June 2005 Archives

LEDs replacing cigarette lighters? That’s what wound up spinning through my brain as I watched the Kaiser Chiefs play at the Queens’ College May Ball.

Not as firestarters, mind. I’m talkin’ cigarette lighters as rock-ballad accoutrements, i.e. glowing objects to be held aloft whenever the band plays a song you like. Because that’s what happened last night, thanks to the whole cameraphone / digital camera scene. Stuck towards the back, I could spot each and every viewfinder that popped up above the crowd — they looked like little glowing blue things, jumping and hopping to the music — until, poof, they’d go down for a few minutes and other consumer electronics would take their place.

You gotta wonder what that looks like from the rockstar’s perspective. They don’t see the screens. Instead, it’s half the crowd stomping and going wild, the other half apparently content to stand still and show you their phones….

Anyhow. Haven’t had time to read that book about the Wisdom of Crowds, but I’ve heard the gist of it, and so last night I made sure to hoist my own Sony K750i in the air, and waved it like I just didn’t care. Coincidentally, I bought the thing only yesterday, primarily because it’s the first 2-megapixel camera phone on the market. The pictures it takes of a Cambridge May Ball look something like this:

No, not great, but then, lighting was low and there wasn’t time to RTFM. But there’s something I love about the constraints, here. I know that visually, it’s like you’re shooting with Kodak Disc film and a pinhole camera. Yet both the form factor and media format are so impulse-friendly that without a cameraphone I doubt these pictures would have been taken. And they capture plenty of the moment, at least for me.

Speaking of which: May Balls, wow. That’s quite a bit of extravagance for a collegiate get-together; it was like an All-American high-school prom mated with the Opening Ceremonies at the Olympics. Yes, the Kaiser Chiefs were the big act, but like a circus, there were other acts in other tents, which ranged from jazz to classical to hip-hop and hippie. Throw in a shiatsu room, a Moon Bounce, a velcro wall, tea tasting, hookahs, Bellinis, burritos, swing boats, fireworks, and a free-alcohol-free-food-free-everything policy that would make even a Las Vegas casino nervous, and you start to get the picture. Definitely the wildest black-tie event I’ve ever been to.

(The Magdalene May Ball is white-tie. I won’t even guess at what goes on, there.)

I wandered home at dawn, which isn’t as late/early as it sounds. The sun goes down at 10:30, now, and is up again within six hours. That, I just love.

Update: Since a fair number of people arrive here looking for more info on the Sony K750i, I’ve added some higher-resolution snaps taken under bright light, which is where the built-in camera really shines.

I’ve knocked the sizes from the native 1600x1200 to 800x600 in Photoshop in most samples, as I think that’s a more realistic example of what you’d mail to friends or post on the web. I’ve noticed that the pictures also tend to look much better that way — there’s a type of pixel noise in the full-size pictures that becomes a lot less noticeable at email-friendly sizes. I also include a ‘tweaked’ version of the picture that’s received minor Photoshop manipulation (i.e., Unsharp Mask, Levels, etc.) to punch things up a bit.

Cath Kidson Bags example: Full Size, 800x600 (natural), 800x600 (enhanced)

Antique Iron: Full Size, 800x600 (natural), 800x600 (enhanced)

I tend to update this page on Saturday mornings. Maybe that’s because it’s the one day I stay seated through my morning cup of coffee, tethered by the teensy hangover which will come knocking anytime I hold up my wine glass for even a single refill.

So be it. Friday nights are good, here.

Last night I was happily back at Magdalene, even though the season of Formal Halls is over. This was a pizza-and-chips affair, instead, with the other Magdalenes who are in the Judge. It’s a small group — there’s four of us MBAs in college this year, a couple of MPhils, and our strategy prof, herself a Fellow at Magdalene.

Nice thing was, the college Master showed up, too. As you might expect from somebody who’s also the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, he’s a very cultured gentleman. (Such that, if genteel cocktail-party talk were an Olympic event, he’d probably lead the field for Britain.) He’s also enormously good-natured, and a super-approachable guy; that’s something I learned after he took a dozen of us MBAs into the Fitz, and gave us a quick lecture on how finance, marketing, and management issues affect the Arts today.

Anyhow. Cambridge is suddenly bursting with festivities, and it’s belatedly sinking in that The End, as I’ve always been warned, is nigh. I feel like I’ve been running this whole academic year, praying I can make it into the home stretch, and just now realized that it’s all already behind me.

It’s fitting, then, that our night sky has been rocked by professional fireworks days in a row — the May Balls are happening (in June, as always) and will be for the whole of next week. (I’m at Queen’s from Monday night to Tuesday morning, meself.) Simultaneously, there’s the May Bumps, a week-long rowing competition which is arguably the heart of Cambridge sport. That’ll be a blog entry unto itself; suffice to say that some students are walking around wreathed with willow branches, most the rest have Pimm’s in hand.

Oh, and the sun is out, gloriously. 84 degrees, no joke.

There’s a correlation between sunny weather and Pimm’s consumption, in these parts. Correlation, yes, and causality, too.

Of course, I’d never heard of Pimm’s before landing in Cambridge. I’d likewise presumed that the locals hadn’t experienced sunny weather — I mean, how else does one explain the Brit tendency to don T-shirts and miniskirts when it’s still freezing out?

Turns out the sun does sometimes shine in the British Isles (every second Saturday in June, 11am to 3pm, weather permitting) and last weekend, Azure, Alanna, and I found ourselves reaching for some sunscreen. And then reaching for the Pimm’s.

Pimm’s, you see, is a gin-based liquer, mixed with lemonade and mint and cucumber and fruit slices. It’s a quintessentially English cocktail, supposedly the standard method of hydration at cricket matches and polo fields, and I shall readily admit:  it’s terribly good stuff.

More elegant than a mint julep, and less labor-intensive than a proper Mojito, Pimm’s No. 1 immediately ranks as one of the best summertime refreshments I’ve had the pleasure to drink. (Especially when the only alternative is warm beer.)

Seriously, though, I believe the weather has turned (mostly), and it’s been a blast. We’ve been cycling/punting/strolling to the outskirts of town, almost daily, then coming home in the evenings to watch the frogs in our neighbor’s garden, or spy on the hedgehog in our own.

Plus, there’s been a swirl of events — this week, the Queen visited the Fitzwilliam Museum, across the street from the Judge, which interrupted a class or two. The same night, Azure and I attended formal hall at Pembroke with two other MBAs; it was in the middle of exams, so it turned out that we four were the only diners, apart from High Table.

That particular dinner will stand as one of the most memorable events from my time at Cambridge: the three long tables of Pembroke’s hall all barren, except for one, with a single candlestick and four plates at the end. All the routine, of course, stayed unbroken; there was still a ringing gong and grace in Latin, the standing, and bowing… whether for four or four hundred, certain things never change, here.

Oh, and yeah, it was ‘Mexican Theme Night’, so then they served us fajitas. Hah!

And school? (School?) Ah, school is still in session, but barely — my classroom time is all but finished, concluding with a case study on Ben & Jerrys’ strategic alliances in Japan. My attention has already turned to the individual project over summer; more on that, later. (There are projects, and then there are, well, other big things…)

We had a slew of great speakers in the last few weeks — Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters, got my vote for being the best of ‘em. He managed to mention RSS, the ‘blogosphere’, and Gawker in a single sentence, which scored big points in my book. Honorable mention goes to Lois Jacobs, president of Jack Morton, which has got to be the highest-profile company whose name I’d never heard — they quietly produce ‘experiental marketing events’. Sounds cute and fuzzy until you find out they’re the crew which produced the opening ceremony at Athens 2004, the Hong Kong handover in ‘97, and a buncha other ceremonial stuff you’d never think was ‘outsourced’. Suffice to say, Ms. Jacobs’ Powerpoint presentation was slick; by the end, I was bracing myself for a pyrotechnically-enhanced finale.

Or maybe that’s a feature in the next version of MS Office…