Sun, 06 Apr 2008
Photos, photos, photos
I've posted heaps of photos over the last week. Here's the summary.
- Our camping road trip from London to Ukraine and back last summer.
- Bestival 2007
- New York last Christmas and NYE.
- Our visit to Bletchley Park yesterday. As well as having lots of facinating exhibits about code breaking and the infamous Enigma, the site is also the home of the National Museum of Computing. It's filled with historic computer hardware from the first programmable digital computer onwards. Highly recommennded to anyone with an interest in computing.
- Today's Olympic Torch run through London. We watch it near City Hall. It was freezing cold and still snowing slightly but plenty of people still turned out. There were a large number of Chinese supporters as well as many pro-Tibet protestors. Police ran with the torch bearer, completely surrounding the runner. Pro-Tibet chanting and booing was drowned out most of the cheering. The pro-Tibet message was pretty clear.
posted at: 17:45 | permalink | comments
Mon, 14 Jan 2008
Google Maps + TFL + tube map mashup
I stumbled across TubeJP today and was seriously impressed. It's a Google Maps mashup that overlays London tube routes and bus stops over the map of London. Hovering over a stop or station shows the buses that stop there. A handy sidebar shows the current live status of the tube lines.
The journey query interface is really cool. You enter your starting point and destination and the trip options and times (using different modes of transport) are shown in the sidebar. You can click on each variant to see the specifics of the route.
The site will be incredibly useful for planning a trip in London. I think I'll be using it regularly.
posted at: 14:58 | permalink | comments
Thu, 26 Apr 2007
London Marathon 2007
I've just put up a few pictures from the London Marathon last weekend (click the image for more). We watched it last year because one of Susanna's friends (Lou) was running. Now that we live in SE1 the race goes right past our front door with the 12 mile mark being 100 metres down the road.
We managed to catch the elite men coming past. They move at a truly amazing pace; I can't believe they can keep that up for 42kms. Although they're probably used to it, the large number of motor vehicles bristling with equipment and media surrounding the leading pack must be at least a little distracting.
posted at: 20:23 | permalink | comments
Mon, 12 Mar 2007
Traffic @ the Arches / Earplugs
We checked out the Traffic drum and bass party at the Arches on Friday night. I'm not a drum and bass aficionado but the music in the main room seemed pretty damn good to me. TeeBee was a real highlight DJ-wise. MCGQ was easily the best MC that we saw. The second room was a little to messy and "jungley" for me but other people seemed to like it.
The crowd was humourous to study. Aboutt 90% of the punters were young, slightly nerdy guys. Hoodies were definitely the thing to wear.
We had a lot of fun and that fact that we could walk home was a big plus.
The night was also good opportunity to try out some earplugs that we'd all bought. DnB nights are traditionally L-O-U-D and this event was no exception. One of our flatmates had tracked down some musician's earplugs from a Dutch company called Alpine. They come with 2 pairs of changeable filters. One set provides greater attenuation than the others. The earplugs turned out to be quite comfortable and seemed to take down the volume fairly evenly at all frequencies. After a while you forget that they're even there. I found that the purple "regular" attenuation filters suited me the best. The yellow high attenuation filters reduced the volume too much for my liking.
There was a welcome lack of ringing in our ears when we left to go home. I'd highly recommend these sort of ear plugs to anyone who goes clubbing regularly. They would probably be suitable for club DJs too. They only cost 15 pounds so there's no excuse for not trying them out. I wish I'd bought a set years ago.
posted at: 23:00 | permalink | comments
Rant: moving house
We moved from Putney to London Bridge recently. Moving house is never pleasant but this time it was especially unfun. Some highlights:
- There were still painters working in the bathroom as we were moving in to the flat. The estate agent called us on hour before we were due to move in to let us know that the painters hadn't finished yet. Of course, the paint wasn't dry by the time we first tried the shower meaning that it has run in parts.
- The cleaning of the apartment that had been promised wasn't done. Carpet cleaners had been organised for 2pm on the day we moved in meaning that we had to put all our gear in the kitchen and couldn't unpack until after they'd left. Overall, the place was filthy.
- The phone line and broadband was supposed to be transferred on the day we moved in. Having seen telcos screw this up many times before I was dubious that this would happen. BT didn't disappoint: the phone was working on the afternoon we moved in, but broadband still wasn't up the following day. It took over a week of persistent calls to BT to get the link running.
- The landlord has decided to store a bunch of her junk in the hall cupboards. The estate agent had assured us that the stuff wouldn't be there while we were there for a viewing. We are now trying to get it removed but are having considerable difficulty. We need the space but the landlord doesn't want to move it elsewhere. It doesn't help that the landlord is in Australia at the moment.
All in all the moving process has been pretty awful. BT and the estate agents really let us down despite us doing all the right things.
Despite all of the above, we're happy to be in the new flat. The location is excellent, it's a bigger place and we've got some great short-term housemates. Just a few more battles to get through...
posted at: 21:53 | permalink | comments
Tue, 27 Feb 2007
londonpython.org.uk updates
As requested by a few people at the last London Python meeting, I've added a button for the Atom feed for londonpython.org.uk. I've also cleaned up the sidebar, added a link to the announce site and fixed a few other minor problems.
Please let know if you see any breakage or would like something changed.
posted at: 15:21 | permalink | comments
Thu, 08 Feb 2007
Snow in London
Today is the first time I've seen proper snow in London. Apparently it's been going since 3am and it's still coming down quite heavily now.
Here's what it looked like out our living room window when I got up this morning. (click for a larger version)
posted at: 10:10 | permalink | comments
Would you leave your bike here?
This is a set of bike racks not far from our place in Putney. Note the large number of broken locks and bike bits. Would you leave your bike here?
posted at: 10:09 | permalink | comments