This blog has now closed. Please visit my new blog, Stepreo.

Archive: shopping

Exploring the Domesday data

19 May 2011 00:08

Categories: *, Current affairs, Dundee, Fife, Internet, Media, Nostalgia, Scotland, Technology

I was pretty excited to learn this week about Domesday Reloaded. The Domesday project aimed to take a snapshot of British life in 1986. 25 years on, the BBC are looking to update it to document the changes that have taken place since then.

I have been interested in the Domesday project for a while. The idea that a snapshot of Britain was taken, in the form of maps, photographs and text. Yet, the data was unavailable to most people.

The Domesday project was as much an ambitious experiment with technology as anything else. The technology was just about available, but a lot of pioneering work had to be done, and the hardware required for it was prohibitively expensive, leaving many of the contributors somewhat miffed.

Since then, it has become one of the most famous examples of digital obsolesence. This was due to a combination of the technology required to read the discs becoming increasingly rare, and idiosyncratic code.

The Domesday project came at a time when the technology was available, but the standards were not yet there to make it stable enough for long-term preservation, or even easy access in the short term. It’s a reminder that digital technologies are hugely enabling, yet frighteningly fragile.

Then there are the copyright issues surrounding both the content and the technology.

Joys of browsing Domesday Reloaded

The BBC should be applauded for finally managing to open up some of the data to the public on the web. The Domesday project was created before the web was invented. This isn’t how the content was designed to be viewed, so navigation is a bit cumbersome.

But aside from this gripe, the Domesday Reloaded website is turning out to be a fascinating resource.

I was born in 1986, the same year in which the Domesday project disc was published. So the Britain described here is a place that I don’t remember. But enough of it is familiar for it to feel incredibly relevant to me. It’s almost like being given a little upgrade to my memory, so that I can have snippets of knowledge from just before I was born.

Take the photographs for D-block GB-328000-690000 — the centre of Kirkcaldy, my hometown (D-block being one of the 4km by 3km areas the UK was divided into). It took me a little while to recognise “Kirkcaldy’s busy High Street”. But once I spotted British Home Stores, I was right there.

Yet, despite the familiarity, it is almost a completely different world. My memory of the High Street before it was pedestrianised is very limited. But it is just within touching distance of my memory for me to feel a strong connection with it.

The text entries are also fascinating. Most of the contributions were provided by primary schools. A decision was taken by the Domesday project not to edit the contributions, so the quality and style of writing varies from area to area.

As such, what strikes me the most is that it informs you as much about the prejudices of the school pupils and their teachers as it does about the area. It also retains their poor spelling and strange grammar.

For instance, an entry from Dundee (D-block GB-336000-732000) called ‘Traffic in and out’ is a basic survey of vehicles travelling on a road, with guesses as to where the vehicles are going and why. It lacks the academic rigour you would ideally want from a historical document.

But while some of the entries may seem banal, it was designed to be this way. The aim was to genuinely document society by capturing childrens’ curiosity with everything. This way it wouldn’t leave out what adults perceive as being obvious, when it wouldn’t necessarily be so obvious to someone in 1,000 years.

Missing D-blocks in Dundee on Domesday Reloaded

The really big shame is that not every part of Britain was documented. I could understand remote rural areas not being included. But sadly some highly populated areas have also been missed out. For instance, two D-blocks that cover the centre and east of Dundee lie blank, as does much of London.

But what exists is a joy. Even in the little amount of scanning I have done, I have already learned new information about the area I live in, which has set my mind racing and inspired me to investigate further.

Challenges for the modern day equivalents

What also struck me is how we actually already have readily-accessible modern-day equivalents of the Domesday project, almost by accident. The BBC is asking for users to update the content for D-blocks that were documented in 1986, to take an equivalent snapshot of 2011. I may go out and take some photographs for that.

But this sort of local information is staggeringly well documented already. We have Wikipedia, which can be edited by anyone but retains an academic approach that the Domesday project lacked. As such, it is a treasure trove of local information that can probably be relied on more.

Meanwhile, Google Earth and Google Maps provide masses of images of all corners of the country. It absolutely dwarfs what’s on Domesday Reloaded.

But the big question, which can’t be answered at the moment, is whether the wealth of information available on the web can be packaged up into a Domesday-style snapshot and preserved forever. The challenges of web preservation are massive.

Like the Domesday project, we could find the digital information almost slipping through our hands. The BBC know that themselves. With a stroke of a pen, it was decided that a significant chunk of British web heritage will be removed when the BBC removes some of its archived pages from the web.

Comments closed

Gaps in the Mercat

21 April 2009 23:53

Categories: *, Current affairs, Fife, Scotland, Work

Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I took a trip into Kirkcaldy’s main shopping centre, the Mercat. I’m very familiar with the first set of shops that meet you from the entrance. I passed them all many, many times on my way to work at the late, great Woolworths.

This opening corridor is a very strange looking place now. The entrance to Woolworths lies at the end of the corridor, facing the entrance to the Mercat. It is the first thing you see as you enter. This alone makes the shopping centre feel dark and desolate. Instead of a bustling Woolies, there is now a large grey shutter, unflinchingly shut.

What is now striking about this section of the Mercat is the fact that so many other shops have shut since Woolies closed down. In fact, when you look at it, there is barely a shop between the entrance of the Mercat and Woolworths that hasn’t been badly affected by the recession.

At the entrance, on the left, is The Officers Club. This briefly went into administration just before Christmas. But a number of stores were saved, including Kirkcaldy’s. This is actually one of the few success stories of the Mercat’s recent past.

Opposite The Officers Club is The Works. This has been in the Mercat for a while. The only problem is, it used to occupy a much larger unit with two floors. The new Works is probably a third of the size. It occupies the slot that was vacated by Bookworld a couple of years ago.

The old home of The Works was filled over Christmas by Calendar Club, a makeshift shop that was only there for a couple of months. Today the unit lies empty.

Next to it lies the former home of Internacionale. This has become empty since Christmas. Presumably they have moved into the Mk One unit at the other end of the shopping centre.

Further along, we come to Passion for Perfume. This is another chain which unravelled in the run-up to Christmas. Today, it’s just another grey shutter left permanently down.

Opposite lies an empty space which is presumably a unit which has been vacant for as long as I can remember. This is next door to Card Factory which has also recently closed down. the Original Shoe Company, a JJB Sports subsidiary which was recently put into administration. Now the only thing on display there is the windolene smeared all over the entrance.

At the top of the corridor, next to the former Woolies unit lies the entrance to an actual JJB Sports. Ironically, this is actually a relatively new shop. It fills a unit that had been empty for a while. It was extensively renovated to accommodate JJB Sports. The shop itself is upstairs, residing directly above Woolworths. I reckon around 18 months was spent building just above our shop (and they were quite noisy about it at times too).

Then, mere days after JJB opened, rumours about its seriously poor health surfaced. I think it, just about, remains open. But I hear it is absolutely dead. I am not surprised given than you are presented with nothing but an escalator when you go through the entrance.

I have heard that JJB were actually reluctant to move in. I am told that the Mercat paid for all of the renovation work themselves. If that is true, they must really be kicking themselves. Not only did they build it for a shop that has been on its knees ever since it opened, they could now take their pick from about half a dozen empty units.

This is a stroke of bad luck really. Once you turn the corner past Woolies, the situation is not quite so bad. But the impression you get as you walk through the entrance is that the Mercat is half dead. Almost every store along the way has been affected by the credit crunch, the only exceptions being Greggs and HMV.

It may put people off proceeding further than Woolies. The whole place feels so dark and empty now. Instead of bright shop lights, you are presented with shutter after shutter. The contrast to twelve months ago could hardly be greater.

(With apologies to dad, from whom I nicked this post’s title.)

11 comments

Merry Chrifsmas

24 December 2007 00:59

Categories: Blogging, Commuting, Current affairs, Economics, Edinburgh, General, Personal, Scotland, Technology, University

Yes, I am a liberal elite atheist trying to ban Christmas, and proud of it! Not really. Everyone else can celebrate it as much as they like as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t celebrate Christmas for religious reasons, and I don’t see any point in pretending otherwise.

I am celebrating though. Wintervals are older than Christianity, and it isn’t difficult to see why. Winter is a terrible time of year, bereft of warmth and particularly sunlight. It is quite disturbing when you have sleeping patterns like mine and you end up sleeping through the entire day.

On this basis, I should really celebrate the Winter Solstice, like Adam Smith was a Socialist does. But seeing as everyone else celebrates on the 25^th, that’s good enough for me.

For me, this is an opportunity to enjoy yourself at a bad time of the year. One of the things I hate most about Christmas is the way people get so stressed out about it. People need to chill out a bit and enjoy the holiday instead of running around trying to buy tat which the recipient will, on average, value between a tenth and a third less than was paid for it (PDF).

I am not being smug about it because I have fallen into the trap as well. There must be some kind of sociological law that says the more you’re supposed to be on holiday, the busier you actually are. Just more lies from society. I don’t know why I don’t just exit now.

That’s why I haven’t been blogging much over the past few days, even though I have a million things to say. Story of the year. The busyness is partly as a result of my high-flying career in retail (!). But I’ve also got a mountain of university work to do as well.

In a way, I am lucky as an Edinburgh University student. Our winter exams are done and dusted by mid-December, so we don’t have them looming over us all Christmas. Having the exams that early has its own disadvantages of course, but at least Christmas is worry-free.

Not this year though. I have a 3,000 word essay to write about changes in Scotland’s population since 1945. The module is The Scottish Economy, which is very interesting, but also a damn nuisance because there is very little reading material compared to most other modules. I really will have to pull those 3,000 words out of thin air.

I’m also tearing my hair out about my dissertation. It’s due in towards the end of February. For various reasons, I never got the work done during the year that I was hoping to, so I am behind schedule big time. Well, I’ve written nine pages out of 30, but I’m sure to cover most of the material that will have to be edited down quite a lot anyway.

The upshot of all this was that I was in Edinburgh on Friday to take back some books that I haven’t needed for weeks and to do some reading for that Scottish Economy essay. I also got out some more heavy books. And lots of climbing up and down stairs was involved.

Then, sucker that I am, I went to do some Christmas shopping. Lots of walking up and down Princes Street was involved. And the stuff I bought was ridiculously heavy. I felt like a bit of a tube in the train station, as I battled with all of that stuff.

Worst of all, the combination of heavy shopping and heavy library books has left me with a plethora of strange pains in all kinds of parts of my body. I feel like a decrepit octogenarian. Next year I will probably stick to shopping in Kirkcaldy.

Incidentally, mad busy 24/7 shitlife aside, I will not be switching off the computer over the Christmas period as some people do. I don’t really see the point in that. For me, blogging is — and always should be (unless it’s a pro- or business blog) — a leisure activity. I enjoy it. So I won’t be stopping. There’ll be fewer readers around of course, but that’s their choice. (Proof, if ever it were needed, that blogging is sustained mostly by people who are skiving off work).

I am currently facing the same Christmas cards dilemma that I had last year. Only this time, instead of receiving five cards, I’ve received nine. Clearly, either nobody cares that I didn’t give them a card last year, or they have completely forgotten. Which kind of sums up the insincerity of exchanging cards.

Anyway, my mother is currently bullying me into writing nine reciprocal cards. I was going to give to charity instead, because let’s face it — giving to charity will do a lot more good. Besides, what will happen if I don’t give them a card? Will I end up in their bad books? It didn’t happen last year, so…

Well, I just flipped a coin to decide, and it turns out that I have to write out the cards. Bah.

4 comments

I just can’t win with headphones

13 July 2007 01:48

Categories: Entertainment, General, Music, Personal, Technology

As though my shoe woes (shoo woos? shoa woas?) were not bad enough, I recently made another purchase which I almost instantly regretted. But I knew that I would in advance.

I have always had bad luck with headphones. They always fail really quickly. I guess in a sense this is to be expected, since there are not many objects in existence that have to traipse around the world being hurriedly stuffed into your pockets, or being violently untangled. So given that headphones are quite fragile objects in the first place, it shouldn’t be a surprise when they stop working.

As such, I am never sure which approach I should take when buying headphones. Should I splash out on an expensive pair of headphones in the hope that they will be a bit more durable? I should I just buy a rubbishy pair for a few pounds and buy a new pair every few months? Of course, being the wishy-washy, indecisive, Lib Dem-voting kind of guy I am, I normally opt for the in between option — something that costs somewhere between £10 and £20 and lasts a year or so.

I have completely fallen out with the kind of headphones that go inside your ear. Compact they may be. But thanks to my ears being different sizes, I often find that one of them keeps on falling out, while the other one doesn’t fit in properly and hurts like hell.

So a while back I decided to get the kind of chunky headphones that sit on your ears. You know, the ones used in The ITV Chart Show logo. Even though that style is more traditionally associated with home listening, you see a fair number of people walking around with kind of medium sized ones. So I set out to find some.

I searched Edinburgh high and low for a pair of the medium sized chunky style headphones that I keep on seeing people wear. I went into every Kirkcaldy shop that I could think of, even taking a major excursion to the Currys on the outskirts. But I simply could not find them.

In the end, I had to go for a pair that I saw in HMV. I was a little bit sceptical because the description did not say that it was specifically designed for portable music players. But the picture on the box made it look portable enough. I could even see the headphones themselves, and they looked fine to me.

The problem with buying headphones is that it is not always easy to tell exactly what you are buying. Unfortunately, the pair that I went for were about as portable as a tank. It might have been okay if it weren’t for the obscenely long cable, which on its own could take up the space of a normal pocket. Plus, they make my ears feel as though they are in an oven. Still, they are good for home listening (I am using them this very moment, in fact).

Because I am once bitten, thrice shy by nature, I decided after that to persevere with my old in-ear headphones, even though they kept on cutting out and giving me excruciating pain. Last week, though, they finally kicked the bucket. No sound was made unless I held the cable in a really awkward way that would cause people to give me funny looks.

Because I am addicted to music — constantly plugged in — when they do fail, it is a major crisis. Going cold turkey on music will never last long for me.

Even though I do almost all of my shopping on the internet, I did not want to take the risk with headphones. I had trouble enough telling whether or not they were suitable even when I could hold the packaging in the flesh. There was no way I could let the cozy glow of the computer monitor to guide me through this one. So I just had to go to HMV and buy whatever pair I could get my hands on.

The only suitable pair was the ones that I had bought before, with the fifteen metre long cable. There was a plethora of the kind that go inside your ear, but I wasn’t touching them for the reasons I noted above.

The only other kind were the ones that clip on to your ear. I had a pair like this before, and they also hurt my ears. Probably something to do with the fact that they clipped on to them.

But being the only suitable pair, I just decided to buy them. Plus, they were Sennheisers — and Sennheisers are meant to be good, right? So I keep on being told, at least.

I had a pair of Sennheiser in-ear ones before. I didn’t think much of them though. Nothing particularly wrong with them, but they seemed a bit bog-standard to me, particularly given the reputation Sennheiser have. I just put it down to the fact that it was the pair that I got free with my iRiver.

So, what about my new headphones then? The most muffled headphones I have ever used in my life. I could tell immediately. It is a bit like listening to music through water. And they hurt my ears. And they have a neck band which means that I can’t even sit back when wearing them.

Sennheiser? Sehr scheisse more like!

4 comments

I just can’t win with shoes

3 July 2007 01:04

Categories: Current affairs, General, Personal

Last week I looked into my sole. That is not a misspelling. I am not that deep, even though I like to pretend that I am. No, instead I carried out my annual inspection the sole of my shoe.

I thought my annual thought: “Hmm, looks like I need to get some new shoes.” So I took my annual trip to the shoe shop (ahem, TK Maxx) to try and find something that I would be prepared to actually wear for the next twelve months.

This did not all happen at once in one smooth sequence of events as it probably should have done. You see, I am a serial procrastinator. I just decided to go to TK Maxx one day after I finished work last week. Luckily, a really nice pair of shoes caught my eyes immediately.

There was a flaw of course — I couldn’t try them on because I was wearing holey socks. This style might be pursued by the great and the good, but not everyone can pull it off. Exposing my big toe would not only be embarrassing for me, but it would also probably cause more public alarm than that wet dreaming terrorist who only succeeded in setting his own arse on fire.

So I went home to change my socks to something more decent. But just to make sure about the price of the shoes (because I really wouldn’t know what a decent price is, and you can never tell with TK Maxx, which is surely the only shop in the world with the cojones to describe £80 as a “discount price” for an anorak), I decided to ask my mother.

£30 for a pair of shoes is, apparently, quite good. Seemingly Clarks would charge £40 for a decent pair of shoes. “Great,” I thought. “That pair of shoes is not only really nice, but it is also cheap.” So off I went with a spring in my step to buy the shoes.

I came home only to be berated by the very mother who told me I was getting a good buy!

“Oh, they are nice,” she said at first. Unfortunately this was followed with, “But they are canvas.” At this moment a question mark appeared above my head, à la the security guards in Metal Gear Solid.

Apparently, £30 is a bloody rip off for shoes made out of canvas. Moreover, it means that my shoes are probably not waterproof, which makes them useless judging by recent weather conditions. As if all of that wasn’t enough, they will also wear out my socks more quickly as well.

I might have been able to cope with that in certain circumstances. Alas, that job at the World Bank was filled on Sunday. I put holey socks in my CV and everything; I ought to have been a shoe-in. They didn’t even send a rejection letter.

8 comments

doctorvee