Christmas, Again

Christmas Day, the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton. Today should, before the Julian calendar drifted, fall on the winter solstice, 22nd December. Pope Gregory XIII, demonstrating that pontiffs aren’t all infallible, made a mistake when correcting the drift in 1582 so we are actually three days late. Not a problem unless you’re a calendar-nerd.

Midwinter should be a fun, light-filled festival to celebrate the passing of the longest night and the eventual return of spring. It's archaic, sure, but it's one  of the traditions that binds us as a nation (or culture, depending on how you define these things) and it's a good excuse to indulge in things we enjoy; visiting friends and family, exchanging gifts, recovering from a long year's work and generally relaxing.

Everything would be great if Christmas wasn't attended by a host of unpleasant religious and cultural traditions and anxieties that conspire to take much or all of the fun from the holiday. From the weird Christian traditionalists claiming Christmas is about them and the sone of their psychopathic bronze-age god of war (ok, so the name "Christmas" superficially supports their case but really they've just hijacked the winter solstice of earlier traditions) to the insane commercial imperative to spend like there's no tomorrow, Christmas can be a stressful and difficult period.

Here are the traditions I wouldn't miss:

• Decorated trees - call me Mr Picky but I like to see trees in the wild, not chopped down in their prime for a fortnight's reverence in the corner of the living room. 
• Present buying - giving a carefully-chosen gift and seeing the delight of the receiver is one of life's great joys but doing this year after year is tricky and stress accumulates quickly in the run-up to Christmas. Amazon's wish list feature helps you to avoid unwanted gifts but removes the personal touch and rather defeats the object of the exercise.
• Logistical nightmares - spending time with family is great but sometimes the setup (which parents-in-law do you visit this year, which grandparents, will your visit coincide with a loved/detested cousin's etc.) is horribly complicated. Fitting visits around ritual meals, especially as family traditions vary hugely, adds further complexity.
• Ritual and tradition - I know Christmas is one long sequence of little rituals and traditional activities but many of them are fantastically annoying. Let’s dump the bad, mix up the good and go with the flow.

Any situation where ritual restricts freedom of action is bound to strain relationships and generate stress, especially when mixed with alcohol, over-eating, screaming children and enforced jollity. My “solution” is to disengage as far as possible, which is generally interpreted as “grumpiness” or “awkwardness” even though it’s actually just an attempt to retrieve a little control over my life. I’ll join in with the bits of Christmas I enjoy and skip the rest, preferably behind a good book; if you do the same then we’ll all be happy and we’ll have a great holiday.

iBooks and Digital Media

Last week’s post was originally to be titled “iBooks and Amazon Prime” and I was going to explain what it was that made me cancel my Amazon Prime subscription. I sort of did that but without really covering any of the details. In this post I want to outline my new media acquisition strategy (which is a pretentious way of saying “here’s how I buy books”).

For years I, like everyone else, bought paperbacks and hardbacks as they were published and whenever they looked like good value for money. It was only after the collapse of the Net Book Agreement in the mid-90s, which until then prevented supermarkets and other parties (Amazon, for example) from selling discounted books, that I could afford to buy a decent number of books. With hindsight it seems strange that competition in the book market could ever have been prohibited and that this might have been believed to be advantageous to consumers.

In these enlightened times, however, you can buy books pretty much anywhere and for far less than the normal cover price. For example, Steve Job’s biography has a cover price, in hardback, of £25 but Amazon are selling it for £11.97 and a Kindle (or iBooks) version costs £12.99 (you might expect e-books to be cheaper than their physical counterparts but, unlike “real” books, they aren’t exempt from VAT).

The major problem with traditional books is that they’re physically large; taking hardbacks on holiday, or reading a paperback on the train requires planning and effort (and frankly I’m too lazy). The size of books restricts the number you can carry and actively prevents spontaneous reading, for example when the wife is looking a clothes and you’re bored in the shopping centre. The solution to this is to stop buying physical books and instead to buy everything through either iBooks or Kindle (I prefer iBooks but Kindle isn’t significantly less convenient).

This has three major advantages:

1. Delivery is free and almost instantaneous - no waiting for the post or delivery van, 
2. Many books can be carried on a single device so your entire library is available, wherever you are, 
3. You are suddenly freed of the need to store and transport a load of bleached dead tree flesh which, except in a few cases, adds little to the reading experience. 

These are, to me, pretty strong arguments. Many people like to have physical media but I honestly can’t see the appeal; books and bookshelves take up lots of space, can’t be easily searched and resist being backed-up. Every time you move house you have to pack everything up in boxes and carry them to and fro. Post-physical is definitely better.

So that’s it - I buy all my media in digital form, books from iBooks, music and film from iTunes. I now read more (on the bus, on the train, on holiday, at home) and I also listen to a wider range of music. And the house is less cluttered.

Amazon Prime; No Longer Required

I was an Amazon Prime customer for three years, from July 2008 to July 2011. If you buy books, CDs or DVDs more than about once a month it’s enormously convenient and a great way to cut costs and I strongly recommend it. Why then, you might ask, did I cancel after three years of happy use? What went wrong? In a word, Apple; let me explain.

We have a stack of Apple products (iPhone, iPods, a couple of iPads and an Apple TV) designed to make discovery, acquisition and consumption of media (music, text, video) as quick and as easy as possible. The key word in the last sentence is “acquisition” because it is in the acquisition of new media that Apple have really changed the nature of the game. By delivering media products as a digital download Apple have cut a key strut from Amazon’s business model.

Amazon’s business is based on offering a large catalogue of physical objects that can be moved quickly from their warehouse to your living room. They have taken the very best 21st century logistics technology and honed the experience of finding and buying 20th century products to become, for many people, the default choice of vendor. Amazon Prime removes one more barrier (delivery charges), easing the decision to buy and locking out competitors.

My justification for subscribing to Amazon Prime was that I would save money on the regular orders I placed for books, CDs and DVDs and this was indeed my experience. I also found myself less resistant to impulse or low value purchases because delivery charges were no longer a factor. Apple’s role in changing this was to deliver a family of products (primarily the iPad) that offered both media shopping (through iTunes and iBooks) and immediate delivery of the desired items. Amazon’s “overnight and free” delivery was trumped by Apple’s “now and free” downloads.

Amazon must be aware of this problem. The development of the Kindle Fire wasn’t sparked by a burning desire at Amazon to provide the world with an alternative to the iPad; it happened, I believe, because Amazon could see their core market disappearing as people chose to download digital media rather than buy physical equivalents. Amazon are still able to sell jeans and shoes and blenders and TV sets and iPads but the high volume items that keep people returning to the site are migrating to digital downloads.

So is an Amazon Prime subscription worth the money? If you regularly buy physical media the answer is likely to be “yes”. If you don’t, you might find that you can live without it but it obviously depends what else you buy from Amazon, and how often.

Moving to an all-digital media purchase strategy has saved me time, effort and money. I no longer have to store or transport physical media and I can carry loads of books, music and video on my iDevices to enjoy at my convenience. I also no longer need Amazon Prime.

Alresford, Parking and Pedestrians

 Alresford is a nice town. The cafes are fun, the little shops are diverting and the restaurants and pubs are generally pretty good. Overall, I like it, but it’s slightly spoiled by the large numbers of cars that park along the edge of the main public areas. 

Sitting about ten miles east of Winchester, it has a bypass (the A31) that carries most of the through traffic away from the town centre and a small station served only by the Watercress line (a steam train runs only to Alton - pleasant for tourists but of little practical use). As a small market town with nice pubs, cafes and shops it should be a pleasant place for pedestrians to wander. And it is, mostly, but the cars parked along Broad Street, the tree-lined avenue where the social scene is centred, make life just a little bit more difficult than it needs to be.

The really annoying thing is that there’s absolutely no need for it. A few modest changes to the top of Broad Street, as shown in the diagram below, would make all the difference. Sacrificing a few parking spaces and a little of the service road (shown in red) outside Tesco, the Chinese takeaway and the pub more room would be made for pedestrians.

How might this space be used? My suggestion would be to plant a few more trees, allow the cafes and pubs to site tables outside their premises on the newly widened pavements and generally encourage more pedestrian visitors to the town. Losing parking spaces is never popular with retailers but in this case it might actually bring more people to the town for longer visits.

It would also be nice it if were easier to cross the road; some sort of pedestrian crossing would be useful. And by “pedestrian crossing”, let’s be clear that I mean a crossing at which pedestrians have priority. A light-controlled crossing would be better than no crossing at all but if we’re trying to help pedestrians move easily around the town then a crossing that prevents them crossing the road most of the time isn’t really the answer.

How about somewhere to park bicycles? Alresford attracts large numbers of cyclists during the summer weekends and a vibrant street cafe culture would encourage more of them to stop rather than pass on through. They’d also stay longer if it were easier to secure a bike in the town. At the moment there are very few places to chain your bike and the addition of a few bike rails would make all the difference.

Finally, what about the poor old motorist, who’s lost parking and driving space just to make everyone else’s lives a bit more pleasant? Some of them will probably leave their cars at home, others will stay away. The remainder will find that there are still plenty of parking spaces and that their visit is now just a bit more pleasant. It’s a plan with no obvious flaws.