Lording it

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but like many Brits, I have a peerage. My full title is Baron Rashbre of London and I even have one of those Latin mottos : "illic est fun progressus". For those not familiar with the titled ranks, a baron is a fancy word for a Lord.

Of course, a lot of this has been in the papers recently, including allegations that some people have paid money to a political party in order to get a peerage. There has even been suggestion that there have been coded emails floating around in Downing Street talking about Ps and Ks (Peerages and Knighthoods). But surely if this was the case then chief of staff Jonathan Powell and director of government relations Ruth Turner would know about it, yet there seem to be strong denials.

Now that the police are involved, I'm sure we will all hear what has happened, once those unfortunate embargoes have been lifted, which stopped even the BBC from reporting on this for a while. I suppose now the Guardian newspaper has managed to get its story printed before the judge had a chance to ban it, then we will start to get more information.

And I suppose there will be changes at Downing Street soon enough, when Mr Blair decides to hand the keys over and presumably quite a few of his staff will line up for their redundancy cheques as a replacement set of advisors are brought in by his successor.


Perhaps it was prescient of Becky, 24 who commented from within Page 3 of the Sun a full year ago, on this very matter.

Or another way to find out what has been happening may be to enquire directly to existing Lords and Ladies who have blogs, websites and email addresses.

tags technorati : rashbre Lords london peerage parliament cash for peerages blair

sniggle

There's a series of adverts on the side of buses and taxis in London at the moment that say "Walk". In green writing. Of course, they are advertising a healthy spread for your bread, but its also a good form of culture jamming, or sniggling, as the street describes it.

And to make it more fun in London, there's an excellent piece of work been done by St Martin's College of Art, which shows the walking time between places on the tube. As a Londoner, I will use overground walking shortcuts, but its amazing how many people only know the tube routes, however convoluted.

cloned

They say imitation is a sincere form of flattery, and I've noticed for some time that there are cloned accesses to rashbre central on the internet. Here's one. And here's another.

I think there is a third, but I couldn't see it in the searches today. The thing is, when I was looking for a couple of old articles, there were searches where the cloned access was coming out higher than the original.

Gulp.

ps Use blogger? Wanna see your cloned access?
Type : http://www.inblog.net/myblogname (without the blogspot.com)

rashbre radio

Some of you know I like listening to music and I've had rashbre radio across on last.fm for about a year, but thought it was about time I integrated it into the blog. So here it is, along with a new tab above (called rashbre radio!).


To stay listening whilst scrolling or when moving away, press the little "Pop Up" button on the player, which will start a new mini window the radio station in it.

once in a red moon

Standing outside tonight, watching the moon, as it is eclipsed by the earth.

Pretty cosmic.



...and thanks dg, for mentioning it, so that I knew to look up!

Theres a few more pictures in my flickr stream.

snappy happy

I take quite a few of the pictures that I post for my blog, except maybe the 'earth from space' or 'mid week and no time to post' type entries. I've always had a collection of cameras of different types and thought it would be worth describing the hierarchy from the 'just about take a picture' to 'purposeful' .

The most basic camera I use is my phone. It has a tiny lens and can take slightly smudgy pictures when the phone doesn't start saying 'memory error' or some of the other excuses that Windows Mobile plays when it doesn't want to co-operate.

Then I have a little black pocket digital 'point and shoot'. This is a small, flattish camera which I usually keep in the bottom of whatever bag I am carrying. It takes normal walkman batteries and therefore I don't really have to worry about remembering to charge it. Frankly, I don't know how manufacturers get away with selling these though, because there is a loooong delay between pressing the shutter and the picture being taken.

Then there's the camera I use the most, which is a little Panasonic Lumix FZ-7. This looks like a tiny SLR, but actually has an electronic viewfinder. It has fast startup, takes the pictures when you press the button and has a nice big piece of Leica glass on the front so that it works well in low light. It also has a 12x optical zoom, which, if it were a 35 mm camera would be the equivalent of 36mm wide to 432mm Telephoto - so it also has image stabilisation to avoid camera shake. There is also a video mode which I've used at some music concerts. I bought a couple of extra rechargable batteries for this from Hong Kong and it goes out frequently when I go out.

Finally there's SLR, and I use Nikon. There's several around at the moment which are at between 6 and 10 mega pixels and for most people I'd just say get something you can afford unless you are into big pictures and fancy cropping.

The trick with these SLRs is to recognise the march of the mega-pixels which means there is always a diffusion model which is lower spec and cheaper but probably really about as good as the best models of a year ago. The current bargain seems to be the so-called 'refurbished' D70s which are around UKP350 at the moment, with a good 18-70 zoom lens. This is because of the replacement rave reviewed D80, which is about UKP700 with a reasonable kit lens.

There's also a superb smaller D40 for around UKP350, which is allegedly lower spec, but in my experience is a lovely camera to use and geared towards people starting out, although I know other photographers (like me) who swear by how good this is.

The snag with the Nikon (whichever one) is to remember to take it along. When I'm travelling and want to stay with carry-on luggage, unfortunately, the SLR becomes an item to jettison.

So thats how I get the hierarchy :
- phone
- black point and shoot
- Lumix
- Nikon.

And as a Mac user, I use Aperture to store my pictures (I did use iPhoto, which is fine for most needs) and actually I use the basic version of Photoshop (Photoshop Elements) for any post editing of the pictures.

blog party

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Greetings if you've come here from the party, please leave a comment and/or a link!

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fyne

A few of us had a bit of a do for Clare at Loch Fyne, which is quite a pleasant restaurant. A smidge of champagne was involved and some very enjoyable seafood. I decided to try the courses which were italicised and this led to a rather delicious Bradan Rost, which is kilnroasted smoked salmon with a whisky sauce.

So, as a weekend treat, here's my reverse engineered recipe. The Bradan Rost itself is a smoked salmon that has sort of cooked during the smoking process. Take some slices and heat them wrapped in foil in a warm oven for approx 15 mins. The result should look a quite deep brown colour.

In parallel, mix crème frâiché, creamed horseradish and whisky in a pan and heat through without boiling. A few pieces of sliced chanterelle can add a little texture. When warm, add freshly squeezed lemon juice and pepper to taste. Remove the Braden Rost from the oven and serve with the warm sauce and maybe some boiled potatoes, crusty bread and green leaved salad.

Sigh contentedly.

King of Hearts

Satirist Alistair Beaton has just launched an intriguing play about the Royal Family, across in Hampstead. The King Of Hearts examines how a prime minister and leader of the opposition would behave when faced with the possibility of the soon-to-be-crowned king converting to Islam.

With the reigning king at death's door and the heir to the throne in love with a British Muslim girl, there is consternation in the Establishment. The main response of the mainly overlapping prime minister and opposition leader is to consider how to engineer advantage from the situation.

Beaton's writing is always entertaining; the Blunkett play called A Very Social Secretary, the anti-war Follow My Leader and recently The Trial of Tony Blair.

eflyer here

moleskine

A small package awaited my return from Germany. Inside was a little Moleskine book. I first wrote abote 'The Whiteberry' back in 2005, and use these little books for notes.

It seems to be catching on.

It turns out that the one in the package included some maps and generally useful information about London, along with blank sections for notes and indexing. I'll consider adapting it as my personal guide to London.

starling dance

In the UK, birds, notably starlings are swarming early, believing Spring is fully upon us. Birdwatchers are commenting that this may be another sign of climate change, bringing moderate seasons earlier.

Meanwhile, there's been a story about defective petrol being sold in the UK over the last few days. This has been made more real by one of my reliable and non sensationalist colleagues having the juddering symptoms affecting his rather posh German 'vorsprung durch technik' Auto.

The initial discussion has revolved around the potential that this fuel has added ethanol, which has changed its combustion characteristics. I noticed that only three weeks ago, we had the Mr Mantega, Brazil’s Finance Minister, urging Britain to embrace ethanol as a petrol alternative.

Ethanol is a biofuel and part of the arguments for its use are that it can reduce the impacts of global warming, presumably realigning the seasons in the process. Mr Mantega was in London promoting the product and mentioned that Brazil happens to be the world’s largest supplier of ethanol.

In the USA, ethanol fuel is also made, in this case from maize. President Bush currently subsidises this form of production, as a spin off general farm subsidies, bur plans an $18bn reduction in this form of farm support over the next five years.

I suppose over the next few days we will see what, if anything, was wrong with the fuel and whether its a legitimate error, some sort of hysterical co-incidence or perhaps some form of orchestrated climate or other protest.

My friend tells me it is costing £140 ($250) to have the fuel removed from his gas tank, and then he will need to check whether he needs a new oxygen sensor or catalytic converter for his car. I speculate this won't be cheap.

We'll be able to watch it on the news, as it unfolds, unless - that is - that you were hoping to watch it on Sky and are a cable subscriber with NTL/Virgin, which is having its Sky services curtailed as part of a recent commercial decision.

a very cellular post

Sometimes keeping a blog can be quite difficult. My hotel room this evening, here in Frankfurt, doesn't have a working boradband connection, so I am typling this into my cell phone. I spent the last two days in busy meetings and was in a dinner until late yesterday and then had a 07:15 breakfast meeting today. So now I'm tired and will take the evening to watch television or listen to my iPod.