2006 : A Jarvis Oddity

Just got back from seeing Jarvis (as in Jarvis Cocker ex-Pulp) @ Koko in Camden. Great gig. Only got the new album this morning so had only heard the new material a couple of times - the gig was still fantastic despite my lack of familiarity with the music. The new album seems pretty good after the first couple of listens.
The encore was amazing. When he first came back on he played "Running the World" (google jarvis + myspace). After that he bantered with the crowd - "You want to hear some old material?" - the crowd cheered. To be honest though I didnt really want to hear him play any Pulp. He had the last laugh though - "Ok. Here is an old song. its not mine though .... " with which he launched into a cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity - "ground control to major tom ....." Brilliant. Glad I got tickets to the next gig at Roundhouse too !

Guy Fawkes

Saturday night I once again broke my vow of not taking photos at fireworks displays - they never seem to work out. The photo below was taken in Battersea Park - it was a pretty good display - but the photographic results were average ..... Headed out afterwards to see Soulwax play live and also DJ at Fabric. Soulwax was good but the venue was just way too crowded. That combined with an attempted pickpocketing at Fabric by someone who looked suspiciously like a sith lord took the shine off the night a bit. Will be a while before I venture back to Fabric again - shame - great music.

Along the Banks Of The Thames

Decided to walk back towards home along the Thames after work last night. Normally I catch the bus just outside work but I felt like a stroll after a busy week at work. Met A half way and as we wandered passed the London Eye we decided to do the touristy thing and give it a shot. It was nearly closing time and hardly anyone about. We managed to get a "pod" with just two other people - lucky we were spared the large group of screaming girls in the line just behind us !! The view is pretty amazing at night - especially considering its Guy Fawkes soon so there are fireworks going off all over the city.

Waiting For The Bus ....

Happy Halloween

To make it easier for all those people searching for "scary cemetery" photos on google images .....

Around Town

Billy Bragg Concert Online

There is currently a Billy Bragg concert online that he did as part of the Electric Proms - "a truly multi-media festival" (their words, not mine). You can check out the gig here. It is only up until the 1st November - so if you're a fan (yes V - thats you!) check it out.

Millenium Bridge @ Dusk

One good thing about it starting to get dark by the time I leave work .... great time to take photos !

Twilight

Went to the Twilight exhibition at the V&A on Sunday. Was worth a look - particularly the works of Bill Henson and Gregory Crewdson. Highly recommended.

Battersea Power Station

A couple more photos from the Chinese contemporary art exhibition currently on in the Battersea Power Station. More on flickr here.

Battersea Power Station

Yesterday I went to an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the Battersea Power Station. Well, theoretically anyway. I did go to the exhibition but, just like nearly everyone else there, I was far more interested in the power station itself. My bus goes passed it everyday on the way to work. It is owned by some property developer in Hong Kong so I always thought the chances of seeing inside it before it got converted to expensive riverside flats was fairly slim. Definitely well worth checking out. Will post some more photos on flickr later of the internals - it is pretty derelict inside.

More info : Wikipedia and development plans.

Upcoming Photo Exhibitions In London

I always seem to have trouble finding out about photo exhibitions in London so I thought I would mention a couple that are opening soon. Might come in handy for those others out there having the same problem ! Both should be pretty good.

Twilight at the V&A : INFO.
In the Face of History at the Barbican : INFO.



Photo taken at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Boston Photos

Arrived back from Boston this morning. Was meant to arrive at 635 in the morning, but got in around 9 due to spending 3 hours on the tarmac in Boston while they changed one of the planes tires. We had to sit on the plane the whole time - fun fun. They even did the meal service before we took off ! Needless to say was very late getting to work and was not overly functional due to the five hour time difference and sleep quality on the plane.
Anyway, will write more later. For now here are a few photos. I wasnt really feeling that inspired photographically over there and that kind of shows ....
You can check all ten (yes just ten ...) photos here.
Starting off with the Stata Center at M.I.T. (designed by Frank Gehry and home of the Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences)



Brownstone on Newbury St

And something a little random ....

Boston

Made it to Boston safe and sound yesterday. 7 hour flight wasnt too bad but the 5 hour time difference is a bit of a killer. So far Boston seems pretty nice. Things seem cheap when you convert them into pounds, but not into Aus dollars. London warps your mind with respect to how expensive you expect things to be. Caught up with an old school friend after she finished work and went out for dinner for her birthday. By about 9pm A & I were fading fast. Not surprising considering our bodies thought it was 2 in the morning.
Anyway thats about it for now. I caved after work the day before we flew out and bought a D80 .... so far I like it. A lot. Cant wait to see how the photos turn out.

Boston

A last minute holiday decision sees A and I heading to Boston this weekend for a few days. One of my old school friends from Adelaide is working there for a month so will get to catch up with her - we arrive on her birthday. Nice timing !
Really looking forward to it. Have always had a bit of a fascination with Boston - not sure why. MIT maybe .... It will be Autumn so hopefully should get a few good shots of the New England fall.
Tried to buy a D80 today but failed. Went to one place on Tottenham Court Road - Ask Electronics - who quoted me 25 quid more than what they quoted yesterday (I still wasnt sure yesterday okay.) That kind of stuff shits me so I headed off to Jessops. Asked if they had any D80 bodies in stock - yep 5 - sweet - 10 minutes later - stock error. i.e. they couldnt find them. I think I might get a job at Jessops. Knock of 5 D80s, sell em to my mates and blame it on a "stock error". Oh well, looks like I am destined to be using my D70 for a bit longer. Am really starting to hanker after the 10M goodness of the D80 ....

Return of Winter

Weather was a bit rubbish on the weekend. Thought I would try and make the most of it and take a few wintry shots. Didnt really work though, just got rained on and uninspired. Oh well - heres my effort.

Island Crises ....

Spent last weekend on the annual work weekend away - this year it was Mal lorca. A lot of fun - took lots of photos but mainly inside dodgy nightclubs. I'll spare you !! Anyway thought I'd post a couple of non drunken photos - I particularly like the Island Cr_ises .... (These photos were taken with my new camera - a Fuji F30. Its very cool - quite happy with the photos. Great low light performance and nice and small. Aperture and shutter priority too. Handy. Replaces my Sony P100 which seems to be suffering from a few dust spot issues.)

Photos From Canary Wharf

Okay - I know yesterday I said Canary Wharf was interesting (in the context of its history rather than its current state) and that I got some photos - I didnt necessarily mean they were interesting photos.

Canary Wharf

Having some great weather over here at the moment. Decided to head out to Canary Wharf today as I am trying to venture to more places in London that I havent been to. Interesting area - though it would have been more so a hundred years ago ... Walked back from Canary Wharf to Tower Bridge along the north bank of the Thams, stopping at a pub along the way for a sneaky pint. Got a few photos that I will post later once flickr starts accepting uploads again - it seems to be broken,

Got the tickets from some f****d up bloke in Camden Town.

Sweet. Just picked up a couple of tickets to go see Jarvis, as in Mr Jarvis Cocker. He is doing a solo show in November @ Koko in support of a new solo album. Sadly the tickets were actually from ticketmaster ....

Take Me Out

Just got back from seeing Franz Ferdinand play at the Kentish Town Forum. Absolutely brilliant gig. Second to last song there were three guys playing on one drum kit drumming up quite the frenzy. Awesome. Its been a good week for music ....

V Festival (aka My First Radiohead Gig)

Headed up to the V Festival in Chelmsford yesterday. Luckily the rain held off until the last song of the night and it turned out to be a fun day. Strangely, after being quite excited about the line up when I bought the tickets, there didnt seem to be that many bands I wanted to see! I got to see a bit of Beck (didnt see much as have tickets to see him at a much smaller venue in a couple of weeks), The Go! Team (which were pretty cool) and a few other bands which were okay. The highlight of the day, by several orders of magnitude, were Radiohead. I have never seen them before so didnt really know what to expect. They were amazing - Thom Yorkes voice was in fine form. Incredible gig. Brilliant. You get the idea ....

Set list for those who are interested (stolen from ateaseweb.com)
01 Airbag
02 2+2=5
03 The National Anthem
04 My Iron Lung
05 You and Whose Army?
06 Bodysnatchers
07 The Bends
08 Nude ["That was an old bugger, this is a new bugger." Thom]
09 No Surprises
10 The Gloaming
11 Paranoid Android ["You can take your hoodie off Jonny." Thom]
12 All I Need
13 Pyramid Song ["Glad you can appreciate a good song." Thom]
14 Lucky
15 Just
16 Idioteque
17 Street Spirit

Encore 1:
18 A Wolf At The Door
19 There There
20 Karma Police
21 True Love Waits/Everything In Its Right Place

Encore 2:
22 Creep [Thom didn't play guitar]

TAR 10

The Amazing Race Season 10 starts the day before my birthday - isnt that nice of them ...

Keepin The Blog Moving ...

Expect Filler

Okay, not great photos but I got sick of the front page of my blog ....

New Nikon DSLR

It appears that there is a new Nikon DSLR set to be announced in 16 days .. 10 hours ... 20 minutes ... Should be interesting .... 10.2mp. Sweet.

Garden Rescue

After a few months of neglect A and I decided it was time to reclaim the backyard. Since winter the garden of the house next door has been the source of a rampant creeper which had taken over most of our backyard, making it almost impossible to even open the back door. Enough was enough. We headed off to B&Q to buy some hedge shears (where we spotted an actor from the Bill ... ). Back to the house and then 6 full garbage bags later we had our garden back. At which point it was time for a PIMMS or two ... even though it was actually raining - Not that I can complain about the weather. Has been a "heatwave" over here the past week = 30+ degrees ! Nice.

It's A Shame About Ray

Went and saw the Lemonheads last night at an outdoor gig at Somerset House in London. Perfect weather for it - has been about 30 degrees in London which makes for great evenings for outdoor concerts ! Played all the usual suspects. Only disappointment was the one song encore, Rudderless. Grrr. Whats with that. Support were Sleepy Jackson which was a cool surpise. Last place I saw them was the Grosvenor in Perth. Am also off to see them tommorow night. Should be great.

Kensal Green Cemetery II

Some more photos from yesterdays trip to Kensal Green Cemetery. See the rest here.

Kensal Green Cemetery

Spent this afternoon wandering around Kensal Green Cemetery taking some photos. I know that doesn't sound like everyones idea of a fun Saturday, but I needed some Photoshop fodder and after seeing some cool photos on flickr, I decided to head up there for a look. Kensal Green Cemetery was created in 1832 but the earliest gravestone I saw was late 1840s. A few famous people are buried there, but the only names I recognised were Charles Babbage and Wilkie Collins. Anyway, here are are a couple of my favorite photos so far. See the rest as a slideshow here.


That angel is pretty damn scary ...

Greece

After a few rather hectic holidays A & I decided it was time for a relaxing one that didnt involve repacking backpacks every second day or crossing endless sights of the tourist checklist, so we headed off to the Greek island of Mykonos to sit on a beach for a week. It was amazing - beautiful clear water and nice warm weather. Very relaxing - just what I needed. Also managed to get some culture on the way home, dropping in on the Acropolis in Athens. To be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment but that was probably partially to do with it being hot weather and the last day of the holiday !! Photo Slideshow

Saving You From Limbo

Rest assured I have not "fallen into the murky depths of the Thames", as one concerned reader inquired, although it has been tempting as this weekend has been pretty damn hot. Have just got back from a week in Greece where the main activity was lying on the beach - made a nice change from the old backpacking routine of unpacking/repacking every couple of days. Anyway will post photos soon and will try and get back to some semi-regular posting