The Sea and the Gloatfest

On Monday, two of my Flickr mates took me on a great daytrip to Whitstable, a little seaside town in Kent. It's just the sort of place where I could imagine Mr. Peggotty, Ham and Little Emily living in their overturned-boat-turned-house, although I think they lived in Yarmouth. It was really fun -- great company, and nice to be in a place where the scale of things is smaller than in London.


The three of us happily wandered about with our cameras, pointing at the sea, rocks, beach huts, birds, and boats. I took dozens of photos and will add more to my Flickr photostream when I get a chance to sort them out.


Yesterday, I walked through Southwark and went to the Imperial War Museum in the morning (there was a roiling sea of school groups in the museum, so I didn't stay long, but did go through an exhibit about the WWII experience of children in Britain), bought knitting needles at I Knit in Lower Marsh Street, met a Flickr mate and a Ravelry mate for lunch, and looked for Donna Leon books for rosenbeans at the book stalls under Waterloo Bridge (sorry, no luck). After that, a group of six of us did our volunteer work at Southbank Mosaics. I don't have any photos of that, but I will write more about it later (here's one of my mates' photos of me working on one of the Blake mosaics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/76743095@N00/2436035855/).


Then, it was on to the Royal Festival Hall for the Guess Where London meetup, a.k.a. Gloatfest, in the bar. It was so nice to see people I'd met last autumn again, and to meet more of the group.

Today is my last day of exploring, and I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do. Time to check the weather forecast and make a plan.

Greetings from (c)old soggy

Everyone here talks/complains about the weather constantly, so I may as well, too. It pretty much sucks. Arrival day was sunny, but windy and a bit chilly. Friday was very windy, grey, somewhat damp and COLD. I spent the day walking around Islington, with runny nose and watery eyes most of the time. But it was an enjoyable walk that included Camden Passage Market (not much going on there on Fridays), lunch at the S&M (Sausage and Mash) Cafe, another Banksy, and a nice little gallery of Italian art called the Estorick Collection.


After finishing with Islington, I took the overground to Finchley and Frognal and walked down the Finchley Road to catch the bus to St John's Wood to meet Spooner at his school. As luck would have it, I saw a charity shop and got a warm scarf for 2 pounds. At Spooner's school, we went to a concert that the kids were doing as a fundraiser for a school in Kenya, and then had dinner at the Princess of Wales pub in Primrose Hill.


Grey, cool and damp again on Saturday, but we were able to do most of what I had planned (a graphic art exhibit called AgitPop at the London Print Studio and the Camden Town Group painters at the Tate Britain), with the exception of the stroll around Chelsea -- when we got to the Royal Hospital, the rain that had been threatening all day started for real and the grounds of the hospital had just closed for the day, so we skipped that as well as Cheyne Walk and headed for a caff instead. The day ended with a concert of Welsh choirs at Cadogan Hall in Sloane Square -- some fine voices, but a very odd assortment of numbers, many sung in a language consisting mainly of G and W and totally without vowels, and a lot of stuff about the Risen Lord and Amen, Amen, Amen. The popular numbers were the strangest -- the theme from The Rose, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, When You Walk Through a Storm, and -- weirdest of all for us Yankees -- Elvis' American Trilogy of Dixie, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and All My Trials.


Today, we're heading to Moorgate where we'll begin a walk around Smithfield Market and various dark and mysterious alleys in the City. It's somewhat warmer and not raining yet, but still grey. I guess you just learn to live with it.



End-of-day update: The afternoon turned out to be sunny and nice, so after the City walk we went to Covent Garden Market (ScribeGirl and rosenbeans will be happy to hear that I scored the soap and tea for them), walked through the Embankment Garden, and did a little food shopping in Chinatown.

The Eagle has Landed

Hey Mates! I arrived in London at 7 a.m. this morning and walked in the door of Spooner's house at 10. A long but uneventful trip. After taking a quick nap and shower, I headed into town to meet one of my Flickr mates at the Royal Academy of Arts to see "From Russia," an amazing exhibition of French and Russian masters, mostly impressionist and post-impressionist, from the Russian collections (i.e. stuff that was in private hands until the Russian Revolution when the state seized it all). Virtually none of this stuff has been out of Russia since, and Putin almost didn't let it out for the exhibition.


Afterwards, we walked up to Newman Street to see the newest Banksy. It's fab.


Then, I came back to Belsize Park and did some shopping -- soap (forgot mine, don't like Spooner's), cello tape (for wrapping prezzies), the essential HobNobs, and some cake for Spooner's birthday. Prezzies are now wrapped and he should be home any minute.

Tomorrow, Islington (weather permitting).

Pssssst. Don't tell Spooner!

I'm not taking any Zud to London on this trip. I've got other stuff for Spooner.

Zemanta

Image via WikipediaI've been trying out a new Firefox plug-in called Zemanta. It's a tool that generates suggestions of photos, links, tags(labels) and articles for your blog based on its analysis of the content. As you type, Zemanta looks for suggestions and then presents them to you after every 300 characters (or, you can click to update the suggestions whenever you want). Most of the links come from Wikipedia, with homepage links for some things. It was really buggy when I gave it a test run this past weekend, but they just pushed out an update and things are running much better now. It's in alpha, so bugs and fixes can be expected. I must say that their support people are very responsive, answering questions incredibly quickly even on the weekend.

So, let's give it a whirl and see what suggestions it finds from this list:

Northampton, Massachusetts
Tower of London
Emma Goldman
Rolling Stones

Not bad -- Zemanta found links for all of these, giving me a choice of Wikipedia article or homepage for several. It found five pix of Northampton or Hampshire County, the Firefox logo, and a photo of Charlie Watts. I've added a couple of the suggested articles below; these give more info about how Zemanta works (geekspeak about algorithms and such) and have some screen shots and videos (I like the demo video).

If you're using Blogger, Typepad or WordPress for your blog, and Firefox for your browser, I suggest you try Zemanta and see what you think. Don't be surprised if you have to reload your dashboard page [Ctrl-F5] when you first open a new post, or if you have to turn off ad blocking -- such as AdblockPlus -- for that page in order to make it work. Be patient as they work out the bugs -- it's a great concept, and should improve with age.

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