Flash seems to automagically detect the MIME-type of your embedded content (in this case, image/png), so that when you call new MyImage() the resulting object can be cast to a Bitmap.

You can, however, explicitly set a MIME-type for the embedded asset. If you’re crazy enough, you can do this:

[Embed(source = 'myImage.png',mimeType='application/octet-stream')]
public static const MyImage:Class;


This time calling new MyImage() will return an object of type ByteArray; in order to convert it into a bitmap, you will need to load the ByteArray into a Loader object.

Now, what caught me by surprise is the way in which the Flash compiler embeds the file myImage.png; I had foolishly assumed that the binary file would be embedded as-is, and then handled appropriately at run-time, but the compiler is a little smarter than that, and tries to handle the binary data according to its MIME-type. This is probably best demonstrated by example. In my test case, I embedded a large uncompressed PNG – the file was 1280×720 and came out at approx. 2.7MB.

With the first style of Embed (the “regular”), my compiled SWF was approx. 1.7MB or so in size, and when I ran it it decompressed to a similar size.

With the first style of Embed (the “byteArray”), my compiled SWF was a much smaller 800kB in size, but when I ran it it decompressed all the way back to 2.7MB.

I’m still trying to get my head around the implications of this (with a lot of help from Tish!) – it seems counter intuitive to me that the decompressed file sizes are so different, when presumably the “regular” version will have to be decompressed to a full 1280×720x4 (ARGB) bitmap data object. Any thoughts?

Amy Dutronc wishes that iPlayer worked properly. It’s like listening to the radio and watching a really boring slideshow.

It soon turned out that lots of other people were having the same problem. They all have good Internet connections, so that wasn’t the issue- actually, even when bandwidth is low, iPlayer has some amazing built-in logic for detecting this and respondng accordingly. The issue is that some of the high-quality video now available on iPlayer requires lot of decoding power, and some computers – especially older ones and Apple Macs – aren’t up to the job. (NB. I believe there are improvements in the pipeline which will help iPlayer to improve playback even on slow machines – but if you’re still unable to get decent quality playback, the tips below may help).

The first thing to check is that you have the most up-to-date version of the Flash Player plugin. Adobe have done a lot to improve video performance (and performance in general) in recent releases. If you’re feeling particularly brave, you can install the beta version of Flash Player 10.1 which has even more performance improvements. This will especially benefit Mac users, as the new “Gala” preview release is the first one featuring hardware video decoding for Macs. NB if you do install the Gala preview, you will sometimes see a white square in the corner of your video – so you may want to wait instead for the public release.

If, despite having the latest Flash Player, video still runs jerkily, here are some tips. Try them in the order shown below until you reach a level of quality which your computer can play back without stuttering.

• Don’t play the HD version of programmes. Obviously, HD is amazing; if your machine will play it then you should definitely choose the HD option. But if your machine is a bit old, or does not have a good video card, then HD can slow it down to a crawl. On each HD programme page is a link underneath the video saying “Also in normal quality”. Click that link for a version less likely to hammer your machine.
• Play the smaller version of the video. On “normal” programme pages, the video has an icon in the top right-hand corner showing two arrows (Update: on the new beta version of iPlayer, the size-toggle icon has moved. It is at the bottom of the media player, in between the volume and fullscreen buttons.). If you click on this, it will toggle between a big and a small version of the video. If you have problems playing the big version, click on the arrow to shrink the window down. The two actually use different video files (encoded at 1500kbps and 800kbps) – you can tell which version of the video is playing by right-clicking in the video window: a menu will pop up, and the second line will say something like “1500kbps | h264 | AK 3.5 (1) | 832×468“. The first part of that line tells you the bitrate.
• Play the low-bandwidth version. If your machine is so clunky that it struggles even with the 800kbps video, then there is one more option: the low bandwidth version. Normally you would only see this version if your Internet connection is very poor – but you can force iPlayer to play it by clicking on the “Use lower bandwidth version” hidden near the bottom of the page. Once you’ve done this, right-clicking on the video will tell you that you’re looking at a 480kbps version. If you want to swap back up to the higher-quality version, the link at the bottom of the page will now read “Use normal version” – just click it.

Hopefully by following one or more of these suggestions, you’ll be able to find the best performance level for your computer.

Disclaimer: this is not an official post from the BBC: although I worked on iPlayer and am familiar with most of the technologies used in the Embedded Media Player, I am no longer affiliated with the BBC in any way. Also, iPlayer technology can and does change rapidly: I cannot guarantee that all of the above information will still apply.

]]> http://www.sumption.org/2010/05/21/some-iplayer-performance-tips/feed/ -1 http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/22/my-life-in-photography/ http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/22/my-life-in-photography/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:03:51 +0000 Dan Sumption http://www.sumption.org/?p=1642 A while ago, Theo Simpson interviewed me about my photography, for a project he was doing. I just stumbled upon the interview, while cleaning up my hard disk, so here it is:


How did you first begin interest in photography?

In childhood – my dad gave me a Kodak Brownie when I was 4 and we developed & printed the photos together.

Have you had any formal training in photography?

I took a photography O-Level when I was 17 in 1986, and did a week’s photojournalism course in 2006, but am mostly self-taught.

What kind of photographer would you say you are?

Always hard to categorise, but I think the term “documentary photographer” more-or-less covers it.

Is there any particular photography you prefer?

Photographs of people, photographs at night… but to be honest most types of photography interests me.

How did you start working commercially?

I was approached by the Mail on Sunday to buy a photo I had taken. Most of my commercial work has been through approaches from others, but this is because I don’t make most of my living from photography and still often feel uncomfortable about promoting myself as a photographer.

Did you start working alone?

Yes, I always work alone.

What steps did you make to set up a company/business? Or did you test the waters so the speak first?

See above – I haven’t gone very far in this direction. I already have a company, specialising mainly in website development, so have used this to manage the commercial side of my photography, but I’ve never formalised my commercial work.

What are the pressures you have found working commercially?

There is a great pressure to perform and get everything right, although this mostly comes from myself. Also I suppose keeping the business side of things organised: keeping notes of expenses, insurance, tax etc.

What kind of portfolio do you have?

I have a self-produced book, as well as a website. I also have a large, rather chaotic but more often updated Flickr account.

How do you get people to see it?

Various ways – I give out copies of my book to people who may be commissioning photography. But mostly I tag my photos extensively on Flickr and ensure that my website has good, descriptive and relevant text, plus plenty of links, so that search engines will rank it highly.

Has your website been a part of your commercial success?

Yes, my own website and my Flickr portfolio have probably been the main source of business for me – although I don’t think this would be sustainable if photography were my main business.

How much competition is there?

There is a lot of competition, although a lot of it is not great quality.

What do you do to advertise yourself?

I have done some online advertising, e.g. using Google Adwords and Bidvertiser, but mostly I just use Search Engine Optimisation techniques to make my photographs easy to find online.

What makes your work stand out from other people?

I like to think I have a fairly well developed personal style – this is not necessarily something I’ve planned, rather something I can’t help. I don’t like covering the same ground that people have already covered, so I am always looking for different approaches to a project, and I think this helps my work to stand out.

Do you advertise?

See above – I have done a small amount of advertising in the past, but don’t at the moment.

How much creative input are you allowed when working for certain clients?

I’ve usually been allowed a fairly good degree of creative freedom. I’ve come to realise that my photography doesn’t always fit easily within rigid guidelines, so I would be unlikely to accept any future commissions without a great degree of creative freedom.

How much free time do you have for yourself to work on other photography projects?

Not a great deal, but I squeeze in whatever I can.

What advice would you give to someone starting working commercially?

I’m not sure that I’m best placed, but I would say try to stay true to yourself while always pushing yourself in new directions. Don’t write anything off out of hand – learning can come from the most unexpected directions.

How do you maintain your client base?

I don’t really have one

What equipment do you use?

Camera bodies: Canon EOS 40D and 20D.
Lenses: 16-35mm f/2.8
24mm f/1.4
50mm f/1.4
70-200mm f/2.8 IS
Flash: Canon 480 EXII
Tripod: Manfrotto

What computer software do you use?

Mainly Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Also occasionally Adobe Photoshop.

How do you back your work up?

External hard disk.

How do most clients want the work presenting to them?

Initially by web gallery. Then prints, photobooks or high-res files.

How are you equipped for that?

I use Lightroom to produce quick web galleries, and produce other formats as required.

How is your client base spread?

Most of my clients have been in Sheffield, with a few in London.

How far do you travel to get work?

Usually not far, but will travel all over the country for the right job. Furthest so far has been to Glasgow.

In a situation where you might feel technically challenged, what steps do you take to make sure the job is carried out properly, for example in unusual lighting conditions?

Experiment with conditions, check details of photos (and download to computer if possible), take as many photographs as possible, using different settings/lighting.

What do you do if you make a mistake?

Keep going and try to learn from it!

What photographers have influenced your current work?

So many… but particularly Garry Winogrand, Brian Griffin, Terry O’Neill.

Is Sheffield a good place to set-up a business?

Hmm… not sure!

Do you maintain copyright on all your work?

Yes.

Do you arrange royalties and rights before you do a job?

Generally.

Do you ever work for free?

Yes, depending on the client and the job.

What are the most important aspects to working commercially?

I am lucky in that I don’t need to make most of my money from photography, so for me the most important aspects are the opportunity to learn & to take interesting photos.

How do you take yourself forward?

In fits and starts, but usually through intense bouts of taking photos & contemplating photos.

What are your plans for the future

Watch this space!

]]> http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/22/my-life-in-photography/feed/ -1 http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/22/desert-island-disco/ http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/22/desert-island-disco/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:45:53 +0000 Dan Sumption http://www.sumption.org/?p=1633 A few weeks ago, Cherry Red Promotions very kindly asked me to play my Desert Island Discs at their monthly Desert Island Disco at The Shakespeare in Sheffield. Here are the tracks I picked, in the order in which I played ‘em. Lizzie also produced a little booklet, handed out on the night, and the following descriptions appeared in it:

1: The Lake of Puppies – Largelife
I got married to this song! “To have and to hold, the stuff in my hands, and if my hands are small, all that I hold must be even smaller…. Be it a large or a small world, nothing is larger than life.”

2: Cardiacs – Manhoo
Cardiacs are the one constant in my life: I could have filled this entire list with their songs. Manhoo is perfect pop, something the Beatles would have written if they’d still been on-form in the mid-90s. I like to think of it as the final word on all the Blur/Oasis nonsense going on at the time.

3: Material – Disappearing
As a student bass player, I had four heroes: first Lemmy, then JJ Burnel, Chris Squire, and finally Bill Laswell. Laswell introduced me to a world of music I had no idea existed (after 20 consecutive listens to Last Exit’s Noise of Trouble, I suddenly “got” free noise). He made me realise I didn’t need heroes any more. This is one of his funkiest tracks, which also introduced me to the sax of Henry Threadgill and guitar of Sonny Sharrock, both of whom also deserve to be on my desert island.

4: The Fuzztones – 1-2-5
Makes me feel like a teenager again.

5: Ronald Shannon Jackson & The Decoding Society – When We Return
A beautiful, mysterious beginning and ending, joined by the most insane-yet-somehow-logical magical manic middle mess. The world’s greatest drummer keeps time while Vernon Reid rocks his fucking socks off. If I could just keep one of the eight, it would be this.

6: Claude Debussy – Claire de Lune
It feels like these five minutes describe an entire lifetime: from the first tentative movements of a baby, through increasing confidence and experience, to a noble, wise and peaceful death. When you bury me, please do it to this piano piece.

7: Caspar Brötzmann Massaker – Tribe
…and when I come back as a zombie, I’d like to hear this pumping out at a few hundred decibels. Immense! Terrifying! German!

8: Ooberman – Blossoms Falling (accoustic version)
Sunday morning lie-ins. True love. Warm, fuzzy perfection. Love you Gill!

Book:Viriconium Nights by M John Harrison
Reading this, during a lost-weekend in Amsterdam, changed my life. Made me realise stories don’t need endings, fantasies aren’t real, and some people waste a lifetime trying to get to the other side of the looking-glass. I think I grew up that weekend. This book contains nothing but language and imagery; but I could lose myself forever in it.

Luxury: an oojamaflip
One thing I’m forever searching for, so I probably ought to have one handy on my desert island.

Of course, eight records is never enough. I brought a few extra, in the hope that there’d be some spare time at the end, and indeed there was – I managed to slip a while side of the Cramps’ Off The Bone in. But what really limited me was not being able to play many very long tracks. Here’s a couple which have just as much right to be included as the other eight:

9: Henry Threadgill’s Very Very Circus – Hope A Hope A
One of the most sublime orchestrations ever created – who else but Henry Threadgill would replace the bass with two tubas, and back up battling electric guitars with a trombone and a french horn. I saw this live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with my friend Ed: probably the best gig I’ve ever been to.

10: Igor Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring
When I was around 19, I decided to “get into” classical music. So I picked a CD at random from my Dad’s collection. Boy, was I surprised. It knocked me off my feet, punkier than the punkiest punk I’d ever heard. It was The Rite of Spring, performed by the New York Philharmonic (still the most violent version of this music I’ve ever heard – and I’ve heard many). However, for my desert island I think I’d pick Fazil Say’s four-handed piano version: surprisingly, just as rich and dischordant as the orchestral version, at times more so.

Finally, one of the other desert islanders picked a Blur track for his list, and explained that he’d listened almost exclusively to classical music until Blur awakened him to the possibilities of popular music. I hadn’t though about this beforehand, but Blur did something very similar for me: from around 1990 to 1995, I listened only to jazz, improvised music and other forms of avant-garde noiseism. I considered myself above crass pop songs. Then by chance I saw a Blur video, Sunday Sunday, on a late night TV show, and I was surprised by the intelligence and beauty of it. From then on, I never looked down on pop music, and my tasted expanded to include a bit of everything. So I really owe a place in this list to Blur, and of all their tracks I think the one I’d pick is the oh-so-beautiful Tender.

Postscript: I’m loving the SEO Smart Links Wordpress plugin, if only because its automatically-generated links remind me of stuff I wrote ages ago and have forgotten. Case in point: Check out the “Henry Threadgill” and “When We Return” links above.

]]> http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/22/desert-island-disco/feed/ -1 http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/01/treacle-song-radio-3/ http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/01/treacle-song-radio-3/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:06:42 +0000 Dan Sumption http://www.sumption.org/?p=1629 Her voice, singing,
Baked in a land of brown, black and purple.
Light, milk coffee clouds;
Dark, cook chocolate shadows;
Sparkle Stabs of Sugared Violet.

Ohne Zucker Bitte.
Kein Kandis.

]]> http://www.sumption.org/2009/07/01/treacle-song-radio-3/feed/ -1 http://www.sumption.org/2009/05/31/books-that-changed-my-life/ http://www.sumption.org/2009/05/31/books-that-changed-my-life/#comments Sun, 31 May 2009 11:36:52 +0000 Dan Sumption http://www.sumption.org/?p=1619 A meme’s been doing the rounds on Facebook. Instructions are as follows:

Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

I did that… but then wanted to offer more explanation of why these books are so special to me, and why you should probably read them as well. And so, I spent far too long writing up 16 potted book-reviews (After posting the original 15, I remembered one other which absolutely had to be on the list). Here they are (in no particular order), complete with links to Amazon via my associate account, so that you can buy them and earn me a few coppers if you like the sound of any of the books here (if anyone knows of a good alternative to Amazon for a very low-volume affiliate account, please let me know).


1. Viriconium Nights, M John Harrison. I read this aged 17. At the time, I read only fantasy/sci-fi (which I thought this was). It is, in fact, anti-fantasy: all of its short stories seem to finish unresolved; no quest is ever completed satisfactorily. Suddenly I understood: this is what life is like; there is no beginning, middle and happy end. Despite this, the writing is so beautiful, the choice of words so unconventional and vivid, the stories can be enjoyed for those reasons alone. Reading this book taught me that sometimes it’s all about the journey, not the goal. I realised the fallacy of fantasy, and have never really bothered with it since. This one book completely changed my reading habits.
2. Pastoralia, George Saunders. Probably the funniest, but also the saddest book I’ve ever read. Again short stories, they are a perfect exaggerated satire of life in the corporatised early 21st century (just as Gogol nails the early 19th century and Kafka the 20th). Saunders started, and has continued, in the same vein, but this his 2nd book is the peak of his originality & brilliance.
3. All Quiet on the Orient Express, Magnus Mills. Like Pastoralia, warped sad, funny, chilling satire, and also a 2nd book which I prefer to the (more critically acclaimed) 1st, or subsequent ones. A young man camps in the Lake District, and takes on some farm work to subsidise a planned motorbike trip to the Orient. The atmosphere is very similar to League of Gentlemen. But nothing happens. Ever (except for one shocking, terrifying incident). But it "doesn’t happen" in such a way that makes this book the most compelling of page-turners. Surely, any moment now, something will happen! I read this for a book club once, and one of the other members said "how could anyone identify with this book? The hero is so spineless, nobody could be like that in real life." I identify 100% with the hero, I could be just that spineless, and I can appreciate that a story this unlikely could all too easily just happen. (I should also add that the original, Ladybird-style cover for this book is gorgeous. Sadly they’ve reprinted it in something generic and instantly forgettable).
4. The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Angela Carter. Angela Carter writes like an angel on acid, and nowhere is her writing more trippy than in this book. It’s a story of a young man from a ministry in an unspecified city in an era which seems to hover unobtrusively somewhere between medieval times and the 21st century. The city is under siege from Doctor Hoffman and his hallucination engine, so that nothing is ever what it appears to be. Carter can use language like absolutely no-one else I’ve ever come across. I’ve never experienced synesthesia except while reading her books. She can put one word unobtrusively alongside another in such a way that you can actually smell what she’s talking about, even though that smell is contaned in neither of the two words. Nearly 20 years after I read this book, I can stll remember its exact taste (and still don’t understand why it’s persistently out-of-print).
5. Geek Love, Katherine Dunn. Again (like Carter) there is a smell, feel, taste which I associate with this novel. Without meaning to sound sexist, it sems that female authors often have a more sensory way of writing than men (although Harrison sometimes comes close). The story of an American family of circus freaks, deliberately and lovingly mutilated during gestation through a variety of bizarre and sickening practices. It’s an extremely beautiful, extremely moving study of the bonds and dependencies which arise within a group who are alone within society.
6. Gödel, Escher, Bach – an eternal golden braid, Douglas Hofstadter. This was on my 3rd year psychology BSc reading list, for a course in Cognitive Ethology taught by Dr. Susan Blackmore. The book (and the course) changed my life completely: showed me all kinds of metaphors for how human consciousness may operate, and banished the need for any kind of "magic spark" from explanations of consciousness.
7. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins. Part of the same Susan Blackmore-led module as Gödel, Escher, Bach, this book did the same for my understanding evolution.
8. Songlines, Bruce Chatwin. Chatwin’s brand of half travel-writing half musing and philosophising is, in my experience, quite unique and quite magical. This is the story of his trip to Aboriginal communities around Australia, but it is also the story of the human race. He builds up a theory, that humans are natural nomads who draw their energy and inspiration from the rhythms of walking, and who have lost much of their spirit by being coralled into permanent residencies. It’s very convincingly argued, and another example of a book which changed my opinion of what it is to be human.
9. The Engineer of Human Souls, Josef Skvorecky. I read this during my first two weeks apart from Gill – she was in Egypt while I was buried under a duvet in a squat in Leytonstone. It still conjures up memory of the magic of our young love mixed with the melancholia of separation. The story follows hero Danny (a not-even-thinly disguised version of Skvorecky) during two periods in his life. He is an aging Czech literature professor in a University in Canada, lusting after his young students, but his mind wanders back to his forced-employment and ultimately meaningless sabotage in the Messerschmidt factory in WWII rural Czechoslovakia, lusting after his tuberculosis-stricken co-worker. The novel is divided up according to the authors Danny is teaching at the time – Poe, Hawthorne, Twain. It’s incredibly complex, and I’m sure there is much here which I don’t quite "get", but its melancholy synthesis of youthful uncertainty/optimism and aged wisdom/cynicism really, really buries its way deep inside my heart.
10. The Photographer’s Eye, John Szarkowski. Szarkowski is my favourite writer on photography (though I’ve long meant to read Geoff Dyer, who is by all accounts a genius on the topic. Sontag and Barthes I’ve struggled with but not yet engaged with). Although this is mainly a (very good) photobook, with an all-encompassing survey of photography at the time of the accompanying exhibition (1964), what most insprires me is the accompany essay and the way the book is structured: split into 5 aspects the photographer must tackle (even if subconsciously) when making a photograph: the thing itself, the detail, the frame, time, and vantage point. His explanation of these 5 is so clear and succint that even a child could read it and instantly become a master of photographic critique. It also articulates (again quite perfectly) what it is that makes photography different from other art forms (it’s all in the frame – quite literally).
11. Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut. Extremely clever, extremely moving, extremely thought-provoking. An example of the kind of sci-fi which I still find quite acceptible, post-Viriconium. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. While captured during World War II, Billy is abducted by aliens who live simultaneously in all times, and he begins to see reality as they do, jumping from one point in his life to another, via old age, the death of his wife, the marriage of his daughter, a WWII bombing raid in reverse where aeroplanes mercifully suck fire & destruction out of a German city, to the finale in a fire-bombed slaughterhouse in Dreseden. One of the most powerful anti-war (but not anti-glacier) books ever, and a constant reminder that every single death is important, yet unavoidable. So it goes.
12. Exquisite Corpse, Robert Irwin. Robert Irwin is one of the most intelligent, yet one of the most easily readable, authors I know of. This is a fictionalised autobiography of an English surrealist painter, which tells the history of the surrealist movement from the 30s to the 60s. Again, I find myself drawn to the WWII period, where surrealism was unnecessary with "a white horse galloping around inside a burning meat market… a girl in a blue dress emerging with her skipping rope from clouds of black smoke and skipping calmly by… facades of buildings curving and distending like the sets of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari… staircases which led nowhere, baths suspended apparently in mid-air, brick waterfalls flowing out of doorways and objects jumbled incongruously together". The novel also has one of the most audacious twists of any novel I have ever read, truly worthy of a surrealist. Read more of my thoughts on Exquisite Corpse here.
13. The Good Soldier Švejk, Jaroslav Hašek. I was made aware of this (and also the excellent War with the Newts by Karel Čapek) through frequent references in the work of Josef Skvorecky. I usually struggle with books more than about 50 years old, but this one proved to me that during the First World War there was at least one author who shared a sense of humour with the writers of The Young Ones, Blackadder and The Office. Side-splittingly funny (but sadly uncompleted due to the author’s death), Švejk is the archetypal "little man", who subversively stands up to, and is much cleverer than, those in authority. By obeying their orders to the letter, he brings chaos everywhere he serves. I’m told by various friends that this is one of the absolute classics of Eastern European literature; also that the English language does not contain the range and nuance of swear words required to accurately translate the book.
14. The Tin Drum, Günter Grass. The Tin Drum. An epic novel on the making of modern Germany. Again, it stays with me particularly because of the imagery and unusual incidents: Oskar’s violent birth, the worn-out drums, his father’s fall into the cellar, and (especially) the horse’s head with the eels. I also have a DVD the excellent Oscar-winning film of this (which only covers about the first half of the novel), plus a copy of the book in its original German (Die Blechtrommel, if I remember correctly), which I dream of one-of-these-days reading even though so far I’ve not managed to struggle very far into page two.
15. À Rebours (usually Against Nature in English), Joris-Karl Huysmans. I read this on the recommendation of my friend Caroline Simpson, and am very glad I did. The story of Des Esseintes, a fin de siècle decadent aristrocrat who, having experienced all of life’s supposed pleasures and indulgences, tires of it all and has himself bricked up inside a house (with only a small hatch through which his servants deliver his meals). Like the Magnus Mills book, this sounds like it could be a tedious read, but its limitations are part of what make it quite magical: the attention to detail is as breath-taking as an intricately jewel-encrusted tortoise. The writing is quite dense, and this book taught me that reading is also an activity which can benefit from a "slow movement" approach: I lingered over and savoured every single word, and got a huge reward from doing so.
16. Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban. A post apocalyptic parable written entirely in not-quite-English (I know some people find this kind of thing very hard to read, but I find that if you let the sounds of the morphemes wash over you then within a couple of chapters it all makes sense). I’m told that every single word in the book has at least two meanings (prime among them: Addom, the biblical first man whose splitting caused the nuclear event which created the current state of this Kentish archipelago). Biblical and scientific double-meanings abound, parliament is a ritual carnival carried out by Punch-and-Judy men, and tradition and survival determine everything in this harsh future environment. Absolutely unique, absolutely genius, and once read never, ever forgotten.

I could have added at least another 15 kids books to this – especially the Uncle & Agaton Sax books. And When Little Bear met Great Bear (or was it the other way around), which I’m sure I didn’t dream up, but I have never managed to find listed in any online catalogue or in any of the booksellers in Hay-on-Wye. Anyway, I hope that you enjoy these reviews and that you’re inspired to read some of the books as a result.

]]> http://www.sumption.org/2009/05/31/books-that-changed-my-life/feed/ -1 http://www.sumption.org/2009/03/24/sue-schofield/ http://www.sumption.org/2009/03/24/sue-schofield/#comments Tue, 24 Mar 2009 07:23:23 +0000 Dan Sumption http://www.sumption.org/?p=1609 To celebrate Ada Lovelace day, and the importance of women in technology, I’d like to introduce you to Sue Schofield. Sue is a journalist and author who was writing about hooking computers up to telephone lines when I was still in short trousers. You could, perhaps, call her the mother of the UK Internet (in fact, I just did).

In 1994 she wrote “The UK Internet Book”. And, yes, it was: The UK Internet book. Until then, all our Internet advice had come from Americans who had a rather different Internet infrastructure from the UK (and no need for BT-approved modems). In those days, we had very few ISPs (in fact, there was only one real UK ISP – the fledgeling Demon Internet – although other “online service providers” such as CompuServe offered small windows onto the Internet). Sue’s book was exhaustive, informative (although the section on gopher was wasted on me) and, unlike the books coming out of the USA, it had a wry English sense of humour.

It also came with a voucher offering a month’s free membership of Demon Internet. So I abandoned my CompuServe training wheels and set off into the world of ftp, nntp, smtp, archie and, yes, gopher. Without Sue Schofield, it would have taken me another year or two to get to grips with the Internet. And so she bears some responsibility for the fact that, in 1995, I started working for one of the UK’s fledgeling web agencies, starting a thrilling and eventful career which has led up to my current work on the iPlayer.

By 2002, when I’d all but forgotten the name Sue Schofield, my friend Phil Franks introduced me to “the girl who left those wacky entries on my guestbook about me being Elton John’s dad”. The name on the email headers looked familiar and… it can’t be… it was! I found myself bantering with the very same Sue Schofield who had hooked me up at 14,000 baud all those years earlier. And thus started a three-way email conversation which lasted several years. (In real life and in private emails, Sue’s peculiar brand of gonzo-tech-journalism is even wittier and more beautiful than in print).

So here’s to Sue, tech journalist extraordinaire, 30 years in the industry and still going strong. It’s highly appropriate that she’s writing for The Guardian today, on the subject of women in technology.

While we’re on the subject of women in technology, I’d like to extend the high-fives to two of my colleagues at the BBC who have made, and continue to make, huge contributions to the iPlayer project: Gemma Garmeson and Marina Kalkanis.

]]> http://www.sumption.org/2009/03/24/sue-schofield/feed/ -1 http://www.sumption.org/2009/03/23/hans-aarsman/ http://www.sumption.org/2009/03/23/hans-aarsman/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:13:21 +0000 Dan Sumption http://www.sumption.org/?p=1604 A few weeks ago I went to the Photographers’ Gallery for a lecture by the Dutch photographer Hans Aarsman. I’d never heard of Aarsman before, but the description piqued my interest, particularly the line "if, and how, artistic ambitions, aesthetics and useful photography can coincide". I’m so glad I went! Aarsman described his journey through photography, and I found strong echoes with my own feelings and development as a photographer.

He started by talking about his early influences which, like so many aspiring photographers, came mainly from Magnum images. He showed some of his own photos from this period, I guess around the late 60s. He explained how, like the best Magnum photos and indeed all of photojournalism, they relied on conflict. Even a charming photo of girls and boys was mainly interesting because of the contrast between the girls and the boys.

And so, after a few years, he grew tired of this type of photography. He discovered the work of Garry Winogrand and described it as "an alien’s view of the world". He explored a similar aesthetic, using unexpected angles on otherwise-uninteresting subjects to provoke fresh ways of seeing. But this style was too unfettered for him. He imposed limits on it by buying a large view camera, which needed a tripod and a good deal of preparation. He drove around the Netherlands in a van, photographing chunks of the modern landscape, and finding ways to obscure the dreadful clarity and sharpness produced by a large format camera. But eventually, once again, he tired of this. He started to see echoes of centuries-old landscape painting in some of his compositions, at the same time as "art photography" was elevating faux-painterliness as its highest virtue (something I’ve written about before in relation to Tom Hunter). He realised that there was no way of taking a photo without his many years of visual training imposing themselves on the resultant image.

Disheartened, he gave up photography. For many years he didn’t own a camera.

This changed when he had to move into a smaller apartment, not long after his mother died. He had to get rid of many belongings, including little dolls which his mother had made for him while she was in terminal decline. He couldn’t justify keeping them, but felt that by throwing them away, he would be betraying his mother’s memory. So he bought a small point-and-shoot camera, and photographed every single thing he got rid of.

This led to a realisation: many things are important to us only because of the memories they evoke. And a photograph is a storage space for memories. Suddenly, getting rid of things became easy. He went even further with the declutter, rejoicing in the ease with which he could simplify his possessions. He even used this approach on potential new purchases: photographing things in the shop so he would never have to buy them (he showed us a photograph of a locked-down Powerbook in a shop, then pointed at the laptop which he was using to give the presentation: "I managed to delay buying this computer for 12 months because of this photograph").

Suddenly he became interested in photographs again. But not art photographs: rather, everyday photographs, photographs with a practical use. He would collect pictures of meat from the promotional supermarket leaflets which came through his door. He began to trawl EBay for interesting pictures, eventually settling on photographs of ashtrays (of which, he says, there are 8,000 new ones per week on EBay). He realised that many photographs have a backstory, and for him this is the most interesting aspect. Over three weeks, he realised (by comparing backdrops and wallpaper) that three of his ashtray photos came from the same person; he began to wonder why this person was selling different hotel ashtrays, and why one per week rather than all in one go.

He started a blog, analysing photographs, and through this he was offered a monthly column in a Dutch Newspaper doing the same thing. He ended the talk by giving a detailed analysis of a photograph of Iranian uranium enrichment, which he analysed for the newspaper. The photograph was originally printed alongside an article stating that Iranians were ramping up their nuclear capability, but by careful analysis of this photograph and others from the same source he was able to demonstrate that this was not the real story. What was actually happening was the Iranians were trying to demonstrate to the West that they were ramping up their nuclear capability. Numerous clues pointed to this conclusion, from the huge number of men needed to wheel a one-man trolley, to the dozen-or-so photographers in the background of what seemed ostensibly to be a hastily-snatched photo smuggled secretively out of the country, to the (meticulously researched) conclusion that one of the men in the photograph had dashed out of the toilet in time to be included into the picture.

Aarsman’s final slide was a quote from Garry Winogrand which he said now defines his relationship to photography. However, unlike virtually every other Winogrand quote I’ve ever read, this one didn’t quite ring true for me. Or at least, I think, it was badly worded. The quote, if I remember rightly, was "beauty is a fact explicitly described". But for me (and I think, if he’s honest about it, for Hans Aarsman), it’s not the explicit description which makes a photograph beautiful. It’s the information which leaks between the gaps; the backstory; the space left for the imagination; the painstaking detective work. Those are the things which, for me, bring a photograph to life and make it dance in the mind.

]]> http://www.sumption.org/2009/03/23/hans-aarsman/feed/ -1 http://www.sumption.org/2009/01/22/im-qyper-of-the-week/ http://www.sumption.org/2009/01/22/im-qyper-of-the-week/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:56:52 +0000 Dan Sumption http://www.sumption.org/?p=1602 A while ago, I signed up to review site Qype, but it was only last week that I really started using it. So it was a really nice surprise when today I got their weekly email newsletter (which, I have to admit, I normally kinda ignore) and saw that I’d been made Qyper of the week.

Here’s what they had to say about me:


Northern lad Dansumption likes the finer things in life: good beer, good food and the odd bit of culture.

According to the man himself, Dan has "eaten in most of the restaurants in and around Sheffield city centre", which means he knows where local MP’s choose to "entertain world leaders", where you’ll pay premium prices for a supermarket-bought faux-baguette, and where to head for if you have an absinthe craving.

And if you’re after a bit of steel city art (and you don’t mind maneuvering around some dustbins to get to it) then Dan’ can point you in the right direction.

I’ll be posting more reviews to Qype soon.

]]> http://www.sumption.org/2009/01/22/im-qyper-of-the-week/feed/ 1 http://www.sumption.org/2009/01/21/itv-gave-me-my-bbc-micro/ http://www.sumption.org/2009/01/21/itv-gave-me-my-bbc-micro/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:57:12 +0000 Dan Sumption http://www.sumption.org/?p=1596 Last night, I was reminiscing with a BBC colleague about the UK micro-computer boom of the early 80s, and it struck me: like many programmers of my age, I cut my programming teeth on the BBC Micro (and also the ZX81). But unlike many, I got my BBC from the ITV.


BBC Micro



In about 1982 (and for most of his working life), my Dad worked at Thames TV, and was a member of the computer club there. Dad and his fellow club-members foresaw the increasing importance of computers in the workplace, and petitioned the management to provide subsidised computers for their staff to take home and learn on (I remember being kept regularly updated on the progress of these negotiations, excited at the prospect of swapping my rather worn 16k Sinclair computer for a spiffy new 32k BBC Model B). Eventually the management were persuaded, and Thames staff were offered a free three-year loan of a BBC Micro.

I played games on it, of course, many of them (I still remember the first night after we got it: Pacman was so burnt into my visual cortex that he continued to chase around my brain all night). But I also wrote games: typing in code from magazines and inventing small programs of my own. I even, along with my schoolfriend David Swaddle, set up a software company DSoft (which took its name from our shared initials). That never went very far (although bunking off school to hawk vapourware to all the local computer shops was kind of fun), but it was a start to something.

At around the age of 16, I started to lose interest in computers. There were too many other things in life to grab my attention. But when I came to write my university dissertation five years later, my dad had just got a new PC, so I laid claim to the old BBC (which had been sold on to us by Thames for a nominal amount once the three-year loan was up) and used it for essays and revision notes.

It took a few more years to rediscover programming: in fact, I was working for Olivetti, writing letters to debtors, when one day I looked at the computer I was typing on and thought “hey, I used to program these things when I was a kid. It was a lot more fun than this, and I bet I could get paid more money for doing it”. I went back to college to study C & C++, and never looked back.

So eventually I’ve pitched up working at the BBC, and I guess (like many in BBC “Future Media & Technology”) you could say it was the BBC Micro which got me here. But, unlike many, it was an ITV company which had the foresight to give me that micro, and plant a seed which continues to bear fruit. I can’t imagine many companies being quite so forward-thinking nowadays, especially as in the intervening years all companies, private and public, have been “rationalised” to the extent where such costs are impossible to justify to shareholders/tax-payers. And I think that’s a very sad thing.

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