starcam

Some relief today that rashbre central has survived its migration from Windows to Linux, at a data centre somewhere in Germany.

I've had to rebuild my secret little website, but everything seems to be working. Good also that its been relatively 'hands off' because today I've been at various meetings in London and in between decided to try out the 'StarCam' Starbuck's coffee cup camera.

So the story starts at the busy area around Oxford Street and Regent's Street., with plenty of London traffic to dodge, whilst carrying a cup of coffee. The early shots were quite difficult to aim until I'd figured out where the clicker button was, through the coffee cup.

Then a gap in the traffic and across Regent's Street, aware that whilst moving fast, the camera will probably blur the shots. And because I'm moving from outdoors to indoors yet not using flash, there's quite a varaton in lighting to handle.

So here I am going into a store in Regent's Street, this won't win many prizes, but this was an experiment, after all.

Then back along Regent's Street to Oxford Circus tube station, where I needed to catch the Bakerloo Line to Paddington; in this case passing one of the many newsagents selling West End Final Evening Standards.

So then its into the tube station, where the lighting proved a bit much for the rather primitive StarCam setup. I think it captures the action of a busy tube station fairly well, though I momentarily lost my Oyster card in the excitement of trying to walk, carry a bag, and a cup of coffee. Lucky I wasn't chewing gum as well.

One minute wait for the train, not bad and it wasn't too full either. I wasn't quite sure how best to hold the coffee cup on the train (no coffee in it etc), so I dropped it into my bag.

Re-emerging at Paddington, onto the platform concourse. I paused here, but the pictures still have a hectic look.

I was still on my way to a meeting, so this was all rather incidental to my main reason for the journey.

Passing a train, and even going past Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the train station and most of the original line to the West of England.

So I'll finish with the picture of Brunel looking into the station, before I hopped outside and along the road to the location of meeting, and I did have to meet someone first...in a Starbucks.

More here

clunk

Please do not adjust your sets, but I've had to take the covers off rashbre central this weekend. It was making a sort of scraping noise. I discovered that some of the cogs are not meshing properly, so I'll be doing a small amount of maintenance over the next week or two.

For those more technically minded, I will be changing the wibbulator; the less technical may be interested to know that I'm adding proper php support to the server in Germany so that my various javascript and css add-ons can be a little easier to maintain.

Short term, this means that the formatting and layout may look a little stranger than usual. I'm hopeful that things will start to look more normal by about Wednesday.

don't mess

I was reading maximum bob's tune complilation for the shuffleathon, which is an organized way to swap music (aka mixtapes - but nowadays on CD). Bob described the various tracks he'd selected and sent, which largely had a US-style country feel to them.

I'll admit, I found the descriptions interesting although other than the Julie Roberts track about Whiskey and (worryingly) another track about tequila I don't know any of them. I did spot the holyhose compilation on iTunes though, so it would be easy enough to revise.

The descriptions of the tunes remind me of a place I've visited several times which is like a wild epicenter for country type music. That's Austin, Texas and especially the area around 6th Street. Its full of bars and clubs and the general idea is to wander from one lively place to another listening to the bands, enjoying some comedy and just chillin' in the bars.

Austin is also one of those places where what happens in Austin stays in Austin, so whether its the aromatic reggae club at the end of the street, the multi storied bands by the Driskill or the shop window performances of the Comedy Club, lets just say it's all great fun, especially when wearing a stetson from Sheplers.
Usually I've visited Austin with enough of us to be able to create a few interesting moments and there's a tradition to take a photo outside a certain place although we never show it to anyone who wasn't part of the trip.

So I'll throw a country style tune into the ring now, but as those that know me might expect instead of a song about girls with apartments in Nashville ;-) its Michelle Shocked performing live in a small club and singing about the piney green rolling hills and the red clay backroads of East Texas.
memories of east texas + the VW story

starbucks coffee cup camera in 10 minutes

A few days ago I was musing about devising an upgrade for the juicebox spy camera to allow ease of photo shooting in public areas. I decided that the design point was to be able to improvise something in a few minutes from easily available components. Okay, I know you need a digital camera as well, but that's really the point of the post.

Walking along the street with a colourful juice box and drinking straw may be a little unusual but the preponderance of people carrying Starbucks, Costas, Pret a Manger or Coffee Nation "To-go's" is pretty high.

So here it is.

Starbuck's coffee cup camera
1) Drink the coffee first. Mine was a grande latte. Don't try with expresso.
2) Check that the camera will actually fit into the cup. Mine did 'portrait' style.
3) Stand the camera next to the cup, observe where the lens hole need to be and tear out a small opening. Mine was right over the small logo face on the back of the cup. I tidied the hole with scissors later.
4) Grab some cardboard packing (eg from another cup) and wedge behind the camera in the cup. Mine was outer packaging from chocolate brownies (don't ask).
5) Put on the sucky lid.

And zippy clicky, you should have a working StarCam (r) (c) rashbre inc. You need to know the position of the on-off and clicker button and then simply squeeze the cup in the relevant position. Fabulously, my clicker button is right by the 'shots' tick box on the side of the cup. And when walking along, its easy enough to have one's hand around the lens area until the moment of the picture.

Just don't use the flash.

I'll see what happens in live use. You may get some pictures of me being chased by an angry crowd. Later.

traffic

I've changed my plans which were originally to go to the town of Reading later today, because I've spotted that there could be some above average traffic disruptions.

Reading has a mysterious and overloaded traffic system at the best of times and now its augmented with the side effects of the end of Ramadan (رمضان).

The Eid celebration(عيد الفطر) is this weekend and apparently 80% of the taxis in Reading are Muslim operated and will be out of action. I can't work out whether that means there will be more or less traffic, but I suspect the answer is more.

For Muslims, Ramadan is the month of fasting and Eid-ul-Fitr is the celebration to mark its end, at the showing of the new moon marking the start of the next lunar month of Shawwal.

I can remember from my time in the middle east, that after the celebrations, a lot of folk take an extra six days in fasting because one day of being good by fasting is repaid ten times over. So 36 days of fasting pretty much covers the full upcoming year.

So I expect Reading will be pretty lively tonight, with the combination of late revellers waiting in lines or simply staying on because they can't get easily home. I'll be on a Plan B.

pootered

It would appear that even space has bugs.

And thanks, cartoonlife, for the suggestion about a bass-line for that synthy thing.

Here's a slightly buggy bass enabled space cathedral version.

phat space reason

affair

I see a part of the USA is really catering for all eventualities nowadays with the recent West Hollywood billboard advertisment for the dating service for people who are currently married.

And now there's the related advertising for the divorce lawyers. Don't they just think of everything?

everything except compromise

For part of yesterday I was with Johnny in the basement mixin' up the medicine.

And then Mark Ronson did this, which I happen to think is rather good.

reason

Minimalist music today.

I'll be honest, I don't really get on with the old school patch map based synthesizers when I mess around with music. All the wires and analogue instability which some people love, but it seems to leave a lot more to chance.

So although I have a copy of Reason, which I used to experiment with on a PC, it has never made it across to my macworld.

Until today.

It's an old copy, and I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I simply set up a few mournful arpeggiates on a couple of the synths included.

So it is not really a tune, more a few sweeps of sound. Perhaps it could use a bass-line.

no reason with two nn-xt

nuts

Crunching a couple of Grilled Steak and Theakston's Old Peculiar crisps, whilst I mused the derivation of Jack Straw's reference to "discombobulation" today, I noticed the disclaimer on the back of the crisp packet.

Recipe : No nuts.
Ingredients: Cannot guarantee nut free
Factory : No nuts.

What can it all mean? A disclaimer on a bag of potato crisps that havn't been anywhere near nuts, that there may still be some inside?

Are they embarrassed that they don't know whether they've included nuts by accident, or that they feel the need for an allergy disclaimer even when they don't need one?

Perhaps they couldn't make up their minds? Perhaps, like, Gordon Brown (according to Mr Straw) they were discombobulated.

If we are not going to have a General Election in the UK until 2009, despite Mr Brown's closest advisors telling the press it was 'game on', then maybe a certain confused embarrassment will now flicker over Gordon's face. A sort of discombobulation.

Recipe : Truth and trust
Ingredients : Cannot guarantee spin free
Factory : confused

tags technorati : rashbre election gordon brown jack straw discombobulation

why (fi)?

If, like me, you are busy roaming a major city this weekend, but still feel the need to go online, than this tee-shirt could be quite useful. Who needs keychain detectors when you can also operate as a public service with this black number?

The wi-fi detector tee-shirt displays glowing bars to indicate signal strength. A couple of minor problems though? It picks up peer network enabled PCs and the batteries are NOT included.

tags technorati : rashbre wi-fi t-shirt clothing street

snappy slurpy

Debra wrote a few days ago about photographing a street scene and then being semi accosted by a drunk who she had randomly captured on film. It all played out okay, but did also get me thinking.

In some places it quite easy to look like a tourist and take purposeful pictures with crowds of people in a fairly innocuous way. Other times its best to look like 'an artist' trying to take 'the perfect shot' without overtly paying attention to the folk around.

In reality, like a spy, its always good to be aware of the surroundings and the possibilty of attracting unexpected attention. Being out in a group can help and tiny digital cameras don't draw so much attention.

If I take pictures of single individuals, or small groups where they are really the focus, then I try to ask for permission. If its a 'busy street scene' or similar, then I think its fair game when the people are really an incidental part of the composition. It is like there is a line between 'street' and 'candid'. I suppose on average I'm more often waiting for people to get out of the frame when I take pictures rather than capturing them.

But I must confess my inner mad scientist is urging me to make an anonymous Starbucks coffee cup camera - because I can, if you know what I mean.

tags technorati : rashbre camera spy drink mad scientist