Well maybe not. But this is a damn good programme. Radio 4 at its finest. A touching, funny, enlightening programme; all sorts of men talking about what the advice their fathers gave them. And, by way of illustration, this is my Dad, atop a Monroe.
in praise of remote control
While I'm not a big fan of remote controls, I love the idea of remote control. Of pressing buttons and controling elaborate systems. Especially systems with a lot of autonomy. Maybe it started with The Beano. My favourite strip, by a long way, was General Jumbo. "Young Jumbo Johnson, from Dinchester, commands an army of wonderful radio controlled model soldiers, 'planes and tanks. Pressing buttons on his radio control-gadget, Jumbo put a brigade of models through manouvres in the local park". I was too young to worry about the miraculous efficacy of his systems, it just seemed like the perfect super-powery thing. No radioactive spider nonsense. Or training long and hard in a cave. You just got a radio controlled army and started doing good.
You could take your ship out and get some fish.
Or help Mancaster Rovers prepare for a crucial European tie.
It then manifest itself in an affection for Meccano and Lego but they never really lived up to what General Jumbo promised. And they didn't offer the autonomy that I wanted from my systems. I wanted stuff that you could set up and leave running. I tinkered with BASIC in my Computer Studies O' level classes (which I had to drop because I wanted to do music) but computers didn't seem very connected to the real world at the time. I couldn't see the link between what computers could do and what General Jumbo did. What an idiot.
I suspect Arthur might have inherited a similar love for remotely controlled systems. We certainly found ourselves among like-minds at the London Transport Museum Acton Depot opening.
So, as I confessed here, I've constructed my own rather exciting Garden Railway layouts, with points and bridges, radio control and an elegant trapdoor that let me store my trains in the basement. (Partly inspired by the other ultimate moment of remote control and autonomy; the Roland Emett designed breakfast contraptions on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which for some reason doesn't seem to have been YouTubed). I've always assumed that building a huge train set in the garden was quite an untypical thing for me to do. But looking back now, it does seem part of a pattern. (And, when Anne and I ever discuss our 'starting a cafe' plan, I always fantasise about delivering the food with a model train.)
Living in a small flat rather screwed up my opportunties to construct large automated, remote-controlled systems. But then, in a garden centre, I saw Gardena's automated watering systems and I couldn't resist.
Clearly this is massive overkill for a few window boxes on a tiny balcony but I'm rather pleased with it. I'm obviously tempted by some sort of Water Computer, but Anne would definitely frown on the pointless expense of that. So I'm now starting to wonder if I can arrange some kind of liason between my Lego Mindstorms NXT and my Gardena.
This stuff'll all play nice with water and mud, don't you think?
I'm not sure why I tell you all this. But now I'm done.
coffee morning
First coffee morning of 2007 will be this Friday (the 5th). 11am. The Breakfast Club.
corporate blogging stuff
Here's an interesting interview with Anil Dash of sixapart, who's a smart man.
i love the beginning of the year
Lots of new things start at the beginning of the year. I like the starting of things. And Beeker's just started a blog about classical music which I know is going to be a treat and an education. And Gareth's asking a bunch of interesting questions. Away we go.
folk button design
With all the Christmas visiting you play with a lot of strange remotes.
And you have to leave your remotes in the hands of the people visiting you, or you have to try and explain to grandparents how to change the screen to show the PlayStation. (As we've done above.)
And you realise that remotes would be much better if they could evolve to highlight the buttons you regularly use, while, actually the reverse happens, the oft used buttons get the ink rubbed off quicker than everything else. Failing that it'd be nice if remotes were easy to draw on.
arthur's daily monster
The Daily Monster phenomenon is still taking off. Arthur loves it. Though I think in some ways he's a little disappointed. He thought all the monsters were just for him.
arthur in the city
Arthur doing his best to look alienated in an Observer-Magazine-from-the-70s kind of way. (more pinhole polaroids)
campaign stuff
Just FYI, these are most of the pieces I've done for Campaign this year. I don't seem to have the rest of them. Hopefully if you click on them, they'll get big enough for you to read. (You'll see I've given up scanning the horrifying picture that accompanies them.)
