Posts

3D printers – about time I got one eh?

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Since I've been selling a 3D printer program ( PhotoToMesh ), since 2010, more than 4 years ago, I thought it might be time to get hold of a 3D printer myself, instead of relying on indulgent friends and beta testers. Here in Italy it was cheaper to by from a local distributor than Amazon.it, since if the distributor has a shop nearby, you can save 50 Euros on delivery by going to pick it up yourself. So it cost 599 Euros for my XYZPrinting DaVinci 1 3D Printer. Foolishly I had not thought to read the measurements of it, and when I saw the box in the shop I thought: Ah, what do I do now? I had to push down the back the seats of my little Kalos car to get the box to fit in it. I found a place for it at home, but with difficulty. Now when I buy things that cost that much I always feel a bit sick in my stomach. Am I doing the right thing? Will it work? Is it a waste of money? I decided to set it up the following morning, when I'd be bright and intelligent. Ok, stop smi

Linked-In and other pep talks only tell you half the truth.

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Many articles on LinkedIn are just disguised pep talks. These LinkedIn articles, and other self help courses, have titles like: 10 ways to become a successful manager. 5 methods to get rich quick. 7 habits of highly successful people I read "Irrationality, the enemy within" by Stuart Sutherland many years ago. It is such a good book it has been reissued: In it he tells the story of a doctor who prescribes a new medicine to a patient and the patient gets better. The doctor concludes that the medicine works. The problem is not only was that just a single case, but the doctor has no information on the other 75% of outcomes. The whole 100% is as follows: I prescribe the medicine and they get better. I don't prescribe the medicine and they get better (anyway). I prescribe the medicine and they get worse (anyway). I don't prescribe the medicine and they get worse. What the pep talks tell you ar

Long shadows at noon, and Wittgenstein.

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I was driving at noon one day in December and the passenger by my side said "It seems like summer!" The sun was out, the sky was blue, we were inside a car so we could not feel the outside temperature. I was amazed, though, that my companion had not noticed that the shadows were too long for a northern Italian Summer lunchtime. I mentioned this, tactful little sod that I am, and my passenger got shirty and huffy with me. And I was reminded of an anecdote about Wittgenstein: “Tell me," Wittgenstein's asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” Now, I must admit, I've had to read the pr

Three Fantasies

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I can't remember when the first one came to me, but the fantasy is of an infinite plane of rural England, always green, and villages with pubs which sell beer which never give you a headache. I'd walk from village to village under a not too hot sun, tasting the local brews, slightly tipsy, forever happy.   The second one came while I was working for Inmos Parallel Processors in Tokyo. Our bosses, when visiting Japan, would take me and another bloke out for a drink at night in the posher, taller, hotels in the center of Toyko. So on the top floor, with Mai Tais and/or Singapore Slings in hand, we'd look out over the traffic below and as far as we could see the cars and lit neons on small bars would stretch to the horizon. And with the alcohol in my brain I'd somehow dream of becoming (after death? after work?) a spirit hanging in the air over the busy streets of Tokyo, watching the lit up nightlife for ever. The third fantasy comes when I

A silver horse, a wasted youth.

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I complain to my daughter that she spends too much time on her smartphone. Then I remembered something I did when I was a boy in the 1960s in East Anglia. We had basically 2 TV channels available. BBC and ITV Our ITV channel was Anglia Television. Anglia Television children's programs started at something like 4:30 p.m. When bored, I switched on the TV at 3:30 p.m. During the day, when no programming was on, Anglia TV would broadcast a rotating knight in armour astride a horse. Handel's Watermusic was the sound track. And I would watch it from 3:30 till 4:30. Around and around and around. So however much my daughter spends on her cellphone, at least she does not spend an hour watching a model knight in armour go around and around. And around.

It's a miracle!

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A bit bored and hunting around for something to look at under my microscope I found a tiny dead fly in the cat's water bowl. So I used a piece of paper to lift I out and have an examine:  What you can't see in the above photo is the inner organs moving , which they were. It lives! I doubt that it has much of a "brain", but maybe enough to suffer. Maybe not. Anyway I put the piece of paper out on the balcony, the fly could not move much because it was held prisoner by surface tension. Half a day later I went back to see if it was still there. The paper was dry and the fly had flown. I imagine it flew back to it's friends and said: " A miracle! I thought I was gonna die! Drown! Then somehow I ended up in the open air on a damp surface which dried up. There must be a god! " Which reminded me of a young bloke I saw on Italian TV who'd just been selected from, I think, something like 20,000 other young blokes to attend the

Bad Comedy, Bad Conceptual Art, Good Comedy, Good Conceptual Art.

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There was an exhibition in London earlier this year of conceptual artists who use glass. Well, to be honest, it was an exhibition of conceptual artists who ask skilled crasftmen to make things. And one of the exhibits was an internal combustion engine made of glass. "Oh how clever. Oh how interesting. A robust thing made of a delicate material. "Now that is a concept worthy of the name." the critics blathered. Opposite as a high art concept. Bad comedy is like that. Some bad comedies are based on the fact that a character does or says something and another character or object, does exactly the opposite. And the whole 30 minutes is full of that repeated concept. Opposite as comedy. Here is one: But there are some good comedies, I don't know how they work, but they do. Intelligent, interesting, novel. Here are a few of my favorite radio comedies, you can find them on the  BBC iPlayer Radio Comedies web site. . Bye!