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So, for over a month now I have been telling people that when The Very Important Piece of Kit is taken back by one of our partners we will have a problem.
Well, not so much of a problem, more of a full stop. No work, no lab, no demos.
Despite all the prophecies of doom we're at the point where The Very Important Piece of Kit is about to be taken away.
I could have saved myself a lot of time by not worrying....
Well I had to make a start sometime on the Christmas shopping.
This was an easy start wandering up Regents Street, again in a t shirt. The weather recently really has been amazing and a little worrying. Shouldn’t we have rain and cold ?
I picked up some Christmas cards in Libertys, raised Hamleys for some Halloween treats and spent the rest of the day browsing for ideas and picking up the odd stocking filler here and there.
The shops are geting into full seasonal gear and even if the weather doesn’t bring snow you can be sure that the avalance of Christmas will be here a little earlier than last year.
There’s something very odd about going past the same place at the same time for hours on end.
We’d been talking for a while about doing the tourist thing and taking an open top bus trip around London and today, another unseasonally warm October day, we finally did it.
After some serious pidgeon chasing, column climbing and a late lunch in St Martin’s Lane, a few doors up from the English National Opera, we set off to see the sites from the top of a bus.
It was funny to watch the confused look on the tourist’s faces every time we passed Big Ben. The clock was set to 12:00 and stopped for maintenance, it’s longest period of silence for twenty two years.
I like to think that I know parts of London very well but the view from the top of a bus has changed all that. Roof gardens I’d never seen, shop signs from years ago and a trip around parts of the City I’d know only during the weekday bustle were all revealed.
With the night drawing in around us we sailed past Harrods before we stopped at Oxford Street for a little shopping and a first look at Father Christmas.
The odd thing was it was still 12:00 ….
The word billion is used so much today it’s hard to comprehend how much it actually is.
A little while ago an advertising agency put this together to illustrate how much it really is :
I got a letter today from Sherap, one the Tibetan kids I sponser.
Seems the weather is cold and wet in India at the moment, unlike here which was the warmest October day for years. Like most kids around the world mothers are an issue and Sherap seems to have been nagged into a range of activities in school from running to dancing competitions. She did well in the marathon coming 3rd out of 75.
Her school life sounds a lot like ours here with a few differences. Three days of celebrations for the birthday of His Holiness the Dali Lama, Tibetan Opera and, at sports day, the lime and spoon race !
I’ve been a fan of Firefox for a while now and I just came across something which builds on the Mozilla codebase and says it will be the browsing experiance to have.
Flock offers a whole bunch of goodies and gadgets including the ability to search your history folder, something useful for us older, more forgetful surfers.
If you fancy flocking to the web check out the features here.
Today is special for me and for this place.
I tend to think of this entry as being somewhat defining in how I used this weblog. It’s not a great entry and there were a few months of sporadic entries before it.
For me, however, it was the start of trying to keep a weblog for a year. I did it partly to record what I was doing, as a way of proving to myself that life was moving forwards : partly it was a means of “improving” my writing and photography and exploring new media formats like podcasting and video blogging. It was also a record I could leave behind me, at least for a while, to perhaps make some sense to people of what was going on in my life and in my head.
So, one year on here we are.
If you stuck with it and read it I’d like to thank you. If you commented and encouraged you have no idea how important that was to me.
Thank you all.
No sooner back than all the fun starts again.
Perhaps I’m approaching this all wrong but no matter what I do I seem to screw up at the moment.
Perhaps a few days away to regroup is what I need.
This year’s Trafalgar Day celebrations were very diferent to last years. With this year being the 200th anniversay of Nelson’s death the square was dressed up to the nines and full of dignaties there to remember and celebrate.
With no press pass I had to wander around outside the secuirty cordon, looking for a different type of picture to represent the whole day. I ended up with this one but kneeling at the feet of a load of seaman isnt the most dignified of positions to find oneself in. Even less dignified is standing up to find a BBC cameraman behind you and standing on him.
Across town at Borough Court the October Plenty was on. A celebration of Autumn set in one of London’s oldest markets. With plays such as the Dead Husband performed by The Lions Part, early music and dance it was very much like being back in the Middle Ages.
Today was a day for travelling back : to people, places and sounds.
Foir the first time in months I got to see Amanda and her bump. She’s doing well, perhaps a little cautious about what will happen in two months but happy and at last winding down her work to rest. We met up at an old antiques haunt of ours for tea and cake and a rummage for paintings and furniture then onto the town she used to live in for lunch, baby clothes shopping and to catch up on each other’s news.
It was odd to be back there but nice for us both. Some good memories.
This evening I was out at a stage show which re-created the radio show, Around the Horne. I grew up with radio but never heard this show until recently. The show was excellent, recreating an old BBC radio theatre and the characters who appeared in the show.
Sitting listening in the darkness I could have been back in the 50’s watching it made, just like at lunchtime, sitting in the daylight, I could have been back 5 years.
This morning didn’t start with a rush. In fact I was becalmed near Heathrow in a monsoon. With an accident down the road I could see where I wanted to get to but there was nothing to do but sit and wait for the traffic to ease and for me to crawl into the car park, wade across it and find the room for the first meeting of the day.
Luckily by lunchtime it was sunny and I had an easy drive to meeting number two. Several calls on the way home and by this evening all I want to do is curl up and sleep. It’s been a long week.
At last I’m back at a sensible time
Probably less sensible is the amount i have of 24 to see before I need to return the disks. Luckily I’m at the back end of the series and the pace of the episodes is high. Even with that 8 hours to see I’m not sure I can get them all watched in time.
It’s really nice to be home.
Driving back tonight I can’t beleive how dark the night is. The rain filled clouds over the motorway look inky black against the sky. Things are shaping up a little better today but I feel like I need to sleep for a week.
We had a game of hunt the discs today. A hunt which didn’t reap any rewards.
Another late night and long drive home.
Day one of a series of seminars and training programmes around the project which we are working on.
Meeting up again with the American suppliers was good and it’s nice to have all the team in one place. What would have been nicer would have been a server which worked. Shipped across Britain it arrived with me with no discs and no ability to load Linux, let alone the much missed wiki.
Getting back home I turned on the desktop pc to see only the Bios screen and a no boot disk message.
Clearly today the computer gods aren’t shining on me.
After all the excesses of last night Richard, Martin and I decided to blow away the cobwebs with a walk in the woods, a little fungii spotting and to climb on some logs.
Refreshed I decided to head out tonight to see Hotel Rwanda. I really wonder where my head was when all this was going on. I’m shocked at how little I know and how little interest I had in it all when it happened. What was I doing ?
I love Autumn.
Unlike the promise and pretence of Spring and Summer, Autumn is a grand letting go. No more the primness and correctness of the first part of the year : Autumn is a riot of colour, smells and renewal.
This morning I was walking in the forest trying to capture a little of the early Autumn colours and I was amazed at how warm the sun still was. The forest floor isn’t yet all covered in leaves but in places the mushrooms are growing and the chestnuts are falling.
Tonight, in keeping with all this Autumnal action, Martin and I went out to see some folk. I love Kate Rusby’s voice and her stage presence is so warm and welcoming it makes for a great show. Well, that and the Guinness. Having got the taste we decided to go visit the Irish club to take another pint or two and drink to the memory of Martin’s Dad.
Slainte!
Totally exhusted all I could do today was stagger down the road to be fed a Thai banquet by Fhai. I wish I had the energy Richard and Joanne have : leaping from the sofa or running endless laps down the hall, into the lounge and back to the kitchen.
I’d like to put this down to youth, the excitiment at getting your yellow belt at karate or not having to suffer a week of hell at work but it seems that Minu at the corner shop is to blame. Take two children, sugar and additative laden lollies and you have an almost untameable power supply.
Perhaps next week I need to get some lollies for myself.
I wonder if the new video Ipod will change vlogging as the original Ipod did for podcasting. Pocket sized battery TVs never really took off but with high speed Internet, better battery technology and more people needing to timeshift things to fit into their lives perhaps now’s the time for this kind of device.
Maybe I need to look at an upgrade…
Perhaps I’m trying too hard to have ownership for all of this. Too much trying to sort out issues and too hard to keep everyone happy, informed and pointed in the same direction.
It feels like time is falling through my fingers like sand at the moment and there’s no end in sight.
Sometimes it’s only when we change a habit do we discover something else.
For me the change last year from overnight TV to overnight radio meant I bumped into a whole new world of music. That included Tord Gustavsen and his trio and that is where Martin and I went tonight.
The Ground is a beautiful album and, performed live, Tord Gustavsen (piano), Harald Johnsen (bass) and Jarle Vespestad (drums) capture that and exceed it a hundred times with baroque, funk, gospel and hymns all woven into two hours of pure bliss.
That and couple of pints of Guinness served by Siobhan meant that changing that habit, whilst difficult to do, bore lots of fruit in the end.
Seems that Podcasts are now mainstream what with the BBC offering several shows in a podcast format and now Yahoo having a whole site devoted to podcasts.
Here’s a few that caught my ear :
Even the pennies in the arcade were old as we went all retro and enjoyed an afternoon in the sun at the steam fair.
With candy floss, table hockey, test your strength and a helter skelter we enjoyed all the fun of the fair.
Pictures here.
The local theatre will always be for me a place haunted by Mother Goose.
Years ago, in my childhood, I went to a panto put on by my Father’s company. At the the intermission I was allowed to walk down the aisle, through the orchestra pit and backstage to meet the cast. I guess I’m still naive but in those days it must have been worse. The sight of Mother Goose, with no wig on, smoking and clearly a man was a revelation for me and I can still remember running back to my parents shouting out, “Mum, Dad, Mother Goose is a man !”.
Luckily I wasn’t scarred for life and I can go back to the same theatre although now it’s changed inside, redeveloped to loose the aisle and the orchestra pit.
Despite all that the presentation of Hamlet was really good. Set in the present with a crashed car, helicopter noises and all the action taking place in an upmarket hotel lobby. Even Ophelia was updated with a white plastic body bag
in which she was consigned to her grave.
It’s been ages since I saw any Shakespeare and this was a good start to seeing some more.
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love
Happy Birthday T
With a bowl of duck eggs and fresh mushrooms from one of Martin’s country trips it really feels like Autumn today.
There was an unexpected visitor at the door tonight with Jodi joining Fhai, Martin, Joanne and Richard for a Friday drink, chat, computer games and generally relaxing after a long week.
With Richard’s word cards all over the front room floor we tried to find words which rhymed listened to CDs, each of us getting over our stressy weeks.
I’d turned down some website work the other day on the basis that I didn’t have the time or the patience so it’s a little ironic to find myself downloading the latest version of Limbo to start on making a new site.
This, however, was a long term committment and copies the type of sites I’ve done before. Unusually I won’t have access to the server, which is why it all needs to be done in a CMS which uses flat files rather than a database.
I should have taken the other work which may have involved photography and using Flash but this is an easier option and sometimes we all need to prove to ourselves we can still do reasonable work.
I’m always amazed and inspired at the various ways people use the Internet and here’s an excellent site.
Apprently in some American states fruit from trees which overhangs public paths are public property. Fallenfruit maps these trees and provides people with an email alert when the fruit is ripe.
In fact they go further, from their manifesto :
“WE ASK all of you to petition your cities and towns to support community gardens and only plant fruit-bearing trees in public parks. Let our streets be lined with apples and pears! Demand that all parking lots be landscaped with fruit trees which provide shade, clean the air and feed the people. “
Now wouldn’t that be cool next summer….
In the corner of my parent’s front room, next to my Father’s chair was a washed, tall, white icecream tub. Curled into the corners would be back issues of Amateur Photographer (back in the days when it was thicker and contained more articles), the Reader’s Digest, his spare glasses and usually a bag of humbugs. It was a little haven his hand would dip into to read something or to sneak a sweet.
If I think back almost all my memories of him centre around laughter, either on the radio or the TV. From the Navy Lark to Morecambe and Wise and the Two Ronnies we’d sit and laugh. The highlight of Christmas for me, aside from the presents, would be the shows. Morecambe’s wit or Barker’s word play.
Comedy then was grounded in the Music Halls and the ability to win and hold an audience. I was amazed at how Barker’s face changed from character to character and some of the complex speaches he’d rattle off to the camera.
There’s no doubt of his talents: comedy, straight parts, writing sketches (submited under an assumed name so it would be judged on it’s merits) and his best work, Porridge.
It was sad to hear of his death today. For me another tie to the past disappeared. A simpler age with so many laughs.
One of the interesting things about email is that you never know what will appear in your inbox.
As I watched mine downloading today I saw a mail address I didn’t recognise go whizzing by, and it was one with a very large attachment.
It turned out to be 4 Mbs of pictures and news from the Russians I’d met on The Mall in the Summer.
Alexey seems well, having taken his family around Europe by low cost airlines to Spain, Germany and Holland they all went to Finland.
It’s really nice to hear from them and know they got home safely and also got the pictures.
Do svidaniya!
Ears are an odd thing. We take then for granted and assume they are always there.
Of course if you wear glasses ears take on a very new importance but just when in life are we aware of them ? I was at Martin and Fhai’s for lunch today watching Daisy draw a picture of Joanne. Inspired, Joanne took the pen and started to draw me, minus ears, glasses and with no smile. After Daisy pointed out the missing ears Joanne added them to the picture of me and looked at the picture of her. Daisy had drawn her with her hair down to her shoulders and a big smile. After a moment Joanne drew in a pair of ears, stuck to the side of her hair and sticking out, a place she never keeps them. Tricky this anatomy.
Much easier was making pudding. A large fruit cobbler stuffed with raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, apple and pear with a scone like topping and lashings of cream. After a meal of roast chicken and duck and all the trimmings with Daisy, Paul and Nan we divided up with Fhai and the kids off to the local funhouse and Martin and I heading off to see the British Museum’s roof, a wander around Chinatown and a beer or two at the Lowlander.
We’d started with a drink at De Hems but the noise in the upstairs bar and the smoke in the public bar drove us on to the quiet of the Lowlander.
After all we don’t want to take our ears for granted.
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