• Possibly related posts

  No related posts.

Directly outside the window, which looks out over the pedestrian area and down towards St Martin’s Church, are wrought metal railings. Their bars are squared rather than rounded, giving them a flat edge.

Gradually, as I gazed out of the window, I became aware that I was apparently looking straight through these solid metal bars: through them, not between them. As people walked by outside, it seemed I could see them walking behind the flat, rigid metal.

A view from Druckers. If you look carefully you can see 'through' the metal bars.

My guess is that the glass of the window reflected the scene outside onto the metal.

I assume that as the proximity of the two was so close, and given the angle of my gaze, the reflection was such that the resulting image was seamless.

Another view from Druckers.

The illusion vanished if I moved my head, and could only be seen through those bars in the photograph (ie those directly in my line of vision).

Which means, presumably, that I would not have seen it had I not sat in that exact location and in that exact position.

• Possibly related posts

  1. I have a favourite tree. And here’s why…
  2. Market Pong 2: let’s make it massive this time
  3. Digpuss shop now open for window-shopping

Certainly music can suggest humour – and is often used to that effect in plays and films – but can it be funny for the sake of it?

Music certainly elicits emotions: it can excite us and soothe us, make us feel optimistic or dismal.

But can a piece of music, devoid of context, make us laugh? That is, with no title, lyrics, description, external narrative or accompanying visual (eg performers, actors, pictures).

I’m intrigued, because I can’t think of examples of where I have laughed at a piece of music for its own sake.

Have you? And, if so, what music was it? I’d be interested to hear.

• Possibly related posts

  No related posts.

So, it would be really good to know how it has helped people (not least because I’m talking at the Bath Digital Festival next Wednesday about quick digital wins (and I’m bricking myself)).

Maybe it guides your responses to a hostile website, or serves as a reassurance to managers that are nervous of engaging online. Or maybe something else entirely.

However it’s helped, I’d love to hear about it and share your stories. And you may remain anonymous if you wish.

Either leave a comment here or use the form below.

• Possibly related posts

  No related posts.

I had wondered about threading them together, like Arabian Nights; I might still do that, at the end, but let’s keep it simple for now.

So, the theme is simply ‘1972’.

The stories will be presented online in some way and will all go live at the same time (hopefully sometime before the end of 2012 else we miss the point).

The story can be about anything you like, fact or fiction. There are just three rules:

1. You must turn forty in 2012;
2. Your story must have some connection to the year 1972;
3. Try to keep your story relatively clean and inoffensive.

Fancy joining in? Please register your interest below. If enough people are interested, I’ll go ahead with it.

• Possibly related posts

  No related posts.

This one is from 1994 and started life as a song(!). About three years ago I added two more verses but forgot to write them down; I spoke them into my phone and then the phone broke.

Bicycles of Life

I’ve got a bicycle,
Which isn’t like a tricycle:
It’s got two wheels,
A tricycle has
Three.
And if I had a tandem
I wouldn’t pick at random
The person who would share
The ride
With me.

I’m very choosy:
I don’t want some old floozy who is
Going to give up when her legs get
Tired;
I want a steady pedaler,
With a good grip on the handlebar,
A girl by whom our journey’d be
Inspired.

And as we tour the countryside,
Not having to pay for the park-and-ride,
We’d see all sorts of interesting
Things;
We’d learn lots about history
And attempts at solving mysteries
Like dinosaurs, and bicycles
With wings.

We’d cycle through all sorts of weather,
Singing silly songs together;
Occasionally we’d stop for cups of
Tea;
We’d design aquatic bicycles,
Over bowls of Ricicles,
And then we’d go and try them out
At sea.

I’ve got a bike,
Which isn’t like a trike:
A bike’s got two wheels,
A trike’s
Got
Three.
And if I had a tandem
I wouldn’t pick at random
The person who would
Share
The ride
With
Me.

• Possibly related posts

  1. Puffin Poem
  2. If half the world had buildings

I am a puffin
Munchin’ on a muffin
But I can’t get enuffin
‘Cos I’ve got a small mouth.

• Possibly related posts

  1. Bicycles of Life: a poem
  2. Time Window and Sandbox

I was traveling home to Birmingham on a Virgin train – not something I do often – and I sat at a table with a couple of Pakistani men. They were a fair bit apart in age and it turned out that one was the son of the other. They chatted intermittently for a bit while; I gazed out of the window. I think we exchanged pleasantries.

Then, by chance, the younger man and myself looked at our mobile phones at the same time. They were identical models, and we chuckled at this. The ice was broken just enough.

So when the father excused himself to search for the conveniences (not all that convenient as he was gone some time), his son asked – a little sheepishly – if I’d join him for a drink in the buffet car. If I remember correctly, he felt it a little disrespectful to his father to go alone.

So I did. And we chatted. For some reason I mentioned my Quaker connections and he got excited because he knew some Quakers well. We chatted some more and I learned that he was a member of the Pakistani parliament. He had been in London with his father to negotiate a deal with a large American food chain: the purpose of which, I believe, was to help fund a scheme to get affordable health care (possibly even free, I don’t remember) to vulnerable neighbourhoods in Pakistan.

And then I discovered he had apologised on behalf of Pakistan for the murder of Daniel Pearl.

Ten years ago today, American journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Islamic extremists in Pakistan. Umar Ghuman, this understated chap in a standard-class train carriage, drinking with a stranger out of respect for his own father, had been the man who apologised in public to Daniel’s.

Umar Ghuman, I salute you for that.

• Possibly related posts

  No related posts.

A tried and tested trick (by me, at least) is to run through the alphabet, visualising each letter in turn. It’s a bit like scrolling through a list on a screen: although you focus on one letter at a time you can see its neighbours too; but in this case the rest of the alphabet is always there somewhere, at the periphery.

The ‘A’ chimed with me straight away. I let it go for the moment as I still had 25 letters to compare it with. But the ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘G’ also glowed a little. (They don’t actually glow as such, but it’s impossible to describe exactly how they present themselves.)

The rest of the journey through the alphabet was uneventful, until I hit ‘W’. Everything about it lit up, and it was even bold enough to proffer a word: ‘When’.

I tried others, like ‘Will’ and ‘With’, but ‘When’ stuck fast. However, the ‘T’ then started throbbing and spat out the word ‘Time’. That posed a problem: do I trust that sudden, apparently random intervention or do I focus on ‘When’, which had been presented so decisively?

I prodded a little more, playing ‘Time’ and ‘When’ off against each other. And then, like the end of a tunnel approaching unexpectedly, the other pieces dropped into place: ‘A’, ‘Time’, ‘G’ and ‘B’ clubbed together to produce ‘As Time Goes By‘.

How the bloody hell does that work?! It feels like I’m doing physical labour, moving pieces around and slotting things together, but in fact I’m lying perfectly still. My hands are doing nothing; to any observer I’m probably asleep; the only muscle I’m using is inside my head.

And where does ‘When’ fit in? The letter ‘W’ doesn’t feature in that song title at all, yet it was instrumental in solving the puzzle.

I’m not trying to fathom the human brain; lots of very clever people are spending their lives doing that. But I am often paralysed by how incredibly unfathomable and sophisticated it is.

• Possibly related posts

  No related posts.

Well, it turns out you can embed .pdf and .ppt files via Google Docs using a simple iframe. You don’t even need a Google account.

<iframe src="http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://document.pdf&embedded=true"></iframe>

Simply replace the bold text with your document’s url and style the iframe with css.

This appears not to work very well with actual Google documents though, as it appends a load of navigation detritus. But it seems to work well for regular hosted documents.

• Possibly related posts

  1. Bookmarks for 4 January 2009 through 5 January 2009
  2. Google Reader – Play
  3. Google Latitude