Abi

05:40 pm: Google Maps search has gone really odd recently. It is terribly, terribly, confused. If I type in

if i type in	it takes me to
Surrey Quays	Elephant
Chalk Farm	the right place, which is labelled "Chalk Farm, Kensington"
West Hampstead	Britannia junction (Camden Town tube station)
Upper Clapton	Hackney Town Hall
Lower Clapton	the right place, which is labelled "Lower Clapton, Lewisham"
Cubitt Town	North Greenwich
Deptford	Ladywell
Lewisham	Ladywell
New Cross	Ladywell
Silvertown	the right place, which is labelled "Silvertown, Bexley"
North Sheen	"North Sheen, Kensington"
Hendon	High Barnet (High Street)
Golders Green	High Barnet (High Street)
Penge, London	Biggin Hill [!!!!]
West Ham	Canning Town

I would be really careful using it for navigation within London.

Tags: web

12:26 pm: 30
It feels a lot like being 29 and 364 days, really. Definitely the most awesome birthday I've had in a while, though, and that's just so far. ;-)

Tags: life

09:58 pm: I fulfilled a long-held ambition today, that I've had since I moved to east London, of going to Southend-on-Sea: the natural holiday resort for people in this part of London in days gone by. It was alright. There was a credible seafront, a groovy-looking fun park, and best of all: an actual sand beach. The pier was long (we walked there and then caught the little train back), but there wasn't as much at the end of it as I might have hoped. But hey. We didn't do much then a recon, was too tired. Would go again. Definitely worth taking a bucket and spade.

One curious thing is the new (or apparently refurbished/expanded) Victoria shopping centre, which was very shiny and clean and new, but had very poor occupancy and was virtually deserted at what should be the busiest shopping time, Saturday afternoon. I know this isn't exactly the best time to be opening retail, but Westfield London and Highcross Leicester have managed much better occupancy rates.

We got the train from Liverpool Street-Southend Victoria. For the way back I got the idea to get an excess to make the return ticket valid from Southend Central-Fenchurch Street, thus going on a different line, but the person at the Southend Central ticket office refused to sell an excess. Also seem to have got a Network Railcard, which is a pretty good deal and I should have got before Eastbourne.

Tags: travel

10:42 pm: I have a Roomba! (a robotic vacuum cleaner)

It has been tested under supervision in all the dry rooms of the flat and it seems to work great, although it can get stuck under the cover of the sofabed.

I am a little sad to discover that it doesn't try to do mental mapping of the rooms it cleans, it just does simple behaviours tweaked for a good probability of 95% coverage. This isn't the future I was promised. (Mind, even 20 years ago watching Tomorrow's World, I was rather cynical about such robotic dreams, knowing what little I did about programming then... Wolfram Alpha is another in a long line of people solving the easy half of a problem and then assuming the difficult half will be just as quick.)

Tags: flat, tech

10:30 pm: So, I don't know how many of you heard of this thing a year ago, but there was a 60s television series called 'Star Trek'. A bit of a silly little thing, rather inspired by the better-known 'Forbidden Planet', about the adventures of an Earth ship in the far future. Apart from some books and comics in the 1970s there were no follow-ups to it and it remains largely forgotten after two series.

JJ Abrams, of 'Lost' fame, appears to be highly favoured by Paramount, the eventual rights-holders of this 'Star Trek' series (it was originally produced by Desilu). So he dusted it off and made a film of it. It's quite fun, an action-adventure movie based on this show. Why did nobody think to do that before, eh?

Tags: star trek

10:27 am: A prize to anyone who can spot the mistake (or possibly simply an innovative stylistic decision) here? Tsk. Google Maps data quality is pretty poor, but this.... Tsk.



Tags: language, tech

07:37 pm: Back. Flat is still here. Really quite tired, having not slept on the overnight flight, but had a bit of a nap in the afternoon (must have been tired if I managed that...) Probably going to be at the pub Sunday evening.

Tags: travel

07:55 pm: Today we did a bus tour of downtown/midtown, and went to the Rockefeller. View was quite good from the very top. Flying back late tomorrow, arriving London on Friday.

Tags: travel: new york

07:55 pm: Dear Livejournal,

I am still in New York, and it is still rather awesome. Yesterday I wandered randomly around before meeting my girl at Penn station; her train (from New Orleans) had arrived half an hour early. Returned to hotel, found somewhere to eat and then got the most touristy thing possible out of the way by having a carriage ride in the park thing.

Today we went to Coney Island/Brighton Beach. Possibly not the best weather for it, but we need a baseline to compare Southend against when I finally get some people there. We went to the amusement arcade and on bumper cars. After this to the New York Aquarium, where we saw a number of lolrusses, and a possibly unrelated bukkit. We has a lolrus now. 791_43 bought a number of Russian-language cartoons and seemed very pleased with herself. Then back to town...

I think I am falling a bit in love with the architecture. 791_43 is getting jealous, i can tell.

Notes on New York Subway:

*Metrocards, bit like Oystercards but still using caveman technology (magstripes)
*7-day pass is cheap - $25 - a Z12 travelcard is £25 and that doesn't cover anywhere the area
*the stations are uninspiring and a bit claustrophobic (but then, the architecture upstairs on the streets, that's amazing enough)
*it isn't clear whether particular lettered/numbered trains are always local or express or whether those are variants of particular lettered/numbered routes
*there are hardly any benches on the entire system
*why no indicators as to when the next train will be?
*the 24-hour running thing is nice
*the bit with using the same gates for entry and exit makes it confusing to try and go the 'wrong' way to the direction most of the other people are going...

Tags: travel: new york

02:15 pm: Hello. I am in New York. Got in last night then made way to hotel. Is very nice hotel, 791_43 chose well. I am suffering a bit from the tired, though. By the time I got to bed it was midnight EDT, and I am not sure if I really slept. This morning I went to Staten Island and back. A lot of people do this apparently: enough that there is a multimedia presentation at the ferry terminal explaining why you shouldn't just hop on the return ferry... On the ferry back I met someone who knew someone from Cotesbach... (!)

After this I wandered around the financial district a bit. The financial district is actually surprisingly tiny: I wonder if it or the City of London are geographically larger. Interesting to see how the grid system more or less just vanishes in downtown, it being the eldest settled area.

After this I made my way back to the hotel, where I have bought wifi access and am going to rest for a bit before heading out again somewhere. Maybe Central Park.

Tomorrow I am meeting 791_43 at Penn station, who will have travelled 30 hour on a train...

Tags: travel: new york

10:25 am: Happy local government reform day.

(1 April has been the traditional day for local government reform in England and Wales going back to the 19th century. The LGA 1888 came into force for most of England and Wales on 1st April 1889, for example. I don't know why.)

Tags: news

05:41 pm: ( BSG finale spoilers )

Tags: other television

07:31 pm: Barclaycard argh
On 1st January 2009, I was awoken (well, I wasn't really asleep), by a phone call at about 0930. This rather annoyed me - who calls people that early on Monday morning?

It was an automated call from Barclaycard asking to speak to a "Manif Yasim". I am not a Barclaycard customer and I never have been.

It asked for their customer number, if that was me, and options for me, if I was someone else, to tell them that "Manif Yasim" would call back later. There was no option to speak to a live operator, and attempts to type nonsense in or strange noises at the prompt did not get me to a live operator.

I've not seen any post for that person here. This repeated an hour later, and then an hour later. The third time I was actually coherent enough to grab a pen to write down the contact number it provided for Manif Yasim to call back (0844 811 0324). Three times I phoned this, each time asking for the phone number to be removed from their database and there not to be any calls made to me again. Three times I was told this was done. Eventually, they stopped. But maybe that was just because

On Saturday, I got another phone call, from Barclaycard, asking to speak to Manif Yasim. This time I am writing the times down. I get called again at 10.09, and I call the contact number again and explain my predicament. This time I am put through to an external number, 0151 473 2528, where I talk to someone. She says she has removed the number from the system. I go to Ikea for about an hour and a half, and when I return, I get calls again at 12.02 and 12.56. I phone the Liverpool number again, and this time I am told they can't find my number on their system at all. I am further told that the system in any case should not be calling me hourly - maybe twice a day, but not that often. Maybe, they say, the day's jobs have already been generated and I am just getting backlog calls. They will stop after the overnight run has happened.

Today, I got a call from the same people at 08.36. And then I went to work. When I got back from work, I got one at 19.21. I call again, and am told my number is not in their system, and that maybe it was just because it was removed at a weekend.

I think this sort of system ought to be illegal, frankly. Any database-generated call ought to have some way of breaking out to a human. But that's not the point. How on Earth can I speak to someone who is actually capable of stopping this? I'm at my wits end.

Tags: life

01:37 pm: Swiss Centre construction x 2
There were big red things (trusses?) that are visible in the previous photograph. These are being taken away today. I assume they were holding the outside of the site up.

12:02 am: party warning
I am 30 this year. On June 26. I haven't organised exact details yet, but I will be having a very big birthday party that weekend. Keep Saturday June 27th free!

There will be plenty of crash space available if peoples from non-London (or even wrong side of London, I am a tolerant sort) places wish to come.

04:13 pm: If you are in London, free and bored on Tuesday (or maybe you just need to get between Ealing Broadway and Wandsworth Road) there is apparently a s1kr1t rail-replacement bus that runs at 9.45am each Tuesday. It runs empty all the time because they didn't tell anyone about it.

03:45 pm: Swiss Centre construction

Swiss Centre construction site 2009-01-07 Haven't posted a Swiss Centre picture for a while. It finished demolition some months ago, and has now entered the construction phase. There are two large blue cranes on site (you can see the bases of them in frame). Today's new arrival is the upright grey thing in between them. We're not quite sure what it is. They got it a certain amount of assembled and then seem to have taken it apart again, so presumably they are Doing It Wrong. The truck at the bottom has the remainder of it. We suspect it may be a concrete pourer - any ideas?

(apologies for the very poor shot, on cameraphone and it is VERY COLD on the roof)

Because the building is now not there any more, and it's winter and some of the trees are out of the way, we've noticed we can see the Natwest Tower and the Gherkin from the top floor. I managed to see quite a few more city towers from the roof but didn't stop to identify them.

Tags: photos, swiss centre

12:26 am: As witnessed by hazyjayne, today I ate some green stuff, which I believe was spinach. In fact, and don't tell anyone Ｉ said this, but it was actually quite tasty.

Tags: food

04:29 pm: Number 11
In case anyone hasn't seen it elsewhere David Tennant's replacement has been cast and will be announced tomorrow. It would have been nice to have this kept a secret until the episode in question, but I suppose this was inevitable (especially given the media circus of the previous switchover).

I expect I will be in a pub in Reading at the time. Damn.

Tags: doctor who

02:49 pm: Oh, and a happy Yule/Newtonmass/Hogswatch/Tree Day/Christmas/Sol Invictus.

Tags: life