AUTHOR: Paul Miller TITLE: About Time STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: Books CATEGORY: Books DATE: 10/26/2005 12:32:41 PM ----- BODY: I spent a wonderful evening yesterday chatting about a new book that my former colleagues at Forum for the Future have put together called About Time. Loads of interesting links to the project I'm working on next year in London in partnership with the Long Now Foundation (who, incidentally, have just unveiled the next version of the 10,000 year clock). As we were talking about the effect of speed on our lives, I couldn't help thinking about a bit of Mostly Harmless where Arthur Dent ends up on a planet called Lamuella: "The days were just a little over twenty-five hours long, which basically meant an extra hour in bed every single day and, of course, having regularly to reset his watch, which Arthur rather enjoyed doing. He also felt at home with the number of suns and moons which Lamuella had - one of each - as opposed to some of the planets he'd fetched up on from time to time which had had ridiculous numbers of them. The planet orbited its single sun every three hundred days, which was a good number because it meant the year didn't drag by. The moon orbited Lamuella just over nine times a year, which meant that a month was a little over thirty days, which was absolutely perfect because it gave you a little more time to get things done in. It was not merely reassuringly like Earth, it was actually rather an improvement." ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: Paul Miller TITLE: A Sunday in Harrow STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 DATE: 10/24/2005 09:16:29 PM ----- BODY: I spent my Sunday at the UK's fist Open Budget in Harrow in north west London seeing how things worked. Polly Billington of the BBC's Today programme was there too and put together this really nice package about what happened. I wish Matthew Parris (who speaks in the discussion after the package) had come along. His muddled garble of rentaquotes showed no understanding of what actually took place. I'll post more thoughts soon. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: Paul Miller TITLE: BedZED Blog - October 2005 STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: BedZed CATEGORY: BedZed DATE: 10/17/2005 04:41:34 PM ----- BODY: BedZED is just over three years old now. Clematis, rose and golden hop plants are beginning to hide some of the metal and brick and making the place look a bit more lived in. It's aging well I think and I still get a kick out of the architecture - especially on perfect blue-skied days like today. The low sun gives the whole place a warm orange glow as it reflects off the brickwork. A Japanese delegation is having a look around. I was just hanging out my washing when I noticed I was being filmed. I just hope it wasn't for primetime. So I suppose the good news about BedZED is that there's no real news. It hasn't turned into a disaster. It isn't a white elephant that nobody wants to live in - quite the opposite, properties seem to shift fairly quickly when they do come onto the market. It seems to tootle along quite happily with little innovations gradually adding to the sense of community. For example we now have an email group as well as a BedZED newsletter. There are regular yoga classes starting up and on a more impressive level Bill Dunster is planning on opening up a renewables shop on site where you can turn up and buy solar panels or mini wind turbines off the shelf. My only complaint would be that the Friday evening bring-your-own bar has become a bit less frequent but I think I might try and get that up and running again as I'm hopefully going to work from home a bit more in the future. It was interesting watching the Stirling Prize on telly last weekend to see how mainstream sustainability now is in the architecture world. The FT also ran a supplement at the weekend about sustainable housing… although theirs was at the (how can I put it?) upper end of the housing market. I think BedZED has definitely been part of the shift towards acceptability of sustainability (it was nominated for the Stirling in 2003). The problem, of course, is the 'volume' house builders who seem to be doing everything possible to avoid putting sustainability into practice. And at a time when the Government is pushing for hundreds of thousands of new homes in the south east, that's very worrying. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Tess EMAIL: 00a71b37bffde95cd01cae2f7ad0f9d7dca2d8ea IP: 82.44.18.177 URL: DATE: 11/26/2005 11:19:52 PM Hi Paul, My name is Tess; I just stumbled across your blog while seaching for something bedzed-related. I am a resident too, since Jan 2004. I don't *think* we've met, but one can never be sure. I always intended to make it to one of the Friday night bars but somehow collapsing in front of the telly with a hot cuppa always got me instead, and then of course the bar seemed to fade away. And now I hear we might lose access to the pavilion altogether, along with the failure of the water treatment, CHP, etc etc. One begins to wonder what's left that makes this place not just another peabody estate. Well, the number of web hits for one... Anyway, I've added your blog to my news aggregator ... (mostly because you're a neighbour I admit, but you do seem to be into some very interesting areas of research). I shall peruse your links further. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Bill EMAIL: b26ad6e73f1a98c9aab66e58cba4a54b99519031 IP: 82.111.133.34 URL: DATE: 01/04/2007 12:57:30 PM Hello Tess My name is Bill Rashleigh and I'm the editor of ROOF - a campaigning magazine about homelessness published by the charity Shelter. We're doing a special issue about housing and the environment and I'll be nipping up to Bedzed to chat to Paul soemtime next week. I was wondering if I might bne able to have a quick word with you too if you have a few spare minutes. My number is 0207 505 2032. I'd really appreciate it if you could give me a call. Look forward to speaking to you and all the best. Bill ----- -------- AUTHOR: Paul Miller TITLE: Them, us and Segways STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 DATE: 10/05/2005 08:42:33 PM ----- BODY: One of the more surreal moments of Labour Party conference last week was emerging from security into the area in front of the Brighton Centre to see three people going round in circles on Segways. For those of you not familiar with 'ginger', it's a two wheel gyroscope enabled human transporter. I once had a go on one at Stanford University and didn't fall off (unlike one person). For some reason they always make me giggle. I mean, what's the point? If I was being cruel I could ask the same about Labour Party conference as a whole. I realised this year more than last that it's a place of strict divides and categories. What type of pass you have; who's up, who's down; whether you're on the list or not. Everything is carefully managed to make sure there's an 'us' and 'them'. I'm usually on the outside and I'm certainly not important enough to get invited to the good parties. This year the only one I got into was hosted by The Telegraph which was full of men with unfortunate haircuts and pinstripe suits. The wine was awful and I left after about five minutes. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- --------