22 blogs from June 01, 2001 to June 30, 2001
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Neil Gaiman (co-author with Terry Prachett of "Good Omens" - a book I thoroughly enjoyed both times I read it) has a blog. It is well written, funny and well worth reading and covers his experiences during his promotional tour and book signings for his new book "American Gods". He is currently in the US, but has book signing dates booked in the UK and in Canada in July.
Posted by Jane at 1:49 PM
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Little Sister
Are you into Big Brother? Would you want to take part in something similar? If so, take a look at Little Sister. This will be 4 people living in a 17 foot caravan in Docklands for 4 days. The winner will win an Alfa Romeo sports car, and will be voted for by visitors to the web site. So, do you fancy taking part, or watching one of your friends? If so, then nominate them or yourself and then sit back and watch.
Posted by Jane at 4:19 PM
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I went to see "The Dish" at the cinema the other night. It's an Australian film, based on the story of how the radiotelescope in Parkes, Australia relayed the moonwalk to 600 million people. I wasn't sure how true to life the film was, but the "On Eagle's Wing" site seems to agree with most of it. That site, which is the Parkes view on things, makes quite interesting reading actually.
It's a good film, not in the same league as "Strictly Ballroom" or "Muriel's Wedding" but good nonetheless. (and those 2 films are personal favourites anyway).
I went with some friends from work and we watched it at the Warner Village cinema in Leicester Square. The Odeon was booked out and yet, less than 200 metres away we were the only 3 people in there for the majority of the film. It felt a bit like being a VIP.
After the film 2 of us went to "Pizza Piazza" for some dinner. This was pleasant and not too busy at all considering it is just around the corner from Leicester Square on Charing Cross Road.
Posted by Jane at 7:03 AM
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Kites used to build the pyramids?
I receive mail from the Alt-Kite (Alternative Kite) mailing list on yahoogroups and received an article this morning about the usage of kites to raise an obelisk. One of the enthusiasts, Maureen Clemmons, has posted to the group before. Today's article says:
"Researchers used a mammoth kite Saturday to set a 6,900-pound obelisk upright, a feat they say demonstrates that ancient Egyptians may have harnessed the wind to move even the most massive of stones. It took two tries but less than five minutes before the reinforced concrete obelisk, which had been prone on the ground, was raised by the tug of a brightly colored parachute modified to fly like a kite in the stiff Mojave Desert wind".
Interesting idea eh! Seems that the progress this group have made to date is impressive. The concept behind it all makes pretty interesting reading too.
Other related articles are from Time.com from December 6 1999 and from dailynews.com from June 4 2001. For more information, visit the Archeologee website.
Posted by Jane at 8:00 PM
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We spent this afternoon at the Middlesex Show. As well as having the usual stalls, it had a small farm exhibit with donkeys, turkeys, ducks and other such hot looking animals, it had a stage with an atrocious singer on, and it also had some equine events. We watched some of the Scurrey racing but the highlight for us was probably watching the Cleverdogs events. We've seen this sort of event at Crufts (shown on the tv) before and this time we got to watch it for real. It was a really hot afternoon, and by the time one of the dogs
made it into the 3rd/4th place playoffs in the Division 1 event, the poor thing was just too hot to really be bothered. The dogs and handlers work really hard and they produced an excellent show for the spectators.
There are more photos here
Posted by Jane at 4:44 PM
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Bridget Jones's Diary
Never watch a film that you know the ending of. That's usually Richard's view of films. I don't agree with that totally, as it is often interesting to see how the book gets interpreted. Bridget Jones's Diary is a book I read many years ago, and enjoyed (in a light reading kind of way - I read it on a flight to Kenya). The film is pretty well put together, and flows along nicely. It was interesting to see how you can turn a book written as a diary into a film - it handles it well. It's a fun film, no deep meaningful experience, but fun. I enjoyed it, it made me laugh.
Posted by Jane at 9:55 AM
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Eclipse
Well, I watched the eclipse on the BBC site. It has to be said that a live web feed isn't quite the same as being there, especially when the camera ran out of battery power, but it was still a pretty impressive sight and I'm glad I watched it. The BBC have already put some pictures up on their news site and I'm sure more will appear very soon. Watching the eclipse brought back some great memories of our trip to Hungary for the last one, and made me think about trying to see another one sometime.
Posted by Jane at 1:48 PM
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Last night, at the Half Moon pub in Putney, a friend's band took to the stage: headlining for the first time. They're called Hostess.
What sort of music? "Hostess combine glorious trip hop beats with delicate melodies to refresh your soul." You can listen at http://www.hostessmusic.com/music.html.
Posted by Richard at 8:29 PM
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There is a total solar eclipse tomorrow in Southern Africa and Madagascar. The BBC claim to be doing a live webcast of it so that will be how I watch this one. The Maximum moment is at 14:11 (British time). At the time of the last total solar eclipse in August 1999 I was with Richard and our friends Paul and Tess at Lake Balaton, Hungary to watch it. It was a fantastic experience, and I would still love to go and see another one. It was a totally awesome sight to watch the sun disappear, and it was easy to see why ancient cultures saw it as a prophesy of doom.
Posted by Jane at 2:41 PM
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Good tapas, good atmosphere.
La Mancha on Putney High Street, London has a good selection of good quality tapas, all served in a relaxing atmosphere - if you don't look out of the windows and see the London buses go past you could almost believe you were in Spain. Last night our tapas choices were: Patatas Bravas (an obvious choice), paella, Scallops wrapped in bacon and served with lobser sauce, Lamb kebabs and an avocado, mozarella and tomato salad. All of which were very tasty, and all washed down with a couple of San Miguels.
Posted by Jane at 12:13 PM
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Daleks
We got talking in the office today about Daleks, those Dr Who nasties who used to have me hiding behing the sofa (I was only about 5 at the time), and I remembered seeing a few web sites dedicated to building a Dalek last year when the shop opposite our old office had a Dalek for sale. We tried to get our company to buy one for the office reception, but it didn't happen. Here are a couple of links which might be of interest:
Posted by Jane at 5:03 PM
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The photo above is of an in-flight information screen on a flight from the UK. Notice anything wrong
with that picture? It's difficult to make out but the aircraft in the middle of the screen is stuck on
route into the UK. Notice also the system crash log text at the top of the image. Not very reassuring, but
as we were already at 30,000ft or something, there wasn't much point worrying about it.
Posted by Richard at 12:49 PM
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Jono sent me a link to 300 Miles High -- a collection of NASA images
taken from orbit. He knew I'd like it because I have a collection of similar images in my copy of
Orbit: NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth.
The good thing about the book is that it has the captions to go with the images, explaining what you're looking at ("The Trans-Siberian Railroad draws a line through the April snow east of the Ural Mountains".... or "Each of these green circles is 200 acres of farmland"... or "...this is a rare clear view of Tokyo -- 30 million people compressed into the ancient Japanese heartland, the Edo Plain of Honshu"... etc, etc, only the descriptions are typically two or three paragraphs, not one sentence). Shame the web site doesn't have the captions.
Posted by Richard at 12:49 PM
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Blogging for charity
Just noticed a link off the blogger front page about blogging for charity. The page reads :
"About a year ago, I blogged for 24 hours straight. It was fun, but did little more than get attention. When I decided to do it again this year, I knew it had to mean something. So I'm blogging for a cause--and so are some other folks. Here's how it works:
The show starts on Saturday, July 28, High Noon (Pacific time). We'll go until noon on Sunday, July 29.
Participants agree to make an entry on their personal page at least once every 30 minutes for 24 hours. Sponsors fork out for every hour the blogger manages to keep going, 24 hours max, or they decide on a flat fee instead. Each participant has chosen a favorite charity and provided a link. At the end of the marathon, sponsors make a donation to the appropriate charity."
To find out more visit 24 Hour Blogathon, and sign up to blog, or to be a sponsor.
Posted by Jane at 8:36 AM
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Tube reading
It's sometimes interesting to see what people read on the tube in a morning. This morning there were 2 people reading Metro (the free London newspaper), one guy reading one of the broadsheet newspapers, a guy reading Nick Hornby's "About a Boy", a guy reading a biography about Tony Hancock (When the wind changed, The life and death of Tony Hancock by Cliff Goodwin), one reading a Java book (J2EE Technology in Practice) and one lady filling in London Underground refund forms (2 or 3 of them).
Every now and again, there are some more unusual books to be seen, like the Tony Hancock example this morning. A few months ago now I saw a guy reading "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler. It was a big book, much bigger than I'd expected (694 pages according to amazon). I knew the book existed - we'd learnt about it at school in history (that upset my Dad as what I called history, he remembered), but I'd expected it to be some short propaganda booklet, not a 3inch think paperback.
Posted by Jane at 8:28 AM
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I was planning to blog lots while I was in San Francisco, but Blogger doesn't work very well on Netscape running on Sun hardware. So if I can remember anything, I'm going to try to blog a few things over the next few days.
I flew with Virgin Atlantic, which was OK. Good selection of films on the flight, oh-so-tempting option to make phone calls, and a selection of early 90s games to play. Shame my game controller didn't work on the flight out or the flight back.
Caught up on some movies on the flights: Antitrust (fun, glad I didn't bother seeing it at the cinema), Miss Congeniality (ditto) and Disney's Tarzan (excellent). In San Fran I saw Shrek, which you should go and see if you like Toy Story-style movies.
I also got to see a film called Extreme in the IMAX. Being towed out to surf 20-60 foot waves... snow boarders with a death wish... climbing frozen waterfalls with no ropes. Mmmm.
Posted by Richard at 12:51 PM
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Hull City get some silverware for an otherwise bare cupboard
From the official web site (reproduced in full as there is no archive of old Hull City stories):
"Last season may have ultimately ended in disappointment, but manager Brian Little and his players will still have some silverware to show for their incredible efforts.
The club have been awarded the 2000/01 PFA Sir Bobby Moore Fair Play Award, which is given to the team with the best on-field disciplinary record during the course of the campaign. The fact that Brian and his team have won the award ahead of all the other Nationwide League and Premiership clubs is a big tribute within itself.
PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor will present the trophy at Boothferry Park prior to a game next season."
Well done Hull. It might not be promotion, but at least it's something!
Labels: hull city
Posted by Jane at 10:22 PM
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Election Day
It's a general election day in the UK today, and I've still not fully decided who to vote for yet. I will vote, but will probably decide as I walk to the polling station on my way to work. Even the Who Do I Vote For website couldn't help me decide who I should vote for as it told me 2 of them were of equal relevance to me. I could always try and get tactical with my voting (Tactical Voter) but for my area they have no recomendation as it is a "safe" labour seat. So, if I want to vote for someone other than Labour, my vote won't really count for much (we don't have proportional representation in the UK yet - sign this petition). The major parties just don't see that different any more, there aren't huge gaps between them at the moment.
Posted by Jane at 6:46 AM
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So I've been in San Francisco for JavaOne for three or four days now. Lots of fun stuff, techy stuff... but I do like the circus elements:
a bunch of 20 or 30 bikers on Harleys circling the conference centre on the first day; the guy on a unicycle teaching the crowd how to juggle; the biplanes flying over with vendor messages; having t-shirts shot at us; watching my first ice hokey game (didn't understand a thing); keynote talks that start with comedy sketches based on Survivor; song and some dance; keynote speaches that start with half an hour of Taiko drumming (Taiko drumming twice in five days.. pretty good, eh?); the opportunity to tell vendors that you hate their product... you get the idea.
The free beer is good, too
Posted by Richard at 6:28 AM
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Richard is in San Francisco this week at the JavaOne conference. I spoke to him this morning and he said that the first day had gone well, although he'd forgotten how intense it all was. There are 20,000 geeks there this year, and amazingly enough he bumped into one of the guys I used to work with at Speedwing Logica many years ago. The conference lasts all week, and there are loads of different talks and events to go too.
Posted by Jane at 8:45 AM
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Local Game for Local People
As a fan of "The League of Gentlemen" and "Big Brother", the "Local Brother" website appeals. Follow the progress of Pauline Campbell-Jones, Val Denton, Geoff Tipps, Tubbs Tattsyrup, Dr Matthew Chinnery, Ally Welles, Ollie Plimsoles, Hilary Briss, Barbara Dixon, Stella Hull as they all try to survive in order to win "twelvety pounds and a bag of pegs".
Posted by Jane at 9:47 AM
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Wadaiko Yamato - a Japanese drumming phenomenen - are performing at the Peacock Theatre in London at the moment. We went last night with some friends and were all extremely impressed. I didn't know what to expect never having seen any Japanese drumming shows before but it was far more lively and humorous than I had expected. There are some very talented people in the show - and they are all very fit too.
So, if you see adverts for a Wadaiko Yamato show near you - take the chance and go and see it.
Posted by Jane at 9:21 AM
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