randomosity

(if this image is just a pretty palace, click refresh to reload the animated gif and enjoy a quick look at the rebuilding of the schloss)

I am always both fascinated and charmed to see an older building lovingly restored and doubly so when its role is thoughtfully reconsidered and creatively re-purposed. The magnificent ducal place in Braunschweig has been carefully reconstructed and redeveloped as part of a shopping arcade in the city centre. The palace itself was torn down in 1960 following years of gradual disintegration and bomb damage during the WWII that left much of the city centre devastated. Although remnants of the old palace were used in the reconstruction begun in 2005, the bulk of the construction material is new. Despite this, the effect overall effect of the reconstruction is gorgeous, and tribute to the craftsmanship of those involved. There have been a number of critics that feel that such a building should only be used as museum or a public non-commercial space. I heartily disagree.

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Answering the question, what’s up with the weird look to Randomosity today…I am trying a strange Wordpress theme today using simple ASCII charters. Its actually a rather complex theme and its surprisingly difficult to actually make Wordpress look so low-tech. The theme is called ASCII and is designed by n.design studio Chris Ensell (sorry Chris). Its extremely well done in my opinion.

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I happened to stumble upon (literally - I was using the new StumbleThrough feature of StumbleUpon) this wonderful Flickr collection. In this set, Michael Hughes captures a variety of popular tourist sites and superimposes souvenirs in photo in situ. What a neat concept. I am sure this opens up all sorts of wonderful questions for the representationalists…it reverses the normal memory process, by physically inserting memory into the present scene to create a representation of memory itself. Its almost a form of memory feedback. In this case, the kischier the better and possibly the less realistic the initial imposed memory object, the more memorable the subsequent artifact actually becomes. Its kind of twisting truth in on itself. I’ll have to think about this one some more.
The photographers idea (and there may have actually been earlier inspiration for him) has sparked a whole series of inspired works in Flickr. Searching for Michael Hughes finds a variety of pics his concept has inspired.

When in Montreal, one must savour the fine eating opportunities and I am thrilled to report that I stumbled across a winner. Rumi is a Persian/Sufi restaurant located in Mile’s End at the corner of Hutchison and Fairmount. It has a charming terrasse and absolutely yummy food.
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Down the line of totally cool furniture comes this rather unique objet d’something. Its called Obelisk and come from Jane et cie. Its simply cool - a set of four chairs and a table that, when stored forms a rather intriguing obeliskish feature for the well turned out living room.
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The Gardens at the Palais Royal are distinctly different from those at the Luxembourg. A grand urban courtyard, the Palais Royal have been a public garden from immediately prior to the Revolution. The Palais Royal was owned by the Duc d’Orleans, an aristocrat who sought popular appeal. As today, the courtyard was surrounded by cloistered shops and atelier and served as a meeting spot for the ‘common folk’.
Today, the garden itself is green and large and a wonderful spot to sit and read and be amongst a milieu.

Entry to the garden is through the palais itself and the contrast from the bustling street to the south could not be more extreme. You emerge from the concrete jungle into a lush garden with a bordering walking paths and a fountain in the centre that creates two separate private areas. Chairs are provided and one can easily while away the hours engrossed in a fine book.
At the south end of the garden is a rather discordant sculpture featuring black and white cylinders that have risen to varying heights out of the patio itself. Impressive, artistic, tasteful?? hard to say. Definitely unique.
What is particularly nice about this garden is the oasis that it provides amongst the hustle and bustle of the surrounding streets. Its a defined area and you are very conscious of the surroundings. But the lushness of the gardens themselves allow you to easily escape in appropriate diversion.

There’s a neat spot, a little off the beaten track, in Paris that I have some fond memories of. It’s an oasis, small in scale and slow in pace. It’s not the sort of place that you find in the tourist directories and its not enveloped by the legend of Paris vacationeering. Bercy Village is a trendy upscale redevelopment project in the 12th which features little shops, a cinema, bars and restaurants, situated within and without of a old wine market. Metro 14 - Cour St-Emilion lands you right in the village.
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I have long wanted to jot down some thoughts about some of my favourite places in Paris. Meaning to eventually present these as an appropriately georeferenced set with appropriate navigation, for now I thought I would add them as simply blog entries. When I thought about where to start, it took me all of a second to ecide to begin with one of my absolutely favourite spots: The Luxembourg Gardens.

There are a plethora of wonderful gardens in Paris, but the Luxembourg is a favourite for a variety of great reasons:

• Convenient
• Adjacent
• Sustantial
• Gorgeous
• Clean
• Safe

The gardens and the Palais de Luxembourg date the seventeenth century and the construction of the palace and surroundings for Marie de Medici. The garden is surrounded by a wall and the garden/park itself is intersected by pedestrian avenues or crushed stone. It is centred on a fountain/large grassy area (I can’t remember which guise it is in right now). There are polite city forests and wonderful statuary surrounding the main promenades.

What I like most particularly about the gardens are the wonderful seats. They can be dragged to any place one desires and come in three flavours. There are the standard upright, like a standard chair type (really great in combination with others for your feet), slightly reclined ones and the best: full reclined spacious metal lounges that are not unlike a Parisian version of an Adirondack deck chair. Getting to the garden early enough means you get your pick of both chair and spot and you can find a wonderfully sheltered spot close to the wall around the central water, and spend the day reading, writing and simply taking in the ambiance of this very special environment.
The central ‘plaza’ area always had this wonderful, huge wading pool in which children rented little sailing boats and pushed them about. Just a really nice ‘park’ kind of thing to do. However, if I am to believe Google Maps (after the Katrina thing I am ever so slightly skeptical), it looks as though this area has been filled in and is just a grassy area now. Maybe its a seasonal, annual thing…I sure hope that is the case.
The area around the Luxembourg also makes it superbly situated. In the Latin Quarter, near the Sorbonne and the Pantheon, it is also near the entrance to the Catacombs (about them in a further entry). There are all sort of wonderful eating opportunities in the area, many of which re great takeaway food that you can return to the park with. I really like this little Japanese yakatori place, a three minute walk from my seat in the park.
On a more somber note, the wall to the northeast is the site where Marshall Michel Ney (the Bravest of the Brave) was executed in 1815 for his part in Napoleon’s return to power. This tragedy is not without its controversy, both due to the circumstances of Ney’s court martial as well as the persistent rumours that he was able to escape to the United States following Napoleon’s second abdication and lived out his days as a rural school master.
The Luxembourg Gardens are easily accessed, both by foot walking south from the Seine having crossed the Pont Neuf, or via the Luxembourg Metro station which deposits you right at the northeast gate of the park.

There’s an interesting short article on Low-End Mac about how the author uses an Apple Lisa for his writing tasks. He cites the fact that he can turn it off and resume exactly where he was by turning it back on, not having to worry about either saving documents or power outages. More importantly he reminds us to consider whether all the bells and whistles of the latest greatest productivity appas are things we actually use. I blogged earlier on this point and was comparing Word 1.0 on the Mac to the current incarnation. Without being some neo-Luddite and pretending like the older technology is that far superior, I think that there are points to be made for simple and fast.

Nonetheless, its not quite that black and white. I have tried to find an alternative word processor for use under Windows with less baggage than Word. I have been unsuccessful. Both AbiWord and OpenOffice seem as bloated and frankly try to emulate Word at the expense of actually thinking about how the human actual processes words. Admittedly there are a few challengers of note on OSX. But, what about starting with TextEdit or the like and simply being able to modularly add features as desired.

One of the other points raised relates to the concept that some tasks haven’t been improved upon by faster processors and the like. Word processing can get away with the older 68K…frankly given the choice, I would actually be very happy doing my word processing on one of the NeXT boxes and WriteNow. That was (and still is) speed with an awesomely crisp display. Pure monochrome (I have little need for colour when word processing) and a joy to the eyes. strangely far less eye candy than OSX has become bloated with. A purpose built word processing engine. I should crank up the old NeXT laser printer and see if it still works as well.

As to the age of the machine we use…think about that for a sec - a twenty four year old computer. And its not the oldest working ones about…alas, it seems like just yesterday.

Update: The pondering is usually good enough to get me exploring. In this case I happened upon PolyEdit from Russian publisher PolySoft. They have a tiny 1.3Mb word processor that reads and writes .docs and seems to have a rather robust feature set, yet runs like a wee demon. I’ll post comments if my trial goes well. So far so good.

Further Update: Well, if I didn’t need footnotes or endnotes I’d be doing well, unfortunately PolyEdit has neither. Additionally, while it will import Word 2000/XP/2003 versions, it will only save as Word v6. Pity. Its super fast and does offer a wide variety of features and the interface really works.

We have seen the face of the near future with embedded displays in refrigerators and RFID tags so you can track a parcel as it speeds (hopefully) on its way. One of the companies doing some innovative work in this area is Ambient. I recalled their wonderful glowing sphere that reacted to the changes in a particular stock price, or the weather using a wireless connection internet connection. Cool, but not something that I would immediately jump at.
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