Noise

Music ought to be but not always is the epitome of wanted sound. In contrast, according to Wikipedia, noise is any unwanted sound. But that cannot always be true.

In most cases noise is not only unwanted but it is also impossible to eradicate. In electronics, noise it is that "hiss" you hear from the speaker even when no music is playing. It is most likely thermal noise and is caused by the random fluctuations of electrons. Every resistor (and an electronics circuit has many) must exhibit thermal noise. The analog in hearing is the hiss that young ears can just about hear due to Brownian motion of air molecules hitting the ear-drum. The only way to eradicate either example of noise is to reduce the temperature to absolute zero but for most of us this is impractical. Much effort is devoted in electronics to minimizing noise or to extracting the wanted "signal" from the inevitable noise "floor". Because it is unwanted, "noise" by definition carries no information. Whereas "signal" by definition most decidedly does carry information. As an electronics engineer I suppose that a good part of my life is spent fighting noise in order to extract signal.

Because we are not used it, total silence can be unnerving. Personally I like it to be quiet. That is one reason why I like living in the country and to do stuff like climbing mountains. Although I dislike man-made noise I love to hear the wind, rain or sea. Some people like to imitate such sounds to help them sleep.

My son and his family have recently moved from the USA to live in Ireland. His girls apparently are so used to noise that they cannot sleep without a noise machine and so they brought one with them. Having suffered the inevitable from plugging it into 230V mains I had opportunity to open it up and discovered with surprise that it consisted simply of an electric fan (so I replaced the motor).  Surprise, because the same thing could have been achieved with some simple electronics and I reckon the manufacturing cost might be and certainly the running cost would be less. To think that they are paying good money for electricity to generate noise which the majority of us are trying to eradicate!

Television Centre

Back in the days of analogue TV the video electrical signal was distributed via coaxial cable. Simplistically, the blood, sweat and tears of a TV production was sent to the transmitter and thence to its millions of viewers via such a cable. In a tea-time discussion when I was working for the BBC the philosophical question was raised - what if the transmitter were replaced by a 75-ohm resistor? Television Centre with its coaxial cable output would be none the wiser. In this way the highly ordered signal that conveyed and thus was the essence of this production would be all "used up" or dissipated in that resistor. Which is kind of the inverse of a resistor generating thermal noise.

Coconut oil and bare-foot care

I am learning - so anything I have said in previous posts, and anything I now say on the subject of foot care, must be taken with a pinch of salt. Whilst I remain a firm advocate of running barefoot, one downside is that I suffer from cracks. I know this is endemic but the least I can do for the barefoot running community is to share what I have learnt so far. If you are not part of this community you have probably stopped reading already...

I used to recommend Silcocks Base. But then I read the ingredients and found it contains sodium laurel sulphate which as you probably know is the "soapy" detergent ingredient in just about every liquid soap, shampoo, body wash product. Whilst on this subject a work colleague of many years back maintained that all these products, and washing-up liquid included, were are variations on a theme. He therefore used washing-up liquid as shampoo as it is cheaper. I have done the same with no apparent ill-effect. But generally I prefer to use soap. It is cheaper, more efficient and I think may be better for you. As with "running shoes" there is a whole load of advertising hype that convinces most of us that we need separate shampoo, body wash, hand-wash and washing-up liquid. It is therefore likely that most of what we are told is untrue.

Since it seemed to me that detergent was the very opposite of what my feet wanted, I turned to my wife's latest-craze good-for-every-ailment coconut oil. I cannot be certain my change to coconut oil is responsible for a marked improvement in the condition of my feet but it seemed likely. It is at least a natural product which bodes well.  If I remember I apply it every night. It is also good for the cracks I get on my hands.

What one is trying to achieve is to keep the skin moist and supple. Running in wet conditions does the same - also a nice long hot bath although in both cases the effect is only temporary.  Running on clay or dusty surfaces has the opposite effect and tends to dry out the skin. Dare I say, wearing shoes also keeps the feet moist (sweaty) which is why, I suppose, shoe wearers do not suffer so much from cracks. They suffer from hot and smelly feet instead.

Cracks are caused when thick, hard and brittle skin is forced to bend. Therefore a second line of defence to to keep those areas exfoliated where skin gets unnecessarily thick or has to crease or bend. The best tool that I have found for this is a small rotary sanding band in an electric drill (e.g. Dremel).  The one I use is about 15mm diameter and probably has grit P80 abrasive.  Apply gently to avoid burning - your nerves will tell you when to stop. Particular areas are the sides of my big toes and the crease under the toes. In neither of these places is thick skin required as they are not "load bearing" whilst running.

Generally cracks do not appear on the "load bearing" surfaces namely the ball of the foot and the heel. If they did it might be a show stopper. The fact that they don't must be a clue to their cause. I suppose that the abrasion caused between the surface of the ground and those areas must exfoliate them and encourage natural regeneration so that the skin is relatively new and thus more supple.

I have a choice of two treatments when cracks appear despite the above precautions (and they still do). In places where the skin is not having to bend (for example the sides of the big toes, or the back of the heels) I apply super-glue. Super-glue has been used by the medical profession so must be relatively safe although some sites say it is toxic. I therefore cannot recommend it even though I use it myself.

In areas subject to stress and bending such as the crease under the toes super-glue makes things worse because it is brittle when dry. The best thing is pink Germolene - the pink version may now be difficult to find. I apply it to the crack then apply fabric Elastoplast which I secure at the edges with superglue as otherwise it will come off too easily. Such a dressing will survive a 5 mile run on roads, although may not survive a cross country run.

Wasted and England

I have just finished and enjoyed reading Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells. It is considered to be his "semi-autobiography" novel and is very different from his relatively sterile and mechanic science fiction novels such as War of the Worlds. It is a sad but very real and personal account which concludes that the lives of the narrator/author and those he dealt with were "wasted" in a search for truth.

"Wasted" is a sad epitaph and I would like better for myself and those I love. At least Wells was honest enough so as to give his readers a chance to rethink their lives. People are remembered for all manner of achievements -  Isambard Kingdom Brunel comes to mind for his splendid name and his bridge over the river Tamar which I loved from first sight as a child - such accomplishments are far beyond any of mine. Perhaps I should simply be content with godliness which, the good book says, is great gain, but how to do that?

Towards the end of his book Wells writes "This is England. That is what I wanted to give in my book. This!". This quality, this entity which is England, is something I would like to write more about. It is what makes me want to write "English" rather than "British" on official documents such as a passport application. Having heard the Irish perspective I am now no longer so proud to be British but I cannot help still being English and I sometimes hanker for England's rolling hills, picturesque villages and profusion of footpaths. Possibly the distinction between British and English is not clear to those who belong to other nationalities.

My wife likes the English traffic lights, road signs and hedgerows which, she says, are more robust and less untidy than here in Ireland. I am not altogether sure that this is a fair judgement. Ireland is, after all, a different country so one should expect some differences.

My parents had a thin blue paper-back book of poems - possibly This is my England and other poems - anyway it tickled my fancy at the time because it seemed to evoke "England", and I would like to read it again. The nearest I could find on the internet was Duality, an anthology by the same author, and I recognise the style. If anyone wants to do me a good turn they could lend or buy me a copy of This is my England and other peoms... But probably I would find it no longer had the same appeal.

I don't like your music

It is not that music by Bruckner is the only music I like, nor that I like all music by Bruckner. But it is true that I have rather definite musical preferences and that they seem to be very different from those of anyone else I know. To a degree I have chosen to make Bruckner my "favourite composer" rather as yellow is my "favourite colour" but it goes a lot deeper than that. Generally I am not offended by the music other people like but recently I chose to don ear-defenders because what a colleague was playing was driving me up the wall. I can only suppose that this person liked his music, just as some like sushi, but how is it that music attracts such vehement emotions as hate or love?

Although my parents disapproved of "pop" music, which has left me feel guilty about listening to some pop music I happen to like, I do not think they were responsible for my musical tastes.  I didn't find Bruckner - he found me. As I may have said elsewhere, when I bought my reel-to-reel tape recorder (a purchase akin to buying an iPod now) I searched the radio-waves for music and recorded anything I liked. In this way I happened to record Bruckner's seventh and only much later found out what it was and that there was more and better.

Professor North reckons that musical taste is connected to personality. He does not resolve down as far as Bruckner but he does at least claim that Classical fans "have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease" which I reckon fits me reasonably well (though I say it myself). If he is right then it has little or nothing to do with one's parents or upbringing except so far as our personality is so formed.

But the category "classical" is far to wide to describe my likes - there is plenty of music that would be regarded as "classical" that I dislike.

It has been said that you either love or hate Bruckner (meaning his music) - rather as Orson Scott Card suggested that you will either love or hate his Ender's Game. In each case I think those hate do so because they fail to identify. Card says:

"I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself."

That resonates with me - for me a "good book" or film is one that I can in some way identify with - usually but not necessarily with one of the characters in the book. When I listen to (some) of Bruckner's music I identify or, if you like, I feel "at home".