Starting to download and explore the images from my phone, over 800 in
total, 1 in 4 of which must be an image of Archer. Triggering lost
memories or commentaries on odd things once thought worth observing.

This series of photos describes the prices of flour in the Tesco on
Nicholson Street. I suppose the observations are that *more processed*
flour is cheaper than less, that extra ingredients in processed flour
make no difference in price. The two value flours at different prices
is pure randomness. I don't know why i thought the flour prices worth
photographing.

Yaya's place in Santa Pola has a wonderful inside-outside space. A terrace in front of the house perhaps 4 by 8 metres; with a retractable roof one can draw down to keep out the sun or the rain; and sturdy curtains to draw close, if needed, on the three exposed sides.

Reminds me of one of the Doris Lessing novels, Sirius in Argos, the terribly grim one where the planet wastes in ice, the shrunken populace impenetrably transcends - "The Representative for Planet 8". Someone is reminiscing about summer houses with walls that move up and down, let in and out the wind; before the ice descends.

Everyone here still seems half-asleep though. Perhaps that's the English thing of not meeting one's eyes..

I've been chatting on "Twitter" with @mfenner, a board member of
ORCID, about open licensing researcher identity data. ORCID -
http://orcid.org/aboutus - is a non-profit set up by a group of
academic publishers and a few university reps. It plans to provide a
universal ID and profile for every researcher worldwide, which can be
used to link together all kinds of scholarly publications and data.

"CC0 waiver applies to all data claimed by researchers. Many
organizations will also contribute CC0 data, but this not mandatory...
Balance of open data and sustainable business model difficult, need to
strike right balance: building and running ORCID not cheap."

My snap response to this is, open data and sustainable business are
not either/or - one can successfully have both, and increasingly one
will *need* to have both.

But the only example i've got of a really successful business built on
open data is Cloudmade - which sells custom hosted services based on
OpenStreetmap data. There must be quite a few others? So i am looking
for:

* examples of a successful 'business' sustainability model based on open data
* more suggestions for how ORCID specifically could raise revenue
while opening all data

The neatest thinking i have seen in this area is by a Spanish social
network consultant called Genis Roca, here is a super-brief summary of
a talk of his i saw last year:
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2010-April/000850.html

All that really applies here is "Databases... due to the audience" and
"Corporate use... due to the technology" - some organisations would
pay for information about the activity of the ORCID-active researcher
community; some organisations would pay for a hosted version of the
(open source) technology ("which of these twenty A. Rahman's actually
wrote this paper?)

At this point i could start speculating about an interesting world in
which research corporations are buying brain-time based on patterns of
relevant intellectual activity from ORCID-like services. But it is
late at night, and all i want right now is help in figuring out how to
build a sustainable "business" based on open data.

(writing on the phone, so excuse anything odder than usual appearing here)

Eating lentils and rice, there's little left in the fridge. A week ago I spent 50 quid on food; probably at least another 20 during the week. It does seem extreme - like a symptom of a social sickness.

The empty fridge isn't necessity; Archer's been ill, so have i, not got out much. There have been times when 50 quid fed me for a month; remembering rooting nickels and dimes out of the change jar for vegetables; daily alternations of lentils and rice.

My boy has been brought up with expensive tastes; we eat lots of vegetarian meat-alike food products, which cost more than their meat equivalents. Can't be production costs - rather relative lack of demand, distribution costs, and some implicit "premium" quality in these things.

(trigger-happy, half-thought thoughts, shifted to the computer but not sure it helps)

Call me not an economist, but i dont understand why it should be the case that: stuff which consumes less resources in being created and moved, should "cost" more than stuff that consumes more resources in this way. I can "understand" given the logic of the present system why this should be the case, but don't see that it needs to be.

In the meantime more of us will be austerity cooking, and i suppose a way to bring that above spare/subsistence level is cooking collectively - bringing some of the "economies of scale" down to a neighbourhood level.

And I wonder how that would work in the practical immediate sense - would my housing estate be playing Tesco, Sainsburys and Asda off against one another to arbitrage prices down? No, it wouldn't work like this. I'm veering into collapsonomics.

 

 

one part of "daily mail fascination" is the fascination of the effect of surgical
changes on peoples' faces. What will happen to the
"New New Face" generation when they age a *lot*, will the effects then
seem absurd (or unsustainable?) or will everyone visible in the media
look the same? What compels so many to customise themselves to appear
younger, ageless seem like warped, distorted forces - not really
helping us, humanity. Wrinkles are mocked, excessive plastic-ness, is
mocked too, everybody looks the same.

How can that process be rolled back or interrupted? that once set in
motion, seems to perpetuate itself. Is it set in motion by other
forces, part of a complex that as a whole could be interrupted? Is
this merely justification for another kind of "surgical fascination",
the feeling of the need to analyse?

Went out to feed Paola's ducks and found myself wandering along that long, straight route that you thought might be a pipeline when we saw it while climbing Arthur's Seat. On each side a wall, protecting a golf course and a small forest; the space between, wide enough to suggest it was a railway once. Discovering what remains of a bridge, a half-collapsed arch visible over the wall. A little platform, on which one can wait for nothing to go nowhere.

As the path eventually runs out into a road, a little sign informs that was the Innocent Railway, an early horsedrawn experiment. Looping back round Duddingston and the old Kirk, chased by a mob of hungry ducks, taking the return trip through the long damp tunnel that pops out, unexpectedly, into this housing estate.

Then the space joins up: *that's* why the railway coal yard, where the rails now poke out from underneath the cobbles in the car park, appears to be a railway to nowhere; the rails run through the tunnel, and what is underground isn't visible on the old maps.

The Innocent Railway at Wikipedia

1849 Edinburgh Town Plans at NLS

If you cast yourself into the sea, without any guidance, this is full of danger, because one mistakes things which arise within oneself for things arising from elsewhere.

If, on the other hand, you travel on the sea in a ship, this is perilous, because there is the danger of attachment to the vehicle.

In the one case, then end is not known, and there is no guidance.
In the other case, the means becomes an end, and there is no arriving.

A man who was living in comfortable enough circumstances went one day to see a certain sage, reputed to have all knowledge. He said:

"Great sage, I have no material problems, and yet am always unsettled. For years I have tried to be happy, to find an answer to my inner thoughts, to come to terms with the world. Please advise me as to how I can be cured of this malaise."

The sage answered: "My friend, what is hidden to some is apparent to others. Again, what is apparent to some is hidden to others. I have the answer to your ailment, though it is no ordinary medication. You must set out on your travels, seeking the happiest man in the world. As soon as you find him, you must ask him for his shirt, and put it on."

The seeker thereupon restlessly started looking for happy men. One after another he found them and questioned them. Again and again they said, "Yes i am happy, but there is one happier than me."

After travelling from one country to another for many, many days, he found the wood in which everyone said lived the happiest man in the world. He heard the sound of laughter coming from among the trees, and quickened his step until he came upon a man sitting in a glade.

"Are you the happiest man in the world, as people say?"

"Certainly I am", said the other man.

"My name is so-and-so, my condition is such-and-such, and my remedy, ordered by the greatest sage, is to wear your shirt. Please give it to me; I will give you anything I have in exchange."

The happiest man looked at him closely, and laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. When he had quietened down a little, the restless man, rather annoyed at his reaction, said:

"Are you unhinged, that you laugh at such a serious request?"

"Perhaps," said the happiest man, "but if you had only taken the trouble to look, you would have seen that I do not possess a shirt."

"What, then, am I to do now?"

"You will now be cured. Striving for something unattainable provides the exercise to achieve that which is needed; as when a man gathers all his strength to jump across a stream as if it were far wider than it is. He gets across the stream."

The happiest man in the world them took off the turban whose end had concealed his face. The restless man saw that he was none other than the great sage who had originally advised him.

"But why did you not tell me all this years ago, when I came to see you?" the restless man asked in puzzlement.

"Because you were not ready then to understand. You needed certain experiences, and they had to be given to you in a manner which would ensure that you went through them."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_the_Sufi