I am undeniably a fan of Bond films, and particularly of the new direction they have taken with Daniel Craig. Although the next film isn’t due for release until November there is a teaser trailer online already. Enjoy. Even if it is called “Quantum of Solace”.
***UPDATE***
The trailer has made it to YouTube now:
Last night I was shopping for a present for a good friend of mine at work who’s leaving this week. As they commute long stretches of the tube each day I decided what they would most like to receive as a leaving present would be An Illustrated Guide to the Piccadilly Line (and a wodge of topshop vouchers and some other stuff, we’re not complete bastards).
It turns out the London Transport Museum has a very impressive library of books on everything tube and train related, and it doesn’t stop there, they have a decent sized display devoted to DVDs. What particularly caught my eye was the series of “Driver eye view” films for each of the tube lines, with a running commentary of dark tunnel followed by dark tunnel of tube track. Now that is a niche market, and they’re got it fully covered. Don’t tell Gorden Brown though or he’ll ban them for being a terrorist threat.
On my way to Covent Garden I also noticed a very nice looking whisky shop which I had a quick look in on. Whisky was stacked floor to ceiling and it reminded me of a cachaca shop in Paraty ‘d been to. In a complete coincidence the London Daily Photo site features the same whisky shop in today’s photo. Which is nice.
Here’s a new toy I have just brought. I already have a Canon SLR but mine is slightly older, (a 400D) and this is brand new. It is also not for me, but for my sister.
Needless to say I am jealous. The kit lense has image stabalisation, the camera has spot metering and live view, and it has a larger and brighter view finder.
I made the purchase in Jessops, which I will try to never do again. Chain store fever struck again. It was frustratingly difficult to just buy a camera. No i don’t want extra insurance, or a bag, or a rip off memory card (£38.99 for a standard 4GB memory card? Ridiculous. ).
I like taking pictures and I’m not fussy about what I take pictures of. But I hear more and more about people who are very fussy and claim that it’s against the law. There’s been a few cases recently – The Register have just published a piece on the problems photographers face – having film removed from cameras, memory cards taken, threats to confiscate equipment – which paints a worrying picture. They also follow it up with some useful advice on what the law actually says about taking pictures (So, what can you photograph?).
This issue was raised earlier in the year by The Online Photographer who shows a great clip about restrictions on film and photography, including a film maker being stopped at Oxford Circus by two community support officers and questioned aggressively with no reason what so ever.
And it’s not just in the UK. DCist and The Online photographer both picked up a comical story of the Head of Cumminications of Union Station being stopped from conducting a TV interview. An interview where he was trying to report that there was nothing wrong with filming or taking pictures in the station.
I’m a big fan of free things, and living in an expensive city like London you have to make the most of them. Which can be quite tricky when there’s free stuff going on everywhere you look.
The closing weeks of June are a particularly good example of this, there’s the London Festival of Architecture for starters which is running for the next four weeks, then there’s The Greenwich and Docklands International Festival this weekend. The Scoop is showing free open air films (which it does every year) at the moment too, and there’s even a reason to visit Tottenham for the Lea Valley festival for a day of “Picnic and Performance”.
Thanks to Diamond Geezer (who has even more free events to check out) and the Londonist (who has lots more about the London Festival of Architecture) for the heads up on these goings on.
Living in and around London all my life it’s easy to take a lot of things for granted. I’m always interested to read other peoples fresh experiences of the city, especially visitors from other countries, as I think it’s good to be reminded of some of the everyday things which you can so easily get used to.
A recent post by a Canadian called Adrienne about the tube is an excellent example of this as she talks about standing on the right on escalators. It’s something which never crosses my mind as I naturally slip in to standing position or march past the other commuters. Good to hear we do some things right here.
I’m not a big fan of shopping malls, one tends to blend into another and you don’t know if you’re in Brent Cross, Lakeside, Watford, Guildford or Cambridge. The usual suspects are always there, the same clothes shops, cafes, music and video stores line the walkways trying to make their 300 square metres somehow different from everyone elses. I can’t count the times I have followed my better half into a clothes store and once inside, have had no idea which store I’m in.
So the Unchained London website (thanks Plummet Onions!) is a breath of fresh air – a directory of independent shops in London owned by real people who have a real interest in their wares. It is a little frustrating to navigate as you have to enter a location AND shop name or description instead of just being able to browse shops in a particular area. But it can be forgiven for now as a great effort to get people to see past the usual mall and high street stores.
Unchained London also reminds me of a post by Ben from Noisy Decent Graphics, where he discovered a shop run by the company Unpackaged where all the products (where possible) are sold without packaging. A great idea I think, taking things back to basics.
This week I’ve been getting to grips with a few web services which I’ve looked at briefly in the past.
First was twitter, which i’m still not sure about, mainly due to the time needed to invest in updating it enough times to make it useful (even though you can do it by phone, email, web etc.) and also because it doesn’t have the big following in the UK as it does in the US. If i can get it to replace Facebook status updates (the fb application was broken when I tried) then I think it may be worth it. Untill then…
Next was Friend Feed, which I’m getting to like quite a lot. The list of services it can follow is impressive and I like it’s simplicity. So far I have it tracking my activity on del.icio.us, digg, flickr, google reader, last fm, linkedin, mixx (I’ll come back to that), twitter and youtube. So far so good and it will probably get used a lot to aggregate research for blog content.
Lastly was Mixx, which has a bit of an overlap with some other services (digg, youtube, del.icio.us). It’s a way of recording and sharing (of course!) URLs, photos and videos you find while browsing the web. I’ll use it mainly for photo and video and it’s great for tracking inspirational images you notice while browsing the web.
