carpet of leaves

In amongst the West End bustle today. It is still school summer holidays for a few days, but there's a change as we hit September and the leaves are already showing signs of the turning season.

I walked past Downing Street and was slightly bemused by the abnormal quantity of brown leaves strewn across the entrance. So many that men with brooms were clearing them away.

Then flitting between my meetings in different parts of town in one of those logistically challenged days where there would be an inevitable schedule mishap. It happened when I was stuck in a deluge of rain by a noisy train station, trying to find the right code number to access a conference call, where two of the digits had been transposed.

"its easily done", commented a friendly voice from Houston, when I finally joined, but in my head I was thinking about those leaves. Not exactly under the carpet, but close.

bikecam 2 - the everything you've dreamed of button

A readjustment of the handlebars on my road bike and I found a spot wide enough to attach the little camera thingy that I'd made a few days ago. A case of real estate conflict on the handlebars. Yes, there's also a light, bell and reflector, so space was at a premium.

Then out for a spin, again around a few lanes.

This time a different challenge. I'd picked a slightly larger camera for today's attempt but only when I was en route did I notice that the camera battery was almost run down. Today's problems: lack of battery, wobble from weight of the larger camera, slow focusing on the slightly zoomed Panasonic. Trial and error, but I am circling towards a formula that will work.

Still...

The main point was to enjoy some cycling around the sunny lanes, which seemed to be a plan for a few other friendly folk too - quite conversational in fact.

I've simply uploaded part of the footage to where the battery died with a bit of music mixed onto it. Feel free to snigger as the camera spins sideways part way through this two minute epic.

the xx

A bank holiday weekend and the time that I finally fill in the tax return. Means clearing up messy paperwork and generally filing a few things.

Time to also swap a few car CDs, having been listening to saint etienne's old foxbase alpha for quite a while.

Instead in goes The xx. A debut album that sounds surprisingly well formed. One I can already sense will be on the playlist for a while.

Sounds which would go well in a David Lynch movie soundtrack. Laura Palmer returns to Mulholland Drive. It turns out The xx are from South London and were born in the 1990s. They have kind of landed rather than been promoted.

There's a clever edginess, with stripped back sound stage, and old 80's MPC for drumming, some strangely blues tradition guitar, a bass that sometimes drifts on like a background explosion and self-aware lyrics that flame with burning houses, uncrossable bridges, lovelorn outsiders, stars, infinity and (of course) boiling wax.

Always good, they sound like themselves, rather than a copy of someone else.

bikecam experiment number 1

A test of a few new components today. The updated Mac, with Snow Leopard, Final Cut Studio and Logic Pro, for video and music editing, plus the zero cost camera mounting for my bike.

A couple of drawbacks with the bike mounting though...It works fine mechanically, but the plastic clip I used was for a rear reflector and is too small for the handlebars on my road bike, so I've had to clip it to my boingy mountain bike.

Not a problem for the route I've taken except the front fork suspension coupled with a small HD camera and no image stabilisation makes even a fairly flat road run look bouncy. I also set a wide angle for testing, which doesn't give quite the sensation of speed of a more telephoto view.

Still, its given me a chance to try the components and discover that I need to try a different camera for the handlebars and ideally to fix it to a bike without 30 cm of front fork suspension.

I'll try my little Lumix with the image stabilisation next. I think that should work better.

I'm also aware that the camera just points where the handlebars are aimed, so when I turned around at the edge of a field, it just gave me 30 degree angled pan. I can see why people spend money on steady-cams and similar.

But for now, in the true spirit of pioneering low cost bicycle attachments, you can watch me judder around a few little lanes at the edge of town under various video editing treatments and to a stuttery Beatles remix.

mac reboot needed

Once in a blue moon, for sure, but I think I will need a reboot of the mac sometime soon.

It is ages since I posted anything Mac-related. Probably a sign that everything is mainly working.

The iMac update for Snow Leopard was flawless after a few clicks to start and then everything just happened in around 45 minutes. I had to answer 'yes' once at the end when it spotted a couple of teensy PowerMac applications and installed Rosetta to run them.

For my MacBook Pro I noticed the disk space appears to have an extra 12Gb back after the 35 minute update. Even the printers and my strange music hardware still work.

Now, after a few hours of use, I notice that the system does seem to be running smoothly and quite responsively. I seem to have a suitably excessive number of big programs (PS, FCP, Logic, Aperture, iMovie, tweetdeck, Safari) running and everything is still stable and quick.

Tomorrow I may update the Mini that runs the television's media support.

Then maybe Logic with its 9 DVDs and FCS with similar. Gulp.

bikecam

I've found the bits and pieces for the bikecam project. All laying around so zero cost so far. Next will be to attach to handlebars. Earliest opportunity will be Saturday.

i theorise on the law of broken boots

After the recent boot catastrophe for my car, I thought I could get by for a few days without any difficulty until I can get it fixed by the dealer.

I hadn't counted on this week's Very Important Business Meeting and the arrival of Important Overseas Visitors. I found myself in the position of having to ferry a couple of them from our office to a hotel, prior to their departure to a different hotel. The task when we got there..

to pick up their luggage...

As it was anyway part of a long chain of inconvenient logistics, there was other help on hand to resolve everything quickly, but I think there is a Law associated with that type of situation.

busted 2 - dieppe problems with the luggage

There were a few tell-tale signs that all was not quite what it seemed. We'd packed the luggage in the car and I'd tried to close the boot. It refused a couple of times. I pushed a little harder and it finally co-operated. I noticed a slightly different gap on one side of the closed shape compared with normal. I even ran my finger tips along it in mild recognition that something was different.

We hit the road back to where the content was to be unloaded and distributed. Some to go indoors, and the rest to be distributed to another car that was about to travel to France. On the way home, I stopped to buy milk. I pinged the electric boot release to attempt to put it inside. Nothing happened. "Whose been playing with the controls?" I quipped as we placed the milk on the rear passenger knees for the last section of the journey.

Home.

Ping.

Nothing.

Mild consternation at this stage. Find the key for the boot instead.

Still nothing.

"Hmm, we have a problem. All your luggage for France is stuck in the boot and it won't open."

My mind thinking that my car is kind of definite. If it doesn't do something after a couple of goes, then it probably won't.

"Can we get into the boot from the rear seats?"

I had this flashback to the time I'd locked the keys in the boot a couple of years ago. I called out the car company specialists. He'd explained these are great cars because the boot area is so secure. The only way to break in involved damage to the vehicle. At that time I had watched him do clever things and after alarms going off we managed to pop the boot and reset everything. Then I had to take the car to dealer to have the repairs carried out.

This time it was Sunday. I called the car company specialist hot line. They offered advice "someone sit on the boot whilst you open it with a key" and then repeated what the previous person had said. The boot was invincible without damage. I should take it to a dealer on Monday.

"What about the luggage?" - "No really, if we send someone around, they won't be able to do it if you've tried the normal techniques".

Indoors, people were on the internet finding forums which also noted that this was difficult and stories of people spending two unsuccessful hours. Violent and incredibly expensive locksmith phone numbers were being noted for later use.

Then the AA, who would be glad to come around, but my concern was that they would run into the same problems as me.

I reached for my screwdrivers and spent 15 minutes trying to remember what the specialist had done when I lost my keys. I noticed there were still a few scrape marks on a normally hidden section which hinted that I was going along the right path. Then a combination of keys and clicks, and finally.

Clunk.

The boot swung open. Everyone indoors ran outside and stopped me from closing it again. "Quick take out the luggage and tell the AA they don't need to come around". The silence of single minded focus on one topic washed away and normal conversations resumed.

Afterwards, I closed the boot again. It stayed shut. The remote control and the driver switch don't work. I can now open it with the not designed for regular use key. The middle brake light has stopped working and a couple of bulbs. My car dashboard is normally rather quiet but since my exploits with a screwdriver is scrolling a series of warning messages about defective components.

It doesn't even mention that the empty boot won't open.

The car goes in for repairs next week.

Packing luggage? - less is more.

Dieppe? They made the ferry.

busted

As a public service, it's necessary to reveal the perpetrators of the Saturday bus ballooning, whereby a perfectly serviceable red bus was customised for special duties. The addition of surprisingly noisy balloons along its sides preceded the bus taking a short journey after which certain folk came back changed forever.

Of course, we all had a great time and by Sunday, when my own car left bursting with luggage from the weekend and also an improbably large additional load for today's trip to France, I had little idea that we would be caught in our own special drama before the exit towards a ferry for Dieppe.

But more of that later. I shall probably entitle it 'busted 2'.

fully warranty?

a bit of a do

A weekend in Surrey, celebrating the lovely occasion of Geraldine and John's Wedding.

We arrived on Friday evening for the rather action packed weekend and I promised to load a few of my pix for family and friends.

short term obsession

As if I don't already have enough to do today, I managed to let an idle thought slip into my head, alongside all the PowerPoint charts and general bizstuff that was supposed to be there.

I could nearly blame a fellow blogger or or two for getting me onto this train of thinking, but I realized early this morning that my brain was loose and susceptible to random pointless wanderings when I started pondering whether carpenters line up the screw heads when they fit a door handle.

So my short term obsession is to build a handlebar clip for my bike that will let me fix a camera to the front. Some of you will have seen my prior experiments like juice-cam, starbucks-coffee-cup-cam and the various commutercam and carcam models that I've built to record journeys.

But I've never got around to a decent bikecam, instead preferring to stick a cellphone in a handy pocket, film a journey and then delete it in disgust.

I don't have time to do this right now, and the whole of the weekend is a Social Occasion, so I'm stuck with lusting after this Instructable $1 project until some time next week.

There will be footage.