Jonathan's slightly less boring-but-useful site » Personal

To the altar in Malta

jonathan — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:25:52 +0000

So that’s it then, Dan & Kei are married at the Xara Palace in Mdina, Malta. And seeing this boat, the Padre Ignazio, Valletta brought back memories of another trip so here it is as a keepsake.

It’s a small world – a few weeks ago I went to see Porn The Musical at the Latchmere in Battersea. It won an award at the Edinburgh Festival and rightly so. The music was so good, I kept looking over to watch the musicians, keyboard player and composer Kris Spiteri in particular.

The band at Dan & Kei’s reception here in Malta were brilliant, and the keyboard player had that kind of touch and inventiveness that makes you turn your head. And when I did, I realised it was none other than Kris Spiteri. I was in awe and very proud of the photo I got to prove it all really happened.

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An online ballet crossword

jonathan — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:50:20 +0000

Click to go to the online ballet crossword

I’m reposting this from six years ago – my first ever online ballet crossword. Even though I say so myself, I think it’s rather nice if you like that kind of thing. It’s as much the gracefulness of the technology that I like as the content, which is about ballet & music & stuff.

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Penguin/Clarkson ad update

jonathan — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:57:18 +0000

For those interested in how things are progressing with my complaint about the Penguin advertisement for Jeremy I-will-run-you-down-for-fun Clarkson’s new book (see previous post So You Think That’s Funny, Mr Clarkson), here are the responses so far:

Penguin: Confirmed receipt of complaint, no response yet
Boris Johnson: Response (yesterday) by liaison officer, advising me to take the complaint on to TfL directly.
Advertising Standards Authority: acknowledgement, no response yet

So top marks to my local MP Sadiq Khan, and Shadow Secretary of State for Transport who, even though it’s not actually in his remit, is the first and only person to do anything tangible so far, in that he has written to both the Mayor & the ASA on my

Click to see the original post

behalf, enclosing my email, and sent me copies of those letters, by post.

By contrast, the most disappointing response by far was from the Mayor’s office, because it came with a whole load of blurb about how the Mayor has ‘made the issue of cycling safety one of his top priorities.’ Yes, I know, and I actually began my complaint with a note of congratulation on the cycle lanes etc. How could they miss the point that I made in my complaint that this having Penguin’s ad downstairs on the underground is at odds with the Mayor’s own laudable efforts to make the roads better for cyclists? I was also hoping for some kind of consideration of the moral/ethical issues in general, but never mind.

Here’s a selection of incidents from my very average week on the road. Believe me, we don’t need dislike added to this:

A police car nearly turning across my path assuming I’d stop because they thought I could hear the imaginary siren that they hadn’t turned on.
People (many, many of them) looking into their laps as they text/chatting on mobile/changing hands for the phone as they turn a corner
A bus overtaking near a traffic island, so that they leave enough room as the front of the bus passes you, but you nearly get swamped by the back end as they swerve in to accommodate the traffic island
People in side roads accelerating towards you just so you know that you’ve got to wait for them
Buses pulling out without a signal
People – and don’t ask me why this is the new disease – looking left as they turn left, instead of seeing what might be coming towards them from the right.
Taxi drivers using the cycle lane as extra headroom to get ahead of people waiting to turn right at junctions – without looking to see whether there’s anyone actually in it.

Oh and the latest annoyance – drivers behind you who decide they’re going to jump the red light, after you’ve already decided that you’ll stop for the amber.

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Success: the RACS building is saved

jonathan — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:26:09 +0000

Fantastic news: the developers have withdrawn their application to demolish the RACS building on the corner of Hebdon Road/Upper Tooting Road.

Read more at the Save the RACS building website.

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Ha! I was right: singletasking IS the new multi-tasking

jonathan — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:29:43 +0000

You may remember that I posted about the natty little program called Freedom that turns off your internet access for a time designated by you, so you can get on with your work? And you may remember that I have a thing about multi-tasking: I think it’s a myth, and a rather dangerous and antisocial one at that.

Well now all those themes come together in a nice article from the Monitor column of The Economist called Stay on Target. It’s about programs like Freedom that help you to ‘clear your screen and clear your mind’, and concentrate on singletasking. That of course is tautologous, because concentrating means just that – focusing on a single task. It is central to Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow (that being in a ‘flow’ state is by definition one in which you are ‘lost’ in the thing you’re doing). So how ever did we come to think that multi-tasking was cool, socially acceptable, or even safe?

I have to confess that I got the link to the article via the Guardian’s tech-feed on Twitter which linked to this technology blog. But now I’ve read it, I’ll be turning on Freedom. Goodbye.

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