intercalary

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

The first leap day experienced by rashbre central's blog.

Helps make the year 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds, or so I'm told.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, leap, year, leapyear

photography

A reflective topic thats 'cropped' up few times lately is the 'colourful' one of whether to mess around with photos after they've been captured.

Here's some of us, London bloggers, earlier in the week and upstairs in the Camel and Artichoke, where the topic of illustration did pop up in a couple of conversations. Many proper photographers explain they will try to get the picture framed fully and then not manipulate the final image more than the barest minimum when its published.

I'm not talking about making starlets look less blemished or having different proportions, just generally cleaning or roughing up an image for whatever use.

For me this creates something of a dilemma. I like the idea of taking properly framed pictures, but I'm afraid much of the time they are 'grabs' taken on the fly, with random devices from mobile phones through to SLRs.

So I suppose I'm a bit too digital to be a proper photographer. I seldom post to this blog without a crop, a bit of fake blur, some saturation, a bipping of the contrast and so forth.

I suppose I see it as part of the process, like correcting my speling and tiping.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, london, bloggers, photography, photoshop, crop,

training

Many Londoners read on trains, which assists to avoid eye contact with other passengers, both in the tube and on the overground.

Today, though, instead of browsing METRO and the Stannit, I thought I'd press my phone to the window and hit 'record' for a short part of this journey. Here's a snippet of a commuter line from the deceptively sunny countryside, via Clapham Junction and into Waterloo.

With the accompaniment of a Dire Straits vs Sex Pistols vs The Hives mashup.

Enjoy?

Technorati Tags: rashbre, london, commute, train, mashup, clapham, waterloo, woking, surrey

standing in the way of control

Oh, Prawns, I'd planned an early night but then I noticed 'Backbeat' on Film4 so I've started watching the mid 90's version of the mop-headed 5 piece Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Best and Sutcliffe Beatles. I'm semi wondering whether it should have been shot in monochrome.

I'd watch Beatle's stuff (even without any of their songs - presumably because of royalties) over Elvis anytime.

This movie includes Astrid Kirschherr who created many of the early photos (When we was fab), amongst other things.

And then there's the Reeperbahn, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten Club, Seeleute, Rickenbacker geetars, usw.

Einen Eindruck der Zeit viel verursachen.

quaking

I somehow missed the earthquake which was supposed to have shaken the UK yesterday. I've been in proper earthquake zones before, including places like the San Andreas Fault where they give visitors briefings about what to do in the regularly occurring earthquakes.

One time I remember quite vividly was when I was with some friends in a shopping mall somewhere around Seattle. We'd all been er - drinking - and were tucked away at the back of a bar. At some point during the evening there was a series of events a little like a ship turning in a big swell of a sea, but at the time I thought it was more to do with a combination of jet-lag and alcohol. The gang I was with were similarly oblivious.

For whatever reason, we decided to leave the mall, in our own time and fairly undramatically. As we got to the outside, we could see fire engines, police cars and flashing lights. It unfolded that there had been an earthquake of moderate severity and the ship-like effects were the building's way of handling the waves as the earth literally moved.

We had some kind of bus to return us to our hotel and sure enough, the radio was filled with the story. If only we'd all paid more attention when it was happening.

more than twitter

Cutting back across Waterloo station forecourt at around 23:00 last night, where the busy people were transitioning from shopping in Marks and Spencers to the remaining few pie and sandwich bars that were still trading.

I'd been in the diverse mix of the London Bloggers, where I managed to spend a little more time than at the last event. Whereas the last time there were considerable blogging artifacts in evidence, this time most people seemed to be in the moment for a chat and whilst there will no doubt be photos, it didn't feel like one was being overly recorded.

Notable is the diversity amongst the attendees and the broad range of topics covered, including commerce, music, photography, parties, travel, advertising, protests in London, great alleyways of the City and all manner of other chatter.

Organiser Andy has managed to achieve a mix of 'regulars' and a good number of newbies at these events which can also help accelerate one's appreciation of the use of social networking.

where's the camel?

Another meeting of London bloggers tonight.

The regular attendees all seemed to have little MOO cards referencing their blogs last time and several attendees had cameras and even video recorders to capture aspects of the event.

I plan to drop by at some point during the evening.

not cold and windy, really

Who says its cold and windy around Canada Square at this time of year?

There's a contrast between the winter coats and the hardy souls out shopping in shirt sleeves or even standing in shirt for a chat. Of course, there's vastly more people moving about underground in the various tunnels and malls of this area of London's Canary Wharf.

I was 'in transit' but decided to sit outdoors for one of my conference calls, and this was the wintry view.

gap

A regular working day today, with me in a couple of different locations including Canary Wharf. For less experienced commuters, the Jubilee line has those special arrows painted onto the platforms indicating where to stand to (a) align with the doors (b) but stand out of the way whilst others get off the train. Remarkably, they are by the electrically operated glass doors along the platform. I suppose it is good for the avoidance of doubt.

The rather temporary looking markings are different at Canary Wharf and Waterloo, but I'm told its all part of a cunning experiment.

I somehow don't see it as iconic as 'Mind the Gap'.

carpet

After attending the BAFTAs a couple of weeks ago, its quite interesting to see the Oscars on television as a comparison. There's a few more of the central Hollywood gang already arrived, but also many of the nominees are the same folk that were at the British Awards.

I've been working with the television flickering in the background. Its quite interesting seeing quite well known Brit/Irish actors being generally as excited and 'normal' as anyone else would be to be on the red carpet.

Daniel Day Lewis seems to be wearing the same somewhat distinctive tux, whilst the ladies seem to have swapped their swish. I gather the coverage continues through to GMTV's morning television show here. I suspect some of the guests may be somewhat tired and emotional by that stage.

dolce

A pleasant surprise on my short trip to Tesco's today; The Observer newspaper had a DVD of 'la dolce vita' bundled with it.

I havn't seen the film for ages, but its one of those that warrants a proper movie evening. There's many famous scenes in it, shot artfully by Fellini in black and white.

Many people know the Trevi fountain scene also from the reference in 'Lost in Translation' but even the opening has been copied in other movies and the scenes in the car were referenced in Pulp Fiction. There's been a Woody Allen affectionate more or less re-make set in (where else?) Manhattan and the film gave the term to paparazzi, based on the name of one of the characters who shoots candid pictures of stars.

Seven nights and seven dawns.

Sweet?

snaporama

Not exactly a postcard view of Gloucester, because a postcard view would have edited away the dual carriageway from this picture taken a few hours ago. I guess that's one of the things with taking photographs, what to include and what to exclude. I could have moved the camera a little further to the left, which would have removed the bypass, but then I think I'd have somehow included the big tin sheds in the foreground.

If that didn't work, then maybe I could have made a feature of the A417 roadway although then I might have lost the view of the Mendip Hills in the background, although perhaps that way I could hint at the country, town, industrial convergence.

Or another way to look at it would be to put the road off to one side (sort of rive-gauche) and try to capture more of the wintry colours in the few minutes of sun on a rather sold and blustery day.

Or, I suppose I could try cropping the picture to give a different viewpoint. Maybe if I crop the last picture to make it more wide-screen panoramic, still including the road and some hint of the way to the hills?