October 9, 2011
Valves
BBC Radio 4 long wave, which transmits on the 198 kilohertz frequency, relies on ageing transmitter equipment that uses a pair of the valves – no longer manufactured – to function.
The valves, at Droitwitch in Worcestershire, are so rare that engineers say there are fewer than 10 in the world, and the BBC has been forced to buy up the entire global supply. Each lasts anywhere between one and 10 years, and when one of the last two blows the service will go quiet.
October 8, 2011
Ah Mike Leigh films, the welcome relief of overlapping dialogue, unbrushed hair, talk of the railways and overcast skies. I am deeply envious of that shed like shelter in the allotment where they drink tea.
“Sounds like he was duplicitous shit…”
*
“Matt with the guitar”
“No, that’s Paul”
*
Why on earth is Netflix recommending Barnyard Tales and The Secret of Mary Magdalene as my personal recommendations. I guess this is a step up from Space Chimps.
October 6, 2011
Malcolm Lowry’s Bravest Boat offers one of the better descriptions or encounters with Vancouver I’ve ever read. Really it’s astonishing to read those paragraphs and find within them both the past and resonance of the present.
Lowry, based on the correspondence I read, took a dim view on the city at the time he wrote it. (Likely influenced by his conservationist overtones springing from his enrapture with trees). I find him a bit exhausting on trees and seagulls. I’m much more interested in seeing and hearing what I miss(ed) standing on the roads each day. The trees make their presence amply felt, I don’t need them hauled up on a pulley and lamented. I find writers cave in too readily to this temptation. Conducting a tree gospel or rhapsody.
I continue to see where the travel writing aspect of early Vancouver/BC literature (1920’s earlier and after-ish) now breaks off into less of a “come with me and I’ll show you” point of view, but instead a narrator who assumes you’re right here beside him/her. It’s much more interesting when the narrator assumes you know something of the city, even if you don’t, it’s a more mature literature somehow. And my favourite is where they obscure the city by renaming it or not naming it or generally give you little, but these exquisite moments like the rhythm of the way people move or some tiny thing (anthropology of the ordinary) where, you, the reader, get an “ah yes” moment of recognition. There’s a particular taste of a certain cup of tea, it reminds me off. Same brand of teabag, yet you do not always experience it.
October 5, 2011
I’ve concluded the most accurate barometer on the weather is to go out each evening and run in it.
Thus yesterday I can report the first real chill to the knuckles declared. Only spotted rain mind joined the chill.
I had to cave in and turn the heat on and fill the hot water bottles.
It’s great soup making weather. The Potrebenko grown bay leaves are diminishing.
October 4, 2011
Weather-wise today was a glower of a day.
I harvested all my long forgot beetroots from the garden yesterday and boiled them up by night.
Still trying to avoid turning on the heat, but boy it is cold. Had to crack the hot water bottle and become an indoor scarf head.
We have these ridiculous fans blowing cold air all day long in our hallways. I’ve tried asking the building to turn them off, but each year never make any progress. Thus begins our in-home penguin season.
October 3, 2011
After mooching about with the salmon stats, I journeyed on and looked at what Canada exports and imports. I have to say it was fascinating in a nerdy kind of way.
For example Canada exports live bovine semen to Ireland.
I noted one zero in the export from Ireland to Canada of live animals one year. (There were two other columns with more affirmative numbers). I did not dare cross check the bovine semen from Canada year stats, I left that knowledge firmly alone.
October 3, 2011
Last night in my ever increasing appetite for redundant information I found myself reading and researching salmon statistics. As in Canadian salmon, specifically looking for BC salmon and where it ends up and who gets to eat it.
I found some detailed charts from some department of agricultural what-not and puzzled out the numbers thinking them pounds of fish until I read the word dollar. The statistic that jumped out was the increases and decreases. UK down 22%, America up something similiar, Japan and China up 119% and 118%. Sadly despite epic searching there was no firm date to be found anywhere on the data.
The most ridiculous thing on the page was the copyright sign to Her Majesty the Queen at the bottom. What precisely does she own the stats on who eats salmon? Or the salmon itself? Puzzling.
October 3, 2011
Several more trips along the Fraser River, today I noticed how retail developments are popping up along Marine Drive in this drive-in square-rectangular designs. There are clumps of new condo towers appearing, but no sense of walking to the shop. So we have high-density housing model along a stretch that’s surbanized as far as services. How are you to participate in a neighbourhood if you’re commuting to fetch a loaf? There’s also a curious spread, retail developments want square footage that they cannot get in other city locations, while housing heads physically upwards. The people seem squeezed in and up, while the business spreads outwards. Both models seem to encourage people to have less contact with each other. I’m in favour of urban density, I think cities are built for that purpose, they aren’t suburbs, they aren’t rural but I don’t like the boxy-shop-boxed-in-with-car-parks-packed-with-obese-sized-cars and mega-sized packages of staples.
It reminds me of the pickle they made out of Dublin. I recall driving to visit a friend’s place in the Dublin mountains and encountering these frankly bizarre “marooned” apartments, that are maybe ghost apartments these days, who knows.
Vancouver’s infrastructure is so much better so there’s little comparison in terms of the living experience because transit turns up here.