bicycle hurdles

It looks like a clear path, but imagine the bikes erratically reversing across the pavement as one moves forward like some kind of fairground ride.

That's like my day today with its seven am breakfast meeting and then a continuously shifting pattern of hurdle meetings. By eight thirty there were also changes affecting the next couple of weeks and my travel plans. I shall need to comprehensively re-map my schedule.

Delayed flight in the evening and then back home until Sunday morning.

UPDATE after comment...

I discover the Temporary Apartment's 1930s modernist styling is officially in the buzzing latin quarter

It turns out that this area I'm staying in is officially the local Latin quarter. I finally got around to reading a guide book, which has actually been laying around in a special box, along with an enormously expensive fashion magazine which seems to be provided as part of the service.

The little grey book, in English, describes all of the nearby cafes with words and phrases like 'funky', 'fusion', 'designer pricing', 'invitingly affordable', 'worth trying the house champagne' and my particular favourite 'Paustian complex'.

Why the interest? I've invited some of the locals for an evening together next week and need to decide on a venue. My UK equivalent code phrase in my Outlook calendar would be 'beer and curry', but somehow around here I don't think that will do it.

I'll have to choose between 'sensual simpicity', 'sophisticatedly rewarding prices' and 'cool velvet verve'.

Maybe it will be the limousine oaked ambience of a whitewashed medieval cellar? or to get-down-diggy on the wild side? I should have asked the orange boiler-suited DJ who was playing Euro-trance at the house party in the Temporary Apartment's Atrium yesterday.

Decisions...

calendar malfunction creates a taxi conversation about phone numbers

I've spent today zig-zagging around this snow stormy town in taxis. Until it all went horribly wrong.

A simple calendar malfunction between two different systems.

My system showed one venue and the other system showed another. We'd both arrived at what was effectively each others' base camp for what was supposed to be a face to face meeting. My colleague and I called a cab to go back to our base for the meeting.

Bizarrely the cab driver was one we'd had much earlier in the day. I was quite surprised but apparently this is less unusual in this city with its short phone numbers.

So we talked about phone numbers whilst we made our way back and said I thought that American numbers were originally designed for big cities to have short rotary numbers (ie like 1s and 2s and 3s rather than 8,9,0).

Of course we couldn't prove my assertion, which I said came from a book I'd once read called Microserfs.

I'd have let it rest. But my colleague decided to look it up.

So later this evening, after I returned from a short visit to The Comforting Pizza Place, I received an email with a copy of a Wikipedia article about American phone numbers. Yes, New York did get 212 and LA did get 213, Chicago 312 and so forth. Vermont was 802 (20 clicks) or something similar.

I then felt compelled to score an online copy of Microserfs to check out my original source. Sure enough a Russian website had an illicit online copy.

It's all there in the conversation with Karla.

the rain has made the path very muddy

One of those days where I've got a bit stuck in't mud.

Lots to do but I've had that overwhelming sense of going backwards because of all of the new time stealers that have nudged their way into the line.

Here I am considering whether to spend another few hours trying to catch up, or if its simply better to down tools and start fresh tomorrow.

Maybe rain stopped play?

Blue sky and a pair of soaring Red Kites

A chance movement from the corner of my eye and I looked skyward to see a very large bird of prey being hassled by another smaller one.

Its around where I cycle and I was semi prepared for the larger bird to be a Red Kite, sure enough with its reddish outline and V shaped tail. A supremely majestic outline - probably one of the best views I have had of this bird with its nearly 6 foot wingspan.

As I looked further I spotted another higher bird; the second Kite. They were soaring around the area hardly moving their wings. The smaller darker third bird gave up and moved away and the other two continued effortlessly across the sky.

Sitting on a cafe sofa watching the world

I've had a few people make references to TNSTNO The Nearby Shop That Never Opens and TICBS The Interesting Coffee and Book Shop over the last few days along with veiled suggestions that I'm making all of this up as part of some novel narrative.

Let me just say it's all true. Even the part about the frogs. And to think I have even supplied photographic evidence.

But to reassure people that I do also get to more normal venues whilst around town, here's another of the cafes where we've sat and whiled away time whilst sipping local beer.

Light

As well as the main rashbre site, I write an occasional post across on 'rashbre snapped', which is about photography. So with some pleasure I received a parcel through the post upon my return to the UK, and within it a book about an aspect of photography. With all my evening and night shots at this time of year, perhaps its also a hint to me?

The topic is about Light.

The book is covering an aspect fundamental to photography, but as I read and thought about it I realised how much I didn't know. Quite often when I obtain reference books on varied topics, its a quick flick through to find some new points, or to help solve a particular problem. This was different because I could gain new information from most chapters.

As well as covering the theory of light and colour spaces, it moves into ways to manipulate or take advantage of light to handle different situations.

Its a heavy book to carry at some 500 pages, but its well divided into sections and has comprehensive areas around lighting, reflectors, tripods, stands, flash, post-production and indoor and outdoor work. Even the little section on light incidence at times of day and in different seasons is useful.

I guess a more experienced photographer may have most of this knowledge, but for a more casual snap-shotter like me its a strong reference by professional people who have obviously learned by experience.

The authors, Brian and Janet Stoppee have film camera heritage but work digitally now, and in addition to the sections on post-production with Adobe and similar, there's a strong emphasis on getting it right in the camera. SOOC as I call it (Straight Out Of Camera).

The second part of the book takes many topics across a simple two page spread format, which is a handy way to browse, whilst also keeping related topics together as a narrative.

If I have a criticism, its of some of the actual photographs that make it into the book. My guess is that the book was quite a long time in production and may have been two books pushed together or has had some sort of makeover. There's some signs of this with a few early pictures that suffer from heavily jagged edges - presumably from small originals. There's also sections that are quite polarized towards a particular product set around Nikon cameras and Matthews Stands and Lighting equipment. I happen to use Nikon so its no big deal and the points made are applicable to pretty much any dSLR combination. My guess is that perhaps the book was originally destined with a different title or similar.

For me, the sections around light placement, metering and colour temperature all had good 'Ahah' moments and thats just scratching the (shiny) surface of what for me is a good reference volume.

Photography and Light - Brian and Janet Stoppee - Focal Press 2009 - well worth a look.

evening wine seemed to loosen the tongue

Back in London today and meeting a long time friend at the Archduke, near Waterloo. It's been an age since we were together, but we soon fell into update, discussion, debate and then onward to future plans.

Quite different lives, but with remarkable moments of intersect and overlap. I'm not sure either of us had planned to spend the entire evening sharing wine and chatting, but by late evening we became the last people in what had earlier been a rather lively jazz bar, with me finally returning home around one thirty in the morning with an alarm call for six. Oops.

why is the daily mail calling me at night?

I'm assuming that the Daily Mail is running out of readers now, because they appear to be lurking in shadows trying to convert me.

They (or their representatives) have been repeatedly phoning my home number to try to entice me to buy their version of the news.

I've been getting calls from one of those 0800 numbers despite having the 'opt out' system to prevent from getting cold callers. I was finally indoors when one of the calls came through and decided to pick up to find out who it was.

"The Daily Mail" explained someone with a South African accent.

He also seemed to know just slightly too much about me, like where I get papers delivered from and they were trying to persuade me to take their paper with lots of half price tokens and a £50 coupon from Marks and Spencer.

I told them I did not want their version of events and I'm wondering how many different codes of conduct they have broken.

17th recollection

I just noticed the seventeenth's blog entry was posted as draft. I spent the day in meetings, interspersed with strange recollections of people in green hats and clothes running around this foreign city centre tied together in pairs.

There was one overtly Irish Bar with many people on the street drinking what looked like Pilsner and another bar at the other end of a pedestrian area which seemed to be on the route for those with three legs.

Everyone appeared to be having a good time, but I had an overwhelming sense of it looking somehow wrong.

I discover the Interesting Coffee and Book Shop

I've still not had much time for exploring the neighbourhood around the Temporary Apartment although I've worked out how most of the area links together and that includes the discovery of the nearby bookstore zone, which comprises quite a few bookstore cafes. T

The above pictured Interesting Coffee and Book Shop is my favourite and in addition to good coffee, cakes and wifi, there's a bustle of people visiting and quite often loitering for conversation.

My book of choice for such moments has been Popco by Scarlett Thomas, who wrote The End of Mr Y, which I reviewed here some time ago.

Popco was an earlier novel and there's some themes which I think were developed further in Mr Y, including virtual worlds, homeopathic remedies and some clever bits of science.

The book has also had a makeover so that it looks similar is style to Mr Y, complete with blue edged pages (Mr Y had black edges).

I noticed this with a wry smile when I realised quite a lot of the content of the earlier book is about how corporations market to consumers.

I like the personal narrative style of the book, on incidentals as well as the main storyline and the twists into cryptography and the chance references to William Gibson, who is another author whose books I enjoy.

There's also some sections about the people who divine lifestyle trends, which flipped me straight back into Pattern Recognition (also reviewed here at some time in the past).

I thoroughly enjoyed the first 4/5 of the book and the way the intertwined stories unfolded. I'll admit to a little disappointment around the last pivot in the story, although I think there needed to be some device to bring it all together. I'll admit I'd also worked out what the necklace was using before it popped out of the story.

I won't say more about that though, and the general narration, lines of thinking and main premises were all good fun and it was one of those books that I was sorry to have finished.

Maybe I should re-read Mr Y.

But for now, here's me crossing the road on the way to the Interesting Coffee and Book Shop.

noodling around at the airport

I decided to check my baggage for today's flight instead of taking it as carry-on. The airport at the far end is fast, so rather than hauling baggage around the airport it was easier to hand it over.

I see so many people agitatedly carrying everything onto the plane and stashing it in the overhead lockers. I do it myself for some journeys, but I'm not obsessive about it and would rather travel light.

Row three today and although there was food, it was more of an 'afternoon tea' with scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream. I made do with a cup tea.

The unusual thing at the far end is that the luggage reclaim sells beer and hot-dogs. I travel quite a lot but don't recollect seeing this facility in other places.

In fact, I diverted through the airport to pick up some Chinese noodles and vegetables in a little 'to go' box, before heading to the belt. I thought I'd take it back to the Temporary Apartment as a kind of supper.

Just finished the noodles. Yum.

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