People are saying that AI is conscious and that it has rights, feelings and probably a desire to take over the earth and destroy all humans. This is not true. It is just a machine pretending to be something it is not. You can find a very good discussion of all this (the best I’ve seen) from Mustafa Suleyman here.
Pressure is not a superhero film. Except that it is. It’s a story of how the largest enterprises can pivot on a single person; in this case James Stagg (played by Andrew Scott) who was Britain’s chief meteorological officer in 1944. He had the unenviable job of telling General Eisenhower whether the troops taking part on the largest seaborn invasion in history would be able to get off their boats and onto the beaches. Basically, if Stagg gets the weather wrong and the invasion arrives in the middle of a storm, lots of people will die and the war could be lost.
That’s pressure. Everybody in the film is played wonderfully. I’d forgotten what a good actor Brendan Fraser (Eisenhower) is too. You should see this film. No car chases, alien invasions or gymnastic fighting. Just a true story with the highest stakes imaginable.
I spent a big chunk of today getting all my holiday photos out of the camera and loaded onto a real, spinning, magnetic disk. I know that flash storage is the future, with super speedy reads and writes, but it is also super expensive. Particularly now. So, I put all 1,669 shots on a local hard disk on my machine. I was worried that this would slow down the editing process as files were moved on and off the rusty platters, but I’ve not really noticed a difference in performance.
I’ve used Lightroom for photo editing for so long now that I think it is a habit I may never break. Even though it is consistently annoying and still won’t let you open more than one catalogue at once. I don’t consider myself as much of a pro with the tool, so I don’t have many pro-tips to offer. One thing it is worth remembering though is that you can copy and paste image edit settings very easily and apply the settings to lots of images at once. This doesn’t work too well for things like cropping, but it is a great way to apply the same style to a group of pictures. The AI object selection and layers are also well worth exploring. You can create export settings so that you can easily create downsized images from your originals. It is very easy to mark specific images (using rating numbers 1-5 or colours from 6 upwards) and then select multiple images by rating or colour. And you can attach keywords to images and then search for them, as well as find images from a particular camera or even lens.
So, actually quite useful then I suppose…
Well, this is sad. Our flight leaves at 7:30 pm, and we are spending our last day in Bergen. Fortunately the check out is at 12 noon, so we’ll have a room to nip back to for the morning. We had another walk round and I found a fantastic camera shop. Something of a payback for all the time I’ve spent in wool shops over the last few days.
Anyhoo, I did buy a camera, but it is kind of a joke device, shaped like a film cassette and with a tiny viewfinder sticking out of it. It does work, and you can get pictures out of it.
I was a bit upset to discover that it was sold without a memory card but since we were having our lunchtime sandwich opposite a tech shop I was able to head across the road and solve that problem easily. The camera is a blind box deal, with six different film simulations. So they say. The pictures are quite low resolution, massively over-sharpened and rather charming.
The pictures below have been made deliberately small so that they don’t look too bad.
After lunch we chilled in the hotel lobby before walking to the station and taking a tram to the airport. The tram is not the fastest way to get there but it is the cheapest, at around four quids for the pair of us. Plus you get to visit all the places where normal people hang out and see a bit more scenery.
The airport was nice until we got to the “cattle class” gate for the plane. They must have considered the probable passenger count for each plane as a few hundred and then gone ahead with the plans for only sixty or so seats at the gate. I’d like to have been at that meeting.
The flight home was smooth, and at around nine o’clock in the evening we started the two hour journey home in the car. Unfortunately, we were now back in England using English roads. Which they like to close at night so they can play with them. So, we got the diversion experience of a lifetime. As in “it seemed to take a lifetime to get home” and “it will take a sizeable chunk of a lifetime to forget it”. One part of the diversion planning process seemed to involve sending enormous lorries down tiny roads past rows of parked cars outside neat little houses that probably weren’t expecting motorway traffic levels.
We also need to mention the signage. What there was of it. You might think that if you were planning a road diversion, you’d get an appropriate number of signs in. Not so. Signs were rare and confusing. At one point we spotted one with the word “Diversion” on it being displayed upside down, presumably so that the arrow pointed the correct way. It felt like we got home in spite of this “help”. In the end we let the Satnav sort it out and just hoped it would get us back on the motorway after the blockage. Which it did. If you ever wonder if you should take a trip to Norway you totally should. We had a great time.
We used our special power of getting up early to ensure that we got to the funicular railway before the queues started. Side note: Nothing pleases us more than walking past a big queue for something we walked straight into an hour ago. Anyhoo, the railway was great, the views tremendous and they had a splendid wildlife park at the top of the railway. With goats.
They were also running some kind of, er, run, at the top with figures in track suits tightening shoelaces and donning ankle tracking brackets to precisely time their entries. We just had a hot chocolate and watched them all.
Then it was back down for a quick sandwich lunch and a walk around Bergen, which is lovely. Getting lost is not a problem if you know that you can always walk downhill to the water’s edge. Then it was out for another nice meal. Italian this time. By the time we’d finished – walking out past a huge queue waiting to get in – yay! It was close to sunset and we’d enjoyed the funicular so much we thought we’d do it again. So we did. Slight snag. The sun sets right behind the city, so the pictures had to be taken right into the light. But as it got lower this became less of a problem. And it was great to see the city slowly light up below us.
Time for another cruise this morning. This one was not electric but was pretty high-speed diesel. Going out on the deck to grab pictures was braver and more exciting than I would have liked and the light wasn’t that amazing – although the scenery was. A member of the crew was saying that if the captain is in a good mood he’ll take the boat right into a waterfall cascading down the side of the fjord. He was and he did. I wondered about asking what the captain would do if he was in a bad mood but decided against it.
We found a lovely place for lunch by mistake, looking for a different (and as it turned out probably lessor) one. Then, in our quest to find the missing B&O hifi store we found a really nice wool shop. Norway folks take their knitting and crochet really seriously. In fact, they seem to take everything in life properly seriously. Until you make them laugh, at which point they really go for it.
We did plan to go back to the same place for dinner (a mistake we’ve made many times) but it was full so we were forced to strike out and find somewhere new. Which we did. The owner told us he had only opened the day before. It was awesome. Just the right amount of food for us. On a stick. Although I’m told that the proper name for this form of serving is skewer.
The day started with a trip on a boat. Which was very nice. Same kind of setup as the first day, but with slightly less pleasing weather. That dropped us off to pick up a bus ride past even more nice scenery to Voss where we caught the train to Bergen.
Tunnel vision on the bus
Not our train
Everything fitted together nicely, including a filling station purchased meal, eaten in the Voss station waiting room. Then on to Bergen. A quick walk from the station to the hotel. Past a Bang and Olufsen HiFi shop. Not seen one of those in a while. We must be in the posh part of town.
Flam is lovely. Based at the end of a fjord it is a tiny village with just hotels, museums, souvenir shops and a general store to its name. Business looks to be good though, what with a succession of cruise ships dropping of interested folks with cash to spend and time to kill.
We took a walk around and found a little Farm Café with superb garden and even a swing. In the afternoon we did a bit more wandering, then headed for our poshest lunch of the tour (it turned out).
We managed to inadvertently shoplift a bag from the museum (the assistant forgot to charge us), but having decided that we wanted good rather than larcenous memories of the place we took it back and offered to pay. They were pleased to see us and we got a discount. So honestly is not a bad policy after all.
The title of this post is a bit of a fiction. It’s actually six hours to Myrdal, with another hour or so down the side of the fjord to Flam. The trip was billed as one of the most beautiful railway journeys in the world and I quite agree with this. Although it turned out to be spectacularly difficult to capture the scenery through the thick, double glazed, train windows.
The lines in the sky are the reflections of the carriage lights. I need to find a way to get rid of them.
We got on the train first thing, got off it a couple of hours into the journey to stretch our legs for ten minutes, and then climbed up above the tree line to Myrdal. Which was quite chilly and totally vindicated our choice of cosy clothing. The train ride down on the Flam Railway (which is a thing) was very nice, with a stop halfway to look at a waterfall.
We arrived starving and found a lovely place to eat which also served good beer.
..although some of the staff were a bit wooden. Ho ho.
Lots of boats
Best way to see Oslo? From boat. Best kind of boat? An electric one. We were up bright and early to get on the first of our pre-arranged “trips around the bay”. This was on a super modern, carbon fibre, all electric boat which glided silently out into the bay and around a bunch of pretty islands and inlets. You could wander around the boat taking pictures, so I did. The weather started super-grey – a bit like being at home – but it got nicer and nicer until we arrived back in something approaching sunshine.
Private island
Walked back from the boat past an amazing bakery where we had a couple of amazing sandwiches. No dry ice , but it did have a really good view of the harbour.
After a quick freshen up at the hotel we headed for the opera house. They let you walk on the roof, and this is totally a good thing. The views were superb and the lighting rather special.
I even managed to find a really nice camera store where I didn’t buy a camera. Or a lens. But did get a rather nice bag.
A change of pace for tea, where we headed for “Proud Mary’s”, a pub/venue which served up a bunch of nice nibbles which, considering the huge breakfast and lunch that we had enjoyed, fitted the bill perfectly. Then to bed. Big journey tomorrow.
Today finds us in Oslo as part of our one-week world tour of Norway. We were up at 6:00 am and off on the road by 7:00am. The journey to the airport – always a giggle – was enlivened by plenty of queues and jeopardy. But we got to Manchester in good time and after a quick trip in and out of the car park (got to love their signage) we got parked up and hot footed it over to Terminal 2 in time to have a coffee in a place with thousands of people and no seats.
Then through passport control, a quick lunch, a half hour delay in the plane and off we went. I think short haul flights are allowed to have their seats closer together than long haul ones. All I can say is ouch.
We got to Oslo in good time and had a very smooth train journey to the hotel. Checked in, a quick walk around and then tea at The Duck and Dumplings, a place I spotted on the map while making plans on the plane after landing. Very nice food and deserts with dry ice.
I asked if all meals in Norway are accompanied by billowing white smoke and I was told that they are. Rather looking forward to breakfast tomorrow.
You may have noticed some interruption to the service at robmiles.com today. It turns out that the day you leave the country is probably not the best day to transfer your domain name. Particularly if the domain you are moving is used in the email address used for 2 factor authentication with your DNS provider. All of which added up to an interesting conversation with a NameCheap support person who was super helpful and managed to give me enough access to able to sort it out with the help of the hotel wi-fi. Very glad I brought the laptop now…..
Talking, as we were, about wacky board games we come to Magical Athlete. We played this last night too. It’s a bit like snakes and ladders, but with no snakes and no ladders. Instead players get to pick athletes for four dice powered races round the board. All of the players have extra abilities, some of which affect other players. For example the “party animal” draws all the other players one square towards them. Some of the board squares have actions on them which might trigger other player actions, so moves can compound in interesting and very amusing ways. It’s a dice game at heart, which means that getting super strategic and thinking things through is not really a thing you can do when you play. But as a party game it is super fun.
We played a bunch of games tonight, one of which was Pili Pili. It is a trick taking game. At the start each player makes a bid that sets out many tricks they intend to take in the round. The total number of tricks must not be equal to the total number of cards each player has, so someone is bound to fail. Then you go off taking tricks using cards numbered from 1 to 56 plus a joker. Anyone who misses their target gets a chilli. Get five chilli’s and the game ends, lowest chilli count of the remaining players wins. Simple eh?
Oh, but I forgot one thing. Each round has a different “mode”. Sometimes you have to pass some (or even all) of your cards to a neighbour after you’ve bid. Sometimes you have lay our cards face up in front of you after your bid, Sometimes you hold your cards above your head so that everyone can see them but you before you bid. There might be one where you have to play your hand standing on one leg. We’ve not played it that much. But these different modes make all the difference and turn the game into something else. Every hand. It’s easy to pick up, great fun to play and doesn’t last that long. Strongly recommended.
If you find yourself in York and hungry for meat (it can happen) I can strongly recommend Bulgogi. We were there yesterday and the food, atmosphere and service were all top notch.
Charles sent me a note about an event later in September. It looks super interesting to me. I’m going pop along in the afternoon with the Custard Cream camera and grab a few pics. If you see me there I’ll make you a portrait you’ll never forget…
Never accuse me of not staying on trend. Just ten years after it started, I’ve finally got into Pokemon Go. It’s not cost me much money so far (apart from a stress purchase of some pokeballs a while back) and I am rather enjoying it. It makes going out that much more interesting I’ve not done much fighting yet, but I’m having fun building up my collection. It is a great case study in how to build a game which draws in the player and offers training and new things to do in just the right amounts to engage you.
Bought a heavily discounted jacket today. I’m sure it is still really stylish though.
You’ll know I’ve finisehd when I take the protective coating off the screen
After the worldwide (in my world) success of the Custard Cream Camera I’m now working on its successor. The Bourbon Classic. This has a much larger capacitive touch screen viewfinder that pivots. I’ve left the printer out of the camera to make a more portable device and it uses the Raspberry Pi 3 camera. There will be a separated printer box with a wireless connection. It will probably be brown too.
Needed to slightly tweak the camera slot for the prototype.
this one looks a bit like a different biscuit, the bourbon.
It’s nice to know that even with the advent of super powerful systems and rampant artificial intelligence some things in computing are hard. For example printing.
I spent a chunk of today trying to print an image on a large piece of paper. I’d configured the printer properties, told it the size of the paper, previewed the output carefully in Lightroom and then got a picture that just filled a little rectangle in the middle of a sheet of very expensive paper that I’d just wasted. It turns out that Lightroom has a totally separate Page Setup menu button about as far away from the Print and Printer buttons as possible. That’s where you tell the program the size of the cell into which you want the picture to be placed. Get that wrong and it’s postage stamps all the way. Ugh.
Some systems are just sufficiently useful to be worth the trouble of using them. Lightroom has been teetering on the brink of this for years. Every time they release a new update with added AI that I don’t need I wonder if they couldn’t spend a bit of time making it a bit easier to use. At least I managed to find the “show preview” option on the printer driver so that I shouldn’t waste any more paper.
Pictures taken and processed using the Custard Cream Camera
This time last week I was enjoying myself at the The Computer Sheds. I was there as a guest of RADD Solutions who were celebrating 10 years of being in the business of keeping railways and enterprise software on the move (see what I did there?).
It was a superb afternoon, rounded off with a really nice meal at The Manor Inn. If you want to see a slideshow of the pictures that I took and fiddled with, you can find it here. The pictures are all held on the Custard Cream Server (otherwise known as the Pi 5 on my desk) so we’ll see how well that goes…..
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
