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Admittedly I was on holiday for around three weeks of that time. ↩︎
Well-fired pain au chocolat. Still, they charged me less than usual.
The long hard winter made everything dormant, but now the bluebells are out in our garden.
Tidying.
What in all the bells is “Banana Ketchup”???
Spring springing in Hackney. This seems to happen every year. Eventually. #spring #hackney
The Scented City
We spent a few days in Cologne over Easter. I took lots of photographs. Here are two that have had some tweaking in Lightroom. I'm especially pleased with the second one. The effect is almost like an impressionist painting to my eye.
Cologne by night; a funfair across the Rhine.
It didn’t actually look like this. The things you can do with software.
Pulp Magazine Covers for All
The [Pulp-O-Mizer](http://thrilling-tales.webomator.com/derange-o-lab/pulp-o-mizer/pulp-o-mizer.html) is a fun thing that lets you generate pulp-magazine-cover-style images, with your own text and good range of images, backgrounds, colours, etc. You can download web-size versions of your creations, or get them printed on cards, notebooks, mugs, etc, at [Zazzle](http://www.zazzle.com/); though I haven’t managed to work out how to get it to use the UK version of the Zazzle site while still keeping your generated image.
Here’s one that I made using the title of a story of mine. It remains unpublished so far, but it was the short story that was the seed for the [novel I finished in November](http://devilgate.org/blog/2012/12/02/november-spawned-some-words-but-not-that-many/).
Day Trip
We had a wee day trip to Cambridge yesterday (Monday). Lovely city. I took some photographs. They're so small and unlinked because, I think, I'm experimenting with a plugin for Lightroom that uploads them directly to the blog. But I have a few wrinkles to iron out, I think. There are bigger versions of them [at my Flickr account](http://www.flickr.com/photos/devilgate/), if you're interested.
First, some punters punting on the Cam:
Then the famous King’s College Chapel. More of a cathedral, really:
This wee guy looks decidedly unhappy:
There’s a pair of war memorials in a side chapel. A famous name at position 2 of the WWI one:
There’s plenty of stained glass, of course, but in another side chapel we see this interesting creature:
Then on to Trinity College Chapel, where Isaac Newton stands in marble:
Here’s a closeup of Newton. I can’t work out what he’s holding:
And above him there’s this rather attractive chandelier and dramatic ceiling:
New Camera; Also Reviewing Purchases
I finally have a dSLR. No longer do I have to hold my camera up in front of me in that quite silly-looking way; once again I can look through a viewfinder. Hurrah!
I say “once again” because I used to have — well, still do have, but almost never use — a film SLR, namely an Olympus OM-1.
With the new one I’ve gone over to Canon, though. It’s an EOS 600D; which rather oddly is known in America as the Rebel T3i and in Japan as the Kiss X5
Here’s a picture of Clapton Pond to show you what it can do. Click through for a better view on Flickr.
I bought it online for full £200 less than I’d’ve had to pay at Jessops; and by going to a site called DigitalRev I saved about £100 over Amazon’s prices. DigitalRev’s service was incredibly good: my camera arrived in London from Hong Kong in two days. It took a few more days for DHL to get it to me, but that’s not DigitalRev’s fault. Really astonishingly fast service, and for the cheapest price I could find anywhere.
The only slightly annoying thing is that I clicked a link in their email asking for comments (essentially to say the above); it took me to a site called Reseller Ratings, where I filled in a few boxes, and then hit “Submit”… whereupon it wanted me to create a profile before I could submit the review. And I just couldn’t face it. I’ll almost certainly never go to that site again, so even though it’s only a name and email (and password) I just thought, “No. I’d rather put a good review up on my own site.”
So think on that, people running review sites.
Generation: Inspired
So, it's all finally over, and we go back to normal. Or perhaps not. The slogan of London 2012 was "Inspire a Generation", and I think that has happened.
But the question is, what generation?
The tacit assumption was always that the slogan applied to the next generation: to teenagers and younger kids. Get them up off their arses, it implied, and away from their consoles, and down to their local sports hall, playing field, or pool.
Whether and to what extent that has worked will take a long time to see. But there’s another generation that is already visibly inspired, to my admittedly limited view.
Mine.
Where by “mine” I sort of mean “everyone who’s not still a child.” Because what I’m seeing as I cycle to and from work these days is that the streets are packed with cyclists. And people out running, too; there are definitely more than usual. But it’s us London cyclists who are really showing up.
I personally have taken public transport to work only once since before the Olympics started,1 and I’ve been pushing myself to get that bit faster on my bike rides.
I’ve been thinking of it as something like, “Hoy! It’s the Pendleton-Trott-Kenny-Wiggins effect.” But that’s a bit unwieldy, and misses some names out.
It is clear to me, though, that the “generation” that is in their twenties, thirties and yes, forties – and probably older – are out there in bigger numbers than ever before.
We’ll see how it holds up as autumn and winter come in, of course. But vastly increased cycling in London? That would really be a worthwhile legacy.
Anyway, here’s my Flickr set from our second event at the Olympics, namely hockey. Click through to see the pictures bigger and with captions.
Olympics: fencing and more Park views
A Flickr set from our first Olympic event: fencing at ExCeL. We went via Stratford, so we stopped off at the Westfield shopping centre on the way, to look at the view of the Park.
Olympics: some photos from the Park
This is a Flickr set of some sights around the Olympic Park the first day we were there (which was just a Park visit; no events).
(I lied about not posting photos, by the way.)
Weekend Warblers
The Radio 1 Hackney Weekend festival was fabulously well organised, loads of fun, and passed off with only three arrests.1 Booking the tickets a month or two ago had turned out to be easy (we sat with multiple browsers and phones as the SeeTickets site crumpled, but in fact it was no trouble at all after we left it for a while). Being local residents helped, as half the tickets were for Hackney households.
It was a free show, so there were restrictions; most notably that you could only book for one of the two days, and only two tickets per person. We were doing it for the kids; and the kids in this family (to say nothing of most of their friends) favoured the Sunday lineup; so that’s the one we went for.
The lineup leaned heavily to the various dance subgenres: (modern) R&B, dubstep, and so on. Not forgetting hip-hop, of course; not only did Jay-Z headline the first night, he guested with Rihanna on the second.
For me the highlight of the day was Jessie J; though I was mildly disappointed that she censored herself in my favourite of her songs, ‘Do it Like a Dude’.2
Tinie Tempah was also good, though since I’ve subsequently been listening to Enter Shikari, I’m slightly disappointed to have missed them as they clashed with Tinie.
There was great secrecy and much speculation over who the “Special Guest” was to be. They managed to keep it hidden until the day, which, while impressive in its way, had me worried. I thought that, depending on who it was, there could be a disaster. In particular, if it had been Justin Bieber, as some kids were speculating, there would have been a vast, simultaneous, two-way flow, from and to the stage (my kids would have been running away from the stage; there are no Beliebers at Devilgate Towers).
Not long before the guest’s time I heard on good authority that it was going to be Beyoncé. Believable, as her hubbie was there, and she was said to be “in the house”. But I doubted it: isn’t she a bigger name than Rihanna? And anyway, I get the sense that she’d be too much of a diva to go on second on the bill.
Anyway, in the end it was Dizzee Rascal, which with hindsight made total sense, what with him being a local boy and all.
As we wandered through the stages and the day, we heard snatches of Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’ seven times (I started keeping count at the third) from various between-act DJs and stalls. So by the time it closed the night, I was thoroughly ready to hear it properly. And a damn fine ending it was, too (though the fireworks were a tad tame).
I was hugely impressed with the organisation of the thing. We got there nice and early, and there was hardly any queueing, despite the airport-style security. The staff were all lovely and friendly, and – get this – there was hardly ever a queue for the toilets!
I would strongly support any moves to make it a regular thing. Radio 1’s event moves around the country, so it couldn’t stay free, but I could easily see it working as a commercial festival in the future.
Cud at The Garage
Surely Cud approaching…
Echotape supporting Cud at The Garage.
The stage awaits Echotape. At The Garage.
Sheen supporting Cud at The Garage
Moving desks today
