Two maps of London in two days on this blog and both bicycle related. This one is about the Mayor of London's Sky Ride which takes place on Sunday.
I did it last year and it was quite good fun, what with London's central roads closed to traffic and the whole place turned over to cyclists. This year's route is similar to last time, but its also possible to go past the Houses of Parliament, which was still open to cars last time.
I guess its a slightly longer route, but presumably there will be more people taking part. Lets hope it's also good picnic weather, like last time.
A little experiment today, using one of the iPhone GPS trackers whilst I took a short spin around part of tourist London.
I was really more interested in how the Cyclemeter iPhone software drew the route rather than exactly where I travelled. The phone was thrown into my backpack amongst car keys and various other electronic miscellanea, so GPS reception was far from ideal.
My start was by The Navigator in Belgrave Square and then out towards the eastern extension of King's Road before heading towards Westminster Abbey with views of Parliament, Big Ben the Eye and then around the back of Downing Street and past the Spitfire parked on the pavement.
The Mall is currently closed to traffic giving an easy run to Buckingham Palace which I did twice because it was quite fun zipping along such a deserted street, except for the roadblock quantities of tourists taking photos. Back past a busy Victoria station and then through a few twists around Eaton Square and back to where I started.
Only a few miles, mainly flat with thousands of tourist spots. A good example of how one of the London hire bikes could do simple sight-seeing in a matter of minutes.
Okay, so the map isn't perfect, but its not bad, and sufficiently good for anyone to be able to work out the route.
And, alright, I'll admit I was using my own bike today, but I did have to pump one of the tyres before I could start.
I recently impulse purchased a small waterproof jacket to keep in my bike-bag. It was after 'The Soaking' a few days ago, but also something of a serendipitous sale purchase.
I was in Wandsworth and walked past a bike shop with a big 'Sale' sign in the window and a display of ultra expensive bikes and ultra reasonably priced waterproof jackets. Magnetically I was drawn inside to look at the rainwear. I wanted something that folded down to a paperback book size or less, which I could put into my small back-pack. Sure enough they had something.
Just six days later it has made a debut, when I was out this afternoon as the sky turned dark grey and then black and another variation of white rods appeared from the sky. Two minutes later I was snug in the jacket and carried on, with just occasional rivulets of soothing rain water bathing my head through the air vents in my cycle helmet.
I know it's good value because I was able to spin past others sheltering under trees and in hedgerows. Come to think of it, that was my situation about a week ago.
Another early start today, although the first part of the day was spent working.
I received the latest updates to something I'm doing during mid-evening yesterday and decided to start work on the changes at around 06:30 this morning. Someone else involved is jumping onto a plane today and it would better if they have the latest version before they start their journey.
As I worked I could look outside and see the fine weather, so once I'd finished the revision, I decided to take a short bicycle ride in the still early morning sunshine.
My hastily assembled shorts and tee-shirt combo amplified the slight chilly edge with the sunlight, and even at past seven thirty there was still a relative silence in the neighbourhood.
After a few miles the reports and paperwork had blown out of my mind, at least until Sunday when I get the inputs from New York.
I don't usually pay that much attention to the stats on this blog.
Ages ago I set up those little tracker things and would check them fairly regularly but as years go by I've paid less attention. But I must admit I was tempted to create some traffic at the weekend when I saw the counter was nearing a major number increment.
I resorted to the cheap trick of posting about the television talent show that has been allegedly adjusting its singing quality via software. i decided to use the show name and the possible software in the title of the post and then add some information about the specific technology.
It worked quite well and I did get a boost to readership and even some offline emails asking for further information. It did the trick of bumping the counter so I could feel quietly smug about my little experiment.
What I noticed, though, was the relatively non-investigative coverage of the story in the media after the event. The Sunday ink papers couldn't carry the story anyway because of deadlines and by Monday the story was little more than the same comments that had been twittering during Saturday.
I'd thought (but not blogged) about the possible fraudulent considerations of tampering with musical performances and then asking people to pay good money to cast their votes towards the one they judged best.
That issue doesn't seem to have surfaced though and the popular press seem to be relaying the "it's not really a talent show its entertainment" line.
I managed to get car wash wet during Monday, when I took some time out for a little ride in the country. It was pleasant enough when I started, but by the time I was a few miles along, the rain had decided to excel.
My last recent downpour had felt like rods of stinging ice, but this time it was pleasantly warm. I'm guessing the difference has more to do with a cooler air temperature rather than warmer rain.
I'd thought about taking waterproofs before I started, but decided to go tee-shirt light. It's probably an early warning of the need to be slightly more sensible.
In the event, I finally surrendered to the water when I couldn't really see the road and found a handy canopy of trees until the rain subsided. My patience paid off, and a short time later there was again a hint of better sky to keep me in a good mood for my return journey.
The DVD of “My Last Five Girlfriends” arrived a couple of days ago and I’ve now had a chance to watch it.
The movie probably wouldn’t be on my usual radar but what with fellow blogger Daniel being in it and all, it becomes essential viewing.
The cover-art suggests regular rom-com, but the film has some interesting surreal sections. Instead of direct action a la Hugh Grant movies or 'talk to camera' like High Fidelity, this one had whole sequences that were really the inside of someone’s head.
If anyone has seen “Pete meets Life”, which is showing on TV the moment, you’ll get an idea of the way that gameshow hosts can overlay commentary on the way someone is behaving.
In this movie there is also a complete tour of an imaginary fun-fair depicting the main character's fortunes as well as some 'confide to camera' moments. One could say all the bases have been covered.
The main subject of the piece is Duncan and the story revolves around the various mishaps of his last few relationships. I’m not sure if he was supposed to be likable but I must admit I struggled.
That didn’t seem to be a problem for the various girlfriends who would link with him in minutes before things progressively spiralled into various quirky behaviours and ultimate disaster.
In the midst of this Duncan is architecting a new building and it is as his accomplice that designer Daniel appears and hits it off with his girlfriend of the moment.
I’ll admit an inward “Yay!” when expansively thatched Daniel first appeared in an elevator and, although he was initially filmed deep in the scenes, he soon progressed to rooms and cocktails alone with the Gemma the girlfriend.
It was all proper acting and realistically delivered - I’ve seen Daniel acting funny (so to speak), but this required a much straighter style. I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say Daniel is a material element.
The director Julian Kemp packed in quite a few techniques along the 'time for a montage' line although I don’t think there were any spinning newspapers. I liked the sense of “London” it included, although the theme park was presumably elsewhere.
The interesting thing is that "My Last Five Girlfriends" seems to be becoming a slow-burn success. It’s moved from limited UK release to full US distribution as a DVD and just hit the UK shores in the same way. Heck - it can be seen on shelves in supermarkets and was reviewed in the Big Papers.
Let’s hope that it also gets another television exposure for Daniel, before the year is out!
Here's not the trailer, but the Film24 extract which opens the film clip with Daniel and one of the girlfriends...
As I started out for an early morning spin, a nearby neighbour was just returning home from their Saturday evening. We exchanged a quick "Hi" as I whizzed past.
I'm not sure if it's a just past dawn thing, but people do seem to greet each other more in the early hours. I suppose it is a function of not so many people around. More wildlife than human today including a sparrowhawk hunting ahead of me along the hedgerow and an impressive squadron of swans flying noisily overhead.
Worth the time to stop and gaze and I'll pretend its not just because I'd just climbed a rather steep hill.
I happened to catch the end of the new Xfactor this evening.
They've wound the melodrama to 11 - I saw a terminally bad pop trio followed by an improbably silent audience ("Don't Clap" cards?). Next a styled quirky girl being given multiple attempts to sound good. Finally a singer with a freestyled version of a Duffy song - Mercy - which seemed an appropriate plea.
My ears picked up what sounded like autotuning during the broadcast. I've used Autotune for fun as a post-production plug-in when I mix music, but this appeared to be used live. I'll speculate it was an Antares AVOX AVP-1, which is a rack-mounted box, rather than the bit of software, but they obviously hadn't read the manual to slow down the retune speed properly.
I suppose it must have been post-processed or only added to the recorded track because otherwise the word would be out from the audience at the recorded show. Surprising no-one bothered to listen to the "Kittens in Autotune" quality playback.
I can understand the use of the technology for correction, but unconvinced of its use in the audition phase of a singing context? Maybe a short note to viewerservices@itv.com is required?
I decided to create a possible response using the Cowellisms application.
“Well you know what, we want to make the show relevant. Let’s put things in perspective, its only a microphone, not like someone fell off a mountain.
Maybe we misunderestimated the British public’s reaction, but let’s face it, we’re going outside some peoples’ comfort zone with some of the acts.
If the singers can’t make the song their own it might be controversial and that's going to get attention in any case.
You know what? You still have to judge everything based upon personal taste. That's why the public voting is so important.
I’ve seen those articles in the Press, all that extra coverage all week about a little button pressed by accident. You know what, we should just wipe the slate clean.
This week I’m going to judge it just on what I see in these performances and let the public decide.”
...and as an addendum, here's one of The Gregory Brothers examples of autotuning a C-SPAN congressional report on building a turtle fence.
The well known cliche is occurring as someone nearby is embarking on a particularly ambitious amount of light engineering, from within their garage.
It’s got those whirring buzzing metallic sounds, plus an occasional hammering and a crackle like some sort of arc of electricity.
There’s something that sounds like bowling balls being dropped and rolled around from time to time and a low bass note that pulses.
There’s also been some spectacular broken glass sounds like bottles being stirred in an upright washing machine. Tom Waits had a similar experience.
I’ll probably try to get a peek at what's happening later, but I suppose in the tradition of such things I should wait until midnight and for a small crack of light from a paraffin stove or candle.
I have a slight sense of disquiet as I notice that google adverts are targeting me with 15-25% discounts on bicycle chainrings as I browse haphazardly around sites. Not just one cog, but a whole series of “offers”.
I should probably clean out my browser cache or reset the cookies to get back to more mainstream offers. I can only think the sensitivity is based upon my recent postings about cycling, but it’s uncannily close to the mark.
Either that or its just the subjective thing, like the way that an iPod Shuffle will sometimes play ten or twenty songs that are just right for the mood. But come to think of it, I remember a recent car journey where we seemed to be surviving on bangin’ club tunes however many times we hit the ‘next’ button.
Today I’ve been throwing stuff away again. It's a chain reaction. I was handed some discarded stuff to check before disposal and it created a yearning for some further rationalisation around the place. I can best measure it in wheely bins and let’s just say we’re full plus an eclectic selection of items for a charity shop or two.
There’s too much to take away on the bike, though, so maybe mentioning ‘car’ a few times will change the advertising.
Update: as a footnote, after this and the above post, I'm getting adverts for Laboratory Waste Disposal.
