Year: 2004

Flickr is my photo site of choice right now. Ideally I would like to generate similar features using Gallery (which I have hosted on my site too) but I don’t yet have the time to sort all that out. So, right now, Flickr will do me very well. I am pleased to learn in their recent blog post that they are Canadian (I have such a soft spot for Canada) and – what’s more – they are based in Vancouver which is where we’re planning out holiday next year. You weren’t really interested in that were you?

If anybody else is planning a quick attack on parliament like yesterday’s fox hunting supporters, I suggest you consult the handy maps that seem to be attached to every news story BBC News is running on the subject!

Unrelated, Amanda was in London last weekend and this day in 2002. Maybe she likes September in London – I know I do.

In 1999 I was lucky enough to travel to Jamaica to see my father who was working there at the time. If I am honest I was not much taken by Kingston but outside of the capital it’s a very beautifully country. I will not forget the day on the speedboat cutting across the clear waters nor will I forget freshly caught lobster, cooked and eaten on the beach. This week I have been wondering what happened to these places after hurricane Ivan went on its seek and destroy mission across the Caribbean.

You can’t really see this picture too clearly but the author of the book This Diary Will Change Your Life 2005 was eating the book this lunchtime at Waterstones, Piccadilly. I have no idea if he finished it or not and there was nobody buying it when I was in the shop just a photographer taking pictures. I thought it was an off was to promote a book.

For several months I have been trying to find a fishmonger – a good, decent purveyor of fine foods who will have fresh fish but prepare it for me on site and explain a little more about it. And today I found a great little place by Clapham South underground station: Moxons.

Happy Birthday Steve. Your Gail Tisley comments are on the site – honest! It’s my present to you!

In my little piece about gmail last week I noted that my journey to work covers many CCTV cameras. In a piece published on the same day at CNN it was noted that there are something like 4.2 million cameras observing our moves around the British capital. That really does seem like a great number. An American author – Jeffrey Rosen – notes,

Instead of being perceived as an Orwellian intrusion, the cameras in Britain … were hailed as the people’s technology, a friendly eye in the sky, not Big Brother but a kindly and watchful uncle or aunt [source]

Do you really think this is the case? I certainly don’t think of it as the people’s technology although I will admit to resigned acceptance of the devices. On the whole I suspect they are a necessary evil in the world we inhabit. Is that a foolish notion?