Filling in some playlists on my ipod yesterday I came up with an idea for a list of songs that can make grown men well up, not through cheesy sentimentality (no moon in june for my ipod) but by evoking intense emotion that can be both saddening but also uplifting.
A quick flit though my music library unearthed a top five. I'll try to make this into a top ten in another post but for now here are the five songs that moisten the edges of Dr Happy Mac'sa vision.
1) The Space Race is Over - Billy Bragg.
This song is a lament for the end of manned space flight. Full of regret for the lost opportunity and of the narrowing of human horizons, the desire to have been able to make it to the moon, symbolic of our romantic yearnings for achievement. The essential problem at the heart of the Apollo program is sumed up by words from Billy's son, "why did they ever go?" Billy's reply, "It may look like some empty gesture, To go all that way just to come back, But dont offer me a place out in cyberspace, Cos where in the hells that at?
2) Dance Called America - Runrig
Haunting and lyrical examination of the highland clearances, a period of Scottish history that saw the population of the highlands shipped off en mass to America in order to free up the land for farming. America was the name of a dance that was popular at the time amongst the aristocracy, which epitomised the cruel nature of the clearances. The haunting start to song builds up throughout to a rousing chorus and beyond.
3. Jwanasibeki - Juluka
Another song about an oppressed and suffering people. This time the predominatly Zulu miners of Johannesburg (Jwanasibeki in Zulu). This song of struggle and toil in apartheid South Africa is also a poem to the strength and determination of a people all set to a thumping tribal beat.
4) Bitter to the South - Bhundu Boys
Another african song. This time a song that vividly encapsulated the problem of African poverty and development. The upbeat african guitar and keyboards counterpoint the harsh lyrics.
There is no year of the refugee,
There is no year of the child,
There are only these years of the dead.
The so cold wind from the north,
Blows bitter to the south.
It takes the food out of the earth.
It takes the food out of the mouth.
A bitter reminder of who's at fault for many of Africa problems.
5) Clouds - Joni Mitchell
Because it's just beautiful.
Wednesday 12 March 2008
Sunday 9 March 2008
Are you happy with your Mac?
So, there I am. Sitting on a train from London back to the Cotswolds. In the carriage are the normal commuters and day trippers, settling in for the couple of hours journey. On display the normal range of PC laptops, busy doing their daily duty, spreading sheets and wording docs. In such a situation you know that by pulling out a Powerbook you are instantly standing out from the crowd, but that's not what I'm concerned about here. After all we all know the Powerbook is the worlds most stylish laptop (well apart from the Air), but is there more to it than style. Of course there is.
As I tapped away on my machine, the passenger next to me reached into his bag, and lo, he too opened up a powerbook. Now two mac owners, sitting next to each other on a train for a couple of hours. They're going to chat, right? And what the other Powerbook owner had to say was both an interesting insight into the benifits of MAc ownership and a confirmation of much of what being a Mac owner is actually all about.
Other Mac owner it turned out worked in a city investmetn institution. Slaved to his windows laptop, the advent of the Intel Mac meant that he was able to requisition a Powerbook for work and by running XP on his windows partition was able to fit right in with his company's windows only policy. But in the evening he was able to reboot into OS X and explore.
As a result of access to applications such as iPhoto, he was inspired to purchase a pro sumer DSLR camera. He was happy to show me the results of his work and was enthusiastic and committed to learning and developing as a photographer. Something that many years of PC owning had failed to ignite in him.
And that is probably Mac ownership in a nutshell. The machine allows you access to your own creativity and makes the development of creative skills easier and more intuitive. This not only means that you get more from your computer, but far more importantly get more from your life away from the computer.
So not every Mac will inspire it's owner this way, but it's my intuition that a fair few do. And that's got to be worth more than a few extra spreadsheets any day.
As I tapped away on my machine, the passenger next to me reached into his bag, and lo, he too opened up a powerbook. Now two mac owners, sitting next to each other on a train for a couple of hours. They're going to chat, right? And what the other Powerbook owner had to say was both an interesting insight into the benifits of MAc ownership and a confirmation of much of what being a Mac owner is actually all about.
Other Mac owner it turned out worked in a city investmetn institution. Slaved to his windows laptop, the advent of the Intel Mac meant that he was able to requisition a Powerbook for work and by running XP on his windows partition was able to fit right in with his company's windows only policy. But in the evening he was able to reboot into OS X and explore.
As a result of access to applications such as iPhoto, he was inspired to purchase a pro sumer DSLR camera. He was happy to show me the results of his work and was enthusiastic and committed to learning and developing as a photographer. Something that many years of PC owning had failed to ignite in him.
And that is probably Mac ownership in a nutshell. The machine allows you access to your own creativity and makes the development of creative skills easier and more intuitive. This not only means that you get more from your computer, but far more importantly get more from your life away from the computer.
So not every Mac will inspire it's owner this way, but it's my intuition that a fair few do. And that's got to be worth more than a few extra spreadsheets any day.
Wednesday 5 March 2008
THIN end of the wedge?
MacBook Air. Nice eh?. Apples' newest and the world's thinnest laptop is one of those products that just makes you want it. A fully featured laptop, never the less the Air has had to make some compromises in the name of sveltness (if that's even a word), namely a decent set of ports and an optical drive.
OK so you can add on a small superdrive and attach ethernet via the USB dongle thingey but that kind of goes against the whole spirit of the thing.
While some people are happy to loose a few ports and a drive, others have been less convinced. Supporters point to Apples history of dropping old technology. The iMac G3 dropped the floppy drive and that worked out just fine.
But I think that the Air is pointing to something else entirely. Lack of an optical drive may make getting applications and data onto the Air slower than a slow thing using wireless but wireless speeds are only going to increase and who needs to load up large apps if all the ones you need are freely available on the web.
Two hundred years ago (in computer years - so around 10 real years), the buzz word in computing was Thin Clients. Small computers that held no data. All a users files and applications would be held on a remote server. This would make Thin clients cheap to make and easy to maintain. Sadly the march of tech ensured that what people actually wanted was bigger and faster machines.
But do they still want this? Most computers are already way to fast for their users and the MHz race seems to have died down. Most computers now come with all the RAM in the world pre installed too. So maybe the Air is the first and the last. The last of the old type of computer, huge hard drive stuffed to bursting point with data, the first of the new breed. Light and agile, pulling your data down from the mobile internet when needed and processing it on web based applications.
OK, so maybe not yet, but soon. Expect the Air2 to have less rather than more but actually do more rather than less.
OK so you can add on a small superdrive and attach ethernet via the USB dongle thingey but that kind of goes against the whole spirit of the thing.
While some people are happy to loose a few ports and a drive, others have been less convinced. Supporters point to Apples history of dropping old technology. The iMac G3 dropped the floppy drive and that worked out just fine.
But I think that the Air is pointing to something else entirely. Lack of an optical drive may make getting applications and data onto the Air slower than a slow thing using wireless but wireless speeds are only going to increase and who needs to load up large apps if all the ones you need are freely available on the web.
Two hundred years ago (in computer years - so around 10 real years), the buzz word in computing was Thin Clients. Small computers that held no data. All a users files and applications would be held on a remote server. This would make Thin clients cheap to make and easy to maintain. Sadly the march of tech ensured that what people actually wanted was bigger and faster machines.
But do they still want this? Most computers are already way to fast for their users and the MHz race seems to have died down. Most computers now come with all the RAM in the world pre installed too. So maybe the Air is the first and the last. The last of the old type of computer, huge hard drive stuffed to bursting point with data, the first of the new breed. Light and agile, pulling your data down from the mobile internet when needed and processing it on web based applications.
OK, so maybe not yet, but soon. Expect the Air2 to have less rather than more but actually do more rather than less.
Monday 3 March 2008
Showtime!
Something different this week. A trade show. Not for Macs but for my side job, wallpaper murals (see www.mywonderwall.co.uk). The show was the Baby Show at London's ExCel centre and lasted three days. Outside of the show, I ended up staying at a friends apartment in Woolich. Not the most upmarket part of London at the moment but given the amount of development going on, it soon will be. 10,000 new luxury apartments!
My journey into the show each day involved trips on the train and the Docklands Light Railway. The trip through canary Wharf was particularly edifying. An elevated train with no pilot, gliding through steel, chrome and glass canyons. If you want to know what the future feels like, then outside of Tokyo, I guess this comes pretty close.
When it's working.
Unfortunately scheduled engineering works resulted in many of the central stations being closed. The replacement, good old fashioned buses. Using the buses was most definitely a trip back down to earth. Literally. Certainly, it's obvious that investment in the area is not evenly spread. Let's hope that eventually those on the ground floor get to catch up with those above.
The future seems to have two versions. At the moment it could go either way.
Coincidentally, on the journey down to London, discussions turned to the current version of Land Rovers Discovery and Range Rover models. far too many years ago, as part of a previous job, I ended up seeing the Land Rover supplied vehicle props for the upcoming Judge Dredd movie. These vehicles were used as taxi's and other vehicles and were designed and built by Land Rover to reflect life in a post Apocalyptic society. They certainly looked very, very hard and now, twenty years later the design cues in these vehicles are readily apparent in the Discovery and RR. Now, only an idiot would describe society today as post-apocalyptic, but I'm not sure it's healthy to be building cars that reflect this level of dystopia. It can only strengthen the divisions between social classes.
My journey into the show each day involved trips on the train and the Docklands Light Railway. The trip through canary Wharf was particularly edifying. An elevated train with no pilot, gliding through steel, chrome and glass canyons. If you want to know what the future feels like, then outside of Tokyo, I guess this comes pretty close.
When it's working.
Unfortunately scheduled engineering works resulted in many of the central stations being closed. The replacement, good old fashioned buses. Using the buses was most definitely a trip back down to earth. Literally. Certainly, it's obvious that investment in the area is not evenly spread. Let's hope that eventually those on the ground floor get to catch up with those above.
The future seems to have two versions. At the moment it could go either way.
Coincidentally, on the journey down to London, discussions turned to the current version of Land Rovers Discovery and Range Rover models. far too many years ago, as part of a previous job, I ended up seeing the Land Rover supplied vehicle props for the upcoming Judge Dredd movie. These vehicles were used as taxi's and other vehicles and were designed and built by Land Rover to reflect life in a post Apocalyptic society. They certainly looked very, very hard and now, twenty years later the design cues in these vehicles are readily apparent in the Discovery and RR. Now, only an idiot would describe society today as post-apocalyptic, but I'm not sure it's healthy to be building cars that reflect this level of dystopia. It can only strengthen the divisions between social classes.
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