New light

Did a spot of DIY this afternoon, putting up a new light in the front room. It's a big glass and metal sphere and weighs all of 6kg, no trivial matter to fit. Happily I did find some solid ceiling and after an hour it still seems to be hanging in so I'm ready to call it a success!

This shot was taken from directly underneath - how's that for confidence :-)

Farnborough Air Show

Went to Farnborough at the weekend. It was the first air show I'd been to for about 25 years and it brought back great memories of going to British Aerospace open days as a kid. It was great to see that so little had changed - kids were still collecting photos of planes, everyone loved the Red Arrows and there were those free pop-out paper hats that you don't seem to get anywhere else at all. Even the planes were mostly the same ones as in the 80's :-)

Highlights for me included the Red Arrows (of course!), the incredible quietness of the double decker A380 and the phenomenal manoeuvrability of the F16 (of Top Gun fame). The Avro Vulcan wasn't flying the day we were there (brake failure) but it was great to see it sitting on the ground.

It was clearly a golden opportunity and I couldn't help myself: there are a few photos up on Flickr.

Grade zero (and more poppies)

I re-applied the summer cut this evening and went one closer than normal to see how a zero would look. Pretty good I thought, but I've been told I'm not allowed to do it again - ho hum. I got the better half to record it for posterity so you can let me know what you think...



Looking back at the previous post reminded me that the poppies are still going over here. They've found a second wind and are just as good as they were a few weeks ago. This is clearly the last hurrah though, as there aren't many unflowered heads left in the field. With the grass grown up long around them they are looking great right now though.



The poppies seem to have been a bit of a hit. Not once but twice since I posted them I've been contacted on Flickr asking exactly where the field is and whether the poppies are still in bloom (flora_london having gone so far as to register with Flickr just to contact me!). It's nice to be able to act as a tour guide for the North Downs once in a while :-)

Poppies

A big field of poppies has bloomed round the corner from our place. According to the locals this is a pretty rare occurrence. I took advantage of the light summer evenings to get out and take a good look after work one day last week.


I packed a good selection of my lenses (20mm, 85mm, 105mm macro and 70-300mm) and managed to get some good shots with each and every one of them. As usual the 20mm was awesome (see the shot above for example) but the real revelation for me was the 85mm f1.4. I hadn't used this baby for a while as its kinda heavy to cart about and as a result I'd forgotten quite how good it is at isolating detail and smoothing out backgrounds. The love affair is well and truly rekindled now :-)


Want to see some more? Check out the set on Flickr.

UOoGB save the day!

Had a pretty awful (though admittedly to a fair extent self inflicted) day at work today, but it was all saved by the brilliance of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britian. Even seeing them in Aldershot (urg!) didnt diminish the sheer awesomeness of their "ironic covers".

Ukulele courtesy of T..Jones
My favourite, I think, was a cover of Bowie's Life on Mars that segues beautifully into My Way and a few other classics. You'll find it, as they pointed out, on YouTube - someone has pirated the whole of their back catalog. Other great stuff up there, if you're in the mood, includes a superb lounge cover of Wuthering Heights and a great take on Teenage Dirtbag from last year's BBC Proms. Go on, no-one can resist the power of the ukulele!

Now if anyone wants to buy me their live DVD from the Proms...

Crewing the Kursk

In a break from the norm I spent this evening at the Young Vic, having great fun helping out behind the scenes on their production of Kursk. To be specific I was deputy cloakroom operative under Lisa's watchful eye :-)

The Young Vic is a not-for-profit theatre who plow their excess cash into working with local schools. They have a great team of paid staff but Kursk needs more ushing than the average play so they emailed local businesses asking for volunteers to help out. In return for running the cloakroom I got to see behind the scenes and watch the play for free. Not a bad deal at all, especially when you consider that the team are great fun to work with.

The production itself was excellent. The audience all stand, spread throughout the submarine stage, the cast moving amongst them. Over 90 minutes we follow the crew on their voyage and learn the fate of the Kursk. They do a brilliant job of evoking daily life beneath the waves and sketching out the gap between professionalism when on the job and larking about when not.

All in all a very good play, and all the better for watching it as a part of the team. I'm lined up to help again in a couple of weeks and can't wait!

Tokyo stories

Earlier in January I was out in Tokyo for a week, chairing some of Symbian's council meetings and presenting at the Japan Forum. Amidst all the work I did find time to get out and about with my camera and I've just uploaded the best of my efforts to Flickr.

The bulk of these were shot from the top of the Mori Tower (part of the Roppongi Hills complex), either from the glassed-in observation deck (complete with curtained off areas that minimise reflections for photographers) or from the Sky Walk that loops around the roof-top helipad.


I've tried a fair few of the view points in Tokyo and the Mori Tower tops the list of the public areas for me. It's still beaten by the view from the Park Hotel though, where on a clear winter afternoon you can see the sun set behind Mt Fuji with the Tokyo Tower lit up brightly in the foreground - so long as you get a room with a Tower view.