Metronet – ruining your lives for a better tomorrow

About once a year, I like to complain about the tube strikes. I did it last year, and I’ll do it again this year. This year it’s the turn of Metronet, who’s members are after assurances over job security and pensions.

I care about the important issues. I care about the plight of the workers standing up to The Man, Transport for London in this case. I care about who will stand and be counted, before there is nobody left to stand. I stand shoulder to shoulder with the common man. I will join them in taking this fight to their front door and hit them in the pockets, where it hurts the most.

Tube services are cancelled from Tuesday until Thursday. Do you realise how bloody inconvenient that is? I’ll never get home. You purse-pinching money grabbing bastards.

Actually, I don’t really care. You see, London has quite a few different ways of getting around. And with my help, you might be able to find your way around too. Firstly, there are the buses. They run above ground – where the air comes from. There are also overland trains. They’re also above ground, but look quite like the trains you see on the underground, with less red. Now here’s the really crazy part. The Great Fire died out over 340 years ago. The streets are safe to return to once more, and London is now traversable in its entirety by foot. Yep, believe it or not, you can walk from Warren Street station all the way to Goodge Street without taking the underground.

Above all, just try not to panic, everyone. It will all be OK 🙂

Facebook death imminent

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article2086909.ece

Basically some geezer who went to Harvard with the Facebook bloke is claiming he had a bunch of source code stolen. Alarmists everywhere are pretty sure the site will be shut down any day now and encourage you to backup your friends before you forget who they all are. Again. Still, it’s sure to return as a paid-for-20-quid-an-hour subscription site run by the evil new owners. Who also originally come from Mars, so I hear.

Oh please.

The Great Gormley Hunt – Event Horizon, Blind Light and Quantum Cloud

Gormley #31
Antony Gormley is probably most widely known as the man behind The Angel of the North. Actually, he’s the man of the Angel of the North, using his own body as the subject for a huge number of sculptures designed to challenge our perception of ourselves and the space that we live in. Recently, as part of the Blind Light exhibition at The Hayward, Gormley has erected 31 casts of himself and put them on rooftops and walkways around London. Well, not personally – I’m sure he had some help. Every one of them faces the Hayward gallery, turning the watchers into the watched – and keeping Londoners looking skywards for the last 2 months.

Putting aside the rumours that Gormley himself is actually inside one of the life-size casts, I naturally wanted to find them all. So since I had this afternoon off from work and it’s not far from the office, I decided to stalk Antony Gormley’s creations for a little while. And I think, armed with a trackstick and camera I’ve managed to find all 31 of them. It’s very difficult to tell now, which are the same statues from different angles.

Three viewing terraces at the Hayward provide the means to see all of the statues, and as Gormley’s previously commented – it’s very interesting to become part of the small community on that rooftops, trying to find them all. Whether actively pointing them out – or passively seeing other people do the same. It’s also rather eery to have all of those lifeless bodies staring back at you.

Quantum Cloud, Greenwich Peninsula, by Antony Gormley And Event Horizon isn’t the only attraction nearby. Inside the gallery, there are a huge number of sculptures and exhibits , including Allotment II, 300 reinforced concrete life-sized units each modelled upon the inhabitants of Malmo. Every single one is different, and you can’t help but be impressed at the sheer number of them, as well as yes – as the guide says – it’s anthropomorphic heaven. Throw away all your 20th century ideals of not being allowed to have first impressions any more. These are concrete blocks, and you won’t be hauled off to jail for being sexist, racist, ageist or judging someone by their appearance in any way. You can’t help but find your favourites or make random judgements over what sort of person they would be. Well I couldn’t.

Blind Light, the namesake of the entire exhibition is a massive glass box filled with a bright white fluffy cloud. The result of this, is that once inside you can’t see a damned think. After wandering around, barely able to see your own hands held out in front of you – you will have no idea where you are. Ghostly shadows will occasionally pass by and if you keep going, you’ll find the edges of the box where spectators will see your face emerge from the mist. It’s very surreal, but a great experience, and yet another example of Gormley making the spectators a part of the art. Not one for the claustrophobic, perhaps.

I won’t list everything else, I promise. Go for yourself and experience the world through different eyes. What I will do, is talk about another Gormley gem in the mostly forgotten area of London that we call Greenwich. The Quantum Cloud stands at 30m tall, making it even larger than the Angel of the North at Gateshead. In fact, until the construction of the B of the Bang sculpture in Manchester, 2005 – it was the largest sculpture in England. The Quantum Cloud sits on the Thames, by the pier at the newly opened O2 Arena, formally known as the Millennium Dome. It’s formed of hundreds of 1.5m lengths of random steel rods, at the centre of which you can make out the 20ft tall man standing amongst the cloud. But don’t look too closely, or you won’t see it. Magic eye, eat your heart out.

London – City of the Glass

No, it’s not the title of the next Doctor Who Christmas special.

But, hot on the tails of the Gherkin, City Hall and the still forthcoming Bankside 123 architecture foundation and London Bridge Shard, is the newly proposed glass skyscraper at 11-19 Monument St.

It’s another of those multi-use buildings which stops the realists from screaming out in disbelief over more offices being built in Central London that we just don’t need. So you’ll be almost as happy as I am to learn about the roof gardens, the visitor centre for Monument and eye-blindingly-bright light-up front. “Flexible accommodation” also sounds like an extremely interesting concept to me, and if your apartment doesn’t shrink when you exit the front-door, allowing extra space for those inhabitants still occupying the building – frankly, they’ve missed a trick. You wait. It will happen.

An impressive looking plan, all the same – and I look forward to gazing into the ripple-effect facade that starts this Fairground ride for giants. And if that doesn’t work, maybe the reflections from the glass will set fire to Monument. How we’d laugh.

Myth TV on Fedora 7

IMG_0037Well, I’ve decided this blog was getting far too technology-based over the last few entries. I’m in desperate need of another hobby, writing about my travels is all very well – but I only have 27 days holiday each year to spare for that sort of thing. Code is falling in from the ceiling and spilling out onto the posts. In my deepest moments of insanity I’ve starting writing about branding. Being able to claim the moral high ground in the past, I’ve now found myself getting into debates over logos, design and the public perception.

Well it has to change. Right now.. So this evening is all about the introduction to my Myth TV posts, which will serve as some sort of inadequate guide to getting an open-source media center up and running with digital tv recording, playback, tv guides as well as all the networkable, internet-ready, upgradeable, linux hardware hell you’d expect from such a project. Much more fun than going down the shop and buying a complete system. You can’t imagine.

Wait. Shit.

Okay, there will be code. There will certainly be text-only configuration files. Hopefully, I can get a llama in there somewhere… Hopefully.