This new lens is working out really well, as is the change of film simulation. But nothing beats some fog to smooth out the light and make mundane views look magical.
Friday, 6 December 2024
Mid-Morning November Fog in Richmond Park
This new lens is working out really well, as is the change of film simulation. But nothing beats some fog to smooth out the light and make mundane views look magical.
Tuesday, 3 December 2024
Understanding Kier Starmer
Kier Starmer is not as other politicians. He is a trial lawyer - he was Director of Public Prosecutions for a while, and that's one of the more thankless jobs in the country. Now many other politicians have law degrees, but they are not trial lawyers: they are politicians with law degrees. Kier Starmer is a trial lawyer who somehow found himself in one of the top ten jobs in world politics.
Most professions, and even many vocational degrees, teach a way of thinking, and of approaching and treating the problems of the profession, as well as the specific technical knowledge and skills of the trade. Trial lawyers are trained to focus on the facts of the case: anything else is irrelevant, and will have their learned friend jumping up to object, if not the judge telling them off. Trial lawyers cannot look at "wider contexts" and "wider consequences": these things are for other people to think about. A human rights lawyer makes specious pleas to the Human Rights Act to keep their client in the UK, and if the client goes on to bomb a bus, that is nothing to the defence lawyer. Trial lawyers are not in the truth-and-consequences business, they are in the get-the-result business, or more often the go-through-the-motions-and-get-the-fees business. And their professional ethics condones this - lawyering would not work otherwise.
Politicians don't work like that. They are in the wider-contexts and wider-consequences business: it's their job (or it used to be) to think about how a decision or a policy will be received, how it will interact with other policies, whether the money can be raised or the cost foisted off on local councils or other people. The better ones are in the goals-and-visions business: what do we want the country to look like? how do we want the world to perceive us?
The ability to think about contexts, consequences, policy reception, interactions, let alone to produce a vision of what kind of country Britain could be, and a path towards that... that ability has been trained out of Kier Starmer.
But here's the real downside about trial lawyers: they live and die within the institutions of the law, and with the whims of judges. Judges, legal institutions and processes cannot be questioned, or the very fabric of the Universe will rend. Starmer is emotionally incapable of contradicting a judge's verdict, which leaves this Government wide open to lawfare, and he is incapable of ignoring the judgements of a trans-national legal institution, which means he will follow the ECHR, the ICC, and any other court the UK has signed up to.
Take a look at his career, and it's clear that he was a young man in a hurry who made the right impressions on the right people at the right time. I have no doubt that within his subject he's smart and capable.
But his subject is human rights law. Whereas it needs to be politics and direction.
And he's going to be Prime Minister until 2034.
God help us.
Most professions, and even many vocational degrees, teach a way of thinking, and of approaching and treating the problems of the profession, as well as the specific technical knowledge and skills of the trade. Trial lawyers are trained to focus on the facts of the case: anything else is irrelevant, and will have their learned friend jumping up to object, if not the judge telling them off. Trial lawyers cannot look at "wider contexts" and "wider consequences": these things are for other people to think about. A human rights lawyer makes specious pleas to the Human Rights Act to keep their client in the UK, and if the client goes on to bomb a bus, that is nothing to the defence lawyer. Trial lawyers are not in the truth-and-consequences business, they are in the get-the-result business, or more often the go-through-the-motions-and-get-the-fees business. And their professional ethics condones this - lawyering would not work otherwise.
Politicians don't work like that. They are in the wider-contexts and wider-consequences business: it's their job (or it used to be) to think about how a decision or a policy will be received, how it will interact with other policies, whether the money can be raised or the cost foisted off on local councils or other people. The better ones are in the goals-and-visions business: what do we want the country to look like? how do we want the world to perceive us?
The ability to think about contexts, consequences, policy reception, interactions, let alone to produce a vision of what kind of country Britain could be, and a path towards that... that ability has been trained out of Kier Starmer.
But here's the real downside about trial lawyers: they live and die within the institutions of the law, and with the whims of judges. Judges, legal institutions and processes cannot be questioned, or the very fabric of the Universe will rend. Starmer is emotionally incapable of contradicting a judge's verdict, which leaves this Government wide open to lawfare, and he is incapable of ignoring the judgements of a trans-national legal institution, which means he will follow the ECHR, the ICC, and any other court the UK has signed up to.
Take a look at his career, and it's clear that he was a young man in a hurry who made the right impressions on the right people at the right time. I have no doubt that within his subject he's smart and capable.
But his subject is human rights law. Whereas it needs to be politics and direction.
And he's going to be Prime Minister until 2034.
God help us.
Friday, 29 November 2024
Highgate Road with Lens Flare
When the light is bright and the air is clear, almost anything is photogenic.
Well, maybe not the entrance to Archway station. Some things can't be made to look pretty.
I took this in the approved style, by holding the camera at arm's length with one hand, framing in the viewer. Came out nice.
Tuesday, 26 November 2024
Hampstead Heath North Side
Until the other day I had never walked on the part of Hampstead Heath that is across Spaniards Lane from the main part of the Heath. Neither are really '"heaths", more like "untended forests" with paths that can turn I've-just-got-a-load-of-mud-on-my-shoes within a couple of steps. The sky was brilliant blue, the sun was brilliant yellow, and it was b****y cold.
I have joined the band of proper grown-up camera-owners, by trading in the 35mm lens I originally bought for the hard-to-obtain 27mm pancake lens that makes the X-E4 almost a pocket camera. It's 40mm-equivalent, which gives just a slightly wider field of view than the 35mm (53mm equivalent) but does not go all fish-eye.
Friday, 22 November 2024
Cuba Street, Isle of Dogs
Cuba Street is a narrow road that runs from the old West India Pier into the Isle of Dogs. This is that view.
It did not look like that when I was using the RiverBus to get there more than thirty years ago. It was all pretty derelict. The cream building on the corner was there then, but it was an old-school pub and I think scruffier. Go to the river end of Cuba Street, and look up what is known in the trade as the Limehouse Reach, and that view has not changed for almost forty years. Which is probably why I find it so restful(!).
Tuesday, 19 November 2024
Friday, 15 November 2024
Canary Wharf - Security
I think the area within the North and South Colonnades, which has the the Underground station in the middle, is patrolled by security officers and may well be owned by the Canary Wharf people, and therefore private land. I was approached by a friendly security officer, who explained that their concern was people taking photographs of entrances to buildings, security camera locations and the like. We parted with a handshake and I carried on.
He meant an entrance like this...
Outside that are I didn't see any security at all. I suspect the use of a tripod within that area requires permission from the Estate management.
He meant an entrance like this...
Outside that are I didn't see any security at all. I suspect the use of a tripod within that area requires permission from the Estate management.
Tuesday, 12 November 2024
Canary Wharf Towers
I went to Canary Wharf the other week. The first developer in there was a Canadian firm called Olympia and York. In Canada, it's so darn cold and the snow is so darn deep that the shopping centres of many larger towns are actually built underground. Not all of them, but certainly Toronto, where O&Y came from. The O&Y buildings have their shops below ground, and may other developers have followed this lead of doing nothing at street level.
Another way of saying this is that there is no "street" at street level in Canary Wharf. "Street" should mean shops, cafes, restaurants, cars, taxis, buses, signs, lights, fly-posted adverts, and so on. At ground level. Flats, offices and light industrial ateliers from the first floor up. There are a few coffee and food trucks and some buses, but that's about it.
The City of London is an industrial estate, but it has a variety of architectural styles and various eateries and drinkeries at street level - while Cheapside and Princes Street / Moorgate have actual recognisable retail outlets. But Canary Wharf is just a collection of high towers with some "architectural" gimmicks that only ever looked decorative in the architect's sketches. Metal-and-glass is metal-and-glass no matter how you angle it - it does not have the texture of stone or brick.
Friday, 8 November 2024
The Second Guitar
Telecasters are for professionals. Julian Lage plays one. Everyone in Nashville plays one and has another as a backup. Show up with a Tele and people will assume you can play anything from chicken' picken' to Jimmy Page licks.
This is not me. Also, the neck is half a baseball bat, and I can't get on with it.
Jazzmasters are for indie guitarists, and I'm just a little too old to fall into that demographic. By a few decades. Also, a real Jazzmaster has the rhythm circuit control on the upper section of the body, and quite a few of the Fender models don't now. The Squires do, and the Fender Vintera's. I played a Vintera a few months ago, and it needed to be better finished for the £1,000 price tag. Sounded nice. Then there's all that stuff about how the bridge is not the best design, and the neck needs re-setting to make it better. Maybe not.
But still, and all, never say never. And also, I need a single-coil guitar with Fender wiring. The McCarty is double-humbuckers with Gibson wiring.
I was browsing the Regent Sounds website, which goes under "day-dreaming", and came across something only a guitar nerd could love. A mash-up of a Jazzmaster (body, neck, headstock and neck pickup) with a Telecaster (bridge pickup and ashtray, selector switch and controls).
You know when you see the girl across the room and know you have to talk to her?
That feeling. Well, nearly.
Except about a guitar.
(Musicians are not normal people. Amy Winehouse even wrote a song about a new guitar.)
So the next time I was in town, I wandered down Denmark Street, like I had any right to, and into Regent Sounds. They set me up with a Fender Blues Junior, and I noodled around for a while. Yes, it balanced on my knee. No, it did not weigh 9lbs or so. It sounded good. I knew I was going to buy it.
So I did.
And eventually, UPS delivered it.
It sounds and plays real good.
Here it is...
This is not me. Also, the neck is half a baseball bat, and I can't get on with it.
Jazzmasters are for indie guitarists, and I'm just a little too old to fall into that demographic. By a few decades. Also, a real Jazzmaster has the rhythm circuit control on the upper section of the body, and quite a few of the Fender models don't now. The Squires do, and the Fender Vintera's. I played a Vintera a few months ago, and it needed to be better finished for the £1,000 price tag. Sounded nice. Then there's all that stuff about how the bridge is not the best design, and the neck needs re-setting to make it better. Maybe not.
But still, and all, never say never. And also, I need a single-coil guitar with Fender wiring. The McCarty is double-humbuckers with Gibson wiring.
I was browsing the Regent Sounds website, which goes under "day-dreaming", and came across something only a guitar nerd could love. A mash-up of a Jazzmaster (body, neck, headstock and neck pickup) with a Telecaster (bridge pickup and ashtray, selector switch and controls).
You know when you see the girl across the room and know you have to talk to her?
That feeling. Well, nearly.
Except about a guitar.
(Musicians are not normal people. Amy Winehouse even wrote a song about a new guitar.)
So the next time I was in town, I wandered down Denmark Street, like I had any right to, and into Regent Sounds. They set me up with a Fender Blues Junior, and I noodled around for a while. Yes, it balanced on my knee. No, it did not weigh 9lbs or so. It sounded good. I knew I was going to buy it.
So I did.
And eventually, UPS delivered it.
It sounds and plays real good.
Here it is...
Tuesday, 5 November 2024
Worst Photo Ever
It's a big claim, but I think this one is a pretty good contender.
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It's not from the phone, but it is as close as I can get with Photos to that eerie iPhone sky and foreground clarity. Shadows is maxed out and Brilliance tweaked down a touch. It's a much better-looking shot, and probably bears a strong resemblance to what I actually saw, which was something like this...
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The sky is slightly fuzzy, but that is what midday glare does to our eyes. The shadows under the bush are more realistic, but overdone in the trees in the background.
I would never have taken that photo with the OM10 and Kodak ISO 200, or if I had, I would have focused on the bush and water, and tried to keep the sky out of the frame. Keeping the dynamic range low was something else we did by instinct back in the day even though we didn't know it was called that.
But with a super-clever digital camera, for some reason, I expect to be able to point the lens at whatever mess is in front of it and have the camera sort it out. Wrong. The old rules still apply. When shooting JPEG. (1)
And if I do follow the old-school rules, any big-brand camera will produce a really nice JPEG.
My candidate for Worst Photo Ever is not such a one. Not only is it technically poor, and shot with no care at all, it's not very interesting to look at. Green, right?
There's a reason why hip street photographers don't take photographs of what's left of Epping Forest - in this case a little corner of Highams Park Lake. Trees have lots of shadows created by the leaves. All those leaves are the same colour, but some reflect the light and others bounce it around, depending on where the sun is. Trees do not have neat geometrical shapes, and make a poor background for someone in a red coat striding purposefully from the shadows on the left to the light on the right. As opposed to a staircase in the Barbican, say. Or a street scene with a nice even light and some not-too-deep shadows.
Anyway, the weather looks highly un-photogenic for the next few weeks, so I won't be taking the X-E4 anywhere soon. And I will not be taking another photograph of anything green or plant-like when I do.
(1) Why? Digital cameras can create RAW files and JPEGs. RAW files are a copy of the data from the sensor, and need to be processed to be at all pleasing, so processing the messy bits out is all one with processing the nice bits in. RAW requires a monthly subscription to Lightroom or Capture One, and either putting in a heap of time developing one's own presets to turn the dull RAW file into something worth looking at, or putting in a heap of time experimenting with other people's presets.
It's boring to look at - oh look! a bush! and water! - it's has far too much shadow and is black in places it should not be dark in. The sky isn't quite blown out, but neither is quite convincing. How much did the X-E4 and lens cost? Getting value for money then.
I should have taken the shot with my iPhone, which would have given me this.
I should have taken the shot with my iPhone, which would have given me this.
It's not from the phone, but it is as close as I can get with Photos to that eerie iPhone sky and foreground clarity. Shadows is maxed out and Brilliance tweaked down a touch. It's a much better-looking shot, and probably bears a strong resemblance to what I actually saw, which was something like this...
.jpeg)
I would never have taken that photo with the OM10 and Kodak ISO 200, or if I had, I would have focused on the bush and water, and tried to keep the sky out of the frame. Keeping the dynamic range low was something else we did by instinct back in the day even though we didn't know it was called that.
But with a super-clever digital camera, for some reason, I expect to be able to point the lens at whatever mess is in front of it and have the camera sort it out. Wrong. The old rules still apply. When shooting JPEG. (1)
And if I do follow the old-school rules, any big-brand camera will produce a really nice JPEG.
My candidate for Worst Photo Ever is not such a one. Not only is it technically poor, and shot with no care at all, it's not very interesting to look at. Green, right?
There's a reason why hip street photographers don't take photographs of what's left of Epping Forest - in this case a little corner of Highams Park Lake. Trees have lots of shadows created by the leaves. All those leaves are the same colour, but some reflect the light and others bounce it around, depending on where the sun is. Trees do not have neat geometrical shapes, and make a poor background for someone in a red coat striding purposefully from the shadows on the left to the light on the right. As opposed to a staircase in the Barbican, say. Or a street scene with a nice even light and some not-too-deep shadows.
Anyway, the weather looks highly un-photogenic for the next few weeks, so I won't be taking the X-E4 anywhere soon. And I will not be taking another photograph of anything green or plant-like when I do.
(1) Why? Digital cameras can create RAW files and JPEGs. RAW files are a copy of the data from the sensor, and need to be processed to be at all pleasing, so processing the messy bits out is all one with processing the nice bits in. RAW requires a monthly subscription to Lightroom or Capture One, and either putting in a heap of time developing one's own presets to turn the dull RAW file into something worth looking at, or putting in a heap of time experimenting with other people's presets.
JPEGs are the camera's attempt at doing all that processing for the user, using the photo-relevant camera settings and algorithms the camera engineers have devised. Here's the thing: Apple has way more engineers working on that sensor data-to-JPEG / HEIC conversion than Fuji, Sony, Panasonic, or any other mere camera maker will ever be able to afford, and the iPhone has a chip way more capable than a camera chip will ever be, so the resulting computational photography will produce far superior conversions of RAW-to-JPEG / HEIC than the camera makers ever will. (Given a reasonable amount of taste on behalf of the engineers and product manager.) The camera companies are still comparing their gear to top-end film cameras, and may be missing the part where we-the-customer will be comparing it with what the top-end phones do.
Friday, 1 November 2024
The Looming Walkie-Talkie, Fenchurch Street
It looks like some weird Photoshopping, but it is what the camera sees. It looks just like that.
Tuesday, 29 October 2024
Friday, 25 October 2024
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
The One With Reflections In The Window
Friday, 18 October 2024
How To Get A Katana To Sound Almost Like A Valve Amp
(Ingredients: a BOSS Katana, a 10-band EQ pedal or 10-band EQ effect in a digital effects board (DEB), guitar of your choice. Has been tested with humbuckers, not yet with single-coils.)
Valve amps have that sound. It pops and snaps, it's clean and clear and as crisp as fresh winter frost.
Which is no-one's description of the sound of a BOSS Katana.
Well, I'm here to tell you how to make a Katana sound like a valve amp. Nearly.
Valve amps have that sound. It pops and snaps, it's clean and clear and as crisp as fresh winter frost.
Which is no-one's description of the sound of a BOSS Katana.
Well, I'm here to tell you how to make a Katana sound like a valve amp. Nearly.
On the 10-band EQ control, add at least 10dB to the 2kHz, 4KHz and 8kHz bands. (Unless you are a bat or a teenager, you will not hear the 16kHz stuff, but change that if you want). I find the 2kHz and 4kHz bands are better at +12.5dB, but your ears may vary.
The EQ control should be the last one in the chain (except for a compressor).
Connect the output from the EQ pedal or DEB into the POWER AMP IN socket on the back of the Katana. This by-passes all the pre-amp and effects and sends the signal straight to the power-amp. The only controls that affect the sound are the power selector and the MASTER volume control. Put the power selector to 25W and the MASTER volume at 12:00. Alter to taste later - according to how much oomph your pickups provide.
Turn the guitar volume and tone pots to 7 or so. (I turn the volume up on the McCarty SE, because the lower the volume pots are set, the less audible the effect of coil-splitting, tone-adjustment, and distortion effects from the HX Effects.)
Strike a note.
It should be whoa, that was sudden, or something similar. It should also sound a whole lot more like a valve amp.
Connect the output from the EQ pedal or DEB into the POWER AMP IN socket on the back of the Katana. This by-passes all the pre-amp and effects and sends the signal straight to the power-amp. The only controls that affect the sound are the power selector and the MASTER volume control. Put the power selector to 25W and the MASTER volume at 12:00. Alter to taste later - according to how much oomph your pickups provide.
Turn the guitar volume and tone pots to 7 or so. (I turn the volume up on the McCarty SE, because the lower the volume pots are set, the less audible the effect of coil-splitting, tone-adjustment, and distortion effects from the HX Effects.)
Strike a note.
It should be whoa, that was sudden, or something similar. It should also sound a whole lot more like a valve amp.
Tweak the volume on the amp to make it more neighbour-friendly (but not so much the sound hides away in the speakers. I find that happens before 10:00 on the dial.)
What's going on?
The frequency response curve of a 12-inch Celestion Gold (available on the Celestion website), the kind of speaker used in valve amps, is
Guitars produce a trail of harmonics, many less than 10 dB down from the base frequency. Reproducing the sound of a guitar properly means making sure those harmonics are amplified equally. Up to 5kHz, the Celestion Gold is giving good treatment to the first, second and third harmonics of all the notes on the guitar, and to at least the fourth harmonics of notes below middle-C (concert pitch - 2nd string 1st fret) - except for the harmonics between and 1kHz - 1.8kHz, where it's a bit soft.
The Katana speaker is not a Celestion. BOSS say it was designed to match the amplifier. My guess is that the Katana speaker remains flat up to 2kHz and then drops about 10dB - 15dB to 5kHz, when it too drops off a cliff, as all guitar speakers will. (Google can't find anything under various variations on "Katana speaker response curve", so BOSS will have to live with my speculations.)
To correct for that slump between 2kHz and 5kHz, we need to boost the frequencies in that range, which is what my suggestion does.
Give it a whirl.
What's going on?
The frequency response curve of a 12-inch Celestion Gold (available on the Celestion website), the kind of speaker used in valve amps, is
(All their speakers have a broadly similar curve. Actually, so do all guitar speakers.)
It comes on song around G on the low E-string, is reasonably consistent all the up to the 18th fret of the high E-string, and then has strong(er) area between 2kHz and 5kHz, after which the response drops off a cliff.
Guitars produce a trail of harmonics, many less than 10 dB down from the base frequency. Reproducing the sound of a guitar properly means making sure those harmonics are amplified equally. Up to 5kHz, the Celestion Gold is giving good treatment to the first, second and third harmonics of all the notes on the guitar, and to at least the fourth harmonics of notes below middle-C (concert pitch - 2nd string 1st fret) - except for the harmonics between and 1kHz - 1.8kHz, where it's a bit soft.
The Katana speaker is not a Celestion. BOSS say it was designed to match the amplifier. My guess is that the Katana speaker remains flat up to 2kHz and then drops about 10dB - 15dB to 5kHz, when it too drops off a cliff, as all guitar speakers will. (Google can't find anything under various variations on "Katana speaker response curve", so BOSS will have to live with my speculations.)
To correct for that slump between 2kHz and 5kHz, we need to boost the frequencies in that range, which is what my suggestion does.
Give it a whirl.
(Edited 6/11/2024)
Tuesday, 15 October 2024
Friday, 11 October 2024
£10 for Lavazza Rossa? What The Actual Fuh?
Has there been a coffee drought?
Google says so. Brazil was hit by a drought this summer and production was down. Since coffee is the second-most important substance in the world (after lithium for all those iPhone batteries) for the media classes, you'd think this would have been on the front pages of every UK newspaper. Woe is us, for our Starbucks will cost far, far more. But no, because the UK media are obsessed with Westminster gossip.
Never mind. The rumour is that the olive harvest was good this year, so we may not be paying £12+ for ordinary virgin oil, like we are at the moment.
None of this would have happened if we were still in the EU. We would have had a sunny summer as well. In fact, it would have been like this...
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(Richard Burton was the original and greatest. I saw him in it when I was a nipper, and it deserved every day of its long run.)
Tuesday, 8 October 2024
What I Missed In The Lockdowns
Regular readers will have long ago realised that I am not the life and soul of the party. I don’t have people knocking on the door because they “were in the neighbourhood”. I don’t spend a lot of time on my mobile in conversations about whatever it is that those people who do spend lots of time on their mobiles have conversations about.
My needs for contact with the outside world are fairly modest. I like to sit in cafes for a while, watch people go by and hear the background chatter, or walk along a shopping street and see people going about their daily lives, or wander round a bookshop or a record shop, or go to the movies, or maybe some dance, and have something to eat in a restaurant now and again, where the presence of other people is part of the experience.
None of that is too much to ask. It has been provided by cities since the first one was founded only historians know when. Yet it vanished like sunshine on a cloudy day in March 2020, and did not really return until 2023. (Sure there were people moving around in 2022, but only in the second half, and the mood was still a bit odd.)
When discussing the Lockdowns, I have tended to focus on the feeling of threat, not from a bad flu virus, but from the Government, the so-called “experts” advising it, and the local council officials implementing and even interpreting many of the ever-changing regulations: they were unaccountable and unregulated, and the “experts” were often acting from ideological motives that don’t bear examination. That would scare anyone.
Recently, I’ve come to appreciate that what I really missed was the very little I asked of and for my social life. Partly because, well, who could really miss so little? Does it even qualify as a “social life”?
Well, it doesn’t matter whether someone else doesn’t call it a social life.
What matters is that I missed it and it affected the way I felt. It wasn’t much of a mooring cable to the rest of the world, but it was enough, and when it was cut, I drifted.
What about the work? I was working from home, dealing e-mails, taking part in conference calls (and Teams when they finally shipped us decent laptops in autumn 2020), and so on. Wasn’t that a mooring cable?
Well, clearly not. Work is not the same as life - which is why we contrast it in the phrase “work-life balance”. “Relationships” at work rarely translate into acquaintanceships in real life. A busy work life does not fill the gap of an empty personal life.
People with domestic relationships may not have felt the lack of being able to wander through the daily tide of people. Perhaps they even found it a relief.
I didn’t.
My needs for contact with the outside world are fairly modest. I like to sit in cafes for a while, watch people go by and hear the background chatter, or walk along a shopping street and see people going about their daily lives, or wander round a bookshop or a record shop, or go to the movies, or maybe some dance, and have something to eat in a restaurant now and again, where the presence of other people is part of the experience.
None of that is too much to ask. It has been provided by cities since the first one was founded only historians know when. Yet it vanished like sunshine on a cloudy day in March 2020, and did not really return until 2023. (Sure there were people moving around in 2022, but only in the second half, and the mood was still a bit odd.)
(Going home from the dentist: Piccadilly Circus 13/1/2021 18:50)
When discussing the Lockdowns, I have tended to focus on the feeling of threat, not from a bad flu virus, but from the Government, the so-called “experts” advising it, and the local council officials implementing and even interpreting many of the ever-changing regulations: they were unaccountable and unregulated, and the “experts” were often acting from ideological motives that don’t bear examination. That would scare anyone.
Recently, I’ve come to appreciate that what I really missed was the very little I asked of and for my social life. Partly because, well, who could really miss so little? Does it even qualify as a “social life”?
Well, it doesn’t matter whether someone else doesn’t call it a social life.
What matters is that I missed it and it affected the way I felt. It wasn’t much of a mooring cable to the rest of the world, but it was enough, and when it was cut, I drifted.
What about the work? I was working from home, dealing e-mails, taking part in conference calls (and Teams when they finally shipped us decent laptops in autumn 2020), and so on. Wasn’t that a mooring cable?
Well, clearly not. Work is not the same as life - which is why we contrast it in the phrase “work-life balance”. “Relationships” at work rarely translate into acquaintanceships in real life. A busy work life does not fill the gap of an empty personal life.
People with domestic relationships may not have felt the lack of being able to wander through the daily tide of people. Perhaps they even found it a relief.
I didn’t.
Friday, 4 October 2024
Aspects of Immigration: Canada
I am going to let this one speak for itself.
Of course, nothing like this happens in the UK. There are no universities which depend for their continued liquidity on the colossal fees from foreign students, and there's no suggestion that those students are awarded degrees about one grade up from what they deserve, because the examiners are aware of the realities of academic economics.
Oh.
Wait.
There are.
In fact, find one that doesn't.
Tuesday, 1 October 2024
The Coming Starmer / Labour Decade
Everyone who didn't vote for him, and a few who did, are now piling in on Sir Kier Starmer. At any moment, they hope, another revelation about who paid for his underwear will remove him from office. Just like the Left did when Thatcher got in.
Nope.
Ain't gonna happen. (Also just what happened when Thatcher got in.)
He's here for the next ten years, because the Conservatives will not be electable in 2029, and will not be able to assemble a coalition government.
(Also just like the 1980's, but in reverse.)
Good times (1990-2008) elect weak leaders; weak leaders make bad times (2008 - 2034); bad times elect strong leaders; strong leaders make good times.
We are now at Peak Weak. First Boris Johnson - who himself admitted that it was ridiculous he was Prime Minister - and now Sir Kier Starmer and his cabinet. Rishi Sunak wasn't as bad as either of those, but he wasn't going to bring good times either.
So get ready for ten years of posturing, distracting, and oblivious legislation and social policy.
Labour has two jobs.
The first is to reduce the cost of the NHS to the taxpayer by at least a half, while improving Maternity, Neo-natal and A&E services.
The second is to stop and reverse illegal immigration.
I hope they do one or both.
Because I don't want to see the state of this country if they can't do either.
You won't either.
And you need to pray that competent people choose to go into politics in the next ten years, or you will just have more weak leaders.
Nope.
Ain't gonna happen. (Also just what happened when Thatcher got in.)
He's here for the next ten years, because the Conservatives will not be electable in 2029, and will not be able to assemble a coalition government.
(Also just like the 1980's, but in reverse.)
Good times (1990-2008) elect weak leaders; weak leaders make bad times (2008 - 2034); bad times elect strong leaders; strong leaders make good times.
We are now at Peak Weak. First Boris Johnson - who himself admitted that it was ridiculous he was Prime Minister - and now Sir Kier Starmer and his cabinet. Rishi Sunak wasn't as bad as either of those, but he wasn't going to bring good times either.
So get ready for ten years of posturing, distracting, and oblivious legislation and social policy.
Labour has two jobs.
The first is to reduce the cost of the NHS to the taxpayer by at least a half, while improving Maternity, Neo-natal and A&E services.
The second is to stop and reverse illegal immigration.
I hope they do one or both.
Because I don't want to see the state of this country if they can't do either.
You won't either.
And you need to pray that competent people choose to go into politics in the next ten years, or you will just have more weak leaders.
Friday, 27 September 2024
Catch-Up
At the end of August, I got a cold, followed by a cough that wracked my torso for a couple of days, and by about two weeks later, I felt physically better, but lacking a certain amount of zip and zest. Even in this fourth week, I'm still lacking get-up-and-go.
It got so bad that I drafted a farewell post - I mean, after not posting anything for four weeks, a blog is defunct, right? And it would be if I was doing this for money or reputation. But I'm not. I thought about the reasons for stopping (running out of ideas, feeling tired, run it's course) and for carrying on (gives me a reason to figure stuff out, to vent about the stupidity du jour). The best reason for keeping a personal blog is that it's a journal that's edited for public consumption. A journal isn't one's Morning Pages. Those fulfil a very different purpose.
So I am going to carry on. The posts from the 9th to the 23rd are part gratuitous filler, and a couple that I drafted during those weeks but couldn't commit to publishing.
However, this is one of those colds that puts an upper limit on my ability to plan ahead or produce long chains of consecutive thought. So there may be stutters.
In the meantime, here's a new track from Alix Perez, who practices the lighter side of drum and bass.
It got so bad that I drafted a farewell post - I mean, after not posting anything for four weeks, a blog is defunct, right? And it would be if I was doing this for money or reputation. But I'm not. I thought about the reasons for stopping (running out of ideas, feeling tired, run it's course) and for carrying on (gives me a reason to figure stuff out, to vent about the stupidity du jour). The best reason for keeping a personal blog is that it's a journal that's edited for public consumption. A journal isn't one's Morning Pages. Those fulfil a very different purpose.
So I am going to carry on. The posts from the 9th to the 23rd are part gratuitous filler, and a couple that I drafted during those weeks but couldn't commit to publishing.
However, this is one of those colds that puts an upper limit on my ability to plan ahead or produce long chains of consecutive thought. So there may be stutters.
In the meantime, here's a new track from Alix Perez, who practices the lighter side of drum and bass.
Tuesday, 24 September 2024
Making Normal
Most of the practical suggestions that psycho-hyphenates make are for people who are a) usually okay, but having a bad time, or, b) can remember a time when they were okay, but then something happened to mess that up.
Then there are people who, c) cannot remember being “okay”, and in fact wonder what the hell you’re all talking about.
Which is me. A long time ago, when I was in early recovery, my GP referred me to some NHS therapy sessions (those were the days): the therapist who triaged me asked if I could remember a time when I felt happy or “all right”, I said I couldn’t, and an expression flickered across her face. I didn’t understand what and why at the time, but it didn’t look like an “oh goody” expression.
C-type people, who can’t remember ever feeling “okay”, have to do something Dr Scott Eilers calls “making normal”. They need to define for themselves what “being okay” means, arrange their lives to fit that definition, monitor themselves for how well they are living up to it, praise themselves for doing well, and be gentle with themselves when they slip and need to get back on track.
Regular people, by contrast, just live. They don’t need to put any effort into maintaining their idea of how they should be living, of what’s “normal”. They don’t have any sense that how they live is a choice, whereas for C-types, everything they do is a choice, and nothing is natural. It’s all conscious. A construction. It has to be kept up by habit and effort. “Making normal” imposes a lot of overhead load.
How do you spot us? We're the ones who make lists of how we should live, even if it’s reduced to a slogan like Work hard, exercise, eat right, don’t drink too much, stay away from drugs, avoid losers users and abusers, and don’t buy things you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like.
Then there are people who, c) cannot remember being “okay”, and in fact wonder what the hell you’re all talking about.
Which is me. A long time ago, when I was in early recovery, my GP referred me to some NHS therapy sessions (those were the days): the therapist who triaged me asked if I could remember a time when I felt happy or “all right”, I said I couldn’t, and an expression flickered across her face. I didn’t understand what and why at the time, but it didn’t look like an “oh goody” expression.
C-type people, who can’t remember ever feeling “okay”, have to do something Dr Scott Eilers calls “making normal”. They need to define for themselves what “being okay” means, arrange their lives to fit that definition, monitor themselves for how well they are living up to it, praise themselves for doing well, and be gentle with themselves when they slip and need to get back on track.
Regular people, by contrast, just live. They don’t need to put any effort into maintaining their idea of how they should be living, of what’s “normal”. They don’t have any sense that how they live is a choice, whereas for C-types, everything they do is a choice, and nothing is natural. It’s all conscious. A construction. It has to be kept up by habit and effort. “Making normal” imposes a lot of overhead load.
How do you spot us? We're the ones who make lists of how we should live, even if it’s reduced to a slogan like Work hard, exercise, eat right, don’t drink too much, stay away from drugs, avoid losers users and abusers, and don’t buy things you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like.
Friday, 20 September 2024
10 Photography Thoughts
It's well past time Councils all over the country had to prune back the trees and cut back the undergrowth - un-tended growth is ruining the photgenicity.
Take the shot at right angles or straight on. Taking the shot at an angle, especially upwards, introduces awkward perspectives, unless that's the effect you want
Don't try to frame it in the camera. Take a wider shot and crop. With all those megapixels, there will be plenty left to give a decent image.
Make a silk purse out of a sow's ear with brutal cropping.
Sometimes a place has (say) seventeen good photographs in it, and when you've go them, you're done with it.
There's something wrong with my eyesight, because every shot I take is off-vertical. Every. Single. One.
You can never have enough sky, but you can have too much foreground - late nineteenth-century wide-angle plate shots of empty Parisian streets and squares aside.
I am never talking a photograph of plants or flowers again. Ever.
Sometimes you can't get what you want in the shot - just try taking a good photograph of the Reaper drone at the RAF Museum, Hendon. With an X-E4 and a 35mm lens. I tried - wouldn't work.
Photos has a Hide Photograph option - use it if you can't bring yourself to delete something truly average.
Take the shot at right angles or straight on. Taking the shot at an angle, especially upwards, introduces awkward perspectives, unless that's the effect you want
Don't try to frame it in the camera. Take a wider shot and crop. With all those megapixels, there will be plenty left to give a decent image.
Make a silk purse out of a sow's ear with brutal cropping.
Sometimes a place has (say) seventeen good photographs in it, and when you've go them, you're done with it.
There's something wrong with my eyesight, because every shot I take is off-vertical. Every. Single. One.
You can never have enough sky, but you can have too much foreground - late nineteenth-century wide-angle plate shots of empty Parisian streets and squares aside.
I am never talking a photograph of plants or flowers again. Ever.
Sometimes you can't get what you want in the shot - just try taking a good photograph of the Reaper drone at the RAF Museum, Hendon. With an X-E4 and a 35mm lens. I tried - wouldn't work.
Photos has a Hide Photograph option - use it if you can't bring yourself to delete something truly average.
BONUS: You can never have too much bright sunny blue.
Tuesday, 17 September 2024
Feeling Jaded About Taking Photographs
When I get ambushed by a really nasty cold and cough - the kind that means I need to sleep in a chair and gives me aching ribs from the coughing, so I can't mope on the couch because if I do, it will set off a coughing fit and have me hacking up.... okay, you don't need any more details - when I get one of those, the best thing to do is start a project that requires minimal physical effort, and not much intellectual effort either, along with a fair degree of repetition.
Like going through my photograph collection, marking up the bangers, deleting the duplicates and the boring stuff that makes you think "WTF did I take that?", exporting the "meh" stuff, just in case you want to re-habilitate something. Also filling in the locations, since the X-E4 doesn't do that.
This exercise made me realise how few days I took photographs, and how limited my range of subjects was / is.
The last time I did any travelling off my beaten track was three weekends in 2013, and three trips in 2011. 2011 convinced me that travelling / holidays are best done with others - unless it's an annual week out from the domestic relationship - and the 2013 trips were done with a little group from my gym. (Ah, those were the days.) Once I'd reached that point, holidays were just expensive ways of entertaining myself for sixteen hours a day without any of the resources I had at home.
There are only so many shots I can take of the Barbican, the Thames, the West End, the City, the London Parks, and my "local area", before it gets repetitive. Same goes for pictures of autumn leaves lying around a tree, the Waterloo Bridge commuter peleton at 08:30, reflections of anything in any window, food, cups of coffee, cranes, building sites, long queues of red buses, little architectural features on the sides of buildings, people caught in the rain, crowds in markets, and so on and so forth. I started to get a distinct sense of the Been There - Done That's.
And I'm just going to say this. Anyone who says there's always something to photograph no matter where you are, has never lived in the suburbs, and never seen a potentially striking view obscured by trees that should have been hard-pruned four years ago. Large parts of modern towns and green spaces are simply un-inspiring and same-y. The UK can often be dull, dull, dull.
I admit, I'm getting old and more than a little jaded ("bored or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of something") and I know that a man who is tired of London is tired of life, but I suspect daily life was a lot more exciting in Dr Johnson's day.
On the other hand, out of 5,400 photographs, I have 390 Favourites, which is 7%, and that's not bad.
Like going through my photograph collection, marking up the bangers, deleting the duplicates and the boring stuff that makes you think "WTF did I take that?", exporting the "meh" stuff, just in case you want to re-habilitate something. Also filling in the locations, since the X-E4 doesn't do that.
This exercise made me realise how few days I took photographs, and how limited my range of subjects was / is.
The last time I did any travelling off my beaten track was three weekends in 2013, and three trips in 2011. 2011 convinced me that travelling / holidays are best done with others - unless it's an annual week out from the domestic relationship - and the 2013 trips were done with a little group from my gym. (Ah, those were the days.) Once I'd reached that point, holidays were just expensive ways of entertaining myself for sixteen hours a day without any of the resources I had at home.
There are only so many shots I can take of the Barbican, the Thames, the West End, the City, the London Parks, and my "local area", before it gets repetitive. Same goes for pictures of autumn leaves lying around a tree, the Waterloo Bridge commuter peleton at 08:30, reflections of anything in any window, food, cups of coffee, cranes, building sites, long queues of red buses, little architectural features on the sides of buildings, people caught in the rain, crowds in markets, and so on and so forth. I started to get a distinct sense of the Been There - Done That's.
And I'm just going to say this. Anyone who says there's always something to photograph no matter where you are, has never lived in the suburbs, and never seen a potentially striking view obscured by trees that should have been hard-pruned four years ago. Large parts of modern towns and green spaces are simply un-inspiring and same-y. The UK can often be dull, dull, dull.
I admit, I'm getting old and more than a little jaded ("bored or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of something") and I know that a man who is tired of London is tired of life, but I suspect daily life was a lot more exciting in Dr Johnson's day.
On the other hand, out of 5,400 photographs, I have 390 Favourites, which is 7%, and that's not bad.
Friday, 13 September 2024
Still Life with Judie Tzuke
A long while ago, I was experimenting with using the Zuiko lenses from my old OM10 on the X-E4, and this happened. I have since re-arranged the room and it isn't there anymore.
Monday, 9 September 2024
Portland Hardware
Yet another one of my dead-pan photographs. What's notable about this is the amount of detail inside the store by tweaking various shadow / brightness / contrast variables. The original does not look that clear.
Friday, 6 September 2024
The Entrance To The Park Is Hidden Here
Tuesday, 3 September 2024
The Many-Coloured Railings Picture
I got through the I-have-to-sit-in-the-chair-to-sleep bit after a couple of nights, but since have just not been feeling like rushing out of the front door. "Weak as a kitten" about does it.Friday, 30 August 2024
The Steps With A Turn Picture (Maryon Park)
Time to play catch-up again. I came down with a god-awful cold at the end of August, and have been recovering ever since.
Tuesday, 27 August 2024
A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-1960
A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-1960 by Nikhil Krishnan is a history of a way of doing philosophy that was admired by some, reviled by others, and unnoticed by 99.9% of the population.(1) If you know who J L Austin, Gilbert Ryle and Philippa Foot are, you will probably find this a page-turner. If you don’t, and you embark on it, you may wonder who are these people, and how did they get there?
The academic world, especially at Oxford, was very different in the first half of the twentieth century. An undergraduate who passed the legendary Greats examination in Greek and Roman history, philosophy and literature with a first-class honours, who also made a good impression on their tutors, and was prepared to live the life academic, could more or less walk into a job at a university somewhere, the very best getting a Fellowship in one of the Oxford colleges. Tenure at twenty-three, no PhD’s, no post-doc hell, no publication record, no pressure to publish anything, and no enormous student debt. Different days.
The people in this story were very clever boys and girls who could (usually) learn foreign languages quickly, construct arguments in the approved style, and were good “exam-passers”. They had no maths and less science, but many were more familiar with exotic European philosophers than their writing would suggest. Many of the earlier generation served in one back-room way or another in various parts of the Armed Forces during WW2 - J L Austin was in charge of intelligence about the German Army for D-Day - but afterwards made very little of it, partly because they were sworn to secrecy. (I have long suspected that some philosophers got their jobs as a reward for their war work - especially those at Bletchley.)
“Oxford Philosophy” was not influential because it was important philosophy, it was influential because it was philosophy from Oxford. It is almost impossible to appreciate how insular mainstream culture was in the UK in much of the twentieth century. It was dominated by a handful of institutions: Oxbridge and their university presses, the BBC, a handful of publishing houses, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, the Royal Ballet and Opera, the RSC, and a few more. What mattered was whether one held a position within these institutions, or were backed by those who did. Back then, the appointments were made on the basis of how a bunch of chaps felt about the candidates. The outside world would see that Oxford had appointed the man, and assume he was something special, because they believed Oxford was something special. Though he might have little originality or ability, on appointment to some venerable Chair, he would find his reputation back-filled and bolstered to match the status of the position.
The “Oxford Philosophers” were not mainstream cultural figures - except A J Ayer whose Language, Truth and Logic is still in print and selling, and Iris Murdoch, who became a well-known novelist. Otherwise a well-educated electrical engineer would have had no idea who Gilbert Ryle, J L Austin, Peter Strawson, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe and others were, let alone have read the few things they published in their lifetimes.
So what was the fuss about? Ostensibly, it was the proper techniques for “doing philosophy”. The Oxford Philosophers claimed that many of the questions and confusions in philosophy could be “cleared up” by paying careful attention to the concepts involved. The same view was pushed by Wittgenstein at Cambridge, and by the Vienna Circle and its associates. It wasn’t the thesis that was objectionable: it was the method. This made two claims. The first was that careful attention to our everyday language would show that the philosophical problem was really a kind of confusion or mis-understanding.
On this, nobody will deny it is always useful to start any discussion of a concept by checking the dictionary and Wikipedia, to make sure that other people will be thinking about the same thing we are when the hear the words we use. From there, it helps to have a few paradigmatic examples of the concept at work, with some compare-and-contrast to locate it in the conceptual landscape. If there is a group of people making money in some way from the concept, we need to understand who they are and what they are being paid to provide. If there is legislation that uses the concept, we need a glance at that. If it has a history, it might help to read that. If the concept has a technical use in a science, we need to decide how to treat that. If it is being wielded by activists, we need to be aware of that, if only to avoid being distracted by their controversies. Is the concept unique to our native language, or does it have equivalents in other languages, and if it doesn’t, how do they manage without it?
But this is not what the Oxford philosophers meant. Their second claim was that ordinary language, as spoken by the kind of people who get a First in Greats, contains all the concepts and distinctions we need to clear up the confusion. There was no need for appeal to scientific theories, because there were no empirical claims involved in defining the distinctions and concepts. And there was no need for philosophical theories, because, well, all we need are ordinary-language ideas, which are held to be a-theoretical. (Nobody said that last bit out loud, even though the idea that language provides and constrains our conceptual resources, and hence, amongst other things, our ability to make distinctions and analyses, had been around for at least eighty years.)
This, combined with what many felt was a smug and parochial tone, was the reason many other philosophers felt Oxford Philosophy trivialised philosophy. It wasn’t that the Oxford people were wrong, it was that they were shallow. Iris Murdoch said in a review of Ryle’s The Concept of Mind
It was not and still is not my preferred way of doing philosophy. Detailed, tortuous arguments picking apart (as it might be) Jones’ view of Smith’s account of excuses and reasons, leave me feeling uninformed and slightly dizzy. I don’t care that Jones’ views are full of holes, and Smith’s aren’t much better. I want an account of excuses and reasons that learns from the mistakes of those who came earlier, and doesn’t show off its erudition by burdening me with a list of those mistakes and why each is wrong. Unfortunately, it was the preferred way of doing philosophy at the university where I was an undergraduate: I barely survived long enough to make it to the LSE.
The results of an ordinary-language analysis, of some concept being grossly abused by a (as it might be) psychologist in their pop-science book, can be useful for dispelling the confusion and wrong conclusions created by the abuse. But the results must be used in passing, as simple facts, and their source never mentioned, for fear of boring or puzzling the reader. Ordinary language analysis is one of many items in the philosopher’s tool-belt, to be used when appropriate. One should never display one’s philosophical tricks and techniques. Nobody is interested. They want to know about the subject.
In the end, that might have been the reason Oxford Philosophy attracted so much hostility. It was too much about itself, as the work of very clever people can be, its topics chosen not because they were interesting to us, but because they showed off the method and the cleverness.
(1) The population of the UK was about 55m at the time. 0.1% of that would 55,000 people, and that’s an overestimate. Don’t forget there were only around 30 universities in the UK back then. At 40 people per year doing philosophy (about the size of my undergrad class) over 30 years, that’s 36,000 students, plus (say) 500 lecturers and professors.
The academic world, especially at Oxford, was very different in the first half of the twentieth century. An undergraduate who passed the legendary Greats examination in Greek and Roman history, philosophy and literature with a first-class honours, who also made a good impression on their tutors, and was prepared to live the life academic, could more or less walk into a job at a university somewhere, the very best getting a Fellowship in one of the Oxford colleges. Tenure at twenty-three, no PhD’s, no post-doc hell, no publication record, no pressure to publish anything, and no enormous student debt. Different days.
The people in this story were very clever boys and girls who could (usually) learn foreign languages quickly, construct arguments in the approved style, and were good “exam-passers”. They had no maths and less science, but many were more familiar with exotic European philosophers than their writing would suggest. Many of the earlier generation served in one back-room way or another in various parts of the Armed Forces during WW2 - J L Austin was in charge of intelligence about the German Army for D-Day - but afterwards made very little of it, partly because they were sworn to secrecy. (I have long suspected that some philosophers got their jobs as a reward for their war work - especially those at Bletchley.)
“Oxford Philosophy” was not influential because it was important philosophy, it was influential because it was philosophy from Oxford. It is almost impossible to appreciate how insular mainstream culture was in the UK in much of the twentieth century. It was dominated by a handful of institutions: Oxbridge and their university presses, the BBC, a handful of publishing houses, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, the Royal Ballet and Opera, the RSC, and a few more. What mattered was whether one held a position within these institutions, or were backed by those who did. Back then, the appointments were made on the basis of how a bunch of chaps felt about the candidates. The outside world would see that Oxford had appointed the man, and assume he was something special, because they believed Oxford was something special. Though he might have little originality or ability, on appointment to some venerable Chair, he would find his reputation back-filled and bolstered to match the status of the position.
The “Oxford Philosophers” were not mainstream cultural figures - except A J Ayer whose Language, Truth and Logic is still in print and selling, and Iris Murdoch, who became a well-known novelist. Otherwise a well-educated electrical engineer would have had no idea who Gilbert Ryle, J L Austin, Peter Strawson, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe and others were, let alone have read the few things they published in their lifetimes.
So what was the fuss about? Ostensibly, it was the proper techniques for “doing philosophy”. The Oxford Philosophers claimed that many of the questions and confusions in philosophy could be “cleared up” by paying careful attention to the concepts involved. The same view was pushed by Wittgenstein at Cambridge, and by the Vienna Circle and its associates. It wasn’t the thesis that was objectionable: it was the method. This made two claims. The first was that careful attention to our everyday language would show that the philosophical problem was really a kind of confusion or mis-understanding.
On this, nobody will deny it is always useful to start any discussion of a concept by checking the dictionary and Wikipedia, to make sure that other people will be thinking about the same thing we are when the hear the words we use. From there, it helps to have a few paradigmatic examples of the concept at work, with some compare-and-contrast to locate it in the conceptual landscape. If there is a group of people making money in some way from the concept, we need to understand who they are and what they are being paid to provide. If there is legislation that uses the concept, we need a glance at that. If it has a history, it might help to read that. If the concept has a technical use in a science, we need to decide how to treat that. If it is being wielded by activists, we need to be aware of that, if only to avoid being distracted by their controversies. Is the concept unique to our native language, or does it have equivalents in other languages, and if it doesn’t, how do they manage without it?
But this is not what the Oxford philosophers meant. Their second claim was that ordinary language, as spoken by the kind of people who get a First in Greats, contains all the concepts and distinctions we need to clear up the confusion. There was no need for appeal to scientific theories, because there were no empirical claims involved in defining the distinctions and concepts. And there was no need for philosophical theories, because, well, all we need are ordinary-language ideas, which are held to be a-theoretical. (Nobody said that last bit out loud, even though the idea that language provides and constrains our conceptual resources, and hence, amongst other things, our ability to make distinctions and analyses, had been around for at least eighty years.)
This, combined with what many felt was a smug and parochial tone, was the reason many other philosophers felt Oxford Philosophy trivialised philosophy. It wasn’t that the Oxford people were wrong, it was that they were shallow. Iris Murdoch said in a review of Ryle’s The Concept of Mind
[It] evokes a picture of a world in which people play cricket, cook cakes, make simple decisions, remember their childhood and go to the circus; not the world in which they commit sins, fall in love, say prayers or join the Communist Party.Murdoch’s point is that the force of Ryle’s arguments depend in part on the blandness of the examples. We might be willing to make a distinction between this and that when applied to frying an egg, but not when applied to spray-painting shop windows in protest. Nuances that can be heard when the moral volume is low, are lost when the moral volume is turned up, and other sounds become audible. We can accept Ryle’s arguments, but feel that, somehow, the conclusions have a very limited application in our coarser, more chaotic, lives. (Krishnan makes the point that an adequate philosophy must apply to lives in which we both play cricket and commit sins, cook cakes and fall in love, remember our childhoods and say prayers, and go to the circus while members of the Communist Party.)
It was not and still is not my preferred way of doing philosophy. Detailed, tortuous arguments picking apart (as it might be) Jones’ view of Smith’s account of excuses and reasons, leave me feeling uninformed and slightly dizzy. I don’t care that Jones’ views are full of holes, and Smith’s aren’t much better. I want an account of excuses and reasons that learns from the mistakes of those who came earlier, and doesn’t show off its erudition by burdening me with a list of those mistakes and why each is wrong. Unfortunately, it was the preferred way of doing philosophy at the university where I was an undergraduate: I barely survived long enough to make it to the LSE.
The results of an ordinary-language analysis, of some concept being grossly abused by a (as it might be) psychologist in their pop-science book, can be useful for dispelling the confusion and wrong conclusions created by the abuse. But the results must be used in passing, as simple facts, and their source never mentioned, for fear of boring or puzzling the reader. Ordinary language analysis is one of many items in the philosopher’s tool-belt, to be used when appropriate. One should never display one’s philosophical tricks and techniques. Nobody is interested. They want to know about the subject.
In the end, that might have been the reason Oxford Philosophy attracted so much hostility. It was too much about itself, as the work of very clever people can be, its topics chosen not because they were interesting to us, but because they showed off the method and the cleverness.
(1) The population of the UK was about 55m at the time. 0.1% of that would 55,000 people, and that’s an overestimate. Don’t forget there were only around 30 universities in the UK back then. At 40 people per year doing philosophy (about the size of my undergrad class) over 30 years, that’s 36,000 students, plus (say) 500 lecturers and professors.
Friday, 23 August 2024
Another Bench, Another Tree-Shaded Path (Abbey Wood)
Abbey Wood is at one end of the Elizabeth Line, and is next to the very little remains of Lesnes Abbey. The Wood is reached by going upstairs from the platform, crossing the road, turning right and taking a left turn into a small park. Walk along the bottom edge, down the narrow path, and you’ll see the Lesnes Abbey bit. The wood is all the green stuff behind it.
Tuesday, 20 August 2024
How The Far Left Creates The “Far Right”
It’s Newton’s Third Law: a batshit-crazy policy will create a batshit-crazy response. More formally, the intensity of the reaction to a new policy will be in proportion to the extent it varies from commonly-held opinion (if there is one) multiplied by its probability of being turned into law and / or institutional policy.
Instruct medical staff to ask middle-aged men if they are pregnant, and have middle-aged men walk out in mind-blown astonishment.
Push for the adoption of an expensive, noisy and inefficient technology (heat pumps, electric cars) on ideological grounds, you will get a reaction pointing out that it is expensive, noisy and inefficient and your policy is dumb.
Continue to pile on privileges to one group of people, and some of the other groups are going to bear a huge grudge against the over-privileged.
Tell people that a woman can have a beard and a p***s, and a lady writer with more money than Croesus will ridicule the idea on Twitter.
In ordinary circumstances, this would be called “healthy pushback” or “engaged public debate”. But to the Far Left, there can be no debate, since its policies are perfect. Resistance is pure evil.
The “Far Right” only exists to the extent there is a “Far Left” pushing extreme policies into legislation and institutional practice. The Far Left cannot get rid of the Far Right, so it must silence it. Freedom of speech is the freedom to express one’s exact degree of support and admiration for the policy. Anything else is hate, terrorism, Far Right extremism.
Instruct medical staff to ask middle-aged men if they are pregnant, and have middle-aged men walk out in mind-blown astonishment.
Push for the adoption of an expensive, noisy and inefficient technology (heat pumps, electric cars) on ideological grounds, you will get a reaction pointing out that it is expensive, noisy and inefficient and your policy is dumb.
Continue to pile on privileges to one group of people, and some of the other groups are going to bear a huge grudge against the over-privileged.
Tell people that a woman can have a beard and a p***s, and a lady writer with more money than Croesus will ridicule the idea on Twitter.
In ordinary circumstances, this would be called “healthy pushback” or “engaged public debate”. But to the Far Left, there can be no debate, since its policies are perfect. Resistance is pure evil.
The “Far Right” only exists to the extent there is a “Far Left” pushing extreme policies into legislation and institutional practice. The Far Left cannot get rid of the Far Right, so it must silence it. Freedom of speech is the freedom to express one’s exact degree of support and admiration for the policy. Anything else is hate, terrorism, Far Right extremism.
Friday, 16 August 2024
Gain and Volume
Yep, it’s tech time again. There are numerous explanations of these two features of an amplifier, and all those I have seen don’t explain it very well. Mostly because they don’t use a model of an amplifier, which I’m going to do.
Picture your guitar amp. At one end is the guitar jack, which carries a tiny, tiny current from the pickups. If that was transferred across to the speaker, we wouldn’t hear a thing. Nothing like enough power. So we need some more power from somewhere - which is why the amp is plugged into the mains, to feed a transformer that feeds the amp’s circuitry. That feed is run through some kind of “amplifying widget”, which might be a valve, a transistor, some combination of both, or some other device.
This widget takes the guitar signal in one connection, the transformer feed in another connection, and combines them in such a way that the signal from the guitar affects the current from the transformer flowing through the widget. (See electronics textbooks for details.) If the widget works properly, the output will be a signal that looks like the input from the guitar, but on a large-enough scale to drive the speaker.
In summary…
Guitar input signal -> widget
+
Current from transformer -> widget
=
More powerful copy of the guitar signal from widget to the loudspeaker
Gain controls are on the power input side of the amplifying widget. Turning the Gain up increases the amount of power into the amplifying widget, and increases makes the output signal… Gain at 0 = signal direct from guitar with no increase in power, Gain at 10 = guitar signal amplified to maximum input power
Now here’s the thing. The amplifying widget will change how it responds as more power is applied to it. That’s why turning up the Gain often produces distortion (unless the widget has a kilometer of “headroom”). But when we adjust the volume, it won’t change the way the widget works, because the volume is on the output side, after the widget has done its thing.
However, adjusting the volume will affect the power going to the speaker, and that will affect the way the speaker reacts. Less power and it won’t be able to transmit the fine details in the signal loud enough for us to hear. Which is why a crunchy distorted tone at high volume turns to a nasty fizz at low volumes.
So that’s that.
Picture your guitar amp. At one end is the guitar jack, which carries a tiny, tiny current from the pickups. If that was transferred across to the speaker, we wouldn’t hear a thing. Nothing like enough power. So we need some more power from somewhere - which is why the amp is plugged into the mains, to feed a transformer that feeds the amp’s circuitry. That feed is run through some kind of “amplifying widget”, which might be a valve, a transistor, some combination of both, or some other device.
This widget takes the guitar signal in one connection, the transformer feed in another connection, and combines them in such a way that the signal from the guitar affects the current from the transformer flowing through the widget. (See electronics textbooks for details.) If the widget works properly, the output will be a signal that looks like the input from the guitar, but on a large-enough scale to drive the speaker.
In summary…
Guitar input signal -> widget
+
Current from transformer -> widget
=
More powerful copy of the guitar signal from widget to the loudspeaker
Gain controls are on the power input side of the amplifying widget. Turning the Gain up increases the amount of power into the amplifying widget, and increases makes the output signal… Gain at 0 = signal direct from guitar with no increase in power, Gain at 10 = guitar signal amplified to maximum input power
Volume controls are on the power output side of the amplifying widget. Turning the Volume up lets more of that power pass to the speaker, so it gets louder… Volume at 0 = no output power, Volume at 10 = as much out as the Gain creates.
Now here’s the thing. The amplifying widget will change how it responds as more power is applied to it. That’s why turning up the Gain often produces distortion (unless the widget has a kilometer of “headroom”). But when we adjust the volume, it won’t change the way the widget works, because the volume is on the output side, after the widget has done its thing.
However, adjusting the volume will affect the power going to the speaker, and that will affect the way the speaker reacts. Less power and it won’t be able to transmit the fine details in the signal loud enough for us to hear. Which is why a crunchy distorted tone at high volume turns to a nasty fizz at low volumes.
So that’s that.
Tuesday, 13 August 2024
Recording With The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and Helix Effects
Regular readers will remember the problems I, and everyone else with a Katana, had with recording and playback through the thing. I gave up in the end.
I’ve been trying recording on the iPhone / iPad, using the Lexis Audio Editor, which is intuitively easier to use than the iOS Garageband. For my simple mind, anyway. Record with the mic, playback via the Apple dongle and the Katana Aux In. It kinda worked, but not inspiringly.
Then I got the Helix HX Effects. I’ve beenplaying with it exploring its functionality for a while. I had registered that it treated the SEND and RECEIVE ports as blocks that could be put in the signal chain. I had got as far as using a RECEIVE port / block to receive music from the phone and pass it on to the Katana.
That works because the Helix software lets us create two logical paths (A and B) between the device inputs and outputs. It’s actually easier to see-and-do on the control software than it is to explain (which is how it should be). Put all the guitar-related effects on one path, and use the other path to take the play-along music. Join the paths together at the end, so the play-along music is unaffected by the guitar effects. Works nicely.
One afternoon, I started thinking about recording again. I don’t want to use headphones, and I want to hear the sound of the guitar from the amp. That was always a problem in the past, because I was getting the guitar effects from the amp. Ever since I got the HX Effects, the amp has been set to the Clean channel and all the effects turned off. EQ’s at mid-day. It’s almost tonally transparent.
The following question now makes sense. Can I use a SEND port on the HX Effects to send a copy of the signal to an interface? The interface connects to the laptop via USB and a recording program can use the USB as an input. Also, can I take the audio out from the laptop and plug that in to the Aux In of the Katana. The HX Effects is connected to the Katana via the L/Mono output socket as usual.
I have one signal path from the guitar to HX Effects to the amp; a separate path from the HX Effects to the laptop to the recording software; and another from the recording playback to the amp. So there’s no feedback loop.
And even better… there’s no way background noise can get into the signal chain because there are no microphones!
I’m using Audacity. It’s recording software with some extras, rather than a full-featured DAW, so it will do nicely for my simple mind. I made sure it could record one track while playing back another, which is kinda key to the whole thing. I can.
All I need to be able to do is send one copy of the signal to the L/Mono output, and another copy to a SEND socket. Which is kinda the reverse of bringing in a signal from the RECEIVE port.
I tested everything I could without actually getting the interface. Everything worked the way I needed it to.
Pull the trigger. The interface of choice for the amateur is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, which has two inputs: either instrument jack plug or mic three-pin. (Mics need a lot more signal boost than guitars.) I need one short guitar cable (male-to-male jack plugs) to connect the HX Effects SEND to the Scarlett instrument in.
Arrives within 24 hours thanks to Amazon Prime. Took about fifteen minutes to set up, including an online firmware update. Another five minutes to set the recording volume for the guitar.
Now I have to deal with the well-known phenomenon of “recording klutz”, where hitherto fluent playing suddenly misses the beat, because someone turned the red light on. Also with the fact that my playing is, well, not quite metronomic.
Which is why we record ourselves. It’s one thing to know you’re a bit clunky while playing, but another to hear it in playback. It’s so much more embarrassing in playback.
I’ve been trying recording on the iPhone / iPad, using the Lexis Audio Editor, which is intuitively easier to use than the iOS Garageband. For my simple mind, anyway. Record with the mic, playback via the Apple dongle and the Katana Aux In. It kinda worked, but not inspiringly.
Then I got the Helix HX Effects. I’ve been
That works because the Helix software lets us create two logical paths (A and B) between the device inputs and outputs. It’s actually easier to see-and-do on the control software than it is to explain (which is how it should be). Put all the guitar-related effects on one path, and use the other path to take the play-along music. Join the paths together at the end, so the play-along music is unaffected by the guitar effects. Works nicely.
One afternoon, I started thinking about recording again. I don’t want to use headphones, and I want to hear the sound of the guitar from the amp. That was always a problem in the past, because I was getting the guitar effects from the amp. Ever since I got the HX Effects, the amp has been set to the Clean channel and all the effects turned off. EQ’s at mid-day. It’s almost tonally transparent.
The following question now makes sense. Can I use a SEND port on the HX Effects to send a copy of the signal to an interface? The interface connects to the laptop via USB and a recording program can use the USB as an input. Also, can I take the audio out from the laptop and plug that in to the Aux In of the Katana. The HX Effects is connected to the Katana via the L/Mono output socket as usual.
I have one signal path from the guitar to HX Effects to the amp; a separate path from the HX Effects to the laptop to the recording software; and another from the recording playback to the amp. So there’s no feedback loop.
And even better… there’s no way background noise can get into the signal chain because there are no microphones!
I’m using Audacity. It’s recording software with some extras, rather than a full-featured DAW, so it will do nicely for my simple mind. I made sure it could record one track while playing back another, which is kinda key to the whole thing. I can.
All I need to be able to do is send one copy of the signal to the L/Mono output, and another copy to a SEND socket. Which is kinda the reverse of bringing in a signal from the RECEIVE port.
I tested everything I could without actually getting the interface. Everything worked the way I needed it to.
Pull the trigger. The interface of choice for the amateur is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, which has two inputs: either instrument jack plug or mic three-pin. (Mics need a lot more signal boost than guitars.) I need one short guitar cable (male-to-male jack plugs) to connect the HX Effects SEND to the Scarlett instrument in.
Arrives within 24 hours thanks to Amazon Prime. Took about fifteen minutes to set up, including an online firmware update. Another five minutes to set the recording volume for the guitar.
Now I have to deal with the well-known phenomenon of “recording klutz”, where hitherto fluent playing suddenly misses the beat, because someone turned the red light on. Also with the fact that my playing is, well, not quite metronomic.
Which is why we record ourselves. It’s one thing to know you’re a bit clunky while playing, but another to hear it in playback. It’s so much more embarrassing in playback.
Friday, 9 August 2024
The Geometrical Kit In The Playground Picture
Tuesday, 6 August 2024
The Path Leading Into the Distance Picture (Maryon Wilson Park)
Friday, 2 August 2024
The Empty Park Seat Picture (Maryon Wilson Park)
Empty park seats are one of those subjects that photographers are drawn to: Geoff Dyer has a chapter on it in his book on photography The Ongoing Moment. So that’s all right then.
Tuesday, 30 July 2024
Garden Clearence and Patio Cleaning Videos
Call me odd, but I find it fascinating to watch someone turn a jungle into a neat lawn, revealing paths and sharpening borders in the process, or jet-washing a grimy patch of hard standing in front of someone’s house to reveal an area of warm pink stone.
I have two thoughts at some point in these videos: a) Jeez, this guy is putting a s**t ton of work in here, and b) how could anyone let it get so bad. For most of the garden videos, the answer is that the owner is old, infirm, or absent. This can apply to the jet-washing videos but not so much.
(I too have been solvenly in these matters, so there’s no judgement here.)
This is the UK. It’s damp all the time (except for ten days a year when it’s too hot) and so moss grows all the time on any north-facing shaded surface, and weeds thrive everywhere .
Every year, once it’s stopped being winter, I clean the front path. This year I used chemicals and a stiff brush and it worked a treat - no need to water-jet. Next year I will need to water-jet my new paving in the back. The lawn needs to be cut, raked to get rid of the dead grass, and fed chemicals a couple of times a year to keep it green. I cut back my side of the neighbour’s hedges a couple of times a year as well. It doesn’t take much… after I got the gear: the lawn mower, the power trimmers for the hedges, a leaf blower to clear the leaves off the lawn in autumn, an extension lead. I pick the little green weeds that grow between the stones in my front garden every spring: it’s tedious but it takes an hour, if that. The resulting weed-freeness is something I look at quite a bit for a couple of days before I get used to it.
(Of course I subscribe to the Council’s garden waste disposal service. It saves car journeys to the tip all the time, which is good for Climate Change. *smug*)
It doesn’t take many activity-hours to do these things, but it does take the gear - which not everyone can afford, and spending £200-ish on kit that only gets used twice a year can seem wasteful, and what’s wrong with some sharp shears? (Answer: you have to take them to get sharpened, which in my case is quite a drive, because knife-sharpeners don’t come down the street like they used to.) And then there’s working out what chemicals to use. I’m not a gardener, so it took me way longer to work out what I needed, and then find it, than might seem a sensible use of time.
However, those bits of work contribute to a pleasant, or at least a clean and tidy, public space, and that’s one of those public goods no-one really thinks about. Keeping the house and garden clean and attractive should be about self-respect, but if you’re not in the mood on the one day it’s not raining that you have spare, then all the self-respect in the world won’t get the job done. Landlords, have no respect for the quality of life of their tenants, and say they can’t afford it.
In the same way the Council should clean out the weeds on the streets and put down some chemicals to discourage further growth. If they don’t, the place will look like the poorer parts of Brighton did a while back, where councillors muttered about environmental safety and let the weeds grow for three or four years, while the spent the money they saved on some indulgence or other. Councils don’t do details. Details cost money, and there are many calls on our Council Tax, and more arriving in dinghies every day.
Why do “we” live with grimy paths, over-grown grassy patches and borders, and long thick tendrils of bramble in our way?
One reason is that it’s normal: we live with it because it seems that everyone else does. We don’t have a picture in our minds of neat borders and weed-free gutters as the way life should be in the UK.
Another is that once the grime, moss and weeds have built up, it’s not an amateur’s job to clear them. It takes the right gear - which costs money - and some experience to do it well. It’s a day or two of someone’s time, so it’s going to run in the low £00’s. Plus VAT. Not everyone has that money lying around: don’t forget that one in four adults don’t have even £100 for emergencies. Homeowners can be up to their ears in debt.
Trees that grow past our ability to trim them, gardens that get overgrown, gutters and pavement-cracks with weeds, brambles waving in pedestrians’ faces, dirt building up on paths… left to itself, Nature will grow wild and dirty, much like our hair if we don’t wash and trim it regularly. Staying clean and keeping up pleasant public spaces (or publicly-visible private spaces) is work and expense that we don’t allow for, don’t have the spare money to pay for, and don’t have the tools and experience to do ourselves.
From which it follows that staying clean and neat is a flex: look at me, I have the money (or the spare time and the spare energy) to keep me and mine smart and clean. Showing off is okay when the neighbours can afford to keep up is okay, but not when they can’t.
I have two thoughts at some point in these videos: a) Jeez, this guy is putting a s**t ton of work in here, and b) how could anyone let it get so bad. For most of the garden videos, the answer is that the owner is old, infirm, or absent. This can apply to the jet-washing videos but not so much.
(I too have been solvenly in these matters, so there’s no judgement here.)
This is the UK. It’s damp all the time (except for ten days a year when it’s too hot) and so moss grows all the time on any north-facing shaded surface, and weeds thrive everywhere .
Every year, once it’s stopped being winter, I clean the front path. This year I used chemicals and a stiff brush and it worked a treat - no need to water-jet. Next year I will need to water-jet my new paving in the back. The lawn needs to be cut, raked to get rid of the dead grass, and fed chemicals a couple of times a year to keep it green. I cut back my side of the neighbour’s hedges a couple of times a year as well. It doesn’t take much… after I got the gear: the lawn mower, the power trimmers for the hedges, a leaf blower to clear the leaves off the lawn in autumn, an extension lead. I pick the little green weeds that grow between the stones in my front garden every spring: it’s tedious but it takes an hour, if that. The resulting weed-freeness is something I look at quite a bit for a couple of days before I get used to it.
(Of course I subscribe to the Council’s garden waste disposal service. It saves car journeys to the tip all the time, which is good for Climate Change. *smug*)
It doesn’t take many activity-hours to do these things, but it does take the gear - which not everyone can afford, and spending £200-ish on kit that only gets used twice a year can seem wasteful, and what’s wrong with some sharp shears? (Answer: you have to take them to get sharpened, which in my case is quite a drive, because knife-sharpeners don’t come down the street like they used to.) And then there’s working out what chemicals to use. I’m not a gardener, so it took me way longer to work out what I needed, and then find it, than might seem a sensible use of time.
However, those bits of work contribute to a pleasant, or at least a clean and tidy, public space, and that’s one of those public goods no-one really thinks about. Keeping the house and garden clean and attractive should be about self-respect, but if you’re not in the mood on the one day it’s not raining that you have spare, then all the self-respect in the world won’t get the job done. Landlords, have no respect for the quality of life of their tenants, and say they can’t afford it.
In the same way the Council should clean out the weeds on the streets and put down some chemicals to discourage further growth. If they don’t, the place will look like the poorer parts of Brighton did a while back, where councillors muttered about environmental safety and let the weeds grow for three or four years, while the spent the money they saved on some indulgence or other. Councils don’t do details. Details cost money, and there are many calls on our Council Tax, and more arriving in dinghies every day.
Why do “we” live with grimy paths, over-grown grassy patches and borders, and long thick tendrils of bramble in our way?
One reason is that it’s normal: we live with it because it seems that everyone else does. We don’t have a picture in our minds of neat borders and weed-free gutters as the way life should be in the UK.
Another is that once the grime, moss and weeds have built up, it’s not an amateur’s job to clear them. It takes the right gear - which costs money - and some experience to do it well. It’s a day or two of someone’s time, so it’s going to run in the low £00’s. Plus VAT. Not everyone has that money lying around: don’t forget that one in four adults don’t have even £100 for emergencies. Homeowners can be up to their ears in debt.
Trees that grow past our ability to trim them, gardens that get overgrown, gutters and pavement-cracks with weeds, brambles waving in pedestrians’ faces, dirt building up on paths… left to itself, Nature will grow wild and dirty, much like our hair if we don’t wash and trim it regularly. Staying clean and keeping up pleasant public spaces (or publicly-visible private spaces) is work and expense that we don’t allow for, don’t have the spare money to pay for, and don’t have the tools and experience to do ourselves.
From which it follows that staying clean and neat is a flex: look at me, I have the money (or the spare time and the spare energy) to keep me and mine smart and clean. Showing off is okay when the neighbours can afford to keep up is okay, but not when they can’t.
Friday, 26 July 2024
Guitar Humility
For reasons to do with me mentioning it, my tutor looked up Joni Mitchell’s Coyote on YT. Within a verse, he detected the down-tuned low-E string (to C), and had picked up the chords. I still have fumble-fingers making a C6/9 and would never have picked up the detuned E-string.
It’s one thing to know about (say) perfect pitch and ear training, but it’s another to see it action and understand the ocean-sized gap between an amateur and a proper musician. An untrained ear condemns us to a lifetime of sight-reading or tab.
Learning the major scales, modes, and even harmonic minors, octotonic and other weird stuff, is actually fairly simple as long as you can handle doing repetitive exercises. After that, finding the key a song is in is a matter of quietly trying this or that note (starting with F♯ then B♭ to figure out which side of the circle of fifths the song is in, and going round that way) until it sounds right. Then jamming along with the track using pentatonics or a major scale is a fairly easy and pleasing experience.
An experience that requires almost no knowledge of chords or harmony, no ability to read tab or stave, and no idea what clever chords are being used. It’s like being able to make an omelet and bake a simple cake and thinking you’re a cook. Or being able to speak tourist Spanish.
Problem is, it gives you an entirely false idea of just how much you know.
I came away from the third lesson, during which we went through the chords of Autumn Leaves as an example of moving in fifths, usefully angry with myself. I thought I had been fumbling on the fretboard like some beginner, and it was inexcusable that I heard the phrase “E♭major 7th” and didn’t automatically make the required shape. I know the major 7th shape on those strings, but I couldn’t bring the knowledge to use. Not good enough.
Playing guitar is like speaking English. The basics are easy, and one can communicate well-enough in it and still speak it badly (unlike, say, French or Dutch), but advanced use takes a very long time, and most people never get that far.
Part of the hump is learning the fretboard. There is no equivalent for pianists: F♯ below middle C is in one and only one place, but on the guitar, it can be played on the third string fourth fret, fifth string ninth fret, and sixth string fourteenth fret. And yes, each one sounds slightly different, because physics (overtones). Same with the violin family. Learning the fretboard is nowhere near as easy as you think it is, and nobody knows why.
Chords are even worse, and it doesn’t help that a chord of N notes can have at least N different names depending on which one is treated as the root. (Classical harmony gets over this by defining the root as the note that would the lowest if the notes were re-arranged in ascending thirds (or nearest approximation). It also does not help that - aside from the sus chords (2 and 4) - there are no even-numbered notes in chords. Chord intervals go 1-9-3-11-5-13-7 (unless the 9 is a sus 2 or the 11 is a sus 4). Also 7’s are all minor unless announced as major, and a diminished 7th is a 6th, but not in a 5/6 chord or a 6-chord (which is not to be confused with a VI chord, of course).
So your tutor can say “Esus ♭ 6” and leave you wondering WTF? Whereas they mean A-minor, which is a reflex to shape at the first fret, because it’s a cowboy chord. Not that tutors would do that.
Oddly, realising just how low on the learning pole I am, has introduced a lump of realism to whatever the heck I think my goals are.
It’s one thing to know about (say) perfect pitch and ear training, but it’s another to see it action and understand the ocean-sized gap between an amateur and a proper musician. An untrained ear condemns us to a lifetime of sight-reading or tab.
Learning the major scales, modes, and even harmonic minors, octotonic and other weird stuff, is actually fairly simple as long as you can handle doing repetitive exercises. After that, finding the key a song is in is a matter of quietly trying this or that note (starting with F♯ then B♭ to figure out which side of the circle of fifths the song is in, and going round that way) until it sounds right. Then jamming along with the track using pentatonics or a major scale is a fairly easy and pleasing experience.
An experience that requires almost no knowledge of chords or harmony, no ability to read tab or stave, and no idea what clever chords are being used. It’s like being able to make an omelet and bake a simple cake and thinking you’re a cook. Or being able to speak tourist Spanish.
Problem is, it gives you an entirely false idea of just how much you know.
I came away from the third lesson, during which we went through the chords of Autumn Leaves as an example of moving in fifths, usefully angry with myself. I thought I had been fumbling on the fretboard like some beginner, and it was inexcusable that I heard the phrase “E♭major 7th” and didn’t automatically make the required shape. I know the major 7th shape on those strings, but I couldn’t bring the knowledge to use. Not good enough.
Playing guitar is like speaking English. The basics are easy, and one can communicate well-enough in it and still speak it badly (unlike, say, French or Dutch), but advanced use takes a very long time, and most people never get that far.
Part of the hump is learning the fretboard. There is no equivalent for pianists: F♯ below middle C is in one and only one place, but on the guitar, it can be played on the third string fourth fret, fifth string ninth fret, and sixth string fourteenth fret. And yes, each one sounds slightly different, because physics (overtones). Same with the violin family. Learning the fretboard is nowhere near as easy as you think it is, and nobody knows why.
Chords are even worse, and it doesn’t help that a chord of N notes can have at least N different names depending on which one is treated as the root. (Classical harmony gets over this by defining the root as the note that would the lowest if the notes were re-arranged in ascending thirds (or nearest approximation). It also does not help that - aside from the sus chords (2 and 4) - there are no even-numbered notes in chords. Chord intervals go 1-9-3-11-5-13-7 (unless the 9 is a sus 2 or the 11 is a sus 4). Also 7’s are all minor unless announced as major, and a diminished 7th is a 6th, but not in a 5/6 chord or a 6-chord (which is not to be confused with a VI chord, of course).
So your tutor can say “Esus ♭ 6” and leave you wondering WTF? Whereas they mean A-minor, which is a reflex to shape at the first fret, because it’s a cowboy chord. Not that tutors would do that.
Oddly, realising just how low on the learning pole I am, has introduced a lump of realism to whatever the heck I think my goals are.
Tuesday, 23 July 2024
CrowdStrike and Other Security Nonsense
I don’t have CrowdStrike on my laptop.
So it never stopped working.
*smug*
Computer security software is generally a waste of processing cycles, RAM and storage space. In a corporate, all the security should be on the corporate wall and whitelist maintenance. Inside the corporate wall, no security except firewalls which are more or less unavoidable now. On a personal machine, let the OS take care of security.
If the NSA, GCHQ, the Chinese, Israelis, French, or very probably the Finnish security services want to get at your computer, they’re going to do so. Private or corporate. Does anyone not think the Russians and Chineses had Crowdstrike reverse-engineered (or were just sent a copy of the code) within about a couple of months?
The criminals are pretty obvious, though anyone can be caught off-guard, as I was a few months ago until the voice told me they could not cancel a transaction unless I was at my machine to do this and that. My guard came right back.
Personally, I think the companies who let CrowdStrike - or anyone - push an update out onto their live systems without testing it on an isolated guinea pig system first, deserve anything that happens to them.
And it is way past time that all these software companies, from Microsoft onwards, carried insurance to compensate the consumers who were affected. Not the freaking airlines, but the suffering passengers. The corporates can sue each other, but the consumers should be compensated.
So it never stopped working.
*smug*
Computer security software is generally a waste of processing cycles, RAM and storage space. In a corporate, all the security should be on the corporate wall and whitelist maintenance. Inside the corporate wall, no security except firewalls which are more or less unavoidable now. On a personal machine, let the OS take care of security.
If the NSA, GCHQ, the Chinese, Israelis, French, or very probably the Finnish security services want to get at your computer, they’re going to do so. Private or corporate. Does anyone not think the Russians and Chineses had Crowdstrike reverse-engineered (or were just sent a copy of the code) within about a couple of months?
The criminals are pretty obvious, though anyone can be caught off-guard, as I was a few months ago until the voice told me they could not cancel a transaction unless I was at my machine to do this and that. My guard came right back.
Personally, I think the companies who let CrowdStrike - or anyone - push an update out onto their live systems without testing it on an isolated guinea pig system first, deserve anything that happens to them.
And it is way past time that all these software companies, from Microsoft onwards, carried insurance to compensate the consumers who were affected. Not the freaking airlines, but the suffering passengers. The corporates can sue each other, but the consumers should be compensated.
Friday, 19 July 2024
McCarty 549 Follow-Up - 1950’s Manufacturing Was Always A Bit Dodgy
The tone pots on my Epiphone Les Paul were monsters, especially on the bridge. Turn the bridge tone pot up to 10 and the sound was 10dB (!) louder than at 0. Neck wasn’t quite as much, but it was still unmistakeable. And to my ears the difference in tone was independent of the volume pot setting.
The effect of the McCarty tone pots depends on the volume level: the higher the volume pot, the greater the difference between 0 and 10. The difference is greater at the bridge than the neck, but that’s because physics.
Which is one reason it took me a while to notice that the bridge tone pot wasn’t actually working. Coil split was, but not the tone control. The neck one was okay.
So back to those nice people at GuitarGuitar Epsom I went, where their wonderful tech swiftly diagnosed a dry solder joint. A quick touch of the iron, and everything worked as it should. All covered by warranty.
A lot of a modern guitar is made by CNC tools. The body is cut by CNC millers, which is why the body shape is so consistent. The pick-ups are wound by a CNC winder, so every pickup gets 5,324 turns of 60AWG (or whatever) - as opposed to 1950’s Gibson pick-ups which were wound by hand and could vary considerably. The necks must be cut and fretted by machine as well, given the cost of a luthier re-fret these days.
The wiring has to be done by hand. I doubt even Apple could automate that. The connections are soldered by hand. Just like when Leo Fender made his first guitar for Noah on the Ark. Hand-soldering has not improved since it was invented. The mid-teenage me used to solder slot-car chassis back in the day, and even I could get a dry joint now and again. However, I wasn’t making lots of chassis in a day, so I had time to spot it and re-solder. The guys in the factory probably don’t have the time.
Once upon a time, cars used to be assembled more or less by hand, and we could tell. Rattles, squeaks, screws coming loose… There’s a reason Ford, Fiat and the rest spend gajillions developing automated manufacturing. It’s the reason that modern cars are so reliable and last so long. That and improved paint formulations.
Guitar-makers don’t work at the volumes of car manufacturers and can’t afford the investment in specialised robots. So we will just have to accept that, at least for the budget-price market (if PRS SE prices are your idea of “budget”), a fair proportion of the guitars will need some post-sale tweaking to get 100% right.
Now everything is copacetic. The default volume pot setting is around 7-8, which lets the tone pots do their thing. I had to tweak some settings on my HX Effects, but I’m getting real slick at playing the stomp switches.
My McCarty 549 SE sounds great, has humbuckers, the Les Paul control layout, and weighs 7 lbs. It’s not going anywhere for a long time.
The effect of the McCarty tone pots depends on the volume level: the higher the volume pot, the greater the difference between 0 and 10. The difference is greater at the bridge than the neck, but that’s because physics.
Which is one reason it took me a while to notice that the bridge tone pot wasn’t actually working. Coil split was, but not the tone control. The neck one was okay.
So back to those nice people at GuitarGuitar Epsom I went, where their wonderful tech swiftly diagnosed a dry solder joint. A quick touch of the iron, and everything worked as it should. All covered by warranty.
A lot of a modern guitar is made by CNC tools. The body is cut by CNC millers, which is why the body shape is so consistent. The pick-ups are wound by a CNC winder, so every pickup gets 5,324 turns of 60AWG (or whatever) - as opposed to 1950’s Gibson pick-ups which were wound by hand and could vary considerably. The necks must be cut and fretted by machine as well, given the cost of a luthier re-fret these days.
The wiring has to be done by hand. I doubt even Apple could automate that. The connections are soldered by hand. Just like when Leo Fender made his first guitar for Noah on the Ark. Hand-soldering has not improved since it was invented. The mid-teenage me used to solder slot-car chassis back in the day, and even I could get a dry joint now and again. However, I wasn’t making lots of chassis in a day, so I had time to spot it and re-solder. The guys in the factory probably don’t have the time.
Once upon a time, cars used to be assembled more or less by hand, and we could tell. Rattles, squeaks, screws coming loose… There’s a reason Ford, Fiat and the rest spend gajillions developing automated manufacturing. It’s the reason that modern cars are so reliable and last so long. That and improved paint formulations.
Guitar-makers don’t work at the volumes of car manufacturers and can’t afford the investment in specialised robots. So we will just have to accept that, at least for the budget-price market (if PRS SE prices are your idea of “budget”), a fair proportion of the guitars will need some post-sale tweaking to get 100% right.
Now everything is copacetic. The default volume pot setting is around 7-8, which lets the tone pots do their thing. I had to tweak some settings on my HX Effects, but I’m getting real slick at playing the stomp switches.
My McCarty 549 SE sounds great, has humbuckers, the Les Paul control layout, and weighs 7 lbs. It’s not going anywhere for a long time.
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