On my way back from lunch near Clissold Park yesterday, I spotted this awesome shop front entirely made from old computer main boards, glistening and shimmering in the low autumn sun.

I couldn’t tell you if this was an environmentally sound way to make use of electrical waste, but it is surely displaying the fascinating beauty that the physical reality of computers hold, albeit normally hidden from view and at best covered in a layer of dust.

Close up of the shop front, they almost look like functional art

I’d love to see a few lonely LEDs glowing on them at night. “There’s still juice in the batteries, you CMOS options are not lost yet…”

This Poster that is currently used to advertise Jack Daniel’s Old. No7 really winds me up.

I’m sorry about the picture quality, my ageing pre-smartphone mobile only has a low quality camera built in.

Here is what they have to say:

THE INVITE SAID BRING A FRIEND

It may not be what your hosts were expecting, but it will be a welcome guest nonetheless. After all, Jack Daniel’s in enjoyed in more than a few social circles because of it’s remarkably smooth character – the result of steadfast loyalty to its original 1866 recipe. Indeed, based on those qualities alone, you could hardly do better in choosing a friend.

Your friends at Jack Daniel’s remind you to drink responsibly.

So the invite to a social gathering said to bring a friend, and JD’s marketing agency believe that a bottle of bourbon makes for a suitable substitute. No, actually they say that a common ingredient for mixing drinks is a better choice than human company, because of it’s ‘remarkably smooth character’. Well folks, I don’t know how anyone who is swayed to believe that booze makes better company than a friend can possibly still drink responsibly, as such an individual would do well to instead confide their troubles to experienced councillor than a bottle.

On closer inspection still, I pose the question what sort of a euphemism “a few social circles” is for party crowds with a devotion to quantity, not quality of intoxication liquor, who by and large strive to do everything but enjoy the beverage responsibly.  I certainly have never heard of a “Lagavulin and Coke” or a “Scapa and 7Up”.

So as a host, I too, would raise an eyebrow if someone offered a cheap booze is lieu of a friend, and tried to justify it by exclaiming that what scratches that throat with 40% ethanol, is redeemed through its smooth character.

So you’ve come across barefoot shoes,  you’re interested in minimal foot-ware or you are simply health concious.  Maybe you are on this page because I gave you a link to it. Actually I am only writing this, because I wanted to give you a link to it and because I can’t remember all the interesting things about bare-foot/minimal shoes, gait, all the research and scientists behind it. And I need to remember all that, because I’ll gladly have a conversation with every-one of you who have asked me over the last days, weeks and months about what’s on my feet.

It usually starts when you and your friend stick your heads together start whispering. Or you’re one of the genuinely delighted people who literally jump at the sight of the shoes and start asking high pitched questions in sheer delight. That makes my day, too! Those things are Vibram Fivefingers, and they are very very comfy shoes, if you ask me. My Fivefingers are actually the first pair of shoes that I don’t take off when I get home after a long day at work. With “smart shoes” as the fashionistas tend to call those pointy high-heeled pinky-crushers, my natural urge is to is to push them off my feet without even opening the laces as soon as I’m through the door.  The arch of my foot hurts, there a spot on the heels where the socks are wearing thin and my toes feel as if they were a single fused appendix of raw soreness. But not so with my thin-soled toe-shoes, and it’s not that to don’t take them off because I like wearing them so much, but because I forget that I’m wearing shoes in the first place. That comfy.

That is one of things we probably didn’t have time for when we spoke on the underground, or through the closing lift doors as it happened today. I also probably didn’t have the chance to tell you why they are so comfy. They are so comfy not because these shoes are great, but because they allow me to use my feet in a way which I have never used my feet my whole life. And I am 35 years at the time of writing this. The trick that I am learning be a lot more concious about putting my feet down when I walk and rather than using the heel as a contact point to use the forefoot to make contact. But don’t let me spell out what so many people have described so much better, I’d rather give you a few links and you make up your own mind. I am very excited (still) about my recent (2 years) discovery that takes the pain out of my walks, but I’m not trying to tell you what’s good for you, or what you should be spending your money on. It’s always good to read more than one source so here are few pointers to get started:

Daniel E. Lieberman et. al. on biomechanics of foot strikes: http://www.barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/index.html

And the same story rounded up on Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134241.htm

Barefoot Ken Bob’s pages. He’s been running for years without:  http://therunningbarefoot.com/begin-here/

Barefoot Ted’s homage to “the book”:   http://borntorun.org/

And “the book” Chris McDougall: http://www.chrismcdougall.com/barefoot.html

Also feel free to search for “why barefood is bad for you” It’s good to get alternative stories.

As a last piece of advice if I may. When you buy some five fingers, don’t forget to buy some finger socks. You old ones won’t fit! My favourite are Injinji wool socks. Sooo soft and durable!

Fun things to do when you have minimal shoes:

• give yourself a foot massage every time you wait on the underground or a pedestrian crossing. The tactile paving (knobbly paving, often brightly coloured to aid visually impaired people) makes a tantalising foot massage when you rub the thin soles of your minimal shoes over them.
• you will get a lot of attention. Even months after first going to work in my fivefingers are they still subject of questions and debate.  Strangers will pounce on you in unadulterated excitement. Teenage girls will giggle. Mutters of disbelief be heard, fingers pointed. Blog about it!
• You will talk to strangers for no reason other than that they too, are wearing fivefingers.
• You will puzzle bouncers in clubs who can’t work out if you’re wearing smart shoes! Think about it, for a change these are really smart shoes!
• You won’t have to take them off at airports! Looks of disbelief, yes but not showing off the wholes in your feet.
• learn to wiggle your toes, and show off the skill when ever a fellow adult’s stare is transfixed on your foot. Works a royal treat with kids, too!

I thought I’d explore the UK’s south coast on foot this year, as I really enjoyed the BBC series “Coast”, I like being near the seaside, and the south coast is in easy reach with train services providing easy and convenient access.

But this walk from Brighton heading east, quite frankly sucks. Heading out of town and towards the marina, your feet and soul begin to ache at the sight of a generic out of town shopping/entertainment mall where the pedestrian access along the rising chalk cliffs should be the main attraction, but instead is marginalised and funnelled through a maze of concrete. The footpath winds through the left over spaces that emerged when the quickest (and laziest, in terms of imagination and planning)  vehicular access route from Brighton into the marina was designed. Or shall I say, engineered. The road comes high from the cliff tops, and its propped up lanes cut through the landscape with no regard to topography, landscape or urban design. Effectively it is a high-level box-section bridge that rests on cylindrical posts and slopes wearily down to the shopping/cinema complex, dissecting cliffs, beach and sea.

The trail crosses extensive car parks and a bland, repetitive cluster of predictable apartment blocks before the ending a shabby industrial section of the marina, where pedestrians are forced to double back on themselves because fences and a boat park obstruct clear access. From there on, you have no choice but walk for miles along a concrete enforced coastal path, that is more reminiscent of dismal military enforcements than the liberating junction of sea and land.

I shall certainly not return to this stretch of coast.

Today’s statistics on WordPress exclaims that there are 60,734,473 blogs using wordpress. This is one of them.

The statics go further to exclaim that “Over 303 million people view more than 2.5 billion pages each month.” and that “WordPress.com users produce about 500,000 new posts and 400,000 new comments on an average day. “WordPress.com users produce about 500,000 new posts and 400,000 new comments on an average day. ”

These are the stats for the WP hosted blogs, there are no stats available for all the WP run, self-hoststed blogs out there. But let’s make a crude assumption. Let’s assume that this statistic is roughly the same for most “one person” personal blogs of which there are millions more, each one being eaqual to one person. Even if as a statistical exercise we can not extrapolate to the majority of blogs on the web, it still means that for each of the 303*10^6 viewers to WP hosted blogs there are  8.25 page visits per month or  0.27 per day. It means, that for each WP hosted blogs, one in 151.84 blogs receive one comment per day, or around comments 2 per year.

In the four years that I ran coffeemoon, I have collected eight comments that have been written by humans, not spambots. Actual visitors that read a blog entry and left a comment. One of which was someone correctioning me on punctuations. Eight comments, four years, that makes two per year – I’m bang on target. But what this means is that for the hundrets of hours of work that have gone into this blog, I probably accumulated 15 mins of meaningful interaction with the the “outside world”. Maybe twice that, it doesn’t really matter. The time I spend in front of this computer, that I spend going to take photographs that help to decorate blog entries with pictures, reading about blogging tips, styling tips, time spent researching and learning plug-ins, coding styling tips, and debugging css stylesheets is time I spend alone, in front of this computer, rather than with friends. No doubt I am not the onle person out there doing this, there is a good indication that at least 60,734,473 other people are spending just as much time on their blogs as I do on mine. 60,734,473 people who’s blogs are a labour of love, an attempt to create something meaningful. For 0.27 visits per day, and 2 comments per year.

And this is just the statiistics for the WP hosted blogs, not for the entire bloggosphere, where a few shining beacons get all the attention. Boingboing.net no doubt does not have these worries. But for me, one of seven million people in my city it is. Because for me, this is a tangible statistic on lonliness. The more time I spend on this blog, the less human contact I get. The harder I try, the less I succeed.

Back when I started coffeemoon, I was enthusiastic, thought that running a blog would be fun, sharing what excites me, being part of that vibrant on-line community who fully embrace what this increadible technology has to offer to us. Sure there would be a lot of spam, and the odd troll, but it would be worth it. Worth it, because I would connect with a few people from around the world who might leave a comment or who have the same interests and passions, a kindred spirit who might share what they have to offer with me in return. But four years later, and hundreds of hours invested in this blog, I know better.

The statistical plug-in I run tells me all that I need to know.

Average time spent on the site 0-30 seconds. Statistically, you will not get this far in the post before moving on. Most popular post I ever created: The home made knife block I made for my brother. Courtesy a good SEO techiques a popular item with google images.

So for me, I should learn from my conclusions, and heed my own advice. Spend less time on-line, whether here on coffeemoon, reading some-one else’s blog (and thus ruining their statistics)or dating sites, and more with real people. After all that is the advice I read on all the sites that talk about loneliness in london, such as the happiness project.

But I have one question for you: If you are already lonely, if you use your phone only to call your bank because there’s no-one but work contacts in your phone-book, if you already spend your free days on trips going out doing what you enjoy, such as photography and learning to play and instrument, if you already do your own art projects, have hobbies and past-times, if you already spend every waking moment being active and doing things, how do you actually get to meet more people and spend time with them?

Ever since I heard a Kora play, I was in love with the instrument. And Toumani Diabate is delightful to listen to, his technical brilliance documented on loads of his CDs. “Recorded in one night, without re-takes or rehearsals” is not an uncommon piece of information to be found in the sleeves of his CDs.

And this collaboration between Balafon player Keletigui Diabate and Ngoni player Baseou Kouyate (“I speak Fula”, “Afrocubism”) is no exception. All are virtuosos in their own right, and together they will send you on a fast paced journey of string cascades,  themes, melodies and improvisations that never feels rushed or forced. No instrument is dominating, but they rather playfully take turns to interweave the strengths and beautiful sounds of their music into a ballet of harmonic delight.

Pure bliss.

On the last weekend in (more or less) sunny September I went for a walk a long the Sussex coastline. I took the train to Eastbourne, then headed to the beach and followed it West towards Beachy Head. The beach is actually  a cliff face with boulders and other rock debris that has fallen from the soft chalk cliffs, and further down towards the waterline the ground consists of slippery plates of chalky rock-bed. It’s an enjoyable scrabble over the rocks, and during the receding tide you have to be careful not to slip as the chalky stone can be very slippery, so naturally my eyes where fixed on the ground to search for a good foothold on every step.

Then I saw something that took a few moments to process in before I could make sense of it. I saw what looked like “imprints” of limpets in the rock.  Shallow oval grooves the size of a limpet’s footprint covered the rock face as well as living limpets themselves.  Close-up many of these imprints showed the detailed ridges of a limpet shell engraved in the rock.

I am no scientist, but it appears, that the limpet stuck to the soft rock is causing the current of the tide to “hollow out” the rock immediately surrounding the limpet. Imagine you are standing on a soft sandy beach waiting for the next wave to wash over your feet. First the ground is soft, the wave comes and as it recedes the shape of your foot causes the water to change direction and this in turn affects the water speed. The sand “up-beach” from your foot is being washed away and your foot sinks into the ground.

The same change in current is what I believe is the cause for the erosion of the soft rock.  Other Limpets (in their hundreds) are actually “sunk” into the rock this way a good 5-10mm!

Then there are the “bug trails”. Little engraved dots, irregular in shape and only a few millimetres across. They look like petrified pre-historic bug footprints. Of course they are not, but they appear to occur in patches and carpets in the same way (and often near to) the sea-grass [sic?] that tries to get a foothold on the rock. Could it be, that the flimsy strings of sea grass cause (soft)rock to erode?

What do you think?

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A thick cover of duckweed floats on Regent’s Canal this summer. It forms such a thick carpet that even the occasional passing barge can only temporarily clear the surface in its wake, before the green carpet once more looks as undisturbed as if had been laying there for months.

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The weed slows down the water and traps all sorts of objects, mainly plastic bottles carelessly tossed aside by passers by. But this carpet of life clings onto them, not allowing the rubbish to be swept away out of sight, as if nature wanted to remind us that once rubbish has been tossed and forgotten it has not actually vanished, and this duckweed holds it in place for everyone to see.

At night however, when calm falls over the canal and is only interrupted by the occasional drunken mumblings of people staggering home this duckweed plays part in a beautiful play of light and shadow that is so faint, the casual passer by does not have time to adapt their eyes to take notice before the scene is passed. The tree lined canal, and the street lights that illuminate them cast fantasies of shadows, shapes, reflections and glitters of light in sulky sodium tones of light and darkness.

What could an event in Hungary and an English Tabloid have in common?

Glad you asked. I just read an Article on the German News Site “Der Spiegel” that mentions that at the 2011 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Hungary Gold medallists Anne Knorr and Debora Niche had to endure the deprecated first Verse of the Deutschland Lied, who’s third verse only is the German national Anthem. The first verse, that was played, starts with the infamous words, “Germany, Germany above everything, Above everything in the world…” Written almost a century before the third Reich in 1841, the lines appealed to for a united Germany above the ensemble of small Kingdoms that it was composed of. However the lines where interpreted out of their historic context by the Third Reich to mean that Germany was superior to the rest of the world, and is thus frowned upon to this day. The Official German anthem consists only of the third verse, “Unity and justice and freedom…”

So where does the Telegraph newspaper come in? Well, they too list in their section on the 2012 London Olympic Games Germany’s anthem as “Germany, Germany above everything, Above everything in the world”.

And to add insult to injury, they continue to summarise Germany with the six word, “Huns, Hitler, Hasselhoff (forgive and forget)”

Not surprising then with this much research going into their journalism, that the German phrasebook that follows on the  Telegraph’ s website cites worse translations than the versions that  Google Translate comes up with.

I am shopping around for a wooden dummy. Even a quick search shown an overwhelming amount of results. So I began making notes to establish what the market actually has to offer. I am based in the UK, and I really can not be bothered to track conversion rates, shipment costs, and tax calculation that would be necessary to include overseas manufacturers/sellers.  In some cases dummies offered by joineries and other wood crafts to custom specs, while some sites offer a  huge array of (non)conventional designs.

All of this makes it hard to understand the width and breadth of the market. In short I wanted to know like for like what’s available in the UK.  As the title of the post indicates I am looking around for a wooden dummy, so have left the army of  illiterate sites that offer PCV/Resin/… wooden dummies. If site offer more than one type I have selected the option that is closest to a Wing Chun Wooden dummy, omitting all the half-trunks, spinning, three legged,  or ground fixed options.

This list is by no means exhaustive, if you know of other manufacturers/sellers, please feel free to add them in the comments.

Prices taken from respective websites on 19/08/2011.