Holy Fuck, Scala London

Scala London

Holy Fuck

Holy Fuck

Dial Porn!

Just a quick entry as it’s already late on Sunday night and I should be getting ready for work… Thursday night I went to see a band called ‘Holy Fuck‘. I guess the name kinda prohibits mass radio play or chart success, but it was a really good do. Electronic music made with a few keyboards and lots of dials (see above dial porn…).

Support band was called “it hugs back”. They weren’t awful but neither were they really interesting.

Friday night we went to go see QI. Except our ticket got us as far as the queue where it was then first come first served. We were about 50 people too late. Bit pants, so instead went for a curry near Bond St which was nice enough 🙂

Black Helicopters Approach…

Westminster Skyline - with Helicopters

Not an awesome photo I know but this is the helicopter flypast – taken from one of the meeting rooms on the 16th floor where I work.

Eclipse

Eclipse – my eee PC

Bevelled Keyboard

There hasn’t been a whole lot going on for me since the excitement of LOOT and easter weekend. I’ve started my job as a Business Relationship Manager at TfL and it all seems to be going jolly well just yet.

So… my present to myself was to finally say yes to buying a new laptop and get on with it. Today arrived ‘Eclipse’ – my new Netbook (name inspired by it’s black fascia). Using ‘doze rather than *nix – overall seems very useful piece of kit. Very quick to setup the wireless and I’m pretty impressed with the almost mac-esque gesture controls. I guess I have no excuse not for being late with BCS work…

Robin’s pie shop in Wanstead has finally opened. Haven’t been yet – saving that excitement for the weekend when Ruth is away…

Sunday Lazy Sunday

Mmm. Lazy Easter Sunday. In fact, pretty lazy Easter break.

Media Overload

Wee Bru

Narrowboat on the Thames – Madness!

The Conga Waits

Follow the Brolly

It’s all been a bit quiet after the hubbub of applying for a proper job at TfL instead of just being a graduate. The good news is… aside a little red tape, I’ve got the position. Just need to sign the paperwork (currently in the custody of Royal Mail) and its sorted.

The last week of lent brought LOOT to London and I was around on the Wednesday to swap buckets. The clever chaps and chapesses managed to bag Meningitis Research a very cool £29K on the Wednesday alone. And who says we are in a recession?

Of course, LOOT means the Millennium Bridge conga. 36 people over this year – see the photos above. Much Bambi burger was then consumed by all and sundry to recover from the strenuous exercise.

Tomorrow brings a bank holiday. Just in time to finish off the ironing and get ready for another quiet week. Maybe I’ll even tackle the multimedia overload which constitutes my CD collection.

Pies, Peppers and Proper Comedy

Wanstead Pie Shop – Still Not Open

Ruth and a Large Pepper

Teenage Cancer Trust Presents

Noel Fielding @ Royal Albert Hall

Not much on lately really. The pie shop in Wanstead disappointed hasn’t opened yet, but I did get to buy this enormous Red pepper in the shop. See. It really was a no-news kind of a week.

Sunday night we went to the Royal Albert Hall to see the Teenage Cancer Trust comedy gig. Pretty good. Highlights included were Sean Lock, Noel Fielding and someone called Jack (possibly Whitehall?) who I hadn’t heard of before. Horne and Corden were passable* as compares and the lovely Lauren Laverne hosted.

*They even did some comedy. It wasn’t awe inspiring but it could have been a lot worse.

London Drinker

The queue to get in

Nice pint design

It really really was quite busy

Yep… very busy

Possibly the last London Drinker beer festival at the Camden Centre, Kings Cross. Pretty good – some nice beers. Food was OK and it was far to busy. Took ages to get the the bars and in the main hall there wasn’t really much space to do anything.

We did however find some space in the balconies, hence the random questions about “dying a death”, then celebrity deaths…

King Lear

Random mural poster, Union St, Southwark

King Lear Poster

Young Vic

The Earl of Kent lay in the stocks for the interval between Act 1 and 2.

On Friday we went to King Lear, at the Young Vic, Southwark.

It was pretty awesome. Very good use of props and the stage space. During the storm monologues, it rained. There’s about 15-20 minutes of storm and it rained the whole time. Infact, it rained so much that during the interval between Act 2 and 3, some stage hands appeared with mops.

However the most disturbing bit for me was the gory bit. I’m good with gore. At all. So when the earl of Gloucester had his eyes gouged out by Regen and the Earl of Cornwall I didn’t feel so good! Before I turned away “blood” had shot across the stage floor (falling just short of the audience). I missed the most gory bit, though Ruth did delight in telling me on the tube on the way home.

If you are booked to see it – enjoy! If not… I think it is sold out now 😦

Blackfriars

On Friday I took a slight detour on the way home from work. The district line wasn’t too well so I ended up leaping off at Blackfriars with at least a 5 minute wait to fill out. From Monday the station is closed, so I thought why grab a few shots with the phone.

Leaving the platform itself, I found they’d already started work – by sanding down the posters! This meant some pretty historical (histerical?) posters were on display. I’ve dated the Leathal Weapon one to 1998 but some of the others looked much, much older…

If you need to get around Blackfriars during the closure – see  http://tinyurl.com/4z2k7z

Snazzy NAS

Last week I finally got around to setting up my NAS [Network Attached Storage] box. It’s pretty cool. £25 gets you the little enclosure. It plugs into the switch, in the back room – so I can’t hear it when it’s on. It is quite loud mainly due to the fact it is a hard drive and a fan in a small resonating metal box. Seems to work with Windows Vista (after a firmware upgrade), XP and 2K. Haven’t tried Linux yet but I assume it will probably work without many headaches.

Coupled with a 120GB hard drive I bought off Chris, it works well for the TV we download from 4OD, iPlayer, et al. especially now we don’t have a TV aerial!

Next task is to look at using it to backup inportant stuff and to see how secure the public FTP facility is.

Scouse Culture

A Liver Bird

Support Lifeboats

Museum of Liverpool

The Albert Dock, Liverpool

Scouse graffiti about climate change

The Liverpool ONE shopping centre

On Sunday I went to Liverpool. It’s been a very long time since I last went to Liverpool and did more than caught a bus. And even then, we pretty much just went round the Beatles museum and went home.

It probably wasn’t the cleverest of excursions. I had absolute craploads of stuff with me, having been back to my parents in Friday (collecting some hardware en-route), then to Nikki’s party where I collected some left-over booze to bring home. I guess that probably counts as tourist fail.

Still, I did manage to see some of the sights and culture. I saw the Mersey and the Liver birds. Had a cup of tea by the albert dock (with a scone, but not cream – lame). Walked round the Tate. Obeyed when the second man asked me to put my bags in the Tate cloakroom (naturally, first time I was suspicious, until I figured out it looked like I was on the rob). Wandered round Liverpool ONE and bought some leftovers from Zavvi. And then it was pretty much home time. Not until I’ve found a home bargains/quality save and stocked up on cheap tat. Just can’t get it in London.

All in all, Liverpool probably doesn’t deserve it’s repuation. Only once did I really feel afraid to get my camera out. And I did anyway… Maybe in the summer I’ll go back and find the rest of the city.

You can find the rest of the photos at http://is.gd/kJFE