Indeed:
It’s the roof of this, looking upstream into the sunset, last August.
Category: Transport
Hell or Habito
I continue to photo taxi adverts, whenever I get the chance. Last Sunday, I photoed this one:
There wasn’t space for to get the whole taxi, and there wasn’t time for me to go the other side of the road and get the whole taxi, because I was in a hurry to be somewhere else. But I hope you agree that that photo suffices.
This being the century of the internet, I have since found this, and this, and this.
I bet Jimbo Phillips never thought he’d be selling mortgages.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Now thrive the cardboard makers
Indeed:
That’s the wrapping of the new sofa, which arrived the day before yesterday.
It interests me that cardboard seems to have defeated expanded polystyrene as the delivery wrapping of choice these days. It’s basic superiority is structural. It is weak in compression, but strong in tension, at least in one direction. Polystyrene is weak in every direction. Its only strength is as padding. And even there, cardboard (or just scrunched up paper) usually seems to suffice. Worst of all, expanded polystyrene is (the clue is in the “expanded”) takes up too much warehouse and lorry space.
Expanded polystyrene looks cooler. But cardboard does the actual job better.
And consider also the sofa itself. Central to its low price, compared to the big bulbous monster sofa style, is that it can be folded flat. Again, far less warehouse and lorry space.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Something for Transport Blog?
Here.
Transport Blog is up again, but not being added to again. I miss transport blogging.
More about the bloke whose Twitter feed I found this bit of video at here.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
City views from 2004
In search of worthwhile photos to show here, I find myself digging further and further back in the archives. I looked for photos taken a decade ago, but found nothing that stirred any thoughts. However, these four, from over fourteen years ago, do now seem to be worth showing.
The first is of the ghostly pillars of the old Blackfriars Bridge. These are still there, looking now just as they looked then. But, then there was no Blackfriars railway station on the more recent Blackfriars Bridge. Blackfriars Station then only happened on the far side of the river, as we look north.
Second, a rather striking view of the City Big Thing Cluster, the striking thing being that most of the City Big Thing Cluster had not yet happened. The Gherkin stands in almost perfect isolation, visible from all directions. No Cheesegrater. No Walkie-Talkie. And definitely no 22 Bishopsgate, already the biggest of the lot of them so far.
The third of these photos I include simply because I like it, or at least I like what it shows and how the photo is composed. (Technically these photos are all very blurry and primitive. The Canon A70 is the cheapest camera I have ever owned and used, and it shows.) In particular I like how we see so clearly the truncated end of the Millennium Footbridge. (I should have a go at that view again, with my current and much better camera, on a much better day.)
And finally, the grey of the dying light suddenly looks blue, as grey did look with that Canon A70. Tate Modern was there, of course it was. It isn’t that modern. But, the Tate Modern Extension, which now stands behind Tate Modern itself, is still way in the future.
I show this photo because it very clearly says “Collection 2004” on Tate Modern. Windows Image viewer, cross-examined, also says 2004, January 17th, and I am a lot more inclined to believe that, given that I know that the 2004 bit is right. I’m guessing that Jan 17 is right also. Goodness knows, it’s gloomy enough to be January. So, nearly fifteen years ago.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The Boxing Day posting
And here, as promised yesterday, are the other dozen of the Christmassy (Google reckons it’s double ss at the end there rather than the single s I used to name the photos) photos that I was gathering together yesterday. They, like the previous lot, are shown in chronological order, the first one being from 2015 to now, the most recent from earlier this month:
I used half a dozen of these two dozen photos to concoct a Merry Christmas photo-posting at Samizdata, in the small hours of this morning, what with there having been nothing there yesterday, until I did that. And then faked the timing. Just like I often do here.
Which means that, for the last week, I have not only done something for here, every day, but have done something there, every day. More on the thinking behind this sudden burst of Samzdating here, some time soon, maybe, I promise nothing.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The Christmas Day posting
I haven’t been out photoing a lot lately, so here are some Christmas-themed photos picked out from the archives, taken during about the last five years or more.
There’s two dozen in all that are ready to go. Here are the first dozen:
Another dozen tomorrow.
I hope your Christmas is going well, with some of the right people with you, and not too many of the wrong people.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Creature comforts
Two creature-related BMdotcom-Friday-friendly images from the Niagara of Trivia and Abuse that is Twitter, to feast your eyes, and your brain, on.
The first is American:
Which I encountered here. I miss Transport Blog.
And the second is Anglo-Canadian:
The Canadian being Jordan Peterson, and the Anglo being a Fox, and what’s more a Fox with an animal tattoo on his arm.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Taxis with adverts in the dark
For reasons too complicated and undignified to elaborate upon, I have been sitting at home, waiting for one sofa to be taken away and for another sofa to be delivered, preferably in that order. This has caused me to be stuck indoors throughout most of the daylight hours of the last week or so, which is why I have posted only photos from the archives, rather than any photos taken more recently.
But, I have been able to get out after sofa-moving hours, which I take to end by about 6pm at the latest. And during the hours of darkness I have reminded myself that whereas most things do not photo well in the dark, taxis with adverts on them look quite good. Not as good as they do in bright sunshine, but still quite good.
Here is a clutch of taxis with adverts in the dark, taken during the last twelve months, but mostly more like during the last two or three months:
The seventh (3.1) of these twelve advertises Huawei, who have been in the news lately, for being a front for Chinese state skulduggery. Other than that one, these are just regular adverts, on taxis. I particularly like the one for The Phantom of the Opera.
But they keep changing, and I’m thinking that my next taxi advert posting might come from me going back to when I first started noticing taxi adverts, and photoing them.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The secret is the back wheels
A slow motion catastrophe, all the more inevitable because this is, after all the internet. But, it doesn’t happen.
This popped up on my computer screen, courtesy of Facebook. What happened was was that I activated a video a Friend had stuck up, and this was what Facebook wanted me to see next. It looked like a nice little catastrophe to pass the time with, so I activated that as well. And although that catastrophe didn’t happen, what did happen was even better.
Do the people who arrange things like this play with toys beforehand? That would make sense.
Apparently Transport Blog may be coming back to life, any month now. But, it promises nothing.