Wow, Have You See Who's In This Film?

I can't wait for this film to come out!

I love the work of Bruce Tracy and Willis Morgan!

Deck The Halls, By All Means, But Let's Not Get Too Carried Away, Eh?

I've written before about my fondness for Moleskine notebooks, and I still use them as my scribble-place of choice.

And I can understand why, as an item of good design and quality, they inspire a certain following and indeed adoration (after all, the list of sites in the right-hand column of this blog includes Moleskinerie).

But this is just going too far.



I mean, really.

"Feed Me! Feed Me All Night Long!" (Song From Little Photoshop Of Horrors)

This makes me laugh, so I thought I'd share.

The story so far: Ralph Lauren put out an ad which is insanely over-photoshopped (either that, or they're employing models who haven't eaten in weeks), and people on the internet rightly took the michael... so Lauren issued a legalese notice, claiming that the use of their very silly image constituted copyright infringement.

So, of course the website removed the image, and apologised. Ah, all right, ya got me - they're doing nothing of the sort, and more power to them.

And yes, you can see the image in question via that link. I'm not including it here because I want to encourage you to follow the link, and enjoy their sarcastic tone.

Besides, the picture in question really freaks me out. I don't want it on my blog.

Unintelligent Design: The Watches Worn By 007

The latest post in this occasional series is swimming against the tide a bit, but still...

There really is no need for watches to be waterproof to hundreds of metres. I'm qualified to dive, but only to 30 metres, and yet there are many watches which are water resistant to depths of 200m or more.

An example: the Omega Seamaster Planet ocean is water resistant to 600m. The deepest recorded dive using scuba equipment is 330m, just over half that. By 200m, the penetration of light from the surface is pretty much gone, so you'll need a torch to read your watch (it doesn't seem to glow in the dark or have a light, but I may have missed that). Similarly, the Rolex Submariner (dial pictured) is water-resistant to 300m, which seems a bit unnecessary.

Yes, I know there's a lot to admire about watches with the impressive build and reliability of Omega and Rolex, but this just seems excessive. I'm pretty certain there's a middle ground to be struck between making something sturdy enough to survive the general bashes and splashes of everyday life (so: a watch that doesn't scratch, and will withstand water if you go for a swim, a shower or do the washing-up) and building something to withstand events that very few people are actually likely to experience.

Then again, since many of these watches which are strangely water-resistant to the depth of the Mariana Trench are top-of-the-line models, maybe reducing the spec and reducing the price, even if it means increased sales, might work against the prestige aspect of the watches?

Hmm. Maybe it's 'intelligence' in marketing terms at the expense of design intelligence, then.

Not So Much Unintelligent Design, More Unfathomable

Continuing the occasional - and unequivocally highbrow - series of posts on the subject of urinals, here's one that, for the chaps, saves you the trouble of shaking.

Though would you really trust that claw-like hand?

And god only knows what the designer of this was thinking. I can only hope it was 4am, the deadline was close, and the Rolling Stones started playing on the radio...

The Best Things In Life Are Free, But You Can Give This To The Birds And Bees

Free (well, you have to collect tokens) with the News Of The World last weekend: a pair of hair straighteners, as demonstrated by Nikki Sanderson, ex of Coronation Street, in the picture here.

Well, they're saying that they're hair straighteners, but on the basis of the picture, you'll be getting something more like a stapler.

I can only hope Nikki doesn't have to be anywhere in any kind of hurry, as with hair that long, and a pair of 'straighteners' that small, I think it'll be a while yet before she's ready to go out.

Unintelligent Design? This Is Just a Gut Reaction, Admittedly, But...

... is this really a good idea?

It has the feel of a wrong turn to me, in all honesty. I would have thought a one-line display (even built into the headphone cord, as the new controls are) would have been more advisable.

We'll see if people go for it, I guess, but it's certainly not a feature I'd want. Perhaps because, to my not-well mind, it all appears rather reminiscent of MC Hawking.

Then again, maybe it's just an April Fool's Day gag that was accidentally released three weeks early...

Unintelligent Design: DairyStix

Staying in hotels is, of course, one of life's great delights; as well as televisions with fewer channels than one can watch at home, and showers which have two extremes of temperature (Inferno and Arctic) and nothing in between, there's always the thrill of using the 'tea and coffee making facilities'.

If the room has a fridge, you might have some real milk, so you can make a proper cuppa, but more often than not, you're likely to have a kettle, cups, teabags, and, in some form or other, UHT milk. UHT milk is obviously handy for hotel-owners, as it lasts for ages (decades after we humans are dust and gone, the giant radioactive cockroaches will still be finding stashes of it and drinking it in an attempt to fend off Causium-234-induced osteoporosis), but it doesn't taste very good at all… by which I mean it tastes of virtually nothing at all, being more like a homeopathic version of Tipp-Ex than milk.

Anyway, UHT milk used to be supplied in hotel rooms (and on trains and service stations and other strangely neither-here-nor-there places) in little pots, like miniaturised yogurt pots, with a foil lid; as Ben Elton noted in the 1980s, these pots appeared to have been spot-welded shut, so it was a battle to get them open, invariably resulting in you showering what little 'milk' lurked within all over the place. And Ben was right to point this out, but the so-called solution is no better, quite frankly: ladies and gents, the milk processing people and hospitality industry proudly present (while the rest of us just resent)… Dairystix.

Yes, all the lack of flavour of UHT milk, now in a longer-than-it-is-wide foil tube. Apparently taking their design cue from those Mr Freeze ice pops which can be found in the Walls freezers in newsagents in summer, the idea is that you tear the end off the 'stick and then pour the milk (well, it's UHT, so I use the term in its loosest and least-accurate sense) into the cup. Which would be fine, if the ends actually tore off in anything approximating a straight line. But that's not likely to happen with the 'dotted lines' you have to tear along, because they're coated with plastic and so you get an untidy tear along it. Which, when you squeeze the tube, means the milk comes out of two or three places in the end of the tube, like a man trying to urinate after someone's stapled the end of his prepuce (if that comparison appalls you, you may want to stop reading now - there's worse to come before this rant is over).

The reward for all this is a pathetic splash of not-milk, which barely coats the bottom of most cups. So you have to put two in, though you'll be lucky in most hotels to get more than two of the sticks per person, so you'll have to think carefully about when you drink your tea. And even then two isn't really enough to make it look like tea. And the reason for this is pretty pathetic; these milk sticks, like the milk pots before them, contain a minimal amount of milk.

In fact, I'm such a sad pedant that I actually did a bit of research to try and find out just how much (or, rather, how little) UHT milk is contained in a DairyStix. Appallingly, it is 12ml, or about 4% of a can of Diet Coke. So, all that effort wrestling with the end of it and then you squeeze down the length of it several times over, resulting in a spray in unexpected directions? All of which is - frankly - little more than the overall quantity of the average male ejaculation (where do you think the group 10cc got their name)? Perhaps it's in some way connected with the choice of films on the in-room TV.

Anyway, my friends, as something that doesn't work and yet looks quite modern and flashy, this is a pretty classic example of Unintelligent Design. Yes, perhaps I love my tea a bit too much, but it seems that the makers of DairyStix and similar items treat the making of tea and coffee with a little bit less love than they should, given that it's part of how they make their living.

Oh, For Faulks' Sake

So, this book comes out next week - Sebastian Faulks (whose work I must admit I haven't read, though people whose opinions I trust speak highly of his writing) has written a new James Bond novel (with the blessing of Fleming's estate). All very well and good, but what's that in the bottom right-hand corner?

'Sebastian Faulks Writing As Ian Fleming', it seems.

Now, maybe I'm just exacting to the point of pedantry, but you can't really claim that, can you? Oh, sure, when Virginia 'Flowers In The Attic' Andrews died the family got another author to be cover-credited as 'The New Virginia Andrews', rather bewilderingly, but I don't think I've ever seen the phrase 'writing as' used (by which I mean misused) in such a way.

'Writing as' is, you see, used when you're writing under a pseudonym, not trying to write something in the style of another author. There are high-profile authors who've 'written as' - Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman or Norah Roberts as JD Robb , but that's because those were made-up names and not real people they were seeking to emulate (given that Bachman allegedly claimed his religion was 'rooster worship', that's probably for the best in Steve K's case).

For crying out loud, when Kingsley Amis wrote a Bond book, he did so under a pseudonym, but the editions of that book which state his true identity say it was 'Kingsley Amis writing as Robert Markham' (as you can just about see if you peer at the bottom of the cover here).

I'm guessing it's not Mr Faulks's fault; he seems to be a genuine fan of Fleming's work, and is trying to emulate the style of Fleming - but then again, so was Raymond Benson, the previous author who wrote authorised Bond novels, and his cover credit wasn't that he was writing as Ian Fleming, it was just his name. Unlike Faulks, who's well-known in his own right, Benson could probably have used that kind of promotional push. And marketing is where I think the idea for this bizarre bit of branding probably originated, to be honest - I just wish that they'd put something like 'After' or 'In The Style Of' or… I dunno, maybe come up with their own set of words to describe it, rather than using a phrase which already has a meaning.

Unless, of course, this is the way the popular kids are using the phrase 'writing as' now. That being the case, this post is by John Soanes, Writing As Charles Dickens.

LINK: Unintelligent (Graphic) Design

In this post, I referred to some shockingly poor quality photoshop work which had somehow evaded quality control, and made it into the public arena.

Many more examples, some of which are rather creepy as well, can be found at the oddly compelling Photoshop Disasters blog.

Caution: features pictures of more than one woman with an excessive number of hands. No, seriously.

Unintelligent Design: Clink The Link If Ye Dare

If ever an item defined 'unintelligent design', this little beauty would be it.

Buy one today for someone you hate.

Unintelligent Design : TV Watch

Yes, I appreciate that Dick Tracy used to have a wrist-radio-TV thing that enabled him to say "I'm on my way", and I know that it looks like the sort of thing that we should have this side of the year 2000, but logic dictates that the screen is only ever - at best - going to be as big as your wrist.

The model shown above, which is available from Firebox, boasts a screen which measures a full 1.5". Wow-ee. Now you too can see Citizen Kane reduced to the size of a matchbox. Will the wonders of modern science never cease?

As I noted in this post, trying to combine functions with a watch invariably results in something that's too chunky to be a watch, but too small to work as a TV or calculator or whatever. And this seems to be one of those.

Granted, it might be bearable for watching Youtube videos or other short works of cinematic greatness like The Star Wars Kid , but watching a whole film on something so small? Only if you don't mind risking eyestrain at the very least.

As ever, you may disagree wildly, and think that I'm talking pish. You're absolutely entitled to that opinion, but do bear in mind that on this issue, David Lynch has made it clear that he and I are in complete agreement, though he uses stronger language to make his point.

Unintelligent Design: Recordable Pen

No real need for me to rant at vast length about the stupidity of this existing, I think, as the pointlessness is pretty apparent - to wit: if you've got a pen, why bother recording anything? Why not just write whatever it is you’ve got to remember, even if it’s only on the back of your hand?

Most of these pens only have a recording time of around ten seconds, which just emphasises the sense in using the pen as, duh, a pen, though some of them have (using new digital technology) recording times of up to two hours. Is it genuinely likely that you'll not be able to get to a piece of paper in two hours if you need to? Sure, you could be in the middle of the Sahara or something, but let's face it, in that situation you've got more pressing issues than the presentation that Derek wants to see by the close of play tomorrow.

Ah, you might say, you could use it as a recorder for a long meeting, and then play it back. To which I say counter-ah, how are you going to transcribe the salient points from the meeting - your pen's in use as a playback machine. What's that you say, you'll use it as a pen at the same time? What, and press play and stop repeatedly while you try to keep up with the speed of speech? I doubt it. Huh? What? You'll get a different pen? Ah, so you concede that it's either a pen or a recorder, not both. So why don't you buy a proper recorder, not some executive toy that's neither one thing nor another? Eh? Answer me. I said - oh, stop crying. Just throw the pen away, and we'll let the matter drop.

Recordable pens, then; like the calculator digital watches of the 1980s, an unworkable combination of two different functions - though whereas the calculator watch was too small to work as a calculator and too chunky to work as a watch, the recordable pen actually works against its two aims by providing the possibility of audio or text-based record-keeping, but makes it impossible to use them in tandem. Which is why you should either buy a pen, or a recorder.

I'm reminded of a joke I used to make in my stand-up days (as I'll egotistically call them) about how I was thinking about getting a tattoo, but wanted to get one which I wouldn't be ashamed of in years to come, which would have some resonance for everyone who saw it, and which would mean something to me every time I saw it. The only tattoo that met those criteria, the punchline went, was a tattoo on the back of my hand, saying 'Get Milk'.
And now you understand why there's no live DVD from me on sale this holiday season.

Unintelligent Design: The Waterless Urinal

Welcome, my friends, to a new feature here on the blog - a celebration of all that is pointless and useless in modern design.

It's all too easy to forget, in this age of iPhones and the like, that there's a lot of stuff out there in the world which is ugly, pointless, or doesn't work (or, indeed, all of those things). And so welcome to the first in a projected series of posts intended to shed light on folly in design, whilst giving me an opportunity to rant and rave and possibly even swear. Oh yes.

First up is an item of which I have some experience, but which may be an entirely new item in the eyes of my female readers: the waterless urinal.

It sounds like a joke, but I promise you such things exist - as you can see from the picture above, they're designed without the need for water to rinse out the bowl from an overhanging auto-rinse sump bar or similar. This is because the bowl contains a filtration layer designed to remove the carbamide (or urea) from the urine - and urine is, of course, predominantly water. The water then passes on to the usual outflow pipe. The filters need to be cleaned with specialist foams or sprays, and occasionally replaced.

As you can imagine, the waterless urinal has been quite popular; it uses less water than a standard urinal, so it's both more environmentally friendly, and cheaper to run (a major reason, I'd guess, why the last two places I've worked have had them installed in the gents). Despite its environment- and money-saving credentials, though, waterless urinals are ideally placed to kick off the Unintelligent Design series of posts on my blog for one very simple reason, and that is (drum roll)

They don't work.

Well, perhaps I'm being unfair, and all of the ones ever made and sold apart from the five I've encountered (three in the previous workplace, two in the present) work perfectly well, but that'd not really very likely, is it? As it is, the waterless urinals I've come across all block up in a frankly unsightly manner, though that's not the worst of it - far, far more unpleasant is the smell. It's the smell of urine and chemicals - the sort of odour that you might smell in a grotty underpass, or pick up a whiff of as you pass the doorway of a shop that's closed but unfortunate enough to be close to a pub at chucking-out time on Saturday night. In short: rank.

As I say, these urinals get blocked up, and this appears to be because the plughole at the base is made of some sort of plastic, which starts to rot because of constantly being deluged with urine of varying density, and I'd guess that the urea and other discharged minerals cause it to decay. This, combined with the fact that some people don't just pee into the urinals, but also spit and shed pubic hair into the bowl, means that the plug starts to clog with a number of unplanned-for items, so the urine doesn't pass through as expected, and starts to hang around and smell. Oh, and I'd respectfully suggest that the frequency of application of the appropriate cleaners, and replacement of the filters, should probably take place more often than the manufacturers let on when giving estimated running costs.

The upshot of all this? In essence, gents toilets which smell as if they contain day-old buckets of piss, and urinals which are clogged with pubes and puddles of slowly-darkening urine. Lovely. Granted, it does save money for the organisations that install them - in the short term, at least, I don't know about having to call in the engineers or other facilities management folks - but I think the environmental credentials are pretty arguable, what with the filters that have to be replaced and thrown away, and the chemicals which are introduced into the environment generally.

Don't think I'm some sort of toilet snob here; I've trekked up mountains and roughed it and used toilets that were little more than holes in the ground, and I know that when you need to go, you need to go, but we're not talking about an item for emergency use - the waterless urinal is something that has been thought about, designed, manufactured and sold for use, and in my experience it's far from fit for the purpose.

Frankly, I wouldn't cross the road to wee on one if it was on fire. Though chances are I could smell it from that distance anyway.

Have you been affected by any of the issues covered, or the references to effluvium and excreta, in this post? Do you think the waterless urinal is the greatest invention since the solar-powered tamagochi? Or would you like to share your experiences of urinating into a modern toilet such as the she-inal? If so, then please contact our team of researchers by clicking the comment button below. And for god's sake aim straight, whether ye be man or woman.