WVM Nissan Cabstar Dropside

Yes, London had an extra white van on its streets on Sunday. We were helping shunt some stray furniture around using a trusty Nissan White Van (well - okay - it was a truck). This meant we could also feature a rolled up newspaper in the cab and tie a few things down with pieces of blue string. We took one load to Norris Road and another was dispatched to a holding bay in a different garage.

In the excitement of it all, I didn't take a proper picture, so here, instead is a recreation using a small cast iron model.

Brrm.

tags technorati : rashbre white van nissan cabstar dropside WVM

Nitin Sawhney Prom 37

Unfortunately, the only camera we had for the Nitin Sawhney Prom has had a memory lapse during the evening.

Here's a picture outside the Royal Albert Hall just before it all started. There were still lines of people trying to buy last minute tickets, which is the tradition for the Proms, where every night 1,400 standing tickets are sold on the night. We had seats already though in the Circle, hence the relaxed pizza earlier.

The concert was superb, with Nitin and a cast of many including a 60 piece orchestra performing a wide range of his music, from the full spectrum of his repertoire.

This included simple pieces delivered acoustically, through to full-blown orchestral pieces. He had several guest performers, varying from Spanish singers, through Indian musicians with Sitars, to beat-box. Eclectic and mesmerizing. Somehow astonishing to pack so much into the time. The the link is to the actual concert, from the Radio 3 play again service, but probably only available for around a week - Go on, click and listen in the background whilst you browse other things. Pretend you are in London at the Royal Albert Hall for a classical concert, including a uniquely Anglo/Indian accent.

Bliss.

tags technorati : rashbre nitin sawhney nitin sawhney proms bbc london royal albert hall kensington

Pizza Express

Yes, Pizza at Da Mario's in Gloucester Road. We'd arranged to meet here before heading on to Prom 37 at the Royal Albert Hall. I'd parked in Imperial College and then stood around outside Da Mario's for a few minutes taking in the Gloucester Road busy scene, complete with fancy fast cars drifting along the road. A high Ferrari and Maserati count.

Da Mario's is something of a tradition. The original chef there invented the recipes used by one of the well-known UK/Italian chains and this small restaurant is where it all started. Princess Diana used to bring the boys to the restaurant and there's a picture inside of her with the owner. I've been to this unassuming venue quite a few times and its always good.

Then a few minutes walk to the Royal Albert Hall to see Nitin Sawhney at the Proms.

tags technorati : rashbre pizza nitin sawhney proms damarios london royal albert hall kensington

virtuosity

Keeping with a mapping London theme a little bit longer, I'm still waiting for the Google Street View scenes like the ones of San Francisco, Las Vegas (tsk, tsk, surely thats not the Hot Babes truck next to the camera?) and Los Angeles (here outside Graumann's on Hollywood Boulevard) to make it to London.

At the moment, for London, there are some nice swivelling Virtual Reality scenes and the project to build a Virtual London, but it hasn't yet all linked together.

tube

Three days in different parts of London and I thought it would be interesting to show the topology of where I've been related to (a) the Tube map and (b) some famous sights. So Wednesday around Oxford Circus, Thursday in the City and tonight I'll be at the Royal Albert Hall.

There's more fun to be had with this over at digital urban who do all things urban and mappy very well. Another of their projects has been to create a digital virtual London to map onto Google, but there seem to be proprietary data rights stopping it at the moment.

a slight return

That London skyscraper they're taking down floor by floor to build the Cheesegrater has had a few technical challenges and some new clever engineering over the last few weeks.

Underground, apparently there are some ex Bank vaults, complete with 1.5 meter thick concrete walls interlaced with sheets of steel. That has given the demolition crew something to think about, according to the news bulletins posted in the area. Makes some of the Bank heist films we all see seem a little less probable when we hear that authorized demolition in broad daylight has problems.

They are also rigging a new 'bracing strut' (my words) to the top of the building to help as they take the top floors down. In the diagram it looks a little bit like a bow and arrow, with the bow as the bracing strut and the arrow as the building.

Actually, there was also quite a bit of photographic interest there when I walked past. I noticed two or three people with normal clickers and a guy with a backpack and some heavy duty cameras, all taking snaps. I wonder if there's a competition or something?

And don't forget you saw it on rashbre central before the BBC.

alert

Its been interesting visiting other major cities as part of my vacation. As a Londoner, there are certain innate security minded things one does or doesn't do, reinforced over years of poster campaigns and similar, which are less well-emphasized in other countries. So returning to London, today was a case in point where I saw several signs that even if its the holiday season, there's still a certain vigilance about the Capital.

Firstly, as I moved into the central City area, I noticed two policemen manning the security booths at the start of the formal city boundary.

Secondly, I'd arranged to meet someone at a coffee shop and before they arrived, there was a minor disturbance whilst the (tourist) owner of a large wheeled case was located. They'd stood their ominously large bag in a corner whilst they queued many metres away for coffee.

Thirdly, a little later, there was a similar situation in a magazine shop at the train station. Someone had brought two sports bags in and left them on the ground, presumably whilst searching for a magazine. The security guard was becoming more and more loud as he attempted to track down the owners. I had left before this had been resolved.

And still, in some key areas there's no bins to place rubbish, as a deliberate security precaution.

What is it they say about the price of freedom being eternal vigilance?

Anosov diffeomorphism

In addition to the problematic sofa, the rest of rashbre central's lounge has been going through some form of transformation.

This is a bit like the shearing of a picture into ever smaller ribbons of chaos and then, through a progressive continuation, the eventual reappearance of order.

Parts of this change occurred whilst I was wandering Nordic parts, so there was that moment of truth upon returning to a scene which fortunately looked fine.

So now rashbre central is refixing door handles and similar items. All this creates an ongoing feeling of slight instability, which will, I suspect, last at least until sofa Mark Three appears. we shall see.

Sophistry

My new sofa arrived!

This is a replacement for my last new sofa that arrived back in April. The first one was supposed to be brown, but when it arrived the Big Mistake was that it was yellow.

The first one was lovingly made by craftsfolk in Italy and then transported by road and ship to the UK. Although an L shape, it was splint into two pieces for the journey as well as being covered in foam and cardboard packaging for the long journey. It arrived immaculately but in the wrong colour.

The second one was also made lovingly by craftsfolk in Italy. Still an L shape, it was also transported in bubble-wrap by road and ship to the UK. This one was tantalizingly well covered so it was impossible to tell the colour until the packing was removed and - Hooray - it was now correct!

As it was removed from the packaging, I noticed the shape looked slightly different from the last one. And then, before the second half had been carried in, I realized the second Big Mistake.

It was a Right Hand Facing L shape instead of a Left Hand Facing L shape. This may not seem much, but trust me - it makes all the difference about how it fits into the room.

So I now have a second temporary sofa; this one sticking out into the room in the Right Colour, but the Wrong Shape.

And the factories in Italy are on vacation for the whole of August.

knobs and knockers

Gordon the painter did a great job whilst I was trekking in Scandinavia. I'd asked that the doorhandles and some switchplates were left off because they were to be replaced. No problem to find the new silver ones but the powerdrill and electric screwdriver had disappeared into the bowels of the garage. So do it manually with an old fashioned screwdriver? No! rashbre central demands electronics for such matters.

This allows a good demonstration of Newton's Fifth Law; "Anything requiring 'do it yourself skills' requires an equal and opposite amount of futile trips to the stores."

So the original door handles, switches and electrical sockets to be replaced all required some form of substitution because of depth or dimension problems. They say a bad worker blames the tools, but in this case there were strange shaped screw heads needing obscure allan keys and all manner of minor obstacle to turn a two hour task into a two day endurance test.

I won't blame the tools, but more the concept of trying to do this seemingly minor task in a small amount of time.

We are now all shiny and happy, however.

old bull

Generally speaking, Irish bars seem to outnumber British pubs during travels abroad (maybe except in some parts of Costa del Sol).

So I was amused to see this hostelry lurking in Sweden, with a typically ironic name, which whilst sounding plausible, is usually a term for 'nonsense' or 'telling lies'.

Although when I glanced into the relatively modern English slang dictionary, the phrase didn't seem to be mentioned.

internet sparks

I've swapped internet providers!

Something not usually for the faint of heart, what with the need to get MAC codes and all. I arranged for the swap to be done whilst I was on vacation, with a view to giving enough lead time for the new arrangements to be made and then a day for the new codes to be delivered when I returned.

And everything actually went to plan.

The old service was still working the day I returned and then at 23:00 (late enough) it stopped working.

Today, the new gadgets arrived, along with the codes needed to activate the service. I keyed in the new codes to my existing setup and zippee the whole thing has started working as before, but twice as fast and at around 60% of the old cost. Well worth the crossed fingers.