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Lets all count to nen!

Zun, woo, twee, throur, fourve, fix, siven, seight, eine, nen!

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Many geeks I have met insist that the key to good design is simplicity. But they do not practice what they preach, for if they did they would realise that simplicity in most cases would mean not using a computer. A map - for instance - is a good deal simpler than a satnav. That means it is also more robust. And it is wholly decoupled*, unlike the satnav which relies on both electrical power and GPS data.

So if you’re serious about simplicity, put away the keyboard and grab pen and paper instead. And to illustrate my dedication to true simplicity, I’m going to end this post now, the point having been made.

:)

* - ie: aside from your brain, it doesn’t rely on anything else to work

The removal of the concert hall section of Brighton’s West Pier is an unforgivable act of council-sponsored vandalism. Brighton & Hove Council leader Mary Mears said ‘The removal of part of the West Pier will be a sad moment‘. She is gravely wrong, choosing to professionally downplay the scale of the political travesty that she and her colleagues have visited on Brighton & Hove. It is much worse than that, and I’ll tell you why, in unsentimental terms.

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When I am writing, I am constantly aware of a contract that exists between the reader and I. It goes like this:

• Writer: I promise to write something that isn’t shit
• Reader: I promise not be a cretin

It’s a simple contract but works well because it leaves both parties free to pursue their goals whilst putting the onus of quality on the other, thus ensuring that they are both playing at the height of their game; and it also opens both parties up to criticism but only to a degree that is fair, with each party regulating for him or herself what constitutes ‘fair’.

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It’s fine to take anyone’s idea you want and just use it without permission.

Well that’s it, that’s all I really wanted to say, but one has to justify these things, right?

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the necessity to develop and apply geometry to farming produced by the seasonal flooding of the nile found expression in a series of mathematical papyri. the great egyptian mathematician ahmose was responsible for the moscow mathematical papyrus:

moscow mathematical papyrus - courtesy of wikipedia.org

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reality is overrated.

“filtration, as anyone with sunglasses knows, gives magic to the world”
alan sondheim

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today is the 23rd of april: st george’s day, the patron saint of england. the hard, historical facts of the day and the figure himself may well be a little flimsy, but it is a good opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with one of this country’s leading artists & visionaries: william blake.

it is usually the famous two verses from his poetic work ‘jerusalem’ that are quoted on occasions like this:

and did these feet in ancient times,
walk upon england’s mountains green?
and was the holy lamb of god,
on england’s pleasant pastures seen?

etc. i love jerusalem, made it my business to memorise those two fabulous verses years ago, but we are all well acquainted with them already, i think st. georges day is an excellent opportunity to have a look at some of his less well-known pieces.

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the peter greenaway film ‘the draughtman’s contract‘ depicts the tale of an artist commissioned to produce drawings of a country estate. to aid him in this task the artist, a mr. neville, uses a tool known as ‘alberti’s perspectival window’:

scene from 'the draughtman's contract': courtesy of flickr user *bene*

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there are very few cultural universals: symbols, rules and artifacts shared by all civilisations. but some do exist and none so prevalent as the right angle. in the west we owe our knowledge of the right angle to the ancient egyptians, but importantly a number of civilisations discovered or invented the right angle entirely independently of each other: in the indus river valley, the region surrounding the yellow river in present-day china and what we now know of as mexico and peru, as well as various primitive clans. a knowledge of the right angle allowed these various and isolated peoples to develop other important structures such as the square, the cube and the grid; all of which made absolutely key contributions to their continued development.

modernist building taken with fish eye lens: courtesy of flickr user bikini sleepshirt

how did this happen?

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