Some friends of mine are about to embark on an adventure. They're leaving the UK for good, and are cycling their way from Stockton, UK (where Banz is from) to Brisbane, Australia (where Vic is from). From what I remember, they're planning for it to take a year or so. Good look guys, I'll enjoying reading about your progress.
Posted by Jane at 4:50 PM
As I mentioned the other day, the 3rd round of the British Kitesurfing Championships is being held a mile or so up the road. I've just put a report up over at Igloo Life and will probably have some more pictures to share soon.
Update: there are now some photos up.
Posted by Jane at 3:38 PM
I've just had to post my Canon G3 off for repair. There's a little plastic tab on the cover for the CF slot which presses down and allows power to flow to the camera. Without the tab it doesn't work. I know, mine just broke.
Posted by Jane at 2:31 PM. Jessops (who we bought it from) told me it could take 4 -5 weeks to repair, so we rang Canon who said 10 - 15 working days. So we've sent it straight to Canon using the helpful people at Mailboxes etc on Western Road, Brighton.
- I hope your G3 comes back pronto. Jessops are rubbish, I put in some slides there to find out it would take three weeks to process them :(.
Posted by jacqueline on 2003-05-29 18:10:27
May 22, 2003
We went to our last "planned" Festival event last night, it was The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett as found in an envelope (partially burned) in a dustbin in Paris labelled 'never to be performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I'll sue! I'LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!!' at Komedia. This was what I would class as Fringe theatre, although it was part of the main festival. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't quite as polished as some of the other performances we've seen. That said there were some great bits in it, and it really is quite silly in places. I think starting it at 9.30pm was a great idea as it gave us chance to get some beers in before hand which I think helped... after all, they expect an element of audience participation!
Posted by Jane at 10:44 AM
I got an email from a friend today, and almost didn't bother to read it, as it started "Zingo Taxis: IMPORTANT INFO". But I did, and actually it sounds like a good service. When you're in London and want a cab, you ring Zingo and they automatically connect to you the nearest for hire taxi (they use GPS based on your phone signal) who will then come and collect you wherever you are. It costs £1.60 on top of the usual rate, and I can certainly think of times when I'd have been glad to do this.
The BBC did a review of this service in April, and a quick look at google also supports this as being a genuine service and not some form of spam.
Posted by Jane at 12:59 PM
May 21, 2003
As I cycled to work this morning, they were starting to setup for the third round of the British Kite Surfing Championships. It gets underway today, and continues until Sunday (although Sunday is an all amateur day). The itinerary can be found at Boost Sports. I'm hoping to get down there tomorrow to watch the proceedings.
Posted by Jane at 8:36 AM
May 19, 2003
We went to see Horse Country at Komedia last night. It won some prizes at last years Edinburgh Festival, and boy did it deserve them. It's a fast moving, conversational piece between "Bob" and "Sam". It's clever, and must be hard work for the actors. But, and here it comes, it wasn't as funny as I'd expected it to be from the things I'd read. In fact, it was a bit hard work at times listening to the relentless string of words. Possibly the weirdest thing for us was that the guy who plays "Sam" had the same mannerisms, and words that Jono has, which was somewhat surreal...
In our quest for a good Margarita somewhere that we don't have to buy food as well (the only criticism of El Mexicano) we popped into Quod, a new place, on our way home. The Margarita's were ok, but not as good as Sunday's. Quod was ok, but it seemed a bit too London for our tastes. Still, I'm sure we'll eat there one day to check
Posted by Jane at 9:07 AM
- http://www.yummywakame.com
I found QUOD a bit poserish and the drinks overpriced. But their paintings are wonderful. I wish I could afford to buy one!
Posted by olivia on 2003-05-21 16:59:30
- Overpriced
I completely agree... we could almost have bought a plate of nachos to go with our margaritas at El Mexicano for the price of them in Quod. Still, got to try these things :-)
Posted by Jane on 2003-05-21 17:16:05
Well, the non-event of the Festival so far was The Glow Project. This sounded like a cool, very Brighton event so on Saturday evening we collected a couple of friends and wandered down Kensington Place. And found nothing, absolutely no art of any kind. Lots of people were milling around, but there was nothing to be seen.
So today I emailed them to find out what happened and got this reply
Posted by Jane at 10:45 AM
Due to unforseen circumstances I had to return to France and postpone the Glow Event until October 2003. Life can be unpredictable! Sorry for the inconvenience, the Glow Project will be back if the sky doesn't fall on my head this time. Check the local press and hope to see you there.
So at least we know what happened to it.
Yesterday we were in a packed house at the Pavilion Theatre to listen to Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest talk about The Red Planet.
The talk was a kind of summary of their book, Mars: The Inside Story of the Red Planet, and it was entertaining and interesting, as I'm sure the book is. Three things stood out: 1. Heather Couper's praise of Brighton, and the North Laine in particular, as cool place and a cross of San Francisco and Sydney; 2. Heather's feelings for why people need to go to Mars (lots of emotions there); 3. They believe life has already been found on Mars.
Regarding life, the interesting question becomes: is the life on Earth and Mars based on the same kind of carbon? If it is, then maybe there's a common origin. But if it's not, then life developed independently so maybe there's life everywhere out there.
Posted by Richard at 10:25 AM
I was cycling down Preston Street this morning, when this huge blue American truck started driving towards me. Now, I only know of one person who drives a truck like this in Brighton, Chris Eubank. And it was him. No time for a photo, I was too busy getting out of the way!
Posted by Jane at 9:52 AM
May 17, 2003
Food blog
On Friday evening we decided to treat ourselves to a meal out, and so after a quick look through the Juicy Guide we decided to give Fruit de Mer a try. So we called and booked a table and headed off in the rain. Unfortunately they forgot to tell us that they'd changed their name to "Niche". Still, we found them eventually, and sat for a G&T in their very relaxing bar area (which you can now visit just for drinks) before going upstairs to our table, or any table, we were the only people there. All in all the experience was a good one, and we'll be going back, both for food and just to use their bar area.
In comparison, yesterday we went to Curve for lunch and were really dissapointed. The food was good, but the service was appaling, really poor indeed.
But it got better, and last night we headed to El Mexicano for a snack, well, actually we went there because we'd walked passed earlier and seen someone drinking Margaritas which left us with a Margarita craving
Posted by Jane at 9:37 AM. And the Margaritas were very good indeed, and our snack of Sopes was really good too. I think we'll be heading back next time our Margarita cravings get too much for us.
May 15, 2003
Yesterday morning, at 4.20am I stumbled out of bed to try and catch a glimpse of the Lunar Eclipse. I got dressed, grabbed my camera and headed off out of the house to the bottom of the street, and saw nothing except a road sweeper out doing an early sweep of Brighton's streets. And whilst I was out doing this, Richard was sleeping. If I'd headed off down to the seafront, my chances of seeing something would probably have been higher, but it was too early in the morning for me to go on any such adventures... or even thing straight.
Someone who did manage to see it created a time lapsed image of it here. (mind you, he's in Arizona and so it was a far more reasonable hour over there).
Posted by Jane at 10:34 AM
But do you think Lisa saw it?
Posted by Jane at 9:18 PM
May 14, 2003
I keep forgetting to check the BBC Radio 4 Comedy site. They have some great stuff to listen to. Right now I'm listening to Laughing at Dingoes, which is Mark Little's documentary on Australian humour. Ross Noble goes Global is something else I like, too. There's lots of stuff there, but you need to check weekly because many of the programmes don't get archived, presumable because the BBC want to sell them on tape and CD.
Posted by Richard at 11:43 AM
If you're interested in software licensing and copyright... ok, for those of you who are left, take a look at Problems in Open Source Licensing. It makes some useful comments on what you can and can't do with copyright, and when you do and don't have a contract. Note, it's written from an Australian law point of view.
Posted by Richard at 2:43 PM
May 12, 2003
Brighton and Hove Virtual festival now has a shortlist of web sites to vote for. All nominations were considered by a panel of judges, and there are now 5 sites per category going forward for public voting. So, cast your vote here.
Posted by Jane at 8:26 AM
As part of the Streets of Brighton section of the Festival, we went to 2 of the free events last Thursday evening. The first was The Constant Soldier, and the second was Sister Sister.
The Constant Soldier was a bit beyond us, as we didn't know the original Andersen story but it seemed to be quite well thought out, although I thought that the turn out was a bit poor.
Sister Sister was really well put together, and very enjoyable (although very hard to take photos of as they didn't stand still very often). It was a mixture of trapeze, video installation and anarchic circus and a decent crowd turned up to support them.
Posted by Jane at 9:14 PM
- http://www.yummywakame.com
Oh I wish Id seen those!!! They sound amazing.
Posted by olivia on 2003-05-21 17:02:41
As part of the festival, last Wednesday evening we went to hear a talk by Colin Pillinger and Steve Squires about Mars, and the Beagle 2 and Mars rover missions to send rockets there later this year. They talked very well, and in an "everyday" kind of way, so we weren't baffled by technology (which I thought was quite an achievement).
They talked for about an hour, and then the floor was opened for questions. One of the questions was "How much are the missions costing?". Colin refused to answer, and only told us what his original budget was (£25m), and not what the current costs where. Steve told us that the Rover project was running at around $800m. So, quite a difference then!
Posted by Jane at 9:01 PM
Soup of the day - Flopsy Rabbit
Posted by Jane at 6:34 PM
Here we go again. I guess the fire crew on the pier this morning didn't quite finish the job: it flamed up again this afternoon.
Posted by Richard at 2:57 PM
May 08, 2003
Over the weekend there was yet another fire on the West Pier. That's 2 collapses, and 2 fires since December. Both fires are suspected to be arson.
Posted by Jane at 1:35 PM
The reason I'm trying this is because it should alow me to post photos from my phone.
Posted by Richard at 7:50 PM
- Wow. It worked. The photo, btw, is from the wall of the Seattle hotel at Brighton Marina, see http://www.aliasseattle.com/ for details.
Posted by Richard on 2003-05-08 23:25:01
- not amused
i can blog from my phone but the browser on my phone doesn't understand file upload fields so i can't post photos. grr.
Posted by SpUnKyTh3MoNk3Y on 2003-05-09 09:28:20
May 07, 2003
Ok, so now I'm trying out Moblogger, and if you see this blog, then you know it worked.
Posted by Richard at 7:43 PM
Fireworks over Brighton Pier - 5th May 2003
Posted by Jane at 5:11 PM
Over the weekend I ordered some more memory cards for my camera. I originally wanted a SmartDisk Flash Trax but I couldn't really afford the £399 price tag. So, I opted for some more memory cards instead. I'm very impressed with the service I got. I ordered 3 cards on Sunday afternoon, an 1GB IBM Microdrive from JetMedia and 2 256 MB SanDisk cards from Widget. Both of my orders arrived today so I'm pretty impressed.
Posted by Jane at 4:39 PM
May 06, 2003
I've grabbed a copy of Blogplanet to see if I can blog from my phone... It sort of worked, but not quite as it breaks our blog with some stupid junk text along the lines of "this was produced with a trial version of the software". Duh and Shame.
Posted by Richard at 12:41 PM
On Sunday we went to see Александр Невский (also known as Aleksandr Nevsky). It's a 1938 Russian propaganda film about a prince who leads the Russians against all sorts of Bad People, and in this case it was shown with the Philharmonia Orchestra supplying the music and the Brighton festival Chorus singing in Russian (I think).
Sounds mad; was wonderful. Lots of funny moments. The battle on the ice could have been cut by 20 mins IMHO, as that part didn't have me "on the edge of my seat" as was advertised.
Posted by Richard at 9:48 PM
I'm planning to take part in the May Day Project on Saturday, so expect to see me waving my camera around a lot
Posted by Jane at 12:37 PM
May 03, 2003
On Saturday we were at Don't look back, which was a non-tour of Stanmer Park with the theme of Orpheus and Eurydice. So think death, think opening doors and seeing brides running away from you, think lots of stuff involving rivers. It was a non-tour because you were left to explore the crumbling house, and stumble across the various "sleepers" (actors) who were scattered around.
We had no idea what to expect, and it turned out to be a lovely, but slightly baffling, thing.
Posted by Richard at 5:57 AM
May 02, 2003
Brighton Festival started today, and the first event was the Children's Parade. Lots of local schools all decide on themes and make figures and things and parade through Brighton and onto the seafront. It was a really windy day, so some of the larger objects being carried were a bit unruly.
Posted by Jane at 2:39 PM
We don't live in Hove, but apart from that this story from thisisbrighton.co.uk seems about right.
Posted by Richard at 8:51 AM
