There is a game I used to play when I was a child called “Jacks“. Today’s version is a lot easier to play, the “jacks” are bigger, and they’re made of plastic and multi-coloured, as opposed to made of metal and grey. And the bouncy ball that comes with it is a lot bigger and bouncier than it was in the old days.
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It rained on and off most of this Bank Holiday morning. But now the sun is shining. Click on the green button below to view a little slideshow of my favourite mobile phone camera snaps from the last few weeks.
Funky music mix by Funkstar De Luxe featuring the legendary Bob Marley: “Sun Is Shining“.
Winding my way down in Baker Street.
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Even through the haze of an uncharacteristically warm April evening from about 1000m above the ground over central London, it was quite easy to spot where home is. Click-and-hold your left mouse button on the picture below to see how.
My home neighbourhood is just about 1 click North of that and a fraction of a click to the right.
And whilst I’m here, for those interested in all things mobile (cellular), there is an excellent weekly roundup of the best of the “mobile blogosphere” at the Carnival of the Mobilists, which (this week) is being hosted at the Mobile Marketing & Spam pages edited by Troy Norcross.
There is a little suburb of London called Pitshanger. It’s in the West London Borough of Ealing. There is a doner-kebab shop there called West Kebab, which in my opinion is the best doner-kebab shop in London. And I went there especially to eat doner-kebab for lunch the other day. But because it was quicker to get there by car than by bus, I had to drive, and this meant finding a place to park in a side-street just off Pitshanger Lane.
Having parked my car, as I walked towards the kebab shop I couldn’t help but notice a curious little action figure (kids toy) that had been carefully placed on top of a bollard at the junction of the side-street and main road:
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In a strange sort of way, it’s quite a delight to see such a sight. Of course, I didn’t touch it. I just snapped the spectacle with my cameraphone. Pitshanger Lane is quite busy with people walking about at a lunch time, especially as it is school Easter holidays here in UK at the moment. So I kind of expected that it would disappear after a while, e.g. get picked up by a passing child etc. But about half an hour later, having fulfilled myself on a medium-sized doner-kebab with a full-works salad, chillie sauce and diet coke (diet coke and chillie sauce is an explosive combination by the way), I walked back to my car and noticed that it was still there.
Why is it that little things like this make you feel good?
I was thinking about this whilst on the top deck of the bus on the way home the other day. Have you ever seen anybody making a video call to someone using their mobile phone? I mean really making one, not just testing it out for the first time, but really doing it, like“in the wild”; i.e. on the street, on a bus, in the pub?
Video calling was meant to be one of the reasons why billions of pounds/euros/dollars were spent by the mobile phone companies building new “3G” (3rd generation) mobile networks over the last few years. So now that “3G” and phones with video calling have been around for a while there should be a sufficient number of people with video calling capability in their pockets for us to be able to make a reasonable guess as to its popularity. But my personal observations tell me that despite the fact that people have it, people just don’t do it. Video calling that is.
Many commentators in the mobile phone industry have given many good reasons why people just don’t do it. And I’ve studied those reasons. Pondered at them. Thought about them hard. And whilst I agree that many of the reasons given definitely have something to do with it, there is one reason that is never quite given. In my own view, it’s the real reason why people don’t do it. Or rather the real reason why people won’t do it.
Even if all of the other reasons, issues and problems were taken away, there is is one reason why people will not do video calling on their mobile phones.
It’s not just the fact that you turn off the 3G capability on your 3G phone in order to conserve battery life. (Most people I know who have 3G mobile phones do this!) No, it’s not just about that. It’s not just about the fact that it’s sometimes more expensive to make a video call compared to a normal “voice only” call. And it’s not just about the fact that you never quite know if the other person you wanna call has a 3G video calling phone, and is in an area with 3G coverage and hasn’t switched off their 3G capability in order to save battery life just like you do.
And even if these issues were overcome (which I’m confident they will over time) and everyone had 3G everywhere, and everyone had video calling, and fantastic 3G battery life and it wouldn’t cost any more to make video calls, then it wouldn’t only be the fact that you don’t generally like the idea of showing the other person how you’re looking at that moment. “No I haven’t just gotten out of bed boss.” Or exactly where you are at that moment. “No, I’m not really in the pub darling.“. No. And it’s not just about the fact that you don’t want other people nearby to you overhearing your entire conversation – in fully unprivate full-duplex as opposed to half private half-duplex. No, and it’s not just about the fact that when you get fed up of seeing the other person in poor-quality jerk-motion you can’t just “upgrade” the video call into a standard voice-only call. And that’s after you’ve worked out how to make a video call in the first place (there’s no “make a video call” button on any mobile phones that I’ve ever seen). Nope. It’s none of these reasons that will confine video calling to occasional uses, like grandchildren calling grandparents far away. Or couples where one partner is far away from another for a period of time. Or possibly in some cases where you might want to show someone something, like “see what I’m seeing” type of thing. No. No. No. If all the above problems were overcome somehow, the real reason why you won’t make video calls is this:
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No joke. It’s a classic case of bad usability. With the help of my most gracious model above you can see that the most natural holding position of a mobile phone is the position that we all know very well; the phone is a comfortable distance away from the face so that she can see what’s on the screen clearly, and her arm is comfortably bent at the elbow, with the elbow resting against her side. The net result of this completely natural and comfortable way of holding the phone is that the video calling camera on the front side of the phone is now at an angle which is acute to the horizontal plane of her face. Which means that if you were lucky enough to receive a video call from her, you would get a great view of her nostrils – in extra wide-angle perspective. And she would see herself in the corner of her screen and probably go “eeuugghh“, and compensate for the fact she’s looking like that by extending her arm out so that the phone camera is now in the horizontal plane of her face. Like below.
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The problem with this pose is that it’s unnatural, and uncomfortable and requires a dramatic extension of personal space. And won’t last for very long. Your arm will get tired very quickly, and when done in public, your spatial self-awareness will cause a tendency to resist it. And so it will be the reason why video calling will never be as popular as regular calling, even if all the other problems were solved. In my view it will be the reason why most people will just not do it at all.
(All the pictures used in this blog posting were taken with my mobile phone)
This posting featured in the Carnival of the Mobilists weekly mobile blog-news roundup number 69 at Mobile Marketing and Spam on April 16th 2007.
WARNING: techie posting: I finally got myself an invitation to be an “official beta tester” (yeah right) of a new piece of Internet-ware called Joost. From the people who brought us Skype. Its overall aim is to take “all the magical bits of television, the even better bits from the Internet, and mixes them together so that you can watch what you want, when you want in full screen high-quality proper TV”. Watch the official promotional video here.
Here is a screen capture of how it looks on the computer screen:
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I must say that the user interface is quite beautiful and very simple to use. It’s starts in full-screen mode and I was quite amazed at the quality of the picture in most cases, although you can spot the compression artefacts sometimes. You can browse through channels and also browse through what’s on in a very simple to use on-screen display which is sumperimposed over what you happen to be watching at the time. You can also “search” the programme listings. The channels are currently a bit obscure, although there are some familiar names amongst them. And then the programmes within the channels themselves are also quite obscure, but nevertheless of reasonable to good viewing quality. For example there appear to be some independently-produced Sci-Fi shows that probably don’t get much “real TV” airtime, and some live London rock/pop concert footage that were probably made for Internet viewing. There is no timed schedule as such; instead the programmes just carousel through the channel you select. All in all, it’s a very well executed concept and as the channel and content lineup improve over time I think it could be something very significant.
However. BUT.
Yes, however, but …. unlike Internet radio stations which you can happily have on in the background whilst you are using your computer to work or perform other tasks, Joost is TV, and much of the content requires “user engagement”. Which means you have to concentrate on the show in order to enjoy it. Now I don’t know about you but sitting on my swivel-chair and staring at my laptop screen on a desk in the corner of my bedroom is not exactly my idea of watching TV. There’s a nice sofa and larger TV screen and surround sound downstairs for easy viewing. Also, there’s a portable TV in the kitchen that gets used for 90% of the viewing in our house, because the kitchen is where most of our time is spent. I can’t see myself taking my laptop into the kitchen to watch Joost instead.
Also, I did some technical analysis of the effects that Joost was having on my laptop computer and broadband Internet connection. Specifically I wanted to understand why my laptop fan was kicking in. The fan comes on when the processor starts to run a little hot. So I went into Windows Task Manager to see how much of my laptop’s CPU Joost was consuming. The Task manager also allows you to get a view of how much instantaneous bandwidth is being consumed on your broadband connection.
Now, my laptop is not a wimpy one by any means. It’s a top of the range Toshiba Tecra with Intel core duo processors and 1 gig memory. And for these performance tests I used a fixed 10Mbps Ethernet connection against my 8Meg broadband link to the Internet. Couple of screenshots below.
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As you can see, Joost was taking about 25-30% of my CPU power and an average of around 6% of my broadband capacity, peaking up to around 25% on some occassions. The net effect of the CPU impact was the fan in my laptop was switching on and making a noise and the gadgets on my desk were getting hot as a result of the hot air being blown onto them. So I had to open the window to get some cool air to circulate the room. And between 6% to 25% of the broadband capacity might not sound a great deal, but when you translate this into megabits per second, 6% is around 600kbps which is what you would expect in order to account for the decent video quality you’re getting with Joost. (In fact it’s quite remarkable that it’s only around 600kbps that delivers such good full-screen viewing quality!) However, even at 600kbps – that’s 73 kilobytes per second, which is about 130 megabytes per half hour viewing. Nine such viewings will take you to one gigabyte. People on a limited data transfer broadband package better be aware of this. For example here in the UK, Sky’s free broadband package has a monthly data transfer limit of 2 gigs. That will get used up in less than 9 hours of Joost viewing.
All things said, Joost is one to watch. (No pun intended.)
And a Happy Easter to all those celebrating.
Click where it says click here and experience the repetitive mundanity of it.
Vocal loop is the beautiful voice of Shreya Ghoshal.
Why do they spell Namaste that way? This film opened last weekend in London and my curiosity could not be contained. A spate of Indian-theme cinema releases are gracing the silver screens this month; notably Shakalalaka Boom Boom (silly name, with equally silly title song) and The Namesake (which I would rather not go see since I love the book too much) and Provoked (which stars Aishwarya Rai meaning I will see it when it opens next week). So Namastey (sic) London it was.
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The caption above tries to summarise my thoughts about this film. I cannot understate how rubbish the plot was. And how badly acted it was. Even though I psyched myself up for a cringeworthy comedy, I couldn’t help but feel waves of cringe sitting there in in the cinema hall. Luckily there were only a handful of other people in the theatre at the time given it was the first (late morning) showing on a Sunday, so cringing could be done in relative privacy. There are precious few aspects to this film that made it worth spending the time and money:
The actors: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Rishi Kapoor, Upen Patel and Parvez Khan are the main billing, and they make for an interesting combination. Interesting because Katrina Kaif and Upen Patel (who play the parts of two British Asian twenty-somethings) were both raised in London and would represent a great start in the credibility stakes for a film with a story like this (British Indian girl marries a Punjabi boy from India). Interesting also because Rishi Kapoor and Parvez Khan, both very well established actors from India and Pakistan respectively, play the fathers of the former two youngsters. So you can bet that there’s going to be some politically-correct Indo-Pak thing going on in this film. And, of course, there’s Akshay Kumar, who plays the Punjabi boy. The combination works very well in my opinion; there’s plenty that will work for everybody, of every age, gender and affiliation. Even though the acting is apalling, the overt comedic-kitschness of it all is overcome by the actor/actress combination.
The setting: London of course! Most of the backdrop to the film is London, and I have to say that the cinematography is incredibly sumptious, beautiful and stunning. Londoners will not fail to recognise the locations, and the film really does us proud. Top marks to whoever chose the locations for the shooting, which include, a trendy bar in King’s Road, the London Eye, a boat on the Thames amongst many others. Although I have to say that if the storyline to this film was a little more serious I would probably expect filming to capture aspects of real London rather than touristy London. By the way, the filiming in Punjab was also excellent, and full of eye-catching colour.
The music: by Himesh Rashammiya. This guy seems to be on a bit of a roll at the moment. The soundtrack is classic Rashammiya, and is most definitely not your typical mega-hit Bollywood formula. The music works very well throughout the whole film and does not explode garishly in song and dance sequences. I would say that there are very few Indian films where the music/dance interludes are not laughable, and this is probably one of them.
So, despite the fact that the British “gora” roles in the story were portrayed rather moronically, that the film was full of overt India-Pakistan political correctness, the Lagaan-style “we are better than the British” India-rising speeches and rugby match, that the acting was awful and and story was crap, the redeeming qualities of the film kind of compensated for them a little. Not a film for a fun-night out. I’d wait for the DVD. Although the London imagery probably works much better on the big screen.
I’ll finish this review with one thing that I think was the absolute highlight of the whole film: there is a scene in the middle of the film where the family are sat around the kitchen table eating. I’m not sure what the director had planned here because it seems the most natural and unacted part of the entire film. It’s full of spontaneous laughing and I’m convinced it was probably going to be treated as an outtake, but it’s in there and it’s absolutely brilliant.
Graffiti is part and parcel of urban life, wherever in the world. At one end of the spectrum you may find meaningful works of art, at the other end you will find meaningless rubbish. To be fair though, one person’s meaningful rubbish could be another person’s meaningless work of art.
Or in whatever is used to scratch up the windows at the back of the upper deck of every London bus. This form of graf is called “etching”. It’s an inevitable result of when a city’s municipal authority evolves to develop advanced anti-graffiti systems in urban spaces. e.g. anti-graf paint on fences and walls, teflon-style coating to trains and bus interiors and exteriors. The etching of windows on buses and trains is what happens next. London is a highly advanced society in the graffiti stakes; for I have ridden buses and trains in many major cities all over the world, but London’s transport systems are the most highly “etched” I’ve ever observed. Those of you who have been around these pages for long enough may remember my last posting of 2004. The accompanying picture was taken with my camera in “autofocus” mode from the top deck of my bus. The thing is, if there’s etch graf on the window then the likelihood’s quite high that the camera will focus on the graf and not on the subject matter outside the window. That picture in the old posting was from the bus.
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Apologies I’ve been neglecting my bus lately. In order to make up for it, I’ve been making a concious effort to try some other buses on my travels to here and there. For example, I spent a few days out of the country earlier this week. One of my destinations was Dublin, Ireland; just for the day. Heathrow is a shortish drive away from home. And a short courtesy bus ride from the car parking to Terminal 1. Upon my return later in the day I snapped away with my cameraphone from the back of the shuttle bus back to my car at the Pink Elephant business car park. I liked the way this one turned out:
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Reflections on a bus journey towards my car.
Goodness; where did February go?
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I need to get out a bit more. 🙂
It’s been exactly 100 days since I went to see the Indian movie “Don”. I’ve also snapped (and wirelessly uploaded “live”) to Flickr exactly 442 pictures from my cameraphone since then. (Flickr is the Don!) Most pictures taken like that are of relatively poor quality compared to what could be achieved with a “proper” camera, digital or otherwise, but I think there is a lomo-esque kind of credibility to cameraphone pictures; to blur is human. (The cameraphone is the Don!)
So I’ve taken a small sample of some of my favourite cameraphone snaps taken in the last 100 days since “Don”, tubing, bussing, shopping, eating and wandering my way around London and the ‘hoods. Done some minimalistic cropping and levelling in Photoshop and sequenced them into a multimedia photo montage with a Don kinda audio theme: Click on the green button above to load the Shockwave Flash object, it’s about 3.7 megabytes and shouldn’t take too long to load if you are on high-speed Internet connection. Otherwise you’ll just have to be patient. Turn up the volume.
Diamond Geezer sums it up nicely. Many Londoners (including those who pretended it was too difficult to get to work today 😮 ) enjoyed it while it lasted. As did many schoolkids who also had the day off due to teachers who couldn’t make it. Personally, I think the kids deserved to have the day off, as sadly it is a rare occasion of immense educational (and recreational) value.
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I love the colour scheme used on the London Underground. Everything; maps, posters, artwork, mosaics. Anything officially connected to the tube explodes with primary and brightly saturated secondary and tertiary colours. Even the interiors of the trains on the different tube lines. I especially like the green on the District line.
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