starcam

Some relief today that rashbre central has survived its migration from Windows to Linux, at a data centre somewhere in Germany.

I've had to rebuild my secret little website, but everything seems to be working. Good also that its been relatively 'hands off' because today I've been at various meetings in London and in between decided to try out the 'StarCam' Starbuck's coffee cup camera.

So the story starts at the busy area around Oxford Street and Regent's Street., with plenty of London traffic to dodge, whilst carrying a cup of coffee. The early shots were quite difficult to aim until I'd figured out where the clicker button was, through the coffee cup.

Then a gap in the traffic and across Regent's Street, aware that whilst moving fast, the camera will probably blur the shots. And because I'm moving from outdoors to indoors yet not using flash, there's quite a varaton in lighting to handle.

So here I am going into a store in Regent's Street, this won't win many prizes, but this was an experiment, after all.

Then back along Regent's Street to Oxford Circus tube station, where I needed to catch the Bakerloo Line to Paddington; in this case passing one of the many newsagents selling West End Final Evening Standards.

So then its into the tube station, where the lighting proved a bit much for the rather primitive StarCam setup. I think it captures the action of a busy tube station fairly well, though I momentarily lost my Oyster card in the excitement of trying to walk, carry a bag, and a cup of coffee. Lucky I wasn't chewing gum as well.

One minute wait for the train, not bad and it wasn't too full either. I wasn't quite sure how best to hold the coffee cup on the train (no coffee in it etc), so I dropped it into my bag.

Re-emerging at Paddington, onto the platform concourse. I paused here, but the pictures still have a hectic look.

I was still on my way to a meeting, so this was all rather incidental to my main reason for the journey.

Passing a train, and even going past Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the train station and most of the original line to the West of England.

So I'll finish with the picture of Brunel looking into the station, before I hopped outside and along the road to the location of meeting, and I did have to meet someone first...in a Starbucks.

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