Shift of attention

You've probably noticed postings have been a bit sporadic lately. Everything's fine, but I've been spending more time working at the bookshop these days (more often than not, a couple of days a week) and that's strongly shaping my topics of interest. I have very nice employers who let me blog, and otherwise compute, at work as long as the customers aren't neglected; so, for the moment, the focus of blogging action has shifted to JSBlog. It has the same eclectic intentions as the Apothecary's Drawer, but it's generally seeded by book-related observations.

Server outage

If anyone's trying to contact me, sorry: a major server outage has taken out raygirvan.co.uk and a number of sites I maintain (hence the dead image links in this blog). It's possibly some kind of attack: in the hour before the server went down, I had 450+ e-mail bounce messages from various places that had received spam from Russian sites with the From: field forged to my address. I'm told things should be mended some time tomorrow.

Sorted: 22nd April

Rural photography - the shaping of aesthetics

For your consideration, two photographs of Sun Hill allotments, Topsham. Which is better, and why? I don't suppose I'm alone in the impulse, when I took the first image, to change viewpoint and zoom in to avoid the heap of plastic compost bags. Yet this is an aesthetic decision that bears no relation to the reality of what was present at the scene, nor the utility of the bags (which are just as important to the gardener's work as the wooden stakes and sheds).
      I had cause to consider this on reading Rural myths, #12 and a theme issue of the defunct photographic journal Ten.8 that came by the bookshop where I work. Ten.8, founded by a group of Birmingham-based photographers and journalists including Derek Bishton, explored an alternative/activist agenda on photography in relation to areas such racism, unemployment and social unrest, along with an general brief of analysing the meaning of photography. Who photographs and what influences their topics? Who benefits from its display? And so on. If the Rural Myths issue is representative, even if you don't agree with the politics this is a thought-provoking approach and one unusual in photographic magazines, which largely focus on the nuts-and-bolts of hardware and technique, and, at most, practical issues of the rights and responsibilities of photographers.
      Rural Myths contains several essays on the same theme: how photography of rural scenes has been shaped, from the start, by the social and political agendas of those taking the pictures. For instance, John Taylor's "The imaginary landscape" looks at how 19th century photography portrayed as "natural" a landscape that was actually radically transformed by agriculture and, especially, how it omitted rural poverty; and Stevie Bezencenet's "Landscape - Image - Property" looks at how photography's view of landscape as a prompt for aesthetic pleasure almost never confronts the reality of the land as property. Terry Morden's "The Pastoral and the Pictorial" and Peter Dormer's "Fantasy Island" both look at how photographic conventions tie into maintaining a certain reactionary status quo about the countryside: as a place that is expected to remain picturesque for the benefit of viewing by those who don't work there.
      There are interesting asides about how conventions alter in relation to current opinion: for instance, how the 19th century's traditional artistic convention of offsetting salient features became modified by early 20th century didactic tourist publications into centralising objects of interest. It's somewhat embarrassing, as a photographer, to find yourself repeating the conventions described, such as the urge to eliminate modernity (as with those plastic bags), concentrating on the folksiest parts of town and country. It'd be naive to deny that such conventions work in the sense of pushing the right buttons - the "Englishness" of a scene like this appeals to me as much as anyone else, and I wouldn't have taken the picture if making the composition didn't have that effect on me quite intensely. But at least that self-knowledge might make me think a little more about breaking out of that script.
      This aesthetic I think runs deep in the English collective pysche; it applies not merely to photographing rural landscapes, but is also a factor in shaping policy about land use. Attitudes to rural land are not permanent fixtures; historically, parts of rural England were intensely industrialised, such as the mining districts of Cornwall and West Devon, Even the quintessentially rural Kent, the "Garden of Engand", contained the Kent Coalfield (which remains surprisingly little-known despite the last pit closing as recently as the late 1980s).
      A Kent coalfield would be inconceivable now, as would many other projects such as building a new railway tunnelling through spectacular coastal scenery, as Brunel did at Dawlish (see Coryton Cove and Shell Cove). We've moved now into an era where conservation is the dominant philosophy, where the aesthetic appearance of English rural landscape is a major factor in the debates over (I pick sites at random) polytunnels, windfarms and new towns. It's right to consider the local and regional impact of such developments, but Rural Myths is interesting in highlighting the role in such considerations of ingrained and sometimes simply untrue memes of what kind of landscape rural Britain was, is, and should be.

Secret Topsham

Secret Topsham: a photographic tour of the lesser-known sights of Topsham, Devon, has been on my site for a while, but I decided to tidy up into a single document.

BT Broadband SMTP problems

Last week I had a problem with my BT Broadband connection: despite my authentication settings being correct, their SMTP server suddenly wouldn't accept my own domain address in my e-mail From: field. Only the btinternet address would work. Since I'd not done anything, clearly they'd made some configuration change.
      This was a pain in the backside. I had either to switch to a btinternet address (which looks amateurish), tell e-mail recipients to ignore the From: address and reply to a different one (which also looks amateurish as well as being messy), or find another SMTP server (which would probably cost). BT Broadband's helpline was unable to help, and told me a) there was no way to configure to use my own address and b) they couldn't offer support for Pegasus Mail anyway.
      I Googled, and found their advice to be completely wrong. There is a fix. You log on to BT Yahoo! using your btinternet address and password (i.e. the ones you use for SMTP authentication) and go to Mail / Options / Mail Accounts. There you find the option to add non-BT e-mail addresses that you want to send from. Problem solved: now I can used my own domain address again.
      I don't know if this fix is generally known, but it's not exactly a positive sign that BT Broadband can't/won't tell you about it.

Addendum, March 28th: I find, at last, that this is acknowledged on the BT Yahoo! Service Status page:

BT Yahoo! SMTP Security Upgrade - March 2008
As part of ongoing security enhancements to BT Yahoo! email, we have upgraded the security to prevent emails from being sent from client applications (Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird etc) when the "From" email address is not either a BT Yahoo! email address or a validated alternative email address. If you see an error 553 message, you will need to validate the email address from which you wish to send. Step by step instructions can be found at BT Yahoo! Mail Help.

Fair enough. But what baffled me, and many others, is that the relationship between BT Broadband access and BT Yahoo! wasn't made clear to me as a customer. Like many others, I was given the SMTP access details on signing up for broadband, but never realised that they also accessed BT Yahoo! webmail or that BT Yahoo! handled SMTP traffic for BT Broadband.

Addendum #2, March 31st: it is now becoming clear that this unnannounced security upgrade caused widespread problems among BT Broadband users. It'd be interesting to know how much money BT made from unnecessary calls to its helpline. See The Register: BT 'security upgrade' causes email headaches.

Anodised aluminium pot scam. The dirty ...

Anyone who watches Catherine Tate will know Janice and Ray's catch-phrase about traders they view as selling overpriced products: "The dirty robbing bastards". This is peculiarly appropriate to a scam revealed by the debunking blog Depleted Cranium, which notes that The Tesla Purple Energy Shield Looks Firmiliar….
      When you read the description of this Tesla Shield from the vendor, Life Technology (of Drumcon, Lisbellaw, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh), the creativity perhaps deserves credit, for spinning such a woo yarn around a little widget of purple anodised aluminium. The price, however, is no joke: $199 for the basic version (and even more for variants) - quite a lot for something Depleted Cranium identifies unmistakably as a capsule keychain costing $2.95.
      Maybe someone could identify more precisely the Zeusite shield ("a high energy compressed matrix of precious and semi precious stones, precious and non precious conductive metals, and monatomic covalent mineral elements which are specifically chosen not only for their protective effects but also their subtle energy enhancement effects"). To me, it looks like a ceramic bead, for $99.95.
      The dirty robbing bastards. I wonder what the Northern Ireland Trading Standards would make of this?

Convex/Concave

If you're in the Exeter area and interested in science/arts crossover, next week's Convex/Concave looks of interest. A free event on Wednesday 12 March 1.30pm - 8.30pm at Gallery Terracina, Exeter Quay, this is a "one-day public workshop bringing together artists and scientists from the South West to share practice and critique of each other's work in an engaging setting".
      The third in an annual series of events under the banner Science in the Dock, Art in the Stocks, the focus of Convex/Concave seems to be on visual perception: looks fun, and controversial in places. As the ESRC press release says, "In one session Harry Collins, a professor of sociology at Cardiff University, will argue that science is fundamentally different from art, and so it is dangerous to allow the general public to make judgements about science, in the way that they do about art".
      I can't much disagree with that: not because the public are stupid, but because they are primed with misinformation about science, particularly via the press's tendency to present conflict between major scientific consensus and small-minority views as equally balanced controversies.

Photographic rights and Exeter streets

UK Photographers Rights is an excellent and authoritative short guide, written by a British lawyer, "to the main legal restrictions on the right to take photographs and the right to publish photographs that have been taken". Alternatively, UK Photographers Rights, A Guide at Tog's Blog ("the thoughts and ramblings of a bitter and twisted press-photographer") gives the same information more robustly.
      I found these while reading around a minor local controversy here in Exeter: recent disputes about rights to photography in the newly developed Princesshay shopping quarter (whose architecture is highly photogenic) and Guildhall Centre. As the Express & Echo reports, security staff have accosted photographers - "Cameraman told, don't take shots in Princesshay", "New concern over photos being taken in the city", and so on - but the site managers deny there being a ban, saying only that permission is necessary (the issues, they say, are "safety and welfare of visitors", and "quite serious security implications" of "visitors taking photographs of shop frontages and staff"). A further complication is that the problem applies to only some of the streets in the development, the canopied ones that were the subject of a Walkways Agreement - see Princesshay is public, but only up to a point.
      Legally, this can't be argued with: landowners have the right to restrict photography. But it makes no intuitive sense in this case. Princesshay incorporates pre-existing street layouts that to all practical purposes function as public thoroughfares. Visitors in particular (Exeter is a popular tourist destination) can hardly be expected to know the legal fine print behind use of a street.
      My main other thoughts concern the silly assumptions behind the restrictions on photography, if the rationale is security. Photographers carrying SLR-format cameras seem to have been singled out for their visibility. This completely ignores the reality that high quality camera phones are now ubiquitous: anyone with a mobile could be taking a photograph under pretence of texting. Such large scope for clandestine photography really makes it pointless to pick on people with a big geeky camera openly taking photos.

Of course, security concerns in a provincial shopping centre are rather small beer compared to those in London, where there are buildings of major national importance and a history of terrorism. That said, there is still a spectrum between realistic concern and officiousness. Searching Amateur Photographer magazine for "rights" finds various interesting articles stemming from readers' reports of being apprehended for photographing London landmarks, and AP has strongly campaigned for photographers' rights. The politician Austin Mitchell, himself a keen photographer, has been highly supportive.

Radiation in the home

Via Bad Science, I saw recently a now-defunct funhigh.com blog post 10 Radioactive Products Used In Everyday Life!!!??, which showcased a selection of curious and dangerous products from days when we were more naive about radioactivity. Other examples are easy to find online: snake oil remedies such as Radithor (which famously killed Eben M Byers) and similar quack cures, commonly infusing water with radium.
      Not all were actually radioactive; some such as Zoé, le soda atomique "which gives you infinite energy as with an atomic pile" just used terms associated with radiation for the cachet. The Radiation Cookery Book from around 1934 looks to be an example. It didn't involve cooking with radiation, just gas, but it's an example of a product from an era when the term wasn't considered bad PR as the name of a flagship range of British cookers (the first to feature "Regulo" thermostatic control - see the Radiation 'New World' H16 gas cooker c 1923).

Archaeology's Top 10 Discoveries of 2007

From Archaeology Magazine: Top 10 Discoveries of 2007. There's much of interest here, but my personal favourite is Building the Great Pyramid, Giza, which reports the increasingly plausible theory of the French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin. As reported in How to build a pyramid, Houdin argues that the Great Pyramid was built using an internal spiralling ramp - thus - which ought to still exist inside the pyramid. It fits a number of observations, and is just so elegant that I hope it turns out to be true. There's further exposition, with pretty but hard-to-navigate VR models in 3D Life Player format, at Dassault Systemes.

Piddock - and an appendix

A few days ago in the RD&E hospital, Exeter, I was reading a very nice photo-presentation about the River Lym (or Lim) that flows to the sea at Lyme Regis. One very interesting detail in the accompanying text was the finding of a Roman villa and piddock shells, with the background account according to Pliny that the Romans used to like to eat these molluscs while bathing in the sea at night, the peculiar aspect being that the piddock (Pholas dactylus) is luminous, especially when the flesh is bruised, and left the eaters' fingers and faces glowing.
      According to other accounts, this bioluminescent effect is extremely strong: North Atlantic Seafood says "that if the flesh is chewed and held in the mouth, the breath becomes luminous and looks like a real flame" and that a single piddock "rendered seven ounces of milk so luminous that faces might be distinguished by it".
      Curiosity apart, the piddock is of mixed value: it apparently makes good eating (I'll take that on trust, as I can't stand shellfish) but contributes to coastal erosion due to its mechanically boring into soft rock to make the hole where it lives to filter-feed. The presentation went on to describe the work of Jan and Robert Knight of Knight Scientific, Plymouth, in elucidating the role of the photoprotein involved, pholasin, and its use as a diagnostic assay for white blood cells, antioxidants and free radicals. (They featured on the BBC's now-defunct QED science documentary series in 1993). Interesting stuff.

Appendix: this topic was, unfortunately, hard-gained. I had more time than I wanted to read the RD&E wall posters over Christmas, due to keeling over with appendicitis late on Christmas Eve and having an appendectomy in the small hours on Christmas Day.
      The story, should it interest/edify anyone: I'd been a bit unwell with intermittent stomach pains and bloating for about three months. There seemed to be a vague correlation with heavy meals and fatty foods, and my GP had been working through possibilities such as peptic ulcer, gallstones, whatever. On Christmas Eve, however, the pain become continuous and over the day shifted to lower right. On the evening of Christmas Eve it was bad enough that I went to the local hospital drop-in centre, where they prodded McBurney's point, and from my reaction instantly diagnosed appendicitis, near-rupture at that, and I was in theatre within a couple of hours. So no Christmas festivities, unless you count some of the team that wheeled me in wearing antler hats.
      Now that I'm on the mend, the pain and bloating have gone. Clearly the appendix was the problem all along. The history's interesting in hindsight. I don't blame anyone for not spotting it earlier, as early appendicitis is hard to diagnose. I'm in the wrong age group anyway (the peak for appendicitis is late teens), and only around 50% of cases manifest in the classic symptoms. Plus the bowel is bad at localising pain; the appendix is served in a general sort of way by a nerve that joins the spinal cord at the T10 vertebra, which gives a generalised mid-belly pain. You only get lower-right pain when the infection worsens and surrounding structures become irritated (hence the classic move of the focus of pain with appendicitis).
      As of 20th January, I'm still a bit knackered (minor complication when I had to go back into hospital for antibiotics and observation) but all seems well.

Appendix 2.I was very impressed by the quantity and quality of art on display in the corridors of the Royal Devon & Exeter hospital. This is because it's an official arts venue, the headquarters of Exeter Healthcare Arts. If you're visiting anyone there, take a look. The RD&E also hosts an annual 'Friends and Family' community art exhibition, which looks a good opportunity for local artists.

Dispersion in progress

At The Growlery, Felix Grant writes on Measures of dispersion: the merits of shifting material from one's private hosting to public space. I've been discussing this with Felix since we agreed on the move to Blogger of a joint project, Difference of Opinion (a collaboration starting about a decade ago that was great fun to write, a series of musings on early and modern computing, with a definite steampunk edge).
      As Felix says, there are partly selfish gains - someone else worries about bandwidth and site housekeeping. But such arrangements are also better for the user in providing facilities (flexible sorting and searching, for instance) that I wouldn't or couldn't code, along with known usability, good aesthetics and separation of content from style (you can change Blogger 'skins' very quickly, without disturbing the underlying content). For example, I just shifted JSBlog to Blogger; it needs slight work on synchronising the style of the blog and the main site, but it's already worth it for the great improvement in reader access to its archives.
      This will be an ongoing project for early 2008. Generally I've allowed my own site to turn into a dusty attic that's not a very good advertisement for work I'm doing for others.

Palace launches new mouthpiece

From the BBC: Queen launches YouTube channel. "Announcing the launch of the channel, a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said the Queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people".
      Not exactly. One of the first things you find at www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel is that "Adding comments has been disabled for this video". Stick it on the Palace website, fine. But don't call it "communication" if it's one-way.

The Gömböc

An interesting mathematical curiosity: the Gömböc (pronounced "gəmbəts"). This is an intriguing object, devised by Hungarian mathematicians Gábor Domokos and Péter Várkonyi, that has the property of self-righting to a single stable position despite being homogeneous, completely convex and not being obviously "flat" or "thin". (That is, this self-righting property is easy to obtain if you allow internal hollows or heavy inserts that skew the weight distribution, as in the Weebles or Balancing Ovoid toys - but not if the object doesn't curve inward, and is solid and the same material all the way through).
      As with many other shapes with useful mechanical properties, this self-righting behaviour has already been achieved in nature in animals such as the Indian Star Tortoise. More on this at the Mathematical Intelligencer article Mono-monostatic bodies: the answer to Arnold's question (PDF).
      A gömböc is, incidentally, Hungarian for a round thing, which may apply to dumplings or the sinister pork haggis in the Hungarian folktale A kis gömböc that hangs in a cottage attic and eats a family.

Compare the rattleback or celt, an object of no discernable application, but one also with unusual dynamic properties: in its case, a preferred direction of spin.

Potter Museum dispute ongoing

An interesting item in yesterday's Western Morning News: Legal row looms over stuffed 'zoo'. Four years ago, the unique if macabre Potter collection of taxidermy went up for auction at Bonhams. At the time, there was considerable disappointment that the collection was separated - see my previous posts. Now the vendors, John and Wendy Watts of Jamaica Inn, Cornwall, are claiming against Bonhams, arguing that the latter were in breach of contractual obligations in ignoring a £1 million offer from Damien Hirst to buy the collection whole. While the practicalities of this may well boil down to finance - the Wattses are claiming £571,932, the difference between the £1 million they would have got and the £336,000 the auction raised - it nevertheless is still disappointing that the collection didn't stay together. This article on Walter Potter of Bramber, West Sussex, has plenty of background on the collection and a sampler of its exhibits, and links to much else besides.