I am a donut

So, it turns out that Berlin is a rather excellent city.  I had the opportunity to visit earlier this week as part of an assignment to the IFA 2015 consumer electronics show.  We were lucky enough to stay a few nights in a very conveniently located hotel and stay a few nights, giving me the rare opportunity to actually get to see a place during a business trip.

This being me, I'll get my gripes out of the way first - the trains, drains and smokers.  The S-Bahn trains are disturbingly British in their tardiness and overcrowding but very un-British in their lack of decent ticket machines - even Germans (assumedly not of Berlin) were struggling and the Messe station had only four machines to deal with hundreds of travelers at peak times.  At least it was also un-Britishly cheap.  As for the drains and smokers, both stink at all hours of the day.  Staring at the awe-inspiring architecture is somewhat dampened by regular gusts of eau de turd and you can't get a drink or a meal out without getting caked in tobacco smoke.

That said, the whole place is an architectural marvel.  It is massive in scale and they aren't shy about mixing large open spaces, parks and huge (huge) buildings.  Everything (other than the smell) is clean and there seems to be a huge amount of construction/repair work going on, giving it a feel of an industrious but culturally packed place.  For a major European city, it is relatively quiet, helped by how spaced out everything is.  The only real visits I managed were to the eerie Berlin Memorial wall and the Bauhaus Archiv, but passing the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag and various memorials, museums and mix of architectures left me wanting to come back and explore some more.

That and the rather excellent culinary scene...

Say U.N.C.L.E.

So it's been a while, but I've finally got a subject with which to make an addition to this poor excuse for a blog...

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (typing that out is rather annoying).  I'll admit up front that I do fondly remember the original series from my childhood so any opinion is accordingly biased.  I should also point out that I'm referring to the re-runs, not that I was around in the sixties when the series first ran.

Now, I do also have a soft spot for Mr Ritchie's work, especially the Holmes reboots.  In a lot of places, U.N.C.L.E. is similar in terms of being a slick, enjoyable update on a well-known franchise without too much tinkering to annoy die-hard fans or wreck the magic of the original source material.  The characters are entertaining and the plot is an undemanding spy-movie romp, similar to the warm, engaging Bond movies of old with a few smatterings of slightly cruder humour.

As you learn from the trailers, the plot throws together an American and Russian spy at the height of the Cold War, forced to overcome their animosity and prejudices to defeat a greater evil.  The relationship between the two lead characters is the centrepiece of the film and - as with the original series - is the source of the majority of the entertainment, both in terms of humour and slick action.

That said, the script and the plot don't really do the basic setup much justice and you're left wishing there was just a little more of the excellent verbal sparring between the two leads, or at least more of a differentiation in their styles and wit.  A couple of strong female characters are thrown into the mix to add fuel to the Molotov cocktail, but they don't really get enough opportunity to show off any real personality, beyond being ammunition for the boys to fight with/over.  Sometimes the humour does devolve into slapstick, but at other times it is genuinely inspired, including a high-brow argument over women's fashion.

Rather unfairly, it is actually Hugh Grant's supporting character who gets the best lines and he delivers them impeccably.  Given that he doesn't play a particularly large role in this movie (but don't fret - the setup for a sequel was as blunt as you'd expect), it just makes the lack of similar quantity and quality of wit for the other characters all the more disappointing.  The actors do try their best - Cavill does an excellent job of imitating Robert Vaughn's easy swagger without coming across as an irritating jock and Armie Hammer is a likable, if sadly under-exploited Kuryakin.  But the on-screen chemistry never really gets going and is broken up too often by set pieces labouring their love/hate relationship.  Indeed, the best scene is when all of the forced conflict is cast aside and the two find themselves on the same side.  Granted, this film needs to act as an introduction to their relationship as much as a good story in its own right, but you're left looking forward to the next installment where all of this narrative baggage is no longer needed, rather than enjoying this movie on its own merits.

All of these minor shortcomings are forgivable.  However, the main obstruction to proper enjoyment of what should be a straightforward, gritty buddy movie is Mr Ritchie's narrative device of choice for this season - the bleeding obvious flashback.  This is where a scene is played and then - just as it ends - is instantly replayed from a slightly different perspective, supposedly revealing a hitherto unseen twist in the plot.  Ritchie picks a similar piece of narrative bling in pretty much every movie he's made and uses it repeatedly.  But here - unlike the narrated plot reveals in Snatch or the entertaining flash-forwards in Sherlock - they are incredibly boring and detract from the flow of the movie.  They happen very frequently and the preceding scene is always shot in such a way that you know what's about to happen and dread the five minutes you're going to spend seeing the same scene all over again - only very slightly different.

The plot reveals themselves are also unforgivably lame, in that they are often mundane or you can tell exactly what is going to happen from the preceding set-piece scene - for example, a scene may contain a character issuing orders to someone off the edge of the screen, leading inexorably to the flashback scene where you'll be spoon-fed what was being ordered.  All in all it just comes across looking like the DP didn't plan the shots properly and missed half the action, rather than stylistic flair.  Far from increasing the suspense, these flashbacks wreck the rhythm of the movie, sap patience and feel like they were trying to squeeze more running time out of the plot than it could reasonably provide.

Also, annoyingly, some of the best action sequences are chopped up and delivered in super-slick, comic-book style frame-in-frame collages.  This simply gets in the way of you enjoying some wanton Hollywood action, all in the name of stylistic faff.

In the design business, this would be form dominating function.  It's just a tribute to the underlying story (not the plot) that an enjoyable movie can still emerge from underneath excessive creativity.

Where's Woolly

Er...so this weekend included a visit to the illustrious TOFT alpaca farm and shop near Dunchurch.  It's a very nice and well put-together setup, especially if you enjoy your crochet, or meeting fluffy, laid-back chaps that look like this.

More photos over in the Midlands gallery.

Only problem is that I'm left with a lingering urge to fire an RPG at something to reclaim some semblance of manliness...

Site feedback

Following the wildly successful launch of photography.garen.co.uk - the first in what will almost certainly be a huge range of Garen branded internet offerings - I've been getting some direct and indirect feedback on the site, layout and content.

It's all interesting and most is actually quite useful, so if you've got anything to add to my melting pot of mods and tweaks, please drop me a note at photos@garen.co.uk.

Orient Express

So it turns out that Shanghai is big (really big), wet, grey and really rather impressive.

Sadly, in the two days I was out there I didn't really get much of a chance to see a lot of it.  This was mostly due to the perpetual fog (it was fog and not the smog I'd been warned about) and torrential rain.  But in the pouring sky waters, it did have a charming Blade Runner air to it and I got to see enough to understand why most other visitors are impressed.

From the view on the 29th (of 60) floor of my well appointed (and surprisingly good value) hotel, I sampled the striking view out over a tiny section of the city, complete with all its neon lighting and graphic displays twinkling, flashing and throbbing away in the evening.  Cranes jutted out of the scenery here and there and the city looked like it was just alive.  Old concrete tower blocks were being demolished while next to them new skyscrapers were rising out of the ground.  Parks were dotted around and glitzy malls and condos mingled with ancient temples and little shikumen districts - it was a bit like a successful game of SimCity, only faster and with better traffic animations.

A telephone's excuse for a photograph

On visual inspection, the people seemed happy, busy, healthy and - in some places - doing rather well for themselves.  And the vast majority were suspiciously young.  I don't know what they did with everyone over the age of 50.

No wonder the US finds this all so threatening.  And - given how massively dependent we in the UK are on our rather easily replicated service industry - how threatened we should probably feel too.

But if they are going to take over the world I have one piece of advice for them - guys, it's an awful lot easier to take the bones out of animals before you cut them up and cook them.


It also got me thinking about how challenging it would be to be an expat stuck out there, mainly due to the language barrier.  More importantly, it got me thinking about how intimidating it must be for anyone to have to come over to the UK for any length of time for work and how it's hardly surprising that if you come from a very different cultural background, your first reaction will naturally be to try and find some semblance of familiarity, be it a segregated enclave or the local Irish pub.

Strange that we find communities of our "expats" in other countries perfectly reasonable but find "immigrants" (the UK media rarely distinguishes different visa types when discussing "foreigners") distasteful.

Padstow Puffins

So the latest little sojourn into domestic holiday delightfulness was the traditional pilgrimage to the lovely fishing town of Padstow.  We managed to go slightly out of peak season, which just means that the choking mass of humanity stifling the place is confined to the centre of town and avoids spilling out into the surrounding countryside too much.  Sadly, it also means the countryside is full of dogs and their owners, along with the associated noise and effluent.

Having thoroughly enjoyed our sea safari up in Oban a couple of weeks ago, we also booked a similar trip out of Padstow, not expecting the wildlife to be on the same level.  While disappointed by the total lack of dolphin and seal activity, we were pleasantly surprised that Padstow has its own (much less advertised) puffin colony, which was happily much more accessible.  If you're down there in the narrow window of the year when they are nesting on land with their colourful "breeding beaks" on, it's definitely worth the trip out.

Having previously trekked along the winding western coast out of Padstow to Trevone, we decided to take the ferry over to Rock and try the east side of the coast over to Polzeath.  We definitely preferred this side, which finds you winding between sand dunes and popping in and out of scenic viewpoints overlooking breathtaking coastline and picturesque beaches, not to mention the fact it's much less crowded.  On the stroll over there, we also looked out onto the island housing the bountiful bird colony we'd drifted contentedly around the day earlier.

Photos are popping up on the main site in their respective folders.  Given the event-based nature of a lot of the recent shots and the volume building up, I'm also going to have a go rearranging the bulk of them accordingly, rather than just splitting by topic.

Journey North of The Wall

As it happens, I was recently drafted to partake in an expedition into the northern wastes far beyond Coventry and out past the wall that was built to keep Mel Gibson and his dodgy accent out of blighty.

With any luck, the photographic ore that was unearthed on said voyage (nuggets below) should soon be loaded onto this internet, ready to be refined by the grinding commentary of an adoring audience.

Following that, hopefully I'll soon also be getting a proper photography website up and running.  But fear not - if you're the other person reading this, the blog will be linked to it directly.  One hopes.

Tschuss.

There we go again:

You'll pledge £X billion to the NHS/education/services/blah *if* you win the election?  How dare you blackmail me, sir.  Basic services are not a carrot to be dangled come election time.  Wind your neck in and make sure it gets done regardless - not because you won or lost your glorified popularity contest, but because it's the right thing to do for the country.

That's your job and you should be grateful we gave it to you.  Not the other way around.

The Eternal Question

To be ignorant and happy, or suffer under the weight of comprehension?

Infestation

Although I'd very much like to crawl under a rock and live off a supply of Fizzy Worms until it's all over, sadly it isn't that easy to avoid a general election.  I'm relatively certain that spring is only just breaking in the UK thanks to the vast volumes of hot air being generated by our dear elected "leaders", as they smell the next chance to flex their incompetence and arrogance in the purest of rat races.

Now, I don't often pay attention to unqualified people in overpaid, technical jobs, but I've noticed a couple of new tricks that I hadn't spotted before (maybe due to chronic apathy).  Fret not, I shall elucidate presently...

The first is a series of ads on the radio, ostensibly as public information (rather than identifiably party political) broadcasts.  I have heard two, one of which was about changes to pension arrangements and the other to care for the elderly.  Aside from the fact I'm blogging about it, that may seem innocent enough.  However, neither ad actually said anything other than how wonderful it is that one scheme or another has been enacted.  The pensions one actually went out of its way to claim it didn't affect pensioners above a certain age but didn't explain how it affects anyone else.  Instead, an elderly chap waxed lyrical about how lovely it was that the changes didn't affect him or his hypothetical wife (I assume she was called Agnes).  The elderly care ad was more blatant and infuriating as it used emotional blackmail, suggesting that because of the schemes enacted by the government, someone's mother/father would be properly looked after.

Neither ad actually provided any information - not even a government website to read about the schemes in question.  Basically, they were thinly disguised ads celebrating "accomplishments" of the current government.  Now, aside from being irritating, I thought that thing was actually against the law.

The second gambit I've noticed is the apparent increase in election "pledges" which any decent citizen of a democracy should rightly expect as a basic task of government.  I heard one politician claiming that if they are elected they'll make sure children learn English and maths.  Excuse me? That's like me telling my boss to pay me a bonus if I promise not to set fire to his trousers for a whole four years.  Another claimed that the NHS is in crisis and he needed to be elected to save it, entertainingly glossing over the fact he had been in power for almost four years.

All of this ignores the masterpiece - the fact that everyone is still begging for election so that they can close the budget *deficit*!  Forget repayment, they're still expecting credit (no pun intended) for not making our debt bigger!  If you take a look at them and their backgrounds, the epic philosophical struggle they seem to be having with spending less than they can earn honestly starts to make sense.

Stay tuned, I'm sure I'll have plenty more examples and slightly more eloquent reports in the coming days...

Cometh the hour, cometh the review.  Right, let's try this...

For my first public opinion-spouting, I've managed to pick a suitably epic cinematic undertaking to delve deeply into - none other than Disney's Big Hero 6.

Oh yes.

Let's start by stating the obvious - this is no Saving Private Ryan.  Hell, it's not even Inception.  If you were hoping for high drama and mind-searing violence, step off.


Now I know diddly about the comic BH6 is based on and if you don't either let me break the plot down for you in a bite-sized analogy - clever kid inherits i:Robot and quest for revenge from older brother, then sets out with band of MIT postgrads to save the day.

Seeing as how the subject matter is based on a Marvel comic, this might just be the first sign of the Marvel vs DC movie battle spilling over onto younger audiences.  If this piece of work is anything to go by, that's probably no bad thing.


In more detail, the story revolves around Hiro Hamada, a bright kid with a spark for robotics living in "San Fransokyo".  When an accident at a technology fair leaves Hiro somewhat bereaved, his older brother's postgrad project - a charming healthcare providing robot called Baymax - makes it his mission to cheer the kid up.  So ensues an inevitable mission to fight evil and restore good to the world.

Beyond the kid-friendly, colourful cinematography and genuinely beautiful animation, being an engineer I was particularly warmed by the movie's treatment of STEM as central to the story.  Hiro is interested in robotics and his experiences with his brother's robotic "healthcare companion" bring subjects such as the ethics of AI and its interaction with human motivations to the core of the movie.  This isn't in a profound way - just that this is the first movie in a long time where technological ability is celebrated, rather than being an enabler provided by a supporting geek for the jock hero.  Iron Man did this to some extent with the first successful Hollywood hero with an engineering degree, but then Tony Stark isn't exactly a paragon of intellectual discipline or rigorous scientific method.

So BH6 deserves brownie points for making a good-natured and genuinely quite inspiring attempt at making engineering look cool to those who we desperately need to see it in a positive light.  On the flip side, the word "engineering" isn't actually used in the movie - the characters prefer to talk about "tech" as if it's something you find in a wardrobe:

"Dude, I love your tech!"
"Your tech is so cool!"
"We can solve this problem with tech!"

...but then I'd be the first to admit "engineering" isn't as fun a word to a tablet-enabled 6-year-old...yet...

Hiro and Baymax in his >cough<
 3D printed armour

The parallels with a children's Iron Man return in the occasional faffing about at holographic PC terminals and some particularly laughable 3D printing of armour plating for Hiro's cuddly healthcare-companion-turned-cuddly-Terminator-robot.  That said, I am grateful I didn't see any obvious Apple-shaped objects dropped in there, which in the engineering world would have been akin to leaving a Crayola carton on display in Mr Turner.

I'm also still not entirely convinced that linking intellectual ability with the word "nerd" is constructive for kids, but at least Hiro's companions fresh out of their lab at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology are placed well out of any conventional "nerd" stereotypes and with their loosely science-based "superpowers" add to the aspirational slant the story gives to technical research.

The movie's plot bobs along nicely and although the twists are gentle and entirely expected (how hard is it to guess who the bad guy is when given a choice of two?), it's enough to allow a good bit of character exposition and the struggle Hiro has with his thirst for revenge and Baymax's implacable, do-no-evil programming is genuinely touching.  The development of the team's equipment and Baymax's...militarisation is also quite fun although a movie this short doesn't really give much opportunity for them to get into more than a couple of action sequences to show off their gadgetry.

The conclusion leaves the movie happily open to sequels and from the general mood of the crop of younglings I had the distinct pleasure of sharing my viewing with was anything to go by - it'll be warmly received when it comes.  Given the "tech"-heavy theme, it's also a god-send for some serious toy merchandising

All in all a pretty fun, charming and artistically lovely movie.  But most importantly it's potentially a step in making the worlds (they're different) of science and technology more mainstream and genuinely appealing to children.

For that, Disney and Lasseter's dream-weavers should be saluted, whether or not that was ever their intention.

Taboos

Every now and then you share a thought with someone about something that's been bugging you, only to find they've been following the same train of thought.

I don't know where this particular one terminates, but it took on passengers some time between risotto and profiteroles last night and went thus:

Why is racism more unacceptable than any other form of discrimination or stereotyping?

If you see a kid lurking on the street of a cold evening in a velour tracksuit, peppered with bad acne and his/her hands stuffed in pockets, are you being a social reprobate by subconsciously checking where your wallet is?  How do you know that kid isn't going to turn out to be a medical researcher?  Conversely, how do you know that clean-cut, well educated politician isn't going to turn out to be a corrupt, lecherous thug?

Alright, using a politician is a little unfair, but an easy straw person to make the point.

I think the root of this came from Herr Cumberbatch's recent apology over using a racially charged term, but I was wondering if at some point in the future we'll be seeing celebrities apologising for having called someone a chav or a scouser.

The Right Answer

For today’s self-indulgent waffle, I shall spoon out the fanciful batter that is one of my favourite little throwaway comments that I regularly hear during my labours in the world of product design.  The comment that I refer to is that “engineering is easy because there’s a right answer”.  Effectively you have some textbooks and equations, you plug your numberthings into a calcuwotsit and out pops the answer.  Repeat as necessary.

Bingo.

I suspect product design is not alone in this and anywhere that “creatives” (we shall return to why that word is in quotation marks at a later date) rub shoulders with...technical people will have some similar sentiment bandied about from time to time.  Ignoring for the moment that it is sometimes - but not always - used with coy sarcasm, we shall assume that this is a serious philosophical sentiment and dissect it as such.

Let’s start with an analogy - it would be like an architect suggesting civil engineering is easy because all they have to do is make sure something doesn’t fall down.  That would constitute the “right” answer.

“Look, we’ve made loads of bridges - you just use all the same calculations and we can just make another one, ok?  I have to do the hard bit and make it beautiful.”

As will be obvious to anyone who’s sat a science exam, there is no such thing as a “right” answer - merely varying degrees of wrong.  Science and engineering are one in that, after about the age of 16, there is no higher authority present to pat you on the back and congratulate you on achieving 100%.  I appreciate that in other countries the cut-off age where your hand stops being held and the harsh realities of the universe take over may be a little later, but in the UK you start being taught at around sixth form (if not earlier) that you really don’t know ***t.  No matter how good your answer and your derivation of whatever equation from first principles, you’ll have made an assumption somewhere along the way that renders it not quite right in every possible scenario in the space-time continuum.  A real project consists of hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of these calculations.  Those inaccuracies stack up and conspire to prevent you ever creating anything “right”.  Engineering is a balancing act between the rigorous application of scientific theory and not losing your mind.

Further, the idea of “right” ignores the fact that any real world solution exists within finite constraints.  Designers are acutely aware of this the first time they go through the heartache and ego-crushing devastation that is productionisation of a cherished design.  Much like pushing a delicate fawn in front of a freight train.  Good design requires an understanding of the challenges of the real world ahead of time and adequate preparation.

Now, none of this is to say that I do not agree with the foundation of this sentiment - that design is subjective.  This could be debated (some designs are obviously wrong and others seem right - why else are all our phones filleted rectangles with glossy surfaces?) but the basic argument is that there isn’t a formula or process that anyone can follow in order to produce great designs loved by all.  We can all agree on this.  What I would say is that engineering is not purely objective.

Much as any layperson can appreciate the beauty of a well-styled car, they can also appreciate the elegance of the cupholder mechanism (contrary to popular belief, engineers don’t just do the engine).  There will have been an infinite number of solutions to that perennial human ache to simply store a vessel of liquid within a moving vehicle.  Compared to this infinite solution space, the number of implementations that quietly slide out of their lair in a majestically understated piece of mechanical choreography, eliciting that quiet approving nod from your passenger is a vanishingly small subset of that space.  But could any one of them be called the “right” answer?

I say not - there is never a right answer in engineering.  But there are plenty of ****ing good ones.