Category Archives: Psychology

Psychology, Society, Tech

Let’s Talk About Stats, Baby

The Runner.

The Runner. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some people are willingly having their lives tallied and quantified via their mobiles.  The stats are everywhere, how many Facebook friends have you got?  How many Twitter followers, how many likes on that post, how many retweets?  Fitness trackers like Endomondo, Nike+ and Strava let you post your times for the walk to work or that bike ride and compete with your friends, the site Fitocracy even lets you directly battle against others for who gets fittest first by completing challenges against each other.  Where have you checked in on Foursquare?  When and where you have you used a condom? (the latter could be open to exaggeration).

Almost every part of your life can be tracked, logged, rated and compared with friends and strangers, your whole life becoming a competition without a prize other than feeling that you’ve achieved more than someone else, the bragging rights rather than the rewards of the enjoyment of the exercise, the outdoors or just feeling better in yourself (exercise has been shown many times to improve peoples’ mood).  On the other hand studies have shown that such competitive apps can also encourage people to exercise, and of course it can be useful to keep track of your fitness.

The other side of the coin are the stats that tell you whether you’re reaching people with what you want to say.

Once you start blogging, or sharing your pictures on Flickr or videos on YouTube something strange often happens.  You start out thinking “I’m not bothered if nobody reads it, well, I’m happy if just one person sees it.”  Soon though you see the stats page and out of curiosity you look at it.  The first time you see a blip on the line your heart jumps a little as the thought that you’ve made a connection with someone, then comes the wonder of the fact that the person who looked at what you’d posted isn’t your mum or dad, your friend down the road or anyone else on Facebook but someone on the other side of the world.

Then there’s the first “Like” or first follower which gives you the knowledge that you’re doing something right.  You naturally value what you’ve created but now someone else does too.  Once you have followers you start to feel the need to give them something in return, to create something they’ll appreciate.  You could experience the rollercoaster of emotions; maybe anxiety that you haven’t posted in a while, doubts about what you’ve created when you don’t get any views but then your next post receives a flurry of likes and comments and that warm feeling of contributing to the world in your own way returns.

There’s no escaping the stats, they’re everywhere.

Standard
Meta, Psychology, Society, Work

The Silly Season

English: Christmas Dinner for the sheep at Edd...

English: Christmas Dinner for the sheep at Edderston, Peebles, near to Kings Muir, Scottish Borders, Great Britain. I wasn’t here early enough to see if the farmer was wearing a Santa outfit on his tractor. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ll be honest, I dread this time of year.  Before you go all Bah, Humbug on me I don’t mean Christmas – I enjoy the week off, the Christmas dinner, presents, twinkly lights etc – I mean the two weeks before it.

The number one topic of conversation amongst my trade customers at the moment is the phrase we all hear “but I’ve got to have it before Christmas, I have people coming round, IT’S IMPORTANT.”  You’ve just told them that it’s not physically possible to produce the glass tabletop, the bespoke timber windows, the wardrobe for their spare room, the new dining suite in the four days left before closing for the festivities.  You’ve just ruined their lives.

Or so you’d believe from the wailing and gnashing of teeth some of us get.  Each and every one believes they’re the only customer you have, that they’re more important.  “Look, you say it takes five working days to get it from the supplier”,  they reply “can’t you, have a word with someone?”  You want to lean in and whisper, “who, Santa?”  But you can’t, you just say sorry, it’s just not possible.  And they slink away to ask someone else.

And for some reason everyone decides they need this stuff a week before Christmas, when they get the lightbulb over the head, as they start planning where to put Auntie Marge when she stays.  Instead of a steady flow of orders we all get hit with a deluge, some we can meet, some we can’t.

Our trade customers are split between builders and furniture makers and it’s the latter who have to contend with their own trade customers who have promised their own customers that they could get it for Christmas, they’ve said yes to the “can’t you have a word with someone?”  And not wanting to let anyone down we all end up trying to get it done if we can.

So my pre-Christmas message is this, if you’re buying something that might have to be specially made either order it earlier, like you would with the Turkey, or just put it off till next year.  Sometime around August will be fine and don’t worry about remembering, the supermarkets will remind you that Christmas is coming.

Standard
Health, Psychology, Society

57 Channels and Nothing On

WATCH TV

WATCH TV (Photo credit: Martin Ritter)

Today’s talk is about 21st century distraction, and repeats on tv – two for the price of one.  Ok, settle down, stop checking your notifications.  Oh, for goodness sake.  Thank you, now…

Ooh, an email…

It’s too easy today, you get home, put on some food, put on the tv for some background noise while you eat and bang, before you know it you’re laid on the sofa watching a repeat of Top Gear, Man vs Food, Mock The Week, Letterman (your country/mileage may vary).  You start to feel a bit tired because of the meal you’ve eaten and think I don’t have time to do what I’d intended to do.  The thing is though that when the UK first got digital terrestrial tv it seemed to offer so much, so many new channels, so much choice for everyone.  What we’ve got is occasional new content but mostly repeats and we watch them anyway.  How right Bruce was.

I don’t read or listen to music as much as I used to and for me the reason is that with only five channels there were large chunks of time when there was nothing remotely interesting to me on, so I had to go and find something else to do.  Now there’s always something I can watch even if it’s a repeat, and that’s the lazy, easy option.  Often the tired feeling vanishes when I start something more interesting.

But it doesn’t end with dragging yourself away from Mountain Pies and Aston Martins, I sit down here to write a post and there’s other enticing options – my mouse drifts towards Hot UK Deals, the National Lottery, shopping sites, other blogs, for you it may be Twitter or Facebook, iPlayer or YouTube, comics or news sites.

So think “am I really tired or is it boredom, how much more satisfied will I feel if I get on with a bit of that project, how will I feel if I just sit here for the next three hours?”  Sometimes the answer will be “I’ll feel fine with that, thankyou for asking” in which case grab a cuppa and stay put, else just get up and do something, you’ll feel better for it.

Standard
Health, Psychology, Society

Being Yourself, Being Happier

Cherai Couple

Cherai Couple (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These days we are bombarded with imagery and articles telling us we should look a certain way, wear certain things, use certain perfumes or aftershaves and act certain ways to find love.  Most of this only makes people feel inadequate and depressed because they can’t achieve these ideals.

As this article by Ken Page describes trying to be someone who you just aren’t is emotionally exhausting and will either attract the kind of partner who won’t really be right for you or will put everyone off altogether.  You also need to be patient and not obsessed with “not being single”.

The most important thing to do is to respect and encourage your authentic self to surface, some people won’t like you doing that but being true to yourself is more important than keeping everyone happy.  Once you accept your gifts and flaws then your let your authentic self out you will feel more relaxed with yourself, will feel happier and can then attract the right kind of partner, one will be in harmony with you.

[Psychology Today]

Standard
Psychology, Society, Tech

Radio Daze

Cat sitting on a radio, Sydney, 1930s / Sam Hood

Cat sitting on a radio, Sydney, 1930s / Sam Hood (Photo credit: State Library of New South Wales collection)

I’m listening to the radio and the presenter, earlier in the show, said that the weather was going to be mixed, with some rain and possibly some sunshine later.  Since then he’s been bombarded with tweets along the lines of “it’s raining in Lincoln, isn’t that where they’re meant to be based”, “dunno what window he’s looking out of, it’s raining here” and similar.  Is that what these people are thinking “it’s raining now, it’ll rain forevar….”

He has resorted to saying “I know it’s not sunny NOW, it’s called a FORECAST.  If you want to know what it’s like now you can just look out the window.”

Standard
Photography, Psychology, Society

The Patience of the Landscape Photographer

English: Ashness Bridge, Borrowdale, English L...

I’m in the English Lake District and I’m here to get away from work and relax but also to take some more landscape photos. As any good landscape photographer will tell you patience is something that is as important as a neutral density grey grad filter.  Sometimes you have to revisit the same spot day-in-day-out, or even week-in-week-out until the weather and lighting are just right as a landscape’s appearance can be completely altered by cloud, the angle of the sunlight and the time of year.

Patience is something that can be lacking these days as I witnessed yesterday when walking past a place called Ashness Bridge.  As I approached the bridge, coming down from the fell above, I saw a small group of men stood in the flowing stream beneath the bridge, expensive cameras on tripods, the aforementioned neutral density grey grads in place (the sky was a combination of sunshine and cloud so the grad helps to avoid underexposing the foreground or overexposing the sky).

One of the group wanted a “picture-perfect” image of the apparently famous bridge and was becoming increasingly annoyed at the other tourists and car drivers that were intruding into his shot and rather than be patient and wait he began gesticulating at a car driver, shouting at walkers and generally being a bit of a tit to put it politely.

The attitude of “I’ve got an expensive camera here, I’m a real photographer, get out of my way” was evident and it is one that gives photographers a bad name – as pretentious and inconsiderate.  No doubt the group had to press on to the next photo opportunity but this is no excuse, if they had prepared properly then all they would need to do was wait patiently for the right moment and fire the shutter, as I did later after they had gone.  I don’t mind having people in my photos as they add scale and context but if I’d waited a few seconds I could have taken a shot free of humanity altogether. I had considered pointing my own camera at the camera club when the man had started shouting, perhaps shouting back “could you get out of my way too please, I want a shot of those trees” but I didn’t as I felt the irony would have been lost on them.

As for my own patience, well put it this way I’ve waited one year, two weeks and three days approximately to reshoot two images I took last year on the summit of Walla Crag near Keswick that last year I messed up due to forgetting my neutral density grey grad filter.

This year I got the shots and I now only have to tweak them a bit when I return home before uploading them to Flickr.

Standard
Architecture, Cars, Design, Health, Jubilee Britain, Meta, Psychology, Tech, Transport, Typography

Old is the New… New

Alfa Romeo Duetto

Alfa Romeo Duetto (Photo credit: lewong2000)

It seems that the more we step forward into the blinding light of our techno future the more people seem to be looking back.  Retro is still with us and is increasingly seen as a mainstream design choice.  As I see it the reasons are varied and often depend on the product.

For some the appeal of retro design comes from the feeling that designs from the fifties and sixties were crafted with more care and solidity, with metal rather than plastic, with levers and cranks that moved with a reassuring smoothness, clicked and whirred precisely giving a sense that they’d last forever and that you were getting what you paid for.  Such is the case with cameras such as Digital Leica rangefinders that remain true to their film predecessors’ styling and construction; Fujifilm’s X100, X1 and X-Pro1 cameras which are also built from metals and leather patterned plastic; and my favourite the Olympus OM-D E-M5 digital system camera which from most angles looks as solid, sleek and minimalist as the old OM series cameras – it’s only round the back that you see the array of buttons and the large screen that betray it’s 21st Century innards.  It is true that these cameras are relatively expensive and for many that will be the reason they’ll buy them but there is also another reason for products like these: to look longingly at what is often perceived as a better time in society as well as manufacturing.

Many retro products aim squarely at a time before bling when cool meant understated presence, celebrities and celebrity photographers used Leicas, drove E-type Jags and Alfa Duettos – the latter cars also currently being reborn with new century tech and tweaked, sharper lines to again bridge the gap between the past and the future.  There are hints of the rejection of overt showiness and loud celeb culture beginning to emerge.  In fashion and advertising the likes of TV shows such as Mad Men are having an effect for the same reason.  Stella Artois’ current campaigns have an obvious fifties-sixties style to associate the brand with what is seen as classic cool.

Instagram and Hipstamatic photos flood daily into Facebook and while the low-fi style of these is fun and interesting too many of the people taking the shots take the whole thing too seriously telling people that their pictures are more “authentic” because they look like old photos taken with film cameras, this kind of retro though is not strictly accurate though as film hasn’t had the kind of graininess and vignetting applied by these apps for most of the last fifty years, unless you had a really cheap camera, like the ones that you can now buy imitations of to deliberately get the poor quality – because it looks cool, of course.

So retro is either a desire to emulate a seemingly better time before our throwaway society and our transient carbon-copy celebrities, or it’s a fad to show how unconventional you are, or it’s a way to say how well off and tasteful you are, or it’s a case of designers taking cues from a time where form and function both mattered and subtlety had more impact than in-your-face showiness to create something truly stylish and often beautiful.

To create the future it is often useful to reference the past, both for its mistakes and its triumphs.

Standard
Psychology

Where To Start, How To Keep Going

73: "Send up a prayer for me..."

(Photo credit: practicalowl)

I enjoy writing this blog but still find it hard to motivate myself to do it, the problem being that I get home from work, some days I go shopping for bits I’ve inevitably forgotten to get with the weekly shop, other days I have a hot bath, other days I get home a bit late.  By the time I’ve made and eaten dinner I find I’m just too tired or just can’t get into the right frame of mind to write anything.

Often by the time I’ve caught up on other sites I read I think that there wouldn’t be time to write anything.  This is an excuse.

I have a read-it-later list in Firefox that would shame War and Peace.  The sheer volume of information available to me seems too great and the feeling soon becomes “where do I start?”

It seems I’m not alone in this, Lifehacker recently asked its readers How Do You Stay Productive After Work and many of the commenters said much the same as me.  (Update: they followed this up with more good advice here including doing some work as soon as you get home, to keep up the momentum).  It can be frustrating when you have side projects that excite you but you just can’t find the energy to do them.  Personally I’ve found that making sure I get enough rest so my work day doesn’t completely flatten me and pretty much shaming myself into not neglecting my projects works for me.

As for where to start – well there’s a lyric in Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver by Elbow that says “just pick a point and go”.  That’ll do for me.

Standard
Architecture, Art, Psychology, Society

The Dream Palais

Palais Idéal, Hauterives, Drôme, France.

Palais Idéal, Hauterives, Drôme, France. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Built over thirty-five years by one man, The Palais idéal in the French town of Hauterives is an architectural wonder that is at the same time regarded by art critics as merely a folly and an example of so-called naive art.

Joseph-Ferdinand Cheval was born in 1836 and suffered an unsettled early life including the death of both his parents before he was 18, the deaths of two wives and several children, and many poorly paid jobs.  In 1867 he began work as a postman and the story of the Palais began.

As he walked on his rounds in the French countryside he began to construct in his mind what he called “a fairy palace of my dreams” in order to combat the boredom he had begun to feel.  His vision became so vivid as to be almost real in his mind but then he lost confidence in his internal vision and found himself simply wandering through the real world that had none of the wonders of his Palais and had only brought him pain in the past.

His spirit was awakened by tripping over a stone in his path that seemed to him to have been sculpted by nature and he realised that if creativity is inherent in nature then it could be within himself too and at that moment he found what he had been missing.  He realised that he could bring his dream castles into the real world and so he began to collect stones and build his Palais.

Once completed The Palais demonstrated his vision of creative reality, merging styles from across the world and across time.  Cheval said that creativity is life and in finding creativity he began a new life and was enriched by its energy.

The Palais was, from its unveiling, intended to be seen and was open to the public so that they too could be inspired to create and live rather than simply, passively be entertained.  Cheval hoped that his Palais would be part of a wider transformation of the world as people found their own creativity after seeing his work.  The Fortean Times article I read ended by talking about this aspect and its author said it was offered as a pebble for use in building that global palace and as I’d now come into contact with the Palais so I was inspired to discover my own kind of creativity and share it.  Today you don’t need stones and we can build a Palais online if we want, in some ways 21st Century Lunch is part of mine.

Fortean Times #286 p74-76 / Interesting Thing of The Day / Wikipedia

Standard