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Howies and Thoughtful are doing something interesting (and probably mischievous) at the organic food festival in Bristol in September. They're looking for some real life dohboys. If you fit the bill (or know someone who does) contact details are here. I hope it's not humiliating for some kid though, that would be bad.
I've just noticed; today is the fourth anniversary of the first post on this blog. 1,579 posts, 5,960 comments, 314 trackbacks, 1 consistent theme - stuff and things.
We climbed up Primrose Hill late last Sunday night, hoping to see the Perseids. We did everything wrong; early rather than late, the centre of London, and only hung around for a while (hard to keep a very tired 7-year old interested for long) but we still glimpsed a few. And it was rather magical.
And then, today, I read a brilliant article in the New Yorker about light pollution (abstract here, no full text online apparently). And it struck me that this might be one of those issues you could get people interested in. There'll have to be a huge bundle of ideas, actions and activities if we're going to get more responsible in our energy use - not one huge idea - and this might be one which catches people's imagination, because it seems to have everything going for it. Lighting the ground and not the sky saves money, increases safety and gives us back the stars.
Some points from the article:
Someone looking at the night sky over New York sees less than one percent of the stars that Galileo would have seen.
Installing 'full cutoff' lighting (ie lighting that shines where you want it, not up at the sky and not straight in your eyes) in public spaces can save huge amounts of money in energy bills because you can reduce the wattage per light.
And I really liked the fact that you can often increase visibility by decreasing the amount of lighting.
Because our eyes adapt to the brightest light present, if you've got a huge 'glare bomb' - an unshielded light - all it really does is create more darkness, because our eyes can't adapt to see anywhere other than the immediately illuminated area. (Doesn't there seem to a big juicy metaphor in there for something?) This often means that lights installed in the name of safety just end up creating huge pools of darkness for criminals to plot their dastardliness.
And there's a huge emotional pay-off - we'd be able to see the stars again. As opposed to the interior of Top Shop - which looks like this at night:
How is that amount of lighting necessary all night?
You can find out more at The International Dark-Sky Association, who have a splendid motto - Carpe Noctem.
People have been asking me where all the video is from Interesting2007. Well, it's here:
Which obviously isn't really good enough. But, today, Steve was kind enough to get me a deal on the renting of one of these for the weekend:
Well, that's just the flight case. (I love flight cases)
That's the bit of gear, which enables me to get the video off the tapes and into here:
So that, hopefully soon, they'll be on this:
Every now and then there are three little piles of vinyl I reach for and plunge into nostalgia. The first is a fairly complete selection of KLF 12s which we won't go into now, the second is a big old collection of early Go-Go stuff (also not for today) and the third is a small mound of hip-hop singles I fell in love with - headed by We'll Be Right Back by Steinski and Mass Media. Steinski was a particular hero because he managed to be both influential in the history of hip-hop and have a job in advertising. But in that way that sometimes we're all too dense it never occurred to me to try and drag that affection out of the past and see what Mr Steinski et al was up to now. But yesterday while following links relating to dj/rupture I stumbled across Steve Steinski's blog and it's a marvelous thing. I've had a marathon listening to his shows on WFMU and you might want to too.
One of the frequently noted good things about the webetc is the way otherwise fringe things can find a viable audience - it's especially excellent for odd audio stuff. But, mostly, to date, it's been about an offbeat artist sharing with lots of people, it's not been about lots of people contributing to the art. This excellent project from BLDGBLOG and DJ/rupture is a bit different. They've set up a voicemail account and they're asking you to use your phone to record various different soundscapes and ambiences. Find yourself somewhere sonically interesting? Call them up and dump it on their voicemail. And then they'll do interesting stuff with it on the radio. I really like that. Excellent idea. Another clever, simple, use of phones.
There's a been a bit of talk recently about a decline in blogging. It seems people are finding other things to do (facebook, twitter, etc) and aren't furiously posting all day. Probably a good thing. In fact definitely a good thing, because maybe we'll start to discover what it is that blogs are best for - what they're a uniquely good at. And I think I have a candidate - this lovely series of posts by Dan Hill, which he makes very clear are not about the birth of his son. Except they are. Which he admits as well.
I can't imagine these existing in any other form. Part memoir, part architectural essay, part sleep-deprived ramble, all lovely. The distance he inserts by talking about architecture makes it even more personal, so much so that I almost hesitate to link to it. (So I asked, isn't that pathetic?) But it's fantastic stuff and deserves to be read. Where else would you get something that's this personal, useful, interesting and immediate?