I'm amazed at the lack of technology employed by T-Mobile in their shops. I went to the one in Oxford Street last night, attempting to get the upgrade I'm now due, but the phone I want seems to be rarer than the proverbial hen's teeth, and they didn't have any in stock. But...they can't check availability on their computer system. They have to phone each store individually to find out if they've got any! Crazy. Only one branch had one, and I didn't have time to get there before it closed - it's in Victoria, so I'll go later.

Anyway, on the way home I dropped into the T-Mobile store in Westfield (biggest urban shopping centre in Europe, apparently) on the off-chance that they might have had one. Turns out they didn't, but hey. Westfield was interesting, but profoundly depressing, to see - it's the size of a small town, crammed absolutely full of clone stores. Evils of capitalism writ large - I felt dirty for having gone there, and I won't be making that mistake again.

Work has been moderately good this week so no complaints there - plus it's almost the weekend. Hurrah!

Final piece of news for now is my discovery of Florence And The Machine. Ohh, my! Go buy the album right bally now! It's extraordinarily gorgeous, as Florence has a wonderful voice, the songs are gloriously eccentric and unusual, and it's just...perfect...really, really good. They could be one of the first new bands I've actually got into in years, given the extremely retro nature of most of my music collection. I'm very keen to see them live, but their upcoming tour appears to be entirely sold out everywhere. :(

Presentation coming up shortly. Should be OK. Might not be. But I don't really care. :)

Most of the time I avoid the news as it is extraordinarily depressing, and usually just makes me feel miserable. I can't believe how many people follow news religiously, like it's something they have to do. All it does is make us feel small and helpless, and show us what a bunch of shits people can be. There's rarely anything of real worth or value in the news.

If I do want to find out what's going on, my first port of call is usually the BBC. It's not perfect by any means, but it's usually fair, balanced and reasonably accurate, and the BBC is worth its weight in gold on this front. The TV and internet coverage is usually very good. I can't stand Sky News, and don't want to support Murdoch's utterly foul media empire, so I don't ever watch it.

I don't generally read papers much. I'm amazed at how many people read Metro on the train, which is utter shite. I prefer good books or LJ on my way to work.

We usually get The Guardian on Saturdays, because it's full of good comment and review sections, including Charlie Brooker's column, which we love.

As promised for a couple of people who commented on my previous entry. Apologies for the poor quality, but it does give you an idea of the music, which was of high quality. :)

The weekend was bitchin'. On Saturday, we went out to Epsom Downs and walked around and explored and shit like that, with the children and my nephew. It was very nice up there. I tried to find a couple of caches, but it was a naff effort - I hold Abby responsible for this. I can never find them when she's around - she has some bizarre effect on me, stealing my caching mojo.

Pictures of the day...voila.

On Sunday, we went straight into town after church, and had a somewhat spontaneous day out, that unfolded rather nicely. Emerging from Embankment tube station, we heard a band tuning up in the gardens nearby and went to investigate. Turns out it was the Oregon Ambassadors of Music, a group of high school musicians from 80 schools in...errr...Oregon. There were loads of them - a big band plus a choir. We intended just to stay briefly, but they turned out to be so good that we saw the whole show - they were most excellent.


Band


Band and choir

We went and got cold drinks after this and then took a Thames Clipper boat from Embankment to the O2. I was pleasantly surprised by how cheap this was, and how much fun it was as well. Views are great.




Bizarre explosion-in-a-nail-factory sculpture at the O2


Learn to bend it at the David Beckham Academy!

Here's a couple of shots of the O2/Millennium Dome. I really wanted to go to the Dome in 2000, but managed to be disorganised for an entire year and never managed it, mainly because Abby was pregnant for the first half of it, and we had a small baby for the rest of it. Shocking timing. Tsk.





Turns out Madonna was playing last night, and she got booed because she turned up late and pissed off all the fans. I lost all the respect I had for her after she developed a fondness for overturning legal bodies and stealing African children, 'cos Angelina Jolie had some. Grrr.

Anyway, you get the idea. It was a great weekend of interesting things in town and country, and it was good enough to keep me relatively chipper at work today, so that can't be bad. Work was actually surprisingly good, so life is really OK, all things considered.

Poll #1425909 Music
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which of these albums should I buy?

I'm amazed at the vast amount of misery that modern consumer capitalism brings to the majority of people, and how we all just put up with it.

Our working lives crush every last drop of spirit out of us. How could anyone design corporate cultures so utterly horrible? Who thought that modern office life was a good idea? When you look at the best that humans come up with - the most breathtaking and exciting things we can do - it's so tragic that we only manage to do this so little of the time. The rest of the time we spout management bollocks and are forced to interact with each other in the most revolting ways possible.

Ugh.

It's all down to money, of course. We all show surprising loyalty to that mercilessly cruel god, Economic Growth. As soon as he gets angry, all of us (apart from the grubby little minions who unquestioningly do his business) suffer his wrath - but no-one seems to question why. No-one takes issue with the outrageously unfair tax laws that benefit the rich, no-one questions the completely fucked-up housing market that only benefits those who own far more property than they need anyway, and no-one seems to want to do much about the fact that the economy is just a giant resource-wasting pyramid scheme anyway.

Those at the top have worked out ways to stay there, and a load of clever means to suck money out of the poor and powerless people at the bottom. And so it goes on and on and on...

Anyway, don't mind me - nothing to see here besides some ill-informed ranting and poorly expressed opinion, but the world pisses me off sometimes.

Revolution, anyone? I'm up for it if you are. :)

Well, while the East Coast route heads into a nationalised abyss and an uncertain future, I decided to go and take a look at a brand-spanking-new bit of the railway today, by travelling on a service that only started running on Monday. It's SouthEastern's new domestic high speed service to Kent. The full service starts in December, with trains from St. Pancras to Ashford, Canterbury, Dover and Ramsgate, but for now, a preview service is operating on Mondays to Fridays, with most trains going from St. Pancras to Ebbsfleet International - with a few carrying on to Ashford. The trains have a maximum speed of 140mph (approx 225km/h), which is slower than Eurostar at 186mph/300km/h, but still faster than all our other domestic express services, which have run at 125mph, with no increase in maximum speeds since 125mph trains were first introduced in 1976. So...this modest increase is exciting. It's a massive improvement on the existing 90mph services to Kent, though, which take forever - approx. 80 mins from London to Ashford. The new service takes a mere 37 minutes.

Anyway, waffling aside, I've been itching to ride the new trains, and did so after work today. I wanted to go all the way to Ashford, but I was pressed for time, so I just went to Ebbsfleet and back (journey time 17 minutes). I showed up at the newly-opened platforms 11 to 13, and found one of the shiny new class 395 trains waiting for me...

Exterior #1


Exterior #2 - High Speed logo


Interior

The trains were running practically empty, as Ebbsfleet isn't really a particularly useful destination in itself, but it was a good opportunity to take pictures and enjoy the experience in peace.

First impressions of the train were good - they're pretty comfortable, with good aircon (vital on a day like today) and the seats are spacious and well laid out, with most of them giving a good view from the window. There's power sockets for laptops under them, but you'd miss them if you weren't looking. There's no first class - but the train is considered a "premium" service. Fares are about halfway between first and standard class levels, which is about £4 more on a day return to Ashford, but for a journey more than twice as fast, there may well be lots of people who consider it worth the money.

Proof of the pudding came in the eating, though - departure. The thing accelerates incredibly fast - you can really feel it, it's way quicker than other high-speed trains in the UK, which can go almost as fast, but get to their top speed a bit sedately. It reminded me, almost, of an aircraft take-off run - you get pushed back into your seat a little. The on board announcements were very planey as well.

Almost as soon as you leave St. Pancras, you enter a tunnel, with a short open section around Stratford, then in tunnel again to Dagenham. In tunnels the train can't reach maximum speed due to wind resistance issues, and there's only a short open section before you get to Ebbsfleet, so the train has to slow down again to stop there. The full 140mph comes on the Ashford runs. However, on the short open section I managed to get a GPS reading, and clocked us at 130mph. As I say, it's the phenomenal acceleration that makes the train so impressive, and journey times so quick. It was very comfortable and quiet even at high speeds.

I only spent a few minutes at Ebbsfleet before heading back again, but here's a shot of the train while it was there.



The station felt a bit strange - it didn't look very British! This is mainly because all the lineside infrastructure is based on French TGV technology, and so it looks a lot like a French station. :)

Anyway, back to St. Pancras again at amazing speed. I can't wait to try a full-length trip to Ashford. Really, really impressive in just about every way - when do we get to build High Speed Two?

Interesting news this morning - this is the Beeb's version of it:

( National Express loses East Coast rail franchise )

This is hardly unexpected - there's been speculation about it for ages - but I think it's happened far sooner than expected, and it goes to show what a mess National Express have managed to get themselves into. Less than two years ago, they took over the East Coast route from GNER, who couldn't pay their premium payments to the government. NX bid even higher, and - surprise surprise - they can't pay them either.

The whole thing reeks of utter stupidity. For starters, it shows that the funding model for the railway places far too much risk on the franchise holders, who in turn have been stupid in risking so much to get hold of prestigious franchises - the East Coast is seen as a glittering prize, and NatEx have risked bankruptcy to win it. GNER were so desperate to keep hold of it that they collapsed and nearly took Sea Containers with them.

Second, there has to be something seriously wrong when one of the busiest lines in the country - where trains are still packed, despite the recession - can't make any money because the industry is so fragmented, and so much money flies around to be split up among several parties, all fighting for their slice of the pie. When the structure we work under was revealed in 1994, I was very cynical about it working. Only surprise as far as I'm concerned is how long it took for a TOC to fail like this - and then it happens twice in two years, on the same route.

I think the government is right not to renegotiate - these companies took stupid risks, and if one franchise gets away with not having to meet its obligations, the other eighteen will be clamouring to do the same. But...surely the time has now come to say enough is enough - the fifteen-year experiment with privatisation has failed. We have a decent railway at the moment, but it's been a desperate struggle to get there, and it could have been done so much more easily and cheaply without all the crap we've had to put up with. It was an ideologically-driven piece of lunacy thought up by a Tory government in its death throes, and Labour has done far too little to sort out the mess. Now it's too late - if they don't do something immediately, Cameron will get his grubby mits on it next year and screw things up even more.

The industry's entire funding model is about to collapse, and that means we're all in trouble.

Very pleased with this. It's a crop of a shot that I took with a zoom at 200mm - hard to keep the camera steady in the light I had available, but it's still OK (unless you look at it VERY closely). Shot in Cannizaro Park in Wimbledon yesterday.

1. "Keep The Aspidistra Flying" by George Orwell
2. "Bollocks to Alton Towers: Uncommonly British Days Out" by Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Alex Morris and Joel Morris
3. "Silverland" by Dervla Murphy
4. "Anger: Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way" by Gary Chapman
5. "Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline" by Charlie Brooker
6. "Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea" by Guy Delisle
7. "The Dark Crystal" by A.C.H. Smith
8. "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
9. "Protect and Survive: Civil Defence Manual of Basic Training" (HMSO, 1950)
10. "Can Any Mother Help Me?" by Jenna Bailey
11. "Shooting An Elephant" by George Orwell
12. "Holly The Christmas Fairy" by Daisy Meadows (read to the children at bedtime)
13. "Investigation into the Clapham Junction Railway Accident" by Anthony Hidden QC
14. "Time of Death" by Jessica Snyder Sachs
15. "Viz: The Big Hairy Almanackers 2009"
16. "Little Children" by Tom Perrotta
17. "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton
18. "Not In My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy" by Julie Burchill and Chas Newkey-Burden

I've been a bit slack in my reading lately - tsk tsk - but this book caught my eye when we were at the Wellcome Collection on Friday. It looked very interesting, with the blurb on the back stating that the authors "pull no punches in this forthright harangue of those who shamelessly say one thing whilst doing another". The title was intriguing, because I've always hated the "Not In My Name" slogan - however good the views of anti-war protesters might be, the slogan has always struck me as a bit vomit-inducing, especially as it's been co-opted by just about everyone for anything they disagree with, even Tory MPs who aren't keen on the new Speaker of the House of Commons.

The book is good in a few places, but unfortunately, most of it is simplistic, hate-filled bile that is largely just plain wrong, or somewhat ignorant. I guess I shouldn't have expected any better from an author like Julie Burchill, who seems to have a massive chip on her shoulder about just about everything, and she hates just about everyone. I can cope with misanthropy when it's done well, with the wit, style and intelligence of someone like Charlie Brooker, but Julie Burchill's writing gets tediously repetitive after about three pages, mainly because she keeps using the word "smorgasbord" - literally dozens of times - and refers to middle-class people as "seat-sniffers" almost as often. She's such a one-trick pony, and Chas Newkey-Burden's contributions are scarcely any better, who is mainly sucking up dismally to Julie Burchill.

Julie makes a good point about anti-war protesters - they've largely ignored how murderous Saddam's regime was, and seem to have no answers to dealing with the tyranny he was perpetrating. Also, many British anti-war protesters have cosied up to pretty ghastly Muslim groups who are diametrically opposed to everything Western liberals hold dear. But...she turns all of this into a massive diatribe against all Muslims, and she has an enormous hard-on for Israel, treating it like a land of milk and honey where no-one has done anything wrong at all. She has a real go at Palestinians and the Westerners who have supported them, especially people like Rachel Corrie who have been rather misguided in their idealism. She makes a point, to a limited extent - Israel is the only true democracy in the region and has massive political, social and religious freedom compared to the hostile Muslim nations around it. But...Israel has also broken loads of UN resolutions, and brought a lot of trouble on itself, and she clearly ignores this. While she criticises people for holding the simplistic Palestine=good, Israel=bad view, she clearly feels that Israel=good, Palestine=bad, and if she's going to lay into all this stuff, she ought to have some sort of suggestions about what to do to bring about peace in the region - and she has none whatsoever.

She manages to shoehorn in some sort of pro-Israel propaganda on just about every page of the book, even when talking about something like green issues, which she does with staggering ignorance. True, greens can be hypocritical and annoying - but she seems to suggest that we can carry on consuming and polluting to our hearts' content, 'cos Jewish people aren't all that fussed about green politics - so that's alright then.

I won't say any more. The premise of the book was really good, but the execution was terrible, and I shall steer well clear of Julie Burchill's writing in future. Life is too short.

Tully has a bright future as an impersonator, methinks. Check out her version of this!

On Friday, after we'd dropped off the children, we went into town to the Wellcome Collection, a place we've grown to love for its delightful creepiness. Our friend Colin hadn't been before, so we were keen to show it off to him. Something we discovered that we'd not seen before was a pile of cards for doing artwork on, that were then all displayed on a wall. One side of the card had a big long list of words on it, for you to base your artwork upon - voila.

The artwork people had created with this inspiration was wierd, wonderful and clever, and I spent some time photographing it. Here's a few highlights.


Argh! So emo!




Remember, folks - passive smoking is very bad for unicorns...


...especially when they're pregnant. This is one of Abby's contributions.


I thought this drawing was amazing.


I'm scared now!

So there you are - after that we went and had lunch in Garfunkels in Leicester Square, which was very good, but they played just about all of Michael Jackson's back catalogue, and nothing else, and it reminded me of the fact that I don't like ANY of his music. It's really not my bag at all. I've decided now that it's Just Another Over-Hyped Celebrity Death, and the saturation coverage is starting to piss me off, although I have to admit to a certain morbid curiosity about the sheer oddness of his life - we all like a freakshow, I suppose, and they don't get much freakier than him.

Now he's died, and the tour next year has been cancelled (duh!), the O2 Arena in London is now going to stand empty for nine months, and the companies involved with putting on the shows are going to lose billions. The economic impact of one death here is quite staggering.

Abby took the children out and about yesterday morning, and I entertained Colin by dragging him around three geocaches in the Boxhill area. It was a beautiful day and the views were lovely, although I only ended up taking a couple of pictures.





We mainly just watched TV last night, including that great old Bond film, "A View To A Kill". This was Roger Moore's last outing as Bond, and he was 58 when it was filmed, seriously pushing his credibility a bit as he's old enough to be the dad of the women he ends up shagging. It was also critically panned as one of the worst films in the Bond franchise, but personally I really like it and it's one of my favourites. It includes one of the best lines in a Bond film ever, when he says "well, there was a heck of a crowd on the piste!" after escaping ski-ing Russian agents with machine guns, and the theme by Duran Duran is a great piece of 80s pop. Grace Jones is bloody terrifying as per usual, and Christopher Walken is a Bond baddie par excellence.



That will do for now, I think. This morning was a little stressful as my mum was ill and I had to go and help her out, but she's seen a doctor now, and has the medication she needs (she's always running out of it on Sundays). I went to the out-of-hours pharmacy in Tolworth to sort that out for her. Abby, Colin and the children have just come out of church, and I'm off to join them in Cannizaro Park for a picnic. Later, dudes.

What with, you know, life getting in the way, I've managed to completely ignore the LJ User Rep elections this year, which is probably just as well. It's surprising that practically no-one (in fact just plain no-one) on my flist has mentioned them at all over the last couple of weeks - I guess this goes to show how much legomymalfoy managed to destroy anyone's faith in the post being anything meaningful.

I intended to stand myself, but just basically never got around to it. However, with the major change to needing 300 supporters to qualify, rather than just 100, I figured I probably wouldn't qualify anyway - only a tiny handful of people did, compared to last year.

The voting is closed now and the results are announced tomorrow, but you can see who has won - and I confess I'm very, very surprised it's not jameth. Pleasantly surprised, actually. kylecassidy has won by a fairly hefty margin, by the look of things, unless the instant runoff process changes things (but I don't think it does).

His platform seems a little bare - almost entirely focussing on technical things I'm not sure many people care about - but at least he has an LJ with a lot of public posts in it, and seems willing to engage with people. He might actually make the job worthwhile.

I wonder how many death threats he recieved?

Michael Jackson has died.

This was somewhat surprising - and also rather tragic. I've never been a fan, but there's no denying the man's talent. However, he was completely bonkers in a terrible, tormented way, and has lived what amounts to a rather horrible life, never being happy or able to enjoy the fruits of his success. Maybe this is a release from his misery, but what a mess he's left behind.

How long before all the children he supposedly abused step forward to tell their sordid stories? It's going to be a pretty disgusting media frenzy, I reckon.

I took the morning easy today, because for some reason I was very sore. I pulled a muscle or something in my side/lower back area, and it didn't half ache to move about too much. A bit of lying down and a hot bath did the job, though, and I went out later to do a few things.

( musing about cameras you can probably skip )

I went out at lunchtime and got a few things done, and was happily relaxing in the shade of a big tree when I checked my e-mail on my phone. Notification of two new geocaches one and a half miles away! I spotted an opportunity to bag two first-to-finds, so I legged it to the station, got a train to Malden Manor, and got to the caches first - with minutes to spare! I was closely followed by the Freedompass Hunters, a New Malden couple who have hidden a few caches and are quite active in finding the local ones. I'd e-mailed them before, but we'd not met, so it was nice to meet up and chat - they're nice people. I went home after that, arriving back at the same time as Abby and our friend Colin, who is staying with us at the moment. They'd been in Richmond Park for the day.

Later on, I collected the kiddies from a playdate and then just relaxed, and watched some TV while reading the latest issue of Amateur Photographer. I've written an article which I hope they might like to publish, on quick-and-dirty infrared photography. I did a bit more today, as the conditions were perfect - bright sun, deep blue sky, a few clouds, etc. Here's my favourite shot of the day.

A conventional shot of this scene would be pretty dull - it's a typical suburban park - but I love the way the foliage positively glows in IR. I'm really glad I discovered how to do this.

Abby saw this a while ago and pointed it out to me when we walked past the shop yesterday - it's in the window of a shop that sells sporting goods, and guns and shit. All very macho.

Haha! The completely superfluous "quotation marks" make the whole notice a bit sinister. It's like they're saying "it's OK, we know what you really use them for. We know you use them to beat people with...there's no need to pretend with us!"

"Snooker" is just a front for criminal masterminds, I reckon.

My week off has been most satisfactory thus far. After Abby and I dropped off the children at school yesterday, Abby went to church to do her weekly Bible study, and I headed off out for some fresh air and exercise.

First stop of the day was Effingham Junction. It's a railway station that sounds like it should be busy, but it's actually in the middle of nowhere and pretty deserted most of the time. I started my railway career selling tickets there in 1994, and eventually got really bored because it was so quiet, but it was a seriously good place to work. Sadly, the place has been somewhat neglected since I worked there, and the buildings, always a bit rickety to start with, are rapidly crumbling away. :( It's a bit sad to see.

Anyway - I had a mission there, because I had a cache hide nearby. I had to archive it a while ago, because the rules on additional logging requirements have changed and also the clues for finding it no longer work, and it hadn't been found since November. The box was still there, though, so it was forming a piece of geo-litter that I needed to collect. I soon had it picked up - I was pleasantly surprised to find everything in perfect condition, despite it having been ignored for so long.

I tried finding a cache or two near the station, but didn't have much luck, and decided that I fancied a long walk - I initially thought of walking to Box Hill, but I noticed I had the co-ords for Gomshall station in my GPS, and as I hadn't been there for ages, I took a walk there, and it was lovely. In total it ended up being about seven miles, mostly along public footpaths, with a few bits on roads. It was pretty easy to find my way, and I hardly came across a soul. The exercise, and space to think in lovely surroundings, was just wonderful. Here's a picture or three or five, or however many I end up posting.

Deep Forest...all the tree cover messed up the GPS coverage a bit...




Blatchford Downs #1


Blatchford Downs #2


Gomshall station

Gomshall was a favourite spot of mine as a kid - my parents got into country walks for a while, and many of them involved trekking about in this area. Being the trainspotter sort that I am, I developed a certain fondness for Gomshall station, which is just as well as the train service is pretty infrequent, and you can end up waiting there for ages! It's a tad bare and sparse, but somehow I just like it...I headed home via Guildford, and gradually recovered from the long trek. All good fun - with two caches found en-route. I wanted to find more, but this part of Surrey is littered with fiendishly difficult puzzle caches that I can't do to save my life.

Today Abby and I went into London for coffee, a bit of exploration and lunch, all around the Strand. We found a really good shop that provided our nephew Connor with a birthday present - all the sci-fi stuff you can eat. Plus a load you probably can't. It was great to have a laugh with Abby without any pressures on us. Well, apart from having to go and pick up the children. I went swimming a bit later as well, so with all the exercise of the last couple of days, I'm aching like crazy, but I feel great for it.

Done a bit of job-hunting too, but progress on that front has been a little more limited. Just gotta keep pressing on...but hey...we'll get there in the end.

Goodnight for now.

Spotted at a Raynes Park bus stop on Saturday...

So, I guess the travel information is not to go there. I quite agree - West London is much nicer.

One of the things I've been keen to try for ages is infrared photography. True IR photography using film-based cameras is extremely fiddly, expensive and unpredictable, so I've always been put off - I did sort of cheat by running a roll of Ilford SFX through my Holga a while ago, but that's not quite the same. So...now I have a DSLR, I thought I'd check out how to do infrared photography on a digital camera.

Rather conveniently, Pentax DSLRs are especially sensitive to infrared, apparently. Some people modify their cameras to be extra-sensitive, but that's a complete no-no with a brand new and expensive camera. So...best way to do it is to stick the (unmodified) camera on a tripod and use an IR filter, which blocks out all visible light. You need long exposures and a fair bit of post-processing, but it works, and it's a hell of a lot easier than faffing about with film that needs to be handled in total darkness.

One thing that I didn't realise is that basic digital compacts can be better for infrared than modern DSLRs, which is interesting - the Centon DC5 I was about to retire to the cupboard suddenly has potential. This site tells you how to see if your camera is sensitive to infrared - so I tried it to see. Voila -

Hurrah - it's passed the "remote test" quite well, showing it to be fairly sensitive to infrared light. Next it needs a suitable filter - I'm going to get a 49mm one, so I can use it with my DSLR as well. But - how to get a 49mm filter onto a compact camera? I had a flash of genius here - put some sort of tube on the front that the lens can move in and out behind, so the filter can go on the front. After messing about with the lid from an old deodorant can, some PVA glue, Sellotape and a 49mm skylight filter, here is my modified camera, ready to take an infrared filter...



Just need to order the filter now, and I'm ready to go - coool! This promises to be fun...