rest awhile

I suppose I should mention the hotel in Edinburgh - we arrived to be greeted with champagne on ice and some rather interesting chocolate mousse type things in little glass goblets.

Its one of those hotels with peacocks strutting around the grounds, where you sit down on sofas to check in and the rooms are full of cushions and heavy drapes with large tassels. Knock on the door to take a look around. I can justify this as proper vacation time for a few days, so I shall just enjoy it all.

bongo time

First a technical rehearsal and then a preview evening for the Warhol staging at the Fringe. Edinburgh is a mad place at this time with countless plays, comedies, standup, music and other entertainment from all over the city. So gaining mindshare from a single production takes a lot of work and planning. Posters, leaflets, assaults on Princes Street, The Royal Mile, tableaux, interviews, hopefully press reviews (and hopefully good ones). The above frame is from today's filming of the cast preparations; a few standing outside after the technical rehearsal.

Tomorrow is the first 'Standing in John Lewis (department store)' event too. So a lot to do to get that vital audience.

First night, and a reasonable gathering - although this was still preview night. The show is launched!

fringe events

In Edinburgh from today, where the Fringe is in full swing. A little mad right now so difficult to post. This is from a borrowed Mac, plugged into a nearby Swisscom wifi hotspot. When I get stable connections, I'll post more!

door sense

A weird co-incidence today as I saw two different people walk into plate glass doors.

The first person stopped just as they got to the door, which was at a well-known sport store. No harm done.

The second one was a store that I was inside and just leaving, when I saw someone ahead of me walk into the door and bounce backwards in slow motion, hitting the floor. I helped him up and he was quite dazed initially, and had dropped money and his wallet. Several other people came over to check as well (though no-one from the shop) and once he was composed he assured everyone he was all right. I reported the incident to an assistant named Aaron in the store and he promised he would tell the manager.

So co-incidence, I suppose - but I was cautious myself after that for the next couple of shops and even noticed one door sliding back quite slowly. I will get over this obsession.

3 stars

The work finished today, but we needed a final session which meant I couldn't take a flight tonight and instead have to go back on Friday morning. As luck would have it, that means a small group of us, variously flying to Washington, Boston, Stockholm, Cleveland and Brussels decided to meet for dinner in the hotel.

Lets just say it was excellent.

Carmen

Wednesday was a somewhat intense day for me with work related matters, but we had a hard cut-off in the evening in order to take a visit to a nearby town. I say nearby, but it was actually around an hour and a half away. Verona - which is a very old town and has a spectacular collusseum in the centre. We'd managed to get some tickets to visit this special place and to see the opera Carmen, performed in the open, in the collusseum.

On the way, I'd briefly read a few notes about the cast, and it sounded as if there were about five or six main players in the opera. Not so, on the stage in Verona, I estimate there were 130 people on stage for some parts, plus a 40 piece orchestra. The Italians know how to throw an opera.

The main show started at around 21:00 and at midnight we were on Act Three. Then there was another 20 minute interval, during which I briefly left the collusseum to get some lemon sorbet. Then back for the final act.

A well staged and well performed show; we walked back to our transport at around one thirty in the morning, happy - if sleepy, before our long drive back to the hotel.

Bella Italia

The flight to Milan was only delayed within acceptable norms and the transit to the waiting car was pretty fast, considering that I'd had checked baggage. I've not really got any idea where I travelled to except it was along an Autostrada and then through some twisty lanes to a rather spectacular spa hotel.

The main business was due to start the next day and as I checked in I received a discreet invitation for aperitifs on the balcony bar at 20:00. Oops, it was already 20:05, so I realised I'd better get moving. I seem to find that when I'm away like this there is never really any time.

Anyway, the hotel room was rather good with its own balcony, jaccuzzi and so on and by the time I found the others, they were already tucking into the local Italian equivalent of champagne. No idea what it was called, but it sure tasted good.

The view from our vantage point was right across the valley and to some decent looking hills opposite. Truly spectacular. When I can get the right connector for my phone I'll post a picture or two, but for now, you'll have to make do a snap of part of my room.

iris

The security at Heathrow had adjusted to the different circumstances. The Terminal 1 drop off area sported a large marquee across the first two car lanes as a pre-departure holding area. People were being called into the terminal three hours before departure time. I wasn't that early, so I was able to go directly to check-in. I'd already got an e-ticket and done online check-in so I just needed to drop off my bag.

I was then given a see-through bag for my car keys, phone and other electronica before my transit through the security scanners. My queue only had about 20 people ahead of me and didn't take very long. I guess it took me less than twenty minutes to get from the outside of the terminal to be fully checked in and airside. Probably faster than a normal day.

Then over two hours to wait airside. I spotted the desk for 'iris' the biometric passport system. Only one person in the line. So I wandered over and within about ten minutes I'd been scanned so that I can now use the high speed immigration lanes which use iris scanning recognition instead of passport control. Great. Now I have a way to bypass another part of the airport process.

air lines

I'm supposed to be flying to Italy on Tuesday for a few days of work. So I've been keeping half an ear to the various reports about London Heathrow's flights. According to Radio 4, around 30% of flights have been cancelled today and about 20 flights cancelled from London Gatwick.

I'm already used to the idea that I'll be taking a very small carry-on bag with just passport and keys and that everything else has to go into the hold (laptop, mobile phone and other electronic paraphernalia). So this time I shall be considering how to travel hyper-light for the visit.

Meanwhile, UK news is spending more time at the weekend explaining the basis of the alleged terrorist plot which was to use binary chemical weapons smuggled in drink containers or similar to disable planes over the Atlantic or US mainland. According to newspapers, a remote detonator could be created using modest technology from, say, a mobile phone, car security key blipper or similar. There seem to be two theories of what such a weapon would comprise: one route says explosive and the other says lethal gas. Spend ten minutes in google and you can form your own opinions.

In the meantime, some television commercials just won't survive this now...

podcast

Something of an experimental post.

I was over at Nat's and noticed the whizzy way to drop a podcast straight into iTunes, so I thought I'd have a go. Here's the Christina Nott tunes we uploaded to last.fm a few days ago, now thoughtfully provided as a podcast which is 'yours to keep'.

Hopefully just clicking here will quietly beam the whole podcast across into iTunes, where it can be played for general amusement. The file is only 10Mb, but contains about 8 tracks of Christina, pretty much the same set as loaded to last.fm.

we are the web

I've been casually tracking some of the commentary about internet commercial interest over the last few months. The web is a great social exchange as well as changing a lot of global economics. Case in point today when a small well-travelled bag of T shirts arrived at my home from threadless in Chicago after an online order a few days ago.

I've mentioned the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) before as a way to consider privacy issues related to the internet and other useful sources are wearetheweb.org as a vector to discussions (as well as to a daft video) and the recent Vint Cerf letter to US congress.

The point is to ensure that now TCP/IP and WWW have become liberating communications vehicles for global reach, that electronic roadblocks and filter lanes are not then imposed by the service providers.

iBox

Those mac vc PC commercials seem to be everywhere and nowadays there seem to be whole websites dedicated to collecting the rip-offs.