Cameron House for dinner

One of those sublime moments where a great venue, great company and great food coalesce to make a great evening. No pipers necessary.

Loch Lomond

So we travelled on to Scotland and to the shores of Loch Lomond, where we were to celebrate Julie's birthday!

Briefly through Lancaster

Mel’s room was bursting (as usual) with “stuff” indicative of a large life confined to a small place. In addition to the prominent guitar, disco mixer and whirlwind of discarded clothes was a steadfast stack of revision material for Eng. Lit. juxtaposed with Orwellian extracts for the current play plus Walhol’s diaries and Edie Sedgwick pictures for the next project.

Blade Road – one way system, John, and thence northward to Scotland.

Northwich with a pinch of salt

Optimised travel with a logical but jarring stopover in a difficult to find hotel in salt capital Northwich far from the M6 and tricky to locate. Just don’t follow the Northwich signs for the hotel and you will be okay. Late arrival in a smelly room consuming milk and biscuits from a nearby petrol station. An early start the next day meant we could minimise the exposure and be swiftly on our way to our real stopover in Lancaster.

Barcelona

Well I found Los Ramblas okay; it was a €1.15 trip from the hotel on the Linea 3. I had to walk down hill to the well fortified meeting square with Terry on a search mission to help me on the last few steps.

The rest had been in the same bar since 16:00 and now at 20:00 quite a few bottles of Rioja had already been demolished. I was still in the pristine state following a day of celibate client meetings. "Get me a glass" was amongst my first statements and soon enough the smoky red liquid was oiling the edges of my conversation.

Later stumbing to the natural seats for us at the Taxidermista, I spotted Terry's considerate venue related aside to Marilyn ensuring food we would all enjoy.

An evening of increasing beverage fatigue was easily offset by talk of the latest TV opportunity for Marilyn, of my rather suspect Anime Singularity from Christina Nott and of John's attempts to fathom Terry's strong Rosicrucian belief system. My summary of "I am what I am" was reposted with Terry's "Be yourself", but I sort of knew we were near to the same page.

Bottles later we hugged and split; Terry and Marilyn to their ideally centric locale; JLO, with me, to an optimally obscure location and then me alone to the posh place next to our event venue. As I toppled from the taxi at 02:30, Tom called, "Hey" as he was about to launch himself onward into the Spanish night.

Whole Wheat Radio

Whole Wheat Radio is an all volunteer, grassroots, labour-of-love webcasting radio station broadcasting on the Internet 24 hours/day, 365 days/year from a 12 x 12 plywood cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska. Unlike most other webcasts, Whole Wheat Radio is interactive.

They have been on-air for more than three years, and the "live" webcasting began in August, 2002 and currently support a maximum of 60 concurrent listeners.

They have excellent podcast downloads of programmes, live sets and individual tracks from artists. SInce starting they have played over 1,800,000 tunes that were actually heard by tuned-in listeners. Main genres are independent musicians including acoustic, folk, jazz, classical, bluegrass, singer-songwriter, swing, big-band, new-age, instrumental, blues, black-gospel, Alaskana, spoken word, and humor.

Whilst not "professional", the station is creative, personal, opinionated, artistic, honest, flawed, human, and real and doesn't . take itself too seriously. Their motto is "Changing Radio - One Listener At A Time."

As one person put it, "you're a small, unimportant webcast." They hope to keep it that way.

Inside the Powerbook

Ever wondered what the inside of a Powerbook looked like? Wonder no more- Here's an x-ray!

(Via Boing Boing.)

New Weather for UK!

wxt_isotherm_temps_uk
Originally uploaded by rashbre.

New Metra weather symbols for the BBC move away from the old 'tin cutout' style symbols of the last 20 years. And they have a funky globe logo too!

Nearly Japan

hibachi
Originally uploaded by rashbre.

So we all met at Benihana in Piccadilly to wish John G a Sayonara before he heads for Tokyo, It was a surprise to all of us that he travels on Saturday, although he doesn't pick up the visa until Friday. Slightly last minute.
A chatty evening with much flashing of knives by our showy chef. Next stop for John - Rappongi.

Hoodies Ban from Shopping Mall

starwars_52
Originally uploaded by rashbre.

Bluewater Shopping Mall has banned hoodies. Will that limit their ability to show Star Wars? - The Sith may seek Revenge! {warning 7.5Mb to load this}

555 Election Statistics

Vote050505:: " Vote050505: Election stats

1) 2005 election: votes cast

Lab 35%

Con 32%

LD 22%

Oth

2) 2005 election: seats won

Lab 356

Con 197

LD 62

Oth

3) The last 60 years of political power (plus the next 5)

1945

1951

1964

1970

1974

1979

1997

.

4) Election turnout: average by decade

1920s

74%

1930s

74%

1940s

73%

1950s

80%

1960s

76%

1970s

75%

1980s

74%

1990s

75%

2000s

60%

5) 2005 election: national support for each party

Lab 22%

Con 20%

LD 14%

Oth

did not vote 39%

• See also: qwghlm's updated electoral map of Britain (cor, that was quick)"

(Via diamond geezer.)

VE 60 in Moscow

More than 50 world leaders, including US President George W Bush, have been paying tribute in Moscow to the Soviet people's sacrifice in World War II. A mass parade took place in Red Square - the latest in a series of events in Europe marking 60 years since the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

Despite the grey skies, Moscow's city centre was transformed into a sea of colour for the celebrations. They began with four soldiers marching across Red Square with the Soviet victory flag, to the sounds of a military band. Thousands of servicemen bearing Red Army standards followed. Fighter jets flew over the square streaming red, white and blue smoke, the colours of the Russian tricolour flag.

Addressing the crowds, Russia's President Vladimir Putin stressed the extent of the Soviet sacrifice to save the world from the Nazis. President Bush, the first US president to attend a Russian victory parade, earlier hailed the liberation from the Nazis, but said the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe that followed was "one of the greatest wrongs of history". More than 40 million people had lost their lives by the time World War II ended in Europe on 8 May 1945, including 27 million from the Soviet Union.