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Drums on Sunday: Mongo At The Village Gate
This record is all energy. The crowd are loud and loving it. The band are clearly having fun. Mongo is driving everything.
I especially enjoyed:
Creole, which sounds like a Latin-er Raymond Scott track.
The way the crowd finds the beat in The Jungle Bit. None of that clapping on the ones nonsense here.
The producer's name, Orrin Keepnews. What a brilliant name.
The Age of Noise In Britain
I went to see a splendid talk on Thursday, by James G Mansell, the author of The Age of Noise in Britain - Hearing Modernity.
It concentrated on the Anti-Noise League, a pressure group, lobbying against, well, you can imagine, particularly active in the 1930s. (That's their logo above)
Things I learned (or possibly misheard):
The Science Museum staged an exhibition about noise abatement in the 1935. The Rubber Growers Association was, rather cannily, a significant sponsor. Their message struck home with at least one visitor.
Milk deliveries were of particular concern to the Anti-Noisers. A clanky, clattery business, I suppose, early in the morning. Interesting how the clinks of milk bottles now signify a golden age of community, not an irritation.
Dan McKenzie was an important anti-noise thinker and his book The City of Din, was a central text. It might be of interest to Dan.
Mr Mansell suggests that the League failed to achieve any traction because they tried to make a medical case for their cause. They maintained that noise caused Neurasthenia. Unfortunately that was soon discredited as not really a thing, and there was no actual evidence that noise was especially unhealthy.
A bit like screens.
He also showed this cartoon and pointed out how gendered and class-based the league's assertions were. They were very concerned about the noise made by women (all that typing!) and the working classes (factories! cinemas!) because of how much they disturbed vital male activity like 'brain-work'.
(All of this rather echoes contemporary angst amongst developers that their essential brain-work is constantly disturbed by the open-plan chatter of lower class people like social media experts. Nothing changes.)
The Anti Noise League apparently used to take factory workers to the countryside so they could experience peace and quiet. To the League's frustration all the workers wanted to do once they'd got there was head off to the cinema or the music hall for some life-affirming din.
World of Blog Posts
I wonder if there's anything that doesn't have a world.
End of Unrealised Schemes
Ian Visits pointed me at a lovely little exhibition at the Peltz Gallery in Gordon Square. It's on until the 27th of January.
It's, basically, a display of index cards and envelopes, created and collected by cinephiles to record what films they're seen, or where they've seen them or whatever takes their fancy about movie stars. Some of the collections are hugely extensive, they're all 'amateur'. People doing this for their own pleasure.
The artefacts are fascinating. An aesthetic I find appealing.
But the lives behind the things are just as intriguing. Wouldn't you like to have lived a life like Graham Head? And then you shudder at the tragedy of "although their exact whereabouts are unknown"...
And then there's this phrase, hit me between the eyes.
Walking An Empire
This fits, sort of, with steps.
I've been playing Run An Empire for a while now, ever since the beta. I like it. I don't normally actually run since my knees confine me to the treadmill for running. So it's mostly Walk An Empire. But, like Ingress and Pokemon Go, it's got me walking further than I otherwise might have done. I'm a level 10 now, it seems. Though I seem to remember being a level 13 at one point. I wonder how that works.
Anyway. Join me! Username is Russell.
And above, since you were probably wondering, is my crest.
Post Fitbit
I know we're all no longer persuaded of the value of the quantified self but I've found counting my steps quite useful. I first bought a Fitbit at the end of 2011, one of the basic, ordinary ones. I suspect that was all you could get then. They're called Zips now. I've been through many since but I've always tended towards the simple keep-in-your-pocket ones. In 2012 I started using Beeminder to set some targets. I started with the traditional, widely discredited 10,000 steps a day in 2012, managed that, and have raised it a thousand steps every year.
For the record, I've actually walked this many steps:
2012: 4,432,605 (12,110 per day)
2013: 4,256,213 (11,660 per day)
2014: 4,945,382 (13,548 per day)
2015: 6,029,183 (16,518 per day)
2016: 5,393,867 (14,737 per day)
(More detail in the graphs below, I don't know why they draw them differently)
Next year I'm aiming for 15,000 steps. Evidence would suggest it's doable.
I am however, going to switch measuring devices. I like carrying a little thing that's not my phone. Not sure why. I originally reasoned it would be useful for those occasions when I don't have my phone, but, of course, there aren't any of them. I like the size, shape feel of the little Fitbit. It's just that it seems to break down all the time. I decided to track this last year, to see if I was imagining it and it turned out, no, I wasn't. In 2016, in order to have a fully functioning Fitbit all the time, I had to buy three new ones and used 13 batteries. I think I've given them a fair crack of the whip but that seems excessive. So in 2017 I'm going to try using a Withings Go and see if that's more reliable.
