Category: My photographs

Google Earth and Mr and Mrs Goose

Google Earth is a source of endless fun. Here, for instance, is a famously spectacular image, suitably flattened to fit in here:

That’s a slice of the first of these, which I found via here.

I have been making ever more use of Google Earth in my explorations of London. It can’t tell you much about where you can go, but it is great at telling you where you went.

So, for example, I recently managed to get into this huge expanse of almost complete nothingness, surrounded by photo-ops on all sides, which is to the south of the Royal Victoria Docks:

I’m talking about the big grey slab there, and the more vegetated area between the grey slab and the river, where the ground rises, to keep the river in check presumably. If you want to find that for yourself on Google Earth, type in “west silvertown tube station”, which is to the top right of that vast expanse.

At the extreme westerly point of the ground I covered, I found a nesting goose, and took a photo of her. Mrs Goose is on the left:

At which point Mr Goose showed up, and drove me away. He looks happy enough there, on the right, but that’s because by then I had retreated. A real photographer would have advanced again, made him angry again, and got a shot of him being angry, while very slightly risking death, again. I only wished I had done that when I got home.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Bomber Command Memorial pictures

Last week I used one of the photos I took at the new Bomber Command Memorial at Hyde Park Corner as a Samizdata Quote of the Day.

Here are some other snaps I took of the Memorial:

For some reason, I often find the little cards and photos of loved ones that people put on these memorials to be more evocative than the Big Thing itself. And given that others will of course also be photoing the big picture, I often find myself concentrating on these small things when I photo these things. And on others taking photos of course, that being a constant preoccupation of mine.

You don’t have to agree with everything Bomber Command was commanded to do during WW2 to salute the bravery of those who did it.

I for one find that prominent Pericles reference to defending freedom (the one I made into an SQotD, and which you can see in the final picture above) slightly odd. Bomber Command was an offensive weapon, as is made clear in the Churchill quote about how only the bombers could offer victory (see photo in line 3, far left). And its purpose was not just to win the war (which despite Bomber Harris’s promises it only helped to do), but to punish the damned losers of it for having started it. This was a punitive war, and everyone at the time knew it. Oh sure, the story at the time in the newspapers was that it was all precision bombing of military targets, blah blah, but if any bombs just happened to land on civilians, the attitude of civilians on our side was: serve the bastards right.

You have to realise how most British people felt about the Germans during WW2, including most of the bomber airmen. The Germans were the people who, having experienced World War 1 in all its horror, concluded from it that they needed to have a re-run of it, but this time win. Starting WW1 was forgiveable, albeit a horrible blunder, and we still quarrel about who exactly did start it. Starting WW2, on purpose, was unforgiveable.

Okay, maybe a lot of Germans were not in favour of all this. But they went along with it, very happily. Until it all started to go wrong.

WW1 ended with a negotiated German surrender. This time around, our Anglo ancestors were determined that every last German left alive would not only lose, but know that Germany had lost. Each German must taste defeat, and if they died while tasting it, that was just fine. This time, the surrender would be unconditional. No “stab in the back” crap. Stabbed from the front, with overwhelming force, by an enraged world.

Never again. You must never, never, do this again. That was what Bomber Command was saying.

In a way, the bombing offensive was a continuation by other means of the silly pamphlet dropping over Germany which was what the bombers first did. Sending a message, but this time in a form that would register.

You may not like any of this, but that is how it was.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Photographing the other photographers with my new camera

I just bought a new camera, the Panasonic Lumix FZ150, and it is great. Here are some snaps I took with it, on Monday, of a few of my fellow digital photographers:

The light was fading quite fast while I was taking these, and trust me, these are much better snaps than I could have taken with my previous donkey-driven camera.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Quimper cat on Harley-Davidson

I don’t always do cats here on Fridays, but I often do. For me they signify the fundamental point of this blog, which is to entertain, and in particular to entertain me, rather than just to be serious and political about everything. There is more to life than the fact, if fact it be, that the politicians are making a mess of everything. So it was that, when on my recent trip to France, I kept half an eye open for cats.

Another thing I found myself snapping was motorbikes. The French really seem to love their motorbikes, perhaps because their roads are longer and emptier than they are in Britain.

So imagine my delight when, wandering around the centre of Quimper of an evening, I came across this:

And I wasn’t the only one who felt that this was suitable material for digitalised immortality:

My favourite snap of a fellow digital photographer in Cat-on-Harley action being this one:

Was the cat in any way disconcerted by all this attention? On the contrary:

The cat loved it.

Here, I hope you will agree, is the appropriate song, sung by one of the all time great French sex kittens. (I actually have this on CD.)

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Light and shade

The recent sunny weather is a mixed blessing for the photographer. On the one hand, everything that is well lit is well lit. But, stuff in the shade is in the shade, and the contrast between the two, if you are trying to include both, means that one or the other tends to suffer. But then I spied a clutch of parked motorbikes, all dark except for their mirrors, pointing upwards and reflecting the brightly lit building behind and above, and I think that I was able to use that contrast to my advantage:

Many photos recently. The good weather has been a long time in arriving.

Too many photos recently? I hope you agree not. After all, it only takes a moment to decide you want to look no further at a photo, if that’s what you decide. A bad (you think) photo wastes very little of your time.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Architecture | London | My photographs | Transport

Apple keyboard remains excellent – iPhone software not so excellent

Remember a posting I did last autumn about how I bought a new, small, Apple Mac keyboard? Probably not. Why would you? Anyway, I did. It still looks like this:

The thing is, you often read enthusiastic endorsements of products by purchasers, immediately after they’ve bought the thing. But such purchasers have a vested interest in being enthusiastic, because if they aren’t enthusiastic, why did they buy it? Less often do you read follow up pieces months or years later, about whether the initial enthusiasm has persisted. Well, in this case, I just want to say that this has, so far, proved to be a very successful purchase indeed. The keyboard is still working fine. It remains the solid, unclunky thing that it first seemed. It continues to be the difference between a conveniently clear desk and a hopelessly cluttered one.

I am becoming more and more open to the idea that my next computer will be a Mac rather than yet another clunky old PC.

Here, on the other hand, are some less admiring reflections about Apple, this time concerning the way that Apple handles the software on their nevertheless legendarily successful iPhone. Actually, it’s because the iPhone is so fabulously successful that Apple can handle its software so badly. Which Paul Graham reckons may cost them in the longer run.

Their model of product development derives from hardware. They work on something till they think it’s finished, then they release it. You have to do that with hardware, but because software is so easy to change, its design can benefit from evolution. The standard way to develop applications now is to launch fast and iterate. Which means it’s a disaster to have long, random delays each time you release a new version.

Apparently Apple’s attitude is that developers should be more careful when they submit a new version to the App Store. They would say that. But powerful as they are, they’re not powerful enough to turn back the evolution of technology. Programmers don’t use launch-fast-and-iterate out of laziness. They use it because it yields the best results. By obstructing that process, Apple is making them do bad work, and programmers hate that as much as Apple would.

My utterly casual and probably quite worthless opinion of Apple is that as soon Steve Jobs stops being their boss, they’re doomed. While Jobs sticks around, everything they make will look and feel great, because this is what Jobs does insist on and can insist on. He has total power and impeccable taste, which is, if you think about it, an extraordinarily rare combination of circumstances. He knows exactly what we all want, years before we do, and he screams like a horrifically spoilt child until he gets it. A few years back, Jobs did abandon Apple, or maybe it was vice versa (what with all the horrific spoilt child screaming), and Apple did then nosedive towards inevitable doom. Only when Jobs returned did the Apple glory days resume. Without Jobs, Apple will become just another clunky computer company with a glorious past and a ton of money to waste that they made in the glory days. Which they will waste and that will be that. Apple keyboards will duly degenerate into being no better than any other kind of keyboard.

Which in my opinion is the single big reason not to buy, which means to commit to, Macs.

Those complaints about Apple’s turgid software approval process were written last November. I wonder if anything has changed since then. It seems rather improbable. After all, the iPhone hasn’t got any less successful.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Today I bought an Apple Mac keyboard …

For some months now I have been looking for a new, small computer keyboard, to replace the great wide clunky accountancy keyboard that you are usually obliged to use, complete with an extra pocket calculator stuck on the right that I don’t use occupying desk space that I can’t spare.

I’ve tried other small non-accountancy PC keyboards of the sort you can buy in Tottenham Court Road, usually made by a company called “Cherry”, but they are just as clunky as the big keyboards, and far too fiddly and generally horrible, not unlike the keyboard of the accursed Jesus (the Eee PC laptop that I am trying to forget and get rid of). Anyone want that? Might be good for a small and rather geeky kid with totally impoverished parents. Tenner anyone? Immediate next day delivery in the London area.

But now, I have this:

It’s an Apple Mac unclunky keyboard (this one I think), pictured there next to the dirty, clunky old keyboard I’ve been using until now. I saw it in a department store in Kingston this afternoon. I said: Will that work with a PC? He said: Should do. I said: Show me. He did. It worked. Bingo. Bought it. Took it home. Plugged it in. It worked. Bingo.

It’s beautifully solid, the opposite of clunky, and I am rapidly getting very used to it.

Is this how the Apple habit starts? You buy an Apple something. It works. It is nicer. Even the cardboard case that it came in is nicer. Everything about it is nicer than the PC equivalents. Even the price of this little keyboard was nicer, by a bit. And pretty soon you are converted.

My only problem so far is that I can’t delete the character to the immediate right of the cursor with just the one keystroke. That particular delete button seems to have been lost, along with that superfluous pocket calculator. To accomplish this, I now have to move the cursor to the other side of whatever I want to delete, and then delete it with the button, which mercifully remains, that deletes the character just before the cursor. I could get used to this, but would rather not have to. Anyone got any ideas about that?

Does that closer up picture of the new keyboard help at all? Hope so.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The choice is yours

Photographed last night in W. H. Smith, Kings Cross, which is a books and magazines shop:

The brianmicklethwait.com thin version, with only the two signs, just wouldn’t be the same, would it? You need something of the wider context, including, as it does, the words “delicious” and “fresh”.

Computing is delicious, but living can be so very, very fresh.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Dame Edna and Borats in Piccadilly Circus!

So today (yesterday by the clock but this is only the small hours and not really tomorrow yet) I was in Piccadilly Circus, London, and I spotted and snapped a celebrity:

Yes it was Dame Edna:

I know, the sunlight all behind her. But what could I do? Move the sun round to behind me? Run round to the other side of the car? Not strong enough or clever enough, and no time. But at least the traffic forced her to stop right next to where I was. Had this happened during the early days of the Congestion Charge, she’d have been there and gone in a blur.

Could this personal appearance in full war paint be something to do with this? She was evidently being filmed as she travelled on her stately way. I’m pretty sure that that definitely-not-Billion-Monkey-type camera was attached to her car, although you can’t be sure just from my shot of the arrangement.

I was only passing through Piccadilly, having other business to attend to. But when that was done, I came back for more, hope that lightning might strike twice. And it did, in the form of these peculiar circumstances:

Those bottoms are advertising the Borat DVD, in which Borat himself dressed like this. Or I presume he did. Maybe that was only for the promotional stuff. The Borats were cavorting and yelling in Boratese outside what used to be Tower Records in Piccadilly, and is now (I think) another Virgin mega-emporium. I of course photoed the photo-ers as well as the bottoms, that snap being the best of a (by then) rather dimly lit lot.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Dirty vapour trail over London

A few days ago, I was out and about snapping, as is my wont, and I saw something rather unfamiliar in the sky over London, a dirty-looking vapour trail.

Vapour trails usually look white, as the older vapour trail that makes an X with this new one is. Something about the way vapour trails are usually lit makes them look white, against a blue sky. Mechanical clouds, you might say. And what could possibly be wrong with that? Vapour trails are just nice, clean steam.

But that one looks a whole lot dirtier, doesn’t it? And there’s the remnants of another, across the X, horizontally.

This was snapped just before it got dark, and I presume that has something to do with it. For some reason, this particular vapour trail was not lit. High clouds blocking the sun from it, but not blocking the sun from lighting us down on the ground? Or the older vapour trail, the one that’s white? I don’t know.

What I do know is that if vapour trails always looked this dark and dirty, there would surely have been a lot more talk about restricting air travel even than there is. Air travel would long ago have become more expensive.

Now, you could say that clouds are often this dark too, presumably for similar reasons. But clouds look natural. This vapour trail looks like mechanised evil spewing into the sky. It looks, in other words, just what the environmentalists have finally persuaded a lot of people that it is, despite usual appearances to the contrary.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog