There must be a faster option than this, but then you need to pay for it. A weekly Zone 1 to 3 travelcard currently costs £30.20, and this will increase shortly. The travelcard opens up the train and tube lines.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
The Commuting Dilemma
There must be a faster option than this, but then you need to pay for it. A weekly Zone 1 to 3 travelcard currently costs £30.20, and this will increase shortly. The travelcard opens up the train and tube lines.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The Lepki Chart - Autumn 2009 iTunes Play Counts
Spurred on by finding some The Farm on my iTunes... DELETE DELETE... I have put together the long awaited LEPKI CHART for Autumn 2009.
- Atlas Sound Logos burst onto the scene in September, racking up 130 track plays in little more than 2 months. The band look likely to overtake Fleet Foxes in the 2009 chart, as the bearded harmonisers struggle to maintain their pre-Glastonbury momentum.
- Perennially popular Yo La Tengo released a new album which includes a mixture of sticky and now overplayed songs. Some slower burners should make their way onto the work playlists and maintain the Hoboken trio's continued presence at the top.
- Luna by The Aliens has now become 2009's most played album, while the Neil Young Premium playlist draws songs from a range of albums, as do the Velvet Underground.
- As Spotify becomes a useful sample source, it is timely that a new "artistic impression" is launched, with the inaugural award being shared by David Bowie's A New Career in a New Town and Can's Vitamin C.
- Nirvana, Tosca, King Gheedorah and some lower quality Ian Brown songs have been and gone without troubling the scorers.
- Blur drop out of recently played artists table.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
My plans for the future of the Premiership
Top 10 play each other home & away, then play the rest once each
11-20 play each other home & away, + 1 game against top 10, + 1 game against bottom 10
21-30 play each other home & away, + 1 game against top 10, + 1 game against middle 10
Getting into and staying in the Top 10 is the goal, and the league is printed in the blocks of 10, so Team 30 couldn't just have an easy draw, the highest they could get is 21.
2 teams up and down between blocks.
Slightly random element about who you get at home or away - gate attendance is shared.
Sky would probably like this as you could have a Sunday triple play of progressively more important games; one of the 5 games each week from the Top 10 would be a fairly juicy one, but you would often get 'improving' and on form teams who had won lots of games in a row against weaker opposition coming up against a Top 10 team.
Not that it is a great model, but NHL has teams playing each other slightly random numbers of times.
The image above shows how the league would have started this year.
One other benefit here is that the current Premiership end of season is focused around the top and the bottom; having nothing to play for once survival had been secured makes for a dull set of Bolton vs West Hams from March onwards; here they would be critical to survival.
Ludicrous?
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Google Doodles
One huge source of traffic can be whenever Google puts up a 'Google Doodle' - a limited edition logo which is usually in celebration of somebody's birthday, Stravinsky, Hans Christian Orsted, Pac Man... It can be anything!Today it is the 71st anniversary of the Wizard of Oz... What? It wasn't in your Google calendar?
To further celebrate, here is a picture from my gallery, of Dorothy's Ruby slippers from Washington's Smithsonian museum.
I specifically checked Google today, as this day last year, a ton of traffic came through Google due to the Perseids meteor shower, which is again tonight...
Sesame Street provided a rich seam of such logos late in 2009.
First up were Big Bird's legs seen representing the L of Google. Considering this logo was brought to us by the letter L and the number 2, it looks like someone in San Francisco needed to watch a little more of the educational show!
Next up in the UK was Cookie Monster, who got his own Google Doodle with some of the G's devoured by the anarchic blue biscuit fiend.
All this Sesame Street nostalgia, for a show which hasn't featured on UK TV since 2001 was quite suprising, but led to other aspects of the educational puppet show to come back to mind, like the fantastic pinball animation music.
Day 3 of the Google doodle series celebrated Bert and Ernie -the fuzzy haired couple who somewhat controversially co-habited happily for many years until many grouches (other than Oscar) found this politically incorrect.
In case you never figured it out, like me, Bert is the thin yellow one, Ernie is the friendlier orange one. Imagine me watching an episode of Lost...
Next up, it was Oscar, the grouch, himself adorning Google's search homepage.
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Elmo took centre stage over the weekend,
And then for Monday morning, it was Count Von Count bringing a little maths into the equation.
And possibly finally, a selection from the cast, as first lady Michelle Obama made a guest appearance on the show.
Back in England this week, it was Happy Birthday Wallace and Gromit! Google celebrated the UK's favourite clay dog and Northerner turning 20. 20! Yes, that means that for roughly 19 Christmases, families up and down the country have been glued in a post-turkey slump which is enlivened by the charming stop motion animation. In a world of ridiculous CGI and noisy robots, Wallace and Gromit make for a charming hour.
About the only franchise untarnished by Mel Gibson's recent involvement (Chicken Run, the multimillion dollar grossing movie from 2000), Nick Park's deservedly Oscar winning Aardman studios continue to create happy productions, so cheers to you, and see you at Christmas.
Friday, October 30, 2009
London autumn colours
Battersea Power Station, lit up due to some snowboarding rave thing here
Battersea Power Station and the dark side of the moon
Pictures from my bike riding in the autumn of 2009.
Chelsea Bridge
making Tooting look suprisingly ornate
apt, Haymarket.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Top Photos of 2008
The long road ahead - nice Winter sunlight in Alberta. This was taken right at the start of 2008, a year which saw me getting married in Canmore, Brighton and Calgary, before taking some time off to travel round South America. Rather than keeping to 10 pictures, I put in 19 this year More Calgary. |
Las Vegas proved to outridiculous even the image I had of it beforehand More Vegas. |
Mo, with Tom and Sarge in the background kicking around Calgary on my Canadian stag do More Calgary. |
Immediately after Wedding #1: The Legal Bit More wedding. |
My attempt at making a calendar style picture! More Calgary. |
I staged this shot at the pavillion to get a handful of poppies into this quintessential British picture. More Brighton |
More England - here with PJ and Chris on hampstead Heath for my English stag do! |
This picture was taken by Scott Ramsay as part of the official wedding picture set - this one featuring the rest of the UK Lepkis. More Weddings. |
The annual trip down to Glastonbury was a great one in 2008 - here Chris, Scott, Lisa, Clare, Jill and Sheps make the team shot. More Glastonbury. |
Scott and Scott in full flight at wedding #3 in Calgary. |
Rio! The best city from the honeymoon tour, and maybe my new favourite city in the world. excellent views, and food and nightlife and beaches and music and atmosphere! More honeymoon. |
Flowers close up... I like the colour balance in this one. I learnt a couple of tricks with my aging Rebel XT, this being one. More honeymoon. |
Two Brits we met in Bolivia, adding a bit of youthful agility to some stunning landscapes More honeymoon. |
Pigs on a beach? Bonkers old Bolivia again More honeymoon. |
A lizard eating a scorpion. Pretty easy to take wildlife pictures in these circumstances. More honeymoon. |
Can't really fail with this one either - the very photogenic Macchu Picchu in Peru. More honeymoon. |
About the only time I put portrait pictures in. Amazing power of nature at Iguazu Falls. More honeymoon. |
One last wedding shot, without us in it, and taken by Marv or Erica. I think this captures the fun of the day, and something of the decadence of the time! Marv's Flickr page |
The lovely wife. I like the way this one is framed - the pink blossoms of an October spring in Uruguay More honeymoon |
Top Photos of 2007
Some of my Top Photos from 2007 - taken in New York, San Francisco, Brighton, Seattle, and Toronto.
The Calgary Tower taken through a fence on 10th Avenue, just near my work (Critical Mass). The fence has since been taken down so this view no longer exists. More Calgary. |
The Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco. This is where i popped the question waiting for tourists to get out of the way, and trying to make myself heard with all the traffic (it is a very busy road!). More San Francisco. |
The beautiful Chrysler building in New York, taken from the top of the Empire State Building. More New York. |
Not a still from a Michael bay film, but a picture which shows the dizzying scale and patriotism of New York. More New York. |
Thanks again to everybody who sponsored me on my 90km bike ride for the Alberta Cancer this June. Thanks to great support from Lisa and her family we raised around $8000 (4000 quid!). More Bike Ride Pictures. For another good cause, click here |
This is a fairly random shot form the Calgary Stampede parade. Maybe it sums up the mixture of conservativism and sluttiness of the whole event! More Stampede. |
I was in Toronto for a couple of days for a bit of a business jolly. I didn't have much time to explore but found this picture present itself, with its moody sky and eerie glow. More Toronto. |
In what was apparantly the wettest UK Summer for quite some time, Lisa & I spent one morning on Brighton beach where the sun was blazing and the colours were sharp. Here's hoping we get another day like it in 2008 :) More Brighton. |
This Summer, I became the stand in wedding photographer for friends Anna & Tom. Bookings now taken... More Weddings. |
Yet more business travel presented itself with a great opportunity to nose round Washington DC. Lots of picture perfect scenes on a plate, of which this one is my favourite with its 70's colours and a couple of semi-staged visual metaphors. More Washington DC. |
My final trip of the year to Seattle - no conferences or team building, this was just about eating seafood, cheesecake and taking the obligatory trip up the Space Needle. More Seattle. |