After stopping to consider if seven potted pansies left in a row behind a back gate were intended for public consumption, I spotted these fine boots.

Contrary to my usual practice of leaving these discovered footwear pairs undisturbed, I slightly rearranged these so you could see that they were infact, intact and not damaged in any way.

The story of these must be interesting, so near the gardener who so generously offered up a string of plants for people to take. Maybe she felt extra generous and started to put out some of her superfluous wardrobe for general consumption.

Having snapped that pair, slightly pleased that the week has not passed without a footwear find, I continued on, enjoying the laneways and architectural oddities of the back of Wilson St.

It was then another pleasant moment to see this mad collection of footwear, telling it’s own story of loss, adventure and missed solace!

This pair of slippers, plus a practical boot and a single flashy heel almost could be lined up to a narrative of it’s own, which I hope you will attempt to supply in the comment area below.

Happy writing!

This pair was at Bondi Beach, a short walk from the beach, near the showers. A warm winter day with some people still swimming and playing in the surf. No-one anywhere near them, which was odd as there were many people who would have considered taking them for themselves in the area.

But it’s not the first time.

it’s the 7th pair I have noticed in two months.

Here’s the pair that started it off, found in the Domain, across the roads from the Art Gallery of NSW.

Sitting tidily at the side of the park, as if their wearer came from the road, slid them off and ran into the grassy park, never to need shoes again. SO between late April and yesterday I have 6 pairs to show you, listed here, in order. Each one must have a story of its’ own, a narrative that digs deep into someone else’s life. These shoes tell more than any Manolo Blahnik could.

My local council introduced a scheme to reduce the use of plastic bags, called “bagbusters” in the neighbourhood, for obvious reasons, and you can read the press release by downloading the PDF from their site. But to me it seems a complete waste of time in comparison to what else is happening in the grocery environment. I feel like it is battling only a small part of the energy waste and a small, token gesture. There is a far greater environmental impact from the chill fridges in most supermarkets.

For example, my local Franklins, in Newtown, has a 30 metre fridge along the entire side and back of the shop, and it blasts very cold air into the entire aisle so that even if I am buying coffee, I get a frozen backside by the time I’ve made my choice. From meats, through dairy and pasta to fresh juices and milk. It is a 30M x 2M fridge pumping very cold air into the entire store, needlessly.

The thing is, I recall when I was younger, back in the dark ages of the 70′s, grocery store fridges used to have these heavy plastic strips you could see and reach through, that conserved the cold in the fridge space to some degree, and the breeze of passing shoppers would not warm the refrigerated atmosphere enough to require massive amounts of energy.

But groceries with entire walls of refridgeration, pumping very cold air into the general shopping space are wasting energy, for no good reason, and with no significant conservation of time or effort for the shoppers. It does not take time to hold a door or barrier aside to reach for the steaks you like, or your yoghurt pot of choice.

It is both a near-criminal waste of energy (think: leaving the doors and windows open when your air-con is on) as well as an obvious waste of money, not to mention causing me to wear a coat just to do my groceries! And surely we already know what the excessive use of energy means to both the environment as well as the already stretched power-grid.

What do YOU think? Is it worth a complaint or am I just a whingeing old fart? …grumbling in the cheese section.

I’ve been noticing how people behave when a train’s approaching. Ok, it is usually during rush hour, with that 8am grogginess or 6pm urgency that I notice this, but it’s a valid enough time to observe collective behavior.

It brings to mind the interesting point that when it comes to observing our online behavior, we are simultaneously individual and collective in our patterns. We act on our own but are affected by the ebb and flow of other users in our motions and choices.

Take for example the train chasing shuffle. This is the condition where, as the train slows into the station, people feel the need to slowly shuffle towards the door that has just passed them. Even when the next door along is going to stop right in front of them, or will be much closer than the door they are chasing, they’ll follow the train along the platform.

At first I thought it was some sort of magnetic or gravitational force, the train pulling us along with it’s substantial mass or metallic might, but that doesn’t hold up.

A force far greater than either seems to be pulling us along.

So the question is: are we being pulled, are we influencing each other, is it the actions of one of us pulling the others along?

Perhaps it is a combination of all of these answers and more, a subtlety we cannot clarify easily. As someone who likes to understand engagement, attention, usability and user flow, these are the questions I have.

I’m digging myself a hole, aren’t I?

I like to watch people using technology in a public place, to see how considered their planning might have been, just like I like to watch people use websites, to learn how to make websites better.

Since coming to Sydney, I’ve been watching how the crossing signals and crossing buttons are used here, as Sydneysiders are a bit different to Londoners and Canadians with this.

At crossings here, there are assistive technologies with big obvious buttons, audio and sensory feedback (the crossing buttons make noises as well as vibrate in an obvious way) to let pedestrians know what’s happening. What I love is watching people use the big button.

There’s nothing simpler than a one button device is there?

My favourite users are the ones who hit the buttons VERY hard, as if it were their worst enemy, or repeatedly, as if several hits make it react more quickly.

The problem with one button devices is that we think of them like light switches; click should be on, end of story. Even when we know different, because we know the traffic lights will not change at our whim, we still treat it like a light switch.

So even a one button device, controlling something we’ve known well since childhood can throw up some surprises. Think of how many surprises your website can uncover.

Like I said, I’m watching you.

CPOTD (Commuter Pic Of The Day)

subtitled: shitty clouds, that’s why I left London innit?

Now who’s an eejit!

Completely forgot I have an iPhone and that there’s an app for just about everything (there’s three fart apps FFS!!). So my new dilemma is do I just use the tuner coming in the post eventually from the US, or repost it on eBay and buy the app?

My loyalties to analogue are in conflict with my loyalties to my lovely new iPhone.

Guess who’s going to win!

Commuter pic of the day to follow.

BTW: played guitar for 40 minutes last night in an attempt to strengthen my fingertips. Can I just say the left side of the keyboard is my enemy this morning? fingertips over on the left of QWERTY is ouchy!

Just sayin’!

I wanted to post about the strange fruit I noticed in the park across the road from me, on my way back from the grocers something glinty caught my eye.

Can you see what it is yet? let me get closer:

I know you know what it is, let me zoom in a bit….

Someone got busy after the pubs shut! I love these guerrilla artists!

I guess I should explain.

In the distant past, I used to be a photographer, before I took up the keyboard. My main forte was still life and small objects, nature isolated. You may recall at the start of this blog in the first posting, I wrote that my photography was why I got interested in the internet in the first place.

I have a  subscription to a tool that tracks any security breach on the internet with my name, so I can see if I am being spoofed anywhere; a useful security tool. This tool alerted me that I was being talked about and I found a student of photography who referenced me. Somewhere, somehow, this person found me in a book or publication and I gave them something to think about, and they turned to their camera to express it. I vaguely recall them emailing me and asking about my picture and I, grateful for the attention and immensely flattered, gave them the best response I could.

So this tool found their reference to me and I am doubly impressed, by A Phan and the image I had a part in helping to bring about, and that we connected through the world, brushed up against each other and contributed to each other’s creative energy. You and I, dear reader, have a similar relationship, via the tool we are now immersed in, me as the author of this piece, and you as the reader. Your presence, even silently, inspires me. This is one small part of the huge mesh of new connections that could not have existed without the internet, depends on it, and becomes the conduit for the types of connections humanity has always desired.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, this IS the new world, the new frontier where humanity will discover, support and reaffirm it’s interrelatedness. We don’t always need the deep soulful connections, like the ones we have with our friends, lovers, family, etc; sometimes it is the wonderful brushing-up against each other, where we share about some specific commonality, that draws us together and helps us understand each other.

See you out there!

There are many men like me; interested in science at that exploratory boyish age in the 60′s, where fascination became reality and we watched enthralled as men walked on the moon. Everyone was talking about what was out there, in space, and what a quantum leap it was for humanity to walk on another heavenly body.

The previous year, 1968 saw the release of a film which changed our view of the universe, technology and humanity in a massive way as well. I’m speaking of 2001:A Space Odyssey, Directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by both Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke. Long before CGI in films, and in an genre which had wilder and cheaper sets and bug-eyed aliens wrestling with heroes to dramatic music, 2001 showed me what space could really be.

Clarke defined a great deal of what the world is today. From describing what was required from satellites in order to be used for modern and earth-spanning telecommunications to being prescient in what he would be seeing in his lifetime and in our hands (the internet, mobile phones, high-speed data, nuclear-powered spacecraft, PDAs, ubiquitous computing, video-conferencing) at a time when William Shatner was the “real” spaceman and aliens were shorthand for communists.

Clarke wrote some amazing books, visually stunning and incredibly descriptive and above all written within the bounds of known scientific precepts. If he had the temerity to imagine into the future or onto other planets, he at least based it on known facts and provable suppositions. He rarely made something up that did not feel completely real and intelligent and made all of it utterly compelling.

In his 90th birthday recollections Clarke says some compelling and prescient things, about technology and its’ responsibility to improve not exploit the planet, but my favourite is his sign-off, in which he humbly quotes Kipling:

“If I have given you delight with all that I have done, let me lie quiet in that night which shall be yours anon. And for the little, little span the dead are borne in mind, seek not to question other than the books I leave behind.”

Thank you, Arthur; I have been delighted.