Owner: rashbre central URL:http://rashbre2.blogspot.com Join Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:11:54 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: there is some fun going forward Site statistics:Click here
Thursday Thirteen (V44) 2007-08-30 08:18:22 Time to open the door on another ThursdayThirteen
. I'm combining it with the tag request from Webby's world a few weeks ago, which is one of those "08 random things about me" memes. Joe asks that the rules are published first, so here goes...The Rules (condensed) Each player must post these rules first. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write about their eight facts on their blog. At the end of your blog post, choose eight people to get tagged, list their names, and link to them. Don’t forget to contact them telling them they’re tagged. Also, point them to your blog post so they know what to do.So here's a few random things.1) I was out yesterday evening at an Indian restaurant with a couple of friends. One I hadn't seen for about two years and the other for about six months. 2) I'm continuing to cycle or run most days at the moment, but decided not to keep a 'blow by blow' (stagger by stagger?) account of it o
OTA: Wordless Wednesday 2007-08-28 14:02:17 electrifyingAdd a comment, trackback or a link for Wordless Wednesday
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...then Hackney Hoxton and Shoreditch 2007-08-27 11:42:03 Emm, this was supposed to be the Saturday post after team rashbre had entered another one of those Shoot Experience photo walkabout competitions. Unfortunately it all went a bit pear shaped. We had tickets and were kind of prepared. The last one we did was, for us, an anytime start and this suited us just fine. This one had an un-noticed 'be there at eleven am' message in the email. oops.So turning up at two o' clock in the afternoon wasn't a bright idea. Then being told the clues took around 30 minutes each and that everyone had to be back at four thirty to upload the finished items.So dutifully taking the team rashbre materials, including the team badges with 'I love Hackney' written on them it was time to go outside Cargo to plan the rescue operation. That's when the pub came into view. After a Grolsch, this became a 'cut the losses' situation. So instead of hammering around the circuit snapping wildly and producing some ill-planned entries, it became more fun to abandon t
Brick Lane 2007-08-27 09:02:25 Strolling onward to Brick
Lane, nowadays nicknamed "Bangla Town" by the locals. Originally an area for the manufacture of bricks, then a Jewish neighbourhood and nowadays the centre of the Bangladeshi community. Ask a Londoner about Brick Lane and they'll talk about the excellent curry restaurants (bring your own beer- the restaurants are mainly Muslim). There's also the markets in the middle part of the Lane and at night its a clubbing area with the Vibe and others open till very late. The 24 hour Beigel Bakery does good trade around the clock.The Bangladeshis first came here as seamen in the 1920s and expanded a wide range of trading in the area. The signage is often in Bangladeshi and as well as items likw saris from the indian sub-continent there's designer fashion from the Laden Shop or vintage clothes from Rokit. Around the middle of the Lane is the tall chimneyed Truman's Black Eagle Brewery with origins in the 1700s. Nowadays its been converted to a tourist, cafe and shoppi
tombola 2007-08-26 14:49:23 The Tombola stall from today's show. Fortunately the weather was extremely sunny - removing a big risk for out door events in the UK. The sun also seemed to encourage everyone to be on the move today, mainly heading out to the country and sea side. And as I commented yesterday, there was no livestock this year, but still plenty of other exhibits, like this...I was also double booked so after visiting the show it was across London to Shoreditch for another event...
time in the garden 2007-08-26 03:41:21 ...well not my garden. And not really a garden, as such.Covent Garden. An area often featured in 'Lies Londoners tell Tourists' (because its not a garden), along with 'The Mall as a great shopping area'. And as a place to visit, for a quick buzz of lots happening, Covent Garden has it all from smart cafes, street entertainers, boutique shops and little craft market stands.For much of its existence Covent Garden served as a fruit and vegetable market covering the whole of the square. Back in the 1600s the land belonged to Westminster Abbey and was a Convent garden, hence the name.It emerged in its current form out of an experiment in London of town planning as the creation of a public square, developed by the Earl of Bedford, Charles I and architect Inigo Jones. It also introduced Italian style Palladian columns, some smart houses and a grids for streets instead of London's random twists and turns.The original public square ultimately caused the residential well-heeled toffs to lea
84.71 2007-08-24 18:51:12 Yup, the plan worked. My three year old Powerbook now has a new drive. It was 80GB, its now 160Gb, with more than half free. I copied everything to the new drive using Carbon Copy Clone (2-3 hours, overnight). I then re-booted from the external clone (hold down option key during boot). It still looked like my computer. I tried safari, mail and then Final Cut Studio. All of them worked and still found my files. So power down, remove battery, unscrew case, flap up the keyboard and track pad, unscrew and wiggle out the disk. Swap them over. Re-assemble, cross fingers. And after 30 minutes, normal service resumed but with more space. A three year old PC could be limping at this point, but this Mac still runs like new and is ready to edit HD video.little box holds Powerbook's old drivetags technorati : rashbre dismantle powerbook apple mac disk replace
Nikon D300 2007-08-24 16:36:42 Nikon sent me their publicity for their new D300 camera. I frequently use Nikon cameras and think they are excellent; even the base-line D40 is a very good piece of kit. As the cameras get bigger numbers they get more expensive, except for the ones with only one number which are REALLY expensive. I think the D300 is really the souped-up D200 with a new wibbulator to shake dust off the sensor when lenses are changed and better waterproofing than the cling-film that I sometimes use on my Nikons. There's some new LiveView preview technology for when the mirror is up, though I'm so used to SLRs that I'm not sure whether this is slightly like a consumer feature. They have also added an HDMI output for links to HD televisions, though I don't think I'd use one of the HDMI slots on my television for an SLR feed.They also announced an eye-watering D3 (one digit, so pricey), which is really for folk of the press. To be honest, I find the intermediate cameras more useful for my type of phot Read more:Nikon
gossip 2007-08-24 14:29:05 Tonight I'm sitting here IM-ing whilst I wait for the Powerbook disk I mentioned yesterday to copy itself entirely to another drive. I found a spare 160Gb drive in a little enclosure and thought it would be sensible to swap it into the Powerbook. I've no idea whether it will work, involving mechanical derring-do (opening a Powerbook) and software technology - cloning the drive. So here's my plan of how to dismantle a Powerbook...I know I may have left out a few details but it looks like a good plan to me. More fainthearted might need this. But that would just put me off.And all this Instant Messaging reminded me that I use a little program called Adium, which does what Messenger, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber, Bonjour and all of those other little programs do, but in one simple and rather elegant manner. And I'll admit I have it set to play the Tokyo train station notifications when people call me.(A few more bicycle miles this evening, mainly up and down the nearby friendly hill).tags techn
17 and rising 2007-08-24 14:15:35 17 teenage gun deaths in London this year, most recently Brixton this month. A gun killing of a biker on the M40 a few days ago and now an 11 year old killed in Liverpool by a BMX teen cyclist with a shotgun.Gang culture is ascribed as a form of belonging, often with violence as entry price. Social deprivation, petty crime and the spiral to drugs and organized crime become the challenges for the projects trying to stabilize and turn the tide. A family is supposed to teach independence, but a gang seems to drive dependence.Ethnicity is in the debate but only a few days ago a white male gang leader was sent to prison following violence based rule of Nottingham. The Krays have gone, but there is still organized money making at the edge of the law.Pop Culture also features; number one on Billboard is Underground Kingz with lyrics about 44's, glocks and Ks (guns) and 454's (shot gun cartridges). Teens of all types face gory Playstation options as influences. Intellectualising about missin
illic est fun progressus 2007-08-24 14:10:06 Britain has many traditions and tomorrow I'm involved in one of them. There's a Royal Show which I'm attending. You've heard in the past that I'm sometimes a little shy about my title of Lord Rashbre of London, but it does seem to fit with the theme for tomorrow. However, the purpose of these shows was originally to support the local farmers and workers, who would proudly show off their livestock as part of the event.Sadly, with the recent outbreak of cattle disease, there has been an embargo on livestock attending the Show. Fortunately there'll be many other attractions so a good turnout is still expected, and tonight's weather bodes well for tomorrow's show opening.
maximum exposure 2007-08-24 07:31:36 I was reading Maximum Bob's adventures after he added a snake picture to his site which created a stir of extra hits a couple of days ago."Johanna Cardona!", I thought, "I'd better Skype a few myspace and facebook friends in case they've had similar experiences on google when talking about Ron Paul, Galilea Montijo from Big Brother in Mexico or any UK soccer WAG scandals and gossip.I suppose my previous posts about Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and even the occasional references I make to YouTube inadvertantly add to search hits of dreamhost viewers everywhere. But then I noticed the "skype down" message and as I don't have an iPhone, blogging about it became the solution.tags technorati : noelia eviction scandal video snake facebook youtube ron paul johanna cardona galilea montijo utube gerry skype down technorati google microsoft apple paris hilton myspace britney spears dreamhost iphone
full 2007-08-22 16:32:23 A slight problem today, when I noticed that the powerbook I mainly use for blogging has somehow filled up. Its 80GB drive seemed immense when I very first started using it. The easiest culprit to fix seemed to be the Pictures folder which has somehow crept from a few items to about 10 Gigabytes...and I keep my main photos in Aperture on a different machine.Lazily, I was going to copy them away to another drive over the wi-fi, when it reported it would take well over an hour, so I was forced to hunt around for a disk as an intermediate store. Then it took about 5 minutes to copy and another 5 to shunt to another home.Of course, that gave me some time back for another run today, although it was only around 1.5 miles because as soon as I stepped outdoors the skies burst open.
run 2007-08-21 17:38:56 In addition to my recent bicycling expeditions, I thought it would be good try try a spot of running as a way to help get me to the point where "the hill" nearby seemed less of a cycling effort than it does at present. Not that I can't do it, but the last half hill seems more effort than it really should be. So, I decided that the best way to do this was to set myself some goals, so that the whole thing has some point and structure. I won't embarrass myself by saying what the goals are; perhaps by the time I set the next wave they will start to sound semi respectable. At this stage, I'm eschewing the latest running gear and simply finding old T shirts and similar, and the trainers that I use for cycling seem perfectly adequate, even if they do have a bit of paint on them. I looked around the web for a place to stash timings and so forth and found the nike site that lots of people use. I duly signed up (free) and found that the little gadget to put in shoes seems to be a part of the
137 - bus of champions 2007-08-20 14:54:24 Meetings in central London today, with Oyster card to the fore. Main journey was on the bus of champions, the 137. Lets face it, the number 25 and the number 10 get lots of press for the areas they visit and are part of prime tourist London, but the 137 knows a thing or two also. From crossing the River Thames, to meandering through Sloane Square, past King's Road and all along Sloane Street, through Knightsbridge, Park Lane, Mayfair and finally to Oxford Street, it can show a sight or two.And some of them seem to be new generation buses, too. Extra wide-windows and most of the cameras and general high-tech pieces look as if they were designed in, rather than added as afterthoughts. And they seem to be called Enviro, which presumably means they are good for the smog.And the windows make it easier to take pictures, too. Here's a few snaps from the journey.Older version of the same busOxford Street specializes in buses and taxis.and tourist shoppersmainly buying Man U and Arsenal socce
furnishings with surrogate chicken 2007-08-19 14:24:13 This afternoon I've been in North West London. Pinner and Colindale to be exact. Visiting large furniture stores that may have interesting bibs and bobs to hide away the hi-fi and other miscellaneous gadgets. But oh! The traffic today was mad. Both aggressive and stop-start. I'm used to London traffic and drive around in it quite a lot. Today, there were a lot of undertakers cutting up to make about a one car advantage in what were mainly gridlock style traffic jams. So above is a picture of Colindale in the rain featuring a fried chicken shop pretending to look like an American KFC.
itsy not so bitsy? 2007-08-19 13:20:02 I'm sure that little spider outside the window is getting bigger. I normally expect to see spiders indoors from around September, so if this one is thinking about it, then I may need to move.
clicky pedal 2007-08-19 13:07:37 The damp weather today didn't deter me from taking a bicycle ride this morning. Instead of my springy mountain bike, I decided to take out my road bike, which is quite like an unsprung mountain bike with thin tyres and road style gears. Neither of my bikes are very expensive although both are a joy to use. When new, they both had a wide range of "street credible" stickers on them to make them look like the price I paid. I peeled most of them off and the bikes then looked much sleeker and less gimmicky. My only challenge before today's run was that one of the pedals is making a clicking sound. I took a look and there's something wrong with the thread. So I've swapped it temporarily with the pedal from a smaller bicycle. It works fine, but does look a little odd until I can get a proper replacement.
vinyl 2007-08-18 07:21:34 A background sub-project is taking some old vinyls and moving them across into digital. Purists may scorn this loss of the warmth of analogue recordings for the harshness of digital sound, but I'm rather more relaxed. With modern sound systems, adding back some dynamic range or squishing annoying clicks and suchlike is fairly easy. I'm not going to be fanatical about converting everything, but there are some well played albums which are not even always available in digital. My dilemma is whether to record them 'as-is' (scratches, sometimes arcane equalization) or whether to clean them up in the process. I've decided to just use a basic recording program like GarageBand to transfer them because it will keep me focused on getting them converted rather than prettying up the sounds, and I may leave a few 'end of side clicks' as a concession to analogue.
rain 2007-08-18 06:46:27 I missed most of the UK's rain a couple of weeks ago because I was mainly abroad. However, today is somewhat inconvenient because, like last weekend, I was planning some cycling excursions and awoke to several different varieties of bad weather. To be honest, last weekend I cycled myself into the ground somewhat, having selected a particularly muddy and bumpy route requiring a camelback refreshment break before returning. So this weekend the plan is for tarmac, but ideally with some moderate weather, because I consider cycling a leisure activity rather than a test of endurance. So I'm doing other things at the moment whilst waiting for the dark black above me to become at least a fluffy grey colour.
how to dismantle an iMac 2007-08-17 13:29:57 I still get a lot of hits about mending iPods (because I had to fix one once) - quick version, use a guitar plectrum to get inside the case. So I though I'd add an entry like it about an iMac. So here's a picture of the new iMac 20 inch Aluminium Chassis version, released a few days ago. Okay, I know. the front is missing. Still, it looks pretty densely packed. My advice for dismantling... don't.tags technorati : rashbre iMac mac apple dismantle iPod broken
blurry 2007-08-17 10:23:06 After all that fun with a White Van, which had lots of special bolts to remember to close without trapping the fingers, it was back to a normal car. Highlighted all the more by glancing around at the nearby inhabitants of the car park. Aston Martins are not exactly commonplace, so to see two (both gun-metal grey) with a white Porsche parked in between is probably unusual even in somewhat blasé central London.tags technorati : rashbre aston martin london cars car park
been a long time 2007-08-17 10:20:48 It's been some time since I did any guitar strumming. A few days ago I had a bash and we had some of my usual cacophony scraping the walls, with modest accompaniment from a drum beat. Then yesterday the new version of iLife arrived for the mac and I dutifully installed it. Casually inspecting GarageBand, I noticed the Magic Band facility, which is new. So I whiled away five minutes making the attached backing track, which can add a new dimension to my twanging. Here's my first unadapted composition - I've resisted the temptation to add any grunge or effects so that the pristine output from Magic Garage Band can be noted - and played along to! beats workin' southside bluesok. a grungy version too. beats workin' southside grungeand a pub version. beats drinkin' southside enough.tags technorati : rashbre guitar tunes magic band garageband apple mac ilife mp3 backing tracks gdec
man proposes... 2007-08-17 10:18:33 Several hectic moments today as I travelled around to various meetings. Along the way I found myself in a rather special Picture Gallery, which initially impressed me simply as a building, then I noticed the pictures and then i noticed, hmmm, "Some of these are quite famous". Quite unexpected, but as an example, I've picked the rather gory one by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer "Man Proposes, God Disposes", showing the loss of Sir John Franklin's expedition to find a North-West Passage, in 1845.This circa 3 metre by 1 metre picture illustrates two polar bears, their fierce and brutal natures uncompromisingly portrayed, tearing up the remnants of the expedition. Landseer is more known for paintings of horses and dogs, but also designed the huge lions at the base of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square.tags technorati : rashbre landseer painting art fierce polar bears
remote possibility 2007-08-17 10:17:03 Another part of the yellow sofa saga has been the other aspects of generally re-arranging the room. Unsurprisingly, there is a fair amount of technology in rashbre central, but the area with the sofas should really be a haven of simplicity. So I wonder sometimes at the large collection of remote controls that progressively accumulate. Television, DVD, Sky, Hi-fi, Remote iPod, Apple Mini, VCR(!). Even the fireplace has a remote control. I can't be bothered to count the number of buttons, but it must be over 500, especially if I count the typing keyboard for the Mac Mini. And selecting certain lesser used functions like playing a Video Cassette becomes a short excerpt from some kind of mission control movie.So, like I recycle the shiny boxes from CDs and DVDs, I thought it was about time to rationalize the buttonage and make it simple to switch things on to do what is required. My current experimental choice is a little Logitech unit. I started with the cheapest programmable unit they Read more:possibility
autumn 2007-09-02 17:42:31 Surely it still too early? However, there are tree leaves already turning yellow and brown.
iPod 6? 2007-09-02 17:26:46 iPod 6th generation preview? ...or just more speculation. You decide.
Read more:iPod
dome vs wembley 2007-09-01 05:33:16 A minor comparison of the Dome vs Wembley as a venue. Not a "Sports" comparison, but for audience care and facilities. The Dome crushes Wembley in a moment. Better transport access, better entry logistics, better free space areas, better range of on site facilities, better restaurants and cafes, better food. And as a venue for live, 20,000 seats at the dome still seems fairly intimate whereas 50,000 seats at Wembley creates distant dots.And an £8 disgustoburger at Wembley is no match for the £7 chinese at the Dome.C'mon Wembley, fix it.
purple 2007-09-01 05:09:39 I never meant 2 cause u any sorrowI never meant 2 cause u any painI only wanted 2 one time see u laughingI only wanted 2 see u laughing in the purple rainPurple rain purple rainPurple rain purple rainPurple rain purple rainI only wanted 2 see u bathing in the purple rainA great gig with Prince keeping the whole Dome on its feet from the opening chord to the very, very, very end of the show. Consumate performer, robust band, great dancers, many great tunes mixin it up between soul, jazz, funk, fusion, blues, rock, pop. The Prince threw a great party for London.strictly no cameras allowed, so you'll have to imagine the rest
memory jogger 2007-08-30 17:20:23 Last week when I was jogging around the Serpentine, I also diverted the short distance to the Diana Memorial, which was fairly quiet at the time. I snapped a couple of pictures and then realized its ten years since the accident, this week. The memorial is quite a contrast to the normal statues and obelisks sprinkled around London. A long circuit of water, actually two flows that meander from a source to a lower destination like two halves of an 'O'. I was around the palace/abbey area at the time it was all happening and remember the sheer volume of flowers at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and Kensington Palace. Looking back at some of the photos on google doesn't really convey the scale, compared with walking through the area at the time.
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