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The worst show in the West End

etymology wednesday

Hi all, today sees the triumphal return of our etymology wednesday feature. Every wednesday, time permitting, I'll be explaining the origins of words, which is often more interesting than it might sound.

AMPERSAND: The first use of the word 'ampersand' (the 'and' sign), is from 1837, and is a contraction of the Latin phrase 'and per se and', which is a method of describing the use of a symbol in place of a word. Literally the phrase means 'the character (&) by itself is 'and''

The symbol we use today is a mutated ligature from the Roman 'et', shown on the far left, and goes some way to explaining why etc. is sometimes written &c.

The 3D revolution

This weekend, I watched the new Pixar offering 'Up' in 3D. This is my first experience of the new 3D revolution which is sweeping through our multiplexes and it's a mixed bag. Cinemas have had a tough time of it lately. the growth of home video in the 80's, DVD's in the nineties and video on demand in the noughties have all helped make the cinema something of an expensive luxury, and for some, the experience just isn't good enough to make the effort. For me, there's nothing like the cinema. I genuinely get excited about going, even for an average film, the darkness, the popcorn, the noise, I love it all. A trip to the flicks typically costs me around £8, then I foolishly pay around five or six quid for a skip of popcorn and a drink. For me it's a nice luxury, but add up the cost for a family of four and you're up at around £50. If the family can wait for a month or two (and the wait is decreasing) then they can buy the DVD for around 15 quid, watch it as many times as they like and pause it for junior's trips to the loo. It's simple to see why the cinemas were suffering. Their plan has been to make the cinema experience something which cannot be replicated at home, and for that they've turned to 3D.

The revolution has been made possible by advances in 3D technology, spearheaded by RealD. Gone are the days of red and green lenses (which resulted in a dirty grey hue to everything), and we now have polarised lenses which come in cute Buddy Holly frames. The 3D effect is pretty good, and whilst the premise of 'things popping out at you' is still a myth, there is a nice level of depth. For the first ten minutes I was impressed, but once the novelty wore off, I began to find flaws.

Firstly, as I mentioned, I spent the first ten minutes thinking about the technology not the film, which is a problem. This might be due to novelty value, and this might not be the case in the next 3D film I see, but anything which takes me out of the film experience isn't a good thing.

Secondly, whilst the red/green issue has been solved, by putting anything between the eyes and the screen, the colours are dulled. At various points through the movie I removed my glasses and the colours were so much brighter as we've come to expect from Pixar, but putting the glasses back on, everything was a bit subdued.

Thirdly, any 3D system which used twin images on a 2D screen cannot work right up to the edges. This system is no different. When an image is split in two, and the two images are moved laterally apart, there is a border around the edge where both images are not visible, so the 3D effect is lost. On a huge screen this isn't an issues (such as IMAX), but on a standard screen, I found it to be a problem.

Fourthly, the glasses. Simply wearing glasses for 90 minutes I was reminded how much I an grateful that my eyesight is fine. The black frames messed with my peripheral vision, and from time to time, the projector reflected back into my eyes from behind me. All in all this was the most annoying part. 

In conclusion, 3D is still a gimmick. For the most part it seems to be working as the cinema was fairly busy, and the kids behind me seemed to really enjoy it, but it's not the future of cinema. No matter how good the effect is, it's the story which really matters, thankfully something which Pixar got very right with 'Up'. Also, 3D won't remain solely in theaters for long. A few years ago I saw some prototypes of TV's which give a 3D effect by rapidly flicking between two viewpoints. This results in something approaching a migraine, but it won't be long before things improve I'm sure. 

If 3D films keeps cinemas open then I'm all for it, but I won't be rushing out to see anything else in 3D anytime soon, it's just not 'better' enough.

running away with it.

So, 100 days ago I set myself the challenge of running 100 miles. A few friends joined in from across the water, and they all completed the challenge, so a hearty congratulations to them all, Paul and James in particular. I on the other hand didn't make it, which is disappointing. I have no real excuses, but the swine flu and a three week vacation at the early stage probably didn't help. Anyway, the one good thing is that I've started running, which is new for me. The challenge on the right is simply a ticker of how far each person can run before 2010, and as you can see, I'm not doing too well either. Hey ho.... will try harder.

Honda U3-X

You have to hand it to Honda, they sure know their robots. Asimo is by far the most advanced bipedal robot out there, easily killing off competitors like Sony's Qrio, and they have a slew of concepts sat in the wings. Around a month ago they also launched the U3-X, an experimental mobility device. It uses the creepy yet commonplace gyroscope sytem of directionfinding, so far so segway. What makes this different, aside from the awkward squatting position is the single wheel. This gives the device a strange 'other-worldly' balancing ability, but it doesn't stop there. The wheel itself is made from a collection of rollers, each which is driven independently, allowing the user to move in any direction, as though sat atop a ballpoint pen. It's fascinating to see it in action, but overall it leaves me with two questions: 1. where on earth would I use it, and 2. why do Honda make such boring cars?

Colour me badd

Stone Island, a brand with which I always wrestle have released an interesting product for their AW09 season, but as an Industrial designer, I'm desperately trying to find a practical use. Here's the deal, it's a special version of their Ice Jacket, which changes from light blue to dark blue when the temperature drops below 15 degrees. There's a lot of 'global hypercolour' about it for sure, but it's still interesting. The only 'use' i can think of would be some smart camouflage, where the user needs a lighter colour in the day, and a darker colour at night. Maybe the desert? One thing's for sure though, at £1095 ($1800), I won't be trying one for myself.

STORM

Not only does Tim Minchin make such good points in his nine minute 'beat poem', but he does it with rhymes, and laughs!

Storm

maintaining anonymity

Hand on heart, could you pick out Henri Cartier-Bresson or Robert Mapplethorpe from a lineup? I probably couldn't, but it would be easy to pick one of their photos from a pile. Jeff Koons too has an easily identifiable style (which is all over London at the moment), but when you see him photographed, he's looks gloriously ordinary. When looking at a body of work, for me it's mostly about the work itself, not about who created it. 

I have been spurred into writing this by the announcement yesterday that Flickr was adding a 'tagging' feature to it's offering, allowing users to pick out individuals in photos in a similar way to facebook. I was initially dismayed by this, but Flickr have smartly added an opt-out clause, allowing users to block others from tagging them. Facebook photos have become the proverbial pain in the ass when it comes to image tagging, and I've wasted a fair amount of time un-tagging myself from photos which i didn't like or didn't want others to see. You might think this is vain, and perhaps it is to some extent, but I don't think I'm alone. We all have highly prismatic personalities, and when a certain aspect is captured, we may want to keep that private. Google's own photo site Picasa now has the ability to automatically tag photos after it acquired a facial recognition company Neven Vision in 2007. This suits Google's myriad meta-data model well, but somewhat compromises anonymity.

Over a short space of time we have moved towards a social-centric media world which has been in large part down to the growth in social networks. The benefits are clear for certain channels, but I'm becoming concerned about the spread of a person-first, content second approach. I follow a few people on flickr who I have never met nor seen, and that doesn't matter to me, It's actually preferable sometimes. Not everything need to be a networking tool, and not everyone needs to be identified all the time. 

NEW DESIGN, SAME STUFF

Regular readers will notice a new design theme here at Sleepinginmyhead. There's not much difference in content, but the old layout was looking a little tired. I'm thinking of bringing back etymology wednesdays, and I'll be using the sleeptweets twitter account on the right for random links, so please subscribe. Onwards.