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An interesting documentary on the Discovery Channel this evening confirms what I have recently suspected: London is the CCTV camera capital of the world, with over half a million hidden cameras, one for every fifteen or so people. They are literally everywhere. The documentary appears to be focusing on the positive effects in the fight against crime, but the privacy aspects are worrying. There were cameras on buses over five years ago, something I see here in Dublin now, too.

Every car that enters the centre of London now has its number plate read by computer, both for Congestion Charging, and for police purposes. The City of London “Square Mile” was the first to implement such a system, having a history of terrorist attacks. It’s no coincidence that that was where I had my bag searched earlier this year. The Borough of Newham goes even further, with facial recognition systems watching everyone in public areas, looking for known criminals. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this scheme extended to the rest of London.

Half a work day was lost today, preparing to move our team to a different part of the building. We’re being moved three floors up, most of us to identical desks, a mirror image of the layout below. At least I’ll now have a view over the buildings to the hills around Dublin.

Quick online update using my friend’s broadband connection (luxury). I did get to the Saatchi Gallery yesterday to see the Damien Hirst retrospective. The pickled animals, while impressive, didn’t do that much for me, but I was cracking up when I saw what appeared to be pharmaceutical labels, but for bottles containing “Meatballs”, “Beans”, and other food products. It’s supposedly a comment on food additives and processing, but I just found the surrealism hilarious. (He’s preaching to the converted on that score.)

Another great Hirstism: a large fish tank, holding a PC and monitor, but with an obstetrics chair in place of the standard one – a comment on how we are born to work, I suppose. Yet the negative pressure is totally absent, courtesy of dozens of fish swimming around freely, without even the conception of work, or any awareness of the futility of their little lives.

The rest of the gallery appeared to be the Sensation exhibition that caused such a furore a couple of years ago. There’s a huge painting of Myra Hindley, in a magnified pointillism (splotchilism?), plus various disturbing works, including lifelike dummies of men in pieces, hanging from a tree, with certain bits hacked off. Tracey Emin’s My Bed went totally over my head, though there were touches of humour in the consumer products spread around the bed, including both condoms and a pregnancy test kit. The most “high concept”, for me, was Marc Quinn’s Self – a cast of the artist’s head in his own blood, kept frozen since 1991.

Tomorrow it’s back to London and then to Dublin, but with a heavy suitcase, holding some clothes, books, and the remains of my CD collection, about 200 CDs with only the inserts, no jewel cases. Let’s see if the people X-raying the case, as it passes through the baggage system, tell the customs people, who may think I’m a software pirate or such. But there are no customs as such within Europe any more, they’re only interested in drugs.

I’m now off to England for a few days, and won’t be back on line till next Wednesday. I’m off to visit some friends who are also storing a lot of my stuff for me. I left it there three and a half years ago, and so I can probably throw out most of it by now. The clothes will be dead after sitting in boxes, the computer stuff was obsolete even then (486SX25 laptop, anyone?), and there are a lot of cables of which only a few are worth saving. The tools must stay, though, and most of my books, since the useless ones were already sent to charity before I packed them. See you next week…

The party I described yesterday was an enjoyable experience at the time, but the most I’ve ever drunk since was the time five years ago I took a bottle of Smirnoff Black Label vodka to a party to share. Almost no-one else liked it, but I found it actually had a real taste, a different animal to standard vodka, even Smirnoff’s own. Black Label is Smirnoff’s top brand; bloody expensive, distilled in Moscow, a favourite of Bond baddies, and (in my limited experience) a great vodka for drinking neat and cold.

Over three hours I drank somewhere between half and two-thirds of the bottle, not realizing it because I didn’t get drunk in the conventional sense. It wasn’t even the kind of drunkenness described by Billy Connolly, where you get drunk from the waist down – I remember walking home as if I hadn’t drunk anything, and there was barely a hangover. No, the only major effect was a week looking yellow and feeling jaundiced, since the vodka had clearly gone straight to my liver. Not a major problem at the time, but I don’t need to be told that repeating it would be inadvisable. I did find another bottle of Black Label here in Ireland, a couple of years ago, but it lasted six months in the freezer.

I took Tom Clancy’s Red Rabbit to London with me, a borrowed hardback copy, which was a pain to carry around but worth it. It’s not a return to his old style, he’s introducing more subtle real-world detail in his recent books, but he’s clearly had fun filling in a major gap in the story of his main character Jack Ryan, whose CIA career is just starting to take off at the time of the story, 1982. The background is the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, and Red Rabbit is an attempt at creating a “back story” behind the real events. Historically, of course, the attempt did take place.

Without giving the story away, then, Red Rabbit is almost a prequel to Clancy’s later novels, offering a chance to expand on his other interesting characters, most notably the Foleys, the husband-and-wife team that later jointly came to run the CIA after years in the trenches. I’m not sure how wise it was to hook his narrative up to real history, but I can hardly fault the storytelling. Red Rabbit is almost up there with The Cardinal Of The Kremlin as Clancy’s best work, I think. He’s no Shakespeare, but he’s not John Updike or Philip Roth either, two Pulitzer Prize winners that I have found almost unreadable.

Clancy just about passes the British Geography test that American writers can easily fall foul of (see 2 Dec 2002 blog). He has the Ryans living in Chatham in Kent, travelling to London via Victoria station, which is correct. He then blows it by having Jack Ryan driven from near Manchester to Chatham in half an hour – not a chance, since it’s over a hundred and fifty miles, with London as an obstacle that would necessitate taking the M25. Two hours would be a minimum at high speed, more likely three. Close, but no cigar, Tom.

his is a letter I just wrote to Jerry Pournelle, which described how I felt after two days in London:

Hi, Dr. P,

I lived in London for eight years, but I’ve been in Dublin for the last three. I’ve been back in London for 2 days, and the fear of terrorism and war is everywhere, playing havoc with life in general.

I arrived on Thursday, through the quiet Luton airport, with only armed police (no soldiers) in evidence, but had my bag searched at a train station later, by a “police community assistant” (not even a real police officer), who seemed to have been given the job as part of some hazing ritual. He was totally unprepared for the procession of angry people he was creating, but still had the cheek to ask for my name and address. I was carrying a hardback book (Tom Clancy’s “Red Rabbit”), but he didn’t even look inside it – there was space for a pound of C4 had I been so inclined.

At the time I was being searched, someone arrived at Gatwick from Venezuela with a live grenade in their luggage, having obviously not been searched at departure. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2765531.stm. BBC News ran an “expose” showing how a presenter could go and stand under the takeoff path at Luton and Stansted airports, within SA-7 range of departing planes, for half an hour before being challenged by armed police.

Today about half a million people are marching towards Hyde Park for an anti-war protest that has been semi-hijacked by a “Freedom for Palestine” platform. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2765041.stm It was such fun walking out of the centre, against the mass of “day tripper” protestors in their eiderdown jackets, with Starbucks lattes and McDonalds muffins in hand, that I had to resist the temptation to go “baa!” at every corner in memory of Dolly (who died yesterday). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2764039.stm

Starting Monday, every car that enters central London will have its license plate read by computer, and the registered owner will receive a fine if they haven’t paid the £5 “Congestion Charge” by the end of the day. There are unconfirmed reports that the system is (or soon will be) capable of facial recognition too. Of course, the call centre that handles payments and exceptions (for residents etc.) is hopelessly backlogged, due to poorly trained staff and badly-designed systems, and thousands of local residents can expect to get nasty letters through the post in weeks to come.

Now I’m off to Luton for my flight back to Dublin. Let’s see if I can make it without Tube crashes, “peaceful protest” riots, cancelled trains, bag searches, facial profiling, disrupted flights, and a SA-7 warhead up the undercarriage as we take off. Good day…

When I stayed in London earlier this year, this was the view from my hotel bedroom:

This time round, this is the view from my hotel bedroom, early in the morning:

say no more…

I’m debating whether I should write a combined review of the three Dream Theater concerts I went to last weekend, rather than describe them in this blog. I’ll get back to the topic later. In the meantime, you can find plenty of concert info on the message board starting at dreamtheater.net.

My trip to London went smoothly, with the exception that I picked up a cold which pretty much ruined Tuesday, since I was too tired and aching to do much. I probably picked it up on Saturday, the only day I experienced really crowded Tube conditions, where someone could have breathed on me. I already seem to be shaking it off, so no cause for concern there.

The hotel (Jury’s Inn Croydon) was very nice, if businesslike, no chocolates on the pillows or such. Transport to and from London was less of a problem from Croydon than it was on my previous visits, from Docklands, Wandsworth, or Swiss Cottage. I even tried out the new Tramlink system which links Croydon to Wimbledon and elsewhere. I was sat at the front of the tram, and had a bit of a fright when the tram hit something, smashing into the floor under my foot. The most likely explanation was an animal, probably a dog. The tram didn’t stop, of course.

Back at the EasyEverything web cafe for another update, with a keyboard even worse than the last. Not only is the space bar malfunctioning, the right cursor key and the whole top numeric row are offline. Go on, bring it on, I can take it.

A nice couple of days of sweltering weather here in London, well over 30degC at times. Did most things I planned, but didn’t get to see the Tate Modern, since it shut at 6PM today – why? Today was extremely hazy, like being inside a cloud, no risk of sunburn. It tried to rain a bit, but we all ignored it and it went away.

The overarching theme of this trip has been the revisiting of my old stomping grounds, including Muswell Hill. I started at Highgate tube station, then wandered through Highgate Wood. I forgot what it could be like in Summer – loads of mothers and nannies, an average of 3 kids per adult. After that, it was no surprise to find that the Muswell Hill coffee shop had turned into a Starbucks – they’re taking over London, it’s much worse than I saw in New York a year ago. From there, through Alexandra Park to Alexandra Palace, the site of the world’s first proper TV facilities, including studios and broadcast tower. Then down the hill into Wood Green, in London’s multicultural Tottenham borough. The shopping centre there has a bargain stall section where I used to stock up on cheap empty calories (in the form of exotic snacks) when I was unemployed, Finally, down Wood Green High St. towards Turnpike Lane tube. I had never done that walk in one piece before, since I lived in Muswell Hill, but it presents a neat microcosmic slice of North London life.

I’ll almost certainly head back to Dublin tomorrow – no reason to stay longer. I have a couple of musical toys to try out: an Alesis AirFX, and a TL Audio FAT-1 preamp & compressor, both found at very nice prices, well below those quoted in the reviews, too. Also, I found a Nikon CoolPix 880 digital camera, for way under half-price, which is how I took the picture yesterday. It’s called “refurbished”, but I think it was returned because it has one dead pixel in the monitor (boo hoo). Which has no effect whatsoever on the camera’s functionality or the quality of the results. So, you’ll be seeing more pictures on this site, even in this Blog.

Not much more will be happening here until 7 August, when I get back to work. When I get back to Dublin, I’ll spend 6 days doing as little as possible, perhaps a bit of writing, maybe some engineering course work. I don’t have a land-line, nor a mobile phone, so I’ll be basically un-contactable. You need something from me? Tough titty, I’m on holiday. Bye.

I arrived in London yesterday after a productive week at Nottingham University, on the Summer School for my 2nd year Mechanical Engineering course. What a difference a week makes. When a 90-minute lecture teaches you what weeks of poring over the books fails to do, what does that say about the books?

One of my fellow students, L, is an RAF Flight Officer, not that you could tell by looking at her. I thought we were getting along well enough, with some future potential there, except that the only time I saw her light up was when she was discussing cars and bikes with the other guys. She drives some “hot hatch” and a Ducati 916, typical “live fast, die young” vehicles. She’s not a fighter pilot, so she doesn’t have that excuse. I don’t drive at all, and I stayed in Nottingham for the night after the course ended, happy to look around and enjoy my time off. In contrast, she jumped in her car and roared off the minute she could, not bothering to exchange contact details. Oh, well. If I feel like contacting her, I have her name and RAF base details.

My attempts to find accommodation in York over the bank holiday weekend were a total non-starter, so I’ll be heading back on Wednesday, unless I can find somewhere to spend a couple more days. There’s always that Marillion concert on Friday in Sheffield, but I do not fancy travelling in a holiday rush or paying inflated hotel rates.

Arriving in London, I wandered around the centre for a while, until I remembered that I had to post my assignment, and then dashed around looking for an open post office. Just as soon as I gave up, I then found one, so my assignment should get to Belfast by the end of Monday. I hope it does, because over the course of the week I went from don’t-give-a-damn through it’s-worth-a-go to I-can-really-do-this-stuff, thanks to the clarifying lectures.

So, early Saturday evening, I head for my hotel. I clearly remember where it is, according to the map on their web site, and I booked it because it’s close to public transport. When I get there… no hotel. Ask at another hotel nearby? They have a number for a different branch. OK, call them, the phone just rings and rings. So I call directory enquiries, they don’t know them at all, the whole chain, but I remembered that they have a sister chain, and I got their number. After all that, I have a number for the hotel, but the phone just rings engaged. Try the other hotel again, and someone there gives me an address which is a mile away from the address I had. The cab driver knew of a hotel roughly matching the description, and it turned out to be the one, and it’s over half a mile from there to public transport, barely manageable. They say they fixed the web site 2 weeks ago? I booked 3 weeks ago.

It turns out that this hotel (ETAP City Airport, London) was only completed a month ago, which is why no-one’s heard of it. They couldn’t explain the phone problems. I wish they’d pick the whole thing up and move it somewhere accessible. Based on the construction of the place, I suspect they could do just that. It’s a wood frame building, wooden floors and plasterboard walls, with a lovely view of some light industrial facilities. There are still piles of building material in some corners, but at least they’re neat piles. The room is perfectly adequate, cosy, if a bit creaky. The shower is the really powerful type I like, meaning you get a more satisfying shower in less time, probably saving water in the process. Everything about it is designed to keep costs down, from the window blind (no curtains) to the single towel (good thing I brought my own big fluffy one). The price is the best I’ve seen in London, so I’ll probably be back. As I said before, I don’t expect much from hotel rooms, as long as the basic functions are well taken care of, and they are in this case.

From the time stamp on this, you can probably guess that I didn’t go to the Farnborough Air Show. I could have, but decided not to, as a mark of respect to all those who were hurt in the air show disaster in the Ukraine yesterday. As I write this, the casualty list is 83 dead and 118 injured. I don’t know if Farnborough air displays went ahead today – I suspect not. Watching the footage last night, it’s clear that the plane (a SU-27 “Flanker”) was stalling, unable to stay in the air, but it remains to be seen whether that was due to pilot error or technical problems. An engine failure could cause the pilot to pull up too sharply while attempting to avoid the ground, stalling the plane. On top of that, there’s been another plane crash today, near Moscow.

I’ll probably have another update on here by Wednesday, before I leave London. I have no agenda for Monday, but Tuesday will be Art Day, including the V&A and the Ansel Adams At 100 exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.