Ransen's Blog

Not sure how long this will last, but I'm doing these entries because I've heard that the best way to learn is to trying to teach what you are trying to learn. That seems to be have been true when I wrote my book " Candelas Lumens and Lux ". I've learned so much from other blog posts maybe I should join the contributing community. Publicly committing to something makes it more likely that the thing will get done. I was faffing around wondering which platform to use for a few ideas I have for mobile apps. I've already done one WEB app, which has had rather limited success (Ok, zero sales). It is a web site which allows you to create European Energy Labels. I did it because I know about the labels, and I wanted to learn C#/WEB apps and I hoped I'd be able to sell the service...     Despite the commercial failure of EuEnergyLabels.com I did learn about WEB apps and I did learn C# (which must rate as one of the very best computer languages ever i

If the self is an illusion (as some Buddhists and some pyschologists and some scientists say), then...er...who or what ...er... is "illuded"?   The definition of illusion is " a thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses. " So something/one percieves or interprets. I've no doubt  "selves" change and die, but at the moment, now, who or what is having the illusion that the self exists? (And for all those who say the self is an illusion I'd ask them to go and do some painful dental work without an anasthetic, and find out who or what feels the pain.) But my main question remains who or what is illuded?  

I was born before smartphones phones had been invented, (before even mobile phones were around come to that). I won't bore you with my objections to their use. Not objections to the objects themselves, but their use. Anyway. I'll try to stop being a boring old fart. But. But. I was at restaurant with some friends by an Italian lake one evening.  The view was, well... And the Moon was out. I walked ten meters to the shore to look. I took a photo. I said "There's a lovely crescent Moon." (A bit blurred in the photo, wonderful in reality.) Someone else took a photo on their phone. They showed it to a third person seated at the restaurant table (outside, not in the restaurant). This person said: "But Owen, it's a full Moon! Not a crescent Moon!"  "It is a crescent Moon... have a look," I replied. They didn't. The smartphone camera made the Moon look full, on the screen. That is not what I am objec

I listened to a tribute on Pierre Bourdieu. On the BBC Thinking Allowed podcast. According to the podcast, one of his ideas was that the French system of egalitè to some extent does not work because working class people do not feel at ease with middle/upper class people, even though the working class people are as intelligent as the others. That ill at ease is a barrier which few can overcome, (though Bourdieu did). Which reminded me of two meetings I had in the same week some time ago and how I felt ill at ease in one of them (in an art gallery) and totally at ease in another (in a technical design office). Two art professionals (not artists) had finished organising the details of my exhibition and so passed onto a more interesting subject. They tested each other out about the living and relatively famous artists they knew and could count as friends. It was a gentle battle of name dropping. I remember feeling uncomfortable and wandering away to look at the art in the

I nearly fell out of my bed as I listened to a podcast of this idiot as she described her latest artwork. Bath tubs with gold at the scum line being watched by a shark's eye which the viewer of the exhibition cannot see but must be told exists. Sorry, she may not be an idiot, maybe she's just in bad faith, or maybe just deluded. And then she said "Science is limited." It's a bit of a cliché but what has science (and technology) ever given us? Everything this imposter has ever used. The building she exhibits in. The cell phone she uses. The lighting in the gallery. The bed where she sleeps. Her credit card. Asprin. Surgery. Brain surgery. Ideas beyond her paltry imagination certainly. Relativity. Knowledge of genes. Super-computers. Shrek. Images from a space beyond imagination, beyond even an artist's imagination. Presumably also the embalming used on the shark's eye.  Maybe she's not be a detail person. Let the mere technician

It had been raining all night and when I got up in the morning the plants on the balcony had drops of rain on them like jewels hanging down. First I saw them then the phrase "like jewels" jumped into my mind. Which was a pity because "like jewels" is almost a clichè and took away from the sight the actual beauty of it. Almost as if once described with a poetic clichè … what? I've said in an other blog post that saying that a cloud looks like a dog with a ball or a laughing head destroys and distracts from the real beauty of the cloud. And so does the phrase "like jewels" when talking of drops of water, backlit, hanging from the green leaves. After that five second slip I managed to get back to the joy of the vision, without thinking of anything else. The photo does not convey the reality of what I saw, maybe 5% of it. Real life dynamic human binocular vision is still better than photos.

You'll have to listen to " Fags Mags and Bags " to find out... ...it takes some time to get into the series, but is well worth the effort.