Grim up North Heath

Tag: dailyprompt

  • Why do the best restaurants close?

    Why do the best restaurants close?

    What is your favorite restaurant?

    I’ve stopped having a favourite restaurant. Of the five that I would give as my favourite, four have closed and one has taken a dip in quality that has put us off going there.

    Cafe Retro, Bath

    Closed 2020-ish

    Cafe Retro in the centre of Bath.

    When we first moved to Bath, we lived round the corner, from this place. It became our occasional Sunday treat, no-frills fried breakfast maybe once a month, evening meals maybe twice during the six years we lived in Bath. the decor is what might be called ‘eclectic’, with mis-matched chairs and no two tables looking alike. But the food is what matters.

    I had breakfast there on the morning of our wedding, in the company of my best man, who also loved the place because their veggie food was brilliant.

    Martini’s, Bath

    Closed 2022

    The smell from this restaurant was amazing.

    We loved the smell as we walked past on the way home from Sainsbury’s. Mainly garlic, some meaty and bready smell as well. We only went twice, because it was a bit expensive. Best dish was the chili chicken livers as a starter. I’ve tried to reproduce this since, but can’t quite get it right.

    On our second visit, Chris Evans (the DJ) was having dinner with a huge group of friends.

    Cafe Notturno, Melbourne

    Closed 2023

    Cafe Notturno, fantastic pizzas and much-needed cheesecake.

    “Nottie’s” as we knew it, was on Lygon St, Carlton in the heart of what was the Italian quarter. We visited often, they did great pizzas and the best cheesecake. When Mrs S was pregnant I would go there to get cheesecake for her. We also went there the evening Mrs S’s parents flew in to see their first grandchild. They have no memory of that meal.

    They closed after 45 years some time before we revisited Melbourne in 2025. The site is now one of many Indian restaurants on the street – the diversity of cuisines has expanded somewhat in the 20 years we were away.

    Tristan’s, Horsham

    Closed 2022

    The only Michelin starred restaurant I’ve been to more than once (been to one other ever). All four visits were wonderful experiences. The thing with very high quality food is that you don’t get a lot, but you’re full afterwards. Last time we went, we had the four course seasonal menu (below). Considering the quality of the food, £50 is a bargain especially with the occasional amuse bouche thrown in.

    Menu from our last visit to Tristan’s. The menus had a seal, so you could pretend you’re doing Taskmaster!

    I had the crab, then quail, lamb and cheese afterwards. Previously we’d had rabbit and I even found a mushroom I like. Girolle1, which, of course, are chuffing expensive (about £1 each). I got a free tot of whisky (Monkey Shoulder, a blend of unpeated malts2) when we went on my birthday (my 50th, I think). They also serve wine of such quality even I could smell the blackberry in it (Boom Boom, California Red by Charles Smith). Normally, all I can smell in red wine is ‘wine’.

    There’s a more complete review on this blog post by Major Foodie.

    A pub (near Guildford)

    We used to live going to this pub for Sunday lunch. It’s close to where my father-in-law is buried, it was my pick for my birthday meal at work after the company moved to Guildford. Unfortunately, it changed hands a few years ago and since then there’s something a bit off about the food, the service and the ambiance. We’re scouting for a new place in the area, there’s plenty of pubs around that do good food, but finding one we feel comfortable in may take time.

    1. Also known as chanterelle mushrooms. ↩︎
    2. Launched in 2005, Monkey Shoulder is intended as a cocktail whisky, but I’m very happy to drink it as is. They now do a ‘Smokey Monkey’ as well as the unpeated version. ↩︎
  • Escape from the corporate roundabout

    Escape from the corporate roundabout

    Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

    This is one of those questions that gets asked at interviews1. I’m not quite sure what the correct corporate answer is. I know there are several wrong answers: “laughing hysterically on a pile of my dead enemies”; “In your chair”; “In a job where I’m not asked stupid bloody questions”. Any of these answers would result in the swift termination of the interview.

    The AI wouldn’t let me generate an image with the prompt “laughing hysterically on a pile of my dead enemies” so I had to substitute “dead enemies” with “dolls”. Which is worse.

    Luckily I’ve never been asked that. There’s two things to say about this question for me: first of all in 10 years time I’ll be getting close to the age when I can collect a state pension in the UK. So as long as I’m still healthy and compos mentis2, I’ll be fine with that.

    Secondly, today I started a new job. It’s part-time, at the local sixth form college, and they weren’t damn fool enough to ask where I saw myself in ten years time.

    Whether I’ll still be doing this in 10 years time I don’t know, I’ve only done one day. It depends really on how well the Heath Way Prints business – or any of the other business ideas I have – go.

    1. Along with “Why do you want to work at (this place)? When I interviewed as night-shift staff at a local supermarket, I came up with some spectacular bullshit. The real answer – I need the money – wouldn’t have worked. ↩︎
    2. Or compost mental. ↩︎
  • Iain Banks: The Player of Games

    Iain Banks: The Player of Games

    What book could you read over and over again?

    There are a lot of books I’ve read several times. I’m pretty sure I’ve read most of Terry Pratchett’s books at least three times (exceptions), all the Flashman books a couple of time, too. Another author I am very fond of, who isn’t Pratchett, is Iain M. Banks (1954 – 2013).

    The ‘M’ (For Menzies1) is important. Mr Banks wrote literary fiction as Iain Banks and added the M for science fiction.

    The Culture

    Most of his SF books are part of The Culture series. The Culture is a post-scarcity civilisation spanning many star systems in the Milky Way. Its living inhabitants are mainly humanoid (Earth features in one short story) and are effectively immortal. Minds, hyper-intelligent artificial intelligences, oversee the civilisation.

    A common problem for the people of The Culture is boredom. Many people have drug glands implanted to provide sexual stimulation, speed up neural processes, improve memory, enhance concentration or help you wake up after a night of overindulgence. You can change gender as often as you wish. You can acquire a new body2 in any form. You can indulge in any fantasy with a virtual reality that indistinguishable from reality. How tedious. One way to avoid boredom is to play board games.

    Player of Games (1988)

    In Player of Games, the main character, Gurgeh, is one of the elite games players of The Culture. A rogue drone, acting for the Minds, blackmails him into accepting a mission for which he is uniquely qualified: to win a game called Azad.

    This is no ordinary game, though. The Empire of Azad is built around the game. The champion becomes Emperor, your performance in the championships determines your career progression. The game is the empire, the empire is the game. The boards fill huge rooms, semi-sentient game pieces add unpredictability to the game and competitors spice up play with side bets that range from loss of money to radical surgery for the loser.

    This isn’t quite how I imagined the boards in the game of Azad, but this is the sort of scale of one of the boards. Picture by Sam Fontaine.

    Gurgeh spends the months it takes to reach Azad learning the game. He arrives in good time to join the tournament and is shocked to find a society with rigid gender ideas (albeit there are three genders) and a strict caste system. This goes counter to the free-wheeling, (almost) anything goes anarchy that Gurgeh knows. But if anyone knows how important rules are in a game, it’s Gurgeh.

    How he copes with a society he can’t understand without understanding the game that underpins the society is the core of the book.

    Why do I come back to it?

    This and the next in the series, Use of Weapons show Banks expanding The Culture into the bedrock of the following series. He wrote nine novels and one short story collection about The Culture.

    I love the inventiveness of the society that Banks created. The Culture is a paradise, and for most of the trillions of people who live in it their only concern is what party to go to and who they next have sex with. For some, this is not enough. The game players all feel the need to reduce the tech level of their lives. Having real, visceral objects to play with against an opponent who is your intellectual equal is an ideal that replaces the virtual that is freely available. We see this now, where people want lower-tech phones, seek early gaming consoles and, indeed, play board games.

    I saw a criticism of The Player of Games that held the position that Banks, writing in 1988, couldn’t have predicted the rise of computer games where you can play against people in different countries. I’d say Banks was spot-on. People surrounded by tech want to be able to switch off, to play chess, to carve things from wood, to learn a musical instrument3.

    So the well-realised society that is explored is a pull. But the character of Gurgeh, his journey, and the mystery of the game and civilisation of Azad get expanded upon in every reading. That’s what brings me back to this, of all the Culture books.

    1. Pronounced ‘ming-iss’ or ‘ming-eez’. ↩︎
    2. In Excession one character does both. They become female to have a baby and end the book with the body of an alien species. The Hydrogen Sonanta, the last Culture book, features a 10,000 year old man who once spent five years as a whale. ↩︎
    3. There’s an aspect of this in The Hydrogen Sonata. The protagonist has spent years learning how to play a particular musical instrument. She even had major surgery to enable her to play properly. An AI controlled robot could play it perfectly. But that wasn’t the point. ↩︎
  • When I’m cleaning windows

    When I’m cleaning windows

    When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

    I had a range of jobs I wanted to do when I was little. I saw my first combine harvester (or “combast harvinger” as I called it) at the age of three I wanted to drive one of them.

    When I went to school we were often asked what we wanted to do when we grew up. Now, I’ve never really known what I want to do, should I ever grow up. It changed every time, and I kind of fell into science. I envy Mrs S, who always knew she wanted to act. However, when I was five I said I wanted to be a window cleaner.

    Why I said this, I don’t know. We didn’t have a window cleaner at home, my parents cleaned our windows themselves. Someone may have cleaned the school windows, but I never saw them, despite our house backing into the school grounds. It may have been a telly programme such as Nationwide or Blue Peter that showed window cleaners cleaning tall buildings that lodged the idea in my head. Or perhaps George Formby influenced my decision.

    George Formby (Jr)

    When I think about window cleaning now, the famous song by George Formby1 comes to mind and won’t leave.

    Released in 1936, the song was banned by the BBC. The lyrics were a bit risqué for the time:

    The blushing bride she looks divine,

    The bridegroom he is doing fine

    I’d rather have his job than mine

    When I’m cleaning windows.

    Lord Reith, the controller of the BBC, expressed his disgust and contempt2:

    If the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they’ll have to be content to hear it in the cinemas, not over the nation’s airwaves

    John Reith, the first Director General of the BBC. He insisted that the BBC should give equal consideration to all viewpoints. But they should also not broadcast what he saw as filth.

    The royal family disagreed and King George VI requested that he play the song for them at a royal command performance.

    Formby didn’t care what Lord Reith said. His star was on the rise and he became the highest paid British entertainer with a six-film £500,000 contract with Columbia Pictures.

    Segregation and World War II

    Formby died in 1961, aged 56. In the alternative 1985 of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, he’s the President of a republican England. At a book signing in 2004 I asked him why he chose Formby to be the president. The answer was remarkable.

    During the Second World war, the Entertainments National Services Association (ENSA) paid Formby £10 a week to provide entertainment and morale-boosting content. This he did, making films and touring factories, theatres and concert halls. He performed in Normandy after the D-Day landings, giving impromptu concerts in barns and on the back of farm carts. His 1940 film Let George Do It! got great reviews on its release in America as To Hell with Hitler.

    George Formby entertains a crowd of soldiers from the British Expeditionary Force with his ukulele in France on 13 March 1940. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205225842

    When the USA joined the war, Formby received a commission to perform for the American troops stationed in Britain. He refused initially, standing firm against performing in front of a segregated audience. Fforde explained that Formby saw segregation as a class issue. As a result of this stand, the US commanders ensured that his concerts were to to non-segregated US troops. In addition to his Normandy performances, he did nine concerts to the 6th Airborne Division standing beside a sand-bag wall to an audience in fox holes.

    All this put a new perspective on a man I’d only ever seen as a turnip-faced ukulele strummer who sang silly songs. His position as a fictional President of England was clearly justified.

    Goes to show, you can’t judge by appearances.

    1. His father was also billed as George Formby. In Warrington cemetery there is a huge monument to George Formby. As an afterthought there is the inscription “Also George Formby OBE, son of the above”. ↩︎
    2. The BBC has a great tradition of blocking songs that now seem innocuous. I Am the Walrus by The Beatles got banned because it contained the word ‘knickers’. ↩︎
  • Margin calls and Trading Places

    Margin calls and Trading Places

    What’s something most people don’t understand?

    The stock exchange scene at the end of ‘Trading Places’ confused me for many years. I learned, many years later, just what was going on and how stock trades aren’t linear in the same way shopping is.

    The set up

    Trading Places is a 1983 comedy film starring Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy and Jamie Lee Curtis. These younger actors get first class support from Denholm Elliot, Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy.

    Ackroyd plays Louis Winthorpe III, managing director of Duke & Duke Commodity Brokers. The Duke brothers (Ameche and Bellamy) are capricious millionaires who only care about money.

    Mother said you were greedy

    She meant it as a compliment

    Street hustler Billy-Ray Valentine (Murphy) enters the scene and is arrested after a misunderstanding between him and Winthorpe. The Duke brothers decide to run an experiment, to investigate nature versus nurture. They bet on this for “the usual amount”.

    They ruin Winthorpe by planting drugs on him. After his arrest he loses his job, his house, his fiancée and has his assets frozen and credit cards cut up. Ophelia (Curtis), a prostitute released from the police station at the same time, lets him stay with her while he gets his life in order.

    Ophelia and Louis meet outside the police station.

    The Dukes give Valentine a job (Winthorpe’s job) and a house (Winthorpe’s house) with a butler, Coleman (Winthorpe’s butler, played by Denholm Elliot).

    At a Christmas party at Duke & Duke, Winthorpe – dressed as Santa Claus – tries to frame Valentine for drug use. This fails. Security eject Winthorpe, but not before he manages to steal a side of salmon to hide in the beard.

    Winthorpe has reached rock bottom. Trying to eat a side of salmon through his fake beard on a bus.

    In the toilets, Valentine overhears the Dukes discuss their bet. They declare the nature v nurture debate settled and the bet is paid. All $1 of it.

    Winthorpe has hit rock-bottom. His suicide bid fails when the gun he traded his watch1 for fails to fire. He takes an overdose of the drugs he used to frame Valentine and passes out in Ophelia’s bath. When he recovers, he finds himself back in his own home, reunited with his butler and less than pleased to see Valentine. Valentine explains how the Dukes did this to them for a $1 bet. The pair seek revenge.

    Revenge is ours!

    Since the only thing the Dukes care about is money, they decide to ruin them. They give the Dukes false information that the orange harvest will be poor, which leads them to decide to corner the market in frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ).

    The final scene is where the confusion lies. Trading floors in the early 80’s were high-tension environments. We see traders asking about each other’s stomach ulcers and hypertension before going into the bear pit that is the high-stakes world of trading frozen concentrated orange juice.

    The high-stakes world of frozen concentrated orange juice trading.

    The Dukes, confident that the price of FCOJ will rocket because of the bad harvest, start buying FCOJ futures. This creates a speculative bubble and drives up prices. Winthorpe then announces that he will sell 30 April futures, each of 15,000 lbs, at $1.42 a pound. They are mobbed, selling to everyone. The price drops and the Dukes watch in horror as they face ruin.

    The Duke brothers realise something is amiss.

    After an hour of frantic activity the true crop report is broadcast. This forecasts a normal harvest. The price of FCOJ plummets and panic ensues. When the price hits 46c, Winthorpe starts buying from everyone except the Duke’s broker. The final price is 29c a pound.

    At the margin call, when all trades have to be settled, Winthorpe and Valentine see the Dukes. They also had a bet; Valentine bet Winthorpe that they could ruin the Dukes. Winthorpe pays up.

    Winthorpe pays up on the bet he had with Valentine.

    Exchange officials confront The Duke brothers. They must pay $394 million (over $1 billion today) to cover their trading losses. This exceeds their assets, and the brothers are bankrupt. Even at the end while one of the Duke brothers collapses with a heart attack, money is first and foremost.

    Official: Mortimer, your brother is not well. We better call an ambulance.

    Mortimer: Fuck him2! Now listen to me! I want trading reopened now!

    The film ends with Winthorpe, Valentine, Ophelia and Coleman on a beach, trying to decide whether to have lobster or cracked crab for lunch.

    What I don’t understand…

    How trading works is at the centre of this scene. In the world of brokerage buying and selling aren’t necessarily linear. You can sell things you haven’t yet bought. If you think the price will fall, you sell as many of a thing as possible with a promise to supply at an agreed time. Then you have to buy the thing and if the price has dropped, you get profit.

    The Dukes think that a poor harvest will mean frozen juice will be in demand. So they think that the price of FCOJ will be high in April. They tell their dealer to keep buying, no matter what.

    Winthorpe sells 30 contracts, each containing 15,000 lbs of juice for $1.49 a pound – that’s $639,000. This is a promise to sell that juice in April at that price. How much he eventually pays for the juice is not the buyer’s problem. A poor harvest would indicate that this could be a good price. No wonder they get mobbed.

    The real crop forecast is released after an hour’s trading. Winter storms have not affected the harvest, so the value of the frozen juice plummets. Panic ensues, the FCOJ price tanks until it reaches 29c a pound. Winthorpe and Valentine start buying the juice that they will sell in April at a much reduced price. Nobody will want frozen juice in April when there is plenty of fresh juice.

    Had Winthorpe and Valentine only done that first trade they would have made $508,500 by buying at 29c and selling at $1.42. but they did many more trades than that – it’s never clear how many, but it’s a lot.

    On the other hand, the Dukes are in the hole for $394 million. They bought a huge amount of stock at the high price and couldn’t sell it before the end of trading. They need to pay for the juice they bought at $1.42 a pound.

    If only the Dukes weren’t so greedy. But then, if they weren’t there wouldn’t have been a moral for this story.

    1. A Rochefoucauld, the thinnest waterproof watch in the world. Retails for $6955. Bo Diddley gave him $50 for it. ↩︎
    2. Don Ameche apologised to the crew for swearing. ↩︎

  • Easier and faster but more demanding research

    How has technology changed your job?

    I’ve only been in my current job for a year. My previous job, science research, changed considerably over the thirty-plus years I did it.

    Back in the old days

    Science and research relied on manual methods when I started in science, doing my undergraduate degree at Loughborough from 1989 to 1993. In the university library there was a mix of card indexes and a new computer system.

    The Pilkington Library, Loughborough University. The unusual inverted pyramid design is not an accident, we were told. I’m not so sure.

    Finding the book you wanted meant being familiar with the library layout and knowledge of the Dewey Decimal system. I spent a lot of time in the 540s (Chemistry) and later, in particular, 541.35 (photochemistry) for my final year project.

    What neither the card index nor the computer index could help you with was looking for a journal article. If you knew the details of the article, from another article, for example, then it was easy enough. Locate the journal in the library and hope that the volume you want is available. Otherwise it was the dreaded Inter-library loan (ILL), which cost money and took weeks.

    If you didn’t know the particulars of the article you wanted, only that it was written in the mid-1970s by PF Morgan in one of the American Academy of Sciences journals, you were pretty stuffed.

    Web of Science

    With the advent in the 1990s of the Web of Science in the 1990s, you could search for a term. This meant that you could search for Morgan, PF and add search terms ‘silicone dioxide’ and the year range 1972 to 1978. And bingo! You found that article you were looking for five years ago and can no longer remember why you wanted it. Mainly because you were investigating photochemistry in 1992, but in 1997 you are working in a geology lab.

    All this seems pretty lame by today’s standards when we are all search-engine savvy. But it was a revelation at the time and exactly what computers are for.

    This means you can find a reference in a journal you don’t have in the library. And furthermore, now you can download the journal article often for a hefty fee. Last I looked the top fee was $60 for access to a single article. This does not encourage the flow of knowledge.

    The flip side of easier research is that expectations are higher. When I had my PhD viva (in 2002), the external examiner was keen to point out that I’d missed what he considered a vital paper on the subject. He had published it in 1978, and I could only apologise and accept his comment that I shouldn’t have relied on computer searches. I checked afterwards. The article hadn’t been cited since 1985. No wonder I missed it.

    Today, there really would be no excuse for missing even a very old article. The web of science is everywhere. However, I don’t know whether non-English articles get pulled into the web of science.

    Statistics and computers

    One other thing that is now much easier with the use of computers is statistics. In 2019 I completed a Masters in Quality by Design. This technique for improving the quality of manufactured goods relies heavily on a variety of statistical methods. To say this would be difficult, tedious and prone to error without fast computers would be an understatement.

  • Flames… on the side of my face

    Flames… on the side of my face

    What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?

    I know someone who never re-watches films or re-reads books because they know what’s going to happen. I told them they were missing out, because good writing rewards a re-watch. Subtleties, callbacks, brick jokes, references you missed first time because you were following the plot. Also, things you didn’t understand because you were twelve the first time you read Lord of the Rings (for example) and at fifty you have a much better sense of the world, how plot works, and you realise Sam is the real hero after all.

    Some candidates

    There’s few things I’ve seen as many as five times. They’d need to be quite old because, despite what I just said, I do think rewatching too frequently is not rewarding. And I think to qualify I’d need to have watched the whole thing.

    This latter disqualifies Red Dwarf. I’m sure I’ve watched most of the first five series many times, especially when I was a student back in the early 90s. But from series 6 onwards there was a drop-off in quality and laughs. I watched 7 (I laughed once), some of 8 and haven’t seen much of any of the latter series.

    I watch Taskmaster regularly, (and blog about it, and make t-shirts too) but I’ve not seen any of the episodes more than three times. There are nearly 200 of them, and they keep making new ones.

    Spaced (1999-2001)

    The TV series I’ve probably seen five times is Spaced, a sitcom centring around two 20-somethings, Daisy and Tim, who share a flat in a house alongside Marsha, their permanently sozzled landlady, and the artist Brian. We follow them as they learn to share a flat, cope with each other’s friends and fail to get their act together. This was two series, first shown in the early 00’s. Starring Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg, who co-wrote the series with direction from Edgar Wright, saw the series as a reaction to the perfect ‘friends’ sitcoms that were prevalent at the time. A somewhat surreal series, the episode are dense and full of visual and verbal jokes, cultural references and call-backs.

    The main cast are supported by some surprising one-off guest actors. The third episode Art features David Walliams as the conceptual artist Vulva1, a former artistic partner of Brian. This was the highlight of Walliam’s career.

    David Walliams as Vulva, the conceptual artist whose latest production ‘Come’ features in the third episode of Spaced.

    We also get two-offs of Bill Bailey as Tim’s boss Bilbo Bagshot and Peter Serafinowicz as Tim’s love rival Dwayne, plus John Simm as a brief love interest of Daisy’s in the Matrix-inspired first episode of the second series. Reece Shearsmith gives a memorably unhinged performance as a Robot Wars rival, providing the only link between Spaced and Taskmaster.

    Clue (1985)

    This is the only film I’m sure I’ve seen at least five times. I’d have thought Star Wars (1977), since I saw it twice when it came out, but I’m sure I’ve only watched it through twice since then.

    I may have seen Kind Hearts and Coronets many times, but I can’t be sure how many. This is a joyous film about the gentle art of murder, and I highly recommend it. Likewise, I may have hit the watch-count on Galaxy Quest and everyone’s favourite Christmas film, Die Hard.

    So, Clue. Based on the board game Cluedo2, I first watched it in the 80s on telly. It’s a film with three endings, which I thing is unique. My memory from the first watch is that my dad loved it, especially ‘Ending C’, famous for the ‘Flames on the side of my head’ speech, and for the final line delivered by Michael McKean3, which absolutely tickled my dad.

    Watching again a few years later, the cast and the ensemble performance grabbed my attention. Yes, that’s Tim Curry4. And Christopher Lloyd. We also have Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlett (she was a late replacement for Carrie Fisher), Eileen Brennan giving a masterclass in how to waffle onscreen5 and a very brief appearance by Jane Wiedlin, who later featured as Miss Of Arc in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

    Watch count is at least five, going up to six at the weekend. Youngest child doesn’t know who Tim Curry is, and this is the most family-friendly film we have of his.

    Now all we need to do is find a way of connecting the DVD player to the new telly…

    1. Her real name’s Ian. ↩︎
    2. Which is called Clue in the USA. ↩︎
    3. Who starred in another frequent watch, ‘This is Spinal Tap’. ↩︎
    4. I’ve only seen Rocky Horror three times. ↩︎
    5. Something Jessica Hynes is also brilliant at. ↩︎

  • I learned it’s called a shock mount

    I learned it’s called a shock mount

    What is the last thing you learned?

    I’m learning all the time, but this is the most recent thing that’s been kind of useful.

    I can’t now remember why I was watching the video this still is from. It’s about The Beatles and I am having one of my periodic bouts of listening to Les Quatres Fantastique1 a lot.

    Blogger David Bennet inspiring a t-shirt design.

    What struck me was the image of the presenter’s t shirt with the mike in front. It looked like he had a microphone print on his top. Would there be a market for such a design?

    The only way to find out is to do it.

    So I had to find a good image of this thing to act as a reference without knowing what the cage thing around the mike is called. After a bit of searching on the Google I found out: it’s a shock mount.

    Its purpose is to absorb knocks and bumps and so reduce noise while recording. There’s a metal or plastic cage and the mike is held in a cradle of elastic to keep it in place. Hooks keep the tension in the elastic and reduce movement.

    So it was into Blender I went to model the shock mount and a microphone. I’d made a microphone before for Steve the stand-up orc. This mike is a simpler design, it’s the mount that’s the interesting bit.

    One of the models I made in Blender as part of a course. This is Steve the orc, moonlighting at the Mordor Improv.

    I think it took me an hour to get the shapes done and looking satisfactory. Not bad. Then shading was fairly simple, block colours except the mike sponge2 which has a noise texture added to the displacement to give it some texture.

    How the sponge texture is added to the sponge bit. A bit of noise is added to the displacement (how far each bit is from the median surface) to create the effect of a sponge.

    The final version needed a background. If it’s printed as a dark object then it won’t look good on a dark t-shirt, so I added a plane behind the microphone and worked out how to give the plane a blue colour in the centre and fade to transparent at the edge. That way there’s a colour behind the mike whatever colour the t shirt is.

    How the microphone looks in Blender. The flat plane is there to make a vignette effect in the final render.

    I’ll probably do a couple of other colours as background. The brown on the original presenter’s t-shirt might be a good option, as used in the featured image.

    Shader settings for the vignette effect. The ‘Alpha’ in the Principled BSDF controls how transparent the object is. The rest of the nodes control where the object is opaque and how see-through it is.

    It’s up on RedBubble as a T-shirt with the blue background. I’m adopting the motto ‘real artists ship’, so I don’t sit on designs hoping they might mature and improve.

    RedBubble Shop
    White t-shirt
    Microphone design on a white t shirt.
    1. As they’re known in France. ↩︎
    2. Also known as a pop shield or spoffle. ↩︎
  • Things happen

    Things happen

    Do you believe in fate/destiny?

    I don’t think fate or destiny are real. Where you are in life is subject to so many variables that to believe is fate is egocentric. You are where you are, things could be better and they could be worse.

    This is a very British atheist view of life. It might be comforting to believe in fate and be helpless to its whims, but that abdicates responsibility and it’s no better than believing your horoscope. There are also many factors outside your control, billions of people and many millions of things that can fail, fall or fuck around with your life.

    Could things be better? Yes. We could have a bigger house that’s less of a mess and more money because we worked harder or we took an opportunity that we missed. We could also still be renting a grotty flat in Bootle because that’s as far as our ambitions and opportunities took us. Or Mrs S could have got into Bristol Old Vic – which would have been a big win for her – and we’d never have met.

    How to explain it? Through Terry Pratchett, of course.

    Terry Pratchett’s gods

    The Discworld is ruled over by gods who are at a loss to know how to pass a wet afternoon. Fate is real in this world. In Lords And Ladies the wizard Ridcully suggests to Granny Weatherwax that if they’d stayed together then their life would have been very different. What if they’d settled down and had children, grandchildren. She responds:

    What about the fire? … Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.

    This is Pratchett’s ‘trousers of time’ multiverse theory, where you go down a different leg and there’s continuinuums all over the place where everything and everyone bifurcates1. I’m not sure I believe that, either. That would mean there’s a universe for every decision everyone ever made. There’s loads of them – where do they keep the ones we’re not using?

    I suppose it could be that there’s an omniscient and omnipotent controller who guides the destiny of us all. That’s a cop-out, or perhaps extreme solipsism if you think only you matter. I believe there’s one universe and I don’t believe in any gods.

    Celebrate your wins, be annoyed at what goes wrong if that helps. Don’t sweat the missed opportunities. And remember, you can’t control other people.

    1. The trousers of time have more legs than a centipede dry cleaner’s. ↩︎
  • Sour sweets and dark chocolate

    Sour sweets and dark chocolate

    What’s your favourite candy?

    I’m using the definition of ‘candy’ to mean anything in the confectionery aisle of the supermarket.

    Current favourite sweet is probably Tesco’s sour rings. They’re sherbet coated fruit jellies, and even though they’re a supermarket own brand, they do hit the spot. I’ve tried various Haribo and Bassets sour sweets but they don’t pack the same punch. They also hide cherry flavoured sweets in there and that’s something I don’t want.

    Current favourite sweet.

    Dark chocolate is my favourite. Green and Black’s dark mint, Lindt dark mint or chilli, Hotel Chocolat’s various dark offerings… all good. Saying that, I’d not refuse a Double Decker or Mars Bar.

    Green & Black’s minty dark chocolate.
    Spicy chocolate! It was a surprise the first time I had chilli and chocolate together how well it works.
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