Go forth

These are quite impressively disturbing.

I recently watched the BBC’s Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press in which the peerless Mr Fry took us through a rebuilding of the daddy of all printing presses, the machine that started it all. Quite aside from the fact that the presence of Stephen Fry instantly elevates any programme to a higher level, the producers admirably resisted the urge to raid the wardrobe department and glue muttonchops to the pimpled cheeks of unemployed actors in the name of ‘period reconstruction’, a curse that affects too many historical documentaries. Instead, we were taken on a gentle but information-packed journey on which the enthusiasm of Fry and the experts building the press was evident.

Gutenberg wasn’t the first to use movable type for printing; as with so much technology it was the Chinese who got there first with letters made from either clay or wood, rather than the lead, tin and antimony alloy pioneered by Johannes. It was his press, though, that made print possible on industrial levels. Before Gutenberg, individual printing plates would be carved from wood, with a separate whole plate needed for every page of a book – an incredibly labour-intensive process. Movable type allowed pages to be assembled much faster and more cheaply, and then simply disassembled into the constituent letters once a print-run was complete, ready for the next job.

On a totally self-regarding level, I wouldn’t be a graphic designer today without the developments and innovations branching from the Gutenberg Press. Yet despite the massive impact that the Gutenberg Press had, one of its main principles has become almost obsolete. These days, using automation rather than by hand, we have the ability to once again produce whole plates for each page of a print job, albeit a separate plate for each colour used. Movable type is rarely seen except in specialist letterpress printers, and is likely to disappear altogether in the next decade or so. It may well be that even the inky goodness of printing itself will decline over the next fifty to a hundred years, overtaken by computer and electronic technologies and harried by the environmental concerns raised over the chemicals and paper required.

The principles behind movable type might have more longevity. To take music as an example, I can see remixing and sampling as being somewhat analogous – taking the building blocks of one or many songs and recombining them into something new. It is the concept of having reusable, generic units in a limited selection of forms that can be unified and integrated into almost limitless variety. As nanotechnology advances, I’m sure we will see similar techniques come into use. Already, molecular manipulation of carbon into basic forms such as nanotubes and buckyballs shows how this building block approach is useful.

Nevertheless, the sheer world-changing importance of Johannes Gutenberg’s invention cannot be overstated. It’s the revolutionary alteration to the flow of knowledge within society that is the Gutenberg legacy. Writing allowed humankind to record information; printing allowed that information to be spread. Books are a vector for change – they bridge gaps between diverse societies and spur development on a whole different scale.

The documentary is available for a short while on the BBC’s own iPlayer here (do a search for Gutenberg), and also separated into parts on YouTube starting here, where I’m sure it will shortly be quietly disappeared by the powers that be.

Now I’ve had a bit of a rant about doggy accoutrements before but take a look at this:

Aaah, it’s a cave for your pet pooch from Pooch Online. Your beloved bundle of fluff can pretend it’s a bit more of a wolf than its four-inch legs might suggest. This custom cavern is built with a multi-layer construction for “a cozy, calm denning experience”. I’m sure you’ve heard many complaints from dogs who are unhappy with the poor denning experience provided by their owners – a simple basket and blanket just doesn’t measure up when Fido next door can go spelunking through his very own Wookey Hole.

Not to mention the “grand, cathedral-like entry of the root” to impress upon visitors that this is the very highest echelon of fake papier mâché dog caves (although the site says ‘paper mache’ because speaking French is un-American.)

But the defining pinnacle of this astounding canine chamber is the accessory it comes with: a personal, limited edition “Sidekick Rock”. Rover’s life is now complete. Your pet will now have it’s own 70s-fad-inspired pet rock, albeit one that’ll be kinder to the teeth than the original version.

Obviously, by the time I had read through to this point I had already pulled my wallet out ready to buy, despite not even owning a dog. This is the ultimate item to make my life complete. Add to basket, add to basket.

Then, just as I was typing in my credit card details, I noticed something odd. There was a little number that needed my attention – the price.

$5900

Even with the exchange rates at present, that’s around £2,900. It would appear that the current housing crisis hasn’t had a knock-on effect on doggy domiciles. For a lump of paste and cardboard reminiscent of something you’d make in primary school when you’re not eating the glue and flicking paint at the girls across the desk, you’re practically going to have to take out a mortgage.

I hope your dog can afford to pay rent.

What exactly does Andie MacDowell do now, apart from appear in adverts for wrinkle cream? She certainly doesn’t seem to be doing much acting, the very thing that presumably got her the job as L’Oréal’s facial fold reduction spokesperson.

Perhaps the constant application of cosmetics has decreased her many wrinkles and creases so much that she’s now become two dimensional, a flat sheet that can only be seen from two sides, like a cardboard cutout. The next step will be for L’Oréal to introduce a kind of facial mangle that you can run your head through to achieve absolute flatness, a Euclidean plane in which your wrinkles are not only reduced – they’re a mathematical impossibility. The CrushaLux Ultra: Because you’re worth it.

Th only problem though, if I’ve got my geometry right, is that if you reduce a three dimensional object with mass to a mathematical plane, that plane becomes infinitely large, although only in two dimensions. The thought of an infinite Andie MacDowell flogging cosmetics is just too much to bear, and she wouldn’t fit on my TV screen.

Before you read the rest of this post, a notice:

Warning: The copyright proprietor has licensed this blog post (including its non-existent soundtrack) for private home use only. The definition of home use excludes the use of this blog post at locations such as clubs, coaches, hospitals, hotels, oil rigs, prisons, schools, the birthday parties of small children, monasteries, igloos, bawdy houses, deep-sea submersibles, space shuttles and monkey (or related ape) enclosures.

Any unauthorised copying, editing, exhibition, renting, exchanging, hiring, lending, broadcasting, reading, laughing at, quoting, extolling, denying, decrying, considering, ignoring, or thinking of this blog post, or any part thereof, is strictly prohibited and any such action establishes liability for a civil action and may give rise to criminal prosecution, professional assassination, strategic nuclear missile launch and the selling into slavery of the first-born of all your descendants in perpetuity.

Despite the fact that you are reading this completely legally and legitimately, I will now compel you to watch an unskippable film about how copying this blog post supports criminals, murderers, rapists and terrorists, and contributes to global warming, extinction of endangered animals, armageddon and heat rash.

I think you can see my point. I rather object to having threats rammed into my face every time I want to watch a DVD that I have bought with my own money from a completely licit retailer. And today as I browsed the film racks at my local Tesco store in the hope of finding something good to watch in the evening (at the same time worrying about the state of society when finding that The Condemned was in the charts, boasting the all-star line-up of former wrestler ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin and former wrestler-pretending-to-be-footballer Vinnie Jones), I noticed something disturbing. From the flat screens that Tesco seem to have installed everywhere to further the cause of a Blade Runner/Minority Report-inspired advertising-saturated future came the sounds of the deeply irking ‘knock-off Nigel’ anti-piracy advert that’s been doing the rounds on TV.

Great. Thank you Tesco and whichever anti-copying federations are active in the UK. Thanks for browbeating and berating me about piracy even as I stand there hoping to give you money. Perhaps you could put a screen up by the eggs warning me that if I were to buy them and throw them at someone, I’ll be arrested and imprisoned for assault? Or how about a sign by the bananas covering the legal perils of dropping one of their skins and explaining how I’d be sued to kingdom come? Do these people not think that suggesting their own customers are criminals just might not be the best way to go about things?

I shall leave you with this lovely interpretation of the anti-copying trailer from the IT Crowd.

I have new eyes.

Or to be more precise, I have new glasses in order to cater for my evidently inferior genetics – thanks for that, ancestors. Practically the entire rest of my family are long-sighted but I like to be different so I’m short sighted and astigmatic. Perhaps I’m some kind of mutant; that’d explain the instant healing and extendable claws too.

Going to the opticians is fraught with the kind of insignificant minor perils that fill the lives of we upstart hominids ever since we decided to use our opposable thumbs for more than just doing impressions of the Fonz.

Firstly there’s the eye test itself. It’s mostly pretty benign, except for that godawful glaucoma test where jets of air are fired at your eyeballs in order to test the fluid pressure (tonometry, if you’re looking for a new word). Of course, what the optician is really measuring is quite how high you jump out of the chair each time they fire the machine, in the hope of beating Gavin’s score from last week when a customer knocked themselves out on the ceiling. Next time you have to endure that test, look upwards first to see how many dents and little clumps of skull matter are embedded in the tiles above you.

Next, once it’s been pointed out that you have approximately the same visual acuity as an earthworm, off you trot to choose your frames. At this point you’ll be confronted with about a billion different concoctions of wire, plastic and lens from which you must choose just one. Rumour has it that when Sisyphus was given the choice between rolling a boulder up a mountain for eternity or picking out the perfect pair of specs, he plumped for the easier option and headed for the hills.

I’ve often wondered how people with seriously poor vision are able to choose their glasses frames because as soon as they take their current pair off to try on the new set in the shop – hey presto – everything’s gone blurry and they can’t see well enough to decide whether they look good. Bit of a catch-22, that one.

Finally, when you’ve picked the glasses that make you look least like Elton John, you come to that special point when you realise that your fabulous new pair of spectacles are actually going to be somewhat redundant. Because, in order to afford the price of the frames, the lenses, and being squirted in the eye with high-pressure air, you’re going to have to sell your corneas on the human organs black market.

Anyways, I got through all that a week ago without having to auction off too many essential body parts and took delivery of my new specs on Friday. They look like this if you’re interested. From past experience frames by Oakley tend to be extremely comfortable and fit like a glove (if your head were a hand, that is). Plus, they don’t go flying across the court when I make any particularly sudden movements in badminton.

They’re not that dissimilar to my previous pair, and what has always amused me is how ridiculously impractical the case that comes with them is: a huge rounded metal torpedo that, if you can even fit it in your trouser pocket, makes you look like the world’s most well-endowed gentleman. Venture into any airport with it and you’ll be shot on suspicion of carrying a pipe bomb, unless it’s Heathrow where they have no doubt lost the guns in the same place everyone’s luggage has gone.

I got a pair of prescription sunglasses too (here, stalkers), and the case for these is a hilariously even larger black woven-nylon lozenge – about the size of two Volvo’s and a Nissan Micra. This is not practical design, Oakley. When I pack for holiday, the glasses case is supposed to go inside the suitcase, and not vice-versa. This massive coffin will not fit in any pocket known to mankind and is more likely to sit for eternity like a 2001-style monolith.