The Ghost Forest

The Ghost Forest is an art installation thats being shown in Trafalgar Square right now, and which I went to see earlier this evening. The artist, Angela Palmer, is using it to remind people of the issues around deforestation, by displaying the dead stumps of magnificent trees that would once have stood in the rain forests around the world.

I hope that I've captured the mood of the event - using very long exposures on my camera of 20 to 30 seconds, the trees aren't the only things that are ghosts...

From Ghost Forest November 2009

Tottenham Court Folk

Tonight we were down at the Borderline to see Dar Williams, a great New York folk singer. I'll describe the gig because I can't illustrate it with any decent photos unfortunately - on checking my bag when we arrived at the venue, the doorman left me in no uncertain terms that if my SLR came out I would be ejected - nice! What you get instead is some rubbish I managed to take with my Google phone...

The support came onto the stage at about 8pm, Lynne Hanson, a Canadian country singer from Ottawa. The audience warmed to her as she spun us a delightful series of tall tales and heart-felt stories, and it suddenly dawned on me as I looked around that the Borderline is themed to look like a country and western club - I just hadn't noticed before! Now I don't like to put people in boxes, but I've never met a Canadian I didn't immediately like - Lynne is no exception to that rule, eh?

Dar took to the stage at about 9pm and gave us an hour and a half of her songs - taking time between each number to chat to the audience. Her take on pop-folk, not disimilar in style to Suzanne Vega I think, went through a whole range of emotions - we got stories filled with regret about not knowing her grandfather, infatuation with her baby sitter when she was a small girl, passing through her formative years in New York's SOHO, and songs visiting paganism, sex and misunderstandings along the way. Her music is really deep as you can tell, and I really enjoyed the evening - some calm acoustic music makes a refreshing change from the grungy rock I usually go in for!

If you're curious about her material, I'd fire up Spotify or Last.FM and have a listen to 'When I Was a Boy' from her first studio album, 'The Honesty Room'. 'Spring Street' from 'The Green World', and 'Teenagers, Kick Our Butts' from 'End of the Summer' will give you a feel too. I really like her material :)

New Who

For those of us who found the new Doctor Who episode "Waters of Mars", broadcast last weekend, a bit lack-lustre, the BBC are taking another shot at it this weekend, with a cartoon series entitled "Dreamland" broadcasting for six nights straight from this Saturday, 21 November.

The story will be set around Area 51, with the good Doctor gaining two new companions for his adventure, Cassie and Jimmy, with the main enemy voiced by the wonderfully sinister David Warner. It won't be broadcast as such, but will be available on freeview using the 'red button' and will be viewable online at the BBC's dedicated Doctor Who page here.

He will also be making an appearance on the BBC's Children in Need appeal on Friday evening. I'm sure that will keep me going until more details of the Christmas special appear...

Goodbye Times Square

If you remember, I posted recently about Luke Jackson's fantastic song, 'Goodbye London', from his debut album, ...And Then Some. Luke is currently vying for the Metropolis Art Prize and, if he is succesful, the video that accompanies the song will be screened in Times Square on December 17th.

I love the quirky video, its really unique, and if you feel the same way then please vote for Luke here, just by giving his video the 'thumbs up'. It will only take a sec, and the good folk in New York could soon be introduced to his great song writing :)

Moths in My Wallet

I'll admit it - I like to spend as little as possible when I'm going out - London is an expensive place to live I'm sure you'll agree!

I've just been switched on to vouchercodes.co.uk. They offer all sorts of money-off deals to save you a bit of cash. The favourite feature I've found so far is the two-for-one deals on restaurant meals that they have on the site. I do come across them anyway from time to time, but now that I'm using their site I don't think I'm going to have to pay full price for a meal again! At the moment, they have special offers available at La Tasca, Zizzi and Gourmet Burger Kitchen amongst others - yum!

All you have to do to take advantage of all the available offers is sign up here. I honestly don't think that there's a downside to this one - it's all good :)

Google-ising

I've just started to use two new Google products, which regular readers might be interested in.

I tend to use Google online in preference to anything else - I use their email, calendar, photo storage and quite a few other things. A new idea they are currently promoting is the Google Profile. This allows you to record all of the sites where you have a presence, whether they are Google-owned or not, effectively putting you more in control of how people find you online. So now you'll find that if you search for me online using Google (and I mean *me* rather than the Londoneer), the first result will be my profile, where you can discover some things about me and find out about all the other sites that I inhabit - my Twitter feed is listed there, as is my Flickr photo account and other things. For anyone who has material scattered all over the 'internets' like me, I think it's going to prove useful in future.

For people who use Google for lots of things they've also launched something else very recently - the Google Dashboard. This provides you with specific statistics on most of the Google products that you use - it shows my email count, appointments in my calendar that are coming up, recent blog posts and the rest, all conveniently organised on one page. I'm already using this daily :)

Manic Music

Last night i was at the gorgeously ornate Bush Hall in Shepherd's Bush again for the last of Liam Finn's european tour dates. He happens to be the son of Neil Finn but we won't hold that against him :) The current tour is promoting the Champagne and Seashells EP which is a bit less constructed and a lot more wild than Liam's first album I'll Be Lightning.

First on stage was The Boy Who Trapped The Sun, a (it has to be said) strikingly handsome solo guitarist and singer. Good stuff, although an unusual choice to ready the audience for the main event, because his material was a little more mellow than I was expecting!



Liam's performance was sparkling - full of furious manic energy as Liam drew complex sounds from the guitar and drums. Eliza Jane, a regular collaborator, was a perfect foil for him as she was cool and graceful, adding more layers to the rhythms and vocals, and at one point breaking out a zither and playing some beautiful accompaniment on it. Nothing could eclipse Liam towards the end of the gig though - wobbling on top of the drum stool and drawing tortured notes from a miniature theramin. I think the track 'Lead Balloon' from 'I'll Be Lightning' really gives you an idea of how mad things got! Breathtaking and a bit scary at the same time! I hope I've captured some of the atmopshere at the gig in the photos you can find here.

From Liam Finn November 2009

If you're new to Liam I can't recommend 'I'll Be Lightning' enough. 'Champagne and Seashells' can be a little challenging, but if you're a fan you must pick it up :)

A Bit of Natural History

Having visitors means that I can behave like a tourist every once in a while, so we went to the National History Museum today.

The dinosaur section is particularly impressive - I absolutely love the animatronic Tyrannosauras Rex they have in one section of the museum. The displays are aimed at children though, which is understandable, so the detail is a bit thin on the ground, although it is fun to play with some of the animated displays.



If taxidermy makes you a bit squeamish I wouldn't recommend the section devoted to mammals though - most of the animals are stuffed, although in the case of the dodo I don't imagine they could do it any other way. The sea mammals section is very impressive - I had no idea that the mature blue whale was so monumentally huge!




Although we didn't have time to visit, I'm sure the area devoted to geology is worth a look - the entrance is breathtaking...

From Natural History Museum November 2009

Greenwich (again)

I have a friend visiting at the moment, and I always like to take people over to Greenwich if they've not been there before. I usually arrive by taking the foot tunnel under the Thames and leave on a Thames Clipper, heading into town along the river.

Today we had a look around the Painted Hall and the Chapel in the grounds of the Royal Naval College, and after lunch in Cafe Sol (which is excellent by the way, and very cheap for Greenwich) we headed uphill to the Royal Observatory. Since I last visited they've built a planetarium that has a remarkable copper 'cone' topping it off. I'd not seen the dolphin sundial before either - if you look closely the tails meet halfway between two and three - it was indeed 2:30pm!

From Greenwich November 2009

A Totally Random Weekend

It's been a strange weekend - I've been all around the Midlands over a period of two days.

Friday evening found me in Derby, ending the evening at the rather unusual Limes club in the City Centre. I say unusual because it had the feel of an '80s nightclub, down to the decor and the music, and a clientelle to match - everyone was in their late 30s and upwards - it felt a bit surreal!

On Saturday morning I woke up in a little village just outside the city where this was the view from the end of the street - idyllic and pastoral I'm sure you'll agree:



On our way over to the West Midlands we had lunch at this catering trailer, in the car-park of B & Q in Burton on Trent. I've been bribed with a hotdog smothered in onions and mustard to say that this is the best mobile eating experience in the whole of Derbyshire - say hello to Dave if you find yourself there :)



Unusually, Saturday closed with me sitting in the stands to watch a football match - Wolves v Arsenal at the Molineux ground in Wolverhampton. The least said about the dismal result and the equally dismal Wolves defence the better...

On Sunday morning I took a few photographs of this in Birmingham before getting on my train. Want to take a guess at what it is?

Red Cups

You can always tell when the rampant consumerism of the UK retail sector gears up for Christmas because Starbucks start to sell their festive drinks - they started yesterday in fact.

Sipping my gingerbread latte earlier this evening I came to a decision. I'm not going to be such a cynic about Christmas starting on the 4th of November again - after all the shops need all the money they can get. I'm actually going to join in this time around, so over the next few weeks expect to see lots of christmas lights and gaudy shop window displays. First on the list will be Liberty early next week - I was walking past earlier this evening and they've pushed the boat out this year. Ho ho ho...

Bloggers' Update

This evening saw me at the Dogget's Coat and Badge again for the monthly London Bloggers Meetup. Andy Bargery organised an excellent event as usual, and I enjoyed chatting to another mix of interesting and creative folk that gathered there.





This month's get-together was sponsored by the Shine Communications PR agency, in their guise as the promoters of Paramount's Home Entertainent Division. They gave us a brief overview of what they do, promising that they wouldn't subject us to any 'hard sell'. In all honesty, hard-sell about Paramount's UK DVD releases is something that I wouldn't have any objection to - I'll be putting up my own review of the Star Trek DVD as soon as I can lay hands on a copy. I've been waiting for it since watching the film (three times) at the cinema earlier this year, and I trust it won't dissapoint in terms of the extras - an area where Star Trek films are generally quite weak. Shine were also generous enough to come along with a rather large goodie bag - there was a raffle for a set of their recent DVD releases, and my pal Tiki Chris (from London Daily Photo) won a huge widescreen HDTV!



Marko Saric was up next to give the assembled audience his top tips on promoting and monetising your blog. I got some great ideas from Marko, and you can find more inspirational thoughts from him here, at howtomakemyblog.

From London Bloggers Meetup November 2009

All in all, a great way to spend an evening - if you're a blogger living or working in London I'm sure you'd benefit from popping along :)

Travelling Upwards!

Well I think I've actually made it on the 'internets'- lastminute.com's blog has today announced its 10 favourite London bloggers - and I'm at number seven! Lots of my favourite blogs get a mention, including the excellent Londonist crew and their news and views, and of course the incomparable Annie Mole and her London Underground blog. I have to say that I'm stunned, and incredibly grateful to the folks from lastminute.com for spotting my (I think) fairly meagre efforts - wow!

Sending You a Wave

I've been waiting for ages now, but I've just been invited to join the Google Wave. I've got a problem though - now I'm part of the 'in-crowd' I'm not really sure what it is.

Straight away I can see its usefulness as a collaboration tool for groups of friends and colleagues - the main page shows 'Waves', or conversations, that become part of a timeline which you can scroll backwards and forwards through, adding video, diagrams, maps or whatever which the group can collaborate on.

The problem I have at the moment is that there are only a handful of people available in my contact list to "Wave" with, and I'm only very loosely associated with them. They're also inactive so far - I'm the only person to start a Wave. I guess if I had people like Leo Laporte or Stephen Fry (or for that matter, any of my friends!) in my contacts things would be different...

It is possible to add feeds from your other favourite sites and applications to your Wave, such as Twitter or Facebook updates. I've added a Twitter bot but all its doing at the moment is spitting out random updates about Google Wave and lots of spam - its certainly not the personal Twitter feed I've spent a long time building up...

I guess I'm just not getting how wonderful this new application is, but it is incredibly complex - the introductory video you're encouraged to watch runs for over an hour and a half. Fortunately Gina Trapani (who writes several useful Google plugins for the Firefox web browser) has written a manual, which I'm patiently working my way through at the moment, but until I've got my head around it I guess its a case of watch this space. Perhaps when there are more people using it and they've refined the homepage I might actually find it useful. When the site is up (it seems so popular that too many people are trying to access it!) you can find Gina's manual at completewaveguide.com

As a little piece of trivia for you, Google Wave is named after the communications technology used in the aborted Firefly sci-fi series :) And it goes without saying that if you want a recommendation to be added to the Wave, drop me a line at thelondoneer@gmail.com

We Are The Champions!

I've recently being trying out one of the latest crop of massively multiplayer role playing games, Champions Online from Cryptic Studios.

The setting is a world of superheroes and villains, and from very early into the game you can adventure in several different areas - a city, a desert and a snowy wilderness. Later on when you get to a high level (which I haven't as yet) you can also enter a huge underwater area.

The immediately striking feature about the game is how much you can personalise your character. You can choose to play as a sword-wielding ninja, a gun-toting mercenary, a sorcerer or many others, and you can choose to take a combination of powers and abilities to make something really unique. The visual character creator offers even more versatility - many, many different costume pieces and colours are available, so that you can create a masked avenger, a weird tentacled alien, a robed priest or (like my main character, who I've loosely styled on the Green Goblin) a man clad in shiny metal body armour.

The community, at least so far, has also been very welcoming. There's no problem in finding new friends to go on missions with, and a lot of the scenarios in the game require lots of people to work together - particularly right now as the Halloween event is in full-swing, and the main goals require whole hordes of superheroes to go up against massively powerful zombies that are long-dead heroes themselves. The forums are very active too.

The one problem I have, and its a big problem, is that the game in its current state is very buggy, particularly at weekends. Sometimes it takes 10 or 20 log-on attempts before you can get into the game, and at times there is terrible lag so actions don't work until a few seconds after you've pressed a button - when a game is like that its no fun at all, because you're likely to end up dead nine times out of ten.

It's early days yet though, so hopefully they can resolve these issues - I hope they do because its great fun to dip in when you have a few hours spare. I've always fancied myself as a crime-fighting superhero :)

The Music Detective

I don't know about you, but when I'm not getting new music recommendations from friends, I tend to use Last.Fm and Spotify to discover new bands, using their 'similar to' and 'sounds like' features to jump from musicians I like to things I might be interested in. That can be fun, but sometimes it can be hard work for me - I have a big music collection and Last.Fm in particular is guilty of, more often than not, pointing me towards other bands that I already know.

To help me make more informed choices, I've recently started listening to Tom Robinson's show for unsigned bands on BBC 6 Music, 'Introducing' - Tom even welcomes recommendations from listeners on the site, and theres a helpful tracklisting for each show so that you can track down bands that you've heard. On the last show, the 'Burt Bacharack Fight Club' and 'Glasvegas' stood out for me (Glasvegas have what I would say is a unique website too!) . The show is available in podcast format so that you can listen on the move, so you don't really have an excuse not to give it a try ;) You can join the 'Introducing' Facebook group too...

The Twilight Zone

As readers will know, I do spend quite a lot of time wandering around London taking photographs. The clocks going back, and our increasingly shorter days, poses a problem though. Basically doing anything during the week becomes quite difficult as I go to work and come home in the dark, which leaves me with just the weekend to get out there. I'll do my best!

On the photography front, I posted a few snaps on Picasa two weeks ago that I haven't talked about yet, which you might find interesting. Where I work in Victoria there are lots of interesting sights close by which I haven't completely explored yet, and in that spirit I went down to Marsham St to have a look around. Even though the area is the location of the Home Office and DEFRA, it is quite quiet, even at lunchtime. There's a lovely square, complete with a central fountain, on Horseferry Road that has apartments down one side with very funky grills separating their garden from the square and, in contrast, a classicly styled old anglican church with equally interesting railings...

From Around Marsham St October 2009

I also came across a strange 1960s construction which I have no clue about - its certainly not part of the tube infrastructure because the Victoria line runs nowhere near here. Does anyone know what its purpose is?


More 1960s but a bit more attractive this time - I found these freizes on an office block that's being refurbished further up Horseferry Road and I just hope that they're retained as part of the work!




More quick little lunchtime wanders coming soon ;)

An Open Weekend #2

In previous years the LUGRadio caravan has run for two days - this year the guys decided one day was all they could handle, so it fell to other people to keep the ball rolling on Sunday.. The Ubuntu UK and Linux Outlaws podcasts stepped into the breach, and thus OggCamp was born.



Today was less organised than Saturday and, other than a timetabled live podcast to be jointly run by both crews at the end of the day, the roster was completely blank. In traditional 'bar camp' style, people were invited to put their names down to give talks, presentations or lead discussions on subjects that they choose. Amazingly, the timetable filled up really fast and I think that, on balance, today's talks and presentations were even better than yesterday's!



Of particular interest to me were the talks by Andy Stanford Clark on his, now famous, twittering house, and the talk from Imran on translating the Playstation 2 game, Front Mission 5, from Japanese into English. We also got another presentation by Bruno Bord, this time sporting a classic 1970s Wolves shirt!



Andy also told us about his work mashing up publicly available data to produce a live timetable for the various Isle of White ferries, so that he would always know when he had a few more minutes to spare to get there before it set off. Of course, being very public-spirited, Andy made this available online in the form of an RSS feed and, in due course, it suddenly started appearing on the official site for the ferries. It took an April Fool's trick, where he replaced the feed with a message saying that "X ferry was now arriving at Milton Keynes" before the ferry company started talking to him about using the data!

I was amazed at the scope of Imran's project - which effectively is a complete rework of a very deep and complex manga game. He's doing what project managers in game companies are paid thousands to do, and he and the other developers are doing it just because they're passionate about the genre. There are regular updates and releases, and they hope to be completed soon. You can check out the project here. They're soon starting work on translating Ace Combat 3 (one of my favourite games of all time) because the existing English version had whole sections cut out of it for the European market, thus wiping out the game's main storyline.



Of course day two closed appropriately, with another live podcast recording and another prize draw, and I really hope they find the energy to do the whole thing again next year. It makes such a change from the stuffy corporate conferences that I have to suffer throughout the year, and I'd even put my hand up to help out when 2010 comes around. Congratulations to all on putting together such a fantastic event!

From OggCamp October 2009

An Open Weekend #1

This weekend I’ve been visiting Wolverhampton to attend the only two annual events in the UK that celebrate open source software and its attendant community – LUGRadio Live on Saturday and OggCamp on Sunday. Unlike most corporate events, these have been put together by members of the community who do it for the love of it - entry fee each day was only £5, so no-ones going to become a millionaire promoting these events!



Day one took place at the Newhampton Arts Centre near Wolverhampton Wanderer’s Molineux Ground and was organised by the cast and crew of the LUGRadio podcast. Although it ceased broadcasting over a year ago now, the guys made a promise to host another annual event this year - the ‘Internet’s Jono Bacon’ has even come back from his new home in San Francisco to join in.

The first revelation on the day was the use of an anonymised Twitter feed, projected onto a big screen at the rear of the stage. This both helped and hindered, as it acted as another channel for the audience to ask questions of people presenting, but was also the platform for a bit of childish humour (and I’m not saying that I didn’t indulge myself, because I did…). A live sketch drawing of speakers shown on stage right added to the mix helped to make this an unusual event too...

A whole range of speakers took to the main stage, with two other rooms set aside for smaller groups. Brock Craft was the first up, and talked about tinker.it, and their work helping people to create new and innovative gadgets. The poor guy did take some flack from the twitter screen though, with people commenting on the beanie hat he was wearing, and suggesting that he might make a good extra in a Star Trek film as a Klingon!



Gervase Markham was next, talking about his work at Mozilla on the Drumbeat project, which aims to build a community around the company’s products, including Firefox – these days the leading web-browser for the intelligent online crowd. What was really fun about his presentation was part two however, where he told the tale of his first effort in programming on the BBC Acorn computer – a text adventure that had the main character dying in many gruesome ways. The audience reminisced along with him about our early days in computing, and there were many laugh-out-loud moments.



Matthew Somerville took the last slot before lunch, and set out the stall for MySociety’s suite of online democracy tools, including ‘TheyWorkForYou’ and ‘FixMyStreet’. The ‘PledgeBank’ site did come in for some criticism from the audience however; as people felt that it didn’t really reflect the spirit of community work. Their motto says it all really, ‘PledgeBank lets people say, “I’ll do something, but only IF other people will too.”’ Which begs the question - if other people won’t commit, are you going to continue to sit on your backside too? Personally if you want to do something public-spirited, I’d recommend signing up to TimeBank, so that your local Community Voluntary Service can contact you so that you can make a real difference where you live…



Des Burley had the misfortune to be the first speaker after lunch, which is always a bit of a graveyard spot for presenters I find. A lawyer from the law firm, Martineau, he did give us lots of information on the legal pitfalls in copyright and trademarked works online however – just a bit dry for my taste and not, to be honest, of much interest to me as a lowly user.
 



The second speaker in the afternoon was the one I was most looking forward to seeing, Andy ‘BlackAdder’ Robinson (any relation to Tony Robinson the actor I wonder – they do look remarkably similar!) talking about OpenStreetMap, the open and unencumbered alternative to the likes of Ordnance Survey Maps, Google Maps and the rest. Andy really got the audience enthused, and made me think about using the newly-installed GIS software on my Android phone in earnest. I have noticed that the small estate where my parents live, built a few years ago, isn’t on OpenStreetMap just yet, and I am going up there very soon, so I might well do something about it and submit the data. If you’re interested in contributing some of your time to the project or you’re just curious about it, their wiki is here


 
The penultimate 'act' on the main stage was the ‘typically French’ Bruno Bord, wearing a fetching t-shirt with a surreal snail on it. I couldn’t quite follow his seemingly unscripted talk, there was a story about his grandmother in there somewhere, but the audience lapped it up - this guy should be a stand up comedian


 
Last but not least was a ‘live’ recording of the LUGRadio podcast, and a farewell from all of the presenters, old and not so old. Prize-giving and congratulations to the hard-working crew followed, as did an impromptu prize-giving as Jono Bacon sat centre-stage in a racoon suit. He was kind enough to have brought along lots of copies of his new book, “Art of Community”, most of which were ‘won’ by Alan Pope from the Ubuntu UK Podcast. People have cruelly speculated that Alan is stockpiling them to keep himself warm during his hibernation period this winter….



So that was the end of another LUGRadio Live but not the last because, with a bit of cajoling from the audience, they’ll be doing another one next year (can I hear cheering from the back??). The least said about the karaoke evening that followed in the basement bar of the Connaught Hotel on Saturday evening the better (although I did give a few Neil Diamond numbers a run for their money)

From LUGRadio Live October 2009

On a final note I should just put in a good word about the hotel I stayed in over the weekend – the Baron’s Court Hotel. It gets a solid 4.5-5 from reviewers on tripadvisor.com, which makes it the best in Wolverhampton, which isn’t exactly overflowing with high quality establishments. It’s a really charming and comfortable little hotel converted from a big 1920s detached house less than a mile outside Wolverhampton City Centre. Its good value for money, and for those of us who can’t go 24 hours without the internet, they have a solid 20mb wireless connection in most parts of the hotel also.

Croeso i Gaerdydd

I've been doing a lot of travelling lately. Today found me in Cardiff again, on a training course. As it was an early start I came down last night and stayed in the Radisson Blu in the city centre, which I can't recommend highly enough - it's very funky! The new St David's shopping centre, which occupies half of the city centre and looks very impressive, opened today too.

Today's course was at Cardiff's flagship hotel, St David's, down in the bay. Personally I think it's ugly on the outside, but each room opens out onto its vast atrium and has its own balcony. It's a bit pricey though! I did get the opportunity to have a stroll around and photograph a few other things though...

From Cardiff October 2009

Christmas Come Early

A Polish friend of mine came round this evening to treat me to a special Polish recipe that only usually comes out at Christmas - barszcz with uszka (don't ask me to pronounce it!). It's a beetroot soup with wild mushrooms and onions, that has ravioli parcels stuffed with more vegetables floating in it. It has a typical Polish taste and reminds me that I'm unlikely to be back there before next spring unfortunately. So a very, very early "Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia" to any Polish readers out there!

It's Raining, So It Must Be Manchester...

Yesterday I was up in Manchester on business. I haven't been to the City in a long time, and didn't get much time to look around unfortunately, but I did have a quick wander around Piccadilly Gardens, which is much improved these days - back in the 90s it was positively grim!

From Manchester October 2009

"I've Only Just Met You, But I Love You"

So says "dog", one of the characters in Pixar's latest film, "Up". We went over to see it at West India Quay this evening as, being a fairly new cinema, it's capable of showing 3d movies, and "Up" is the latest one to use this gimic. To be honest, wearing polarised glasses was a bit uncomfortable, as was the surcharge I had to pay even though I have a monthly cinema card (!) and I don't think the film really benefitted from being in 3D. In fact, after a few minutes I didn't really notice it - I'm sure it appeals to the kids though.

I really loved the film as it works on so many levels. While children will see lots to enjoy, it also has a very mature theme dealing with the love and loss of a partner, and a young man growing into an adult - so all in all, it has a bit more depth than most Pixar movies. Go and see it :)

Hearts of Gold

We went down to the Borderline, off Tottenham Court Road, earlier this evening to see Goldheart Assembly again. What a contrast from the last venue we saw them at, back in April, when the audience just seemed to be family and friends. This time, the place was absolutely rammed with fans.

As usual, there were two supports, starting with Rogue States. A very competent bunch of musicians but a bit derivative - I do wonder if we'd never heard of U2, whether these guys would be playing huge stadiums by now... Next up were the Molotovs, with their simultaneously cheeky and poignant sound and lyrics - great fun, and I wouldn't say no to seeing them headlining at a gig, given their unique style.




At about 9:30 the main event took to the stage. It seems that even though they're now getting quite famous, having done the round of summer festivals this year, it hasn't gone to their heads because they're still bearded and wearing their clothes 1970s-style. They gave us a long set, including 'So Long St Christopher' (which features on their debut single) and the wonderfully lyrical 'Jesus Wheel'.




They also announced at the gig that they've just signed to Red Panda Records, and that there will be an album coming early in 2010. I can't wait!

Only 24 Hours To Save The City

I've just been sent a review copy of a new book by Marsha Moore, 24 Hours London. It's a tourist guide but with a really interesting twist - it sets out all the tips over a period of 24 hours.

At 5AM for example, it suggests going over to one of the early morning markets or nipping in to a funky little 24 hour coffee shop in Soho. For tourists looking for a different experience, or indeed something to give jaded locals like me a new perspective, this looks like a really good idea. Marsha's book launches on 4 November, and is available from all the usual places. As it's only a tenner why not pick it up?

Peace In Our Time

I did do a bit of a political tour on this visit in the end, as we took a walk along one of the 'peace lines' signified by enormous high walls that separate the Falls Road and Shankhill Road areas in west Belfast. The one we saw is covered in messages of hope and brightened up by a long stretch of colourful graffiti contributed by artists from across the world. We also took in the murals on the Falls Road, that equate the revolutionary struggles and oppression in Europe and beyond with the Republican community in the City, and also portray some of the notable figures from the community.

From Peace Wall October 2009

I also visited Stormont, where the Northern Ireland Assembly now sits, in an affluent area out to the east. Being in a bit of a rush to get my flight home, I didn't get to see Stormont Castle or the impressive ornamental gardens nearby, so I'll update you on those at some point in the future.

From Stormont October 2009

Sun, Sea & Giants

I had you there for a moment :)  While my last trip to Northern Ireland seemed to focus on the problems that the area has experienced in the past, most of my visit this time was taken up with sight-seeing along what has to be one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.

On Saturday we ventured out to the little seaside town of Bangor that sits on the southern end of the estuary, Belfast Lough, which leads out into the Irish Sea. It has a charming little harbour and we were lucky enough to find the HMS Bangor, a Royal Navy Minesweeper tied up there :)



We headed out further on Sunday, spending the day on a coach trip that took us out along the coast and through the Glens of Antrim, taking in all the sights. The particular tour we went on is operated by McCombs, who I can't recommend highly enough, as we had a knowledgeable, charming and rather cheeky coach driver on the day!

Our first  few stops took in some of the little towns dotted along the coast, the first one being Carrickfergus, where unfortunately we only had enough time to have a quick walk around the harbour (next time I must come back and look around the 12th Century Castle that dominates the coastline - its an impressive sight)





Our first major stop was at Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, operated by the National Trust, where I overcame my vertigo to get out onto the little island there and get some dramatic photographs of the coastline - from here you can see the island of Rathlin, and due to the very clear weather on the day, we could also make out the Scottish coast, which is only 14 miles away.





Of course our (almost) final destination was the Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland's only World Heritage Site, formed from the cooling of volcanic rock which split into its well-known hexagonal shapes. I was a bit disappointed to find the area swamped with other tourists though, so it was impossible to get a nice photo without lots of brightly-coloured kagools in the way! We did go and have a look at the 'organ' however, which sits just around the headland and which, to my mind, looks even more man-made





That wasn't quite the last thing we saw though - before heading back inland to Belfast we made a brief but very spooky stop to photograph the dramatic ruins of Dunluce Castle perched on the edge of the cliffs a few miles further along the road. If one of my favourite TV series, True Blood, ever gets filmed outside the States, this should be their first destination - suitably creepy!

From North Coast October 2009

Photo School

Yesterday I attended Photo School's creative photography workshop for beginners, run by the experienced and talented professional photographer, Jon Mortimer.

I had a great time - we started off with an hour-long discussion about techniques in a room off the balcony of the very grand Crosse Keys pub in the City (clearly the headquarters banking hall of a major bank in ages past) and then went out around Leadenhall Market across the road to put into practice what we had learned.

Although I wasn't feeling particularly creative I was mindful of some of the dos and dont's so I think I got a few more decent photos out of this session than I normally do (I often come home after going around snapping away to find theres only one image that I'm really satisfied with). We went back to the pub for the final hour of the course to share our favourite two photos, and Jon and the other members gave some very useful critiques of our efforts. I have to say that, in addition to learning a few new tricks, I came away realising how much more I have to learn - although beginners like me, some of the other people there clearly have a natural eye for a good composition because some of the shots were breathtaking. I have to really work at that sort of thing!





If you're trying to really improve your photography I can't recommend the course highly enough - you can find out more here, or come along to the more casual get-togethers organised on meetup.com, here. If you're curious about how I fared, here are the other photos I took on the day.

Virtually OK

I've just seen Bruce Willis's new vehicle, "Surrogates" at the cinema.

It's a sci-fi movie about a world where people go out and lead their lives connected to robotic bodies while they remain at home. Dreamed up by a crazed scientist (does James Cromwell play any other role these days??) these surrogate bodies were originally made to give people with severe disabilities access to a wider range of activities, but by this time almost everyone on the planet is using them. 

This isn't a bad film by any means - the basic premise is sound and the special effects are fine if not spectacular, but Hollywood does have a nasty habit of dumbing down because they believe the audience can't handle a complex plot - and this is one of those films. The identity of the person who is 'pulling the strings' is apparent within about 10 minutes of the start, and even the mystery about what's killing people is resolved in a one minute friendly conversation with one of the minor characters. This could have easily been another AI or Minority Report but because of the bland, simple plot it's just another shlocky sci-fi film.

If you're a fan of Bruce Willis then going to see it won't be a complete waste of an evening, but its such a shame that he wasn't given more to work with  :\

Let's Be Friends

Just a quick post to let you know that in central London, until 6 October, you can pop along to our very own Central Perk coffee shop in Soho, which is an exact duplicate of the set from the Friends TV series, created to mark the 15th anniversary of the show   :)

You can get a voucher from the Warner Brothers website here to take with you for a cup of coffee, and you might even get the opportunity to sit on the famous sofa towards the back of the coffee shop and pretend to be Joey or Rachel for a few minutes - personally I think Chandler's more my role model :)