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Still away in the hills.

Here's a short Chelsea interlude for film (and photography) buffs, which has cropped up in our beer-laden conversations and makes a London-ish post, whilst I enjoy the sunshine.

travelling back a month in time

We are away in the Cairngorms at the moment, having woven a path across a decent chunk of England and then over the border to Scotland.

There's almost no mobile phone signal coverage in this area and this current blip of WiFi was unexpected although allows me to upload a few pictures and a short blog entry whilst sipping a bowl of leek, potato and onion soup.

The soup may sound hearty, but I think they'd add a wee dram of whisky if it was really cold. It's certainly a month or so earlier seasonally, with daffodils still in evidence and lambs that are a whole size smaller.

things are looking up

Despite the clear skies, the cars around our way seem to have a layer of brown dust across them at the moment. I can't decide if it has anything to do with Iceland.

In other news, I may be taking a few days holiday at the end of this week.

fresh air reviewing

I'm spending most of today reviewing some work items, which means sitting indoors looking at the mysterious condition known as 'Summer' occurring outside.

But I'll come clean.

I needed to go on a short errand earlier, which gave me the excuse to fill my Camelbak with icy water, stuff a few of the review papers in the same backpack and use the bicycle instead of the car for the journey.

This meant I could take a slightly different route along a few back roads and also pause a while under a leafy tree to continue my reviewing al fresco.

No such chance for the rest of the week, when I'll be office based.

Summer Alert

Sunday seems to have brought a proper summer's day along. Nothing for it but to head for the beach, although that seems to have been many other peoples' plans too, so traffic avoidance was part of the process.

Nonetheless, we found a sandy area looking out towards the Isle of Wight and spent pleasant hours in the sunshine.

dream dna sequence

A few days ago, over dinner, I was briefly describing one of my dreams and the people present were somewhat surprised at what they saw as bizarre content. Readers of this blog will know better.

To be honest, I can't even remember the dream properly now (as is the way) but I expect my more recent ones are equally 'imaginative'.

But instead of describing one, I thought I'd select a few components from the last few days that could easily make an interesting dream sequence or probably at least appear in a few of the newspapers as cartoons.

Which components to select?

1) The UK coalition - Clegg and Cameron - "Claggeron"?
2) The roll-on deodorant shaped mascots for the Olympics.
3) "Synthia", the newly created and self replicating life-form created by re-booting a dormant bacteria using a chemically generated DNA strip.
4) Any other set of recent newsworthy twins - Jedward is a bit old but has the right type of hairstyle

So my dream sequence could be something that creates a new lifeform, which somehow mutates into orange and blue pairs, with identical hairstyles and then takes over the world/economy?

Truth/Fiction/Dream? - You decide...

ashes to ashes finale

I've been quietly enjoying the "Ashes to Ashes" series, which finally ended on Friday night, including some neat wrapping of its interplay with the prior "Life on Mars" series.

I'm not sure whether the plot links would have been considered when the preceding Life on Mars series were made, but it was certainly well done, even if some of it had been retrofitted.

At it simplest level, Ashes to Ashes allowed a modern action police series to be set in the 1980s, be politically incorrect and break many modern day policing regulations. The blend of the surreal moments and the intrusion of cosmic forces added a certain spike to the show alongside some regular moments, such as the boozing in the subterranean Italian bistro. Indeed, even in the complex finale episode, there was also a diamond heist crime story in amongst the main storytelling.

The part I had guessed was that the Police Station was a sort of Underworld staging post and that maybe the new DI Kemp was a Charon figure ferrying souls to his variation of a Hell.

What made it fun, though, was that there was still enough originality in the scripts and ending, so that unless you'd sat down and analysed the show (I expect some did this), then for the average viewer there was a good chance to still be surprised.

As an example, I'd worked out the nemesis role, but hadn't picked up on the three lost souls that would form part of the ending. The moody lighting and cutaways in the final episodes helped to signpost this, but until Episode 7 I'd not really picked up the pointers (I watched the last two episodes together - travel, don't you know?)

I also didn't really figure out the Gene Hunt back story until it was unfolding, and found this to be a satisfying way to see the edges of the reality start to melt away.

I also smiled with the final scene, which even had a door slightly ajar during what was really a reset of the reality.

crossing the alps a couple of times

Well, I'm back from Milano, after a couple of good flights over the Alps, captured here on my iPhone.

I used to work in Milan and my return trips always evoke the hustle and bustle of the place. Right from landing in Linate, walking down the old-school stairs to the tarmac and picking up a bus back to the terminal, past the vast hangar decorated with "Giorgio Armani" written in huge neon.

Then to the 'non-queue' for the passports and eventually into the terminal to be greeted by a suited driver wearing wraparound shades always with a black Mercedes that speeds through the special lanes of the city, avoiding most of the lines of traffic.

Milan's traffic is 'imaginative' with interesting manoeuvres and very advanced parking techniques.

When I left the city, my check-in was almost too late, and I had to be phoned through from the desk to the plane check-in. I sat in the return flight with that once-familiar feeling of 'powering down' after spending time in the city.

Here's one I prepared earlier...as they say.

day of the mascot

I can't help thinking of that old, but excellent, PC game "Day of the Tentacle" when I see that new Olympic Mascot...

It's probably just me, though...

hold very tight, please - ding ding

One of my ways of bringing this blog back to London topics is to post the occasional picture of a red bus or black cab. I suppose the recent Downing Street posts would also count, but I can't miss the chance to post a picture of the planned new London bus, which the Mayor of London has just unveiled.

It tips a hat to the Routemaster, with the open rear platform, but also has a glass stairway that give the outside a distinctive and difficult to draw look.

The video below, complete with its special 'busy/old school chemistry lesson music' gives more of an impression of what will be in service by the time the Olympics hit town.

time at rest

The theory of a full weekend somehow melted away. It's already Sunday evening and I'm not quite sure what has happened.

Saturday required me to work, so I was huddled over a computer until the early afternoon. Then brunch followed by grocery shopping and a pause to watch Doctor Who in a dreamlike state. An evening meal and the day had somehow dissolved.

Never mind, I had plans for Sunday, but today hasn't gone exactly where I expected. No big deal, but today feels like I've been operating in slow motion. Terry Pratchett invented that idea of the 'Procrastinator' as a kind of machine to park time 'at rest' to re-use it later. I could have used that this weekend, when I could have banked some of my 'slow time' to use on another occasion when everything has speeded up again. However, going with the flow somehow feels right at the moment.

It's the City tomorrow, then Milan, flying on Alitalia to bypass the predicted BA disputes but still dependent upon the new volcanic activity.

Windows for Mac on a USB stick

I thank maximumbob for the idea to try this.

I do run the occasional Windows application on one of my Macs, and have Parallels installed for this purpose. I considered doing the same on my MacBook Pro, but couldn't justify the disk space.

Enter a USB memory stick. I reformatted the memory stick for the Mac filing system and just dragged the windows image onto it. Then I fired up Parallels and told it to look at the stick for a Windows image.

Hey presto. Windows on a stick.

So now I can transfer the single image between the iMac and the MacBook should the need arise and I don't have to fill the two machines with surplus Windows images because everything is on the stick.

Excellent.

Now to delete the iMac Windows Image.