The Invisible Bicycle Helmet

Not being a cyclist I've never quite understood why some people make such a fuss about wearing a helmet to protect their head in case of an accident.  Supposedly cycling has taken a downturn since helmets came in, which personally I find hard to believe.  Whatever the case, there are still people hassling about wearing these protective devices, so two women have invented the 'invisible cycle helmet.'

This short video doesn't show you the helmet until the very end: it's a neat surprise, and a leap of the imagination.

You'll have to go to Vimeo to see it (I haven't figured out how to get their videos to show up on my blog as yet).   But there's also more information about the helmet on the inventors' site.   You can also read what the Guardian wrote about it in May.

Both the women in these photos are wearing invisible helmets. 

Riding boots and Haiku

I used to use Google Desktop on my computer at work, where it was great for finding the countless files that my boss and his offsider produced.  There were often several copies all exactly the same filed in different folders.  When I got this Dell computer, however, it didn't seem to like Google Desktop, and my geek son told me that there was an in-built search engine anyway, kindly provided by Microsoft.

Well, there was.

Microsoft promises much - 
Much disappointment
for the person word-searching.

I've just been reading a few of the haiku in the sample version on Amazon Kindle of Bicycle Haiku - hence the sudden bursting into miniature poetry (haiku are a bit like miniature horses, aren't they?)  This book is a series of sketches and haiku done while the author was riding from San Francisco to New York in 1979.  The author, Kevin Kelly, self-deprecatingly writes in the blurb: This book will not be a best-seller. It's a book of poetry, and you know what that means. It might appeal to anyone intrigued by pedaling across a continent, or loners fascinated by blue highways and other little-travelled roads, or sensitive souls really into haiku, or sketches. I can imagine a few odd ducks who collect self-published books that will be thrilled by this book. Personal friends of mine may be interested in this vanity publishing. For the rest -- that is for most normal people -- there is nothing of fashionable interest here.

However, Microsoft's in-built searcher now searches only when it feels like it, which, increasingly of late, has become less and less of the time.  Microsoft Word promises to identify all my spelling mistakes, too, but this resource has also become very spasmodic: on some Word files it works, on others it refuses to do so.

Microsoft promises much. 
But unconfident 
spellers daily left at sea.

And the only reason I was trying to use my in-built search engine was to see if I had anything on riding - I'd already found the Bicycle Haiku reference on Evernote, but it didn't seem to go with English riding boots which is what I was more particular about finding.   The riding boots in the picture, which are an example of the English variety, seem a little lost in the midst of their field.  One is looking off to its right, trying to find its owner; the other is snuggled close to its twin, just in case it gets left behind.  At least that's how it seems to me.

One boot surveys the landscape; 
searching.  The other
leans, hides inside itself.

2020: It's a while since I wrote this post, and my experience of Word's on computer search system is that it's much improved.

The Lady in Question

Somehow managed to catch an old movie from 1940 on tv this afternoon. It was a very classy print, and fitted the wide screen format without anybody looking twice their size, so obviously some work had been done on it to make it viewable.
Seemingly this particular movie was notable for being the first in which Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth appeared as a romantic couple. It took me a while to recognise Ford because he looked so young. By the time he came back from the war, a few years later, he’d aged considerably, and was much more the way I remember him. Hayworth plays a very subdued role; she’s a character who’s under suspicion and always on the back foot. None of the temptress here, even though Ford falls for her at first glance.
The film was The Lady in Question adapted from an earlier French movie called Gribouille. It concerns a bicycle shop owner played by Brian Aherne who’s called into jury duty, and, by speaking out at the right moment, manages to get Hayworth (the accused) acquitted. He’s a bluff, good-humoured character - a bit too off-hand about the other relationships around him, and not always wise. However, he offers to give Hayworth a job after the trial, and she comes and lives with the family. Of course one of the other jurors believes she was guilty and keeps popping up every so often; and of course both Ford and his sister’s boyfriend know who Hayworth really is. It’s surprising half the town doesn’t, but that’s neither here nor there.
The acting is all a bit over-the-top - these are Americans being French people, remember, (even though they call their wives ‘Mrs’ rather than ‘Madame’ and speak with good, solid American accents), and anyway the French are more ebullient than the Americans - aren’t they? The script isn’t well written, never being sure whether it’s a drama or a comedy, and several scenes are played for their comedy effect, which undercuts the dramatic ones. Nevertheless it’s an interesting example of a typical studio production, with the small parts being played by actors who bring an eccentric quality to their roles.
One piece of trivia: the part of Lurette, the little accountant who causes so much hassle, is played by Curt Bois. Bois’ career in German movies began in 1907, when he was only six (!) and ended in 1989. Around 1937 he came to Hollywood and appeared in nearly forty movies before returning to his native Germany. He’s often uncredited in the Hollywood movies, or has tiny parts (such as a pickpocket in Casablanca). But he kept on working, and survived long enough to revive his career in his own country, appearing in some 35 movie and tv roles, including that of Homer the poet in Wim Wenders’ famous Wings of Desire. (Later remade, like Gribouille, into a much less worthwhile movie, City of Angels, starring the lugubrious Nicholas Cage and the super-cheerful Meg Ryan.)