I went down to the Mandalay Bay again to visit the Aureole. This is a wine bar with a four story wine rack. The bar staff use a trapeze to retrieve the wine. It has to be seen to be believed. And now, you can see it!
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Hot Stuff
Over the weekend, I went to the West Dean “Chilli Festival”. I had no idea what a big industry chilli growing was in this country. …
Sailing
Down to Poole in Dorset very early this morning. I have finally got my act together to take the RYA Day Skipper course and spent the day learning to navigate using charts, pencil and paper. The maths reminds me of the boys’ A-Level homework and although despite being geeky enough to look up the cosine rule, drawing scale models of the “triangles of velocity” is probably quicker . 😉 …
Improving my mind
I’m have returned to California to attend Sun’s top technology conference, and I shall be travelling on to Menlo Park and visit Sun’s campus for the Sun Labs Open House. Once again, I have failed to improve my mind on the plane and instead of watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, I watched “Shut up & Sing”, a documentary about the Dixie Chicks. They are not a band I’d listened to before, but I did read about the furore created when they stated on stage that they didn’t approve of all the policies being pursued by a certain American politician. …
On my way to NWN 2
This is now leaking out and was reviewed in Empire’s January 2007 edition, where they gave it 5*’s. It certainly made me want to get it. I still need to get a second copy of NWN and the guys & gals at rpgdungeon recommend the Platinum Edition. Gamespot review NWN 2 here. NWN 2 is now on sale at Amazon (.co.uk). …
The Beauty of Grass
I visited Bury Court yesterday which claims to have two of the finest contemporary gardens in the country, designed by Christopher Blakely-Hole & Peter Oudolf. It’s been explained to me that ‘contemporary’ means lots of grasses, and a ‘Tea House’, …
Che Guevara: Revolutionary & Icon in London
I visited the V&A’s Guevara, Revolutionary & Icon exhibition. This exhibition is based on the famous photographic image of him and its use, so less political and a bit more design. Lawrence Lewellyn Bownen does socialism. Sadly the V&A prohibited photographs, even of the plaques they made themselves. So here is a re-sized copy from wikipedia and some comments about some of the other exhibits. …
The New Statesman, Episode 2006
We, that is Mrs L & I, went to see “The New Statesman, Episode 2006”, staring Rik Mayall as Alan B’stard on Saturday. Marsha Fitzalan also reprises her role as his wife Sarah. Sadly, no new jokes, its the same old B’stard, using politics to make money, and have as much, if a bit too fast sex as possible. He’s joined New Labour and works in No. 9 Downing St now. …
Watching the English
On my way down from Edinburgh, I finished “Watching the English” by Kate Fox. This was recommended to me by Geoff Arnold. The book is bloody funny and so true. Its written by one of Britain’s leading social anthropologists, using her science to observe the English. She has the grace to start her book with a discourse on the “Participant Observer” paradox and manages to be funny about this as well. The book covers manners, class, the pub, queuing, language and dress, together with some other issues that I can’t remember, but always returns to our humour. …
Batman Begins – again
I’ve just re-seen Batman Begins
. Its on the plane, the sound track is piss poor, the screen is tiny but these limitations only enhance the quality of the script & the drama of the story. This is what super-hero fiction is really about. As argued by the Captain, all the predecessor Batman stories remain cartoons (well they would be wouldn’t they) and we’ve been waiting for this story. …