Brightening Up London
Bob Geldof and Orange are collaborating to Brighten up London for the Christmas season, I have seen a few of the buildings but nothing quite compares to Buckingham Palace lit up, it is absolutely amazing.
Holiday
I am taking a much needed break from work, a school friend is visiting from home and we are doing the tourist thing all over London. I thought it will be all the same as last year but so far has been pleasantly surprised with how things have changed in the last year. There are whole new sections open at the Tower of London and even Camden Town has expanded since I was there last.
I am looking forward to doing some of the things I will not really get to do with my Significant Other as she isn’t really into the whole war thing. My friend has just visited Poland has been to some of the concentration camps like Auschwitz and I have to say I am really keen to go there looking at the books and photos she brought and remembering watching Shindlers List with her when I was in school
We are also watching the Band of Brothers series again and we will be taking a drive out to see the B-52, Blackbird and many other American and British air craft at Duxford.
While walking back from the Tower of London we got some really nice shots of the bridge and HMS Belfast
Bad Photography Day
After not having much time recently for photography I decided to go out today and take some shots since it was a perfectly clear day and wonderfully cold. I packed all my stuff, even remembering a spare battery, and headed down to Blackheath for some lunch, I looked around for a place to go since the only place there is terrible with service (but has great food) and in the end I decided on them after all.
After lunch I forgot my tripod in the shop, I should have given up here already. I only realized this after I was like 10 minutes away and had to turn back, after another 10 or 15 minutes I made it to Greenwich Park and saw something I wanted to take a photo off, turned the camera on to the “no data card” error message, I forgot my CF card in my computer! So I head back home to fetch it, another 30 minutes each way down the drain.
As it is winter and the sun pretty much just falls from the sky now and so I missed the best time of the day and could not take the kind of photos I had in mind anymore. I walked around a bit and found some other stuff to take photos of but I then realized that my remote control for my camera had a flat battery and was of no use to me, the end result is a whole pile of blurred photos due to tripod shake from having to press the shutter by hand ๐
For all of this I only had one semi decent shot – Greenwich University with Canary Wharf in the background for a nice contrasting scene – click on the thumbnail below to see the 800 x 600 version.
After this I spent the night putting up a gallery category dedicated to Bridges, I love bridges, if there is one thing that will force me to stop and take out a camera it’s a bridge and I love living in a city with plenty of them compared to previous cities I lived in.
Online Entrapment
Police from the UK, US, Canada and Australia have set up a site posing as a child porn web site. Anyone who continues to use it after multiple warnings will get a visit from big brother.
I don’t even know what to say about this, its shocking. While by the letter of the law this isn’t entrapment as such since the person chooses to continue after warnings, I still think it’s a nasty thing to be doing. Protecting children is becoming a one-size-fits-all explanation for all sorts of liberties taken by law enforcement agencies, just like the fight-again-terrorism.
From the ‘Lectric Law Library‘s definition of Entrapment:
ENTRAPMENT – A person is ‘entrapped’ when he is induced or persuaded by law enforcement officers or their agents to commit a crime that he had no previous intent to commit; and the law as a matter of policy forbids conviction in such a case.
However, there is no entrapment where a person is ready and willing to break the law and the Government agents merely provide what appears to be a favorable opportunity for the person to commit the crime. For example, it is not entrapment for a Government agent to pretend to be someone else and to offer, either directly or through an informer or other decoy, to engage in an unlawful transaction with the person. So, a person would not be a victim of entrapment if the person was ready, willing and able to commit the crime charged in the indictment whenever opportunity was afforded, and that Government officers or their agents did no more than offer an opportunity.
Nokia 6600
I lost my Nokia 9210 last week, apart from the data loss and number loss I realized that even though it was big and a pain to lug around I do love that phone. I love the fact that it had easy manipulation of SMS, I could delete all messages with a simple ctrl-a, ctrl-d combination etc.
I had the option to get another 9210 under insurance but I needed Bluetooth and GPRS so I opted for the Nokia 6600. I have mixed first reactions – on the one hand I love the brilliant clear screen, the camera (even though it is crap), the GPRS and Bluetooth etc. On the other hand it is annoying that it does not have a automatic lock feature on the keypad and slightly dodgy battery life.
