Went on a nice little bike ride from my gym. I’m trying out a good little cycle GPS app called Cyclemeter, which does everything a basic cycle computer does – speed, duration, pace, distance – but not the highly complex stuff like cadence and presents it all in a much more intuitive way than even high end bike computers. You’ll need a contraption to attach the iPhone to your bike, but there’s a small company in the States, Bicio, that produces a great mounting system. Admittedly it’s for the 3G/3GS version, but it does for the iPhone 4 just as nicely.

It’s another example of the iPhone and their developer partners like Abvio exterminating the opposition by making things simple and well designed. It does everything a £50 – £150 bike computer does, but it’s in colour, in real time and generates a pile of easy to understand, easy to use and share online statistical information, none of which my former bike computers could be arsed with. All for a total cost of approximately £25 (iPhone not included obviously).  In the same way as I’m worried about Nokia’s future as the World’s premier mobile phone manufacturers, I’d be very worried for specialist sports computer manufacturers like Polar and Cateye, who can look forward to losing a large chunk of their market to smartphones like the iPhone.

It's all go for a whole new era of post-World Cup disappointment as Rhino and Greedy Stevie Me prepare for kick off

This was everything a friendly really needed to be, particularly when you consider how rubbish we’d been in the World Cup (which already seems like about a zillion years ago and part of our ancestral cultural past). In many ways the result was the least important thing about the whole affair, sure it was nice to see them winning again, but if that had been all that there was it would have been a very pyrrhic victory.

Initially the signs weren’t good. We had the bones of the old skool side which had done so much to destroy their claims to be the ‘golden generation’ and the absolute minimum of changes – Hart in goal, Jagielka playing in the ‘Rio’ position next to Titface, and the inexplicably not taken to South Africa duo of Adam Johnson and Theo Wallchart on the wings. You felt that if this was the team Crapolo wanted to take to Euro 2012 then he had learned next to nothing from the World Cup but had simply retreated into his shell to count his money.

We were promised a team in sackcloth, who’d been made catatonic by fear and the majesty of the new Wemberley, a set of lads who were ready to take a public whipping in the same way Titface occasionally takes bookings for the team. Instead we got a team that seemed to have been released from pressure, like a fighter who gets up having been punched in the face realising that, you know what, he was still alive and it didn’t hurt as much as he’d feared.

What we got were all those things that Engerland had seemed incapable of doing. Things like accurate passing, movement off the ball, genuinely accurate crosses from Wallchart, and at least one piece of actual positive interaction between Gerrard and Lumpy. Admittedly the latter still doesn’t suggest that there’s any realistic way these two can play together effectively, but it was a nice moment for the scrapbook. Hart looked like a solid presence in goal and Wallchart, Ashley Cole and the Johnsons provided both width and real threat down both wings (even if Glen Johnson was pretty bloody awful). But the most positive thing was that players were trying things rather than simply going for the easiest ‘pass of fear’ back to the man who gave you the ball. Sure many of those flicks and dinks didn’t come off (possibly the result of players’ unfamiliarity with one another), but they were threatening and indicated a team that was actually enjoying their football. There were some lovely moments of interplay down the wings, great close passing which threatened to pull the Hungarians’ defence apart and overall the team looked like they wanted to win, which frankly they hadn’t done throughout the World Cup safari. They looked hungry.

Typical Engerland

It really wouldn’t be Engerland without a little bit of a mess. I can’t count the number of times when Engerland have had the best part of possession and then gone a goal down, so why should this match be any different? True to form Engerland were the masters of their own misfortune as once again our defence was caught napping. Blame it on the unfamiliarity of players with one another, but Dawson’s error in letting Zoltan Gera through on goal echoed Titface’s lapse against Klose for Germany’s first goal and suggests that defensive coaching needs radical improvement under Crapolo. Admittedly Dawson did well to get back and try to clear the ball off the line and would have succeeded if only the French linesman hadn’t already given the goal.

Untypical Reaction

Normally at this point Engerland would have gone into shellshock reaction and either played all eleven men in opposition’s penalty area, or hunkered down in our own six yard box and conceded the game. Instead, in a radical change of emphasis, we calmed the game down, re-established control and got back into the game. Smart pressure from Adam Johnson on the right and Young  and Gibbs on the left put the pressure back onto the Hungarians. Johnson is fast becoming one of my favourite players, if only because he is the spitting image of Joy Division’s dead singer Ian Curtis, and the pressure he helped create opened up the centre of the pitch, allowing Zamora, who was playing the Heskey role (big striker who runs about irritating the defence without actually scoring) to, well, run about a bit and irritate the defence without actually scoring.

This in turn left space in front of the defence for Gerrard to meander into with the extraordinary result that he scored two excellent goals (note to self, this is almost as many goals as Engerland managed in total in the World Cup). And while the first was a typical Gerrard strike from outside the area, the second was the type of goal everyone wanted to see at the World Cup but didn’t, a mazey, jinky little dribble through four defenders with a sneaky toe poke at the end to beat the keeper. If it had been Messi doing it we’d never hear the end of it (admittedly, given it’s Gerrard, we’ll probably never hear the end of it either).

Overall, A Good Result, But . . .

A good game, played in the right attacking spirit, showcasing some of the array of talent at Crapolo’s disposal. The new boys and reentries done good and on the strength of this we shouldn’t have that much trouble pruning the dead wood and getting through our qualification group. That said, Hungary couldn’t have been more accommodating, playing the sort of 4-4-2 formation that no one intelligent does in international football anymore, defensive lapses show that sadly Titface’s Engerland career is far from over and Crapolo looks thoroughly clueless. But worst of all was the continued failure to bring Rooney into the game in any meaningful way. Irrespective of his position at Man U, he just isn’t working as an international striker, seeming far more effective when coming in from behind rather than leading the line. You’re left with the lingering sense that maybe, just maybe, his best years as an international player (or at least as an international striker) are well behind him. But no way is Crapolo going to grasp that nettle just yet.

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The new red outside gallery at the Serpentine.

Posted via email from palaceofvision’s posterous

Rams led the Braun design team for 40 years and developed a powerful philosophical approach to design which is summed up in his ten principles of design.

Early portable tape machine (requires several strong people to carry)

• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design makes a product understandable.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is long-lasting.
• Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
• Good design is environmentally friendly.
• Good design is as little design as possible.

The range of items the Braun team applied these principles to was enormous, from toasters and cigarette lighters to tape machines, home film cameras, music systems and shavers. And the exhibition shows off many of them and you can see the realisation of the principles in the spartan design as well as the design vocabulary of the buttons and shapes that have become utterly iconic. It’s impressive how few of today’s products even begin to meet Rams’ principles.

And you can also see the effect Rams’ principles have had on modern industrial designers, not least Apple’s Johnathan Ive, whose commentaries on his designs echo Rams’ early experiences as a carpenter and artisan. In particular, how the design for the iPod epitomises much of what Rams was doing and thinking, much more so than the perforated aluminium Mac towers. It’s just a shame that, while they’ve got a new MacBook and iPod, they haven’t actually got any kind of quote from Ive himself.

Once we all dreamt of having hi-fi systems like this (with a record player and tape machine)

Overall, it’s a nice exhibition and the exposure to Rams’ principles is inspiring, but I would have liked to have more commentary on the development of the principles and when and how Rams came up with them. I’d also like to have had more of a direct link to current products that echo these principles, the one case of stuff they have is hardly enough to suggest a long-term legacy. Otherwise you’re left with a bit of a feeling that this is an exhibition about the past (and the past of Braun in particular), rather than one about a powerful design philosophy that is as relevant today as it ever was.

The Roundhouse playing piana

We went off to see the David Byrne ‘Playing The Building’ installation at the Roundhouse during one of its ‘bring your own tambourine’ evenings, which had the potential for both awesome spectacle and truly painful knitted raffia music. The reality was a bit half and half. I felt a little let down by the installation. While it’s a great idea – a kind of artistic Einsteurzende Neubauten (go google them) without the full on destruction – I thought it veered too far in the direction of installation rather than an actual functional experience. You can see that the single piano-cadavered instrument sitting in the middle of the Roundhouse makes a fantastic image, stark, empty and a fusion of ancient and modern, but it would have been far more interesting to have more instruments controlling the sounds made by the building. Certainly more people would have been able to interact with it than were allowed for by the single piano and you’d have had a much more exciting, cacophonic experience.

It was, however, a genius idea to allow people to come in on certain evenings with their own instruments. Again, this could have been a recipe for disaster. Instead it was somehow incredibly touching and polite as bunches of people with guitars, tubas, those mouthy blow organ things that the guy in Gang of Four had, toy instruments and a variety of other wind and percussive things strolled around the space playing their own things, while trying not to overwhelm anyone else. And while it could have gone all Glastonbury porridge field, it somehow didn’t. Not my usual thing, but really good.

View from Arundel Castle

Meanwhile in my search for the perfect iPhone app, I’ve discovered two really sweet ones. The first is the carefully hidden tilt-shift filter in Photo FX (find it in Lens fx /depth of field). Tilt-shift being the effect that makes everything look like it’s a teeny weeny little model as exemplified by my favourite Monster Truck videos (see this post). While hardly perfect, it’s pretty good as you can see from these images. I would like to be able to alter the blur areas but that’s just being picky.

The other great app is iDrum Underworld. A bunch of Underworld tunes, including Cowgirl, Born Slippy and King of Snake, which you can mix up and use to create your own stuff. Really compelling and pretty addictive. As one review said, ‘This steals your life’.

I’ve also started to get back into running using my favourite social media site (or at least the one I’ve been most active on), Nike+. I’m using their now-working-pretty-well Coach facility, which has me doing very simple daily runs, although that will ramp up as the weeks progress. You can follow my attempts to get one leg in front of the other on Twitter.

Daedelus and his magic box thing

Off to the ICA in Pall Mall to enjoy a night of Ninja Kicking madness with VanCam and Marie. When I bought the tickets for Marie’s birthday, I really didn’t know what it was going to be like other than it was a Ninja Tune evening and it was at the ICA. The latter is obviously a big plus point as it was here that I saw Einsteurzende Neubauten doing their now-infamous concert for machinery way, way, way back in the old days (like 1984 or something). They filled the stage with lots of plant machinery (cement mixers and the like) and proceeded to throw milk bottles into the concrete and tried to drill through the ICA floor with a pneumatic drill. When they finished after about 20 minutes, the audience were so excited they attacked the stage, destroying half of it and then escaped and went mad running up and down The Mall for the rest of the evening. It was brilliant and the nearest thing to a beautiful riot you’ll ever see.

So, nothing for the Ninja Tune team to live up to then. And plenty for it to live down because it could have been another two turntables and a cello catastravaganza like the last time.

First up, DJ Food. Pretty fucking awesome. That great mix of really kick ass beats and killer sounds, like the best bits of Pulp Fiction. A melange (and I don’t use the word lightly) of great sounds and rhythms. Sounds to cut shapes to. I was on the floor dancing for the whole hour.

Where to start with Daedelus? Well first off he’s got this box that is reminiscent of my favourite maschine (see past grazillion posts on the desireability of said Maschine), only his looks as though it’s a 16 x16 box, which is kind of like Maschine squared. Fuck knows how it works, but I’m guessing that it’s the same kind of sampler trigger/display thing. Anyway, this is what he plays. And it’s killer. Remember when Chemical Brothers just started and block rocking beats were new and exciting. That’s like child’s play compared to this. This is like bullish, ferocious, beat love. It’s half DJ, half performance, only there are no turntables, no records, only samples and this one guy. He’s like the Johnny Depp of music, half caricature, half genius and completely unlike anything else. I mean remember all those great sampler/synth bands and then remember how rubbish they were live, plinky plonking themselves through their tracks trying to be live bands (Depressed Toad) or DJs (Orbital). This guy is like a maestro in comparison. It’s samples, and beats and live and it fucking rocks.

Bus stop for Ninjas

So, phew. Ninja Tune pull it out of the bag and totally make up for poncing bloody cello woman and her rubbish DJ friend. There was a load of weird synchronicity going round too, something to do with the Plinth in Trafalgar Square or the like. London had gone into one of its collective periods of municipal madness. It reminded me of late nights after gigs when all the real people had gone home and the streets belonged to strange people (and that’s strange in every sense of the word). That kind of magic, this isn’t really a normal city feeling you only get on really special occasions. I got off the bus on the way home and saw this. I stood in the middle of the road taking pictures as the night busses tried to kill me. Never seen it before in my life. Next morning it was gone. I shit you not.

For one night there we were all Ninjas.

Large copper sulphate crystal from Roger Hiorns Seizure installation

The Kids Who Do Art were obviously very, very clever. Having had the contents of last year’s Turner Prize substantially dissed, they decided to ensure that this year’s nominations at least produced some interesting, albeit highly exclusive, art, rather than tedious monologues of string and manikins.

This time instead of nominating some oververbal, cliche ridden artphags, the Turner Prize people have nominated personal favourite Roger Hiorns (along with three other lucky losers). Hiorns, who poured anything between 60,000 and 90,000 gallons/litres/bathtubs of copper sulphate into a council flat to ‘see what happened‘, is everything the Turner people need after the tedium and torpor of last year. Most essentially he gets noticed outside the patronisingly oblique little artworld that the Turner people inhabit. Seizure, the copper sulphate council house, is fantastically compelling and emphasises that the most extraordinary, most relevant art today is taking place outside the confines of the galleries and museums the Turner people live in. The demand for spectaculars, whether it be Seizure or the recent grafitti under Waterloo station, far outweighs that for most retrospective showpeice exhibitions. Admittedly, at least one of the other nominees, Richard Wright, is interesting, but for my money it’s Hiorns’ to lose. I particularly look forward to seeing the Little Artists’ lego version.

Meanwhile, I’ve been adding to my overbearing web presence. In particular I’ve been forced (forced you understand) to upgrade my Flickr account. You can see all my pics from the copper sulphate house, along with a whole load of other stuff, most of which has been taken by and manipulated within my iPhone. I can’t wait for Apple to put together a halfway decent camera lens for it in the next release.

I was super happy to find out that after what seemed like three or four lifetimes worth of waiting, Powers volume 12 is out. I had worried that, as with many comics, I might have got bored during the interval and it would be a hideous disappointment, but I needn’t have wasted the worry. Powers 12 is the best volume yet, finalising the Deena Pilgrim story arc along with a bunch of in-the-wings characters. Overall it feels as bittersweet as the final episode of The Wire series 3, it’s hugely satisfying, but I’ve no idea where they’re going to take the series now. Pilgrim sitting on a beach somewhere feels very reminiscent of McNulty swinging a baton as he’s returned to the beat. Still in Bendis we trust. Like David Simon, he seems to have his finger on the pubic bone of the police procedural and is capable of playing it about at will.