fugit without the tempus

One of those weeks where I'm partly inhabiting the City whilst trying to get some fairly large work items completed.

As usual its all a bit of a stretch.

I'm doing those negotiations about which things to attend and others where I need to drop out. Its strange because I'm both looking forward to some future events but also not wanting time to pass too quickly so that I can get everything completed.

exhibit

Private Viewing at the weekend. Photos and paintings intermingled as I dropped by friend Nino's new exhibition. Images and Imagination creating a range of photographs then rendered into a variety of artworks.

I enjoyed the show and liked particularly the cutaways of smaller detail against a larger backdrop. The two accomplished artists THW Ashby and Joy Ashby created the accompanying artwork alongside the photographs with a variety of interpretations sometimes as paintings and other times with the addition of more three-dimensional aspects.

The blend created opportunities for a wide palette to be used, vibrancy in some areas and more sombre and muted in others, with vivacity from seascapes and tranquility from the solitude of cornfields. The visitors clearly enjoying the display in a rather animated opening night.

guidance

I was a sat nav yesterday. Google maps. Phone. Concierge level service. The real deal. Green Ka was out having an adventure in the lake district when the area became a flood hazard with severe weather warnings.

So wet that the roads ahead and behind were flooded and to get to higher ground required negotiating muddy water that came into the car footwell. The fell runners race was called off stranding 1,700 runners.

Plaintive call for assistance such that I had to press the special button that turns rashbre central into a command centre with phone link to the Ka. Flashing lights, screens flickering on the wall, communications equipment. A real Thunderbirds moment. If only we had those boingy palm trees.

A few e-minutes later, plan B was in action. A6 - closed. A684 - suspect. A685 - open. Distance back to M6 (J38) a twisty 12 miles. Nearest motorway adjacent stopover on the way to Glasgow - J42 Carlisle. Room available at 23:23? - yes. 200 metres from motorway exit.

Booked by plastic.

Then SatNav emulation using google maps to track route from Beezon Road, Station Road, Longpool and Appleby Road back to the A685 and the route to Tebay and back on to the M6. It all worked and I gather this morning breakfast is being served in Carlisle before heading for Sterling.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, rain, lake+district, weather, fell+runners, OMM, satnav

caribou barbie

Like many Brits I've watched the Tina Fey spoof of Palin and chuckled, although I'm mindful that US satire can be a trifle clunky compared to the way we do it here in the UK.

When I saw the next Late Show with the real Palin as a guest being rapped to with Inuit and moose waving their arms in the background, it became rather confusing to understand how the satire was supposed to work.

Real life was becoming stranger than the spoof. Presumably Palin had thought this was a countermeasure or a way to connect rather than another example of simple bad judgement. Cringeworthy springs to mind.

Anyway, its continued with a laboured version of Will Farrell as Bush endorsing McCain and the fake Palin in the middle of the screen between the two of them.

I'm wondering how the American voters pick through what is happening now, with America's economy sinking, Bush and potentially McCain positioning more war zones, Palin on a campaing to reduce civil liberties and reasonable quantities of innuendo-based political advertising sprinkled through the US television schedules.

A sense of desperation creeping into these politicians' posturing at this stage?

Tina for President.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, tina+fey, president, palin, mccain, fey, tina,

coordinate

Intersecting arcs today through Peterborough. A voicemail arranged snip of coincident timing brought Rajesh and me together in the sunshine near to a park. Distant assignments and a moment of convergence. I didn't really see Peterborough apart from the park and a windswept Tescos. But I enjoyed the co-ordinate precision of a random place to meet.

shred

A few days ago, I noticed that my local Sainsbury's is selling shredders near to the organic vegetables and Christmas mince pies. I guess this is a sign of the times, with all the missing secrets that have been revealed in the press. I even noticed that some of them (and they had a variety) were able to shred CDs. So today when I was passed a CD with a big label saying it contained encrypted data, my first thought was how quickly I could read its content and then shred it. Of course, I then discovered that rashbre central's puny shredder can feebly manage but one sheet of paper at a time.

poladroid westminster abbey

It had to be done. Take a perfectly good picture with a DSLR and poladroid it. It makes the sounds of a polaroid, comes out looking brown, you can shake it (not sure what happens) and then after a couple of mins 'voila'. Vignetting, strange colours, unexpected framing, distortion - its all there. The software appears to be in Franglais too. Oooh - and you can only do a maximum of ten at a time (like a packet of film). Shake it, you SXy Polaroid Swingers.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, polaroid, poladroid, london, westminster, photography

solving the credit crunch

If I accepted the money from all the well formatted and perfectly spelled mailshots I get from Coca-Cola lotteries, unknown distant relatives leaving me millions, soldiers with unexpected cash caches and various foreign diplomats prepared to cut me in on 30-50% of their offshore wealth, then I could really help put some money back in circulation. And there's so many like me. We could fix this fiscal turmoil.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, credit, credit+crunch, stock+exchange, london,

taverna agni and the naughty nautical tales

Once upon a time, there was a naughty girl named Mandy. Mandy had been naughty so many times in that she was banished to another country where they could not understand her very well. This meant it was much harder to make mischief.

Mandy was a friend of a very rich man named Ivan, who was also a friend of the very pink pig who ate everything.

Ivan was from another country and he had a big boat to go with his richness. It was a boat big enough to have lovely parties. Some people said that Ivan was a wizard and could turn ordinary metal into gold. When Ivan had a party on his boat he invited all kinds of people.

Some of the people who came to the party would not usually be seen together, but because the parties were so good they would go anyway.

Mandy also knew about metal and had a big job in a special place where metal was priced. Mandy knew the price of metals but not always their value.

Another person at Ivan's party was named George and he also had his own big party that sometimes needed extra money to keep it going. George brought his friend Andy to Ivan's party on the boat. Andy happened to be a party fundraiser for George's own party.

Of course, the drink and food was excellent at the party. There was lots of wild talk as the rather good wines began to take effect. Everyone wanted to show that they were important and influential people but because some of the people were not really friends, they sometimes made fun of each other too.

Mandy said some things about a man called Gordon to George and then George told some other people what Mandy had said. This upset Mandy, who thought she had said it in confidence. Mandy was furious.

As the party continued, Mandy's friend Natty heard George and Ivan talking about parties and then George's fundraiser Andy suggested ways that Ivan could help George without it being too obvious. That way Ivan could join George's party games whenever he wanted and wouldn't even need an invitation. Maybe one day in the future George could even help Ivan in return.

So when Mandy heard about the conversation she decided to get even with George. Mandy was full of mischief and decided to get one of her friends to tell the story. Mandy had always liked to spin her mischief through others rather than doing it herself.

Natty had lots of girlfriends and told a few of them first and then also put it in a letter to another friend who had a printing press. The next thing, it was all over the Kingdom and everyone was talking about it.

Poor Mandy, though, she had not seen how everyone could get in trouble by telling so many people. Mandy could get in trouble with Gordon, George could get into trouble with the people who organised parties and Ivan could get into trouble for talking to George's fundraiser.

This was enough of a leak to sink the biggest boat and that's just what happened. Ivan's ship sank, along with Mandy, George and even Gordon had to swim hard to get back to the shore. And as the party food from the ship washed up on the shore, the pink piggy gobbled it all up.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, taverna, agni, mandy, prince+of+darkness, mandelson, osborne, yacht, corfu, oligarch, russian, allegedly

sandwiched

A week of sandwich bars as I travel around various parts of London and beyond. My meetings this week mean I should probably take a packed lunch, but will probably end up in Pret, Eat and similar venues.

NaNoWriMo Storyline Collapse

There I was, innocently collecting a few words for a possible story in November's NaNoWriMo, when all of a sudden the press seems to have grabbed most of them for its own story.

Sometimes you just can't make it up.

darkness
amoral
elitism
bullingdon
oligarch
allegation
political toys
retribution
spin
fundraiser
party
prince
insouciance
club rules
poison
boat
tavern

Oh well

Technorati Tags: rashbre, taverna, agni, mandy, prince+of+darkness, mandelson, osborne, yacht, corfu, oligarch, russian, allegedly

spend

I was around Downing Street today, where civil servants are creating new spending programmes to keep the economy turning in the aftermath of the banksters.

To paraphrase: "Short of cash? let's borrow more. Money is printable."

And we have John Maynard Keynes being quoted by mediaconomists as the next worthy idea.

Keynes of the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which (if my lessons with Mrs Fairclough serve me well) suggested a number of macroeconomic disconnects. Savings and investments would be independent of one another. Spending would be affected by marginal changes in wages. Nowadays we'd call it a tipping point.

The idea everyone has latched on to is that Keynes talked about counter cyclical spending (governments spending more in a downturn). Er, what if the same government has already been spending heavily in a positive market? And what if big business has been busily moving all its production and services to Chindia?

I suspect the politicos and journos are mainly looking for a simple label (Keynes? Galbraith?) and that finer points (eg of countervailing powers) will be glossed over. At the moment it seems to boil down to using public spending to generate employment, wages and grand investment projects during the upcoming tough times. Hmm - big projects using freshly printed money? ...sounds a bit like devaluation of a currency to me. Perhaps €uro 2012 is "game on" again for Britain after all?

Keynes had another thought in his theories, which related to something Lenin had said. It was about debauching a currency, using inflation to destroy wealth. I'm wondering if the City used a different form of debauchery driven from the bonus culture, with very similar consequences?