The sand wins in the end

This photo series I have stumbled upon everywhere in the past few days. The photographer is Richard Ehrlich.

The images are not from a dystopian future in the Sandlands, after the bubble has burst and all the workers have gone home. The location is Namibia, in southwest Africa.

The town of Kolmanskop sprang up in 1908 after diamonds were discovered in the desert sand. By 1920 Kolmanskop was a booming mining town with 300 German expatriates and their families - a hospital, gymnasium, casino, bowling alley, and power station. Houses were built and decorated in beautiful colors with great artistic sensibility, presumably to offset the lonely existence in the middle of the desert. By 1928, however, the diamond deposits dried up and the town was abandoned to the elements. The skeletal remains of the houses are now left to sand and time, with every room constantly shifting and re-emerging as the wind shifts.

Levis by Gondry

Is it a re-make? Even if it is, as filmed by Gondry it is just perfect.

Playful nostalgia

In German there is an invented word for a special nostalgia wuith regard to life in the East prior to the fall of the Berlin wall. East being 'Ost', the term is Ostalgia.

Which goes some way to explaining the image above. It should remind automobile cognoscenti of the old Trabant, the most ubiquitous car on the East German roads back in the day.

But the designer has assumed that by now, if the Trabant were still in production, there would have been a 'face lift' and today's version might look like this.

The vehicle is selling well as a plastic scale model. And, as shown on the left, you can make a 'New Trabi' with nothing more than paper and glue.

But wait! There's talk of actually building this design as a Trabi for the twenty-first century.

To be perfectly hones I find the design cute! I hope the porject takes off.

Malcolm in Abu Dhabi

That's my 'handle' among the podcasting community; my sibillantly sonorous comments on Adam Curry's Delta Sierra Charlie show are thus signed. However since 'Malcolm in Abu Dhabi' is also 'Malcolm in Munich' (doing really interesting stuff!) the process of re-adapting after five years to a Western-style office culture is both ongoing and fascinating. Bukhara, insh'allah is not the way things go here in Germany. In short, there's little down time during the day for leasurely blogging, let alone podcasting.

Does it indicate a severe lack of inspiration if I post yet again on the subject of the weather? I'm not actually a weather junkie, really. (Those of you who are so afflicted might be interested in the device shown above, found here on WiredNews.)

Re-adapting to winter in Bavaria has been easier due to the milder than normal temperatures. Downtown on Saturday I watched the stately passage of a burbling Brabus-tuned white Mercedes SLK, a convertible and with its top down. Similarly topless a few minutes later was a sporty BMW with two attractive female passengers, not topless but in expensive furs. It was about 13 degrees Celsius in mid-afternoon.

Meanwhile in the Gulf News I read this:

According to the met office, the temperature during the day in Dubai is not expected to pass 20 degrees Celsius on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and the night temperature is forecast to drop to 16 degrees Celsius. The high winds are a result of the Shamal wind, a wave of high pressure that funnels through the Gulf between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The sandstorm warning comes just as the UAE is recovering from three days of heavy rains earlier this month, causing widespread flooding that resulted in traffic chaos across much of the Emirates.

Okay, maybe there'll be a dramatic icy blizzard here. January is over but winter isn't.

Dance With Me

Okay, that's Professor Rosenblum's second lesson and it's finally Friday. Nice YouTube feature, new to me, is the possibility of colour-customizing the video window.

Seems fitting to float off into a wonderfully retro ambiente with Nouvelle Vague's clip embedded below.

Y'all have a great weekend, hear?

An anniversary

My first Macintosh was a 512K which needed an external floppy drive since there was no hard-disk on board. The 128K model was launched on January 24, 1984 and it resembled closely the 512 I inherited from a colleague in early1987, when he upgraded to something cooler, either an SE or possibly a Macintosh II.

Odd to think that my induction into cyberspace took place in the real world not five kilometres from where I am now. Hmm, wheel of life. What goes round, comes round.

Why DIYLBM? This is why? (Part Two)

As regular readers well know, my other guiding guru (as valuable and inspiring to me as his friend Michael Rosenblum) is Jeff Jarvis. From Munich he has crossed thre bordeer and climbed up to Davos, from where he posted the following:

"Small video cameras are already the hot thing, gadgetwise, at this year’s Davos. Robert Scoble is broadcasting live from his mobile phone, as Jason Calacanis did at DLD. Loic LeMeur is making videos all over for Seesmic (with a bigger camera). I’m playing with the Reuters/Nokia mojo cameraphone (see the videos below). The YouTube Davos Conversation booth is recording the machers on video with tiny cameras.

And I showed my FlipVideo (the $79, 30-minute, dead-easy video camera) to Kai Diekmann, editor of the biggest paper, by far, in Germany: Bild. He gets thousands of photos from his readers, who send it up to a simple number via their mobile phones. Now he’s practicing networked journalism and assigning and mobilizing them to shoot things. He also told me that next week, they’ll have a top chef from a popular German food show telling readers in the paper to send in videos that he will put on his show. Where’s the line among media there? Diekmann is then doing with videos what he did with phones and so he was wowed by the Flip and wants to order a thousand of htem. That’s what happens whenever I show it to open-minded new people: I tell them they should buy them by the dozen and distribute them to their readers to become producers. Here’s Diekmann:

Kai Diekmann, I should add, I do not regard as one of my gurus. I find the publication he edits, the tabloid Bild Zeitung, frankly abhorrent. But in terms of his approach to the craft and practice of networked journalism he certainly gets it.

Why DIYLBM? This is why!

Explanation courtesy of Michael Rosenblum, the guru of the VJ movement. Become videodigitally skilled today to earn big bucks tomorrow. As simple as that.

Television graphics

Not having spent any time in the UK for years there's much I have missed on British television. Like these absolutely hilarious idents for BBC Three, which are about to be phased out, for some obscure reason.

Celebrating Digital. Life. Design.

Following up on yesterday's post regarding the excellent conference I managed to miss here in Munich, it seems I also missed a great party at the Bayerischer Hof!

And also in town for the occasion was one of my two favouriite street fashion photographers, Yvan, whose FaceHunter blog is on my daily must-read list. (The other is Sartorialist, whose New York gallery show on which he is to be congratualted opened a couple of days back.)

Yvan's coverage is here.

How nice to have several excuses for posting such a pretty picture!

Digital. Life. Design

That's the name of a conference which I just found out about. Go here to the website and wonder at the calibre of the speakers, the great and good of the Web 2.0 world all gathered here... here in Munich!

Jason Calacanis, Jimmy Wales, Marissa Meyer of Google, Esther Dyson, Michael Arrington, Matt Cohler of Facebook, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Lars Hinrichs, Joanna Shields of Bebo were just some of the speakers.

Jeff Jarvis was also there, he had "discussions last night at a Munich blogger meetup about whether Facebook will make inroads in Germany. StudieVZ is the killer social site here; it concentrates primarily on students but it has the long headstart and it is local."

At a session devoted to creativity the keynote speaker was the author Paul Coelho.

And Martha Stewart was interviewed by Tyler Brülé (whose Monocle magatine is the only 'dead trees' publication I permit myself).

All this hosted by Hubert Burda.

Says Jeff Jarvis, covering the event in his blog, "Burda is the most social corporation I know. That’s no doubt because its chairman, Huburt Burda, loves people and playing host to them. I’ve been to dinners and parties from New York to Davos where he and his lieutenants bring together incredibly diverse and interesting bunches of people. They’ve just brought 1,000 people to Munich for their conference. I’ve seen that being a gracious host pay dividends to Burda. They bring in new ideas and talent and relationships. Most companies I know are not at all social. They live in their own buildings and worlds. Not just people are becoming more social. Companies must become social."

Okay, I wasn't able to attend the T.E.D. events either. And D.L.D. also will allow me to catch up digitally. But it would have been cool to be there live.

Consolation is to be found in the video below, Royskopp's take on the very modern world we live in.

Getting serious with Millicent

My posts for the past six weeks or so have been totally self-indulgent, almost all qualifying for the 'life cache' tag (whether used or not). I suppose this is partly because there was a relative dearth of Media 2.0 news during the holiday season. But to a great extent it was due to the change in my own circumstances, from employee to free-lancer, from being a semi-permanent exile in the Sandlands to having clients in Europe as well as in the Emirates.

But today I can get serious again about developments in the media. Millicent claims to offer Desktop Publishing For TV, which is of indisputable interest to me and conform with my 'do-tit-yourself low-bidget media' mantra. More about it here, thanks to MediaGuardian.

Withdrawal

The start of my mission in Munich coincided with the introduction of draconian anti-smoker regulations. Bars, restaurants and cafés are now completely smoke-free as are workplaces and any public buildings. So this means that smoking is permissible only in your own home (and, I note with relief, in hotel rooms) or outdoors.

Although yesterday I noted that the winter is currently a very mild one, it is not the most agreeable experience to interrupt a restaurant dinner with a Marlboro Light moment between main course and dessert. However there is an upside here; that cluster of three or four recidivists on the pavement outside seems to me to hint at a new form of Social Networking in meat-space!

For what it's worth, in just two weeks my consumption of ciggies has been radically reduced by these pressures. No longer do I buy daily my two packs from the West Side Grocery in Khalidiyah (for AED 12, or just over EUR 2). Instead I pop EUR 4 into a vending machine and receive one pack. This contains only 17 cigarettes (to avoid having to set up the automats to give small change). For EUR 5 you can get a pack with 22 nicotine sticks! I am quite proud of not going for the EUR 5 option! Indulgence halved; cost doubled. The economics of smoking, as they impact on me, strangely resemble those so well known to expatriates working in the Sandlands - salary value decreasing, cost of living increasing.

Climate caprice

Abu Dabbling (from whom I borrowed the photo) describes here eloquently the consequences of three days of rainfall in the Sandlands.

And ArabianBusiness.com has this to say:
"The temperature in the open desert dropped to minus three Celsius at dawn on Wednesday for the second straight day, while passengers landing at Kuwait airport were greeted by minus one Celsius."

My two-cents-worth for today is to note that here in Munich where a fiercely frigid January is the norm, at 8 o'clock yesterday evening (four hours after the early winter sunset) the the temperature was a ridiculously mild 8 degrees Celsius. And the weekend will see even warmer weather.

Eureka!

When I read this post on the Gizmodo blog it was as if a curtain had been drawn open. No wonder I am a Mac fan-boy (waiting for tomorrow's news with admirable patience), tending to go ooh and aah whenever there's a new design by Jonathan Ive. No wonder at all, since way back in the sixties I was a Braun fan-boy, and a huge admirer of all the work of Dieter Rams.

Rams was introduced to me by my father; in the mid-fifties his most treasured posession was what was then called a radiogram. This model was nicknamed 'Snow White's coffin'. Whenever I hear the Modern Jazz Quartet I see this lovely piece of kit in my mind's eye.

One of my own very first Dieter Rams acquisitions was the cigarette lighter shown at the left. This must have been in the early sixties and, although the design was modified in the seventies, this is the one I'd snap up if it was ever offered on eBay.

Now I come to think of it, did my long-lasting preference for a colour palette featuring orange and grey have Braun as its triggering influence?



And, since migrating from Nesacfé to proper filtered coffee, I have never been without a Braun coffeee maker. Unfortunately my budget never stretched to the armchair shown below in which I would happily have sunk, resting after sessions using Mac gear designed by Ives, in the spirit of Rams...



...and listening to John Lewis' syncopated riffs when he solos on No Sun In Venice.

Cna yuo raed tihs?

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Re-posted from the blogof elBarbon, Mexico City, which has the fully justified title Nice F****** Graphics.

It also rained

According to ArabianBusiness magazine:

"Dubai's economy could be facing losses of around 432 million dirhams ($117.6 million) following the city's complete shutdown on Monday for the visit of US president George W. Bush.

Most businesses, schools, shops and restaurants were closed on Monday after authorities called a last minute public holiday to try and limit the impact of the closure of almost all Dubai's major roads, bridges and tunnels so Bush could tour the city's landmark developments.

According to estimates based on Dubai's gross domestic product (GDP), which was 157 billion dirhams ($42.7 billion) in 2006, the Gulf's second largest economy and largest trading hub would lose more than 100 million dirhams if its economy came to a standstill for just one day."

Add to the woes of Dubai's patient citizens the severe traffic disruption caused by the forces of nature - in the form of flooding following heavy rainfall - and, well, you just have to grin and bear it.

Moxy, Freem and the Arab street

The photo pblished in today's Gulf News shows the thousands who descended to fill the streets of Dubai, to show their gratitude to the city's highly estemmed visitor, George W. Bush, for all he has brought to the region...

No?

Right, the thousands were sitting fuming and cursing in the traffic jams caused when the authorities suddenly decided to close the principal arteries of the city which even at the best of times is impossibly traffic clogged.

Somebody probably thought that these closures might cause some... inconvenience perhaps. So at the very last minute it was decreed that today, the 14 January, should be a public holiday!

Brilliant wheeze! Sandlander is not competent to judge whether bringing Dubai to a stand-still was a neccessary security measure. But I think we must be allowed to speculate as to how we might appropriately celebrate GWB day on 14 January 2009. Suggestions hereby solicited.

Back in September I deplored under the headline Franco-Naff graphics the achingly twee illustration style adopted by publishers bringing out books featuring Anglo ex-pats in France. I was reminded of this by the arrival yesterday from Escondido, California, of a copy of Helena-Frith Powell's book (above, bottom left), sent by my old friend J via the US Postal Service and a mere six days in transit. (Guess I'd forgotten how good snail mail can sometimes be!). Thanks, J!

A further element of one of those 'coincidence clusters' which seem to be crowding my life at the moment was the latest post by Petite Anglaise (whose book will be out next month). Her topic was the strangeness of seeing her manuscript Americanized for the US edition, both in terms of word equivalences and spelling differences. She made the salient point that we Brits are perfectly happy to read American fiction which has, of course, not been Anglicized for our consumption. So why not vice versa? The comments to her post are, well, expressions of a wide spectrum of opinion!

An interesting side-bar to the above; somehow J managed to send from California the UK edition, priced in Pounds Sterling, which is a bit mysterious... And also, I won't be getting a chance to read it until my daughter has finished it, she as francophile as her Papa!

Petite Anglaise had no real objection to the cover art her publisher came up with for her debut novel. Frankly I would have freaked out if a similar suggestion had been made with regard to the publication of my own 950 page manuscript. I like clean. I like graphic. I like the font FF DIN.

Not that this threat ever loomed. Thirty-five covering letters with three sample chapters failed to elicit positive interest from any of the British publishers I contacted. It is in response to such deafening silence that self-publishing becomes an alternative to be considered.

Next manifestation of the 'coincidence cluster'. Former Sandlander Keefieboy posts here today about the upcoming print-on-demand launch of his own book in response to massive publisher indifference.

Add a final coincidence; I just got an email announcing the the bow of Podshow Press, an interesting hybrid approach to self-publishing with an audiobook-to-print migration contingent upon audience uptake of the chapters offered as podcasts.

Now I'm wondering if I should turn the clock back to January last year, when I was on the verge of a starting a self-publishing effort which, alas, I had to break off after seven weeks. Maybe the coincidence cluster is telling me it's time to give it another go? Why not, the content may possibly be written off as Franco-Twaddle, but at least it will not be packaged à la Franco-Naff.

The weather report

How ironic to learn that at home in the Sandlands people are complaining about an unusually cold spell. An overnight low of 10 degrees in Abu Dhabi is, of course, uncomfortable if one has become used to being spared the rigours of any kind of wintery weather.

Just after seven I watched from my hotel room window as the sun rose. This morning in Munich it was an undramatic six degrees at six in the morning. But nevertheless I need shoes stouter than the various Tods I acquired over the years in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. There will be snowfall to reckon with yet.

From the window of my workplace, appropriately designated Visitor's Office, I can see the planes taking off from the Munich airport when, as today, a clear blue sky permits.

Muharram 1, 1429

To mark the Hijri New Year the photo above,
borrowed from the Abu Dabblers,
seems appropriate.
It follows nicely on yesterday's post, too.

Inspiring images from Abu Dhabi

From the limo which took me at the crack of dawn from Abu Dhabi to catch my early flight from Dubai I cozuld not help but notice that the Skeikh Zayed Mosque was brilliantly illuminated and seemed very close to being finally completed.

This image series on the UAE Community blog appears to confirm my thinking with over four dozen amazing photographs.

Now the year can begin

An Emirates flight in the comfort of Business Class is a good way to effect a transition which is more than just a voyage from A to B. The photos above I downloaded about a year ago when other bloggers had the same extraordinary experience of leaving the warmth of the Sandlands to land in wintry Bavaria. Posting will inthe coming weeks be sparse, while I settle into a very different pace of daily life in new (non-smoking!) surroundings.

Tricky days ahead

[Phot: ParisDailyPhoto, borrowed shamelessly]

It's hard for me to imagine a French brasseries or Bavarian beer-hall with nobody smoking.

Since such establishments will again figure in my life during the coming months it's hard for me to know how I'm going to feel as a long-time smoker.

Oh I know, I shall be far healthier if I cut down. I was duly warned as a youngster that [a] smoking will stunt my growth and [b] result in premature demise. So I'm six-foot four and, in 2008, a mere two years short of the threescore-and-ten.

I wonder if the inevitable tweak I must make in my habits will plunge me into bitter melancholy? Will the stress of withdrawal permeate my smoking-reduced blog posting? Is there an alternative? Time will tell.

Ettore Sotsass

After a year during which cultural and artistic giants like Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Norman Mailer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jean Baudrillard 2008 starts with news of another loss.

Designer Ettore Sottsass (Italian, born Austria, 1917) died yesterday, at 90. The leader of a group of Italian designers who called themselves Memphis, he helped spark the postmodern design revolution, which mixed pure modernism with color and pattern, historic references and unabashed pastiche. Now-classic Memphis pieces such as his Carlton room divider rocked the design world in the early 1980s, and continue to inspire designers today. (re-posted from TED Blog)

2007 blogging

To the fourteen percent of my visitors who did not bounce straight off the site, my thanks and best wishes for the coming year. 2,738 visits in year, without any SEO effort on my side.

The USA accounted for 785 visits 28.67% of all, 225 of these from California, a quarter of whom visited more than once.

UAE-based readers made 753 visits, 27.5% of all, 308 of these from Dubai, almost three-quarters of all visitors checked the site more than once and contributed to an average of 4'30" on the site per visit. I must have seemed at least marginally relevant to fellow Sandlanders.

From the UK there were 276 visits, of which 104 were from the capital. But hardly more than 30% were repeat visitors.

Germany brought 154, visitors from Berlin marginally more than those from Munich.

France delivered 125, notably more repeat visitors than in most territories at 57%. And 50 visits from Montpellier, my favourite French town.

Italy 103, Spain 60, etc. etc. Motto for 2008? Can't. Not. Blog!

Cheers!

The 'crew' were as welcoming as ever. The menu was delicious; oysters, then a sole-and-shrimp cocotte, the sorbet and finally a splendid tournedos. Nice way to end the year in my Abu Dhabi canteen.