all of our bus stops are belong to me

Yeah, I know.

But I couldn't resist.

snow car in the world

This is quite close to where I had to abandon the car yesterday.

I'd managed to drive part way to a meeting but during the journey it was cancelled, so I turned back. I couldn't have gambled on cancellation, though, and so had started out extra early. A kind of Catch-22.

On my way back, the side roads were not gritted and after being surprised by another struggling motorist driving sort of sideways, I then found my own car deciding to protest.

The various 'I know better than you' safety lights came on and it refused to move along the road. I finally got to disable the anti-skid-protection using a special button in an attempt to keep going. This allowed me to drive another wheel-slipping noisy metre before a very loud beepy warning came on and a large part of the dashboard started flashing red. I didn't know it could do that.

I had to admit defeat and snuggle it to the kerb for later retrieval. As I left it, I noticed sort of pungent tyre aroma and the black iced snow in front of the rear wheels.

One backpack, boots and gloves later, I was enjoying a walk through the still pretty snow.

this snowman has matching hat and scarf

The white stuff affected plans somewhat today.

I didn't expect to be walking along the road admiring snowmen at a time I'd originally expected to be in a meeting. Of course the transport infrastructure was suffering today and caused delays and reschedules.

My next meeting is a conference call, where I'm sure we will swap tales of today's snowy adventures.

'sno snow y'know

Pah. Fooey.

I see shadows.

I see fluffy white clouds in a blue sky.

The buildings around me are looking sort of yellow in a strange light.

Whilst all around me the twitterverse is talking about #uksnow and bad weather. This morning we had a snowflake fall here. I saw it. Then a little later another dozen or two. I held my tongue out to see whether it passed the tongue test. Nope. I couldn't catch a single flake. Mainly because they were smaller than grains of salt. This picture from rashbre central on 5 Jan 2009 has much more of a snowdrift than anything today.

And now this yellow light.

Sunshine.

I quite like it.

gardening notes

I said I'd look out for signs of Spring and noticed these robust looking shoots pushing through the earth in the garden today.

I don't think they are from the Mars plant which inhabits part of the garden, secretively burrowing underground and then re-appearing unexpectedly with space suckers which, when cut, squirt toxic Martian space juice up to a quarter of a mile.

time to use the iPhone pub detector

We are using the iPhone pub detector this evening to select a venue.

It doesn't tell you how good the pub is, but it does tell you where the nearest ones are. It seems like a fun thing to have on a phone, but then I also have the Star Wars light sabre module which glows and makes all kinds of laser beam swooshing sounds when you move the phone around.

My low serial number iPhone is one of the original ones with the aluminium back, but on the whole, around London, I don't notice the lack of 3G because of the pervasive wi-fi.

Another £1.59 well spent was the GPS Motion-X software which lets the phone run as a GPS tracker, similar to a Garmin unit. Of course, the built-in Google maps does that as well- eerily telling me exactly where I am when I think I'm lost, but the Motion-X creates a waypoint database, which is sort of handy for photography for recording where & when. It can run in automatic mode or you can save waypoints at will, as well as exporting them as pins onto Google maps.

But now, off to GPS reference 51.512668,-0.13168 the pub.


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carcam revisited in iMovie

A very quick re-cut of the carcam from before Christmas, just to try out a few of the features of iMovie 09. I usually edit video with Final Cut, but thought it would be interesting to see whether Apple have fixed the strangeness introduced in the last version of iMovie.

My general view is that they have. The initial interface is fairly different from most AV editors, and it took me a while to figure out how to un-hook sound, multi-track and similar. Its all there, as is precision editing, but you have to click around a little bit to find it.

I suspect I'll mainly still use FCP for video, although this package with its transitions and titling is quite good for quick editing and comes with all new Mac systems. Once I'd imported the video and a soundtrack, it was only about ten minutes to bash together this little comp. It took longer to remember the quicktime settings to embed it with scaling.

The ability to publish straight to youtube was an interesting little addition too. It takes all the decisions about compression and frame rates away and just does it. Youtube is policing the DRM rather well though and decided not to let Regina's song through.

internet 1969

Time to play spot the differences. Any thoughts?

bagging a bug bag for face faceoff

I keep a reusable bag in the car boot for when I'm buying a few groceries or similar. I should estimate I've bought around ten of the bags at different times, but they seem to disappear of their own accord, long before they've worn out. So today I bought yet another one to restock the car. It also gave me an excuse to experiment with Apple's new iPhoto face recognition software.

I noticed that iPhoto lets you access an Aperture library, which is where I keep my photos stored. I grabbed 2-3 folders of maybe 100 pictures with a few consistent faces, taught the names to iPhoto and it then ran through the pictures getting the names mainly right. It missed a few but didn't guess any incorrectly.

Hmm, I thought, maybe it uses shapes and dates. So I then tried it with the ladybird on the shopping bag. I taught it the name and showed it 4 almost identical photos of the ladybird. It didn't have a clue. So it seem that the Face recognition isn't going to be fooled too easily with alien shapes.

My next experiment will be with the new ironic film soundtrack loops available in Garageband.

coin operated boys

When I've worked in Italy there's a sometimes delays on paper work associated with so called 'bribeville' anti-Mafia legislation.

No comparison with the the British Upper House and recent denials of improprieties by its august members. It's so unfair to call it Erminegate, when the poor unpaid Lords and Ladies are slaving to move new laws of the land into being.

Today we heard there is no connection between fees received and actions affecting the passage of new legislation. I'm sure the posh dining clubbiness of the House is used appropriately, and that its exclusivity wouldn't be used to turn heads or procure inappropriate advantage, let alone to do so for reward.

A shame this pops up just after the Lower House abandoned its attempt to scrap accounting for its expenses. We now have both groups of politicians dealing with their remuneration whilst the country struggles to make ends meet. But its not misconduct in a public office. We've been told.

twitter haiku tea break (with cranberries)

I like the idea of using twitter to send haikus.

@amandapalmer suggested it this morning, so I wrote one on the way to the office, as an experiment...

tail lights red, streaming
wintry yellow tarmac glows;
london’s work beckons.

Then, this evening, inspired by the fridge, whilst I waited for the water to filter before I made some tea.

shrill cranberries wait
redly, fiercely, harshly, fat
mesmerizing sharp

Of course, as well as the 5/7/5 = 17 syllables, they are supposed to have some reference to season...

dancing forlornly

Spring's exaltation near goads
happy somersaults

...Then I found the haiku generator...

archly replying
faintly, serene, first gnat smiles
fumbles, anarchic

Its a sure fire way way to cut down on @rashbre twitter followers.

Damien Hirst's Nikon D3 Camera (maybe)

I know Nikon announced their new D3x a few weeks ago. It looks as if the origin of the species, the original lower pixel count D3, can now be bought in installments. Its interesting to see how many bits of big glass go into a wideangle zoom. More tokyobling here