Gadget Moment

via Slashdot, this has to be one of the funkier gadgets around at the moment. Oakley sunglasses with a built-in 128Mb or 256Mb MP3 player. Bloody expensive (around $500), but man, what a geeky little gadget. Pity I’d have no use for them, short of spending another $500 to get a prescription built into them.

And if you’re really into cycling and time-trialling, how about a time-trial bike frame that weighs the same as three bags of sugar?

Edward Hopper, Tate Modern, London

One of my long-term favourite artists, I was looking forward to seeing the first full exhibition of his work in the UK for twenty years. £9 for the ticket, which seems a bit extortionate, but worth it for something I want to see. However, I must admit that if I’m paying that kind of price, I’d rather see the tickets limited to, say, 500 per half-hour time-slice. The entire exhibition seemed crowded with people, in almost a direct snub to the solitude and sparseness of people in Hopper’s paintings.

Still, if you wander round the exhibition twice (pausing to look at the fantastic view out of the windows, directly across Milennium Bridge, and into the entrance to St Paul’s Cathedral) then the ones that had crowds the first time are empty the second, and vice versa. Well, except for Nighthawks (AKA “The Hopper Everyone Knows”) which was just packed on both occasions.

I hadn’t realised how similar two of my favourite artists are – both Hopper and Jack Vettriano share a very similar viewpoint, and on several occasions I found myself surprised by the similarities. Despite how much he’s despised by the art world in general at the moment, I wonder whether in fifty years Vettriano’s work will attract the same crowds as Hopper does now?

London

Ooops, bad planning, organising a trip to London on the same day that another 100,000 knobbers decided to run a mile for charity. Oh bloody whoops. Still, we managed to avoid most of them by simple dint of walking on the other side of the river. Waterloo to Tate Modern, into Tate Modern to see the Hopper exhibition, spit at anything by Damien Hirst, and then out again and over the Millenium Bridge. I still love it – just wish the bugger would still wobble. However, other people walking over it don’t seem to appreciate some 6’4″ gonk bouncing up and down in the middle, seeing if the hydraulic dampers work properly. Can’t think why.

Over the bridge and around St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’d never been inside it – and once we’d got through the crowds of Japanese/German/Americans to discover it was £7 to look round, while most of it is currently wrapped in scaffolding, a quick “fuck that for a game of tourists” was the result. So I still haven’t seen round it – that’ll wait now ’til sometime in 2006 when the work’s been completed. At that point it’ll a) probably be pretty impressive, and b) probably be £15 to look around.

Still, the redeveloped Paternoster Square is impressive, and provides some impressive viewpoints, and a nice square for Elisabeth Frink’s “Shepherd” statue. Back to the Millenium Bridge, but rather than crossing it, deciding to go down the steps, and walk back down the other side of the river – the one previously occupied by 100,000 idiots charity runners. Underneath the bridge, there’s a glass pyramid, a timescale of scietific development over the previous two milennia. It’s lovely – and it’s never publicised to my knowledge. If you get a chance, spend five minutes there, looking at it, and the bizarre sundial next to it. (I’m sure DiamondGeezer will know the ones I mean, and provide links)

The walk along the river was lovely – and conveyed an utterly different experience from the more industrial South Bank. Small arbours with benches and trellis work abound in one area, making it into almost a garden, or a piazza walkway feel. Under the Blackfriars bridges, and back onto the Embankment. Narrowly avoid getting well and truly pissed on by the squalls of rain, and watch the SportRelief trannies (all orange wigs and high-heels) slipping along the slick pavements.

Back into Embankment station, up to Marylebone, and thence home. A pretty good day all round.

Travelling

Yes, you’ve guessed it. Virgin Bloody Trains. Not much more needs to be said really. Travelling in First Club Class (No First or Second class passengers in our train system, oh no, just those who can afford to pay extra for a table) because the normal carriages are rigid with people. No such thing as a busy train, obviously – it’s only running from Bournemouth to Edinburgh, why the hell would people want to use a long-distance service like that? So I know, we’ll give it three carriages of normal class, and one of First Club Class. Make the fuckers pay. The bloody inconvenience of having to stop to pick up or set down passengers, for God’s Sake. It’s just unholy – we’d be so much better off just running the train and never stopping it at stations.

Oh, and you, yes you, the cunt with “Peter and the Wolf” as your ringtone on top volume, it was amusing the first time, but the fact that your dickhead colleague can’t get to grips with the concept of “on the train” and keeps calling back every time the call drops means that your comedy ringtone and sign of individuality becomes more than slightly wearing. It’s unfair of me to want to insert the phone for you to use as a vibrating buttplug, because of course it’s not you who keeps calling the fucking thing, but if you could set it to, oh, I don’t know, “Discrete” or “Beep” setting, so that we don’t have to listen to bastard Prokofiev for the fortieth time, that’d be appreciated. Still, it’s better than The Nokia Tune™.

Travelling

Lots to mutter about when I get home. Travelling. (Grr) Tate Modern (grr but cool too), St Pauls (Rip-off Grrr – £7 to look at a bunch of scaffolding surrounded by fucking tourists), travelling, rain, and – oh, Shrek 2. Non-Grrr.

Travelling again now, and will update all this gubbins later tonight. Don’t hold your breath.

Away

‘nads to this, I’m off to Oxford.

So close, So far

Oh, and we’re getting ever closer to the magic 200,000 page impressions. It’s on about 197,500 as of yesterday. I hope it doesn’t go past over the weekend while I’m away. But if it does, well, that’s life. There’s no prizes for hitting it, mainly because I can’t be arsed to go through the log-files line by line to check who got the exact page impression and all that guff, but it’ll be another interesting mile-post.

And it’s only a month ’til d4d™s second birthday. How scary is that? I’ve been writing this shite now for two years. Time flies when you’re having fun.