Sunday 30 April 2017

Organic growth

Heading east along East Street there is a care home on the northern side of the road, just before one gets to the first turning into Ewell Village. A care home which I believe to have been run by a church flavoured charity, with a name something to do with sunshine.

A care home which has now been taken over by Abbeyfield. Presumably this involved some lawyer work to transfer the assets of the one charitable trust to the other.

An Abbeyfield which seems to be growing, and to be doing rather more than converting older houses into quality bed-sit houses for people wanting something between their own homes and a care home. Perhaps they are drifting into the mainstream and have got themselves onto some list of organisations deemed worthy to take government money for the provision of accommodation more generally for older people. Perhaps it is only right, proper and reasonable that charities that prosper should expand in this sort of way, quite possibly at the expense of those which are failing, for one reason or another.

PS: I have noticed that the sun is often worked into the names or logos of places which look after or otherwise care for the very old. With sunshine being preferred to sunset.

Reference 1: https://www.abbeyfield.com/. Established in 1956 by the late Richard Carr-Gomm, OBE.

Reference 2: http://www.carrgomm.org/. For a slightly different story from Scotland.

GC

GC, aka George Clooney, is a minor irritant in my life.

A screen actor about whom I know virtually nothing, apart from having watched maybe one of his films, probably Ocean's Eleven, on the television. Nothing so grand as going to the cinema.

Who irritates because he is forever in the news. Scarcely a day seems to go by without his mug popping up in some newspaper or other. What is it about him and his doings which makes him such a hot property, at least to those hard pressed people who have to fill up the pages of our newspapers without recourse to paying journalists to get out there and find out about something interesting?

Wikipedia has him down as a sporty papist from nowhere who, during the last twenty years or so of the last century, managed to climb the greasy pole of television stardom. And goes on to say something like: '... In 2009, Clooney was included in Time's annual Time 100 as one of the "Most Influential People in the World". He is also noted for his political activism, and has served as one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace since January 31, 2008. His humanitarian work includes his advocacy of finding a resolution for the Darfur conflict, raising funds for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Armenian Genocide recognition, the 2004 Tsunami, the victims of 9/11, and creating documentaries such as "Sand and Sorrow" to raise awareness about international crises. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations'.

Why do his greasy pole climbing skills qualify him to influence anything or anyone? Has he been in consultation with our own Bob Geldorf? I still don't understand and I expect that he will continue to irritate me.

PS: but then, one might ask the same sort of questions about his president.

Saturday 29 April 2017

Suburban Saturday

In the queue for our local dump, at opening time, that is to say 0903 on this Saturday morning. Queue to the left, stretching into the distance. Parked cars to the right, presumably owned by people working in the vicinity.

Not as bad as it looks, with us into the dump within 10 minutes or so. And the queue had vanished by the time we left. We thought while we waited that it was a pity that the windscreen sticker issued by the dump people on a previous visit to certify that we were Epsom residents entitled to use the dump, not some aliens from Sutton or somewhere, visible pale orange to the right of the windscreen, was not more like the National Trust sticker, invisible to the left, which might have been amusingly confusing.

Seeing various signs about Suez, we inquired to find that this was the name of the company which had taken over dump operations about six months ago. Which returning to base we find is the current moniker of Sita, for which see reference 1. From which I fail to learn what Suez stands for, but do learn that rubbish is all mixed up with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an outfit which seems to be chock full of bright young things and bright young talk about rubbish recycling.

I thought the name was familiar and further googling revealed that this Ellen MacArthur was indeed the one who sailed around the world and whose B&Q badged, black & orange catamaran we had once seen moored in the vicinity of Cowes. Ask google about 'b&q helen macarthur catamaran'.

And I had thought she had retired to live in a near underground eco-house in the Outer Shetlands - whereas actually she appears to have done rather well in her new calling.

All in all, despite my Old Labour leanings, I think I am content that the council should have offloaded this particular bit of business to a specialist provider.

PS: the catamaran is the sort of thing that I would notice these days, but it appears to have been sold, from Cowes, in 2007, the one year when we missed the Isle of Wight in favour of Tenby. Must have been spotted in 2006, a few months before the invention of the blog. See reference 3.

Reference 1: http://www.sita.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/.

Reference 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3VYZDG5uWs.

Possibly bad science

Back in the 1930's, some scientists used to worry about the uses to which nuclear energy, which their work was going to make available, would be put. I dare say that some of them actually made a career move into botany to avoid the issue - but enough carried on to take us to where we are now, with a rather mixed balance sheet for matters nuclear.

While now, some scientists worry about the uses to which AI flavoured technology is going to be put, although the CEO's of companies like Google, Amazon and Apple, which stand to make a great deal of money out of it, wax enthusiastic and optimistic. Just think of all the good stuff that we are going to be able to do with it.

And there is a lot of good stuff, for example, better than human grade, real time translation into English, of the words of the leader of North Korea. Mind control of prosthetic limbs, maybe even of organs.

Nevertheless, I am in the worrying camp. I am very doubtful that we, as a species, are going to make much of a fist of managing the blurring divide between human activity and machine activity. Of managing the colonisation of vast swathes of what were satisfying and satisfactory employment opportunities by robots. Will we just spend our time on earth knocking back recreational drugs designed and manufactured by robots? While millions of other people continue to starve and to die of unpleasant diseases in Africa?

And what about the colonisation of the minds of the robots by the bad guys? What about the AI enhanced sex toys about to roll off the production line of the people at reference 1 [redacted] and featured in yesterday's Guardian.

I don't suppose that we are going to stop it, any more than nuclear energy was stopped. The theories and the science are out there - and they are exciting. Millions of people - including me, in my own small way, are at it.

The ancient Greeks clearly knew a thing or two when they wrote the story of Pandora's box. Not to mention Homer who recycled it as the story of Aeolus and his bag of winds. Not to mention the chap who wrote the story of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. With the humans taking the plunge, with rather mixed results again, in all of them.

With thanks to the late Cranach for the original painting and to the Courtauld Institute for its image. A picture I am rather fond of and I think I have used it before.

Reference 1: [redacted]

Friday 28 April 2017

More cheese

On Monday, to London to hear the Chopin preludes again, this time from Louis Lortie, a new to me pianist from Montreal. Becoming something of an old friend, having heard them from Wuja Yang only a couple of weeks ago and noticed at reference 2. No idea how many times in all, but a quick peek at the record suggests an average of at least once a year, starting in 2007 and noticed at reference 3.

Bad start with the ramp at Waterloo very light on Bullingdons, but there was one in working order near the bottom. Over the bridge and up Drury Lane to be greeted by what looked like a large field gun from the First World War lined up on the gates to the Masonic Temple. No idea what it was doing there.

The area around Oxford Street was pretty gummed up with traffic and the first two stands I tried near the Wigmore Hall was full, but I was able to slip into the last spot at Portman Square, with someone pulling out just as I pulled in. After which bother I thought I deserved a drop of Riesling at the Coach Makers - where the cheerful young barmaids made a spirited effort to sell me some lunch.

The recital opened with 6 canonic preludes from George Benjamin. Not without interest, not least as a showcase for the Fazioli grand brought in for the occasion.

And so onto the preludes, where I thought that Lortie played well to the rather harsh tones of the Fazioli, the last sighting of which was noticed at reference 5. He also liked to thump a bit in the loud bits, also to work his face. Rather different from Wuja Yang's effort, although I would be hard put to say why, but very good just the same.

The BBC contributed no less than one announcer and thirteen microphones, mostly hung from the roof in a large cluster.

Thought about, but decided against going back to the Coach Makers, heading instead for Seven Dials (a once seedy area which was the setting for some of John Buchan's thriller 'The Three Hostages', one which, as I recall, included language which would now be considered racist - and this from a future governor-general of Canada) and the Neal's Yard cheese shop there, where I was able to stock up on Lincolnshire Poacher, having been some days without. On the way taking the last spot on the stand at Soho Square and discovering that what was the famous Foyle's building was being demolished, in favour of what the foreign demolition worker whom I asked had no idea. The best he could do was the observation that heritage buildings were being torn down all over Europe.

After cheese, to a Swedish flavoured bakery in Earlham Street where they did me an excellent breakfast tea, cheese salad in sour dour breakfast roll and a cinnamon bun. A bit dear, but good; worth the money. Run by a young Swedish couple, with the ambience being completed by a couple of Swedish customers.

Onto Tooting, where I was able to check the stock in the book department of the Oxfam shop there, emerging with a near mint condition copy of 'Right Ho, Jeeves' for £2. I like the Hugh Laurie television version well enough, having recently invested £8 in the collected edition, but I am finding the book rather hard going. All seems a bit dated, rooted in public school slang of 100 years ago, and long winded. Maybe the trouble is that I am doing it the wrong way around, television first, book second. I also get the impression that the two dozen or so episodes have been assembled, patch-work fashion, by cut and paste from a much smaller number of books.

Wetherspoon's over the road in fine form and I thought about a dictionary of French names but decided against - I suspect not for the first time.

Reference 1: http://www.louislortie.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/wuja.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Hiromi+Okada.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Benjamin_(composer).

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/visiting-jigsaw.html.

Colour

A bit of colour in the kitchen. Petunia plugs bought from the Saturday Telegraph and converted by a few weeks TLC into the snap left. Probably petunia amore queen of hearts, named for the purple hearts.

The glasses from the night before just visible bottom right. Glasses, as it happens, from Singapore.

On parts and properties

Looking to refine the build of the ship of the line at reference 3, we have come to think about parts and properties, by way of references 1 and 2.

With particular emphasis on how an object or a part of an object would be different from a property in the two and a half dimensions of our layered data structure.

In reference 2, we have already used the size and shape of the patterns on which our elements are defined to tell us the mode – sight, sound, touch, whatever – of the parts of layer objects – where both ‘part’ and ‘layer object’ were given special meanings in reference 1. Whereas in most of what follows we use both part and object in the ordinary way. So for distinguishing objects, their parts and properties we need something else, something other than the size and shape of those patterns on which their elements are defined.

The first thought is that the difference between a part and a property is perfectly clear. A gun turret is a part of a ship of the line, whereas its class – first rate, second rate, whatever – is a property. Leaving aside the complication that a ship of the line might have a lot of gun turrets and in order to get to a part we need to say which one. With the collection of gun turrets not generally being thought of as a part. While the number of gun turrets is a perfectly good property.

If we think of sets, a part is a proper subset, with a partition being a collection of subsets which do not overlap in any way but which, in total, amount to the set as a whole. So our ship of the line can be thought of, in side elevation, as a large, two dimensional set of small rectangular cells, with seven subsets: its hull, its engines and fuel; its bridge and control systems; and, its guns and ammunition. These seven subsets or parts do not really amount to the whole, but for many purposes they are good enough.

While a property says something about the set as a whole. The number of members, the number of members which are yellow, the average value of the members or the number of recognised subsets – or parts.

Which leads to the notion that the value of a property is something very simple, a choice from some small number of choices available. At the very most, in mathematical jargon, a countable number of choices. Something that one can enumerate or count in the way of the non-negative integers. Or we might go so far as to allow a decimal number, a real number or, in the jargon of Visual Basic, a single. Leaving aside the complication that real numbers do not really exist in computers, with computers being finite never mind countable, only good approximations to them.

Now suppose the object in question is one of our rectangles. At the most basic level, leaving aside Powerpoint complications like line and fill, a rectangle can be completely specified by four numbers, two for its position and two more for its shape. So this object is completely specified by four simple properties. But not many real world objects are this simple, are not readily described in terms of their properties.

The name of a property is this simple, just a word or phrase. While the map which takes one from an object and the name of a property to the value of that property for that object is likely to be complicated. The map that takes us from ‘HMS Vanguard’ and ‘displacement in decimal thousands of long tons’ to the value 44.5. But a complication which we can leave aside, with all that heavy lifting having been done in the course of building our data structure, a building which culminates in what we are calling its compilation.

What about more complex properties? What if one wanted the A turret of our ship of a line to be considered as one of its properties, a property with the name ‘A turret’ – leaving aside the minor complication that numbers and names are also used to label turrets, as well as capital letters. With any particular navy having a convention which gets you from the property name, in this case ‘A turret’, to a turret on a real ship, in this case the one nearest the bows. To all of which we respond with exclusion. Such things are not properties, they are parts.

What about objects which you can’t see, which exist in time but not in space, at least not in the way of a ship of the line? An object like a piece of music, an object which might also be considered to have parts, parts in two dimensions. One dimension being the division of the music into lines, say one for tenor and one for trumpet, the other being the division of the music into time, say bars or movements. Which we allow, with music being distinguished from painting by the mode of its expression, the size and shape of its constituent elements. See reference 2.

From all of which we arrive at the notion that an object is a complicated thing which may be divided into parts, parts which may well be considered as objects in their own right. While properties are simple attributes of objects, attributes which can be specified by a string of the form ‘<object_reference>:<property_name>=<property_value>’, with such strings generally being quite short, say less than a few hundred bytes in computer speak. With something like a picture generally being a few tens of millions of bytes.

Which notion excludes things like smell. So the smell of a rose might ordinarily be thought of as a property of that rose, while at reference 2 we talk of smells being quite large and complex elements. A property which might be expressed as a line in the sense of reference 4, but which cannot easily be reduced to a string of characters.

So, where we get to is that one solution to the question posed at the beginning of this note, how do we distinguish a part from a property, would be to say that a property was a one dimensional object in two or three parts, all lines in the sense of reference 4, with the first being a reference to the object, in the case that the property was not embedded in the object, the second being the name of the property and the third being the value. We say nothing about the size of the elements involved. But we do say that both objects and their parts are something bigger, something occupying more space on a layer than a property. Parts are the same kind of thing as objects, while properties are not. At the extreme, anything which is not a line or a loop, although in practise we might expect most objects and parts of objects to be substantially bigger than a line or a loop.

We put aside the question of the division of labour between the name of a property and its value. So in the displacement example above, one might prefer to include the units of the displacement with the value of the property rather than with its name.

These arrangements might not satisfy a philosopher or a mathematician, but they might do for the purpose of defining a data structure from which we can generate subjective experience, an experience which does not need to respect philosophical or mathematical niceties. It just needs to be good enough.

Illustration

In the top half of the illustration we have a large blue ship, the dominant part, with three subordinate parts, all on the same layer. A representative object. The small pink rectangle is intended to remind us that the elements making up these parts, often sight mode elements, are small relative to the parts as a whole.

In the bottom half we have three properties.

In the first, the property is embedded in the substantive object, with both property and object on the same layer. With the property being a two part line embedded in the larger layer object, an arrangement which might be convenient in the case that the layer concerned is not driven by sensory data, where the geometry of parts is not otherwise important.

In the second and third, the property is linked to the substantive object on some other layer by the stubs on the left, with the weight being connected to the dominant part, here standing for the whole, and with the anthem, for some reason or other, being connected to the pink subordinate part. With these properties being three part lines, layer objects in their own right.

We will be saying more about all these arrangements in due course.

Conclusions

We have exhibited a way in which we might organise objects, parts and properties in our layered data structure, a way which maintains the reliance on geometry rather than on content or look-up tables. Put another way, we had already used the shape of elements to indicate their mode and we now use the shape of parts, parts which are made out of elements, to indicate their role.

References

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/a-new-start.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/more-on-modes.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/a-ship-of-line.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/lines.html.

Group search key: srb.

We'll keep the red flag flying here!

For the record, despite my doubts about the variety of Old Labour offered by Mr. 'the crow' Corbyn, I shall be voting Labour in the forthcoming election. As long as the party can put up a donkey for leader, it is not out, and it is important for it to get as big a vote as possible as a spring board for recovery at some point in the future. Hopefully not too dim and distant.

In our constituency, the Rt. Hon. Mr. Grayling is likely to be returned with a large majority, say 25,000 or more on a vote of 60,000, so tactical voting is not an issue. At least he is the product of a sort of grammar school, along with his leader, rather than Eton.

However, I suspect that the owner of the car illustrated, like that illustrated a couple of years ago at reference 1, comes from a part of town which was once Labour but is now Daily Mail. With there not being much chance of movement during the campaign. Furthermore, not only is it more of a lady's colour than that at reference 1, I think that somewhere it says something about Tiffany, possibly referring to the Tiffany Blue which is well known to google. Don't be mislead by the FIL on the number plate - but for the real FIL, you can see reference 2.

PS: I had assumed that Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail was rabidly right wing. But scanning reference 3, the truth seems to be more complicated, even if it does involve a great deal of money. Yet another product of a sort of grammar school - as indeed, I was.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/real-car-attack.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=FIL.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dacre.

Thursday 27 April 2017

Jules

I have been reading the Maigret story called 'La Première Enquête de Maigret', firmly set in 1913 and written in eight days in 1948, just a year before I was born.

A Maigret version of 'Endeavour', with Maigret on the first steps of the ladder to chief inspector, aka commissaire. But see the helpful reference 1, which claims superintendent is a better fit. A rather frustrated Maigret chafing at his lack of standing and his posting to a district rather than to the Quai des Orfèvres. Hating being treated as and being called un enfant de choeur - which taking the literal meaning, he had, as it happens, once been, back in his natal village. Still being called Jules, at least by some, which use of his first name, in later life, like Morse, he heartily disliked.

Unusual, with nearly all the stories I have read so far being set in a timeless middle age, in an unspecified time. A sort of golden age where criminals come and go but where Maigret, his crowd and milieu are always there, always the same. The exceptions being a couple of stories set after his retirement, and there, as here, some mileage is made out of his changed standing in his calling.

Much talk of moustaches, which must have been worn by most Frenchmen at the time. With Maigret possessing, if not always using, the net for sleeping and the irons for curling. Just like Poirot.

One important plot element is a Dion-Bouton car, for which see reference 2, from which we get: 'in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, which opened the Irish War of Independence, The O'Rahilly [The 'the' is no mistake. This was the name he is or was known by] drove his De Dion Bouton up to the Irish HQ in O'Connell Street, and, discovering that the Rising he had planned and trained soldiers for and then tried to prevent, was actually going on, he drove it into a barricade, walked into the GPO and said: "I've helped to wind the clock, I've come to hear it strike." He was killed in a heroic charge against a machine gun nest in Moore Street days later. A famous photograph shows the skeleton of the car in its barricade'.

Another is a famous coffee company. It seems that in the Paris of the time such a company would have its fancy horses and carts, just like those our own brewers used to sport. There were also cards in the packets of coffee which you could collect and stick into books, just like the cigarette cards noticed at reference 3. And if you collected enough of them, you got a suite of walnut veneer bedroom furniture. Presumably some of the cards were very rare.

Some treatment of the way that aristos and rich people were apt to get special treatment from the police. Unlike the ritual humiliation which was, in France in those days, meted out to the rest of us when pulled in for some reason or other.

Some treatment of the various bars and restaurants along the Seine, mostly catering to trippers and holiday makers from Paris, bars and restaurants which seem to figure quite a lot in the Maigret stories, along with locks and barges. In this one we have the restaurant keeper catching goujons for lunch, to order. Which I completely & miserably failed to connect to our gudgeon. Also several mentions of a green tinge to the white wine, from where I associated to the vinho verde to be had in Vauxhall.

As always, some interesting new words and phrases. For example, caca d'oie for a yellowy-green colour. Douche écossaisee for a shower that blows hot and cold.

A Poirot style ending, with most of the cast gathered for a lecture by Maigret on what really happened.

But unlike Poirot, who is always saying that he uses psychology, with Maigret we actually get some, with Simenon trying to explore what it is that would make someone like Maigret successful - in part, on his account, his ability to get inside the skin of the people, mostly of the lower orders, with whom he has to deal. He understands them, what they might get up to and the way they live. Part of this being his liking for low bars and bistros where he can soak all this sort of thing up. Another part of this is expressed in the word 'flou', to which I may come back on another occasion.

All in all, not a bad story, unlike Endeavour on the box, which I did not take to at all. But I think I prefer the regular ones, set in the aforementioned golden age.

PS: at least one reference to wooden cobbles in the Paris of 1913. Something one still comes across in London from time to time, usually covered with half an inch or so of something tarry (as in black stuff).

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissaire_de_police.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Dion-Bouton.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/treasure-trove.html.

Wednesday 26 April 2017

Postscript

The other day I noticed a small book about myths and legends at reference 1. This day, for some reason, the story of Odysseus came to mind, celebrated by Julian Jaynes as the birth of the modern, reflective and devious man. Not very Freudian at all, but see reference 2 to check for yourself.

While I was thinking how sexist it was.

You have a chap who goes off to the wars with half the young men of the land and vanishes for ten years or more. There is no news, but he has various adventures, some involving young ladies, and all his men get killed.

Eventually he gets back to find a throng of suitors for his wife, eating him out of house and home. He slaughters the lot, defiling their corpses for good measure. He then gets the maids who had been entertaining the suitors in various ways, to clear up the mess and then hangs the lot of them from a rope strung across his courtyard. His wife, however, had done the proper thing and waited for his return.

All of which seems a bit excessive. I remember reading in the Mishnah of a much more sensible arrangement in Palestine. Before a merchant embarked on his travels, he made a post-nup with his wife, the main effect of which was to set a limit on how long she had to wait. After the necessary time had elapsed, if he did not show, his wife was free to sell up his goods and start a new life with a new man.

But the story does reflect what must have been a common anxiety among men who had to travel for business, travel in those far off times being a rather uncertain business. So Freudian to that extent.

PS: I wonder now how much that other JJ, James Joyce, knew about all this when he named his famous book for the story. One anti-parallel being that Bloom's wife did have a lover.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/myths-and-legends.html.

Reference 2: http://www.julianjaynes.org/.

Trolley 76

An M&S trolley, not far from the end of our very own road. What is it coming to? Some of the flat dwellers who live behind the big hedge?

Note the wheels at the front, larger than those at the back, which is not. I think, the case with Sainsbury's trolleys. Nor is there any attempt at the security devices which are fitted to most of theirs - even if I have yet to see any evidence of the devices working. This trolley did seem easy to wheel, but that may have been down to better standard of sidewalk on this side of town, rather than to wheel configuration.

The handle was quite badly bent, with two large holes at the bend, as if some fixture had been ripped off. But nothing of the sort to be seen at the trolley stand on return. All white handles there, a later version than than mine, so perhaps changing the green handle for a new white handle will not be a big deal. One hopes that they don't just chuck the whole trolley in the tip, on the grounds that it costs more to mend than it is worth.

A bit further on, in East Street, outside Majestic, we had a bicycle tyre neatly hoop-la'd over a lamp post, maybe 4-5 metres high. Assuming it was the same sort of youth who dumped the trolley, how many attempts did it take to score? One can't imagine them doing anything imaginative or difficult like building a human pyramid up the pole, to do it that way.

And a bit later on there was a second M&S trolley (food hall white, large size), but it was neither snapped nor scored as it was on the space dedicated to Epsom Market, outside Wetherspoon's and in sight of the M&S front door. Excluded by rule 15b (15a being the one about trolleys in the further reaches of the Sainsbury's car park at Kiln Lane). At least I can feel virtuous about getting it indoors before the hail shower which followed shortly after.

Big pharma

From to time I mention big pharma in a generally negative way. Suggesting perhaps that they are inventing mental complaints and illnesses so that they can sell us lots of drugs to treat them. See, for example, reference 1.

So I pleased to be able to report, following an article in this week's Economist (April 22nd to 28th), that they also do other stuff. In particular, give huge numbers of doses of medicines to help with the push to eradicate various unpleasant tropical complaints, presently widespread. The deal seems to be that they donate the medicine, but someone else has to organise delivery, which does not seem unreasonable. All pushed along by WHO, Mr Gates and his foundation. Also good to be reminded that all those Windows and MS Office license fees are being put to better use than building solid gold swimming pools, in the way of some of the very rich people nearer home.

While along my way, I learned about something very nasty called the Guinea Worm. See reference 2.

I have also learned that these complaints affect a huge if shrinking swathe of the world; that is to say most of the tropics. A big chunk of South America, most of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, chunks of China and big chunks of the rest of south east Asia.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/big-pharma.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis.

One that got away

Not a trolley on this occasion, rather a sort of wine.

About a fortnight ago I thought, for a change, to buy a bottle in Marks & Spencer, possibly in the margins of returning a trolley, and lighted upon that illustrated. A little more than I usually pay, but gave it a whirl.

It turned out to be rather good - but unfortunately it also turned out that I got it cheap because it was end of line and it has now vanished from the shelves of both the Epsom and the online M&S.

Moved to look it up on google and surprised to find that, despite tasting rather like a higher grade Chablis, it came from the other end of the great limestone ridge which is the home of Burgundy, that is to say the southern end of the Côte de Beaune. Maybe now that I can't knock the stuff back in style any more, I have found instead what it takes to be a wine buff.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%B4te_de_Beaune.

Reference 2: Chassagne-Montrachet 2013.

Tuesday 25 April 2017

Dorking three

On Saturday to the third and last recital given by the Piatti String Quartet at Dorking Halls, promoted by the Dorking Concertgoers Society. An outfit which must have been going for a while as we must have been going to their concerts for more than twenty years and it was not young then.

Brahms No.3, Op.67 and Beethoven Op.130 with the Grosse Fugue ending, aka Op.133. First new, second last heard just about two years ago and noticed at reference 3. Two more in 2014, another in 2013 and another in 2010. So it should be reasonably familiar.

Slightly irritated to find that the Dorking Halls people had thought it appropriate to provide light classical background music while we waited for the off, in and around the Martineau Hall, one of several halls in the complex. Furthermore, there were no cakes on offer. Not the first time that the Dorking Halls people had come across as a bit amateurish. But I suppose I should not moan and should rather be grateful that the facility still exists.

We were sitting near the left hand end of the third row - of raking seats installed on a slightly creaky scaffold - which I think was too close for comfort, at least on this occasion. The sound was too raw, too much the parts rather than the whole, possibly accounting for the fact that sometimes the first violin seemed a bit weak, while at other times the cello seemed a bit strong. One does not pick one's seats in the way that one would at, say, the RFH, but next season we will give the seat allocator a hint about further back and in the middle and see what that does. And one wonders, not for the first time, what the musicians hear; presumably something rather different to what you or I might hear, even if we had somehow been inserted into the middle of their group. And maybe someone in the audience who played one of the instruments concerned would be somewhere between the two, acting out that part of the performance, at least in their mind, as it unfolded.

In any event, while the Brahms included some fine passages, I did not really feel that I made a connection, that I had settled to it. Beethoven much better, probably helped along by knowing it quite well. Knowing it not in the sense that I could have hummed any tunes or phrases beforehand, rather that as the music unfolded, I recognised things. A familiar friend rather than a new acquaintance.

Smart exit through the back door, with the result that we were one of the first cars out of the car park. Odd that no-one much else seems to take advantage of it.

PS: the Martineau Hall was presumably named for some local eminence, someone whom I have yet to track down, with wikipedia only recognising a once Huguenot family which moved from Norwich to eminence in Birmingham. No Dorking angles at all. Perhaps a visit to the local museum is called for.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/dorking-two.html.

Reference 2: http://dorkingconcertgoers.org.uk/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/big-fugue.html.

Mess two

The gang master in question on this occasion, two large holes on the edge of Epsom Common, is Balfour Beatty, with half a dozen or so of their vans being parked on Stamford Green Road during the day for the past few weeks. The smaller of the two holes is snapped left.

The two large holes are something to do with the mains electricity, possibly the large cable which connects Epsom to the substation at Malden Rushett. And whatever it is involves a lot of fifty gallon drums of something, some of them from France.

We sometimes wonder whether the substation counts as critical national infrastructure, but a chap once told me in TB that if we lost the whole substation, another one would kick in in a second or so. Your computer might notice, but you probably would not. It seems that there is a ring of the things all around London.

PS: my understanding had been that a fifty gallon drum was the unit called a barrel when there is talk of oil prices going up or down in the media. However, checking in wikipedia, the oil barrel seems to be a more modest 35 gallons. With our own Richard III getting a walk-on part.

Reference 1: the holes: 51.334331, -0.282867.

Reference 2: the substation: 51.343138,-0.3246451. Best seen in satellite view.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_(unit).

Mess one

A drain cover in our road in an intermediate state, following surface dressing. No doubt it will look a lot better when the dressing covering the drain cover has been cut away, as per the pale yellow indicator, but I remain convinced that the machines with which they do the lines on the road are making a much messier job than of old.

No doubt the gang masters' vans which brings the gangs in say things on the side like 'working with Surrey to keep your roads spic & span'.

Sunday 23 April 2017

Faust

Last week to the RFH to hear Isabelle Faust and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment do some older music. Haydn, symphony No.49. Mozart, violin concerto No.1. CPE Bach, Symphony in G. Mozart, violin concerto No.5. Unusual in that we do not do orchestras very often.

Bright but cool evening and I was pleased to see a young man heading west on the cycle path over West Hill. Someone actually using it for once, rather than cycling on the path on the other side of the road, intended for pedestrians.

First young lady of the outing caught my eye on the platform on account of her tight lycra leggings, plain black below and strongly patterned on her bottom. I was reminded of the displays that some monkeys make in the same area.

Second young lady was crossing from Waterloo to the South Bank Centre, soberly dressed in black top and trousers, but with the black set off by glittering gold shoes, mainly strap, but including very high heels. It must have taken her some time to learn to walk in them without falling over.

Arrived at the RFH to be given a substantial and free program. The first time such a thing has happened. A program which seemed to make more of a splash with the creative team - including people like the digital content officer and the director of marketing and audience development - than it did with the orchestra.

However, the orchestra were listed, all 31 of them. 11 ladies. 2 brass - seemingly french horns without valves or pistons, but one with a spare coil of tubing and the other with a selection of what looked like shoe horns hanging from the music stand. 3 woodwind - seemingly old style oboes looking rather like modern recorders. Cellos without legs. The drill was stand for the first piece, sit for the second, stand for the third and sit for the fourth. Cellos excused standing, Faust excused sitting.

I was very taken with it all, with the Mozart 5 bringing the concert to a triumphant close. Apart that is from the encore, said to be Mozart's Rondo in C major, probably K.373. Also, having been very taken with CPE Bach's symphony (for strings only), I was reminded of reading somewhere that CPE was much better known in Haydn's day than his father, with Haydn being quite surprised to learn that the father was a musician at all.

Orchestra small enough and playing the sort of music that meant one could hear what was going on, without it all burring into a wall of sound. So good.

My only comment would be that there sometimes seemed to be odd clicking noises from some of the strings and I wondered whether something untoward was happening when the bow changed direction at the end of a stroke, perhaps catching the string at the wrong phase.

The leader and the younger string players paid great attention to Faust when she played - but I was amused to see a fatter, older chap at the back of the violins who had clearly seen it all before and paid her no attention at all. For all the world he might have been having a scratch.

Faust, unlike Wuja the week before (noticed at reference 2), was soberly dressed, with a long yellow skirt (with cummerband) and a lilac top, a sort of hybrid between a blouse and a shawl. I found the shawl part, flapping about below her arms, a little distracting, but it did not seem to bother her.

More or less full downstairs, including the cellist from the Endellion Quartet (the second time I have seen him in an audience, a cello player with a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge) and a chap who looked like an older version of someone for whom I used to work. His father or older brother? I restrained myself from bothering either of them.

Already booked up for a near repeat concert, this time with the new-to-us Rachel Podger, in November. With this exact same concert being given eight times in Australia before it gets to us at the end of the month. Do they steam around Australia in a giant bus with trailer, after the fashion of a road train? In any event, another orchestra which is getting as much as it can from its investment in rehearsals. See references 3 and 4.

PS 1: with thanks to reference 1 for the picture, rather more interesting than anything I had to hand.

PS 2: reference 5 reduced me to geekery. Involved doing something with exceptions in flash in content settings. But it seems to have worked. Ten out ten to the relevant chrome help page.

Reference 1: http://www.janackuvmaj.cz/.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/wuja.html.

Reference 3: http://www.rachelpodger.com/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train.

Reference 5: http://www.endellionquartet.com/.

File note

On Easter Monday, wanting an outing but not wanting to drive or to visit a hot spot on a bank holiday, settled, for the first time for a long time, for Horton Country Park - but see reference 1. A place which turned out to be quite busy with dog walkers and joggers, although not much activity was to be heard from the sometimes loud and toffish polo boys at the next door equestrian centre.

Some signs of chain saw activity, with lots of woodland management going on. Some signs of hedge layering.

Visit closed by walking down the path by the side of the children's farm, now called Hobbledown, where what we got for free was llamas, alpacas and a large pot bellied pig. Proper pig glimpsed in the distance.

To judge by their website, the Hobbledown people are working the farm a lot harder than the more cooperative/charity types who used to work it. See reference 2.

PS: before the charity types got it, the farm was run by the nearby mental hospitals, mainly as occupational therapy for their patients, otherwise apt to be idle and bored, before therapy of this sort got banned as a result of union intervention. Intervention which claimed to be about patient rights and welfare.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/horton-country-park.html.

Reference 2: http://www.hobbledown.com/.

Saturday 22 April 2017

Evolution

This morning, in the course of investigating the relation of the English word random to the French word randonnée, prompted by something BH came across in the Jane Duncan book she was reading, I came across a babiroussa in Larousse.

The little picture which came with it suggested that all four canine teeth grow upwards, which seemed all wrong. Upper canines grow down and lower canines grow up. But checking with wikipedia at reference 1, I find that Larousse has got it right, all four canines do indeed grow up, at least in the males.

From which I went on to speculate whether, in the course of the evolution of this trait, the upper canines had slowly rotated, one clockwise and one anti-clockwise, eventually coming to a halt at their present position. But then decided that the truth was probably less exotic, and some random (see below) mutation had just flipped the gene which tells these particular teeth whether to go up or down.

Presumably a relative of the prize pigs described by Tom Harrison in 'Savage Civilisation', last noticed at reference 2. And I feel sure that he has been noticed elsewhere, but I can't find where.

PS: the story about random and randonnée turns out to be complicated, but a link suggested by Littré may that the latter is a hunting term for what the hunted animal does when flushed out of wherever it is it has been hiding. Draws itself up to its full height, casts around for a bit and then charges off in some direction or other, seemingly at random. While google talks in terms of the word mean a hike and OED talks in terms of ranging artillery, with at random once meaning at extreme range. And, again, I feel sure that all this been noticed before, but I can't find where. Memory clearly in trouble this morning.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babirusa.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/conspicuous-consumption.html.

Fire!

Back in 2015 I noticed the digester which wasn't in front of the Sainsbury's building at Kiln Lane. While today, after returning trolley 75, I noticed a large tank out the back. Quite noisy, with quite a lot of gurgling going on. Was this one actually a digester? I though probably not, settling for a more mundane tank for the storage of heating fuel.

However, there was a maker's plate screwed to the side which told me that that tank was a 037c/06e made by Franklin Hodge of Hereford.

The Franklin Hodge website directs me to something called the Redbook Live, a product of the BRE group, a composite involving both fire research and building research. From which I learn that this tank holds water for the sprinkler systems for the shop, a superior tank which only needs to be emptied and checked every ten years.

One of a range of LPS 1276 tanks made by said Franklin Hodge, with LPS appearing to mean, in this context, loss prevention standard, rather than, for example the large polyp stony corals which google seems keen on. I suppose that they are excited about losses and leaks, not because they are worried about water in the road, but because they want to be sure that the tank was full, should it be needed.

Clearly an area awash with standards and regulations. How many of them driven from Brussels?

The only snag with all this being that I don't see why a water storage tank should gurgle so much. Do the regulations required the water to circulate through the sprinkler system continuously to make sure that it would circulate in case of need?

PS: the maker's plate mentioned above is also mentioned in the regulations. It must be there.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/digester.html.

Reference 2: http://www.redbooklive.com/.

Visible mend

More than a couple of years ago now, I noticed some invisible mending going on at the top end of Ewell Village, a tricky looking business involving cutting out mortar, reinforcing bars and fancy resin. Mending which became and remains more or less invisible, certainly from across the street. See reference 1.

Today, at the other end of the village, I noticed another effort, with this one not invisible at all - although it is possible that the job is not quite finished - which would explain why I had not noticed it before.

It would be interesting to know the history of this extension, with its triangular arch over what appeared to be a much wider opening when it was first put up. Accommodation for some kind of a trap?

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/invisible-mend.html.

Trolley 75

At time of capture, lying on its side in an East Street bus stop.

At Sainsbury's, I tried wheeling it back and forth past the sign at the entry to the car park warning potential trolley thieves of electrical alarms, but failed to elicit and response from either the sign or the trolley.

Detritus

I was tempted to add this lamp on a verge down Horton Lane to my small collection of such pick-me-ups on the back patio.

A sturdy affair, with a large battery in the back compartment to the left and some tricky looking wiring getting from there to the front. Possibly intended to turn itself on when you put the lamp on its pole - there being a large hole for the purpose between front and back, not very visible here.

It might have been interesting to take the thing apart to find out exactly how it worked, but I desisted. Much more important matters to attend to.

Casualty

A damaged tree, snapped yesterday just coming up to Horton Retail (on the right) from the south.

Presumably a high lorry had veered close to the edge of the road for some reason and snagged a branch - with scrape marks being visible half way along. Seems a bit unlikely that wind would do such a thing, not that has been much that I have noticed in recent days.

The good news is that the hawthorn is coming out along Horton Lane and looking very well. Quite smelly, without being overpowering in the way of privet. A few days ahead of our own.

Friday 21 April 2017

Winter's Tale

Last Saturday to the Barbican for the 'Cheek by Jowl' touring version of the 'Winter's Tale'. An outfit of whom I have no record and whom we may not have seen before.

Failed to check the railway timetable properly and arrived at the station to find engineering works disrupting the Waterloo service. But we managed to get there and find a No.4 bus which got us to the Barbican in good time. On which bus we sat next to a lady and a young lady, presumably her daughter, who were on the same errand. Like BH, the lady had done the play for her A-level second string. Furthermore, the daughter was about to go to Guildhall next to Barbican to study classical saxophone, of which I had not before heard. We learned that for these purposes, you need just two of them, not the full range.

The show was in the lower, smaller theatre, more or less underneath the canteen. But it came with a very large stage, plenty of knee room in front of the rather basic seats, and a team of around a dozen players.

An accessible version for the modern audience, heavily cut and partially rewritten. But as a story about someone with too much power over those around him getting badly bitten by the jealousy disease, it worked very well. Perhaps the 'trouble at court', woodland frolic, resolution' formula, common in Shakespeare - and no doubt elsewhere - does indeed touch some primitive, Jungian chord. See reference 2.

But there were irritations. The opening seemed rather forced and silly. Dressing up the trial scene like a White House press conference with lectern and video repeat behind was clever, but there was too much of it. Again a bit forced and silly. But I liked doing the bear and the bear noises on screen. Most impressive.

Woodland frolic mostly rather tiresome, with Autolycus particularly so. I didn't like him or his performance at all. I didn't think the attempt to move the action to the 20th century worked at all and would have much preferred it left somewhere vague in the 16th or 17th century. Shepherd rather weak. Satyr's dance missing.

Otherwise, the king, his queen, Perdita and Paulina good.

Ending rather spoilt by the otherwise effective tableau vivant at the end going on for far too long.

On the way out, pleased to find that there was still at least one broad bean plant in the micro-allotment tub illustrated above. Just right of centre. For the last sighting, a bit less than a year ago, see reference 1.

With the Waterloo service damaged, we thought to try the Thameslink from Farrindon, which resulted in our taking a light dinner at the Three Compasses, which we had been about to pass up on the grounds that there was no English grub to be had, when we found it listed on the back of the Thai menu. Interesting establishment, possibly re-purposed from some wholesale operation to do with the nearby meat market. Interesting clientèle, rather noisy and very democratic. Perhaps the toffs only turn out during the week. Interesting also in that they sold what appeared to be a real ale with a green Watney badge attached - with my having thought that Watney's was long gone. While according to google: '... They are having their Watney’s branded pale ale brewed under licence at Sambrook’s, reasonably close to the original Watney’s brewery in London'. Along with some acid comments about the Watney's beer of old - while for myself, my recollection is that I got on OK with Watney's ordinary bitter, this at a time when lots of pubs did not sell warm beer at all.

Slow train to Wimbledon, surprised on the way by the density of housing across the river from Blackfriars, then a wait at Raynes Park where we tried, for the first time, the Wetherspoon's there, 'The Edward Rayne'. Busy, quite a lot of what looked like old-style local trade. Onto the train which contained a lot of drunks, oddly so for early evening and it was not at all clear where they had been to get in the state they were in. One young couple was very steamed up and excited, so much so that the lady next to us, with the air of someone who knew, told us that there would be no action to follow. They would fall asleep the moment their heads hit the pillows.

PS: after the event we learn that Edward Rayne was born in the US and was very important in the fashion shoe trade in this country in the middle decades of the last century. While some other Raynes owned some of the land on which Raynes Park was built, some decades previously. Not at all clear whether it was the same lot. Perhaps the Wetherspoon's pub names department thought we were getting a bit too into the heritage side of their pubs and their names, getting a bit too po-faced about it all, and was having a bit of fun with us. For po-faced see, for example, reference 5.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/citadine.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/myths-and-legends.html.

Reference 3: http://threecompassesthaifood.com/.

Reference 4: for our previous attempt on the play, see http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/winters-tale.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/more-travel-variations.html.

Metro Bank

A quick puff for Metro Bank, following my first ever transaction with them at their Epsom branch.

Lots of friendly staff who claim not to mind the long opening hours.

More important on this occasion, a state of the art coin counter, which will turn your coins into bank notes in very short order, with very few rejects, in my case about seven, or much less than 1% of the total, of which four were foreign. No need to be a customer. Far superior to the offering in Sainsbury's where they charge 8% or so - even if you are donating the coin to charity - and somewhat superior to that in HSBC - which suffers from poor availability of machines. See, for example, references 1 and 2.

My only complaint was the poor choice of charities to which one could donate, so the notes alternative was popped into an HSBC machine over the road - another first in that I have not used their cash deposit machine before - and it now wending its way to Mencap. Clever machine: you just stick your card in the slot, drop the money in the hopper and the job is done. It counts up the notes and puts the answer into your account. No more need to fill out any forms. But would it still be clever if you were doing hundreds of notes rather than half a dozen or so? And then, what would happen if you thought that the machine had got it wrong?

PS: they also appear to offer interest on long term deposits, again a better offering than HSBC.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=7.9%2Blooks%2Bbetter%2Bthan%2B8.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/piggy-bank-machines.html.

Thursday 20 April 2017

Trolley 74

Captured on the 18th April from a bus stop down East Street. After a good spell, trolley supply will probably ease down now that the Easter holiday is over and bored youth are otherwise occupied.

Paused

First noticed three years ago at reference 1. A large derelict house down Court Lane, off West Hill.

Since that time the contractors moved in and were, I thought, about to demolish the place and get cracking on some new flats, or whatever it is that is to occupy the site. Going so far as to put cones down Court Lane so that no-one could block the way for construction traffic. That was some months ago.

Now, the cones are still there, the building is still mostly there, but action seems to have stalled and the site has been secured. Snap taken through the hole in the gate - or perhaps it was though the chain link fence.

Another developer who has run out of money? Another developer who is trying to get the council to agree to whatever it is he wants to do by making what is there now uninhabitable?

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/derelict-2.html.

Wednesday 19 April 2017

Speculations

I have now moved on from Atkinson and his Maigret to the second reading of  'La Première enquête de Maigret', from Volume XIII of the collected edition. To which I should add, in all modesty, that a proportion of the preceding 12 volumes are missing and another proportion are not Maigret at all, rather miscellaneous police yarns brigaded with Maigret (as explained in various notes de l'éditeur), yarns which I have mostly skipped over, at least for the present.

But in this Maigret yarn, there is mention from time to time of pneumatiques which Larousse tells me are, or more probably were, a form of air powered telegram in some large towns and cities in France. Presumably a spin-off from systems in department stores which survived, at least in this country, until my childhood, and which still exist in a vestigal form in certain large Sainsbury's to move cash from the tobacco kiosks to the accounts departments.

However, the subject of this morning's before-rising speculation was how a town might organise its pneumatic delivery service.

According to Larousse, the messages were written on standardised message forms, so presumably they were rolled up and put inside a small tube, something like a small torpedo with a hatch.

The tubes in which the torpedoes ran presumably connected up the larger post offices, with the idea being that you delivered your message to the office at your end and that a delivery boy took it from the office at the other end to its destination on the street, much in the way of telegrams, which system also lasted.at least until the late 1950's. So roughly contemporary. Perhaps the advantage of the pneumatique was that you sent your own handwritten message, paid for by the page rather than by the word, whereas that of the telegram was the much larger network.

Was it just one message to the tube, sent on demand, or was there a schedule with tubes going on the hour, every hour?

I then speculated about how the pipes were organised.

Was it a simple star system with there being two pipes connecting every post office to a distribution hub, with a small army of torpedo handlers at the hub moving the torpedoes from the source pipe to the destination pipe?

Were the pipes hung off buildings and telegraph poles or did they go underground?

Was there a more complicated topology with several distribution centres?

Rather improbably, was there some form of routing? With some kind of destination code on the outside of the torpedo which could control in some tricky way the passage of the torpedo through the network of pipes? Was there some equivalent of points on a railway?

Was a time of day angle, with the nine o'clock tube taking a different route from that at half past? With a small army of pointsmen working all the points. Much less tricky than destination codes.

Maybe in some idle moment later today, I shall ask wikipedia all about it. Perhaps it will turn out that such things existed in this country too.

Maybe also some enterprising systems teacher in some secondary school will make it an examination question: write a short illustrated essay on how such a thing might be organised. Do not use more than five sides and do not take more than ten minutes.

PS: after breakfast: I felt sure that I had noticed the tubes at Sainsbury's at some point and have now got around to checking the archive, rather quicker than checking the three blogs one at a time and helped along by the Word search facility, quite good for this sort of thing. Pneumatic turned out to be the necessary search term, with atmospheric a poor second. See references 1 and 2, respectively.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=The+Turin+of+Garrett+Lane.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/a-different-kind-of-heritage-operation.html.

Real soup

Today, during a lapse in our regular arrangements, I was moved to make a pork soup, which turned out very well.

Ingredients: four ounces of pearl barley, half a tenderloin, one and a half onions, four sticks of celery, half a pound of white cabbage and five button mushrooms.

Soak pearl barley in a little more than 2 pints of cold water for 2 hours. Bring to boil Chop and add half a tenderloin. Prepare and add the onion and celery. Simmer for around 45 minutes.

Prepare and add the cabbage. Give it another five minutes. Prepare and add the mushrooms. Give it another five minutes.

Serve.

Not a condiment, spice or e-number in sight!

I think I used to post about pork soup on a regular basis, but the most recent one that I have been able to turn up about this particular sort of soup, that is to say not involving red lentils, is more than four years ago. See reference 1. Have I really not had a proper soup for that long?

PS: with reference 2 being from getting on for ten years ago - so the idea has been around for a while.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/healthy-living.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=some+furtive+branch.

Tuesday 18 April 2017

Chemicals

The tree stump first noticed at the end of December past at reference 1 looks to be well and truly dead with no sign of life at all. So whatever evil chemicals they painted or poured on have done the trick.

But have they gone too far? Will the bank which holds up the railway crumble away once the roots start to rot away in a few years time? Would they have done better to cut them down, but not to have gone the whole hog with chemicals?

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/stump.html.

More crossroads

Back at the crossroads, I have now finished a quick (third) read of 'La Nuit du Carrefour'. I also have the benefit of a review of the ITV version from the Guardian, by a chap who must, at least, have got a bit further than I did.

It seems that in the ITV version, the story is one of police corruption, of country police on the take, with Maigret riding into town to sort it all out. Now I dare say that corruption was as much a problem for the French police as it was for those here in the UK - but it does not feature in any Maigret story that I have read, including this one. In fact, while Maigret does not get on with all his colleagues, and some of them are not sympa at all, they are all, more or less, good chaps, doing their best in sometimes difficult circumstances. Going further, I think most of the villains are good chaps too, with a fair proportion of the really bad ones being foreign, as is the case in this story, where the killer, as apposed to the common or garden thieves, is Italian. And then he kicks up a fuss about having his head chopped off. Didn't mind dishing it out, but didn't like it when it was his turn - no Gallic spirit about it at all - or even Belgic.

Maybe there is some technical reason why the story as written would not do, but I fail to see what it is. Why the adaptation needed to include so much additional material? Plus the set did not feel much like the scene turned up by streetview, on what I think is one of the route nationales in question, the D.19, at gmaps 48.573614, 2.248134. A roughly Seine valley scene which reminds me of our fens, to a lesser extent of the Thames valley at say Wallingford or Lechlade.

But most irritating was the fact that I found that, despite having read the story twice last summer, I had remembered virtually nothing of how the story played out. How almost everybody living in the three houses at the crossroads was in on it. Never mind about the nasty back story of the three widows who used to live in one of them and who gave their name to the crossroads.

A story included, incidentally, a proper Poirot style gathering of the cast at the end so that the hero can give a short lecture tying up all the loose ends in the minds of the average reader.

Perhaps the takeaway is that one should expect to be irritated by television adaptations of books that one knows and likes beforehand.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/blackadder-goes-to-crossroads.html.

More asset tags

Starting to get going on the asset tagging of valuable street furniture now, and today noticed an interesting bit of old-style asset tagging from BT.

You just the issue the chaps who put up the telegraph poles with a handful of metal strips like that illustrated left, together with a punch. Then before they leave an erected pole, they just punch the code out of the strip and then nail the perforated strip up onto the pole. Lasts forever.

One supposes that the 'P' does not stand for pole.

I also noticed that some of their newer cable boxes, the green ones standing about a metre high, have 'BT' - or perhaps 'British Telecom' - painted neatly in black on one end. So no asset number, but at least you do know that it is one of theirs.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/poles.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/asset-tags.html.

Wuja

Tuesday past to hear Wuja Yang at the Festival Hall. Shortly after I booked the concert, quite some time ago, on the strength of a mainly Schubert programme, I got an email explaining that Schubert was mainly off, in favour of the Chopin Preludes (Op.28). Which was fine, as I like the Preludes. We get there to a programme which had Schubert, Brahms then Chopin, and a notice which explained that actually we were going to get Chopin then Brahms (in the form of some unknown to us variations on theme by Handel, Op.24).

No aeroplanes at all on the way in, but we do arrive in time to take a little refreshment, over which we thought we had come across a second young lady engineer, on the grounds that she was reading paper headed 'IEEE', but she turned out to be a Romanian marketing person. The first one had been Oxford educated and while not saying or doing anything offensive or unpleasant, managed to keep up an irritating conversation with a young male colleague all the way to Waterloo. Perhaps it was the sub-text of  'I'm the greatest' which grated. Much preferred Romania to Oxford. Better looking too.

And behind her was a lady who turned out to come from China and who was wearing very little on the top half of her slender body apart from a few straps. Probably in her thirties rather than her twenties, but she certainly made male heads turn and female jaws gape.

In the nearly full hall, there were quite a lot of Chinese, although not as many as had turned out for Yundi Li at the concert noticed at reference 1. Wuja continued her prima donna bit by having us wait for quite a long time after the lights dimmed for her entrance, to the point of someone behind us muttering about 'get on with it'. Did she have to crank herself up to get through the door? But I liked her playing manners, generally quiet, but working her face some of the time and working her whole upper body for the particularly loud or fast bits. Both her dresses - she thought it proper to change during the interval - were skin tight shimmering affairs and she also sported high heels - which I would have thought a bit of a nuisance from a pedal point of view. Oddly, she had a very abrupt way of bowing. But I suppose, if you are thirty and have spent the past 25 years clambering to the top of the classical piano ladder, there is going to be some collateral damage.

I thought she did very well indeed on the Chopin and pretty well on the Brahms. I dare say the Brahms would have been even better had I known it. There were four encores, of which we stayed for three, mostly modern stuff which I was not that keen on, but including one bit which sounded like Schubert.

No wave of groupies, as there had been on the last occasion. Perhaps they had been cooled down by the announcement that there would be no CD signing.

A composite program, that is to say serving more than one concert. For the first time ever, a composite program which we will get more than one use out of. Provided, that is, we remember both that it exists and where it is when the time comes. Challenging.

Full moon.

PS 1: unenthusiastically reviewed by the Guardian, about a week later. We have noticed before that the Guardian can be a bit down on things that we were fine with.

PS 2: Wuja appears in most Wigmore Hall programs, wearing a very short little red number with very high heels, sat at or draped over a Steinway. Can't remember whether she is advertising herself, Steinway or what.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/a-plangent-pop-concert.html.

Reference 2: http://yujawang.com/.

Monday 17 April 2017

A ship of the line

Objective

To describe the data structure – in the sense of reference 5 – which would put a battleship into consciousness.

It is quite possible that it would have been helpful to know more about how computer systems – perhaps support systems in today’s warships – do this sort of thing. Or even the systems which are learning to drive cars (see references 2 and 4).

But for the purposes of this paper, we suppose that we do know a fair bit about second world war battleships, this one being the very large Japanese battleship called the Yamato, sunk towards the end of the second world war. With the photograph below taken during sea trials off Japan, near the Bungo Strait, 20 October 1941. See reference 3.


Scenario in words

Frame 1

We are in a small boat, off the south of Japan, looking at the battleship which is maybe a hundred yards away. We are conscious of that part of the hull which is underwater, even though we can’t see it. We are conscious of the noise of the engines, which we can just about hear. We are also conscious of the noise of the waves and the water against the hull, a noise which we know about, but cannot actually hear.

Frame 2

We then focus on the B turret (second from the right, that is to say from the front or bows). We are conscious of the turret and its various parts, with the assembly as a whole going down through the hull, more or less to the bottom of the ship. Perhaps vaguely aware of the gun crew, perhaps even more vaguely aware of the gun direction from the bridge.

Frame 3

We remember an incident in a similar gun turret on a ship on which we served some years ago. Perhaps a human incident, nothing much to do with guns, involving a couple of people we used to serve with.

From where we back out into remembered images of this second ship, along the lines of that with which we started.

Scenario in layer objects

Frame 1


Pale blue sky background.

Darker blue sea foreground.

One layer object for the ship, both above and below the waterline.

The visible part of the ship gray, well below the horizon. Clear boundary against the sky. Black ellipse, another layer object, the puff of smoke above.

The invisible part of the ship dark blue, visualised in less detail and with less accuracy than the visible part. Underneath the layer object for the sea, which is foreground and by which the messy waterline is expressed.

In addition, we have a number of small layer objects for the foam and spray, represented above by the blue circles.

What we do not do is add a layer object for that part of the sea which is behind the ship, so some of the sea is, as it were, missing. Noting that, as the ship is in the sea, rather than in front of it or behind it, we cannot do all the sea in one layer object and all the ship in another; something has to give. An alternative solution, which might with experience turn out to be better, would be to have one layer object for the visible part of the ship, another for the invisible part, the part below the waterline, a third for the sea as a whole and a fourth for the sky as a whole. Visible part of ship in front of sea in front of invisible part of ship in front of sky. Do we do better with a ship in one piece but with a damaged sea, or the sea in one piece but with a damaged ship?

Some emotional background. Perhaps a mixture of respect and fear. Respect for the magnificent ship, fear of what it, the enemy, might do. Fear for the havoc it might wreak if it got among the troop transports of an invasion fleet, as it very nearly did.

Frame 2


The sky, the ship and the sea have been pushed into the background, leaving the focus on the two brown parts. Upper part visible, with bit more detail than before, lower part invisible, but in mind.
Then there is detail supporting the turret, in a layer below the ship layer. The sort of thing that might be in the back of the mind of an observer who knew something about big naval guns.


Drawing package layers

Here we digress to drawing packages, the sort of thing used by building managers and architects, part of the inspiration for our layered data structure, with our experience being drawn from a package called Drawbase, once used to describe the large government building in Parliament Street, then known as GOGGS. A package which still seems to be up and running, still about buildings, although it has probably moved on since we knew it more than twenty years ago. See reference 7.

Sticking with just plans in two dimensions, a plan in Drawbase is made up of layers which are made up of objects. Objects are lines, which may have line and fill in the way of Powerpoint. But more than Powerpoint, objects can have all kinds of other properties, quite apart from those needed to specify or control their appearance on the plan. Properties which the managers and users of the building which is the subject of the plan will be interested in. For example, in the case of a room, the occupier or, in the case of a fitting, purchase date, vendor, price, vendor part number and owner asset management number. And, these days, such information could easily include pictures and video clips.

Layers are a management concept. Any particular user of the package has access – read, write or both – to administrator nominated layers. One tells the package which of those layers one wants to see, as one goes along, and any particular visualisation draws on just those objects which are in those layers.

For each floor of the building, from sub-basement to roof, we might have the following layers, quite a lot of them altogether.

One layer for the core of the building, the masonry, steel and concrete.

Another layer might add the timber: the doors and door frames, the windows and window frames, partitions.

We might have one or more layers for utilities. We might, for example, have layers for the IT infrastructure cabling – although much of the detail would probably be held in a specialised system, perhaps directly connected to some of the infrastructure concerned. The same might be true for security systems: cameras, intruder alarms, controlled doors and such like. With deciding how exactly to carve things up being a matter for nice judgement. Nice judgement which will also be needed in the layers needed here, to which we turn shortly.

Then we have fixed fittings, such as those which might be found in washrooms and kitchens.

Then we have furniture, such as chairs and tables. Not to mention the once all-important filing cabinets.

These fixtures, fittings and furniture might well be linked into some asset management system.

There is clearly some overlap in function between such packages, cameras and consciousness, with all three seeking to provide an at least mainly, pictorial representation of a chunk of the world. We see consciousness as lying somewhere between the other two, combining elements of both. As including both something like the pixels of the one and the properties of the other.

Our data structure layers

Here we attempt to enumerate the layers of our data structure which we would need to support the first two frames. A task which is easier than the building to the extent that it does not need to be exact or comprehensive – and we can probably get away with cutting plenty of corners.

Remembering in what follows that visibility works from the top down. A layer object in sight mode on an upper layer may occlude another layer object in sight mode on a lower layer. If, however, the upper layer object is connected to the lower layer object, then it is as if the lower layer object were projected into the upper one. The position of the subordinate, lower object in the visual field is constrained by the position of the dominant, upper object, giving us, in effect, a form of zoom, usually zoom in rather than zoom out. So the version of the turret at layer 8, in what follows, zooms in to much less detailed version of the turret included at layer 4.

The necessary connections are introduced at reference 5.

Sky in the background, ship in the middle and sea in the foreground. Ship in front of the sky fairly straightforward, ship behind the sea at the waterline rather less so.

  1. The top layer. The foam and the spray around the ship, partially occluding the sky, the ship and the sea below. Sight mode. 
  2. The sea, around the ship and up to the waterline. Messy boundary at the waterline. Sight mode. 
  3. The sounds and smells from the sea. Mixed mode. 
  4. The ship, including the visible parts of the B turret in summary form and that part of the hull which is underwater, hidden by the sea. The ship will be a single layer object, possibly divided into parts corresponding to the main parts of the ship. The parts will be divided in turn into the small elements which provide detailed visualisation. 
  5. Other information about the ship. For example, the place and date of launch. 
  6. The sounds and smells from the ship.
  7. The emotions arising from the ship. As noted above, perhaps a mixture of respect and fear. Respect for the magnificent ship, fear of what it, the enemy, might do.
  8. The B turret in detail, in many of its parts. But compressed by its connection, through the two intervening layers, to the ‘realistically’ sized part in the ship layer above. Sight mode.
  9. Other information about the B turret.
  10. The wisp of smoke.  Sight mode.
  11. Other information about the wisp of smoke. 
  12. Miscellaneous sensations arising from the movement of the small boat we are in. Not visual as we are concentrating on the battleship.
  13. The bottom layer. The sky in the background. Sight mode.
There are lots of ways in which one might do all this, but it also seems probable that the brain will have a generally consistent approach, an approach which is much the same from one scene to another, while also allowing for the moods and interests of the day.

But no sequence of layers is going to put everything near to everything else to which it is connected. The ship layer cannot both be immediately above the layer carrying the other information about the ship and the layer carrying  the detailed picture of the turret. While collapsing everything onto a single layer is not an option either.

Conclusion

We have presented, in outline, one way in which our battleship might be expressed in the layers of our data structure.

Footnotes

The title of this post is taken from reference 1. A childhood favourite about a Captain Hornblower on a battleship of yesteryear. Albeit a second rate rather than a first rate, like Nelson’s ‘Victory’.

GOGGS is the abbreviated version of government offices, Great George Street. For those of a heritage bent, GOGGS was built over the first 20 years of the 20th century and was originally called the New Public Offices, as opposed to the Old Public Offices – now the Foreign Office – next door. It started its service as home to the Board of Education, the Local Government Board and the local Ministry of Works Office.

It would be easier to do the spray with something like the semi-see-through objects of MS Powerpoint. But we need to think about if or how that might translate to this context.

The hypothesis is that the subjective experience is generated by high frequency activation processes scanning the various objects in our data structure. The current thought is that mixing modes during activation would not matter, would not disturb the subjective experience. Or put another way, that the subjective experience is additive, provided only that the duration of the scan is kept short. This would mean that it is not necessary to tackle the modes in series. More thought is clearly needed, but in the meantime, current thinking on mode is to be found at reference 8.

We also need to think about why the regular brain cannot cope with seeing layer objects which overlap in the visual field in their entirety. Such a brain seems to need to reduce the visual field to two dimensions, even though, on the model presented here, more might be thought to be available. And some people are quite good at visualising complicated objects, perhaps in three dimensions, in their minds. Perhaps to the point of being able to rotate them.

References

Reference 1: A Ship of the Line – C. S. Forester – 1938.

Reference 2: https://waymo.com/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/first-go-now-cars.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/a-new-start.html.

Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/coding-for-red-and-other-stuff.html.

Reference 7: http://www.drawbase.com/.

Reference 8: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/more-on-modes.html.

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