OTA : Wordless Wednesday

New London Parking Penalty
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iTouch

Well, my post about the new iPod was speculative and slightly wrong, but not that wrong, really. Here's the real thing. To my surprise, the initial capacity is the same as the last Nano. I'd have expected a disk based system with maybe 10 times the capacity at launch. Oh well.

autumn

Surely it still too early? However, there are tree leaves already turning yellow and brown.

iPod 6?

iPod 6th generation preview?

...or just more speculation.

You decide.

purple

I never meant 2 cause u any sorrow
I never meant 2 cause u any pain
I only wanted 2 one time see u laughing
I only wanted 2 see u laughing in the purple rain

Purple rain purple rain
Purple rain purple rain
Purple rain purple rain

I only wanted 2 see u bathing in the purple rain

A great gig with Prince keeping the whole Dome on its feet from the opening chord to the very, very, very end of the show. Consumate performer, robust band, great dancers, many great tunes mixin it up between soul, jazz, funk, fusion, blues, rock, pop. The Prince threw a great party for London.

strictly no cameras allowed, so you'll have to imagine the rest

dome vs wembley

A minor comparison of the Dome vs Wembley as a venue. Not a "Sports" comparison, but for audience care and facilities. The Dome crushes Wembley in a moment. Better transport access, better entry logistics, better free space areas, better range of on site facilities, better restaurants and cafes, better food. And as a venue for live, 20,000 seats at the dome still seems fairly intimate whereas 50,000 seats at Wembley creates distant dots.

And an £8 disgustoburger at Wembley is no match for the £7 chinese at the Dome.

C'mon Wembley, fix it.

memory jogger

Last week when I was jogging around the Serpentine, I also diverted the short distance to the Diana Memorial, which was fairly quiet at the time. I snapped a couple of pictures and then realized its ten years since the accident, this week.

The memorial is quite a contrast to the normal statues and obelisks sprinkled around London. A long circuit of water, actually two flows that meander from a source to a lower destination like two halves of an 'O'.

I was around the palace/abbey area at the time it was all happening and remember the sheer volume of flowers at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and Kensington Palace. Looking back at some of the photos on google doesn't really convey the scale, compared with walking through the area at the time.

Thursday Thirteen (V44)

Time to open the door on another Thursday Thirteen. I'm combining it with the tag request from Webby's world a few weeks ago, which is one of those "08 random things about me" memes. Joe asks that the rules are published first, so here goes...

The Rules (condensed) Each player must post these rules first. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write about their eight facts on their blog. At the end of your blog post, choose eight people to get tagged, list their names, and link to them. Don’t forget to contact them telling them they’re tagged. Also, point them to your blog post so they know what to do.

So here's a few random things.

1) I was out yesterday evening at an Indian restaurant with a couple of friends. One I hadn't seen for about two years and the other for about six months.

2) I'm continuing to cycle or run most days at the moment, but decided not to keep a 'blow by blow' (stagger by stagger?) account of it on here.

3) I've just installed a new Windows environment on one of the macs. To test it I fired up explorer with this blog and noticed how the formatting on explorer was all wonky. I've spent about 15 minutes hunting down the missing brackety things to make explorer work again. No such problem with Mac.

4) Three white vans are due to deliver things to home today. There's a high probability to be out when they arrive. UPDATE One arrived whilst I was in.


6) Going to see Prince at the Dome tomorrow. I don't think the rumours are true that the sponsors have painted O2 on the roof so that it can be seen from planes and outer space.

7) Next week I will be in Belgium, on business.

8) I'm operating on expressos today. There's no milk and I'm not so fond of black tea.

9) Yesterday lunchtime, I sat on the banks of the River Thames for a while. It was the first time this summer I've noticed it being actually cold when the sun was behind a cloud. On the radio, farming news is already talking about autumn.
10) There are some very noisy builders working close to where I am typing right now.

11) I usually spend about ten minutes writing a blog entry. Thursday Thirteen and memes always seem to take longer. I guess its because they become multi themed.

12) A couple of days ago I spotted that one of the Alien movies was on television. They are still some of the best scary movies in my opinion. It was the one where 12 aliens had escaped onto the big space ship. Best watched with the lights out for maximum effect. I think it probably affected my resting heart rate (running and cycling reference there!)

13) Still no more white van deliveries. I will have to go out soon. I really need tea.

14)I won't tag people, but please self select to either do Thursday Thirteen or Joe's meme.

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OTA: Wordless Wednesday

electrifying
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Brick Lane

Strolling onward to Brick Lane, nowadays nicknamed "Bangla Town" by the locals. Originally an area for the manufacture of bricks, then a Jewish neighbourhood and nowadays the centre of the Bangladeshi community. Ask a Londoner about Brick Lane and they'll talk about the excellent curry restaurants (bring your own beer- the restaurants are mainly Muslim). There's also the markets in the middle part of the Lane and at night its a clubbing area with the Vibe and others open till very late. The 24 hour Beigel Bakery does good trade around the clock.

The Bangladeshis first came here as seamen in the 1920s and expanded a wide range of trading in the area. The signage is often in Bangladeshi and as well as items likw saris from the indian sub-continent there's designer fashion from the Laden Shop or vintage clothes from Rokit.

Around the middle of the Lane is the tall chimneyed Truman's Black Eagle Brewery with origins in the 1700s. Nowadays its been converted to a tourist, cafe and shopping area, although part is still open for guided tours.

The area was one of the most densely populated in the middle of the 19th century and at that time was known for slums, narrow alleyways, poor water supplies and no proper sewage facilities.

Brick Lane today is a bustling and multi-cultural area. Off to each side are other small roads with fame of their own. Chicksand Street is reputed to be where Bram Stocker stayed on his return to Transylvania. Flower and Dean Street was the address of most of Jack the Ripper's victims at some stage in their lives and Hanbury Steet was the site of one of the murders. I'm not sure about Bacon Street.

And any spare flat surface will have been postered or display some form of graphic. This varies from mindless tagging to the street art of Banksy or sometimes installation pieces that have somehow made it onto the street.

Brick Lane may have converted to being more be halal than kosher, but the area continues to cast a vivid image into east London.

...then Hackney Hoxton and Shoreditch

Emm, this was supposed to be the Saturday post after team rashbre had entered another one of those Shoot Experience photo walkabout competitions. Unfortunately it all went a bit pear shaped. We had tickets and were kind of prepared. The last one we did was, for us, an anytime start and this suited us just fine. This one had an un-noticed 'be there at eleven am' message in the email.

oops.

So turning up at two o' clock in the afternoon wasn't a bright idea. Then being told the clues took around 30 minutes each and that everyone had to be back at four thirty to upload the finished items.

So dutifully taking the team rashbre materials, including the team badges with 'I love Hackney' written on them it was time to go outside Cargo to plan the rescue operation.

That's when the pub came into view. After a Grolsch, this became a 'cut the losses' situation. So instead of hammering around the circuit snapping wildly and producing some ill-planned entries, it became more fun to abandon the competition and to simply wander around 'the area formerly known as Hackney' now called Hoxton, Shoreditch and Brick Lane.


Hoxton itself has become one of the gentrification areas in London and the small grassy Hoxton Square was filled with people chilling out for the afternoon, overlooked by various trendy restaurants and art galleries.

Indicatively, around the square, with graffiti like stencilling onto the pavement, was a series of signs for the "Cereal Killer", either advertising an Australian rock band or Kellogg's breakfast foods.


The nature of the area creates a fusion between street culture typified by graffiti at one end and posh art galleries at the other. As an example, there's a shop which has been converted into an advertisement for the recent Chemical Brothers album.

So there's a balance required here to interpret the difference between substance, pretence with perhaps a little wry humour. I'd need to spend more time in this finely delineated area to be able to make the necessary judgement. ShoHo (Shoreditch/Hoxton) is less clear-cut than the SoHo of Manhattan, yet shares some of the characteristics.

and the Hoxton snaps were on the way to Brick Lane...

time in the garden

...well not my garden. And not really a garden, as such.

Covent Garden.

An area often featured in 'Lies Londoners tell Tourists' (because its not a garden), along with 'The Mall as a great shopping area'. And as a place to visit, for a quick buzz of lots happening, Covent Garden has it all from smart cafes, street entertainers, boutique shops and little craft market stands.

For much of its existence Covent Garden served as a fruit and vegetable market covering the whole of the square. Back in the 1600s the land belonged to Westminster Abbey and was a Convent garden, hence the name.

It emerged in its current form out of an experiment in London of town planning as the creation of a public square, developed by the Earl of Bedford, Charles I and architect Inigo Jones. It also introduced Italian style Palladian columns, some smart houses and a grids for streets instead of London's random twists and turns.

The original public square ultimately caused the residential well-heeled toffs to leave the area for Bloomsbury to escape the riff-raff and lack of privacy.

Then the Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed the major markets in the City and the fruit market moved to this area where it remained for around 300 years, evolving in the late 1800s to a covering of the area with a train station style roof.

The final closure of the extensive fruit market in the 1970s was an effect of London road congestion and became the reason for the market to move to South of the river to its current Nine Elms location.

Unimaginative developers wanted to knock down the market and build a conference centre but local opposition was so strong that a renovation plan ensued creating what is, today, a major magnet for tourists and Londoners at rest. Street performers ply their amusements on every corner and there is always a big crowd by the Punch and Judy pub looking out to the end of the square where a high wire act, jugglers or a stand-up will be working the crowd (or sometimes one person doing all three together).

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the Covent Garden Opera House also operate in the area and it has a 'one way' tube station at certain times of the year (exit only) and this encourages tourists to wander the area and then find a different way back from Leicester Square or Embankment.

And of course, the spirits from many a yesteryear still inhabit the whole area.

Close your eyes, listen to the noise and you can imagine any time from the past in this vibrant part of London.

But I only took these snaps as I passed through on my way to Shoreditch.