you could see the reasoning behind but just did not deliver the requisite emotional impact.
 
Ultimately the failure of the production arises from a series of logical but inappropriate directorial decisions by Jamie Lloyd that add up to an interpretation that grates on the eyes and ears. The language has been obscured by yelling, the lightness of touch that would contrast with the horror we end up experiencing is reduced to incoherence by the heavy-handed execution of set, costume and acting. Where the direction deviates so markedly from the text it takes real ability to play-off these differences, something not in evidence here. Avoid.
 
There's a better written review over here by Webcowgirl that goes into more detail if you'd like to know more.

Glasses by Swissflex

I wear glasses all the time; I've never tried contact lenses as there weren't any suitable for my eyes years ago. As such I'm always on the lookout for lighter specs that are comfortable to wear all day. Back in late 2008 I saw this post on Cool Tools about Eyephorics which led me to the Swissflex website. Despite emailing Swissflex and getting no response I eventually found that Frames in the Lanes right here in Brighton carries the range and bought a pair a year ago. They are amazing and are the most comfortable glasses I've worn. They are entirely plastic and use no metal or screws. Mine weigh only 9g and have nosepads that conform to the shape of your face; with most glasses it's pretty typical to end a day with red pressure marks on your nose as it is difficult to get the fit exactly right, none of those problems here. Highly recommended.

 
Swissflex are an interesting case in that their product is fantastic yet their Flash only website is dire. Their advertising is the worst kind of bland pan-European / International market work going (think those Mazda 'zoom zoom' adverts). I emailed their UK supplier and got no response. I emailed them via their website and got no response. Were it not by chance I wouldn't have been able to get hold of a pair. Even today the retailer section has the same contact details that I could elicit nothing from. 
 
I can't find this stated on their website but was told by the optician that for a small additional payment they will cut lenses to any shape you provide a template for within reason, so if you have an existing favourite shape you could get a Swissflex version made-up.
 
Before these I favoured ic! berlin; the previous two pairs I have weigh in at 14g and 16g and were nice but just not as comfortable to wear all day.
 
As a footnote if you're a Brighton glasses wearer I recommend Bromptons for their excellent customer service and range of interesting specs. I always have my eyes tested here as they're spot on. They recently made up a pair of prescription sunglasses for me with large lenses, frames by orgreen. They are something that any other optician would have baulked at as I think my prescription is at the limits of what a large lens can stand. They really persevered and found a supplier who could do the job so hats off to them, they really deserve your business.
 
DO NOT go to Specs in the North Laines. A while back I saw a pair of ic! berlin frames I liked and thought as I'm here I'll buy them. Big mistake. I feel they were using a cheap lens supplier and just could not get the lens for my left eye correct despite several attempts. The answer "the computer says it's fine" is not helpful when my eye says it can't see through it properly. Sadly they were pretty rude about the whole thing. Eventually they rang Bromptons, found out where they sourced their lenses and ordered from there. Came back right first time. Lesson: write down the name of the frame and go to Bromptons.
 

           
Click here to download:
Product_glasses_by_Swissflex_t.zip (5032 KB)

Donations to worthy causes...

I've just donated money to two causes I find worthy. They were the Celia Hammond Animal Trust and Sea Shepherd. 

Celia Hammond's Lewisham branch was where we found the beautiful cats we take care of; the trust do an amazing job trying to give animals a better quality of life and frequently seem to face overwhelming numbers needing care and attention. I'd suggest very strongly that if you're thinking of co-habiting with an animal you start here and avoid breeders and the like who are doing nothing but exacerbate the problem of too many animals and too few homes to give them the love they all deserve.

The crews of the Sea Shepherd vessels deserve a special mention for laying their lives on the line for a cause they believe in. They don't stand by and 'bear witness', they actually stand up for those that can't defend themselves and stand against illegal whaling activity when governments around the world will not.

Which reminds of this great article I read: Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'. Too true. One day. And hopefully soon.

A heartfelt work of staggering genius...

My musical listening history is dotted with artists who went from being the next great inspiration to just having one early album as the defining moment in their career. The mark of the true artist is not one of a discrete act of creation, but of development and ascendency. The Kleptones had that one great album, A Night at the Hip-Hopera, an exercise at once both thematically complete and diversely eclectic. This was an album so popular it was stolen from the hi-fi while it was playing at our house parties. What marks them out is that they have built on this success with each subsequent release.

Their latest work, Uptime / Downtime, scoops up a great armful of my most favourite tunes for a hug that delights as much as it surprises with a continuation of the double album concept of 24 Hours. As my friend Joe would say, so retro, so future... to a point where the vital feeling I had when I first listened to these old friends is recaptured in these multi-layered self-referential slices of pop (culture). The Kleptones are successful at recycling the inherently disposable into something greater than the sum of their parts; making the tunes that really meant something into genre and time-spanning dancefloor fillers, whether that floor is a club or your own front room.

Note: all albums are free to download. So get to it!

Spimes step up...

If reading an 83-page Apple patent application isn't your bag then at least skim this summary: Apple exploring wireless system for quantifying the unquantifiable over on AppleInsider. The "sprawling patent" talks of "sensing systems" that collect data about what happens to objects as they move through space and time. Although the article doesn't use this term Apple are essentially applying for patents on a variety of types of spime, one of those technologies that, like the barcode, will have both a sudden ubiquity and a profound effect on how we view the world of manufactured objects that surrounds us.

If you want to indulge in a little further reading on what's coming next then try When Blobjects Rule the Earth. If your interest is sufficiently piqued follow-up with  Shaping Things; both the speech and the pamphlet are by Bruce Sterling who coined this particular neologism. In fact I believe spimes first appeared, but were not referred to as such, in his 1998 novel Distraction, which is well worth a read.

Dashboards, scorecards and sentiment...

More of my time is being spent preparing reports on what people are talking about on the web. There are a number of companies offering tools that do this kind of thing. The way they work is by identifying keywords in a dataset and pulling out pertinent information around the word(s) such as date of mention, where it occurred, on a webpage fitting what kind of recognised format, etc. This data is then presented in the form of a 'dashboard', i.e. a few charts, possibly with some sort of 'score' attached. I prefer to work with the actual data retrieved by a crawler for particular keywords rather than use an automated summary as I want to be able to check the accuracy of the underlying information. There doesn't seem to be an offering out there that doesn't provide some sort of bell-or-whistle that tracks 'influencers' or 'emerging trends' or promises the dreaded ability to analyse sentiment... however:

Algorithm-based sentiment analysis doesn't work accurately

If it were possible then natural language processing would allow me to have a friendly chat with Google when I wanted something and not have to parse my requests into a few pithy search terms. The reason sentiment analysis is a key part of tracking is that most of us who use these tools would like to believe the promise that they can discover when people are saying good or bad things about the topic we're interested in. Unfortunately this knowledge is not perceived as valuable enough to have a real live human read and assess every mention that has been discovered so inaccurate methods are employed in an attempt to achieve useful results. Conversations on the web are human conversations with all the nuance and multiple meanings afforded by the language used and the context in which the conversation occurs, e.g. correctly identifying sarcasm is at present an impossible challenge for a computer. If you're looking into using one of these tools then ask these questions of the supplier:

  • Can I export the data to CSV, XML, etc.?
  • How do you identify and remove spam?
  • On average what percentage of mentions identified constititute spam?
  • How accurate is your sentiment analysis?
  • Please may I see the human assessed sample of mentions versus machine assessed sentiment that you used to produce that figure?
  • Which academic / research papers would you suggest I read to find out more about the fields of natural langauage and sentiment analysis?

Dashboards and scorecards are only as good as the data that lies behind them so if you can't see the actual data or easily compare 'scores' across multiple keywords and understand what the differences mean you should run a mile. I've been through and am still going through trying to make monitoring work effectively and am currently working on an efficient way of working out sentiment that is not subject to the flaws outlined above.

Readability

I picked up on this bookmarklet via a post on Matt Haughey's blog. I read a lot of webpages daily and this tool transforms that experience into something almost pleasant. It was created by arc90 and strips out the text of whatever page you are viewing and formats it so it's easier to read. Being able to get rid of all the clutter to get to the content I actually want to see makes me very happy. The image below compares a page from Wired.com against the Readibility version so you can see what I mean:

page_comparison_small

You can tweak the style to suit yourself when you create the bookmarklet. Perfect! Reminds me of the layout suck.com used back in the days of low resolution displays. Also, if you use Safari and sync your bookmarks with your iPhone you can use it on that device too:

readability_iphone
'Readability' in Safari on an iPhone

Go treat yourself right now. Arc90 assures us it works in most modern browsers.

A new lease of Half-Life...

I loved this game when I first played it ten years ago as the silent Gordon Freeman wandering the Black Mesa Research Facility. Martin, you thought it was pretty good too as I remember? Proves that Physics PhD's can mix it up with the best of them. It's interesting to read that a team of dedicated people have re-created the game using the Source engine. I'll look forward to revisiting it.

3 original comments:

I recently installed windows on my mac for the solo purpose of playing the hl sequels. The original is the best, probably – especially given what a quantum leap (no pun intended) it was for storytelling in those sort of games.
Comment by Martin Austwick — 20 November, 2008 @ 3:24 pm

Half-Life itself didn’t grab me, but Counter Strike… my god.
Comment by handolio — 23 November, 2008 @ 10:42 am

Agreed. That was my first foray into online gaming and it was extremely satisfying.
Comment by Mark — 26 November, 2008 @ 6:06 pm

Join the RAC, you won't regret it...

I've had to call the RAC twice in the space of a month. It's one of the hazards of driving a sixteen year old car with one previous owner who only ever used it to drive round a village. The service has been spot on both times I've dealt with them. Given my brushes with Orange, Virgin Media and various utility companies this is an all too unfamiliar situation. They're prompt; I've received a call from an operator to tell me the patrol was half an hour away and then one from the patrol itself when they're ten minutes out on both occasions. All of the people I've spoken to have been polite, really know their stuff and expressed a genuine desire to help get the jalopy going again. If you own a car then do yourself a favour and buy great customer service from the RAC. Hell, even if you don't own a car who knows when you might be in one that breaks down. Cover yourself then you'll never be stuck. As an aside I once spent three hours late one night waiting for the AA when a friend's car broke down. When the recovery vehicle finally did arrive it was from some local garage. There was a total mismatch between the expectation set and the service delivered hence why I chose the RAC when it came to needing cover myself.

Disclaimer: if the above seems a little out of character then it's because I want to balance the fact I moan an awful lot about crap customer service on this blog. If someone does a good job I figure I should mention that too.