Nobody home
Weather Project
An oldie.
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
‘Freak’ hail causes flood chaos
Flume
Well I think it’s about time I gave up on this plane ever arriving.
I kid, obviously. I haven’t actualy spent a month in the departure lounge of London City Airport. No, I’ve been doing Other Things.
These things include Work, Beer, Photography, Pointless Capitalisation, Prolixity and Punctuation. Also some intercontinental ballistic twittering, IMing and emails. Also work and photography.
In addition I’ve been experimenting with psychoactive drugs such as alcohol and even (sorry mother), caffeine. I will write more on this subject, but suffice it to say that you regular coffee drinkers are all completely mad and you don’t even seem to realise it.
There has been music, in both receiving and transmitting mode. You may hear more of this, if I get my digit out.
I started to make my first podcast, and found my first instinct is to put on my radio voice, which in my case is BBC Announcer c. 1952. This I found to be slightly embarrassing and also mildly hilarious, so I may just go with it.
Why a podcast? I don’t know. I suppose I’m still looking for my meejum. (Have you seen my meejum?)
And now I head off into the mental construct that is South Kensington, pith helmet freshly waxed, to spend another day walking with dinosaurs.
Blogging - it’s like the Xmas family circular but every day of the year!
Fogged
I am sitting in the departure lounge at London City Airport, fogged in. I’m not sure if I will be going anywhere today. There is what police constables in Sherlock Holmes films used to describe as a “right pea-souper out there, sir.”
LCY is a pretty good place to have to wait. It’s a “no announcements” airport - they just have loads of flat screens with departure details, so you would have to work quite hard to be unaware that your flight is DELAYED DUE FOG.
This gives the place a hushed atmosphere, with the silence only broken by the hum of the air conditioning, a murmor of conversation and the gentle slurping of the early morning beer hounds at the bar.
As a result, I’m quite relaxed, in an unplace with food and drink and wireless Internet and plenty to read. I’m beginning to wonder if I actually need to go to Amsterdam at all.
Given the blankness outside the windows, this may be a good thing.
Update: Next time, Eurostar.
Shedding
Hello from Switzerland! (Thanks to the fragrant Anna Pickard for supplying me with some emergency exclamation marks. I’m using a QWERZ keyboard, and that particular character seems to be missing. I assume the Swiss don’t exclaim very much, things being so well organised here). (Update - found it!)
I’m here having a bit of a family get together in the Alps. I had never seen an alp properly before, and I can say that the Swiss know their alps, and if you need alps, this is the place to come. I’ve been having geography lesson flashbacks pretty much constantly since I arrived (Ohh, there’s a terminal moraine! Ahh, look at the arêtes on that one, etc.) It’s been great.
I’ll probably write more about the trip and even post some pictures - if the focus hasn’t gone wonky on my camera, as I fear it may have, but I thought I should mention I decided to try a new blogname for size, hence the new monica. I need to check the latin motto. I’m sure my learned readers will let me know if I have mangled my dead language monkey plural. (Now that’s a name for a weblog).
Just off now to climb every mountain, ford every stream. Barring a picturesque plunge from a glacier, I shall post more soon. Keep this page open and click refresh until I post again. (Though I know you do that anyway, you lovely readers). To the cable car!
It’s not about the rabbits
At the time I said that it’s not about the rabbits, but now I’m not so sure.
Cryptozoology
You will probably be aware of the Cryptozoology Season the Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London.
Next Wednesday night, they will be showing the 1954 classic Godzilla.
I may go. I think it probably counts as work.
Update: I went. It was a really interesting film and discussion. The film itself suffers at times from the glacial slowness and the wordiness typical of many films of that time, but the symbolism was where the interest lay. (I may be wrong, but some of the performances of the older actors even seem strangely stylised at times - I might say kabuki-like if I had ever seen kabuki).
We watched the original 1954 Japanese version of the film, not the adapted US 1956 version with Raymond Burr. The theme of Japan bravely defending itself against a mindlessly destructive barbarian force was always clear. Much has been made of the anti-American aspects of the film, but though these are obvious, I saw Godzilla as a more general symbol of willful destruction, regardless of nationality.
There was a fair amount of laughter in the audience at the ’special’ effects - a bit too much laughter, I thought, given what the original audience of the film had experienced only a decade before the film’s release.
I was surprised at how good the monster was. I finally understand why many people prefer Haruo Nakajima in a rubber suit to more recent CGI monsters.
Probably not one to watch again anytime soon, but I’m glad I’ve seen it.
Monochrome resurrection
Mr Mnmlsm
DC’s comment about Processing led me to revisit NodeBox.