Touch wood, but I think we may have crossed a line. Today I made it to Sainsbury's to buy food. And then I made it back.
Still coughing intermittently and snotty but my head is clearer. I think I've got "just a cold" now, which is something I can deal with.
My vocal chords are shot to fuck and the muscles under my ribs are still bruised but at least I can think now.
If this progresses overnight I may well start dealing with the absurd backlog of email and rss feeds, of which there are a lot. Eek.
Chicken Soup is rather remarkable. Especially when combined with the restorative powers of DISCO!!!
More tips are welcome. I seriously need to start kicking this now and my diet has reached a nadir.
Also remember it takes a hell of a lot of effort to make toast right now.
After a couple of nights with the most violent, dry-retching cough along with the gooiest snot my nose has ever known I went back to the pharmacist again. Is this a problem yet? Nope, apparently, not. Gimme some of that Night Nurse then. Anything for a decent night's sleep.
And yes, the lovely chemicals in Night Nurse do indeed keep you asleep. But while they do their best to deal with the mucus they ain't so successful at that and I found my self waking up with a distinct inability to breath and a need to cough like none other. So while I may have gotten 6-8 hours I then spent the rest of the day paying for it.
The sweating is the weirdest. Not a fever so much and it comes and goes. Why?
Anyway, in-amongst all these thrills I managed to take the above self portrait. Don't fully remember doing so but there it is.
Feel a bit more lucid tonight, but then I felt a bit more lucid over the weekend so I'm not reading anything into it.
On the side of the bottle of Benylin I've been chugging from since Tuesday it says "consult your doctor if symptoms persist." And I'm wondering how long "persist" is in symptomatic terms, those being a hacking chesty cough, nose streaming red goo, a sore dizzy head and a complete lack of energy let alone being able to concentrate on anything.
(Actually, the one thing I can do is play Mario Kart, which is kinda odd. It must be using some buried primal part of my brain...)
So I'm thinking maybe I'd better go see the doctor on Monday, just in case, but then Andy informs me he had it for a fortnight. And Alex says she's still got the headaches. What I've got is normal.
See you on the other side...
Reference photos taken in Specsavers.
As you may have noticed but been too polite to say anything, my glasses were getting to be a bit fucked. Getting on for nine years old the lenses were scratched, the arms were padded with duct tape and they had a tendency to sit wonky. But then four years of farming, decorating, refuse collection, gardening and misc manual labouring will do that. So it was time to bite the bullet and go get some new ones. Andy and Alex were on hand to help with the trauma of deciding, helped by the realisation that there aren't a lot of hidden costs in your modern optician these days (unlike dentists) and I now have two new pairs.
Interesting to note that the style I would previously have jokingly called "new media wanker glasses" (thick black rectangular) is now the norm. In fact I now have a pair (not pictured), which is fair as I'm pretty much a new media wanker these days. The other is a rather distinguished pair of wire-frames (bottom row, 2nd) that compliment my balding head in an Uncle Pete kind of way. Both are thin rectangles which is messing with my head as I adjust to the different field of vision The top bit has vanished while the sides are all wide-angle. Also of note is that my prescription had barely changed in the last decade.
Getting new glasses has a strange psychological aspect. I've now changed my face is a subtle but definite way. And thanks to the 2 for 1 offer I can switch faces at whim. I'm not sure I welcome this new daily choice in my life, but I'm sure I'll deal with it.
New glasses!
Bournville, March 6th
** ** **
I might be putting 2 + 2 together and coming up with 20 but has anyone else noticed the torrents for certain American TV programs that are usually broadcast on Sky in the UK are massively oversubscribed at the moment, and when you do find one that'll let you join it fair zooms down the pipe?
Could it be that customers of Virgin Media, who let's not forget used to be NTL / Telewest, a company known for their broadband as much as their TV, are getting their Lost / 24 / Battlestar / etc fixes through other means? And could it be that when this squabble between Branson and Murdoch is over they'll be quite happy sticking with a system that doesn't have adverts and is a significant number of weeks ahead?
Sky's figures for 24 are down 175,000 while Lost is down 96,000 (via). I wonder if they'll come back?
** ** **
Went to see Hot Fuzz last night - first time I'd been to the cinema in ages come to think of it. Very entertaining though didn't quite have the impact of Shaun of the Dead. Recommended, though director Edgar Wright really needs to calm down on his multi-fast-jump-cuts. There's barely a shot in there that's over half a second long.
And just for the hell of it
That's better. Normal service will now be resumed.
All taken from the legendary cats page.
The Sky, March 3rd
There's something zen about watching an eclipse for an hour and 15 minutes. It was definitely worth it though. Magical stuff.
This photo is better bigger and much better much bigger.
As I was putting together that previous masterpiece of bloggery (and yes, such things are crafted with great care in the Ashton Garret, lest you think I just throw these things out on a whim) I decided an illustration was in order. Not having a prawn sandwich to hand I turned to Google, as one often does in these situations, for help and there in the first few results was the perfect image. So I nabbed it, drew a crude red circle and line over it and uploaded the results.
Now, that photo isn't actually of a prawn sandwich. It's a photo of a plastic replica of a prawn sandwich produced by a company called, logically enough, Replica who "create theatre in the retail environment and provide hyper-realistic food models for health education and drama". So not only is the photograph somebody's work, the subject of the photograph is also somebody else's work. Both of them are covered under copyright. Which I broke.
And here's the thing. If I'd reproduced the image as is and labeled it as a neat photo of a fake sandwich then I'd be very guilty of copyright infringement as I do not have the right to copy that image. But I didn't care too hoots about the fakeness of the sandwich and wasn't that bothered about the merits of the photograph (which, to be frank, needed a bit of work to get the colour balance right). All I wanted was an icon that represented a prawn sandwich, something that, when you saw it, you'd think "prawn sandwich". To me there was no real difference between my putting the words "prawn" and "sandwich" in a red circle with a line through it and using a photo, except maybe the photo was funnier.
Yes, I'm still guilty of copyright infringement and probably some other stuff but I consider it a lesser crime because my intentions were different. Or to put it another way, if I had reproduced the image as I found it I'd have felt obliged to credit the site I found it on. Having assimilated it into my own work that obligation somehow vanished.
Sticking with photography, a tangental example illuminates. If you take a photograph of someone where they fill the frame you need a model release in order to commercially use that photo. (Okay, not legally in this country but it's good form, especially if you want to sell worldwide.) If, however, you take a photo of a crowd and someone happens to be in that photo then you don't have to bother getting them to sign a piece of paper no matter how identifiable they are because the photo isn't about them. There are degrees and at some point the rights shrink away into meaninglessness.
I should point out that I don't take any glee from infringing on the rights of plastic food manufacturers nor their photographers. It just struck me, as I was failing to get to sleep, that I'd somehow crossed a line where I would no longer respect their rights and I found that interesting. And I, perhaps foolishly, thought you might find it interesting too.
(And if you're wondering, yes, this post is very meta.)
If you should find yourself faced with a free buffet of food at, say, for the sake of argument, a local council sponsored event, please remember the most important rule of all.
Do not, no matter how tempted you are, no matter how much the devil on your shoulder eggs you on, ever, ever eat the prawn sandwiches.
Trust me. Your arse will not thank you.
The good news is it passed fairly quickly and all is well now but it could so easily have been avoided had I just followed the rule.
I'm not the sort of mook who cries foul whenever BBC gives undue prominence to a story they don't think worthwhile and I do accept that hundreds of cars mysteriously breaking down after using fuel from a number of specific petrol stations is a fascinating story, but the BBC news site currently has three, count them, three stories on it's front page about this. Here's a screenshot if they've come to their senses by the time you read this.
The main news item today is Petrol retailers say fuel is safe. In the Features, Views, Analysis box is Driver Fury - Anger as motorists hit by wave of 'contaminated' fuel. Meanwhile over on the right under Have Your Say there's Have you been sold 'contaminated' fuel?. The Driver Fury piece is actually linked to twice on the same page (with different titles), also coming under the main news piece along with an unrelated story about oil prices falling. You can also watch a statement from a Tesco spokesperson. Then in the Most Read box two of these stories appear again.
All of this linked to directly from the main BBC news page.
Can you spell overkill?
Cross posted from Brum Blog. Please leave any comments there
This evening I went to a talk at the Council Chamber. This is the room where the city council meets to do business. It looks like this. The talk was titled "A Civic Gospel For The 21st Century" and was given by the historian and broadcaster Tristram Hunt, author of the book Building Jerusalem. He was introduced by the leader of the council, Mike Whitby, with follow on comments from Jerry Blackett of the Chamber of Commerce (who had a very nice tie) and Chris Game of Birmingham University (who has a very impressive beard).
Here's the summary of what the talk was about, taken from this press release:
His lecture will ask whether we can we recreate the civic gospel of Chamberlain's Birmingham, when it was known as the best governed city in the world. How can the business community once again play a strong role in civic affairs? What impact does the city's diversity and changing social make-up have on how it is governed? What new freedoms and powers does local government need to take the city forward?
While the talk was very interesting and raised some important questions about the relevance of Birmingham's Victorian-era regeneration to its current period of major change, that's not what I'm going to write about. What interests me is the talk itself.
I attended as a guest of a friend who works in the local history department of the Library. He gave the impression he could "slip me in", the subtext being I perhaps shouldn't be there. Of course there was no problem with my attending - anyone could have phoned the council and booked a place. They just needed to know it was happening.
The event wasn't very well attended considering the subject matter and the stature of the speaker (he's been on telly!) and I understand it hadn't been publicized very well, if at all. Just a few circular emails to the usual people in the usual departments. The press release from the council appears to have been issued on the 26th, two days ago.
The talk was, like I said, introduced by the leader of the City Council. I'm sure Mike Whitby is a good man. I'm sure he does what he does for sound and moral reasons. But I can't understand him. Sure, I recognise he's speaking a form of English but when I process the words that come out of his mouth I can't deduce any real meaning. Maybe if I spoke politics I'd get it, but I don't. Not many people do. From what little I did comprehend he appeared to be bemoaning the bad reputation councillors have and the negative reporting they get in the press. He alluded repeatedly to a battle that had occurred in the Chamber yesterday as if the audience would immediately know what it was. I had no idea, though I believe it was to do with setting the Council Tax. This is not a personal attack but from my perspective he was representing Local Government and I came away thinking I want nothing to do with Local Government.
Tristram Hunt's talk was, as you'd expect from a young media-savvy academic, very well presented. I wondered if him doing these sorts of events was similar to an up and coming band touring the country before making it big and expect to see more of him, if not in broadcasting then perhaps in politics. He struck me as very Cameron-esque, combining that belief in the virtues of free enterprise and business with an appreciation of the importance of what you could roundly call Society. I didn't necessarily agree with everything he said but I understood it and it made me think.
The follow-on speeches, reacting to Tristram's themes, were also interesting if short. Jerry Blackett came across as quite progressive making the point that local businesses realise that they need more from a city than low business rates - they need a city their workers, particularly their skilled workers, enjoy living in and are starting to realise they need to pay for this. Chris Game, using the position of academic with no vested interests, was very entertaining and I'd like to see him talk again.
The Q&A afterwards was a bit of a farce. A couple of relevant points were made but there was also a lot of single-issue grandstanding which kinda pissed me off. I wonder if this was due to the environment and the presence of Mike Whitby on stage where people felt able to rant about their specialist subject no matter how off-topic it was in the knowledge that Whitby couldn't stop them for fear of being accused of censorship. So there wasn't much of a debate about the issues under discussion, which was a shame as they were interesting issues.
Afterwards we moved to the Round Room of the Art Gallery for refreshments. There were multiple plates of sandwiches and canapes and plenty of wine. We stayed pretty much to the end and barely a dent had been made in the food (despite my best efforts).
So, conclusions then.
Over the last few months as I've been blogging about Birmingham I've become very aware that this sort of thing goes on a lot. There are many talks, conferences and the like which are open to the public and many of them are debating issues which are of crucial importance to the development of the city. I only know about them because I've either been looking or, more often, because I know people who have found themselves in positions where they come across them, usually within "the establishment". Often (though not always) these events constitute the "consultation" part of a project enabling the department or agency involved to tick the consultation box and get their funding. But no-one outside the usual suspects attends so no views or opinions outside of the establishment are heard.
Now, on the flip side to this, the danger of opening yourself up to the views of the masses is that the masses will give their views and once they give their views they expect something to be done about them. You can see this happening with the No. 10 Petition site where people are, rightly or wrongly, expecting their petitions to have some effect. Further to this is the cruel truth that there are a lot of idiots out there and giving them a voice is not always the most productive of actions. For further illustration of this see The Internet, department: Blogging, subsection: Comments. And this is something government at all levels is going to have to deal with. Currently, by accident or design, they're not.
But even if these talks continue to take place behind de-facto closed doors (which isn't such a bad idea if you want them to be controlled and useful) there's no reason why the results of them should stay hidden. To my knowledge this event was not recorded and there was no transcript. If it was there is no facility for that information to be made available to the wider population. Information, let's not forget, that the citizens have paid for. We paid for Tristram to travel here. We paid for the buffet afterwards and the overtime for the staff. And while the minds of those who attended may have been stimulated those who didn't see no direct benefit. I'm not suggesting they should be involved with the debate as it stood, but they should have access to the results of that debate, be it a video or audio recording or a document. Then they can take this and start their own debate elsewhere. This, to me, is the genesis of e-democracy or whatever you want to call it. Not so much having access to the current structures of power (which are not built to deal with it) but having access to the tools to build your own structures which can then react to the establishment on from an informed perspective. Give us the information.
This view of mine comes into sharp focus when you consider our elected leader Mike Whitby and his alien ways. I don't necessarily want him to change but I also I have no desire whatsoever to engage with him on his level. It's occurred to me that if I want to continue writing about the City then at some point I'm going to get dragged into these institutions and negotiate the waves of politics and double-speak and, frankly, bullshit, finding myself eventually drowning in a sea of nonsense wondering what exactly my point was in the first place. I don't want to do that. I appreciate that managing a city is a very complicated thing and requires a specialist language and attitude. I understand that idealism will only take you so far in this arena if you want to get anything done. But I know in my heart of hearts that I'm never going down that road.
But I also have a passion for this city and a desire to understand it, not from a political point of view nor an academic one, but as someone who lives here. In order to do that I need information and I need the powers-that-be to realise that giving me and everyone else that information in a structured but undiluted form is not a bad thing but a very good thing indeed. That way we can have a proper debate, distributed across the city, involving everyone. We don't need to be given a voice - we already have a voice. We just need the knowledge, the information, to give our voices some substance.
If you want to comment on this, please do so here.
NEC, 25th Feb
Went to Focus on Imaging today at the NEC, my first visit to a trade show where I wasn't putting it up or taking it down. I was there for a little under four hours.
By the gods these things are mental! I didn't really do much other that wander around but I'm utterly exhausted from the experience. But I do have a few inches of glossy catalogues for cameras I can never afford.
Best stand was probably Ilford where they had photographers who used their film and paper on hand to talk about their work. Biggest disappointment was probably Apple who were just pushing Aperture, though I guess that's understandable. Weirdest omission was no sign of Lightroom at Adobe. Hardly any freebees or schwag. I got three sheets of Ilford inkjet paper, a copy of the British Journal of Photography (which is pretty good) and a Nikon carrier bag. Got to play with a Gorilla Pod after hearing about them ages ago which was cool and I think they might actually be worth the money.
First of all, here's my solution for dealing with road traffic congestion. On any given road where congestion is occurring every other car with a single occupant should be removed from the road and crushed. The owner would then be given a bike and bus/rail pass as compensation. I envisage some kind of large helicopter with a big claw picking the cars straight off the road for immediate disposal though I appreciate this might not be feasible.
I also think speed cameras should be replaced with a giant mallet that swings down on the offender flattening them and their car into the tarmac. Or perhaps a trap door in the road that drops them into a fiery pit of fiery fire.
With my stance on this issue clear, I find myself wanting to comment on The Great Petition. While single-issue petitions don't really mean shit in the wider scheme of things, especially ones that are hyped by the Daily Express, this has resulted in possibly the most intelligent thing to come out of Tony Blair's office in the last ten years. This email is long. It has sentences that are not sound-bites. It covers many points of view. It is, above all, quite calm and lacking in hyperbole. It's in the sort of reasoned, level-headed voice you wish governments would use on a daily basis.
That's not to say I believe him or anything. The motorists lobby is strong enough to force a climb-down on this not to mention the whipping he's been getting from the reactionary tabloids. And the "big brother" issues are serious, regardless of who's collecting the data.
But road pricing is a sensible move. After all, it costs me twice as much to travel by train at peak hours so I tend not to. Why should motorists be excluded from this sensible approach to dealing with transport capacity is beyond me.
So Tony, why did you wait until now before treating your subjects like intelligent human beings?
Walsall, Feb 18th. Bigger.
Sunday was the first Black Country Flickrmeet being a tour around Walsall, only the second time I'd ever been there. My knowledge of the area west of Brum is embarrassingly lacking. Or maybe not so embarrassing. After all, Birmingham is a pretty large place. When I lived in Southampton I felt no obligation to get to know Portsmouth though it was only a short train journey away. And, it has to be said, my knowledge of Coventry is equally poor.
But still, there's this whole urban sprawl out there waiting to be explored which is handy as I'm starting to run out of places in Birmingham. On the last meet in Digbeth I felt like a tour guide, though of course revisiting places is never a bad thing, especially as Birmingham is changing so much these days.
But still, the Black Country has opened up a whole new area of interest and coupled with some developments in my blogging work (more on them later) I'm starting think outside the city boundaries and consider myself more of a West Midlander. Which is quite a development for a Birmingham resident.
The best thing about these Black Country meets is I've got nothing to do with them. I just turn up and let others lead the way. Very refreshing!
Of course now we have two monthly meets in the area along with everything else the photographic calendar is getting a little crowded leading to some musings on how we're going to deal with it all this year. I think it'll be fine but right now there seems to be a Flickr-related meetup every week, and that's on top of all the other things going on. S'gonna be a busy year!
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