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 ...)

Out the Bedroom Window

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.

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

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

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.