pedestrian thoughts

I did actually spend more than a day in New York. Really, I did. It’s just that I’ve recently had a lot of busy days in London and, er, have neglected to type up my notes. I’m very sorry. But I’m now armed with my Impega 80 sheet, 8″x5″, reporter’s short-hand notebook. I say it’s mine, it’s probably the property of the BBC. But, once more, I digress. And so early on…

On my previous trips to New York, I’d always meant to go to the Transit Museum. This time, I wasn’t going to let my good intentions lead me, once more, down the road to failure. So a reasonably early rise and a trip to the Bryant Park branch of Pax for 810 calories of breakfast, including my first venture into the world of breakfast potatoes. For the uninitiated, they seem to be boiled potatoes, bashed about, mixed with bits of green pepper, then thrown on the griddle for 30 seconds. The bacon was overly streaky and cooked rigid. Very crispy. The eggs and toast were to my satisfaction, though. Didn’t manage to finish the large freshly squeezed orange juice I’d bought.

After struggling with a copy of The Onion as my breakfast reading material, I found my way on a Subway down to Hoyt-Schermerhorn, which happens to be conveniently placed for the MTA Transit Museum. Exiting the subway in Downtown Brooklyn brings about a whole different feeling, especially when compared to that experienced when climbing up into Times Square, Bryant Park or Lexington Avenue. There’s a lot of construction on the go. There’s site machinery chewing the air, labourers chewing the fat, and plenty of police chewing gum. You feel more exposed than in Midtown. The abundance of helpful signposts ends outside that block. The maps in the back of Time Out’s guide to New York become a new sort of friend. Sort of like when you discover an old friend is in a position to give you something you need and crave. A sofa for a night when you miss the last train, a free holiday in their Italian villa, or a ton to tide you over when that bloody cash machine swallows your card yet again. (Yes. I’m talking about you, HSBC machine at Television Centre.)

Walking across a couple of blocks takes you to what looks like a Subway station entrance. Going down the steps, you’ll find yourself in the disused Court Street station — home to the MTA’s Transit Museum. Once you’re in, go down again to the station’s platforms. The tracks you see are still connected to the system, with the traction current being used to power and illuminate a huge selection of the MTA’s (and its predecessors’) Subway cars. From the early wooden wagons to recently decommissioned stock, the gradual improvements and refinements in the trains can be witnessed first hand. Some are subtle, like stylistic changes to lighting, others not so; substituting ventilation fans with ones which don’t behead the tall is one such. There’s plenty of signs and displays in the centre of the island platform to bring coherence to the chronology. The attention to detail is sometimes quite nice, too. The system maps and advert boards inside carriages are contemporaneous, for instance.

My favourite exhibit on the tracks is the revenue collection train. If you too harbour a desire to be Woody Harrelson (or Wesley Snipes) on a vengeful money-grabbing mission, now is your chance to act it out. For a measly $5. Another thing that’s definitely worth a look while you’re down on the platforms is the signal box. As the station is still hooked up, the board charting where trains are in real-time is fully functional. There’s also a radio receiver in there, so you can listen in on the (what I’m sure is) riveting guard-driver-signalman banter.

A word of warming, though: there’s even a museum cat roaming around down there, presumably to control any infestation of vermin. As the only visitor on this Tuesday morning in February, it came as something of a shock when it jumped out from the World’s Fair Special train. But being the solitary visitor does have its advantages on the upper floor of the museum; if you want to pretend to drive a bus without fear of being thought of as odd, your chance is now. If you want to pretend to refuel a bus, you can! Want to stand behind a Subway ticket office window? Yes, it’s yours!

There’s some strange things upstairs. Like every style of Subway entry barrier (and entry token) since day 1, right up to the ones in use today. So, should you really want, you can use a modern Metrocard to pass through the same kind of barrier you do two or three times a day just getting about the city. Naturally, I was thrilled by the prospect of being able to do so. There were some interesting exhibits, though, like the history of the bridges spanning the boroughs and how fare money is collected from the bus network (a giant vacuum cleaner is shoved into each vehicle’s ticket machine, as you ask) and Subway stations, then processed. Both these exhibits featured videos (which are a welcome relief after you’ve read all the stuff about the building of the Subway system on your way around) and were interesting and informative. On the downside, all weights and measures are given solely in imperial units. There’s also nowhere to get a drink or snack inside the museum, so take a packed lunch to eat in the mess area if you plan on making it a leisurely visit.

On the way back, stopped off in Greenwich Village to secure some jeans. Old Navy came up with the goods. $30.

So, Tuesday afternoon is knocking on. Ever aware that lunch was foregone in order to enjoy the full majesty of the transit museum’s beckon, I decided to head into one of the city’s many delis. A slice of pizza and a Pepsi Max and, because it’s Tuesday afternoon, a phone call from man and legend Paul Smith, indicating he’s arrived and will be ready for ale in approximately two hours. Time to get a move on; food must be eaten, travel must be made, and a shower must be had. Drinking in Hell’s Kitchen requires the best of a man, especially when your first port of call is Rudy’s.

A Heineken for me and a Stella for Smith. Retire to a booth, the seat being more duct tape than leather these days, with a splendid view of the television carrying the Obama-Clinton debate, complete with closed captions. You don’t know quite how surreal it is to be in a dive bar, 4500 miles from home, reading the words of two politicians on a television set, until you’ve actually tried it. And, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I wouldn’t do it again. There’s a certain amount of fun to be had in spotting the captioner’s (rare) errors, although Smith preferred working out how little delay there was between the lip movement and the words appearing on screen. I evidently go for the cheap thrills, he preferring something a little more challenging.

A few beers down, the end of the debate, and it’s time to move on uptown on 9th. We find ourselves in one of the many New York bars to be using beermats provided, for free, by the good people at LifeStyles Condoms. We also find the bar to be a bit rubbish, so we finish up quickly and bust a move to the Hudson Hotel’s Library for a couple of $10 beers. The snooker table is occupied, it’s too dark for Smith to take photos, and the Internet machine costs far too much. So we decide to chance our luck getting in at the hotel’s Hudson Bar. For the record, having a beer in your hand and walking around like you own the place seems to do the trick. We’re now in a bar with an under lit glass floor, metal patio furniture, and the great and the good of New York’s looks department. And some drunk accountants. Paul points out that our $10 beers have now been enjoyed in two bars, thus making them better value for money. I’m not so convinced, with it being my $20 going down our necks and not his, but nod in a docile manner regardless. Was pleased that, after only two trips to the lavatory, I ascertained that the provided hand wash was almond scented. Over the coming days, I was to learn quite how popular this particular fragrance is amongst those who stock and maintain New York’s restrooms and wash basins.

Another beer down and the drunk accountants, heavy financial toll, and disturbingly light floor reap their dividends. We move across town to the Ava Lounge, accessed from the lobby of the Dream Hotel, a bar fourteen floors above Times Square with beer at $7 a pop. Be aware, though, the lifts are tiny. If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to close your eyes and imagine you’re in a big open field. It makes arriving back in the lobby, and seeing the huge fish tanks, all the more surreal. Especially as the Ava Lounge’s bar snack of choice is those little biscuit things shaped like fish. It all adds up in the mind and breaks you, especially after ten beers and a chaser of jet lag.

Trekking back to the Americana from Ava involves skirting around Times Square, which means the dangerous prospect of encountering a 24 hour McDonald’s. Whatever state you’re in, no matter how good of an idea it might seem, and no matter what your friend tells you, just say no. For me. Please.

Day three, Wednesday, follows when I get another couple of hours. It’s hard work, this blogging…

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I live in West London, under Heathrow airport’s flightpath. My local London underground station is on the same line as Heathrow airport, about 25 minutes away. I’ve flown from Heathrow before. It’s fine. You can even take two bits of hand-baggage from there. But not from Gatwick. Which is where I flew from.

So, with both my camera kit and laptop thrown into the same rucksack as reading materials, tickets, Passport, and other in-flight necessities (from either the airline’s perspective or mine, but seldom both), I set off, somewhat intrepidly, on my trip. At 5am. Now, it’s not that intrepidity stems from tiredness, you understand, but it should probably be noted that I’d spent the previous afternoon and evening watching a game of association football and drinking moderately, at a den of obscene iniquity, and questionable integrity, somewhere in London’s dangerous (but nevertheless trendy) Clapham. And didn’t go to bed afterwards.

Cab arrives ten minutes early than anticipated. I’m sort of ready, but decide to keep him waiting outside until 5am - which is when I’d booked the car for. Atonement was swift; as I was chucking my case in the boot, his dirty rear bumper and tailgate soiled my jeans. Not the best thing, really, when you’re about to make an 8,000 mile round-trip and need live off only two pairs of jeans (the aforementioned, newly soiled, ones being the best-fitting and most comfortable of the two) for the next week. So, foul mood in the taxi. Made even fouler by having to endure a tragic, mushy-music, radio station for the 9 mile journey to Victoria. It was one of those rare occasions that I felt the need to actually update my facebook status with details of what I was doing and how I was feeling, rather than a slightly obscure song lyric or bizarre film reference (although I maintain the sentiment of the previous update, which is that milk was a bad choice, was a salient point that needed making).

Got on the Gatwick Express. It’s completely unremarkable. Apart from the very bright lighting in the carriages. So that’d be almost completely unremarkable, then.

Gatwick’s North Terminal was my next point of call. Breezed through check-in and security, following a swift ‘Big Breakfast’ (no sausage, but an extra hash brown instead, please) under the golden arches. Couldn’t find any wireless Internet for love, only for an extortionate amount of money. Decided to slum it and use the Internet on my mobile for nothing. Didn’t go for a pint in one of the two departure lounge pubs. Rang mum instead.

So. Delta. An American airline, playing a non-variety of pop-country music while you board. And, according to the seat-back magazine, you can download the very playlists they heroically craft from the iTunes Music Store. Just search for ‘delta tunes’ on the iMix page. Seriously.

The most surreal part of the flight came with the captain’s welcoming announcement, performed spectacularly in a good old country boy American accent: a higher body had decreed that only business class passengers can make use of the first class lavatories - and that only standard class passengers can go for a piss in the plebs’ bogs. It was also pointed out that members of any congregations would be ‘dispersed’, in accordance with Transport Security Agency guidelines. Thankfully, it was a very lightly loaded 767-300ER flight (around a third full). The two toilets serving the whole of coach started to appear a bit ‘fresh’ by the time we’d got over Canada; the mind worries for their state at the end of a fully-laden flight, and about the level of queuing that would ensue. 130:1 lavatory contention can’t be an altogether good thing, especially considering the potential for queue-jumping brought about by the crowd dispersal policy.

Delta feed you good. Let’s get that straight. Peanuts and a drink just after take-off, a full tray meal about an hour in (with free booze), ice cream half way there, and the bizarre combination of a pizza slice and shortbread biscuit just before descent. Plus, it seemed, as much tea as you could possibly gulp down your gullet. Being a Yorkshireman, and possessing an unabashed inability to reject the offer of a cuppa, meant I took on one of the less desirable aspects of a racehorse for much of the morning. It’s a diuretic, don’t you know.

Fast forward the reasonable flight, dull plod through JFK’s shoddy terminal 2, and the uneventful AirTrain ride to Jamaica. Bring on that first Subway ride of the trip. Always a bit of a dodgy one; armed with a suitcase, a backpack, and a copy of Time Out’s guide to New York, you don’t look like the most local of people. Easy prey for New York’s many vultures and vagabonds, the unmistakable feeling of vulnerability. Once you lose the suitcase, it’s fine. Once you’ve not been up for 26 hours straight (save two hours sprawled across the middle three of a 767), it’s fine. Once you’ve had a beer in you, it’s fine. Whether or not that’s because you’ve no longer got a 15 kilo suitcase to hamper your escape from any undesirable situation, or are more alert to duck and dodge any deviant, or possess the wonderful alcohol-fuelled arrogance, I can but only speculate.

Checked in to the Americana Inn and, after familiarising myself with the operation of my room’s fancy sink, made a move to do a bit of mid-afternoon shopping and have a general mooch about mid-town. Bought an FM radio for the iPod, which isn’t as crap as James Cridland would have you believe, had a look around the pure glamour that is Times Square, and went for a hot chocolate with TONY, the TONY guide, a notepad, and 101.1 WCBS-FM. Plans for the week were made rather loosely, along with hay and an early night…

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I’ve been battling away with a pretty ordinary mobile telephone for a while now. I never seem to have the latest and greatest, but I never seem to have something so desperately sad that my (ironically) desperately sad mates have felt the need to take the piss. I’ve, effectively, been talking and texting into a 4 year old Mondeo 1.8. Efficient, reliable, and pleasant enough — but each feature it has seems to be done better elsewhere. And it would be really rubbish off-road. And that’s where I want to take it.

My iPod stores more music than the memory card and sounds better. My DAB pocket radio gets more radio stations and sounds better than the in-built FM tuner. My digital camera takes better photos than the one in the phone. So why do I want a telephone that can do all these things, but in a more mediocre manner than items I carry about in my man-bag as a matter of course? I hardly ever moblog these days, and I’m finding I increasingly use Facebook and GoogleMail while I’m on the go.

So: wouldn’t it make sense to have a mobile telephone that excelled at mooching around on Facebook and dealing with my e-mail, but while also giving me something new that I can’t get from any of the other devices I carry about with me?

I gave me the X-Series from 3 with the Nokia E65.

Although it offers a camera and an mp3 player, they’re still not as good as those I carry around with me. The camera’s not even as good as the one on my outgoing phone, and the E65 is bereft of an FM radio. But it’s not regression: as I outlined above, these facilities won’t be missed. But what this new telephone offers me is stunning: I can listen to radio, over the Internet, from anywhere in the world. I can download podcasts automatically and listen to them right away. I can buy music and have a copy to go on the phone straight away, and subsequently download it to my computer at home. I can keep track of RSS feeds. I can make free calls using Skype. I can send an unlimited number of MSN Messenger messages.

None of the other devices I carry around let me do these things. Neither did my old telephone.

But only now do we get to the really, really, cool bit: it comes with Slingbox and Orb. Slingbox lets me watch any TV channel wherever I am. Orb allows me to watch or listen to any single bit of media on my home computer. I can even tell my computer to record things for me, too. All from a telephone that’s smaller and lighter than the one I’m bored of.

Even if the camera’s not quite as good, and there’s no FM radio, it really feels like a huge leap forward.

Deal details
150 minutes, 750 texts, 25 video/photo messages, £5 of premium content, unlimited (subject to fair use) handset-originated data, Skype, MSN Messenger, Orb, Slingbox: £35 per month.

Free Nokia E65, Slingbox, Bluetooth headset, 512MB memory card and next day delivery from 3 Shop. £82.50 cashback through Quidco.

Blogs of interest on this subject
The guys who develop X-series keep a really interesting blog.

There’s an x-series moblog, too.

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I’m a moderately active member of Media UK, an excellent online media news, directory and discussions website. I’m also a user of Twitter, the reasonably useless (but somewhat fun) uni-tasking social networking service.

Imagine my delight when Media UK began to offer a service of sending me the latest radio news through Twitter, directly to my mobile telephone. “Brilliant!”, was the first pedestrian thought I had. “I can get all the latest radio news sent to my mobile. For free. I will be seen as a deity amongst those with whom I consort.” And so it was to be. For a few days, at least.

But there’s only so many news stories of a certain calibre I can take. Here’s a few examples from my time as a subscriber to the service:

• Sri Lankan government quotes Media Network to back up official complaint to US
• RTHK-Hong Kong launches simulcast programme in Chinese
• Shortwave numbers stations feature in musical premiere tomorrow

Now, I’m as much (if not more) of an anorak as the next man. But none of these stories were of interest to me. Perhaps my importancedar is out of kilter.

Media UK’s news feeds are collated from a number of blogs and third-party news sites, with (it would seem) no day-to-day editorial control from Media UK. Up until now, I’ve had the last 24 hours’ news (from these same feeds) delivered to my e-mail account each day at about 5pm. I’ve not objected to the chaff; I can just read past it to the next news story in the digest. And, as it’s filtered away from my inbox, I can read it when I have a spare moment.

No such luxuries for when the phone beeps, though. It’s an interruption and, perhaps because of human nature, we have high expectations of things which detract us from our activities. Receiving a text message to tell me RTHK is providing a Chinese simulcast is as much of a let-down as being alerted to the fact that vodafone have some cracking deals if I use one of their partner networks when I travel abroad.

The intimacy of text messaging is very different to anything else, even e-mail. Both are electronic, written, personal and private. But what allows a text message to build our hopes up more than an e-mail? Is it the interruption factor? Is it that the mobile telephone is always with us? Perhaps it’s because automated, commercial (and spam) text messaging is (thankfully) rare, so the expectation is for a message sent by a real person? Looking at my e-mail box, around half my communications are from companies I do business with (Amazon, Play.com, SVP, eBuyer) sending me solicited promotional e-mails. But they’re not personal. They’ve been sent by a computer. And I half expect that when I receive an e-mail. Looking back through the inbox on my mobile telephone, there’s not a single non-human-sent message in there. And, consequently, an unmoderated, computer-generated, news-feed is something alien. And I couldn’t hack it.

Do we, as users, need to change their expectations towards push-based mobile content? Do aggregators need to step up their quality control when pushing content over, perhaps, the most personal medium? Did you bother to read any of this bollocks?

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It’s not often you’ll find me bitching about software, particularly that written by Microsoft. For the most part, it’s decent stuff: easy to use, innovative, productive. I’m thinking particularly about Office and the .NET framework as two particularly shining examples.

However, I seemed to attract the job of authoring and maintaining a website the other day. I code by hand and constantly review changes in Firefox. Of course, this all comes unstuck when (your entirely valid) HTML and CSS renders completely differently (and incorrectly) in the world’s most widely-used browser. And it doesn’t help that those wonderful PNGs I spent precious time crafting, complete with alpha-channel transparency, simply show up as grey boxes. I know there are ways around this. However, they all have ramifications for my desire to create WAI-compliant code, or would require with me to plead with the company IT people to switch everything from IIS/ASP to Apache/PHP. Just for me.

In light of these “Month of Sundays” scenarios, I’ve decided to go retro. Or, as the W3 put it, “depreciated”. Or as Chris Morris (a very talented academic web developer chap) might put it, “obsolete”. CSS layout has gone out the window, to be replaced by a cunning mash of tables and CSS styles. Those wonderful, anti-aliased, alpha-channel transparent 24-bit PNGs have made way for some clunky, 18-year-old GIFs. So now my corners are jaggy, without the beautiful, crisp, clean anti-aliasing they formerly basked in.

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Imagine the irony. You’ve spent the afternoon at work writing an article (or, rather, rehashing an old article) about what a scourge pirate radio stations are on society. You probably know the drill; they cause interference to radio stations and the emergency services, jam air traffic control signals, play awful dance music, etc. and other statements designed to make DJ Gabbaman on Banging FM appear to be the devil incarnate. Or, if not the devil incarnate himself, a close relative.

But back to my tale of irony, woe, and DJ Gabba MC. After sticking the freshly cooked buns on their rack, I flicked the radio set on to Radio 2. It happened to be a very interesting documentary about rock music and, at length, the life and times of Dave Grohl.

My ability to enjoy the programme was somewhat diminished. You see, young DJ Gabba MC on Big Bass FM (or whatever) has set up his transmitter a bit too close to the Radio 2 frequency. Meaning Grohl’s entertaining, if somewhat pedestrian, banter was punctuated by the big beats of Bomb Doggg’s latest jams. Which I found quite annoying, truth be told. Especially as someone at Radio 2 had gone to a lot of hard work to produce an entertaining radio programme for folk to enjoy — some of whom subsequently couldn’t, thanks to a selfish little so-and-so and his box of records.

Radio pirates are a real problem in London. They blight the airwaves with content few people want — far fewer people than were displaced from their evening of Radio 2 listening, at any rate. But it’s always the stations I like listening to that take a hit from Gabbaman and his ilk. I just hope it doesn’t extend to the aeroplanes I catch.

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