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Bowbrick makes an amazing find:

“…in Japan, I learn, there’s a family-owned building firm that’s 1400 years old. They completed their first job in 598…”

» BowBlog: World’s oldest company?

^ Jeremy gets a good image of the transit of Venus in Hackney

The architect, the philosopher*, the physicist and the robotics engineer.

Our merry band investigating the future of user-experience for Nokia is growing by one, with the addition of Chris “Antimega” Heathcote.

Tervetuloa Chris!

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* We had two philosophers, but Petri has gone and got himself awarded an incredibly prestigious scholarship for 5 years, so we have to make do with just the one now. Congrats to Petri!

^ Seen in the window of Cafe Kafka, Helsinki.

The rich actively enjoy filling in forms, and therefore attack such things as tax and expense claims with gusto and competence.

I am not rich.

Came back from Australia to find the commenting on this site faulty. They’re being lost somewhere, somehow. I don’t have the time or the facillity to sort it out, so for now if you have something to add, mail me. The world will probably scrape by with one less place to debate search-box positioning, cities, bad kerning and comic book physics.

At Heathrow there are inumerate banners, animations and promotions proclaiming the availability of “the wireless web”. The T-mobile extortions have even come down in price (to 5 quid an hour – still hurts… Narita is 5 quid-ish for 24 hours) to entice the 802.11 enabled further.

However, there’s still the old problem of electricity. Terminal Three seems to be full of false electrical dawns. Plugs by comfy chairs that don’t deliver any juice when you hook up to them. After trying about 4 of these and not getting anywhere, I homed in on a pack of tanned middle-aged men with a complicated array of “fannypacks” and rucksacks. “Aha – silicon valley middle management types!” I thought.

Lo and behold they had discovered the electrical watering hole. FYI – it’s by the central pillar if you draw a line between Dixons and Hugo Boss.

Crisis over, I’m now getting a little bit of extra charge on my iBook for the inflight emergency episodes of Alias if the movies suck.

So, the question is – why don’t T-mobile and BTOpenzone spend a little bit of their marketing budget on signage or seating by electrical outlets?

Perhaps even underwrite a little interior design or minor capital works to get a couple of extra outlets in there. It would probably encourage a lot more usage of their services, and cost very little. Having some kind of physical locus would encourage things like interchange between experts, novices and the curious – further word-of-mouth marketing and free technical support.

It would help travelling wifi users with little time on their hands to explore for electricity, make incremental sales, and create warm-and-fuzzies about the brands involved.

Why not?

^ Surfer in collage snapped at the Archigram exhibition this weekend, at the Design Museum.

The exhibition and Archigram have been written about nicely by Dan, so I’ll just remark that it left me feeling elegiac, for a fallen future we used to picture; full of the psychedelic technologies of freedom.

The schemes, epigrams and illustrations looked like they were straight out of the pages of The Invisibles, or at least an imaginary Homes and Gardens feature on Mister Six.

It was interesting to visit with an art-director friend of mine, who was looking at it more through the lens of graphic design, and how the work has influenced recent graphic artists and commercial imagery.

Off down under for a couple of weeks, for some sun, surf and switch-off. I’ll leave you with this from The Guardian Review, a passage on Falling (and surfing) from Nicholas Lezard’s review of “Falling” by Garrett Soden:

“There are primatologists and anthropologists who suggest that it was a very strongly vested interest in not falling that led to our development of consciousness. Smaller animals, such as chimps, need not fear the consequences of a drop from the trees as much as we, or other great apes, such as orang-utans, who climb slowly and with deliberate caution. Besides, we have spent far more time, if you examine our family tree, up that tree than on the ground. With quite sophisticated balance skills, we are certainly very good at controlled falling: skiing, skateboarding, hang-gliding, mountaineering. Captain Cook was flabbergasted at the surfers of Hawaii: a lieutenant on the Discovery commented that the Hawaiians’ skill was “scarce to be credited”.

Surfing, for them, was a matter of deep religious significance, and when the Calvinist missionaries arrived, Soden writes, “a gravity sport was attacked as the devil’s work” – and not for the first time. Falling has always been metaphorically consistent in this regard: it is not approved of.”

Back in May.

“Stay On Topic: This mailing list is by and for those who practice interaction design. All discussions on this email list must relate to interaction design. This can include discussions of sister disciplines such as information architecture, visual design, etc. but only as they relate to interaction design. For example, a conversation on color theory would be out of place, but one about the best highlight color for buttons would fine for discussion. For a draft definition of interaction design go to our web site at interactiondesigners.com.”

Oh boy.

My inner-masochist has driven me to subscribe.

I’ll see how I do…