Synchronicity
December 17, 2008
Last night I spent two hours unsuccessfully searching the house for our Roomba: the little chap had wandered off somewhere, had presumably gotten stuck and was now sulking in parts unknown. So far, situation normal, but this time none of the usual suspects presented themselves: under the bed; behind the loudspeakers; under the litter tray (don't ask) - all clear.
Frustrated and perplexed, I threw myself down on the sofa and switched on the TV – this week's Horizon was just starting. It's title: Where's My Robot?
Two hours later, Gill got home and found the recalcitrant 'bot in 30 seconds (it must be a girl thing) - it had opened a door, got into the room, closed the door after itself and then couldn't open it again. Worse than cats.
BAA, Humbug…
August 12, 2007
A news item today concerned the forthcoming Climate Change protest camp being assembled at Heathrow airport:
“We will not tolerate protesters harassing our customers”, said a particularly assertive BAA spokesperson. Which is hardly surprising since, as any poor sod who's travelled through any BAA-run airport will tell you, that's their very own speciality.
The Infamous Incident of the Knife-Wielding Maniac
So I was in tropically soggy Festival Edinburgh this weekend for a bit of a schmooze, most particularly for our friend Martin's stag weekend. As such weekends go, it was notably good-humoured and civilised, with the party ending up at the Pleasance for its late-night comedy show prior to the inevitable diaspora of cheerful drunks to their various borrowed flats, bought hotels and ad hoc burrows. So far, so good, and when the survivors reconvened on Sunday morning for a relaxed brunch and coat-of-the-canine in George Street's Tiger Lily restaurant, all was relaxed and cheerful.
Recent Stuff from my other blogs:
- Photoxxl.co.uk - a 'Service' to Avoid…: As a photographer, I sometimes find that I need to go large and print at poster sizes – as my nearest good pro lab is sixty miles away, I'm always interested to see how well online printing services perform. A...
- The Limit of Sky: Sky Digital demonstrate a hitherto undreamt of level of ineptitude in handling a simple house move. They are currently running BT a close second as “Dumbocracy of the Decade”.
- Baron's BMW: Rant the Second: Baron's BMW: more evidence emerges of incompetence and generalised slacking.
- Baron's BMW: A Rant: My local BMW main dealer is Baron's of Hindhead. I've been a customer of theirs for a decade now and have probably (I don't dare add it up) spent more with them than my first house cost me. There's...
- Winter Festivals: Dispelling my personal humbug: a User's guide to winter festivals.
- Crowdie Cranachan: My homeland of Scotland has produced a fair number of indigenous dishes, many coming out of the mists of time and borne abroad by several centuries' diaspora of woad-painted Picts – there can be few corners of the planet...
- Thai Poached Salmon with Basalmic-glazed Mushrooms: This isn't a genuine Thai recipe – it's one I dreamt up on a Saturday afternoon, and one of those, "what have I got in the fridge" moments, inspired and focussed by the imminent and ad hoc arrival of a...
- On Drinking a Wine That's Older Than Me…: There are wines which pour, make a satisfactory glugging noise in the process and which caress, stimulate or assault the senses with varying degrees of complacency or excellence. These are the things we tend to drink from day-to-day, often...
Ducati Diary
- Nothing for Years…: After years in the doldrums, the Sports Tourer market has perked up noticeably, with the launch of the Ducati Multistrada 1200 and the long-awaited Honda VFR1200. Similar market, similar capacities, but only one will do what it says on the box.
- Lots More on the A84…:
We have a problem: on a mere twenty miles of one local road, the A84, bikers are dying. One is too many, and what we have are many too many doing so. So herewith a few hints on cooling it, enjoying it and surviving it…
- A821 Dukes Pass:
The A821 is probably the most astonishing roads in the UK: reminiscent of an alpine pass, it's the best way to have huge fun at low-speed and to have a damn good workout at the same time.
- Pass Wide and Slow – Bikes and Horses: How to do Horses: Encountering and Passing the Hairy Beasts of the Glen
- "Honey, I Spent The Aga Budget…": First impressions of the Ducati Monster S4R as supporting act and of the 1098S as the main event.
Travel[B]log
- Scottish Parliamentary Pictures: Photographic essay in the Scottish Parliament
- Cameras for Travellers, Part I: The Need: Choosing a Digital SLR.
- Demonstration, from a cafe in Primrose Hill: Sent, with graphic attachment, by e-mail from a Palm Tungsten T via GPRS......
- Voice Message: This is a UM ver. 2.0 message....
- Photographing Mountain Gorillas: Techniques and advice for getting the best out of your photographs of Mountain Gorillas and other such fluffy objects.
Two Worlds
- Richard Harris: Biography of Richard Harris, Founder and Director of Two Worlds.
- Two Worlds Expands: an Encore: Jonathan Marshall joins Two Worlds as director of Interactive TV and Development Services.
- Jon Jardine: Biography of Jon Jardine, Development Lead at Two Worlds.
- Two Worlds Expands: Jon Jardine joins Two Worlds, as lead developer and designer.
- A Time for Change: Two Worlds is changing and expanding: We're expanding and adding development and prototyping services and tools to our strategic consultancy and product and service architecture design capabilities.
Two Worlds Images: The Photography of Richard Harris
- Olympus E-3: First Impressions: That's something of an Olympus tradition – like that other industry iconoclast, Apple, Olympus have rarely headlined on numbers, but have usually delivered where it counts: build quality, lens quality and sheer usability - I'm actually sitting here with my heirloom Olympus OM-2n beside me, rediscovering just what a joy it is to hold and use – I really do believe that cameras that feel the product of precision engineering by people who care inspire better image creation than those that come across as marketing-led, cost-driven consumer electronics. ...A number of the buttons are customisable to a high degree, and it'll be a while before I've got everything set 'just so' for me – it's even possible to customise the controls so that their function depends on the mode the camera is in, and there are two complete 'my mode' settings to allow you to save common shooting settings and access them with a single touch.
- Richard's Bio: I'm Richard Harris and I'm a travel, expedition, heritage, landscape and wildlife photographer, working around the diffuse boundary between using photography as an adjunct of my travels and expeditions and it being an income-generating profession. My work's been used in a variety of books and magazines, I sell limited edition prints of my work and I've won a few competitions along the way, most notably the Aitken Spence Sri Lankan national photographic competition of few years ago, the prize for which was a return visit that beautiful, friendly and tragic island....
- 2006 Goodwood Revival Meeting: Images from the 2006 Goodwood Revival Meeting.
- Watts Chapel, Compton: The Watts Cemetery Chapel, Compton, Surrey: Home, gallery and memorial chapel to the great Victorian Arts & Crafts artist.
- Patterns in the Stone: There's a problem with photographing the really iconic places of the world: how to convey the essence and atmosphere of a place through the barrier of the familiar postcard images to which we're all pretty much innured. This is one such – the mediaeval island fortress abbey of Mont St Michel in Normandy. This is a truly magical place, where the patterns of nature and those of man contrast, reflect and complement each other as the light changes through the day and through the seasons. And this is what I've tried to capture in this gallery: the patterns, light, detail and the contrasts that make the atmosphere and presence of the place....