“Don’t let the past steal your present.”
~ Cherralea Morgen
“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life. “
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Each today, well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look, therefore, to this one day, for it and it alone is life.”
~ Sanskrit Poem Quotes
Tall Man (Me in my Bathroom) ©2011
As I walked into a pub a woman said to her boyfriend, perhaps to cover up the fact that she was ogling me “he’s tall isn’t he”. It happened to me a while back, also in the pub, the guy stood next to me looked at me and exclaimed “you’re tall!” Really? I hadn’t noticed.
Well, I had and that’s why this blog is called what it is. Here is the story of its name. People have in the past called me, being very original, “Lurch” so, having come up with the idea for the blog about modern society and the tagline used as the title above, I called it 21st Century Lurch. Having already mentioned the url on Facebook etc I then decided to call it something else less personally negative so chose another word that meant tall “Longfellow” and changed the url from 21stlurch… to 21stlunch… and put it down to a typo. Longfellow’s 21st Century Lunch arrived by accident but I liked it more anyway.
Our society still values bigger numbers – engines (as in the size of a car’s example rather than the number on an aircraft’s wing, that’s just sensible to have a few spare); salaries; bigger GBs (in smartphones); higher versions (of iPads or Browsers); values of cars and houses; prices of pies and TVs and so on. Everywhere you look you’re told bigger is better, with a few exceptions – waistlines, fuel bills and wind turbines come to mind.
Which is why it’s the case that someone can say “Andy, hold this, you’re tall” or “can you reach that off that shelf, you’re tall” and not think that you’d be offended whereas if you said to someone “you’re short, reach under there and pull out that lead” there would be a sharp intake of breath and an exclamation of “you can’t say that!” And we’ve all heard “is it cold up there”, “is it raining yet” etc. Even the Queen, on meeting a tall basketball player was reported as saying “you’re tall.”
I’m not saying that being tall’s all bad but we have the same issues that those at the opposite end of the height scale have. Cash machines are too low, recent ones designed to be used by “average” people as well as those in wheelchairs are almost painful to use without kneeling and hence looking like you’re praying to the Natwest for money. For the long-legged toilets are often a very long way down, as are many sofas. Trying to gracefully enter a car or van where someone has pulled the seat forward since you last used it is very nearly impossible and often nearly lethal. People complain about shelves being too high in shops, I’m always happy to reach for something if someone asks, but there are many places in this town of many historical buildings where I can regularly dent my head on an oak beam or doorframe – and yes, most of them are, or were, in pubs. As for clothes the top half’s generally ok but I’ve nearly exclaimed with joy when finding a pair of suitable long-leg jeans in a shop, for a time the nearest available pairs were forty-odd miles away. It is quite satisfying to know though that when you have your hair cut the hairdresser doesn’t have to waste time or energy jacking your chair up to a usable height.
There are also stereotypes based on fairytale giants, for example on a topical comedy show it was reported that a commentator had said of footballer Peter Crouch “he has a remarkably light touch, for a big man”, I know that we’re likely to be a tad heavier than shorter people, having an extra twelve inches or so of body to fill, but we’re not all lumbering giants. I know quite a few lumbering mid-height people.
Lastly of course Women say they’re looking for Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome yet often the tall bit stops just above average height, I’ve often heard of women assuming that a tall man would only want an equally tall woman, while shorter men are supposedly put-off or intimidated by tall women. I have only encountered a handful of women anywhere near my height and to be honest for someone shorter than me I’m happy to bend down a bit, it’s not a problem.
The rear LCD display on a Flip Video camera (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Often today people worry about surveillance by the government with CCTV everywhere and intelligence agencies able to view what we do online (hi, Mr/Mrs NSA/GCHQ person) but there’s another side to the technology which is becoming ever more popular.
Many of us carry some form of video camera, I have a smartphone and a good compact camera that can record HD video, in fact I used this the other day to record a worker at our factory who was adamant he could cut a worktop with a saw that everyone else said was clearly blunt. The resulting video is a possible candidate for YouTube, complete with Top Gear style “four hours later…” captions, as I joked at the time.
We now have the ability to record everything we experience in some way or another and people feel the need, or the desire, to do exactly that and share it with the world, even in their most intimate moments, as if to prove that they did it, or how good at it they were, so to speak. It’s a standing joke that Instagram and Facebook are a repository of photos of people’s dinner but in some ways it’s true. In any pub you go in there are groups of drinkers gurning at smartphone cameras, never again will you be able to get utterly pished without it being recorded. I once had my glasses “borrowed” by a woman whose friend took a photo of her, wearing my glasses, with me kissing her cheek. Months later a woman stood by me at a bar turned and said “I’ve got a photo of you on my Facebook.” Same woman, same glasses. Technology has made it simpler, quicker and cheaper to create a digital photo album or slide show that, without needing shelf-space or the setting up of a projector, can be virtually infinite in size, accessible anywhere, searchable and sorted by date.
The next stage is again in the area of wearable technology. Google’s Glass project, along with other similar techie-eyewear, promise the ability to instantly record anything you can see, which has worried many privacy campaigners despite the devices clearly having a red, Borg-like, light on the side when they’re recording.
The other type of device is specially designed for recording just about everything you experience – the Lifelogger. Two devices have appeared so far, Autographer and Narrative, which are intended to document your life while you’re wearing it of course. While you’re not you can imagine it sitting there wondering where you’d gone. The two have different approaches, Autographer uses five sensors to detect location and changes in light and motion to take a photo when you change location of when it thinks you’re doing something interesting like running after someone. Narrative takes a picture twice a minute. When downloaded you can then look through what they’ve logged and perhaps see things you’d missed or remember something you’d forgotten – which might be both a blessing and a curse depending on the event.
One day we could all be carrying a multi-sensored device that, in the event of an emergency, could log what’s happened to you and call for help – a kind of personal Black Box Recorder. This is happening in cars already, as the Russian meteorite impact last year showed – the event captured by an unprecedented number of witnesses thanks to dashcams and smartphones. In-car video is also useful for insurance companies, TV clip shows and YouTube, recent personal experience of idiot drivers makes me want one more than ever.
Whether the current Lifelogging technology has a use is down to whether it’ll record anything useful or interesting but the idea has been picked up by emergency services who have considered something like Glass to both record an incident and how it’s dealt with (possibly for legal, in case of being sued, reasons, inevitably these days) while also providing vital information to the medic or police officer in real-time. Already trials have shown that police wearing body cams are seeing positive results in terms of arrested criminals accepting their guilt.
So we hurtle onwards into the recorded future, the problem could be having time to sort the wheat from the chaff of all these Lifelogged images and indeed where to store them all.
Looks like we’ll need a bigger server.
Point Four Touch Point of Sale Till (Photo credit: Cyberslayer)
It’s not that I don’t like banks, or that I’m in some way un-British and avoid queuing it’s just that I don’t like being required to go out on some cold, damp Saturday morning when I’d rather be sat by the heater reading. This is why most of my bills are sorted out by Direct Debit, even my credit card which is paid automatically every month – as it’s exclusively for online use rather than credit as such.
However there is one, variable bill which I don’t do this way – the electricity bill, because I don’t want them taking the money if they’ve over-estimated it. So once a quarter I trudge to the bank. The last couple of times I’ve been intercepted in the queue and guided to the paying-in ATM which can, I am assured, be used to pay bills and sure enough it did, it scanned the bill, took the details from my card and printed me a receipt. It lacked the friendly hellos and brief chatter of talking to a teller but it did its stuff efficiently without having to wait with the other customers and their queries that computers can’t resolve (yet). It’s amazing what technology can do isn’t it.
When it works.
This time I queued for the ATM, a member of staff asked if I was OK with doing it myself, “yes,” I replied, proudly, stopping short of continuing with “fear not, I have done this before”. The woman ahead of me was though clearly having trouble paying a cheque in and was becoming increasingly frustrated by the machine. Some people would have been mortified at causing a delay for others. When she went in search of a real person I approached the anonymous grey box, inserted my card and then my payment slip which it chewed a little, thought about and then spat back out at me.
The member of staff who had by now redirected the cheque woman to a teller dashed over, I tried again but still it said it was having trouble reading the slip. “Oh,” said the smart-suited bank woman “I think it has trouble with the new smaller payment slips.” Right, so it’s the electricity company’s fault. I was redirected to the queue for the tellers too, while reflecting that it’s lucky there were still real people present to do the job. The banks say this is to do with improving customers’ experiences, to reduce waiting times and so on. A while later a man ahead of me was plucked from the queue and escorted to the same ATM, poor unsuspecting soul, like something out of Nineteen-Eighty-Four he walked by, towards the room 101 of automated banking technology, “good luck” I silently whispered.
It’s becoming ever more common though, in the supermarket there have been self-service checkouts for a while, and now the incredible sounding Hybrid Checkouts – you get your own conveyor belt to play with, like your own Generation Game. A tin of beans. A lettuce. A cuddly toy…
I like checkouts with people on them, you can say hello, chat a little, they do all the scanning stuff. I know someone who can scan goods quickly, accurately and have a riveting conversation with you at the same time, all you get from a Hybrid Checkout is the infamous “unknown item in the bagging area” message. Which is a further complication – having to precisely place your items in your bag instead of lobbing them in haphazardly.
They say it’s quicker, denying the accusations that it’s to do with saving on the costs of staff, as do the banks. They encourage you to use them, “it’s for your own good” they virtually scream as they drag you by the basket towards the robot cashiers while you whimper “but I want to talk to the nice lady on till nine.” I have been known to linger at the end of an aisle, apparently choosing coffee until I see a gap on a conveyor then dump my groceries onto it before they can have my basket away from me. True story.
I’ve seen people using the Hybrids, repeatedly scanning a loaf of bread while looking around for help. My friend on the till would have scanned it first time. If you’ve got alcohol or something else that needs authorisation then you’re left waiting until an assistant can come and release you back into the community from whence you wandered, happy and smiling, ten minutes earlier. Just nipping in for a bottle of wine and a curry you said. Now you need something more substantial. “What kept you?” your partner says as you get into the car. You mumble something about bloody technology and drive home, which is something that, for now, you can still enjoy doing yourself.
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (Photo credit: Janitors)
Chocolate bars? Sorry. I’m referring to phones at the moment. Anyone who answered anatomically – no comment, but you know who you are.
In the last few years smartphone makers have been simultaneously racing to make the thinnest phone whilst also ensuring their screens are bigger than everyone elses – bigger numbers sell it seems. For years Apple played no part in this, with Steve Jobs apparently saying that bigger screens were impractical, until they then made a bigger screened phone and suddenly it was an obvious thing to do because it is the perfect fit for your thumb’s range of movement. Right. What they haven’t done (yet) is make a 6″ screen phone, what many tech bloggers mockingly referred to (when Samsung unveiled the Note) as a Phablet.
How they laughed. Until millions of people went out and bought them. 25.2 million shipped in the Asia-Pacific region during the second quarter of the year, according to IDC. Samsung still has around 50% of the market tied up in Notes. The larger screen smartphone trend was really started by the Dell Streak but the Galaxy Note really made the form popular, especially with its s-Pen stylus which gave back touchscreen devices truly precise pen-like use even though, again according to Steve Jobs they were an outdated way to control a device. People like to doodle and make handwritten notes though and this is easier with a pen, as it properly drawing something, annotating a plan etc…
One reason that larger phones are catching on is that they’re not really that big, the screen size has increased but the surrounding bezel has reduced almost to the point of non-existence so, combined with thinner chassis the phone doesn’t feel too bulky – though despite the idea that we’ll evolve different shaped thumbs due to texting is a massive misunderstanding of evolution our trousers may evolve bigger pockets. Or sales of jackets and cloaks with poachers’ pockets may increase. A particular user group for big-screen phones is apparently people with impaired eyesight as the larger on-screen keys are easier to read and type on. Lastly the availability of high-speed mobile internet and the fact that smartphones can connect to wi-fi internet whenever possible makes them popular for watching films and tv or gaming on the move, though personally I wouldn’t want to watch a film on anything less than my 7″ tablet.
Some have aired concern that as manufacturers battle to have the biggest screen size consumers will be forced to accept bigger phones in order to get higher specs elsewhere in the device and this could be a problem, as this Gizmodo UK article points out they should also release smaller versions too and it seems that this is happening with smaller but not spec-crippled phones beginning to trickle out from companies like HTC and Sony.
One considerable downside is the size of the phone when you actually make a phone call, I know, it’s crazy but some people still do that. I’ve not tried it but I’ve read that after so many years of phones becoming so tiny and inconspicuous that you’d sometimes appear to be talking to yourself it feels odd to have something the general size and shape of a thin paperback novel stuck against your head whilst talking to it. This is the difference between today’s big phones and the eighties bricks – back then you wanted people to see your expensive mobile and didn’t care how big it was. To this end phone makers have come full-circle and are developing tiny satellite handsets which look eerily like late-nineties GSM phones, with buttons and everything, connected via bluetooth for the purposes of making voice calls via the smartphone lurking in your pocket or bag. It’s only a matter of time before we get these add-on handsets made to look like classic Nokias or Motorolas, I suppose, with the current retro obsession in other areas of technology.
Taking all this to its (il)logical conclusion in the future perhaps the smartphone will become a hub, connected to your smartwatch for notifications, your Google Glass style eyepiece for even speedier updates and navigation, and your peripheral handset for talking. At which point we’ve gone from carrying many devices doing various jobs to many devices doing various jobs but connected together.
Rain camera (Photo credit: @Doug88888)
How to guarantee it’s warm and sunny just about every time you step outside your front door… Buy a nice new wet-weather jacket in June.
It’s a lovely, warm and comfortable jacket and I’ve used it twice during a summer that was much better than the last few years’. It’s a strange psychological reaction, you’ve bought something new and you want to use it straight away, you want other people to see your bright or shiny new thing but you can’t, it’s frustrating and suddenly you find yourself pleased to see something like the rain that you’d normally moan about. I suppose it’s the same for someone who bought a convertible car, or a barbecue and a freezer-full of meat just before one of our lousy wet summers.
In the last three weeks I’ve used it twice and now we’re back to summer again, with only three months to Christmas. Anyone fancy barbecued turkey this year?
Shrink wrapped helicopters (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ikea have a lot to answer for. Well, not just Ikea really but retail outlets in general, combined with the general idea of everything being available to conveniently take away.
A while back a customer arrived to collect a mirror, this is a custom mirror, hand-cut, semi-hand-polished, we don’t have off-the-shelf mirrors, or double-glazed units, or windows, the world just isn’t that standardised, as I’ve discussed before. Anyway, I brought the mirror out and carefully placed it down, sitting on its corner protectors which stop the polished edge being chipped. “Is that it?” he boomed. “That’s the mirror you ordered.” “But aren’t you going to wrap it up in something, it’s gotta go in my van, what the f**k am I going to do with that?” I use a question mark there but it may have been a rhetorical question. I said that we didn’t have any cardboard or bubble wrap. “Right, I’ll go and sort my van out and wrap it up my f*ing self then.”
Someone else ordering a double-glazing unit recently asked “will it come packaged up?”
This is the thing, if you buy a timber door from a DIY store it’ll probably have a bit of shrink-wrap around it it protects it from rubs but not knocks as such, we don’t have the facilities to package everything and it’s impractical to keep packing materials in all the time, if we do have some card and people ask then we will wrap things up, the problem is the expectation of it being packaged and the reactions if we can’t.
Most of our products are supplied to trade people who turn up prepared, with vehicles suited to the task but more often people turn up in vehicles that are too small for the glass or come without anything to support it at all. At the opposite end of the scale one customer used to turn up with a specially made tray on the roof of his car for carrying mirrors and another had built a timber support inside his car to move one glass unit – which was an impressive level of preparedness. Most customers at the moment do come prepared in one way or another, even if it means five minutes of me standing by the car holding the glass while they remove jacks, toolboxes, shopping and so on from the car boot before spreading out an emergency tartan blanket as support.
For the rest though the explanation is the takeaway society – people expecting to not have to do anything themselves, just turn up, have it wheeled out and put in their unprepared car. Their food comes in packages in the supermarket, their furniture comes in boxes, or delivered in vans, so it comes as a shock to find something that doesn’t conform to their expectations it’s just unfortunate that so many people’s reaction today is not to either ask politely if we might have something to put round the glass, or say that they’d go and get something themselves or a more suitable vehicle but instead to refuse to acknowledge that they may have overlooked the transport issue, to blame the supplier, to lash out with indignation and exclaim angrily that it should be wrapped up, that it’s our duty, that it’s the law – nothing comes unwrapped these days, don’t we know that, it’s a basic human right for goodness sake.
Ahem, sorry. Anyway, it’s late here so I will just wrap this up for you now.
Solúcar PS10 es una planta solar termoeléctrica por tecnología de torre, la primera en el mundo explotada comercialmente. Solucar PS10 is the first solar thermal power plant based on tower in the world that generate electricity in a commercial way. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am interested in cars, nice cars. I’d particularly like a new Jaguar F-Type, an orange one, if anyone’s feeling generous. I’m telling you this in case you think this post is in some way biased.
I’ve just read yet another article about another designer with “eco” credentials planning a zero-emission or in this case emission-free car. This one was a hydrogen powered car but others have been fully electric. I have a little issue with the idea that these cars have zero-emissions. It’s a case of semantics. Petrol, diesel and hybrid cars have a pipe at the back that makes you cough like you have a forty-a-day habit if you wrap your lips around it, electric and hydrogen cars don’t, hydrogen cars even put water back into the environment, combining the hydrogen with oxygen in the power production process.
All good yes? Well, apart from indirect emissions. Electric cars are charged from the mains which at the moment requires mostly fossil-fuel powered generation. Hydrogen, although common in the universe has to be extracted here on Earth and that takes… electricity, fossil-fuel, etc.
I’m discounting the environmental impacts of building the cars in the first place as even the advocates of these technologies don’t deny that.
The thing is that cars won’t be truly zero-emission until we can generate power widely without emissions. Some nations are fortunate to have abundant geothermal or hydroelectric power resources but for the rest of us we need to look elsewhere. Nuclear power is still controversial, though the technology is still being refined to be safer in the long-term and new thorium reactors can even use previously created waste plutonium. Personally, for cars at least, I think hydrogen is the way forward and another emerging technology is the way to make it. In hotter countries such as Spain large solar power stations (see above) have been built that focus the sun’s immense power onto arrays of receivers which can be used to heat water to drive generators and generate electricity. If you use that electricity to power a plant that creates hydrogen then the power created from the Sun’s energy is portable beyond the locality of the power station.
To places like this where we’re enjoying our couple of weeks of sunshine.
Longfellow's 21st Century Lunch 
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