Russell Davies

Day Two

257-263

from c to shining c

Four years ago

Names to conjure with

"Bank Top, Blakey Moor, Daisyfield, Excelsior, Grimshaw Park, Industrious Bees and Livesey"

Ancient and Modern

Designing for accountability, designing for broken-ness

These two things crossed my transom at the same time. They're both good and feel connected.

Richard eloquently points out the big issue for the next 20 years - software is politics now. This bit stuck out for me:

"I think the accountability model for a service needs to be an intrinsic part of the design of that service. Accountability needs to be embraced as part of the service design rather than abstracted away."

And Nick Foster (East Midlands represent!) stuck up his talk from dConstruct wherein he stresses the importance of designing for broken-ness, of realising the thing you're making won't always work and that it needs to acknowledge that.

The Future Mundane from hellofosta on Vimeo.

These seem related points to me. One failure mode is 'I have run out of paper', another is 'my data has been sold to a company I don't trust', another is 'my country has been invaded and they've seized all the servers'.

These are things to be designed for. These are user needs too. They have to be embraced.

 

Wonderful Things

♫ #lastfm artists: Kid Creole & The Coconuts (55), Admiral Fallow (5), Voodoo Love Orchestra (4), Patri.. via @tweeklyfm #music

— russell davies (@undermanager) September 13, 2015

 

 

I'm not quite sure what had me listening to Kid Creole this week but I've had a lovely time doing it. At this distance it'd be easy to see them as another slightly odd 80s costume novelty, but they were always more than that.

At their best (Stool Pigeon, Wonderful Thing) they were the only band that ever married pop sounds and rhythms with swing / big band instruments. They did it properly. Took it seriously. Not like Jools Holland and his lot - just too tired to pub rock any more. The clarinets on the intro to Wonderful Thing are just perfect, their sound alone nudges the song out of Prince-style self-regard and into Aanand-like self-love. And that bass sound! Why don't we hear more of that?

There's clearly a bunch of talented musicians here and it's combined with the iron will required to resist their inevitable slide towards Santana-like slow rock jams and dubious reggae. (For the most part, the outer reaches of the Spotify repertoire are not worth exploring. Stick to the big songs.)

250-256

Believe in miracles

This is a good way to illustrate Brian Clough's remarkable achievements at Nottingham Forest. Soon to be featured in "the greatest film about football ever made." Hopefully, to be premiered at the City Ground.