Quelle Horreur!
Bizarrely today I got to go to Paris for the day for work. Literally, for the day. Leaving at 7 in the morning on the Eurostar train and arriving back at half ten in the evening. The weather was gorgeuous but unfortunately I was in a meeting for most of the day. We did get a quick tour by car of the city centre before heading back to the train station. I have been to Paris before, albeit over ten years ago. I didn't remember how impressive the city centre was though - perhaps it helped that this time it was in the warm spring sunshine rather than the cold winter of Christmas '96 !!
It's Been A While ...
Over a month since the last post, but hey, I've been busy - mainly with work. A lot of late nights and deadlines. All the usual fun stuff.
Some exciting news on the gig front - I managed to snaffle tickets for one of REM's "rehearsal" shows in Dublin in early July. Should be interesting - more info here.
And, even more exciting, I got a ticket to Glastonbury. Armed with my laptop and PC side by side I managed to get a ticket after about half an hour of timeouts and busy pages. The whole festival sold out in about an hour and a half. I can't wait. It means I get to see Arcade Fire for the third time this year (Last gig at Brixton was probably the best gig I have ever been too. period.) and, at last, I get to see bjork !!
And as if that wasnt enough good news - I went to the Walthamstow dogs Saturday night and managed to make enough winnings to pay for my pints. The satisfaction !
Some exciting news on the gig front - I managed to snaffle tickets for one of REM's "rehearsal" shows in Dublin in early July. Should be interesting - more info here.
And, even more exciting, I got a ticket to Glastonbury. Armed with my laptop and PC side by side I managed to get a ticket after about half an hour of timeouts and busy pages. The whole festival sold out in about an hour and a half. I can't wait. It means I get to see Arcade Fire for the third time this year (Last gig at Brixton was probably the best gig I have ever been too. period.) and, at last, I get to see bjork !!
And as if that wasnt enough good news - I went to the Walthamstow dogs Saturday night and managed to make enough winnings to pay for my pints. The satisfaction !
This Life Revisited
I posted a few weeks back some photos of the building where I thought This Life was filmed. Well I finally got a copy of This Life and DVD and took a screen capture showing Egg and Millie walking up to the house. The building in the background (with the red van outside) is where I work. Cool huh ?
Aaaaaargh .. Windows You Suck
Aaaaargh ... there is nothing like doing a couple of hours work and then succumbing to the Windows blue screen of death ... without saving first of course. Lady, can I borrow your mac ....
And now a shot from my visit to the Natural History Museum on Sunday as part of a Flickr Scavenger Hunt. That Earth thing is seriously weird.
And now a shot from my visit to the Natural History Museum on Sunday as part of a Flickr Scavenger Hunt. That Earth thing is seriously weird.
My London Photo Map
Just killed an hour putting all my photos from London on a Flickr map. Kind of cool - check it out here. Just a shame they dont put them all on one page ....
Heavy Snow Foreast For London
Starting 3am tomorrow morning through to lunch time. Up to 10cm. Considering that 2cm a couple of weeks ago caused train havoc it should be interesting. But its okay because ....
"Transport for London said it had 72 people, 34 lorries, three quad bikes and 4,000 tonnes of salt on standby to grit the 580km of main roads in the capital. The mountains of salt, located at seven depots, are enough for 15 days of bad weather. " (source)
Thank god for the quad bikes, otherwise we would be doomed !!!
You gotta love some of the headlines
And for a reality check, someones rather amusing view on the "chaos" caused by the 2cm we had a fortnight ago.
Anyway ... hopefully it will bring some good photo opps. The only question now is ... where !!
"Transport for London said it had 72 people, 34 lorries, three quad bikes and 4,000 tonnes of salt on standby to grit the 580km of main roads in the capital. The mountains of salt, located at seven depots, are enough for 15 days of bad weather. " (source)
Thank god for the quad bikes, otherwise we would be doomed !!!
You gotta love some of the headlines
UK faces chaos as snow hits
7 INCHES OF SNOW TO PARALYSE UK
Motorists urged not to travel in snow
County primed for icy blast
Snow set to cost economy £400m
Winter's heaviest snow heading in
7 INCHES OF SNOW TO PARALYSE UK
Motorists urged not to travel in snow
County primed for icy blast
Snow set to cost economy £400m
Winter's heaviest snow heading in
And for a reality check, someones rather amusing view on the "chaos" caused by the 2cm we had a fortnight ago.
Anyway ... hopefully it will bring some good photo opps. The only question now is ... where !!
Arcade Fire
Went to see Arcade Fire play at the Porchester Hall last night. Awesome gig. A lot of the songs they played were off their unyet released album - Neon Bible. Fortunately I had had a chance to listen to a few of them already so it wasnt totally new. The band are brilliant both on and off stage - the final song, Wake Up, of the encore was performed acoustically right in the middle of the audience, about two metres from where I was standing. Brilliant. Cant wait to see them again in Brixton in March.
This Life
Around Christmas time they screened a reunion special of This Life on tv. The media hype ahead of the reunion special piqued my nostlagic interest and I hired a couple of DVDs of the old series. Still very cool - Anna is by far the best ! Anyway I work in Southwark and I knew that the series was filmed in Southwark somewhere. After watching some of the old episodes I thought that the row of houses opposite my bus stop for work looked very familiar. Turns out that that was where they used to film This Life - how cool is that. Will take a photo tomorrow and post it ....
Take A Deep Breath ...
After constantly running out of hard drive space on my laptop I bit the bullet and copied all 24 GB of my photos from my laptop onto an external drive and then made another backup onto my main PCs hard drive. And then I hit delete ...
Happy Australia Day
Not quite here yet - but to those folks in Oz where the action is at - "Happy Australia Day". Enjoy the fireworks knocking back a Little Creatures or two.
More Snow Photos ...
No. No more snow this morning - a couple of photos taken out the bus window on my way to work yesterday morning. (Okay - I admit - the snow doesn't make that much difference - any excuse for a shot of Battersea Power Station ...)
Snow In London
Woke up this morning to find snow on the ground outside (after doing a double check when I heard it on the radio first.) It was very cool - even after having spent a winter in Toronto I still love snow in the city - makes everything nice and clean. Sadly, it didnt last long and most of it was gone by the time I got to work.
Anyway, here are a couple of quick snaps before I headed to work.
Anyway, here are a couple of quick snaps before I headed to work.
Well its been another long wait between posts. Thought I would at least make a post to get the rather morbid cemetery photos of the top of the page !!!
Have been at home sick the last couple of days .... starting to get cabin fever. Should be fine to head back in tomorrow though - nothing too serious.
Have decided to get serious about selling some of my photos to pay off my camera gear, so started to read up on "serious" image processing. I had no idea it was so complicated. I thought I knew a fair bit about levels and histograms and white balance etc but there seems to be a helluva lot more I dont. Lashed out and bought a color profiler for my monitors - bought the Monaco OPTIX XR. Just after I placed the order I read on the 'net it was being discontinued. Oh well. Think it was delivered to work today so should get to play with it tomorrow.
One last question ... why does photoshop vary soooo much in price depending on where you live. Especially considering you can download it. Here are the different prices converted to Oz dollars. Go figure. Anyway - its too damned expensive in any currency -think I will stick with elements and some decent raw workflow software.
US : US$649 (~A$820)
UK : #569.88 (~$A1425)
OZ : A$1125
Escape To Cornwall
Caught the train down to Truro, in Cornwall, on the Friday before New Years' Eve to catch up with a friend of A's who lives in Perranporth. Had a great relaxing time touring around a bit, despite the cold wind and rain. Spent the stroke of midnight of New Years standing at the edge of the beach watching fireworks. A bit of a different New Years day at the beach to what I am used to - can't remember too many people wandering around in gum boots and waterproofs in Oz!
St Michael's Mount, Cornwall
St Ives, Cornwall
Perranporth Beach, Cornwall on New Years Day
St Michael's Mount, Cornwall
St Ives, Cornwall
Perranporth Beach, Cornwall on New Years Day
Back To Work
Aaaaaargh - why do holidays go sooooo quickly. Back to work today. Had a great Christmas break, spending Christmas with A's folks and then down to Cornwall for New Years. Which makes today so much harder. Anyway - hope you all had good holidays and if it is your first day back today as well, you have my sympathy !!
Holidays
I have been on holidays for the past two days, having not used up enough of my holiday leave during the year I've been forced to finish up two days earlier than the usual Christmas break. Which is fine by me. Has been nice mooching around for a couple of days while everyone else is still at work. The weather over here has got cold all of a sudden, with the temperature hovering around zero, and a blanket of fog causing chaos at Heathrow. Many European flights being cancelled so I am glad I hadn't booked to go anywhere. One upside to the fog though is that it gives some great photo ops, which I made the most of today while heading in to town to do some last minute shopping.
Bragging Rights
After the Jarvis gig on Saturday night, Sunday offered up another gig of an old favourite of mine - Billy Bragg. The gig was out at Hackney Empire which is a great venue - apart from it being quite hard to get to by public transport. Well, okay, fair enough - getting there was fine. It was just when trying to get home I took the wrong bus and ended up at the end of a bus route outside a hospital in the middle of who knows where. That combined with missing the last tube, night buses and then the night bus breaking down made for a bit of a extended trip home. Anyway, enough of that ....
Billy was in fine form - opening with Milkman of Human Kindness and finishing up with A13 Trunk Road To The Sea (joined by Wiggy on stage) - with a great mix of tunes in the middle and the usual banter.
L : Hackney Empire R : Billy and Wiggy playing A13
Billy was in fine form - opening with Milkman of Human Kindness and finishing up with A13 Trunk Road To The Sea (joined by Wiggy on stage) - with a great mix of tunes in the middle and the usual banter.
L : Hackney Empire R : Billy and Wiggy playing A13
Jarvis - Take 2
It has been a while since the last post- I have been a busy boy. Last Saturday headed up to Camden to see Jarvis play at the Roundhouse. Another brilliant gig, with a bit more crowd banter than the previous one. Played all new stuff and a couple of covers - no Space Oddity this time though. I wasn't very close so no photos this time - you'll have to take my ticket as evidence. If you don't have the new album you really should get it. Be nice - buy it for someone for Christmas .....And now for my first youtube post - Jarvis Cocker's new film clip - pretty funny.
10 Years Ago Today ...
- after finishing my University exams - I flew to Europe for 6 weeks travelling around with a bunch of guys from Uni. Where that 10 years went I am not so sure. Scary.
Deja Vu
Just after I posted the previous entry - I realised I had already banged on about early sunsets in this blog - so I searched my blog for "sunset" and found this entry "At Home Sick". Just over a year ago I had been at home sick and complaining about the sun setting early too. Deja vu indeed. No random python posts last year though ....
Photo Exibition : In The Face of History
Went to the "In the Face of History - European Photographers in the 20th Century" photo exhibtion at the Barbican yesterday. Interesting collection of images - most of the photographers I had never heard of though. Well worth a look. The Barbican itself is quite interesting - it managed to top a poll of Londons ugliest buildings - its like a massive warren of brown bricks and cement.
Anyway - I took a few photos below. The first one was taken a bit after four in the afternoon (the EXIF is wrong - I need to set the time on my camera). As you can see it is already dark. Sunset is just before 4pm at the moment - giving about 8 hours of daylight. I bet the Australian readers among you are feeling pretty smug right now. Summer. hrrumph.
Anyway - I took a few photos below. The first one was taken a bit after four in the afternoon (the EXIF is wrong - I need to set the time on my camera). As you can see it is already dark. Sunset is just before 4pm at the moment - giving about 8 hours of daylight. I bet the Australian readers among you are feeling pretty smug right now. Summer. hrrumph.
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