Isn’t life wonderful!

Each year people start getting the ‘flu about the same time that they start putting up Christmas decorations.

Are Christmas decorations responsible for the influenza epidemic sweeping the nation? Does handling all this mangy years old tat scattered around shops, homes and workplaces spread germs?

As a person who coincidentally hasn’t yet got the ‘flu or any decorations I’d argue that there is some kind of link no matter how tenuous, so to be on the safe side I think we should ban anything festive at all.

If you want to join me in trying to ban Christmas next year, send me an email.

Usual pile of old Christmas card pup at http://www.johncarling.com/web/play/xmas08. Bah humbug and all that. But I hope both people who read this post have a happy Christmas along with everyone else.

It looks to me like President FD Roosevelt created the New Deal to help the US out of severe economic trouble. He gave paid work to poor people, thereby improving the environment and, more importantly, putting money in the pockets of the poor. This eventually worked and a few years later the US became the world’s richest nation by far.

Rabid journalists are claiming the present economic crisis is as bad as the Great Depression. I don’t know if they are correct but personally suspect and hope not.

President Bush confronted with this downturn, however bad it turns out to be, seems to be giving vast amounts of money to the incredibly rich bankers and financiers who caused the problem in the first place.

Am I correct in this assumption or am I missing something?

Ooops. I’ve not bothered to write anything on this blog for ages. Wonder how many blogs end up like fallow fields in the middle of nowhere? I must have been busy.

Also notice that, at the time of writing, there is something a little wrong with the encoding.

Am I alone in thinking the shadow chancellor’s response to the latest budget sounded entirely like something from the mouth of Rik Mayall’s Alan B’stard’s Piers Fletcher-Dervish? Is the Opposition trying to be serious or are they laughing at us?

Adobe has finally produced a version of its Shockwave player that works on 64 bit windows machines! Until very recently this company which is worth many hundreds of millions of US dollars apparently thought that 64 bit computing wasn’t worth investing in. It looks to me like this giant software company though making software for new computers was too expensive.
However this version of the Shockwave player (10.3) doesn’t quite work the same way as the 32 bit version. 3d models do not always light the same way for example. The new 64bit-compatible version seems to bleach out anything with a direct white light falling on it unless the light is specifically given a darker hue. Still we must be grateful for small mercies and at least Adobe now thinks the growing number of users with up to date hardware should be able to see Director Shockwave interactions.

We could save huge amounts of paper, ship and box electrical items more cheaply and make our lives a whole lot more convenient if we used a portable electronic screen to display instructions for individual devices. The screen could be in another device such as a mobile phone or could be slightly larger and stand alone. The display screen/ chip reader doesn’t need to be clever; it only needs a navigation buttons to enable choice of and movement through documents.

If we agree a standard then we only need one cheap screen for every electronic item we own. Each item could contain a small extremely cheap chip not a lot unlike a pet chip. Instructions could be swiped into the display screen by proximity swiping or input via Bluetooth.

If you lose the paper based instructions for some device you can usually download them from the web, but this is inconvenient and relies on you having Internet access, probably via a computer and you have to go find them. Swiping your reader near the item sounds a whole lot easier to me.

Even better, we could put paperless brochures and contact details in organisers at conventions and trade exhibitions by Bluetooth or swipe technology. There must be somewhere that is doing this already. It would not only save a fortune, be a far more efficient way of gathering and maintaining contact details but also save enormous amounts of expensive waste. Again this year I was dismayed by the huge amount of expensive and unnecessary brochures as well as the inordinate weight of paper material being handed out at an educational trade show I recently attended.

If the reader was easy enough to use and book sized and probably with simple touch screen navigation we could swipe electronic books when we buy them in a book shop saving paper, energy, time and money. It would also make it possible to publish a more diverse range of books in mainstream high street book shops. If the standards allowed the readers to be sophisticated enough we could have cool multimedia too.

From time to time people ask me why I am not producing art anymore.

I am. Continuously. And no matter how much I try to convince them of this, people like to ignore all the evidence to the contrary. Along with the art world in general most seem unwilling to grasp the idea that serious art can be made without oil paint or some equally well regarded media.

Art doesn’t need to be in an gallery. It doesn’t need to be in a frame or on a pedestal. These last two do seem to help people understand that they are to look at something in a different more reverential way whispering if they speak near it. Does that make something Art?

If an image is in a posh gold frame in an impressive gallery the inference is it must be among the best of its type and be worth real money. Maybe that makes it good art?

Personally my oil and water colour paintings were all about the interaction between light and form and atmosphere among other things. My etchings were more personal in nature, but also explored light. The few sculptures I could afford to create years ago were explorations of beautiful soft strong forms seen in the light.

It seems to me that the computer screen issues light and as such is more interesting than a painting which absorbs it. We can use technology with software to create the illusion of light, form, texture, atmosphere, colour and animation. The technology could be paint, ink, watercolour or 3D software such as 3ds Max, Maya, XSI, Lightwave and the like which permit the artist to create limitless environments with emotive lighting and let you walk round them. We can explore these environments as well as produce images from them. The standard 2d packages permit the creation of some stunning images and animations too.

I’m always baffled by the idea that computer art which is transient and uses technology which we know will soon be succeeded by something more impressive is less important in artistic terms than something framed in a gallery. It is certainly harder to sell a virtual image than a physical one as ‘art’. But this challenge to the monetary ‘value’ of something creative is surely one that validates the unsellable rather than reduces its worth to society.

A Van Gogh is now worth a fortune. When he painted them they were mostly worth nothing. Would he rather have had enough to live on and a little human respect and have his work classed as ‘worthy but minor’ or lived the difficult, hungry life he was forced into and years after his death find that the immensely rich are using his work as a monetary exchange (until his work becomes untrendy) while the public gawp in awe at something they were laughing at a few years ago.

Ironically the value of transient art and virtual images in the entertainment sector is immense. Films with beautiful soundtracks cost huge amounts to make and frequently produce a massive return at the box office. It is a shame that we spend so much more on entertainment than on things that matter like ending poverty.

But life is wonderful. We are living in a time of great opportunities. The very same technology that is used to create entertainment will soon be used to save lives and bring people from round the world closer together. That is one of the things art is about.

I might be remembering things incorrectly but I saw the Punch and Judy show on UK Channel 4 at 7pm tonight and it reminded me that they used to have a news bulletin at that time. The schedule claims that they still do.

As far as I could tell the stars of this contest felt their job was to humiliate the other contestants. The main showman, Jon Snow, did grovel obsequiously to some neatly suited Tory who still managed to look uncomfortable. Caroline Flint did well considering the main aim is to have Mr Snow ask a question and then interrupt the answer as often as possible. After this some chap rather ironically ranted slightly rabidly about radical Islamists while someone else tried to get a reasonable word in edgeways. I’m left thinking that they are trying hard to do something to up the ratings. Perhaps they can give the fighting parties some weapons or show a car crash. Oh. I forgot they did do the car crash in immense and gory detail.

I’m slightly fazed by the news today. For the most part it seems to consist of a media scrum round some terrible family tragedy and news reports about new green proposals from the Tory Party. At the end of the reports they then tell us that these are just internal proposals which the leadership may agree with or not. Based on that sort of reporting your standard political party can propose absolutely everything everyone wants then if it isn’t met with immediate applause the leadership can deny it ever agreed with it and get even more positive coverage. I’ve noticed that there has been quite a lot of this type of ‘news’ article recently. The alternative to reporting fantasy policies is to report real ones but that isn’t so interesting.

The other bit of news is that the government is going to give all pregnant women £200 so they can buy decent food. I think this is a good thing but assume most of the mums needing the money will spend it on baby clothes and the like. It will help some others but they probably eat well anyway. That is not to say that the government should not give this cash, it is just that a payment for decent food after seven months of pregnancy is not necessarily going to go to any kind of food in the households that need it the most.

It may be the timing or the way this has been announced but it has been met with an extremely negative reaction. The BBC website (I won’t put the URL as it will only encourage them) has a huge number of rabid remarks like:
“The benefit scroungers are getting a great deal as it is. Now you want to give them another ipod? Brilliant.

If a woman is stupid enough to get pregnant while not having any money to feed herself then i hasten to guess these are not the type of women to be switched on about healthy eating.”

Interestingly this last statement about getting pregnant while not having enough money or food could apply to most of the 3rd world, large parts of the developed world and most of our forebears throughout history.

The comments on the BBC website were apparently close to 100% against this payment. Luckily when push comes to shove people from all economic backgrounds always have had children. Given this irrefutable fact, I’m a little baffled by the apparent lack of comments in support of this move.

It is also worth remembering that we already support pregnant women with maternity leave among other ways. As a society we do this because for our society to continue we need the population to continue and maybe to grow. I might be missing something, but the people who made the negative comments are the same people who may receive the payment. I wonder how many will turn it down along with maternity or paternity leave.

I’ve put a daily chess problem on my site. I found it on the excellent www.shredderchess.com and they got it from chess.emrald.net where there is even more.

The problems are not hard to solve. I think they are meant to be solved in a couple of seconds. See how you do.

Because of Adobe plugin problems with 64 bit machines it looks like I’m going to be moving over to Wirefusion which as a product has a version for half the price and relies on Java. There is an example of a ‘Bayleaf’ style house structure here. Other solutions are available. Write here if you have a favourite solution, or strong opinion on which is the best way to put 3d on the web.

There is an excellent colour vision example here at http://www.iamcal.com/toys/colors/ which web designers should be aware of. A well known site about colour vision is http://colorvisiontesting.com/

Looks like there are some problems with Adobe/Macromedia Flash and Shockwave Director plugins for people using 64 bit machines with Vista. Am yet to find out if it is the 64 bit or the Vista at fault. That is, did the same problems happen with XP 64 bit? And when are these problems going to be fixed? In one article I read Adobe just said they are working as fast as possible to fix the Flash problem but that it did work in the ie32 bit browser.

There is a little more here

Have just managed to get a little more time so have been able to read a book that isn’t entirely technical. It is a bit of an old classic best seller called ‘The Joy of Work’ by Scott Adams. I’d recommend it to anyone working in an office with a slighly cynical outlook.
Imagine most people will have read it already but in case not h2g2 has this about the book.