Fewtrem Europa

Another Cultural Difference

2008-08-06T18:58:00.010+01:00

A look at cultural differences through free Property Magazines: France & America.

I was sorting through lots of papers some time ago (in fact I think I did a post about all of that) and came across two property magazines picked up on holidays: one European, one American. Before throwing them away, I enjoyed observing the cultural differences between them. So we have "IMMO 16-17 Charente" from August 2002 (France) and "Showcase Wickenburg" from August 2004 (Arizona).

The first obvious difference is that the American magazine has gone for quantity over quality. There are many more pages and each house description takes up more room, however only black, red & blue ink is used (pictures are only black and white). The French magazine is much more colourful and printed on better quality paper, but much thinner. Do European consumers value quality over quantity compared with Americans - food may be a parallel for this.

Another striking difference is the emphasis on the actual agents in the American magazine - placing pictures of people in cowboy hats at the top of most pages. There were very few pictures of people in the French magazine. Perhaps this indicates that America is a much more personal society than Europe. This would seem to follow the general view that emphasis is placed more on customer service in America and is probably also a result of the more entreprenerial society. The French estate agents looked more like proper companies than individual franchisees and this was emphasised by the fact there were less names and more logos ("Agence L'Atrium" vs "Carol Casey Realty Executive")

Other smaller differences include the absence of a legal notice about equality in the French magazine or articles supposedly offering advice on home buying. Perhaps this reflects slightly on the different legal systems. The final comparison I wanted to note that, although the French magazine is 2 years older, a minority of agents have listed websites or even email addresses whereas almost all of the American agents have at least an email, with many having websites too. This probably confirms that France was behind in adopting the Internet.

Overall I prefer the french magazine, it is more durable and the pictures are much easier to see and the language also seems to be much more formal and I expect I am used to the less personal nature of business in Europe.

Picture Blog

2008-07-08T21:23:00.001+01:00

Since I ended up with 1000 pennies I decided to put them to some use. Ironic picture?

Defence of originality?

2008-07-07T17:03:00.011+01:00

Considering how difficult it is to find a job at the moment, I am going to try to make a concerted effort to blog down some of my thoughts over the next few weeks.

I personally don't feel that I am at all original or creative. I can see elements of things that have been done before in everything that I do and how it is based upon past experience. This is to be expected - in most cases there are systems that work, conventions to be obeyed. The first case seems to restrict originality in any practical applications and the later in anything artistic. As a society we have developed ways of doing things, for example when watching a film we have learnt how directors build up suspense, portray characteristics, etc. To deviate from these would be like finding a new way to peel an orange that takes twice as long as it does usually. It seems to be difficult for a life system developed under natural selection over millions of years to generate new ideas with a high frequency. Therefore, when I see something that is truly a new concept then I respect the creator even if I don't personally like it.

As a species, if we are to achieve our underlying goal of continued survival, we need people to come up with new ways to solve the problems facing us. For this we need people to continually think outside the box. Though we increasingly commit ourselves across the world to the same standards of living, merging cultures into a single Earthly identity and viewpoint, reducing the variety of ideas, leaving less unique perspectives. Just as we have lost plant and animal species from our fields as farmers all demand the single best varieties, will we lose variation in our cultures? Clearly, one only has to look at the increasingly Western ideals that are spreading throughout China and Eastern Europe for evidence of this. Can we survive by all researching on ways to improve the current "best" products and systems or are we leaving a large gap open in our armour where a virus destroys our chosen variety where one of those we have disregarded would have survived?

I seem therefore to be promoting diversification for the sake of originality. I also strongly believe in the freedom to be a unique individual. Thus I will include one of my favourite defences of the European Union - a collection of many different cultures, to use the motto of the organisation, "United in Diversity". I would advocate that the cultural exchange between countries helps develop new ideas and the best methods are adapted across the continent. To combat this loss of variation, cultures must be preserved and this is done by people expressing their individuality (as well as being heavily supported by EU funding). Citizens are allowed to live in any member state they like and consequently many live where the culture suits them best, preserving it and promoting it. A particular case of difference is language - the tool used to express thoughts can surely have much influence in developing them.

So as long as natural differences in humans are around, exchanges of views which have brought us so much in the past will continue to proliferate results. Though we must strive to keep them around, whilst being free to choose which ones we identify with. Even though it can't be sensible to only have one system, a uniform Earth would be incredibly dull.

Minimalism

2008-03-12T13:29:00.003Z

Since returning home form university I have spent far too much time thinking. In particular about the contrast between these two places. One thing that on this occasion seems to be bothering more than anything else is how I have managed to live in a room where I could describe almost everything as an essential and now there’s a house full of things that seem either pointless or obsolete. Hence I seem to be increasingly advocating a minimalist way of living.

We are living in the transition to digital media – CDs are a classic example of old technology now taking up vast amounts of space in the home. A single portable hard drive can replace the entire CD rack. And the same thing is happening with video and perhaps with books sometime in the near future. There are other things too that seem to have their days numbered – there is no place for the stapler in a digital world, for example. Yet these things still make the trip to university - for now. There’s far too much more, however, that’s just been bought. It’s not outdated technology or ornamental and is now just cluttering up the place, often in boxes, but kept for sentimental value or forgotten about.

Its nice to live in a society where we can afford to keep and continue buying all of this junk, but our lives should be more measured on how we spend our time than on what we own. Managing large collections of personal belongings requires much time and a large house and hence more maintenance. I feel that perhaps some of the university style living principles should be applied at home – keeping essentials and focusing on how time is spent. Besides, rather than buying an item individually, we should look to share with neighbours where possible (and probably gain a better purchase). That’s another fundamental aspect of student life that seems to have been forgotten at home
All of this would also, of course, be great for the environment with less emissions and less waste. Yet in today’s Britain this seems incredibly difficult when people measure personal wealth and try to compete with neighbours rather than work with them.

Picture Blog: Transport vs. Technology

2007-12-19T17:29:00.000Z

The near future sees a big battle between the need to transport and the use of technology. A face to face meeting or a conference call? A trip to the cinema or download a film from the Internet? Work in an office or at home? Take a city break or play computer games for a weekend (surely not!)...?

Inform

2007-12-19T14:36:00.000Z

I seem to be increasingly valuing information as more important than objects that I own. Particularly unique and original information. Having spent weeks this year sorting through files, papers and what seems like (but unfortunately is far from) everything in my room, I have refined my ideas on what I actually want to keep.

If it means something to me, it is important to me to keep it. It seems that far to much does though, so its difficult to sort through my things. Firstly, tackling those useless "objects", those things that aren't paper or have a use basically, there seems no point in keeping them unless they are on display. Yet I still keep several collections of things since ts nice to look at them. Yet they will be meaningless to anyone else and most likely binned when I'm gone. So I have found myself taking pictures of things I know if I keep it will be even harder to get rid of them next time I do a sort out is helpful. I can keep pictures of these things on a hard drive taking up an increasingly negligible space as technology progresses.

The information of the picture lasts far longer than the object that's now in the bin. Ultimately this is true for everything on the Earth. When the Earth is destroyed, its existence will still be noticeable to people in the future from the light that has been emitted from the sun and its consequential distortions. An object can't be transmitted as light but a picture can be easily.

This works brilliantly well for all the paper I have lying around. Its possible now, although its far too time consuming or expensive, to scan in and even have an OCR program read and index all these pieces of paper and have them searchable - accessible to everyone online perhaps - and have them actually utilised rather than stuck in the boxes on top of my wardrobe.

They will also be kept for a lot longer - once transferred over the Internet, sent out in radio signals to satellites, broadcast across the whole galaxy. Hopefully it will easily be possible to scan objects in the future to preserve them fully in the future. If there is actually any value to any of the "information" we produce.

A quick thought (oh dear!)

2007-12-10T20:54:00.000Z

To add to the "because I was bored" label, I was looking at the map of the underground in the back of my diary and for some reason wondered if it was possible to traverse every tube line by changing at every station (i.e. not staying on any of the trains for more than one stop). I found one way if you count the DLR (it goes in a tunnel into Bank so I think thats okay) but couldn't do it without it. Theres the difficulty of teh Waterloo & city only having two stops and the East London Line being very short. Anyway, don't read this, there should be more interesting stuff on this page.

You could also get on at Old Street to add the other arm of the Northern Line to the trail. If I do this I'll update this.

Locations (a 20min-ish blog)

2007-12-08T16:48:00.000Z

As no one seems to read this, I might as well announce that I plan to set up a website about locations. I plan to have general locations which I find promote certain emotions and circumstances. Classic ones for me are in the built environment for example underground railway stations and multi storey car parks.

That is not really the subject of this post, but more the opposite - the irritation of the recurrent use of these in media - especially computer games. Although I personally love the underground stations that pop up in many RPG games, could we have something a bit more original? Some of the old classics, in particular I was thinking of Deus Ex, Rainbow Six, Metal Gear Solid & Half Life, there are many similar locations in the games:

Warehouses
Heliports
Prison Cells
Snowy Mountains
Tunnels with or without trains in / air vents
Lifts
Ports / dockyards
Generator Rooms
Hotels
and many more!

But we do we get fed up with dodging lasers and security cameras in what really could be almost anywhere without the graphics? I personally seem to play the games with a high priority to explore new virtual worlds, sometimes to annoyingly high detail!

A lot of the above involve transport systems - perhaps due to their generic set up and required functions that we are all familiar with but also because it adds a dynamic feel to the game. Certain locations, however, do seem to create certain moods and when done in the right way with a half decent story line they can be fairly emotional. The industrial style and scale of many, such as the furnace in Metal Gear Solid or the warehouses in Deus Ex add to the significance and dark side of the stories. This presumably helps suck the player into the world which is presumably what we want when we play games. Notably similar situations occur in films where the stories and moods are more vital, but I'm thinking of computer games today. Games give you the opportunity to play about in environments you may visit (or may just know about) such as a warehouse which you wouldn't get to do in real life - so in a way fulfills a real life desire. That seems to be why most games are based on real life situations which most of us won't get to experience - car racing, combat, mass management etc.

Notably the locations often make the most of what a character in the game can do - climb crates, swim underwater, shoot from a distance etc.

So could we get some other good locations? Here are some of my ideas (which may be in games I haven't played):

a level whilst parachuting in mid air?
a level on an icy slope with ice buildings?
more real life landmarks like in some early Rainbow Six games
mines / construction sites
fields of crops such as maize
offices with particular purposes - e.g. stock exchange (okay, the bank in Raven Shield was good)
a level on a motorway such as in Matrix Reloaded
more sports grounds / stadiums

but I must admit that I still love the classic locations, especially the underground railways! I also wouldn't want to advocate pointless, purely made up and unrealistic locations (the inside of a plant that produces newspapers?)

Any more suggestions or are we limited?

Some iTunes improvements (5 min blog)

2007-11-18T21:17:00.000Z

Just as an aside, I've had some of these in mind for a while, but shall I bother emailing apple to tell them?

Firstly, if I spend 79p per track I expect to be able to more with it that I can at the moment. For example, why don't they sell you it in a form where you have the individual track elements (instruments, voices, special effects etc.) available so that you can either play it as it was edited or select the individual elements that you want to emphesise (by changing volume / equaliser) or even apply special effects. You could remove an entire instrument if you wanted! It would be like maxing your own remix but surely easy for apple to do considering that tracks get produced like this (or at least they do if you listen to the music I do).

I would also love it if they could include the lyrics with the songs and have them appear in the top of the box Karaoke style - so you know what it is people are singing and can sing along. Again it requires the co-operation of the artists but then it would be worth 79p a song! Also, a slow / fast play button would be nice.

Finally, a little one, they could do with a "start playing from here next" button - how often I am listening to a track but then want it to jump somewhere else afterwards, but will be busy programming / typing up a report by the time it finishes the track and would like it just to jump there automatically. This would be so useful especially considering VNV Nation have many 6 min + tracks and I could be in the middle of a complex for loop by then!

I don't expect Apple will implement any of this if I emailed them, because people are still paying that 79p (or more for "DRM Free") but it would be great though!

Ditch the desktop and return to terminal computing

2007-09-21T13:29:00.000+01:00

Cable TV has been the poor relation in the UK Television market for decades but with the ability to stream on demand content in brilliant standard terrestrial and satellite TV resolutions I began wondering where this personalised television feed could be leading us.

If the current Virgin Media platform can deliver an individual stream of video to each box on its network then there are fairly immediate consequences for traditional TV channels and our video & DVD collections. I can rent a film from the comfort of my chair for half the price of the video shop and I needn't worry about having to get it back in time or if the disc will be scratched etc. So when will this brilliant service be extended to cover entire computer systems?

How wonderful would it be to chuck out the desktop computer and replace it with a small cable box with a few USB ports, a keyboard, mouse and television screen. The screen would receive a full resolution stream from the cable company's computers and the input devices would send commands back via the cable as is possible now using a remote control. The cable company would then take care of everything else for you. There needn't be any difference in the look and feel nor operation of the computer since the cable stream would just be what you see on computer screens today. Simply switch on the box and a desktop would appear instantly with programs and files accessible as they are on your desktop. There would, however, be no need for a powerful computer chip, graphics card and hefty hard drive in the cable box since the cable company would have all that hardware off site in something like today's Internet data centres. So you simply have the inputs & outputs in your home and the processing and storage taken care of somewhere else. Use the cable box's USB ports to attach your camera and USB drive.

This system would offer many advantages including:

No more waiting for the computer to boot up - just switch on the screen & cable box and its instantly ready to log in since the cable operators computers are always on
You would pay monthly or as you go rather than paying one large sum to buy your PC. The Internet would also be included in this price
Less time wasted trying to sort out technical problems since most hardware is maintained by the cable operator so little or no technical knowledge required
The processing power and storage is shared. This means that all of today's wasted storage and processing power inside the worlds desktops will be shared out and thus less needed in total and this should reduce costs.
The Internet would be faster due to the location of the cable operators computers on major fibre optic Internet links
Instant updates of programs and operating system - since you subscribe rather than buy you are always using the most recent version of programs.

There are, of course, several disadvantages of this system, mainly the fact that you rely on your cable connection working to do anything - even access your files. I don't trust Virgin Media with that at the moment! There are also the obvious security risks that would result in everyone's data being transmitted over the cable network and stored centrally.

I personally believe that aspects of this future is inescapable due to the ever improving bandwidths of the cable system. It could end up with laptop devices receiving streams via radio waves. It could be the return of Terminal Computing.