Just The Job:Beached In Garden:Looking Sheepish In Bristol

At heart Steve was a hippy, dreamer and sensualist . His hippy philosophy  caused him to believe he could make, for everyone a better and more interesting  world. He saw the ability to make and listen to music, to create photographs and film as the birthright of all.
He was immensely  proud, after battles over legal issues, that he was able to bring the recordings of the Beatles to his iTunes roster.

Why? Because he was a fan of the group and thus did not stop until he had them under contract.
As a sensualist he admired form and shape.
 He designed products with curves and an increasing minimal size, both in dimensions and volume.

He reasoned, if it looked good and worked well with an intuitive operating system, people would take the goods in their homes, bringing, of course increasing sales to the company.

Finally as a dreamer,  he called the computer 'the bicycle of the mind' and regularly rode on it into the sunset.

So, as I said, in a recent tweet on his retirement from the company as CEO: For iMac; for iPod, for iPad, for iPhone and for iCloud , iThank you Steve.

Steven Paul Jobs 1955- 2011 RiP.

I wrote this in 2011, shortly after Steve Jobs death at the age of 56.

Recently at our local library, I came across this new  graphical biography of himself. It is written by Jesse Hartland  and published by Virgin Books (2015). It is an immensely entertaining read and obviously full of clever drawings.

Like most graphical books there is a lot to see in the illustrations and rather like the iceberg, this book belies the mass of information that Jessie has had to assimilate, in order to pare down in the creation of this work.

She  expertly deals with this "quirky, tactless, confrontational and insensitive man, " self-driven to discover  or refine new products. His rise,fall and rise again to make Apple Inc the biggest company in the world and whilst so doing never forgot  his mantra ' Simplicity is the ultimate Sophistication' (da Vinci ).

With this constantly in mind he oversaw products which delighted buyers with their intuitive use and high quality build, combined with a design ethic never seen before  in these technology fields.

Amongst other things, in this book you will discover the meaning(s) of i prefixed before all Apple products i.e. iTunes; iPhone; iPod etc.: his last words and the danger of Job's ' reality distortion field.'

I'll end this review showing  a page from Jessie's book, which rather touched me with the knowledge that each day a single red rose appeared on his desk.


Jessie Hartland

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Now here's the thing.---- I was sitting in my garden last week, in the early evening enjoying the peace and quiet when there was an aerial ballet by five or six seagulls. They zoomed across the sky and arced over the trees and the nearby roofs. This display lasted about ten minutes and then they were gone.

Seagulls were only seen rarely away from the coasts but now,  like the foxes seem to be widening their territory.
It made me think about the avian changes in my garden. Starlings, who  used to screech and attack my neighbour's venerable apple tree are now never seen and Sparrows, again in past years regular visitors are only now re-appearing in diminished numbers.

When you add these changes to the  seldom seen wasps, who normally at this time  would be eating the dropped plums from  our tree and would  swarm around if you were eating outside.
They to have mysteriously moved on.

"Tain't natural I reckon, what say you? "

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Justice Lamb and Mr Brunel

In the summer of 2013 in the city of Bristol, there were sculptures of Gromit dogs. They were dotted about the city and a trail map showed the locations. At the end of the event the sculptures were auctioned off in aid of charities for  Children in Hospital, both in Bristol and London.

This year it was the turn of Shaun the Sheep. The  seventy sheep were shown first in London ( 28/ 3 - 31/ 5 ) and later in Bristol (6 / 7 - 31/ 8 )

Last Monday  ( 17/8 ) D. and I and little d went to Bristol Harbourside. They went shopping and I went a-shauning .

Here are some of my 'finds ':

Air Fleece

Life Aquatic

Green Forms For a Blue Planet.

Shaun Bean

Beach Boy

Alright Me Babber

As you can see they are charming and their titles are pun-derous : here are some more  examples.

To Sheep Perchance To Dream: Yeoman  of the Baaard;  Championsheep; Baa-LLoon and From Dusk 'Til Shaun.( Great Stuff.)

Oh,  and in 2015 Shaun came with an App,

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And that, as the string said to the parcel 'wraps it up for this week.'

Enjoy the end of August and relax if you can.

Cheerio for now,

Ck.