Gdynia Główna station after its remont

Although I had to be in Gdańsk this morning, I did not relish arriving there at 5am on the night train from Warsaw. My ticket was for Gdańsk, but I paid a small consideration to travel onto Gdynia, from where I'd return to Gdańsk in good time for the event I was moderating. This gave me 45 minutes extra sleep on the train, which was welcome.

At Gdynia, I found the station I'd last visited the previous summer fully reopened after its comprehensive remont. The post-war architecture has been sensitively restored to something approximating its original state, though with contemporary white-on-blue signage and raised floor guide-markings for the visually impaired.

Arrival at Gdynia Główna, just before six am. My night train is on the left.

One of the five restored mosaics; this one depicts the coastal economy.

Waiting room and ticket hall

Mosaic with the winged wheel symbol of PKP, Pegasus, and the Zodiac.

The station frontage: façade as seen from Gdynia's Pl. Konstytucji.

Mosaics from 1957 had been uncovered and the socialist-realist lamp fittings are working. And the crisp, cloudless morn, shortly before sunrise, offered the ideal conditions in which to admire the restored station.

Post-industrial Gdańsk

I arrived in Gdańsk by night train early this morning, and before indulging in a Lenten breakfast at the Scottish restaurant (egg and cheese McMuffin, salad w/ yoghurt & dill dressing, pure orange juice), I paid a visit to the Cradle of Solidarność, the Gdańsk Shipyard.

The place is winding down, but there's still some activity with a handful of workers coming and going. There was a debate last year as to the possibility of keeping the iconic cranes that characterise Gdańsk's skyline. The scrap value of the steel is far outweighed by leaving the cranes in place. Like Łódź, Gdańsk's industrial heritage has enormous potential - leave it in place and use it as an identifiable focal point for new development. I hope the cranes will stay, as well as the brick-built tenements that surround the shipyard.

Footbridge. Gdańsk Stocznia station.

Shipyard gates, famous worldwide during 1981 strikes

There's little happening now in the bankrupt shipyard

Save the cranes - an iconic part of Gdańsk's skyline

Resting and rusting: communist-era status symbol

Brick tenements, at the end of the street, the shipyard.

8x8 armoured personnel carrier used by communist Militia in 1981

Crosses commemorating dead shipyard workers killed in 1970

There's more to Gdańsk's history than just its old town.

This time last year:
The watercolours of Isaac Quinton

This time two year:
Silver birches and blue skies

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands in late winter (2009)

This time five years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands in late winter (2008)

No more revelations

The twelfth conversation between Fr. Tischner and Jacek Żakowski is fascinating from the theological point of view - we learn that the Catholic catechism rules out once and for all any further revelation of God to Man at any time before the End of the World, when Christ shall come in glory to judge the living and the dead.

There will be no more revelations to Man - no second Christ, no more Moseses receiving tablets from God on mountain tops. "Although the Revelation has been completed, it is not fully explained. The task of Christian faith over the years will be to penetrate, step by step, into its meaning," reads Żakowski from the catechism.

Fr. Tischner asks from where arise the difficulties in understanding this thesis. He says that our imagination, shaped by science and positivism, is based on empirical observation of repeatable phenomena. In physics or chemistry, the same cause has the same effect. But religion is not a positivist science. "In religion, everything is unique and individual," he says.

Żakowski touches on an area which at the time was not as bit an issue for the Catholic Church in Poland as it is today - the Marian element of the Church, which sees Fatima, Medjugorie and Sister Faustyna as evidence of further revelations of God to Man.

Fr. Tischner replies that the catechism says that all these extraordinary events should be seen in the context of things that help us understand the Revelation of Christ. "There is a general thesis that God speaks to every person according to their possibility (or potentiality). These events (Fatima, Lourdes, etc) do not bring us any new truth. They only interpret what has already been said... Their role is not to improve upon or to complement the ultimate Revelation of Christ... These are not the confidences of the Lord God. Because God has already confided - that He loves the world.

Indeed, continues Fr. Tischner, God gave his only son as His word, he has no other words to give us but His son. "If, as Islam accepts, Christ is a prophet, and not the Son of God, then He would only be one of the masters of religious life, like St Benedict or St Francis of Assisi. He would be incorporated into the historical stream of interpreting revelations.

Żakowski probes deeper. "The world changes and continually creates new challenges. Human dramas rise, and yet God remains silent. He did not send Moses to Auschwitz to lead the chosen people out of captivity. Maybe in another two, three thousand years, God will feel a new need to communicate with people, and will need another prophet. By saying "there will never be any more Revelations, you are taking that chance away from Him."

Fr. Tischner repeats that the chance now lies in understanding that, which as a revelation, has already been given to us. "What you've just said is a very nice example of the imagination that which works along the rules of our knowledge of science, an imagination that wants to reduce revelation to E=mc2. On the other hand, there is dramatic imagination, which says that uniqueness is a value."

He makes the point that the dramaturgy of faith rests upon one moment; it is Christ-centric. Fr. Tischner quotes Kierkegaard: " If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus. Read in that which He says, read in that which He does, read His footsteps." Fr. Tischner then compares the Tridentine catechism to the new one. "The old one was ecclesiocentric. It focused above all on the role of the Church. The new one is for everyone - not just for the clergy."

"The revealed truth about God is inexhaustible. Every historical era will have it is unique experiences and on the basis of those experiences will interpret what God has confided to Man. We will continue to read God's confidences differently - but always in a Christ-centric way. The thesis about the definite end to Revelation does not mean that more truth is not required by Man. It only means that no more is needed for his salvation. To be redeemed, all that he needs, is to know that God has loved him," says Fr. Tischner.

Żakowski says: "But to live, one has to know a bit more than that."

Fr. Tischner concurs: "To build, to create, to live - yes you have to know more and more. But that 'more' is not the most important. What is paramount is that that which has already been revealed, should be understood. You have to continually strive to understand it better - always 'fides quaerens intellectum".

This has been an interesting chapter. For my part, I don't think divine revelations are necessary for human understanding of God. Our understanding of God will improve over the millennia - through dialogue, experience, interpretation of our human drama - but will never fully get there. We are always less than halfway from Zero to One. The journey to absolute understanding of God is eternal.

This time two years ago:

Free will and destiny

This time last year:
Dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl

This time three years ago:
A light dusting of snow

Hope - and despair

Eleven chapters into the book (bear with me, there's 25, Lent's not halfway through yet) and Jacek Żakowski is increasingly prepared to challenge Fr. Tischner. Żakowski starts off fawningly reverential; as the conversations unfold, his journalistic tendencies to question become more and more apparent.

"It is intriguing question as to why the Lord God in his great divine teaching created in Man something that's called hope," says Fr. Tischner.

"There are those who say that it is human hope that created God," responds Żakowski. "Faith has the power to anaesthetise man in the face of the burdens of temporal life".

Fr. Tischner responds by pointing to one religion that is entirely bereft of hope - the Ancient Greek one. Life in the Greek world closed itself in a circle - like Odysseus' journey. He was merely returning home - to that which he knew, and remembered. When God called on Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldees and follow him to the Promised Land, Abraham trusted God and followed.

The catechism cites the revelations of God to Man - to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses - and finally - God sends Christ to bring salvation to all men. In this, the Judeo-Christian world offers hope of something that is not known. Fr. Tischner explains: "The flow of time in the Judeo-Christian world is one in which tomorrow is not like today, it's not a scaled-down today, but an enlarged one. We have a timeline that goes up. Man can create gods for himself, but the question is - are these gods of memory, or gods of hope? For man to create gods of hope, man has to have carried that hope within him already. Hope is a historical event, placed in time and space. In this sense, the Bible says that God creates hope. Why does God create hope?"

"Man needs hope to make sense of life. Many people must have felt that the losing hope, they lose the sense of continued existence," replies Żakowski. "The Judeo-Christian God creates structures of growing up, maturing, climbing upwards. Maybe, as the great teacher, God created hope to force us to become better and better?"

"Let's differentiate the open and the closed sense. The sense of Odysseus' life was closed. All he could do was to meet Penelope, whom he had already met. In the case of the Judeo-Christian sense of life - it is open. We are progressing towards a meeting with something that no man has met. In here lies that promise. Here is Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and Christ. There's a line, going ever upwards, going beyond human memory. Hope continually undercuts memory," says Fr. Tischner.

He quotes Kierkegaard as saying that the Israelites, who had an excellent understanding of divinity, understood that were God to reveal himself in His fullness, man could not withstand it, and would die. [Shades here of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil]. And this is why God reveals Himself to man step by step, across the ages. And creates time. Not time that's closed in a loop, but time that unceasingly grows; the time of history, the time of deeds, of God's promise. A beautiful metaphor. You promise, therefore you give something to the other person. But you have not given everything," says Fr. Tischner. "You have given only hope," replies Żakowski.

"The day will come when the promise fulfils itself. There is the relationship between him who promises, and him who receives the promise. This is the trusteeship of hope. Giving a promise, you become the trustee of hope. But the hope is often tested; tested by anxiety, despair; to keep on hoping, you return to the trustee," says Fr. Tischner.

"Yes, this is the simple teaching of humans, you offer hope, you hold out threats. Man is undone between hope and anxiety; man is brought up in a behavioural way, with a choice: do well, and you will be rewarded with eternal life; avoid doing evil and you will avoid the fires of hell. Would it not be more beautiful if we were to do good simply because it is good to do so?" asks Żakowski.

"Behavioural teaching is rather a human invention than the text of the Gospels. What have we in the Gospels?" asks Fr. Tischner. "The last shall be first," replies Żakowski. "Those that do not force their way to the front with their elbows shall attain greatness for all eternity..."

"I'd say that this is not encouragement to be bottom of the class," replies Fr. Tischner. "Rather its encouraging you to notice your own human weaknesses, failings, our earthly unhappinesses. 'Fear not, this all serves hope'," he says.

"Consolation," replies Żakowski.

"It's more than consolation. It's an encouragement to reflect... There are two possibilities - hope according to memory, the hope of Odysseus - and then you have a closed sense of life; or memory according to hope, and there you have a reflection upon the future, an awareness that I'm happening at the same time as history...," says Fr. Tischner.

"Upbringing by stick and carrot," replies Żakowski. "You are repeating to people, 'your hope is not on this earth'." "Oh no, not so!" says Fr. Tischner. "There is a trustee of faith. One carries one another's burdens. We are one another's trustees of our hopes, and from that trusteeship is formed the community of the Church. Woe betide him who is without hope in the Church. You cannot allow man to experience anything that will take away hope from him, but you may put that hope to the test. Such tests are necessary, that hope may grow, upwards. By 'tests of hope', I mean anxiety, unease, the temptation to despair. You must say to man: 'you are greater than your despair.' Your hope is greater, there is the promise. And God says this."

Fr. Tischner ends with a quote from Meister Eckhart: "And when God comes to Man, he does so, saying 'auf wiedersehn / au revoir / do widzenia' ['goodbye' - itself a contraction of 'God be with you' - is not the right translation. It's more like a 'be seeing you', a promise of seeing you again] It is a promise, in the future tense. God cannot reveal Himself fully, for you would not be able to withstand it. But he is saying "I'll be seeing you. This is the great teacher of hope".

Without a sense of life indeed there's no hope. Despair is indeed a dreadful state to be in, when hope dies, there's little point. But is there other hope than religion? I think there is. But more later.

This time last year:
Communist Poland's secret rail disasters

This time two years ago:
The Cripple and the Storyteller: a short story

This time two years ago:
Dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl

This time four years ago:
Another light dusting

God's teaching

"What's the difference between education and upbringing*?" asks Fr. Tischner of Jacek Żakowski, who has experience with children of his own. Żakowski explains that education is the teaching of knowledge, upbringing the teaching of life. "How then, do you you bring up your children?" asks Fr. Tischner. "Principally, but talking at them," replies Żakowski. "If they go out of line, if they play truant, for example, what would you do?" "I'd say to them: 'it's your problem'. You've missed a lesson and you will suffer the grim consequences. I wouldn't beat them, but would strive to have them understand that it's entirely up to you as to where you will end up in life," explains Żakowski.

But how does God educate or bring up Man?, asks Fr. Tischner. "Judging by the effects, there isn't a special way," retorts Żakowski (who over the course of the conversations is becoming less reverent and more challenging of Fr. Tischner). And Fr. Tischner begins to side-step. Two thousand years of Christianity, the Crusades, the Inquistion, no end of wars motivated by religion, 'Gott Mit Uns' on the belt-buckle of Nazi soldiers bayoneting children to death - yes, how does God educate man? "Man meets the Word of God and discovers God's confidence. Man can accept it - or not. The catechism carries the concept that Man is passive and that all initiative stems from God, says Fr. Tischner.

"That means that either God brings you up, or He doesn't help you at all. And all those who God didn't want to bring up - they are justified by His passivity? Or, another way, "the way God made me is the way I am?"

Fr. Tischner turns the argument round. "The are unjustified by way of their activeness! They did not succeed, because they were actively denying God, rather than being passive." Here in the margins, I pencilled 'WHAT???' A soldier, engaged in the unspeakable evil of massacring civilians, was too active in the face of God's will?

Żakowski continues: "So we shouldn't bother God too much, we shouldn't adore him too much, because if He wants to, He will come and redeem us, and if he doesn't then nothing will save us?"

Fr. Tischner replies: "St Paul says 'faith comes from listening - and listening is silence. Thomas Merton says: "whosoever wants to find God must enter into silence." Żakowski replies, using a word not yet seen in ten chapters of this book: "And prayer? Prayer is the great eternal disturbance of the good Lord God." "But it's not a racket made under God's window. In this perspective, prayer is an answer. The initiative of prayer flows from the other side." "If prayer is to help, shouldn't it result from need rather than duty?" asks Żakowski. "It's not important," replies Fr. Tischner.

Whether it's an inner need that becomes a signal that you are are answering, or becoming aware of there is a duty you answer, God is always by Man first. "We speak of God coming to meet Man," says Fr. Tischner. "Whatever good happens in the world, whatever initiative, beginning, always comes from God. That's why in today's world, controlled by the cult of human activism, faith proposes something opposite," he says. " This prompts Żakowski to ask whether more people have not lost their faith by listening to their parish priest than reading the works of Lenin or Marx.

Fr. Tischner replies: "Activism is often a denial of that silence that God requires to come into a person. We're sitting in the Camaldolese Priory in Kraków. When we came in, everyone said 'what a great silence there is in here'. It is in this silence that we can understand the teaching of God The great Meister Eckhart said 'Cling to him that has the initiative,' which means 'cling to God'. And Meister Eckhart says 'that which you set off to seek, is now seeking you. That which you chased after, is now chasing you. And that which you tried to escape from, is now escaping before you," says Fr. Tischner. "What's escaping?" asks Żakowski.

"Above all, fear," replies Fr. Tischner; "the anxiety of this world. Our existence in this world is saturated with unease, anxiety; we're always chasing something, or else we're fleeing something. [A neat theological parallel of the economic theory of greed and fear.] When you cling to God, 'that which you first sought,' - in other words peace, 'now, it's seeking you'.

Żakowski agrees the concept is indeed beautiful, but asks "why, in the face of such a straightforward recipe,  this world, having been exposed to God's teachings, for two thousands years, is not becoming a noticeably better world. In any case, I cannot see any dramatic explosions of that goodness."

Fr. Tischner "replies that our mind is created in such a way as to see evil rather than good. And we often see only one side of the coin." And now, mid-paragraph, Fr. Tischner ducks the question and returns to Meister Eckhart. "You have accepted His confidence, you have 'clung to Him'. When someone confides in you, not only does it satisfy your curiosity, but it also gives you the chance to cling to that confidence. When someone tells you that they love you, they not only satisfy your hunger for information, they also open up before you a whole new world. Your old world has changed."

Żakowski continues in a questioning tone. "In the whole martyrology of the Catholic Church, there are many saints who clung to God; in the end, that which they feared overcame them." Fr. Tischner replies, citing the case of St Maksymilian Kolbe, who, before he was killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz, "discovered that the soul cannot be killed. And that discovery freed him from fear."

Żakowski probes further: "So you cannot get rid of the evil of this world? Maybe you can find comfort in the Absolute." Fr. Tischner: "More than comfort, because when you 'cling to God', you reply to the evil in the world with good. You overcome evil with good. A miracle occurs, and out of evil comes its complete denial, negation." "But this doesn't protect one from the suffering of this world - from hunger, or suffering," retorts Żakowski.

"No," says Fr. Tischner, "but you see the sense of your own suffering. The suffering hurts, but no longer throws you into despair." "Do you think that people can surprise an omniscient God?" asks Żakowski. "In this subtle drama of overcoming evil with good is God's teaching, exceeding all the logic and physics of this world. I'd say this - the result is always richer than the causes."

Well, I think we have some interesting points made. I'll concede that it's subtle. It's clever. But at the end of the day, is it convincing? As I read over the text of the conversation, my mind is racing off on different tangents; I'm considering the role of God in my life - and it is different, yet with some features that Fr. Tischner discusses resonating with me. My own view of God is tempered not so much by theology, but by science; post-World War II society, living in an era of sub-atomic particles and genetics and the Hubble space telescope, it is a view of God as purpose, as direction - and yes, ultimately, as Love. But more on that later. Now onto the Eleventh Conversation...

* Wykształcenie = education, wychowanie = upbringing. Pedagokika? The title of this chapter in Polish is Boska pedagogika. The peda- in the word has the same Greek root as pediatra (paediatrician) or pedofil (paedophile), and means 'child'. As opposed to 'Andragogy' = educating adults.

This time last year:
S2 to Puławska ready by this time next year?
[Not on your nelly. This time 2014, maybe, perhaps, possibly. For update, check today's post by Student SGH]

This time two years ago:
In praise of blue skies

This time four years ago:
WAM PLUNK BISH BASH ZUNK
(Incidentally, Molesworth fans - Ronald Searle's obituary in the Economist a few weeks ago is a must-read)

This time five years ago:
Four weeks into Lent

Future trends in the economy

As I wrote here several Lents ago, the current economic crisis is not a short-term blip; rather it will be an event of historic significance that will last an eighth of a lifetime - ten years or more. In the UK recession has already been a feature of the economy since the first quarter of 2008, with a third dip on the way. Moody's downgraded the UK from Aaa to Aa partly because the ratings agency could not see economic growth returning until 'the second half of this decade'.

During such extended periods of economic uncertainty, we will be seeing that 'creative destruction' taking place; old businesses going bust - old business models ceasing to function - and new ones emerging.

And what will emerge?

The Old	The New
Owning a car	Renting/sharing a car
Driving	Being driven
Software in a box	Software from the cloud
Buying electricity from a big company	Generating your own electricity, selling the surplus
Buying things	Sharing things
Buying things	Repairing things
Buying things	Experiencing life
Accessibility	Authenticity
Tourism	Travel
Food as a fuel to keep you going	Food as an authentic experience
Roads	Rail
Globally-known brands	Locally-produced and cherished brands

Old things will not necessarily disappear. They will simply lose their erstwhile dominance. Television did not kill radio or cinema, it diminished their importance. The internet will not kill television or books, it will diminish their importance.

But what really drives the economy? The notion of 'show off or die'. When I see a person sitting alone behind the wheel of a large SUV in slow-moving urban traffic, I can see one insecure person who still believes it necessary to demonstrate their wealth in this rather primitive and grotesquely wasteful way.

Car ownership statistics from the UK, US and Germany show that many young professional people have got the message that owning a car is as fashionable as wearing flared trousers and kipper ties.

If you really must drive your own car - this is the future. Coming into production this year, the Volkswagen XL1 is the shape of things to come.

The other week, Moni told me a current hipster joke: "My favourite frequency is 25,000 hertz. I bet you haven't heard it." The true hipster, at the avant-garde of society, will wear brands no one has heard of, see bands no one has heard of (Eric Shoves Them In His Pockets, anyone?), go to clubs no one has heard of, drink unpasteurised beer from a micro-brewery in Przasnysz.

When the developed world emerges from economic crisis in a few years time, it will emerge without many of its familiar brands. The UK has lost such high street chains as HMV, Barratts, Habitat, Jessops, Clinton Cards and Comet (to name but five of 23 that have collapsed since the beginning of last year).

While Google is set to keep its primacy for the foreseeable future, I'm wondering who will be the Google of new technologies that are as undreamed of as computers and mobile phones were just 30 years ago? Which of the following brands will make it huge globally in the next decade? Spotify? ZipCar? MakerBot?

It's worth reading this article from the Economist's Management Thinking website about collaborative consumption - sharing is the new ownership. Excerpt here:

There will be a shift from ownership to access, from buying to hiring, from permanent possession to sharing, where people will expect to be able to buy goods on a temporarily basis. As Mark Zuckerburg said “Everything that can be shared will be shared”. 

A good retail example of this is a typical household drill, which is apparently used for an average of 6 minutes in its lifetime. It has taken immense resources to produce that drill and many other similar products, so sharing makes more sense than outright ownership - from an environmental, economical and lifestyle point of view. Accordingly, community initiatives are beginning to appear which give neighbours access to goods that there is no need to buy and permanently own.  

One such initiative is the ‘TechShop’ in Durham, North Carolina. This is a ‘tool library’ giving neighbours access to a huge selection of tools for any possible home improvement or construction project without needing to purchase those tools. Here is a significant opportunity for retailers to develop a model that would meet customer demand and also increase revenue through multiple ‘selling’ opportunities. 

Brands and retailers will need to respond to the shift in customer attitude and behaviour. They will have to develop strategies and business models that meet this growing demand and recognise the shift from an asset-heavy to an asset-light existence - neatly summed up by Lynn Jurich's observation, "The new status symbol is not what you own, it’s what you are smart enough not to own." 

Makes eminent sense. Cut out the clutter in your room, in your garage, loft - in your life. As someone recently wrote in Gazeta Wyborcza - 'what's the sense of spending your life doing a job you don't enjoy to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't like?' So if 'showing off or die' will not be the next driver of economic growth what will?

The so-called emerging world is still forging ahead powered by the old model of consumption - if you haven't experienced having a big car sitting in the drive of your four-bedroomed house, it will drive you to work harder and longer until you do.

The future engines of growth for the developed world will be different. No longer conspicuous consumption, 'keeping up with the Joneses', stuffing the landfill sites of the nation with trash bought on credit. Certainly healthcare will eat up ever more of rich countries' GDP as their populations age. The dream of living a long healthy life into an advanced old age is a very real economic driver. Seventy as the new fifty? An alluring prospect that billions will buy into.

People will always be conceited and snobbish, but in the rich world they will seek ever more sophisticated and subtle ways of showing it. Think of a new way of satisfying that need and you can become very rich indeed. If richness is what drives you...

More about the new Sharing Economy here and here (from the Economist).

D3200 shoots X100

Last night, as I boarded a number 14 tram, a, friendly but not entirely sober chap recognised me as a fellow snapper and proudly boasted of his Fuji X100, which he pulled out of a bag. By sheer coincidence, it is exactly a year ago that I was testing the very same camera, loaned to me my the husband of Marta, my colleague from work. So yes, I knew about the X100's clever viewfinder and yes, I appreciated its handling and its unobtrusive appearance that made it ideal for street photography. I wrote about it the X100 here (one year ago today!) and here.

The reasons I gave for not buying the X100 and for buying a new Nikon D3200 were borne out by time and experience. The price of a new X100 has tumbled from £720 to £550; and a new X100S has just been launched offering the same philosophy but with a 25% increase in megapixels and faster focusing and operation. It costs £1,100 - double the price of the X100. No doubt a successor to the X100S is being planned even as I write. [2014 update. Yes indeed, the X100T]

Among all the improvements in the X100S, one I'm not reading about is a general enhancement of its robustness and handling over its predecessor, and those were my main gripes, as were lack of screw-in filter to protect the non-interchangeable lens. And so rather than the Fuji, I bought a Nikon D3200 for two-thirds of the price of a lightly-used X100. For this I get: a zoom lens with vibration reduction (OK, the lens is one-and-half stops slower but with VR I can hand-hold at three stops longer), the speed of operation of an SLR, a more intuitive, user-friendlier menu. On the downside, the D3200 with kit lens weighs 220g more than the X100.

And so - here we are - the X100 and its user, shot by a D3200 and its user.

Evening, downtown Warsaw in focus; X100 user not quite.

Photographers snip-snap in the tram

My encounter with the X100 user did re-awaken pangs of desire for a decent digital rangefinder. The X100 is, well, too flimsy in its build quality. I fear issues using it each and every day around my neck. What would I really like (the Leica M being absurdly priced)?

Let me show you my dream digital rangefinder camera - a digital version of the Nikon S3 2000 - a collectors' piece, a re-issue of the 1958 S3. I've mocked up what a digital S3 could look like. Made of lightweight metal, with a full frame (FX, 35mm equivalent) CCD sensor, it could have take manual or  autofocus lenses (with VR - imagine an f1.4 lens with VR!). Beautifully oldschool.

Nikon S3D digital rangefinder, with manual Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens

Nikon S3D digital rangefinder - 3-inch LCD screen, controls

Nikon S3D digital rangefinder body showing full-size CCD sensor

Nikon S3D digital rangefinder top-plate - thumb-wheel for manual focus

I hope to see something like this in the shops in the not-too-distant future!

This time last year:
Weekend with the Fuji X100

This time four years ago:
Sublime sunset, Jeziorki

This time five years ago:
Dramatic sunset, Jeziorki

Waiting for the warmth to return

Today, 1 March, is St David's Day - the patron saint of Wales. Today, people of the Welsh persuasion around the world (and in Wales) will proudly wear the Daffodil - the national flower - in their lapels.

Wait a moment - daffodils? Now? But in Warsaw? It will be an age before flowers start appearing through the soil (well, six weeks at least - maybe crocuses and snow-drops a bit earlier). Spring is still astronomically three weeks away, but the real beginning - when that marvellous miracle of rebirth happens all at once - is not due until the second half of April. Another seven or eight weeks of yearning... (meanwhile London's lawns have been graced with early bulb flowers since  early February - there's no shortage of daffodils for the Welsh).

The is przednówek or przedwiośnie, the latter half of winter, which drags on and on.

Ogród Saski, awash with meltwater.

There's overnight snow forecast, which will have melted by the late morning, maximum temperatures +4C, then falling again and some more snow that will have melted by Sunday lunchtime. And no prospect of improvement in the coming days. Nor much chance of strong frosts and heaps of powdery snow now. Sunshine is being meanly rationed by the weather gods... After over four months of waiting for the sun, the last few weeks are the hardest.

Heaps of dirty ice line the pavement, ul. Puławska.

Yesterday, I decided I'd had enough of my big M65 Parka and furry lumberjack hat, so in an attempt to to bring on spring with a change of outwear, I went out in a (lined) trenchcoat and trilby hat - big mistake. The bitter wind nearly had my hat off several times, and my ears were permanently cold. The burden of winter wear - furry hat, warm scarf, bulky parka with hood, gloves and Biedronka boots (warm, hard-wearing but more suitable to building site than office) - is beginning to lie heavy on my shoulders.

O spring! How I long for thee!

This time last year:
Remembering Poland's 'Accursed Soldiers'

Two years ago:
Getting the balance right between work and play

This time four years ago:
Sublime Jeziorki sunset

This time five years ago:
Sunrise getting earlier