Behold the mysteries of the Great Pyramid revealed!
French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin (I wonder if he is related to the famous 19th century magician Robert Houdin, who later inspired the stage name for Harry Houdini?) claims to have solved the mystery of how the Great Pyramid of Cheops was built - he has a 3-D simulation available online (although you may need a plug-in to make it work and it takes ages to load), which will walk you through the theory or also allow you to 'free navigate' the 3-D reconstruction. There's even a little Second Life-style animated person (presumably a virtual Monsieur Houdin) who walks on to narrate the theory part. Fascinating stuff.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
My sweet Lord
Christians in the US are pissed off (again), this time about a six foot sculpture of Jesus on the cross made out of milk chocolate. Presumably they would be even more offended if it was made from dark chocolate. I find it highly amusing that the Catholic church is especially offended by the idea of a sweet chocolate Jesus you can eat, since the centre of their faith is transubstantiation, where they believe literally - not symbolically, but literally - that the communion wafer and wine become the real body of Jesus as is it administered to the faithful. So why the problem with a choccy Jesus? Surely it would tastes better than a dry wafer?!?! I think the Catholic church in American should bless the statue, then when the gallery show ends they take the now consecrated choccy saviour, have a special mass and eat it!
Before believers start condemning me to the recently re-stoked fires of Hell that the Popenfurher was blistering on about like some medieval idiot last week, think about it, I am just trying to help. The church is always complaining they can't attract new people, especially younger folks, to services, so surely a consecrated chocolate Jesus is just the thing? I mean you ain't gonna win friends with crap wine and dry wafer! If you went to a friend's soiree and all they offered was piss-poor wine and dry wafers you'd think they were a lousy host, so why is the Holy Host so bad? Come on, at least offer some dip with those wafers! Hey, Father, can I have some gaucamole or spicy bean pate to go with the Host, please? And what about a nice Shiraz to wash it down with? I mean, really, make a bloody effort! "oh, monsignor, with this ferrero rocher Jesus you are really spoiling us!"
Christians in the US are pissed off (again), this time about a six foot sculpture of Jesus on the cross made out of milk chocolate. Presumably they would be even more offended if it was made from dark chocolate. I find it highly amusing that the Catholic church is especially offended by the idea of a sweet chocolate Jesus you can eat, since the centre of their faith is transubstantiation, where they believe literally - not symbolically, but literally - that the communion wafer and wine become the real body of Jesus as is it administered to the faithful. So why the problem with a choccy Jesus? Surely it would tastes better than a dry wafer?!?! I think the Catholic church in American should bless the statue, then when the gallery show ends they take the now consecrated choccy saviour, have a special mass and eat it!
Before believers start condemning me to the recently re-stoked fires of Hell that the Popenfurher was blistering on about like some medieval idiot last week, think about it, I am just trying to help. The church is always complaining they can't attract new people, especially younger folks, to services, so surely a consecrated chocolate Jesus is just the thing? I mean you ain't gonna win friends with crap wine and dry wafer! If you went to a friend's soiree and all they offered was piss-poor wine and dry wafers you'd think they were a lousy host, so why is the Holy Host so bad? Come on, at least offer some dip with those wafers! Hey, Father, can I have some gaucamole or spicy bean pate to go with the Host, please? And what about a nice Shiraz to wash it down with? I mean, really, make a bloody effort! "oh, monsignor, with this ferrero rocher Jesus you are really spoiling us!"
The man doth protest too much
No, really, he has an official Guinness Book of World Records entry for most political protests in one day! Who am I talking about? One of my comedy heroes, Mark Thomas; Radio 4 has his show available to listen to on the BBC site detailing how he decided to play with the dreadful law that freedom-curbing git Blair passed to try and make it harder for citizens to stage lawful protests in and around Parliament and Whitehall. As Mark points out a friend of his was arrested while enjoying a picnic because some heavy handed plod decided she was making a protest and hadn't gotten police approval beforehand. No, I am having a picnic, she replies, pointing to the food, blanket on the grass etc. Ah yes, but your cake has 'peace' written on icing on it, that makes it a form of protest. Yes, in the French revolution Marie Antoinette was famously (if mistakenly) said to 'let them eat cake', while in Blair's police state you can get nicked for eating cake near the House of Shame.
That said some of the coppers in this come across as equally pissed off at having to enforce a clearly bonkers law as Mark increasingly makes a fool of it - one senior officer who has to pass the requests for demos in the area comes in to see him when his constable passes to him Mark's latest demo - calling for said senior officer to be sacked because of his role in enforcing this law. In he comes, looks at Mark, laughs and says "that's bloody brilliant." I do like Mark Thomas, he does that great thing of mixing comedy and politics effectively, exposing ludicrous laws and corrupt politicians and dodgy dealings with humour. Caught him at the Edinburgh Festival before and he is even better live. One of the few things better than seeing someone 'sticking it to the man' is someone using humour to humiliate the man while he does it. God bless satire, our last and best hope for freedom and a good, sharp pole for sticking it to the man.
No, really, he has an official Guinness Book of World Records entry for most political protests in one day! Who am I talking about? One of my comedy heroes, Mark Thomas; Radio 4 has his show available to listen to on the BBC site detailing how he decided to play with the dreadful law that freedom-curbing git Blair passed to try and make it harder for citizens to stage lawful protests in and around Parliament and Whitehall. As Mark points out a friend of his was arrested while enjoying a picnic because some heavy handed plod decided she was making a protest and hadn't gotten police approval beforehand. No, I am having a picnic, she replies, pointing to the food, blanket on the grass etc. Ah yes, but your cake has 'peace' written on icing on it, that makes it a form of protest. Yes, in the French revolution Marie Antoinette was famously (if mistakenly) said to 'let them eat cake', while in Blair's police state you can get nicked for eating cake near the House of Shame.
That said some of the coppers in this come across as equally pissed off at having to enforce a clearly bonkers law as Mark increasingly makes a fool of it - one senior officer who has to pass the requests for demos in the area comes in to see him when his constable passes to him Mark's latest demo - calling for said senior officer to be sacked because of his role in enforcing this law. In he comes, looks at Mark, laughs and says "that's bloody brilliant." I do like Mark Thomas, he does that great thing of mixing comedy and politics effectively, exposing ludicrous laws and corrupt politicians and dodgy dealings with humour. Caught him at the Edinburgh Festival before and he is even better live. One of the few things better than seeing someone 'sticking it to the man' is someone using humour to humiliate the man while he does it. God bless satire, our last and best hope for freedom and a good, sharp pole for sticking it to the man.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Hunting
How quickly a gently snoozing cat can go from being curled up sleepily on the sofa to manic hunting mode; a moth got into the flat and went fluttering past the candles. Cassie's eyes snap open and she pounces, from rest to leaping into the air after the moth in seconds, a little urban tiger stalking her little jungle. Does that make her a 'tiger moth' :-) ?
How quickly a gently snoozing cat can go from being curled up sleepily on the sofa to manic hunting mode; a moth got into the flat and went fluttering past the candles. Cassie's eyes snap open and she pounces, from rest to leaping into the air after the moth in seconds, a little urban tiger stalking her little jungle. Does that make her a 'tiger moth' :-) ?
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Flickr
I've enjoying posting small photographs here and on my Fotolog, so I decided it was about time I set up a basic Flickr account so I could upload more images and try to group them together (Fotolog is great, but the free version is limited to one a day - I do like the way friends on there interact though), so now we have the Woolamaloo Gazette on Flickr! I've uploaded a bunch of pics today, some of which have been on here before, but I'm going to hopefully add a bunch more as I go along.
I've enjoying posting small photographs here and on my Fotolog, so I decided it was about time I set up a basic Flickr account so I could upload more images and try to group them together (Fotolog is great, but the free version is limited to one a day - I do like the way friends on there interact though), so now we have the Woolamaloo Gazette on Flickr! I've uploaded a bunch of pics today, some of which have been on here before, but I'm going to hopefully add a bunch more as I go along.
Npower and the freedom of the press
Following up from me on my high horse blogging last week about energy company Npower bulldozing its way through both the environment, local opinion and the freedoms of speech and the press, here's a proper link to the Channel 4 item I mentioned, with a link to the report and a blog entry by Alex Thomson on Npower's (ab)use of the law and their sinister, masked security goons to overturn basic democratic freedoms at Radley Lakes.
Following up from me on my high horse blogging last week about energy company Npower bulldozing its way through both the environment, local opinion and the freedoms of speech and the press, here's a proper link to the Channel 4 item I mentioned, with a link to the report and a blog entry by Alex Thomson on Npower's (ab)use of the law and their sinister, masked security goons to overturn basic democratic freedoms at Radley Lakes.
"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."
Frederick Douglass
Douglass may be known to some of you already; for many years his writings have continued to be published by the likes of Penguin Classics and still read more than a century after he died. Frederick Douglass was a slave, who used the small amount of reading and writing he was taught to educate himself further, then to begin to elucidate upon that most despicable of institutions, slavery. Douglass did not confine himself only to the plight of the African slave in America (and other lands), he spoke eloquently and with passion on the inequalities between poor and rich and men and women (in an era where even a rich, white wife was essentially the property of the husband). He was a confidant of President Abraham Lincoln and was pressed by the mourners at his memorial to speak, which, reluctantly he finally agreed to, speaking unprepared and off the cuff he moved the mourners to tears and gained a standing ovation; it is said Lincoln's wife was so moved she passed to Douglass the president's favourite walking stick as a keepsake.
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, one of those sadly rare moments where morality, public will and politics all came together to do something good. Soon the British would go from being some of the most efficient at running this diabolical trade to an almost missionary zeal in preventing it, with the sight of a Royal Navy man'o'war something slave ships feared to see as the fleet enforced this law. It is a good time to consider not only our shared history but how that history still informs today. Centuries before this point a Spanish monk pleaded with the crown that the Conquistadors in the New World not treat the natives as animals and slaves because, regardless of their faith a true Christian would still percieve them as children of God and therefore to be treated as equal with anyone else of any colour or creed. The Spanish crown was more interested in exploiting those natives and their land, but the monk's enlightened words never went away.
Sadly slavery in one form or another has existed for most of human history; even the Cradle of Democracy itself, the Classical Athens of Pericles, the culture most Western nations like to say they draw upon for the basis of their modern, enlightened societies, saw nothing wrong in slavery (and of treating women as second class citizens either). The Spartans who are celebrated in the new film 300 could only run their warrior society by subjugating an entire race, the Helots (which did cause other Greeks to squirm a bit - enslaving barbarians was one thing, but enslaving other Greeks seemed a bit off; the hypocrisy of this notion was lost on the ancients).
Look around your home city today; look at some of the grand buildings in Glasgow and Bristol and London and wonder - how many of these splendid buildings we take as part of our great historical heritage were built with money earned from the slave trade? Or take America, with that remarkable Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal." Alas many of the signatories to that document were happy to own slaves; the Land of the Free was born on the back of whips and iron shackles. A century on from the American Abolition and ordinary folks like Rosa Parks still had to fight for the simple right to sit down on a bus.
(image of a French slaver ship taken from the archive run by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities)
How much did the idea that you could enslave another because they weren't really as human as you poison societies and leave us the evil bequest of racism, discrimination and hatred that plague us to this day? And far from a Western condition how many African tribes made large amounts of money happily capturing and selling their fellow Africans to white slavers? How many Arab merchants carried on the trade? Watching an interview on the news today I found myself in rare agreement with a journalist from the Catholic Herald when he commented that slavery had, sadly, been going on for so much of our history that we were all, every one of us, in all likelihood the descendants at some point of slaves - and slave traders. Push far back enough... Now there's a thought, and not a terribly pleasant one; certainly makes you think about that awfully jingoistic dirge "Rule Britannia" where the line proudly proclaims "Britons, never, ever, ever shall be slaves..."
And today? Yes, we may have this awful trade finally abolished in most of the world - remarkable given how many millennia it has been around, outlasting empires and entire civilisations - but the legacy of it is still there, in the way different people are treated differently even in modern, Western societies. It still poisons us. When you see others as different it it too easy a step to then consider them lesser, inferior. When you start thinking that way you walk into hate and bigotry which shackles all of us as effectively as the iron slave collar. It leads into thinking of others as less than human. It leads to discrimination, hatred, violence, slavery and even to the death camp. That's where that sort of hatred takes us, make no mistake and let no shouting, red-faced BNP bigot telling you "there ain't no black in the Union Jack" and that all our ills are caused by 'immigrants' (including those 'immigrants' born and raised here) tell you otherwise.
No, we are not all the same in a pluralistic society, but the way we treat one another should be the same. And yet skin colour, wealth, nationality, gender, even accent still dictate how we are treated. We still have chains to break; I don't know if we ever can break every last link in those chains, human nature being what it is, but it is still a fine thing to try.
Frederick Douglass
Douglass may be known to some of you already; for many years his writings have continued to be published by the likes of Penguin Classics and still read more than a century after he died. Frederick Douglass was a slave, who used the small amount of reading and writing he was taught to educate himself further, then to begin to elucidate upon that most despicable of institutions, slavery. Douglass did not confine himself only to the plight of the African slave in America (and other lands), he spoke eloquently and with passion on the inequalities between poor and rich and men and women (in an era where even a rich, white wife was essentially the property of the husband). He was a confidant of President Abraham Lincoln and was pressed by the mourners at his memorial to speak, which, reluctantly he finally agreed to, speaking unprepared and off the cuff he moved the mourners to tears and gained a standing ovation; it is said Lincoln's wife was so moved she passed to Douglass the president's favourite walking stick as a keepsake.
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, one of those sadly rare moments where morality, public will and politics all came together to do something good. Soon the British would go from being some of the most efficient at running this diabolical trade to an almost missionary zeal in preventing it, with the sight of a Royal Navy man'o'war something slave ships feared to see as the fleet enforced this law. It is a good time to consider not only our shared history but how that history still informs today. Centuries before this point a Spanish monk pleaded with the crown that the Conquistadors in the New World not treat the natives as animals and slaves because, regardless of their faith a true Christian would still percieve them as children of God and therefore to be treated as equal with anyone else of any colour or creed. The Spanish crown was more interested in exploiting those natives and their land, but the monk's enlightened words never went away.
Sadly slavery in one form or another has existed for most of human history; even the Cradle of Democracy itself, the Classical Athens of Pericles, the culture most Western nations like to say they draw upon for the basis of their modern, enlightened societies, saw nothing wrong in slavery (and of treating women as second class citizens either). The Spartans who are celebrated in the new film 300 could only run their warrior society by subjugating an entire race, the Helots (which did cause other Greeks to squirm a bit - enslaving barbarians was one thing, but enslaving other Greeks seemed a bit off; the hypocrisy of this notion was lost on the ancients).
Look around your home city today; look at some of the grand buildings in Glasgow and Bristol and London and wonder - how many of these splendid buildings we take as part of our great historical heritage were built with money earned from the slave trade? Or take America, with that remarkable Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal." Alas many of the signatories to that document were happy to own slaves; the Land of the Free was born on the back of whips and iron shackles. A century on from the American Abolition and ordinary folks like Rosa Parks still had to fight for the simple right to sit down on a bus.
(image of a French slaver ship taken from the archive run by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities)
How much did the idea that you could enslave another because they weren't really as human as you poison societies and leave us the evil bequest of racism, discrimination and hatred that plague us to this day? And far from a Western condition how many African tribes made large amounts of money happily capturing and selling their fellow Africans to white slavers? How many Arab merchants carried on the trade? Watching an interview on the news today I found myself in rare agreement with a journalist from the Catholic Herald when he commented that slavery had, sadly, been going on for so much of our history that we were all, every one of us, in all likelihood the descendants at some point of slaves - and slave traders. Push far back enough... Now there's a thought, and not a terribly pleasant one; certainly makes you think about that awfully jingoistic dirge "Rule Britannia" where the line proudly proclaims "Britons, never, ever, ever shall be slaves..."
And today? Yes, we may have this awful trade finally abolished in most of the world - remarkable given how many millennia it has been around, outlasting empires and entire civilisations - but the legacy of it is still there, in the way different people are treated differently even in modern, Western societies. It still poisons us. When you see others as different it it too easy a step to then consider them lesser, inferior. When you start thinking that way you walk into hate and bigotry which shackles all of us as effectively as the iron slave collar. It leads into thinking of others as less than human. It leads to discrimination, hatred, violence, slavery and even to the death camp. That's where that sort of hatred takes us, make no mistake and let no shouting, red-faced BNP bigot telling you "there ain't no black in the Union Jack" and that all our ills are caused by 'immigrants' (including those 'immigrants' born and raised here) tell you otherwise.
No, we are not all the same in a pluralistic society, but the way we treat one another should be the same. And yet skin colour, wealth, nationality, gender, even accent still dictate how we are treated. We still have chains to break; I don't know if we ever can break every last link in those chains, human nature being what it is, but it is still a fine thing to try.
McJob
McDonald's, probably one of the firm's most often satirised (and with good reason I think) has stuck its corporate foot in its greasy mouth once again, demanding that the term 'McJob' is removed from dictionaries such as the world-famous Oxford English Dictionary because it is derogatory and inaccurate. Obviously it isn't enough for McD's to use its corporate muscle on business practises, on farmers round the world, on protestors and others, it now wants to exert a measure of control over language. The OED and other dictionaries incorporate some modern phrases and colloquialisms when they become common in everyday speech for a decent period of time, hence why phrases like 'McJob' are included or 'switch' also gets included not only as a description of a debit card but also a verb, since the name of the car has become the verb to describe the action, "I'll switch that, please."
Launching this attempt is amazingly ill-advised - for starters it now raises the profile of the phrase the a far higher level than before, which rather defeats the purpose right away (that's like firing someone because their blog allegedly brought the company into disrepute, thus launching the story into the world media and a far vaster audience - big companies seem utterly clueless about handling their image). The second is that by showing little understanding - or even a certain level of humour - over this McDonald's has confirmed that the popular satirical image of them held by many critics (including me) is that they are an awful, monolithic, homogenous corporate entity that strictly enforces their ideology on staff but attempts to do so on the public. I suspect most people will more than likely side with a respected and loved institution of knowledge like the OED over Mickey D's anyday of the week, although I also suspect most folks will be bemused at the whole thing and wondering why McD's decided to make a mountain out a molehill that most folks never thought twice about before (way to go McDonald's PR folks, you are really good at your jobs!).
Personally I haven't been into one of this god-awful company's dreadful eateries since the mid 80s. Long before I turned veggie and had nothing to eat there (I believe that's different now, but back then it wasn't) I stopped going to this lot because during Mayfest in Glasgow in the 80s there was a play by a small indy theatre group which satirised the fast food business. No company was named or identified, it was simply a play about life as a worker in a fast food joint, but McDonald's threatened this tiny troupe with legal action because, as the world's most successful fast food stuff-yer-gob emporiums they argued audiences would assume it was about them. I think had it gone to court they would have been laughed out since they had no grounds (they were never identified, no company was) and also because of a little thing called freedom of speech, but the small indy theatre group didn't have a crew of high priced lawyers like McD's and couldn't afford to contest it - the play was pulled before the festival. It was a shameless and despicable bit of big biz bullying and I've never eaten in their stores (I refuse to call them restaurants) since then and never will. What I've learned over the years since in newspaper reports and books like Fast Food Nation have confirmed to me that they are not a business I'd ever give my money to and this latest pathetic attempt to control image adds to that feeling. Unfortunately masses of people will happily stuff themselves and their kids with their food several times a week, so they probably aren't too bothered about me boycotting them for the last 20 years.
McDonald's, probably one of the firm's most often satirised (and with good reason I think) has stuck its corporate foot in its greasy mouth once again, demanding that the term 'McJob' is removed from dictionaries such as the world-famous Oxford English Dictionary because it is derogatory and inaccurate. Obviously it isn't enough for McD's to use its corporate muscle on business practises, on farmers round the world, on protestors and others, it now wants to exert a measure of control over language. The OED and other dictionaries incorporate some modern phrases and colloquialisms when they become common in everyday speech for a decent period of time, hence why phrases like 'McJob' are included or 'switch' also gets included not only as a description of a debit card but also a verb, since the name of the car has become the verb to describe the action, "I'll switch that, please."
Launching this attempt is amazingly ill-advised - for starters it now raises the profile of the phrase the a far higher level than before, which rather defeats the purpose right away (that's like firing someone because their blog allegedly brought the company into disrepute, thus launching the story into the world media and a far vaster audience - big companies seem utterly clueless about handling their image). The second is that by showing little understanding - or even a certain level of humour - over this McDonald's has confirmed that the popular satirical image of them held by many critics (including me) is that they are an awful, monolithic, homogenous corporate entity that strictly enforces their ideology on staff but attempts to do so on the public. I suspect most people will more than likely side with a respected and loved institution of knowledge like the OED over Mickey D's anyday of the week, although I also suspect most folks will be bemused at the whole thing and wondering why McD's decided to make a mountain out a molehill that most folks never thought twice about before (way to go McDonald's PR folks, you are really good at your jobs!).
Personally I haven't been into one of this god-awful company's dreadful eateries since the mid 80s. Long before I turned veggie and had nothing to eat there (I believe that's different now, but back then it wasn't) I stopped going to this lot because during Mayfest in Glasgow in the 80s there was a play by a small indy theatre group which satirised the fast food business. No company was named or identified, it was simply a play about life as a worker in a fast food joint, but McDonald's threatened this tiny troupe with legal action because, as the world's most successful fast food stuff-yer-gob emporiums they argued audiences would assume it was about them. I think had it gone to court they would have been laughed out since they had no grounds (they were never identified, no company was) and also because of a little thing called freedom of speech, but the small indy theatre group didn't have a crew of high priced lawyers like McD's and couldn't afford to contest it - the play was pulled before the festival. It was a shameless and despicable bit of big biz bullying and I've never eaten in their stores (I refuse to call them restaurants) since then and never will. What I've learned over the years since in newspaper reports and books like Fast Food Nation have confirmed to me that they are not a business I'd ever give my money to and this latest pathetic attempt to control image adds to that feeling. Unfortunately masses of people will happily stuff themselves and their kids with their food several times a week, so they probably aren't too bothered about me boycotting them for the last 20 years.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
"My god, it's full of stars..."
I looked at this astonishing image from the Hubble Space Telescope on the BBC's site today of the red giant V838 Monocerotis, a star which exploded in 2002 and the first phrase that leapt to mind was astronaut Dave Bowman from Clarke and Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey - "my god, it's full of stars."
Dammit, why don't we have those holidays in space I was promised as a kid yet?!?! I want to see these things for myself.
I looked at this astonishing image from the Hubble Space Telescope on the BBC's site today of the red giant V838 Monocerotis, a star which exploded in 2002 and the first phrase that leapt to mind was astronaut Dave Bowman from Clarke and Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey - "my god, it's full of stars."
Dammit, why don't we have those holidays in space I was promised as a kid yet?!?! I want to see these things for myself.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
New badge
Hard to believe that's three months gone by already, but I got a reminder from the Blood Donor Clinic that I could come back in any time from the middle of this week on (used to be every 6 months but now you can give 3 times a year), so after work tonight I went in on the way home to donate a pint of finest quality Celtic red, organically grown and with just a hint of peaty aftertaste from all those single malts. And I got a badge!!! Heheheh. No, really, I got a nice little pin and certificate when the nurse noticed this was my tenth pint since I started donating regularly again and apparently they like to mark this so you get a special pin and wee certificate, which was quite nice. All this and some Tunnock's Teacakes afterwards.
I'd given blood a few times back when I was at college and got into the habit again a couple of years ago when The Bookstore Who Shall Not Be Named fired me. The job centre I had to go to (you have to go not to the closest one to you but to one designated to deal with names beginning with certain letters for some daft reason known only to the civil service) was close to my old student flat and near the Blood Donor Clinic. I was feeling really down - I'd never been out of work in my life and the job centre was so depressing it made me feel worse, so I decided to do something positive and went to the clinic right afterwards and started donating again. Felt good to do something positive when I was feeling so far down and later when my uncle was declining it felt pretty good too - I knew my blood probably wasn't being used to treat him but it was going to help someone who needed it, kind of my own little up yours to Death, and it did make me feel a little better.
I'd lost count since I started going back and I found it slightly amusing tonight when I realised I had now given more blood than is actually circulating in my body at any one time. Two or three donations ago though I was sitting next to a much older man who was on to something like his 34th donation, so got a long way to go to match that. I would have taken my hat off to him, but being indoors I had already removed it. Anyway, once again I'd urge anyone who has seen the adverts asking for more donors and thought, I should do that but not gotten around to it to give it a go - it doesn't hurt, doesn't take very long, it's very easy and most centres have late evenings and weekends so you can fit it in around your work (and you get choccy biccies afterwards!). Go on, give it a bash - it might be a stranger you help, it could be someone you love, but it will help someone for very little effort on your part. And you'll feel better for doing it. Donation levels are very low, so why not do something about it? I mean if I can do it then a lot of other folks could too. You can find details on the Transfusion Service's site.
Hard to believe that's three months gone by already, but I got a reminder from the Blood Donor Clinic that I could come back in any time from the middle of this week on (used to be every 6 months but now you can give 3 times a year), so after work tonight I went in on the way home to donate a pint of finest quality Celtic red, organically grown and with just a hint of peaty aftertaste from all those single malts. And I got a badge!!! Heheheh. No, really, I got a nice little pin and certificate when the nurse noticed this was my tenth pint since I started donating regularly again and apparently they like to mark this so you get a special pin and wee certificate, which was quite nice. All this and some Tunnock's Teacakes afterwards.
I'd given blood a few times back when I was at college and got into the habit again a couple of years ago when The Bookstore Who Shall Not Be Named fired me. The job centre I had to go to (you have to go not to the closest one to you but to one designated to deal with names beginning with certain letters for some daft reason known only to the civil service) was close to my old student flat and near the Blood Donor Clinic. I was feeling really down - I'd never been out of work in my life and the job centre was so depressing it made me feel worse, so I decided to do something positive and went to the clinic right afterwards and started donating again. Felt good to do something positive when I was feeling so far down and later when my uncle was declining it felt pretty good too - I knew my blood probably wasn't being used to treat him but it was going to help someone who needed it, kind of my own little up yours to Death, and it did make me feel a little better.
I'd lost count since I started going back and I found it slightly amusing tonight when I realised I had now given more blood than is actually circulating in my body at any one time. Two or three donations ago though I was sitting next to a much older man who was on to something like his 34th donation, so got a long way to go to match that. I would have taken my hat off to him, but being indoors I had already removed it. Anyway, once again I'd urge anyone who has seen the adverts asking for more donors and thought, I should do that but not gotten around to it to give it a go - it doesn't hurt, doesn't take very long, it's very easy and most centres have late evenings and weekends so you can fit it in around your work (and you get choccy biccies afterwards!). Go on, give it a bash - it might be a stranger you help, it could be someone you love, but it will help someone for very little effort on your part. And you'll feel better for doing it. Donation levels are very low, so why not do something about it? I mean if I can do it then a lot of other folks could too. You can find details on the Transfusion Service's site.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Who was that masked man?
Channel 4 News tonight carried the frankly scary story of masked private security guards garbed in black, black masks raised over their faces to create an anonymous and threatening-looking appearance, going up to British citizens on a public road in a public space along with a pinstripe suited lawyer and violating their freedom of speech, freedom of expression and clearly, to my mind, violating the freedom of the press. Locals in the area of Radley Lakes have objected to shameless energy company Npower chopping down trees and planning to use the nearby lake for a spot to dump waste ash from their power station in. Many locals have objected and been ignored, a study into the impact is under way but Npower are just carrying right on with their task while it goes on so the study will be academic. Worst of all these creep security guards who look like a cross between something from a totalitarian regime and a masked Old West bandits and the corporate lawyer have persuaded a judge to grant an injunction, based largely on some anonymous witness statements with no actual cross examination which has banned even accredited journalists from taking photographs in public spaces to cover issues which are clearly in the public interest based on little to no proper evidence.
Masked, black suited, menacing looking guards who spent most of the C4 report denying citizens and reporters their basic rights while happily filming everyone present themselves; the injunction the foolish judge gave the company on their flimsy 'evidence' (supposedly to protect staff, although so far no-one has proved there was any real threat) is so vague that apparently just watching the report means the viewer is also injuncted! How ridiculous is that? I'm glad C4 News reported on this because I hadn't heard of this until tonight and from what the usually highly dependable C4 team said other large corporations are using similar dirty tricks with corporate lawyers who would be at home working for Monty Burns and their own private rent-a-cops around the UK. I find myself getting irate quite often at some reports on the news, but this made me bloody furious, that some large company would not only ignore their local residents but then use a mixture of lawyer's tricks and sinister, masked security to violate one of our most precious freedoms. Npower, you are utterly despicable and shameless. Editorial Photographers UK has some more on this story.
Channel 4 News tonight carried the frankly scary story of masked private security guards garbed in black, black masks raised over their faces to create an anonymous and threatening-looking appearance, going up to British citizens on a public road in a public space along with a pinstripe suited lawyer and violating their freedom of speech, freedom of expression and clearly, to my mind, violating the freedom of the press. Locals in the area of Radley Lakes have objected to shameless energy company Npower chopping down trees and planning to use the nearby lake for a spot to dump waste ash from their power station in. Many locals have objected and been ignored, a study into the impact is under way but Npower are just carrying right on with their task while it goes on so the study will be academic. Worst of all these creep security guards who look like a cross between something from a totalitarian regime and a masked Old West bandits and the corporate lawyer have persuaded a judge to grant an injunction, based largely on some anonymous witness statements with no actual cross examination which has banned even accredited journalists from taking photographs in public spaces to cover issues which are clearly in the public interest based on little to no proper evidence.
Masked, black suited, menacing looking guards who spent most of the C4 report denying citizens and reporters their basic rights while happily filming everyone present themselves; the injunction the foolish judge gave the company on their flimsy 'evidence' (supposedly to protect staff, although so far no-one has proved there was any real threat) is so vague that apparently just watching the report means the viewer is also injuncted! How ridiculous is that? I'm glad C4 News reported on this because I hadn't heard of this until tonight and from what the usually highly dependable C4 team said other large corporations are using similar dirty tricks with corporate lawyers who would be at home working for Monty Burns and their own private rent-a-cops around the UK. I find myself getting irate quite often at some reports on the news, but this made me bloody furious, that some large company would not only ignore their local residents but then use a mixture of lawyer's tricks and sinister, masked security to violate one of our most precious freedoms. Npower, you are utterly despicable and shameless. Editorial Photographers UK has some more on this story.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Warning - nuclear missiles can seriously damage your health
The church of Saint John's on Princes Street often features some thought-provoking and satirical paintings commenting on current events. Since recent weeks have seen ministerial resignations from both the Edinburgh and London parliaments over the controversial plans by Blair to start work on a successor to the Trident nuclear missile submarines it seemed and appropriate time to post this. I find it bitterly humorous the way Blair pushes this through parliament - only with the help of Tory votes since so many of his own party refused to back it, my how proud he must be - to plan for a new force of nuclear missile submarines while at the same time attacking Iran and Korea for their attempts to build atomic weapons and after dragging us into an illegal war which was supposedly to destroy Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Just who the hell are we supposed to 'deter' with this force? With British soldiers being injured or killed due to shortages of helicopters and personal armour shouldn't we spend some money there instead of billions on new nukes which do nothing? Has anyone explained to the Prime Minister that the Cold War ended some time ago and the world situation is a bit different today?
The church of Saint John's on Princes Street often features some thought-provoking and satirical paintings commenting on current events. Since recent weeks have seen ministerial resignations from both the Edinburgh and London parliaments over the controversial plans by Blair to start work on a successor to the Trident nuclear missile submarines it seemed and appropriate time to post this. I find it bitterly humorous the way Blair pushes this through parliament - only with the help of Tory votes since so many of his own party refused to back it, my how proud he must be - to plan for a new force of nuclear missile submarines while at the same time attacking Iran and Korea for their attempts to build atomic weapons and after dragging us into an illegal war which was supposedly to destroy Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Just who the hell are we supposed to 'deter' with this force? With British soldiers being injured or killed due to shortages of helicopters and personal armour shouldn't we spend some money there instead of billions on new nukes which do nothing? Has anyone explained to the Prime Minister that the Cold War ended some time ago and the world situation is a bit different today?
Saint Giles
Saltires fluttering in the spring breeze on the Royal Mile, with Saint Giles cathedral behind (no, not named after Buffy's Watcher!).
The entrance to Saint Giles; a few feet from this spot some brass panels mark the spot on the cobblestones where the gallows used to stand. Across the nearby junction is Deacon Brodie's pub, named for the respectable citizen who by night led a different life which led to him dancing on air at the end of a rope on those same gallows - gallows, ironically, he had helped raise the money for as part of his 'respectable' front.
Love the different creatures on each of these small pillars flanking the entrance.
I like the winged creature on the lower right hand - looks almost Babylonian in style.
Barber-shop quartet, Medieval style!
Inside Saint Giles; the sun was coming in the stained glass window behind me, dappling the stone pillars in shifting patterns of different coloured light.
Bright spring sunlight spilled in this day, illuminating the stained glass, the vaulted ceiling and the stonework beautifully. Being Edinburgh there were tourists around, of course, but not too many just yet, so I could enjoy that very special sense of peace you get in old, stone kirks. Hard to believe in this quiet spot the opening shots of the Civil War would be fired in the form of stools hurled by outraged women as the ministers tried to read from a book of common prayer imposed by Charles I. A few months later dreadful combat would burn throughout Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales, ripping apart the kingdom and costing a king his head. How little could those women have realised what a storm was to break over the land.
The Lion Rampant and the Unicorn, ancient insignia of the kingdom of Scotland.
The pipes of the organ shining in a burst of light from a high window.
The marble effigy of Montrose.
This tiny side-chapel is an especially peaceful spot, reserved for quiet contemplation and remembrance, where you can light a candle for someone you lost.
Not entirely sure, but it looks as if the bearded preacher in the upper right is meant to be that well-known barrel of laughs, John Knox, quite possibly the Scotsman most in need of a spliff and a shag to chill him out than any other in history. I had to stop taking pictures at this point, unfortunately, as an attendant came up and told me I needed to purchase a special permit to take photos, which seems a bit odd to me since this is supposed to be the national high kirk; I wonder if tourists can pay in their own currency and have their money changed right there in the temple :-)? It was only a few pounds but I objected to the principle; still, at least the staff were polite about it unlike the ignorant vergers of Saint Paul's in London and, unlike the rude and unfriendly Saint Paul's they do allow some photographs, but really, that can't be terribly conducive to tourism in a major site in the capital, can it?
Saltires fluttering in the spring breeze on the Royal Mile, with Saint Giles cathedral behind (no, not named after Buffy's Watcher!).
The entrance to Saint Giles; a few feet from this spot some brass panels mark the spot on the cobblestones where the gallows used to stand. Across the nearby junction is Deacon Brodie's pub, named for the respectable citizen who by night led a different life which led to him dancing on air at the end of a rope on those same gallows - gallows, ironically, he had helped raise the money for as part of his 'respectable' front.
Love the different creatures on each of these small pillars flanking the entrance.
I like the winged creature on the lower right hand - looks almost Babylonian in style.
Barber-shop quartet, Medieval style!
Inside Saint Giles; the sun was coming in the stained glass window behind me, dappling the stone pillars in shifting patterns of different coloured light.
Bright spring sunlight spilled in this day, illuminating the stained glass, the vaulted ceiling and the stonework beautifully. Being Edinburgh there were tourists around, of course, but not too many just yet, so I could enjoy that very special sense of peace you get in old, stone kirks. Hard to believe in this quiet spot the opening shots of the Civil War would be fired in the form of stools hurled by outraged women as the ministers tried to read from a book of common prayer imposed by Charles I. A few months later dreadful combat would burn throughout Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales, ripping apart the kingdom and costing a king his head. How little could those women have realised what a storm was to break over the land.
The Lion Rampant and the Unicorn, ancient insignia of the kingdom of Scotland.
The pipes of the organ shining in a burst of light from a high window.
The marble effigy of Montrose.
This tiny side-chapel is an especially peaceful spot, reserved for quiet contemplation and remembrance, where you can light a candle for someone you lost.
Not entirely sure, but it looks as if the bearded preacher in the upper right is meant to be that well-known barrel of laughs, John Knox, quite possibly the Scotsman most in need of a spliff and a shag to chill him out than any other in history. I had to stop taking pictures at this point, unfortunately, as an attendant came up and told me I needed to purchase a special permit to take photos, which seems a bit odd to me since this is supposed to be the national high kirk; I wonder if tourists can pay in their own currency and have their money changed right there in the temple :-)? It was only a few pounds but I objected to the principle; still, at least the staff were polite about it unlike the ignorant vergers of Saint Paul's in London and, unlike the rude and unfriendly Saint Paul's they do allow some photographs, but really, that can't be terribly conducive to tourism in a major site in the capital, can it?
Millennium Clock
Since my new camera has better video and sound functions than the old one I shot some footage of the Millennium Clock going through its paces in Edinburgh's Royal Museum. Shame I had to seriously reduce the quality so it would suit YouTube, but since it is a free video hosting service I suppose I shouldn't complain.
Since my new camera has better video and sound functions than the old one I shot some footage of the Millennium Clock going through its paces in Edinburgh's Royal Museum. Shame I had to seriously reduce the quality so it would suit YouTube, but since it is a free video hosting service I suppose I shouldn't complain.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Blue Peter
What is the world coming to when you can't even trust Blue Peter to play straight and true with viewers? With the other recent scandals over TV premium rate phone-in shows I've mostly been of the opinion that, yeah, TV companies are blatantly ripping off viewers, but anyone stupid enough to keep calling at those rates frankly is a fecking idiot and deserves to be ripped off. But Blue Peter? Okay, they weren't making tons of money from a premium rate number, but they did lie to millions of kids. They have now apologised for an 'error of judgement' but I think the fact they kept quiet about this since November until a member of the public exposed it means an apology is pretty weak and rather insincere - only apologising after not only lying to kids but keeping your mouth shut about it like it never happened for months until you are caught out is something else again and an apology doesn't cut it. I think the only way Blue Peter can make it up to a traumatised nation is to have presenter Konnie Huq in the tiniest bikini in the world doing an episode on jello-wrestling.
What is the world coming to when you can't even trust Blue Peter to play straight and true with viewers? With the other recent scandals over TV premium rate phone-in shows I've mostly been of the opinion that, yeah, TV companies are blatantly ripping off viewers, but anyone stupid enough to keep calling at those rates frankly is a fecking idiot and deserves to be ripped off. But Blue Peter? Okay, they weren't making tons of money from a premium rate number, but they did lie to millions of kids. They have now apologised for an 'error of judgement' but I think the fact they kept quiet about this since November until a member of the public exposed it means an apology is pretty weak and rather insincere - only apologising after not only lying to kids but keeping your mouth shut about it like it never happened for months until you are caught out is something else again and an apology doesn't cut it. I think the only way Blue Peter can make it up to a traumatised nation is to have presenter Konnie Huq in the tiniest bikini in the world doing an episode on jello-wrestling.
Ivor the Engine
Walking round the Museum of Scotland with my mum and dad the other day we heard a noise, "scccchhhhhhhhhhhhh tpppptt, scccchhhhhhhhh tpppptt...". Looking down from the gallery we were on we realised an engineer had started up the gleaming steam engine on the floor below us. This modern addition to the Royal Museum in Edinburgh takes you round Scotland's history in chronological order, starting at the entrance with Pictish standing stones, taking you through the early Kingdom of the Scots and on. By the upper floors you reach the Industrial Revolution - there is a large stone building actually inside the museum housing a Newcomen style 'atmospheric engine' (the earliest steam engines, before James Watt improved them) with the wooden beam projecting from the stonework. Beside this is this working steam engine; when we passed it we noticed the can of oil and the dirty rag on top and realised someone had been working on it - of course we hoped we'd see the engineering curator come back and start her up.
While walking round the next floor up we heard the distinctive sound of a steam engine 'breathing', a dragon of iron and copper brought to life by a fusion of fire and water. Like a lot of little boys I loved steam engines as a kid; I well remember my mum and dad taking me round the steam museum at Carnforth in Lancashire, which I loved - not only did you see restored engines you saw great, rusted hulks awaiting rescue which, if you came back a couple of years later, would have been lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt by volunteers to working condition, freshly painted, brass and copper pipes gleaming.
Even better it was a living museum, not just a static exhibition; the engines would be fired, build up their steam and come to life, so much better than seeing just a static exhibit. I guess there are some things you never grow out of and I still love steam engines; the intricate movements, the harnessing of water and fire to create something new in history after thousands of years of humans relying on their own muscle or beasts of burden. Quaint today, perhaps, but world-changing, cutting edge technology at the time and still, to my mind, carrying themselves with an elegance and style no modern, more efficient engine ever quite captures; in their own peculiar way steam engines seem to be alive in a way no other machine is, breathing, pumping oil and water like blood and with a heart of fire and iron; our most mythical creature, the dragon, born anew from imagination and engineering.
Walking round the Museum of Scotland with my mum and dad the other day we heard a noise, "scccchhhhhhhhhhhhh tpppptt, scccchhhhhhhhh tpppptt...". Looking down from the gallery we were on we realised an engineer had started up the gleaming steam engine on the floor below us. This modern addition to the Royal Museum in Edinburgh takes you round Scotland's history in chronological order, starting at the entrance with Pictish standing stones, taking you through the early Kingdom of the Scots and on. By the upper floors you reach the Industrial Revolution - there is a large stone building actually inside the museum housing a Newcomen style 'atmospheric engine' (the earliest steam engines, before James Watt improved them) with the wooden beam projecting from the stonework. Beside this is this working steam engine; when we passed it we noticed the can of oil and the dirty rag on top and realised someone had been working on it - of course we hoped we'd see the engineering curator come back and start her up.
While walking round the next floor up we heard the distinctive sound of a steam engine 'breathing', a dragon of iron and copper brought to life by a fusion of fire and water. Like a lot of little boys I loved steam engines as a kid; I well remember my mum and dad taking me round the steam museum at Carnforth in Lancashire, which I loved - not only did you see restored engines you saw great, rusted hulks awaiting rescue which, if you came back a couple of years later, would have been lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt by volunteers to working condition, freshly painted, brass and copper pipes gleaming.
Even better it was a living museum, not just a static exhibition; the engines would be fired, build up their steam and come to life, so much better than seeing just a static exhibit. I guess there are some things you never grow out of and I still love steam engines; the intricate movements, the harnessing of water and fire to create something new in history after thousands of years of humans relying on their own muscle or beasts of burden. Quaint today, perhaps, but world-changing, cutting edge technology at the time and still, to my mind, carrying themselves with an elegance and style no modern, more efficient engine ever quite captures; in their own peculiar way steam engines seem to be alive in a way no other machine is, breathing, pumping oil and water like blood and with a heart of fire and iron; our most mythical creature, the dragon, born anew from imagination and engineering.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
300 previewed
I was approached by some of the folks who were organising previews of the upcoming film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300, which tells as historically rather loose but nonetheless brilliant tale of the 300 Spartan warriors who held off the entire army of the Persian Empire for several days while the other Greek city states rallied their forces (Athens would later repeat this victory at sea, crushing a huge Persian fleet). It is one of history's great turning points; had the Greeks been ground under the Persian heel our modern world would be very different, without that Classical flowering of philosophy, scientific enquiry, writing and democracy (how ironic a bunch of military zealots who ran their brutal society by enslaving an entire people to do their work while they trained would be so instrumental in this).
Unfortunately for me the preview was at the BFI's Imax screen in London, so I couldn't really make it, but a couple of my colleagues at FPI based in London were only too happy to go along and have now posted a preview up on the FPI blog. I can't wait to see it myself - historical inaccuracies aside it looks quite amazing, being shot in a manner very similar to Sin City (another Frank Miller comics adaptation), matching the comics original almost panel for panel, shot against green screens with very few actual sets to give it an incredibly stylised look. And I'm sure the girls (and some of the boys) are going to enjoy 300 incredibly fit men who spend a lot of screen time almost naked and oiled :-)
I was approached by some of the folks who were organising previews of the upcoming film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300, which tells as historically rather loose but nonetheless brilliant tale of the 300 Spartan warriors who held off the entire army of the Persian Empire for several days while the other Greek city states rallied their forces (Athens would later repeat this victory at sea, crushing a huge Persian fleet). It is one of history's great turning points; had the Greeks been ground under the Persian heel our modern world would be very different, without that Classical flowering of philosophy, scientific enquiry, writing and democracy (how ironic a bunch of military zealots who ran their brutal society by enslaving an entire people to do their work while they trained would be so instrumental in this).
Unfortunately for me the preview was at the BFI's Imax screen in London, so I couldn't really make it, but a couple of my colleagues at FPI based in London were only too happy to go along and have now posted a preview up on the FPI blog. I can't wait to see it myself - historical inaccuracies aside it looks quite amazing, being shot in a manner very similar to Sin City (another Frank Miller comics adaptation), matching the comics original almost panel for panel, shot against green screens with very few actual sets to give it an incredibly stylised look. And I'm sure the girls (and some of the boys) are going to enjoy 300 incredibly fit men who spend a lot of screen time almost naked and oiled :-)
Pixar - 20 Years of animation exhibition
The National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street, Edinburgh is currently hosting Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. Celebrating the most famous exponents of big-screen computer animation the exhibition, as the name suggests, has material from just over two decades of Pixar studios work, from the very early shorts such as the animated desk lamp (still seen on the studio’s logo at the start of each movie) through Toy Story, Finding Nemo, the Incredibles and Cars right up to concept art for the forthcoming Ratatouille.
As you would expect for this sort of exhibition there is a lot of art on display, from preliminary sketches and storyboards (looking at the storyboards makes it clear these animators were all big comics fans as kids and never grew out of it - good on them!) through to finished works, models and maquettes (there is a cracking series of head models from the Incredibles, each showing a different expression on Bob’s face, like exhibits from the world championship of gurning) and short videos showing of different aspects of Pixar’s work. There’s a chance to get interactive with touch-screen presentations allowing more access to behind-the-scenes looks and information while the museum is running a whole series of related events, from lectures on animation, showing Pixar movies every Sunday in the lecture hall, storytelling events inspired by Pixar movies, showcases on Scottish animation and more (the NMS site has the full details).
While all of this was highly enjoyable the standouts of this exhibition are two mini-shows. The first is shown on a wide screen. Actually, a very, very wide screen. A wiiiiiiiiiiiiiddddddddeeee screen. The sort you have to swivel your head from left to right to follow movement. It takes the form of a wall of art from the Pixar crew; as the camera pans across the gallery wall (some of the pictures static, others animated) it periodically moves into a particular picture and the viewers are treated to a new animation playing on themes from previous Pixar movies, all on this enormously long screen; it is big and it is clever.
Oh but there is even better than this. There is the Pixar Zoetrope. You remember those wonderful Victorian toys for children, where a form of lampshade has a series of slightly different characters printed on it, with slots cut - spin the shade around a lamp and the figure ‘moves’. We’re all familiar with it - it is after all the basic principle all animation, from the most basic outline drawings through Ray Harryhausen stop-motion creatures right up to the most cutting edge CGI cartoons work, a sequence of still images flickering before our eyes at 24 frames per second until our eyes and our brains interpret them as movement and static cartoons come to life. Pixar’s Zoetrope is designed to explain this basic concept in the most incredibly fun way - it makes a cartoon come to life in 3-D. Victor Navone, an animator for Pixar, has a short looped video of the Zoetrope taken from the earlier show at MoMA in NYC, although, as he says himself, it simply doesn't do justice to how it actually looks when seen with your own eyes, nose pressed up against the glass.
In a darkened room there is a large, glass case. Inside the case is a very large disc, with several rings of models of different Toy Story characters, all in slightly different poses. The disc begins to rotate slowly, speeding up; as the characters being to blur before your eyes as the frequency increases a strobe light comes on and suddenly something magical happens - the models come to life. Seriously, the illusions is utterly magical; Woody rides his horse, Buzz Lightyear balances on a ball while endless toy soldiers leap from the top of the bucket o’ soldiers, parachutes blossoming into life as they leap down. It is for all the world like having a real, solid, 3-D cartoon right there in front of you. The fact the exhibition shows you exactly how it works doesn’t detract from the magic in any way whatsoever; frankly it was worth the price of the exhibition for the Zoetrope alone. It did what a lot of the finest animation does - it makes you feel as if you are five years old again, standing with big wide eyes open in wonder. I’m still buzzing from watching it (actually watching it several times, it kept drawing me back); I saw this with my dad, the man who ensured I was raised as a Seventh Day Cartoonist, and we both emerged with smiles like Cheshire Cats to my patiently waiting mum (with them both retired now and me off this week we were having a very nice day together, food, drink and sightseeing).
The Edinburgh exhibition runs through until May 28th at the National Museum of Scotland, along with a raft of supporting events, with full details to be found on the NMS site. And when you come out one of the other exhibitions on at the National Museum currently boasts a huge, shiny rocket straight out of a Dan Dare comic (a Black Knight rocket from the aborted 50s British space programme, which is pretty much the same as Dan Dare in so many ways) and an actual NASA Gemini space capsule on loan from the Smithsonian.
The National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street, Edinburgh is currently hosting Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. Celebrating the most famous exponents of big-screen computer animation the exhibition, as the name suggests, has material from just over two decades of Pixar studios work, from the very early shorts such as the animated desk lamp (still seen on the studio’s logo at the start of each movie) through Toy Story, Finding Nemo, the Incredibles and Cars right up to concept art for the forthcoming Ratatouille.
As you would expect for this sort of exhibition there is a lot of art on display, from preliminary sketches and storyboards (looking at the storyboards makes it clear these animators were all big comics fans as kids and never grew out of it - good on them!) through to finished works, models and maquettes (there is a cracking series of head models from the Incredibles, each showing a different expression on Bob’s face, like exhibits from the world championship of gurning) and short videos showing of different aspects of Pixar’s work. There’s a chance to get interactive with touch-screen presentations allowing more access to behind-the-scenes looks and information while the museum is running a whole series of related events, from lectures on animation, showing Pixar movies every Sunday in the lecture hall, storytelling events inspired by Pixar movies, showcases on Scottish animation and more (the NMS site has the full details).
While all of this was highly enjoyable the standouts of this exhibition are two mini-shows. The first is shown on a wide screen. Actually, a very, very wide screen. A wiiiiiiiiiiiiiddddddddeeee screen. The sort you have to swivel your head from left to right to follow movement. It takes the form of a wall of art from the Pixar crew; as the camera pans across the gallery wall (some of the pictures static, others animated) it periodically moves into a particular picture and the viewers are treated to a new animation playing on themes from previous Pixar movies, all on this enormously long screen; it is big and it is clever.
Oh but there is even better than this. There is the Pixar Zoetrope. You remember those wonderful Victorian toys for children, where a form of lampshade has a series of slightly different characters printed on it, with slots cut - spin the shade around a lamp and the figure ‘moves’. We’re all familiar with it - it is after all the basic principle all animation, from the most basic outline drawings through Ray Harryhausen stop-motion creatures right up to the most cutting edge CGI cartoons work, a sequence of still images flickering before our eyes at 24 frames per second until our eyes and our brains interpret them as movement and static cartoons come to life. Pixar’s Zoetrope is designed to explain this basic concept in the most incredibly fun way - it makes a cartoon come to life in 3-D. Victor Navone, an animator for Pixar, has a short looped video of the Zoetrope taken from the earlier show at MoMA in NYC, although, as he says himself, it simply doesn't do justice to how it actually looks when seen with your own eyes, nose pressed up against the glass.
In a darkened room there is a large, glass case. Inside the case is a very large disc, with several rings of models of different Toy Story characters, all in slightly different poses. The disc begins to rotate slowly, speeding up; as the characters being to blur before your eyes as the frequency increases a strobe light comes on and suddenly something magical happens - the models come to life. Seriously, the illusions is utterly magical; Woody rides his horse, Buzz Lightyear balances on a ball while endless toy soldiers leap from the top of the bucket o’ soldiers, parachutes blossoming into life as they leap down. It is for all the world like having a real, solid, 3-D cartoon right there in front of you. The fact the exhibition shows you exactly how it works doesn’t detract from the magic in any way whatsoever; frankly it was worth the price of the exhibition for the Zoetrope alone. It did what a lot of the finest animation does - it makes you feel as if you are five years old again, standing with big wide eyes open in wonder. I’m still buzzing from watching it (actually watching it several times, it kept drawing me back); I saw this with my dad, the man who ensured I was raised as a Seventh Day Cartoonist, and we both emerged with smiles like Cheshire Cats to my patiently waiting mum (with them both retired now and me off this week we were having a very nice day together, food, drink and sightseeing).
The Edinburgh exhibition runs through until May 28th at the National Museum of Scotland, along with a raft of supporting events, with full details to be found on the NMS site. And when you come out one of the other exhibitions on at the National Museum currently boasts a huge, shiny rocket straight out of a Dan Dare comic (a Black Knight rocket from the aborted 50s British space programme, which is pretty much the same as Dan Dare in so many ways) and an actual NASA Gemini space capsule on loan from the Smithsonian.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Diagram prize
Each year the Bookseller run the Diagram prize, one of the more unusual literary awards; while many mainstream literary prizes can, if we're honest, be a bit up their own arse, the Diagram accepts nominations from booksellers and librarians for the daftest genuine title. This year's shortlist is out and comprises of (and bear in mind this is not me off on a mad make-up-something-silly jag, these are real books):
How Green were the Nazis? by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller
D. Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans by Roger De Boer, Harvey Francis Pitcher, and Alan Wilkinson
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification by Julian Montague
Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan by Robert Chenciner by Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and Alex Binnie
Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium edited by Robert J Anderson, Juliet A Brodie, Edvar Onsoyen and Alan T Critchley
Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence by David Benatar
Each year the Bookseller run the Diagram prize, one of the more unusual literary awards; while many mainstream literary prizes can, if we're honest, be a bit up their own arse, the Diagram accepts nominations from booksellers and librarians for the daftest genuine title. This year's shortlist is out and comprises of (and bear in mind this is not me off on a mad make-up-something-silly jag, these are real books):
How Green were the Nazis? by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller
D. Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans by Roger De Boer, Harvey Francis Pitcher, and Alan Wilkinson
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification by Julian Montague
Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan by Robert Chenciner by Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and Alex Binnie
Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium edited by Robert J Anderson, Juliet A Brodie, Edvar Onsoyen and Alan T Critchley
Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence by David Benatar
For the journey
A couple of weeks ago I was talking about the gorgeous animation for Lloyds TSB bank - it doesn't make me want to switch banks, but the animation is lovely, following a couple on their train journey which is also a compressed version of their life as they meet, fall in love, marry and have a child. The style of the animation from the looks of the long-nosed characters, tall skinny buildings and raised railway line is obviously influenced by the wonderful movie Les Triplettes de Belleville, which is not a bad animation to borrow from. There are a series of them, apparently, with the second running on TV now (these sorts of adverts are often the main source of income for struggling animators); YouTube has the first one up now:
Someone left a comment on the previous post on this subject (sorry there was no name on the comment I think) asking about the lovely music which goes along with the adverts. I did a bit of Googling and found on the Boosey and Hawkes (very famous musical name) that the music is a version of Eliza's Aria by Elena Kats-Chernin, composed for the ballet Wild Swans, based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen - according to the B&H site it will be getting a new release on CD along with other work including her Piano Concerto No 2 and Mythic. There's a link on the B&H site to where you can order the disc - I may pick that one up myself. Meantime someone else has uploaded the music to YouTube as well:
A couple of weeks ago I was talking about the gorgeous animation for Lloyds TSB bank - it doesn't make me want to switch banks, but the animation is lovely, following a couple on their train journey which is also a compressed version of their life as they meet, fall in love, marry and have a child. The style of the animation from the looks of the long-nosed characters, tall skinny buildings and raised railway line is obviously influenced by the wonderful movie Les Triplettes de Belleville, which is not a bad animation to borrow from. There are a series of them, apparently, with the second running on TV now (these sorts of adverts are often the main source of income for struggling animators); YouTube has the first one up now:
Someone left a comment on the previous post on this subject (sorry there was no name on the comment I think) asking about the lovely music which goes along with the adverts. I did a bit of Googling and found on the Boosey and Hawkes (very famous musical name) that the music is a version of Eliza's Aria by Elena Kats-Chernin, composed for the ballet Wild Swans, based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen - according to the B&H site it will be getting a new release on CD along with other work including her Piano Concerto No 2 and Mythic. There's a link on the B&H site to where you can order the disc - I may pick that one up myself. Meantime someone else has uploaded the music to YouTube as well:
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Walking in the glen
I went off with Gordon and Bruce the greyhound (with his head stuck out the car window as usual) to Roslyn, just outside Edinburgh, for a good wander around the woodland walk around the glen, then up to the remains of Roslyn Castle and finally a walk past Roslyn Chapel.
Starting from the carpark down in the glen, we crossed the river and started up the steep slopes. The greenery you can see all over the hillside is not grass - it's wild garlic, masses and masses of wild garlic. The entire area is virtually carpeted with garlic plants and even early in the year like now you can smell the pungent aroma - another month or two and it will be much stronger. There's more garlic here than every Italian and French restaurant in the whole of Edinburgh combined.
After walking up the steep, wooded slopes, ducking low branches and clambering over roots and moss-covered rocks and fallen trees we came to the bass of Roslyn Castle and decided to do a circuit. This is the approach to the stone bridge linking the road to the castle.
Looking up towards the bridge above us; this doesn't really do the sense of scale justice, it is a fair old drop from up there, then on the far side yet another drop down to a low river valley where you can see walls of stone eaten out by millennia of water erosion.
On the other side of the stone bridge, looking up; I love the way some of the base stones are just huge boulders with the edges trimmed by stonemasons, then higher up the structure is of more conventional stone blocks cut to shape. Looks several stories up on the left and you will see glass and curtains - this part is still occupied and we'll come round to it in a moment
Roslyn has quite a history, including being attacked by Oliver Cromwell; old warty face stabled his horses in nearby Roslyn Chapel to show his disregard, although at least he didn't destroy the chapel. Much further back Sir William Wallace has associations with the castle and further along the forest walk than we went today is Wallace's Cave. All across Scotland there are sites named for Wallace and associated with folk tales of our hero - I grew up near Wallace's Well on the outskirts of Glasgow and used to cycle to it, it's supposedly the spot where he was betrayed to the English and finally captured to meet a gruesome end. There are far fewer such places now, but they still number in their hundreds, probably a hangover from a pre-literate time when the common folk wanted to remember their hero and so named spots for them and associated them forever after with a tree, a rock, a cave, a well... It may also derive from a deeper, older Celtic heritage and the association of the hero with the land itself.
Reached the summit now and this looks very much like a lovely old Scottish rural cottage, doesn't it? Actually this is the top of the building you saw earlier - the back of this drops down several stories as you saw two pictures back; quite deceiving from this angle though, isn't it?
Another view of the still habited remains of the castle; between the location and the fact it is surrounded by great swathes of wild garlic growing all over the hill and glen it must be the single home most protected against vampire attack in the entire kingdom.
On top of the stone bridge pictured earlier, leading up to the remains of the castle.
Just walking past Roslyn Chapel, which as you can see is still covered in scaffolding and a temporary roof as it is repaired and renovated. As Wallace is associated with the nearby castle so the Bruce is with this building, with a stone carving within said to be a death mask of the greatest of King of Scots. Of course the Chapel is also associated with the Knights Templar, several of whom pledged their service to the Bruce and fought for him at Bannockburn in 1314, where a vastly outnumbered Scottish army shattered a vast, well-armed English army and secured the independence of the nation, changing the future shape of Great Britain as they did so, although they would not have known it at the time. Far distant ancestors of my own clan, the Gordons, also fought alongside Bruce at Bannockburn and this is thought to be where they started their rise to prominence in later Scotland, being granted extensive lands by the Bruce for their services.
Another view of Roslyn Chapel, covered in its repair structure. Somewhere deep within this small structure is said to lie the Holy Grail itself; certainly one of the functions on my new camera was set off today, the special function which lights up in the display to warn you that you are close to an ancient and mythological device (it also works on Arthur's sword and other ancient relics, but I don't use the function much). Seriously though, I have no idea if the Grail is buried within the Chapel at all (Dan Brown includes Roslyn in his pile of second-hand nonsense in the Da Vinci Code) but the carvings within it are of astonishing quality and intricacy.
It is also linked with another mystery, that of early visitors to what we now call America; the Sinclair family who were instrumental in building it were also known as sailors and they hired navigators to sail from the Orkneys westwards. Some local traditions from native tribes in Canada and eastern America tell of their visit, long before that idiot Columbus took a wrong turn. On the roof of the chapel is carved the 'bounty of God's Earth' and among the fruits and vegetables is a representation of the crop of maize, then unknown here, being a New World crop. Does it mean they made their voyage and came back? No-one knows for absolutely certain, although some circumstancial evidence leans in their favour; I'd like to think they did. Next to the chapel is a fine old house which used to be an inn, which saw visits from Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Boswell and Doctor Johnson and Dorothy and William Wordsworth. However, lest we get carried away with mythology, history and nostalgia, I loved this advert one of the local farmers had placed, cashing on on the Dan Brown associations while also pretty much showing what he thinks of it all:
I went off with Gordon and Bruce the greyhound (with his head stuck out the car window as usual) to Roslyn, just outside Edinburgh, for a good wander around the woodland walk around the glen, then up to the remains of Roslyn Castle and finally a walk past Roslyn Chapel.
Starting from the carpark down in the glen, we crossed the river and started up the steep slopes. The greenery you can see all over the hillside is not grass - it's wild garlic, masses and masses of wild garlic. The entire area is virtually carpeted with garlic plants and even early in the year like now you can smell the pungent aroma - another month or two and it will be much stronger. There's more garlic here than every Italian and French restaurant in the whole of Edinburgh combined.
After walking up the steep, wooded slopes, ducking low branches and clambering over roots and moss-covered rocks and fallen trees we came to the bass of Roslyn Castle and decided to do a circuit. This is the approach to the stone bridge linking the road to the castle.
Looking up towards the bridge above us; this doesn't really do the sense of scale justice, it is a fair old drop from up there, then on the far side yet another drop down to a low river valley where you can see walls of stone eaten out by millennia of water erosion.
On the other side of the stone bridge, looking up; I love the way some of the base stones are just huge boulders with the edges trimmed by stonemasons, then higher up the structure is of more conventional stone blocks cut to shape. Looks several stories up on the left and you will see glass and curtains - this part is still occupied and we'll come round to it in a moment
Roslyn has quite a history, including being attacked by Oliver Cromwell; old warty face stabled his horses in nearby Roslyn Chapel to show his disregard, although at least he didn't destroy the chapel. Much further back Sir William Wallace has associations with the castle and further along the forest walk than we went today is Wallace's Cave. All across Scotland there are sites named for Wallace and associated with folk tales of our hero - I grew up near Wallace's Well on the outskirts of Glasgow and used to cycle to it, it's supposedly the spot where he was betrayed to the English and finally captured to meet a gruesome end. There are far fewer such places now, but they still number in their hundreds, probably a hangover from a pre-literate time when the common folk wanted to remember their hero and so named spots for them and associated them forever after with a tree, a rock, a cave, a well... It may also derive from a deeper, older Celtic heritage and the association of the hero with the land itself.
Reached the summit now and this looks very much like a lovely old Scottish rural cottage, doesn't it? Actually this is the top of the building you saw earlier - the back of this drops down several stories as you saw two pictures back; quite deceiving from this angle though, isn't it?
Another view of the still habited remains of the castle; between the location and the fact it is surrounded by great swathes of wild garlic growing all over the hill and glen it must be the single home most protected against vampire attack in the entire kingdom.
On top of the stone bridge pictured earlier, leading up to the remains of the castle.
Just walking past Roslyn Chapel, which as you can see is still covered in scaffolding and a temporary roof as it is repaired and renovated. As Wallace is associated with the nearby castle so the Bruce is with this building, with a stone carving within said to be a death mask of the greatest of King of Scots. Of course the Chapel is also associated with the Knights Templar, several of whom pledged their service to the Bruce and fought for him at Bannockburn in 1314, where a vastly outnumbered Scottish army shattered a vast, well-armed English army and secured the independence of the nation, changing the future shape of Great Britain as they did so, although they would not have known it at the time. Far distant ancestors of my own clan, the Gordons, also fought alongside Bruce at Bannockburn and this is thought to be where they started their rise to prominence in later Scotland, being granted extensive lands by the Bruce for their services.
Another view of Roslyn Chapel, covered in its repair structure. Somewhere deep within this small structure is said to lie the Holy Grail itself; certainly one of the functions on my new camera was set off today, the special function which lights up in the display to warn you that you are close to an ancient and mythological device (it also works on Arthur's sword and other ancient relics, but I don't use the function much). Seriously though, I have no idea if the Grail is buried within the Chapel at all (Dan Brown includes Roslyn in his pile of second-hand nonsense in the Da Vinci Code) but the carvings within it are of astonishing quality and intricacy.
It is also linked with another mystery, that of early visitors to what we now call America; the Sinclair family who were instrumental in building it were also known as sailors and they hired navigators to sail from the Orkneys westwards. Some local traditions from native tribes in Canada and eastern America tell of their visit, long before that idiot Columbus took a wrong turn. On the roof of the chapel is carved the 'bounty of God's Earth' and among the fruits and vegetables is a representation of the crop of maize, then unknown here, being a New World crop. Does it mean they made their voyage and came back? No-one knows for absolutely certain, although some circumstancial evidence leans in their favour; I'd like to think they did. Next to the chapel is a fine old house which used to be an inn, which saw visits from Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Boswell and Doctor Johnson and Dorothy and William Wordsworth. However, lest we get carried away with mythology, history and nostalgia, I loved this advert one of the local farmers had placed, cashing on on the Dan Brown associations while also pretty much showing what he thinks of it all:
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Eruption
The BBC site had this astonishing photograph taken by the New Horizons space probe. This is Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, a world so large its collection of moons around it are like a miniature solar system (in fact it is reckoned if the gas giant Jupiter had been a bit bigger it would have reached the threshold to ignite the nuclear fires at its core and become a star, just as the sun did billions of years ago). Io is one of the Galilean satellites, one of the four larger moons first seen through an early telescope by one of my great heroes, Galileo, when he turned his new optical device on the king of planets. I've seen Jupiter through a large telescope at the University of Glasgow's observatory myself, in enough resolution to see the coloured bands and even the mighty, centuries-long storm of the Great Red Spot; on either side of Jupiter's glowing disc I saw two bright points shining like diamonds on black velvet and realised they were the moons Galileo had seen centuries before.
Io itself is a world which looks like an old-fashioned view of Hell, a surface covered in decaying yellows from sulphur, constantly reshaped by a continual series of volcanic eruptions as the enormous gravitational power of Jupiter twists the core of the little moon keeping it geologically active when most worlds that size would long have become inert, like our own moon. As well as tremendous gravitational tides the space between the moons and Jupiter is often filled with enormous amounts of high energy radiation - a beautiful but very inhospitable place; it increases my admiration for the skills of those who designed and operate these missions that these little probes can even function in such conditions. At the top of this image, almost on the terminator line separating dark from light, is an eruption from the volcano Tvashtar; this eruption is actually shooting out some 180 miles into space.
It reminds me of the triumphant Voyager missions years ago, when one woman noticed an anomaly on shots taken of Jupiter as the little probe left the system to continue its grand tour of our solar system (still the greatest voyage of discovery in human history to date). The data from those incredibly early computers was slow to process, even before taking into account the time taken to transmit that information to Earth over the vast distances. She noticed something strange and was at first unsure what she was seeing. Only slowly did she realise that one shot had, quite by accident, caught an eruption shooting right out into space from Io; a fluke shot and a chance find by that scientist to come across the first volcanic eruption humans had ever seen on another world. I'm just disappointed that all the promises of my childhood of holidays in space by the time the 2000s came around still hasn't come to pass. When I hear idiots complaining about the money being spent on space exploration and how it could be better spent on problems on Earth (that bloody Davina McCall was the latest, showing her incredible ignorance) it infuriates me. As a percentage of budgets we spend very little on this actually; don't demand cuts to exploration, cut the money on bloody massive weapons programmes, then we would have the budget for Earth bound problems like hunger and disease and to explore new worlds and learn more.
The BBC site had this astonishing photograph taken by the New Horizons space probe. This is Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, a world so large its collection of moons around it are like a miniature solar system (in fact it is reckoned if the gas giant Jupiter had been a bit bigger it would have reached the threshold to ignite the nuclear fires at its core and become a star, just as the sun did billions of years ago). Io is one of the Galilean satellites, one of the four larger moons first seen through an early telescope by one of my great heroes, Galileo, when he turned his new optical device on the king of planets. I've seen Jupiter through a large telescope at the University of Glasgow's observatory myself, in enough resolution to see the coloured bands and even the mighty, centuries-long storm of the Great Red Spot; on either side of Jupiter's glowing disc I saw two bright points shining like diamonds on black velvet and realised they were the moons Galileo had seen centuries before.
Io itself is a world which looks like an old-fashioned view of Hell, a surface covered in decaying yellows from sulphur, constantly reshaped by a continual series of volcanic eruptions as the enormous gravitational power of Jupiter twists the core of the little moon keeping it geologically active when most worlds that size would long have become inert, like our own moon. As well as tremendous gravitational tides the space between the moons and Jupiter is often filled with enormous amounts of high energy radiation - a beautiful but very inhospitable place; it increases my admiration for the skills of those who designed and operate these missions that these little probes can even function in such conditions. At the top of this image, almost on the terminator line separating dark from light, is an eruption from the volcano Tvashtar; this eruption is actually shooting out some 180 miles into space.
It reminds me of the triumphant Voyager missions years ago, when one woman noticed an anomaly on shots taken of Jupiter as the little probe left the system to continue its grand tour of our solar system (still the greatest voyage of discovery in human history to date). The data from those incredibly early computers was slow to process, even before taking into account the time taken to transmit that information to Earth over the vast distances. She noticed something strange and was at first unsure what she was seeing. Only slowly did she realise that one shot had, quite by accident, caught an eruption shooting right out into space from Io; a fluke shot and a chance find by that scientist to come across the first volcanic eruption humans had ever seen on another world. I'm just disappointed that all the promises of my childhood of holidays in space by the time the 2000s came around still hasn't come to pass. When I hear idiots complaining about the money being spent on space exploration and how it could be better spent on problems on Earth (that bloody Davina McCall was the latest, showing her incredible ignorance) it infuriates me. As a percentage of budgets we spend very little on this actually; don't demand cuts to exploration, cut the money on bloody massive weapons programmes, then we would have the budget for Earth bound problems like hunger and disease and to explore new worlds and learn more.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Unscheduled bus stop
As usual I had my nose buried in a book on the bus to work this morning and it took me a few minutes to realise that the bus hadn't actually moved for a while. Look up - hmmm, doesn't look good, all I can see are the roofs of other stationery buses. Several minutes go past and nothing moves; infuriatingly I am less than a a third of the way to work. Assuming the endless roadworks that have been screwing things up so often are in play once more I give up, get off this bus and find a pile of exasperated folks doing the same from a score of other trapped buses, start walking. By the time I reached the West End of Princes Street I realised that the traffic backed up to Haymarket I was stuck in was just one part of the jam - there was a bunch of fire engines and a hydraulic lift working on a crunched double decker right at a major junction, so in four different directions everything was stuffed (and of course I felt a bit guilty for cursing road works etc when it was actually an accident).
It turned out that the bus at the back of this pic I snapped as I walked past (the one with the crane arm above it) had been hit by a truck carrying a crane which had ripped right through the roof just two or three minutes before - couple of minutes later and it could have been the bus I was on; scary how quickly and simply the everyday trip can turn into an accident. Some people were injured, but fortunately no-one was killed; the fire brigade used the hydraulic lift to rescue some injured folks rather than trying to get them down the narrow bus stairs. I walked most of the way to work, my thinking now changed from "I left earlier than usual to get a good start for this, dammit???" to "gee, it is a lovely sunny morning and I ain't been harmed in an accident, life is actually good and hey, it was a nice morning for a walk anyway, eh?".
As usual I had my nose buried in a book on the bus to work this morning and it took me a few minutes to realise that the bus hadn't actually moved for a while. Look up - hmmm, doesn't look good, all I can see are the roofs of other stationery buses. Several minutes go past and nothing moves; infuriatingly I am less than a a third of the way to work. Assuming the endless roadworks that have been screwing things up so often are in play once more I give up, get off this bus and find a pile of exasperated folks doing the same from a score of other trapped buses, start walking. By the time I reached the West End of Princes Street I realised that the traffic backed up to Haymarket I was stuck in was just one part of the jam - there was a bunch of fire engines and a hydraulic lift working on a crunched double decker right at a major junction, so in four different directions everything was stuffed (and of course I felt a bit guilty for cursing road works etc when it was actually an accident).
It turned out that the bus at the back of this pic I snapped as I walked past (the one with the crane arm above it) had been hit by a truck carrying a crane which had ripped right through the roof just two or three minutes before - couple of minutes later and it could have been the bus I was on; scary how quickly and simply the everyday trip can turn into an accident. Some people were injured, but fortunately no-one was killed; the fire brigade used the hydraulic lift to rescue some injured folks rather than trying to get them down the narrow bus stairs. I walked most of the way to work, my thinking now changed from "I left earlier than usual to get a good start for this, dammit???" to "gee, it is a lovely sunny morning and I ain't been harmed in an accident, life is actually good and hey, it was a nice morning for a walk anyway, eh?".
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Bugs and moons and cats and cushions
I got totally floored towards the end of last week with what I presume was a bug; started as a bit of a headache, noticed it was a bit harder focussing on the computer screen at work, popped a couple of Anadin and didn't think too much of it till I got home, couple of hours later my arms and legs feel like lead and my head feels like a mix of cotton wool and space dust, so I crawl into bed ridiculously early. Cue very sleepless night waking up either roasting and drenched in sweat (I don't mind being sweaty in bed, but for the right reasons only) or shivering so badly I shook myself awake (very weird, don't remember the last time I shivered). And all through it weird, linking dreams where I seemed to be walking through scenes of classic black and white movies (I think I was looking for Louise Brooks but she proved as elusive in my confused dream state as she was to most in real life). Interestingly even when half awake the dreams kept running. Add in some nasty dizziness and fatigue and you have yourself a nasty bug that seemed to come out of nowhere; fine in the morning, feeling iffy in the afternoon, utterly screwed by evening.
Next morning it felt like a very bad hangover, the sort you wake up from and find you have the hangover plus you realise you are still a bit drunk and crashing around, stumbling with no co-ordination and still either too hot or too cold. Found out since then that a couple of my family got hit with the same thing from nowhere, so presumably there is a nasty virus going round (that will teach me to juggle those ducks on the canal). Still a bit tired and feel the odd little resurgence of it, but not too bad now; forced myself off with a mate for a very long walk (yes, with Bruce the greyhound too, all excited as ever when he sees us putting on jackets "oh boy, oh boy, we're going for a walk!!!") to try and get the blood circulating before going off to check on Dizzy while Mel is away visiting her cousin in Norway. Naturally Dizzy took advantage of me feeling a bit drained still today to curl up next to me and use bits of me as a pillow. And talking of pillows, I got one of my photos of Dizzy looking incredibly cute and slumbering in the sun on a rug out in the garden and had it printed onto a big cushion last year for Mel's birthday. I have been waiting patiently for her to curl her little furry form up next to it and stay there long enough for me to get a picture of her with it; naturally whenever I have seen her in front of it she has moved by the time I get the camera to take a snap, but after months and months of waiting I finally got that picture and here it is, Dizzy with the Dizzy cushion!
I also managed to get out for a little while on Saturday night and saw some of the lunar eclipse - amazingly we had a pretty clear sky for once in Scotland (poor Mel didn't in Norway, clouds spoiled the show). There was a reddish-pink tinge to the moon for a while, it was a fascinating sight, must have been terrifying to people in the pre-scientific period of history (which is most of it, really) - one of my Fotolog friends, Foxglove, has a cool image on her flog here. Would have been a great night for doing a virgin sacrifice, although the only Virgin I wanted to slice up on a pagan altar as the moon was swallowed by Those Who Cannot Be Named would be sodding Richard Branson's Virgin who have been busy posturing against Murdoch's Sky this week which is great for them but a real pisser for their customers who suddenly found out they'd lost access to a bunch of their favourite major shows literally overnight (thanks for the advance warning, Branson, you numpty).
One company blames the other of course, both give contradictory reasons why talks broke down, all I know is I was with Telewest for years and subscribed to them because it was the only way to see certain import shows. Branson's "we must be involved in every industry that exists" Virgin company takes over and a few weeks later the biggest entertainment channel is gone and a lot of folks will miss the next eps of their favourite shows this week while Murdoch and Branson engage in a pissing contest instead of looking after their customers, which is a poor way to run a service. I also notice that despite losing the biggest channel Virgin hasn't offered to cut my bill to reflect this and actually boasts they are offering us more choice through a programme on demand service which gives us access to old programmes instead; that makes up for losing the latest new import shows like Galactica, Richard, thanks. Twonk.
I'm no fan of Murdoch but since his Sky has some of the programmes I want to see I need access to that and since I paid for that (and am still paying the same amount) but having it cut at no notice by Branson who has a long-standing personal and ongoing really ticks me off. And the fact he is still charging me the same amount for less proves that customer care is not on top of his agenda. Jeez, to think someone is willing to pay 100K to fly into space on one of this arsehole's rockets when they get going...
I got totally floored towards the end of last week with what I presume was a bug; started as a bit of a headache, noticed it was a bit harder focussing on the computer screen at work, popped a couple of Anadin and didn't think too much of it till I got home, couple of hours later my arms and legs feel like lead and my head feels like a mix of cotton wool and space dust, so I crawl into bed ridiculously early. Cue very sleepless night waking up either roasting and drenched in sweat (I don't mind being sweaty in bed, but for the right reasons only) or shivering so badly I shook myself awake (very weird, don't remember the last time I shivered). And all through it weird, linking dreams where I seemed to be walking through scenes of classic black and white movies (I think I was looking for Louise Brooks but she proved as elusive in my confused dream state as she was to most in real life). Interestingly even when half awake the dreams kept running. Add in some nasty dizziness and fatigue and you have yourself a nasty bug that seemed to come out of nowhere; fine in the morning, feeling iffy in the afternoon, utterly screwed by evening.
Next morning it felt like a very bad hangover, the sort you wake up from and find you have the hangover plus you realise you are still a bit drunk and crashing around, stumbling with no co-ordination and still either too hot or too cold. Found out since then that a couple of my family got hit with the same thing from nowhere, so presumably there is a nasty virus going round (that will teach me to juggle those ducks on the canal). Still a bit tired and feel the odd little resurgence of it, but not too bad now; forced myself off with a mate for a very long walk (yes, with Bruce the greyhound too, all excited as ever when he sees us putting on jackets "oh boy, oh boy, we're going for a walk!!!") to try and get the blood circulating before going off to check on Dizzy while Mel is away visiting her cousin in Norway. Naturally Dizzy took advantage of me feeling a bit drained still today to curl up next to me and use bits of me as a pillow. And talking of pillows, I got one of my photos of Dizzy looking incredibly cute and slumbering in the sun on a rug out in the garden and had it printed onto a big cushion last year for Mel's birthday. I have been waiting patiently for her to curl her little furry form up next to it and stay there long enough for me to get a picture of her with it; naturally whenever I have seen her in front of it she has moved by the time I get the camera to take a snap, but after months and months of waiting I finally got that picture and here it is, Dizzy with the Dizzy cushion!
I also managed to get out for a little while on Saturday night and saw some of the lunar eclipse - amazingly we had a pretty clear sky for once in Scotland (poor Mel didn't in Norway, clouds spoiled the show). There was a reddish-pink tinge to the moon for a while, it was a fascinating sight, must have been terrifying to people in the pre-scientific period of history (which is most of it, really) - one of my Fotolog friends, Foxglove, has a cool image on her flog here. Would have been a great night for doing a virgin sacrifice, although the only Virgin I wanted to slice up on a pagan altar as the moon was swallowed by Those Who Cannot Be Named would be sodding Richard Branson's Virgin who have been busy posturing against Murdoch's Sky this week which is great for them but a real pisser for their customers who suddenly found out they'd lost access to a bunch of their favourite major shows literally overnight (thanks for the advance warning, Branson, you numpty).
One company blames the other of course, both give contradictory reasons why talks broke down, all I know is I was with Telewest for years and subscribed to them because it was the only way to see certain import shows. Branson's "we must be involved in every industry that exists" Virgin company takes over and a few weeks later the biggest entertainment channel is gone and a lot of folks will miss the next eps of their favourite shows this week while Murdoch and Branson engage in a pissing contest instead of looking after their customers, which is a poor way to run a service. I also notice that despite losing the biggest channel Virgin hasn't offered to cut my bill to reflect this and actually boasts they are offering us more choice through a programme on demand service which gives us access to old programmes instead; that makes up for losing the latest new import shows like Galactica, Richard, thanks. Twonk.
I'm no fan of Murdoch but since his Sky has some of the programmes I want to see I need access to that and since I paid for that (and am still paying the same amount) but having it cut at no notice by Branson who has a long-standing personal and ongoing really ticks me off. And the fact he is still charging me the same amount for less proves that customer care is not on top of his agenda. Jeez, to think someone is willing to pay 100K to fly into space on one of this arsehole's rockets when they get going...
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