I suppose this might be true. Might be actual science. But it looks and sounds like lies. Marketing lies. The ™ doesn't help, has the opposite effect of what was intended.
Funny how marketeers do this all the time. See also; those shampoo ads where they say, "Here comes the science bit".
Went to the latest Hockney exhibition. Very good. Small.
Feels like Hockney has had loads of exhibitions since I've been blogging.
April 2012
February 2014
April 2017
Sure, this is when they close, but when do they open?
I met a friend at the park the other day at 6am. The park was closed. I always imagined it opened when the sun came up, after all it closes when the sun goes down hence the complicated closing times.
Someone pointed out to me that it's unreasonable to think there are council employees (park keepers?) getting up at 4am to open up the parks. Another friend, an early riser like me, thinks this is perfectly reasonable. It would be a good Richard Scarry job.
On the website it says the park opens at 7:30am but I went past at 6:45am and it was open. So some time between 6am and 6:45am. I shall endeavour to find out and report back.
Set your alarm clocks.
The perfect piece of blogging by Dan Hill. You must have already seen this but if you haven't, grab a coffee, click on the link and enjoy. What blogging was invented for.
A slim cataloguing of the rich diversity of small vehicles that help shape street life in the world’s largest city.
Small vehicles of Tokyo by Dan Hill
This is a sloppy signage installation at John Lewis. You'd expect bette
Exactly four years ago I wrote a blog post about the pace layers of digital services and infrastructure. Think of it as a junior school short story to a Dan Hill PHD.
It was prompted by this photo I took in Manchester.
The other day I saw this e-scooter park.
In May I saw this dockless bike park.
Four years. Pace layers. How cities learn.
Couple of years ago I started collecting pictures of Land Rovers in London. Defenders specifically. No idea why, that's just what we used to do in the middle ages of blogging.
I had a vague idea that I'd match them with pictures of muddy Land Rovers from the country. But that's a bit silly.
We live near an LTN, a low traffic neighbourhood. A few streets where they've blocked the roads to cars to make them go somewhere else and make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists. To encourage more walking and cycling. I'm a fan. I appear to be in a minority.
It gets vandalised regularly.
Graffiti and plants pulled up. Occasionally people try to move it with vans. One a few miles away had oil poured over it.
I can't remember another measure introduced by a council that brought about such violent opposition. Maybe the first speed cameras, but that felt less widespread. Poll tax maybe, but that's only administered by the council it was introduced by central government. That was certainly a violent protest. This is an unusually high level of hostility for a council traffic calming scheme.
They don't protest during Walk To School week.
I think in London these LTNs are primarily introduced to try and solve congestion and pollution but obviously prioritising walking and cycling over cars is also a response to the climate emergency.
Whenever I see these planters vandalised I reflect that LTNs are probably 0.001% of the change required to save the the climate, so is this one thousandth of the violent protest we are likely to see as governments introduce more measures. As governments will inevitably do that in a piecemeal and haphazard way, does that mean the violent protests become never ending.
If you react this way to a 10 minute increase to your car journey how are you going to react when a government says you can only eat meat twice a week. Or you can only heat your home to 18 degrees C. Or only fly once every two years.
At the launch of yesterday's report on the Climate Emergency, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Prof Tim Palmer said “If we do not halt our emissions soon, our future climate could well become some kind of hell on Earth”.
This is nice. Seen a few of these sorts of notices around since the start of the pandemic. Feels like it's brought out more of a local, community-ness to folks. Maybe. Yes, this is in a nice, leafy, well off neighbourhood, but still in a big city.
Just don't knock on the door.
Chris Espinosa who was Apple employee number 8 (and is still employed by them making him the longest serving employee) posted this on Twitter a few days ago.
David Beaver says it's real. Which is nice. Small funny.
Photo borrowed from Ben Quinton/The Guardian and this Guardian article. Hope that's ok.
Ten years ago, on this blog, we were obsessed with the question of who designed the face on Henry the Hoover. We ran a deep investigative series of blogposts. Who designed the face on Henry the Hoover? (Jan 2011) and Henry the Hoover face designer update (Jan 2011).
We reached no firm conclusions but a few reckons.
"The name and the face were both Duncan's ideas, put there (in his charming account) because the lonely cleaning armies of the early morning and late night liked to use an object they could address as a friend."
Duncan being Chris Duncan founder and sole owner of Numatic which makes Henrys.
We were basically correct, and we can now reveal the full story via this wonderful article in the Guardian Sucks to be him! How Henry the vacuum cleaner became an accidental design icon.
Here's the full story.
By the mid-70s, after Numatic had found some success, Duncan was on a British stand at a Lisbon trade show. “It was as boring as sin,” he recalls. One evening, Duncan and one of his salesmen idly began to dress up their latest vacuum cleaner, first with a bit of ribbon, then with a union flag badge on what started to look a bit like a hat. They found some chalk and drew a crude smile under the hose outlet, which suddenly looked like a nose, then some eyes. Searching for a nickname that felt suitably British, they settled on Henry. “We put it over in the corner with all the other equipment and the next day people were laughing and pointing,” Duncan says. Back at Numatic, which then had a few dozen employees, Duncan asked his advertising guy to design a proper face for the cleaner. “Henry” remained an in-house nickname; the product still had Numatic printed above its eyes.
We salute you advertising guy! Great article, well worth a read.
From the top of Forest Hill in South London you can see the arch of Wembley stadium. That's 15 miles away as the crow flies.
So how far can the eye see? Google says 3 miles and then 12 miles but I can see the moon most nights and that's over 200,000 miles away. So a bit of science for you.
Anyway. When they built Wembley I thought they said the arch would light up every time a goal was scored. Next time a match is on I'll go to the top of this hill and check.
Why would you do this? Why split BREAK and FAST like that? There's plenty of room for the whole word and it's not one of those trend–y gra–phic de–sign things with the hyphens (em dashes), so why bother?
We'll never know and that's beauty of it.
The Hundred is a 'new' form of cricket. Not really, but it's a shorter, repackaged form of cricket designed last two-ish hours and therefore be more suitable for tv and short attention spans than a five day Test match. If you like cricket you will know this, if you don't you won't care.
Anyway.
All the teams are sponsored by salty snacks. The designers have made the logos nice and big on the kits. So it looks like everyone is wearing a crisp packet.
I was looking for a picture to illustrate this for you but of course someone has already done it. Pic from The Times.
The Hula Hoops one and the Tyrells one are particularly good.
They are literally wearing crisp packets. Shame they don't have mascots, they'd be amazing.
The four main chickens. Nothing to do with the exhibition.
Great review of Doug Fishbone's exhibition - Please Gamble Responsibly in Cork. Closes 29 August.
In it he notes "that it would now cost £63 to buy a chicken if groceries had increased at the same rate as homes". That's a great way to illustrate the madness of housing economics.
Simple. Whimsy. Powerpoint. Well worth a read. Would you pay £63 for a chicken? The artist who built a street to show house price madness.
Not the image that comes to mind when you think of the word bedlam.
From the Wikipedia entry about Bethlem Royal Hospital:
"The word "bedlam", meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the hospital's nickname. Although the hospital became a modern psychiatric facility, historically it was representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform."
Related, strange name for a house.
That's a silly idea isn't it? In the old days we used to shut for August. Once upon a time we had guest bloggers in August.
Anyway.
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