maynardcase.co.uk linkfest

New York
Went to New York for two weeks with work, thus having a weekend to wander around. Went for a walk around Ground Zero, through to Battery Park (where I lived for a few weeks in 1999), along to Wall Street and down to the South Street Seaport. Had a quick trip up to Central Park, watched some guys bouldering, and then went to Trattoria Del’Arte for some astonishingly nice pizza and a glass of wine. Finally rolled off Saturday with a trip to see Chicago, on the basis that I couldn’t get cheap tickets for anything good. I was entertained but (as ever) relieved that I’d not spent full ticket price.

Sunday involved a trip to MOMA, which I rather enjoyed, having some rather conservative modern art rather than all the flashy and rather hard to understand stuff you previously found in Tate Modern (although I’ve not been since the re-hang). Annoyingly discovered after paying that I could have got in for free, but that’s just my tight northern approach to life reappearing. Wandered down to see the Rockerfeller Center (nice wall motifs), Grand Central Terminus (pretty impressive), past the NY Public Library and through Times Square to catch the E train up to Central Park again. Had some chinese on the upper west side, then back down to Times Square Loews to catch Inside Man (slightly disappointing; I enjoyed the general feel of the film, the characters and the dialogue but fundamentally the “clever solution” that is present in all good heist movies just wasn’t clever enough, and the deep dark secret wasn’t that interesting either).

Photos will be turning up shortly…

Angst
This was my first trip to NY on my own; I found myself with a lot of evenings with some expenses to have a nice dinner and then nothing else to do, and no energy to do it with anyway. It’s a bit isolating working with people who you only vaguely know and then having the evenings to yourself. I met up with a friend from uni who is working out there which was a rather pleasant break from it all. The culture differences don’t help either; there is something comforting about the familiar and being in a strange place is rather stressful, even if it’s one that you think you know from movies and television shows.

I’m hoping that for any future trips, I’ll know what I’m doing and I’ll be able to relax a little more
Lens
A few days prior to the weekend I took advantage of the dollars to sterling exchange rate to buy a new lens - a Canon EF 70-200mm L IS. First thoughts were
* it’s really, really heavy
* the zoom isn’t as much as I was hoping for
* I can’t tell if the image stabilisation is making that much difference
* but the image quality looks pretty sharp

Well, after getting used to it, I can confirm that it is worth the ludicrous price tag, giving astonishingly sharp images. The IS really does help to give a really stable image to the extent that it’s possible to take sharp pictures at 1/25th of a second at the full zoom. I’m really looking forward to taking more photos with it and getting the most out of it. What I would really like to do is try it with a 1.4x and a 2x extender - specifically to see how it affects the sharpness of the end result.

It’s still really, really heavy, though…

Just a quick post to say I’m now back in the United Kingdom, where I hope to lose some of the weight I must have acquired over the last few weeks.

Thanks to everyone in New York who made me feel welcome.

I am currently in New York for a little while (sadly, on business), so I can’t get to emails sent to my home address. If you know my work address (it’s my first name . my last name @ my company . com) you can get to me there.

I will be posting intelligent and witty observations on America and New York if any occur to me.

Until then, I will be posting random photos as per normal…

Just to let everyone know that I am contactable via Skype.

If you have a computer, a broadband connection and a headset of some sort (or speaker & mic), you should be able to call me free of charge - just download the software and look me up - just search for my name. If you can’t find me, send me an email and I’ll let you know my Skype username.

While Skype is closed-source and therefore evil, it does look like it might be the winner in the battle for free voice over IP services in the future. It even has a revenue stream in the form of SkypeOut and SkypeIn, features which allow Skype users to call real land-lines, and vice-versa - for a fee, obviously.

Hope everyone is having an excellent Christmas and a great New Year!

Freeview goodness
So, I bought the Topfield TF5800 which is a rather nice little PVR, with two Freeview receivers, 160Gb hard drive space and the ability to hook it up via USB to a PC. This allows you to download recorded TV from the box, in case there’s anything you want to preserve, and to upload programs which affect how the system behaves (eg. different electronic program guides, a nice list of your timed recordings, skipping through advert breaks and so forth).

Having not had one of these beasties before I am pretty impressed, although I keep forgetting to make proper use of it; for example, pausing live TV just doesn’t occur to me at the moment. I’ve got a set of searches running for key words (eg. “Simpsons”) - whenever this crops up in the EPG the cunning software that I’m running sets up a timer for me to record it, which should mean it works even when they change the scheduling. The gf likes to use the radio, which helpfully tells you which track you’re playing. Not amazing stuff but quite neatly done and astonishingly useful when you’re used to analogue.

Book review
About halfway through Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, which (given the fact that it contains no alternative histories, spaceships, high-end physics or unusual aliens) isn’t my usual reading material, but I can honestly say that it’s excellent: funny, moving, realistic characters and a very precise detailing of common tragedies that are no less tragic because they’re more frequent. Obviously now that I’ve said that, the ending will suck, but I’ll let you know.

Film review
Went to see Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit on Saturday. I’d love to be controversial and claim it was rubbish, but in truth I thought it was really good fun. Highlights include the rabbits floating around in the BV6000, and the excellent moment where some spare change is required for the plane.

Imdb keywords include: Funfair, Cheese, Chase Scene, Love Triangle, Pest Control, Police, Knitting and Bad Smell. So there you go.

The big holiday of this year is fast approaching: tomorrow I will be on a flight to Australia, where I will be not doing any work for at least three weeks. Hurrah!

We’re flying to Sydney (via Kuala Lumpur for a few hours), where we’re staying at the Wake Up! Hostel (exclamation marks required, apparently) for four nights. After that, we hire a car and start driving south down the coastline, calling at some, all, or none of the following locations:
* Kiama
* Berry
* Pebbly Beach
* Eden
* Mallacoota
* Lakes Entrance / Bainsdale / Sale
* Wilson’s Promontory
* Phillip Island
* Melbourne
* Great Ocean Road
* Port Fairy
* Adelaide
* Kangeroo Island
* Grampians National Park
* Blue Mountains

On the return to Sydney we’re having a night at the Intercontinental, to make up for staying in mud huts the rest of the way around.

Any feedback on these choices or anything else that is essential viewing between Sydney and Adelaide will probably be ignored, but hey, feel free to persuade me otherwise. If you’re all really lucky I may be able to find the time to type up the odd travel diary on the way.

If you would like to get in touch, please use my GMail account (my first name . my last name AT gmail.com), as I might (perhaps) be able to read it while abroad.

(Incidentally, if you are considering burglarizing my home, please note that there are house-sitters there for the entire holiday period and I would be extremely annoyed if you got broken glass on the carpet. Thank you.)

Things that I am hoping to purchase in the near - distant future, assuming large quantities of money and no external controls…

* Dishwasher
* Dual-tuner Freeview PVR
* Digital radio
* External HD case (and two 160Gb HDs to go with it)
* Tripod bag
* Canon flashgun
* Hitech 85mm neutral density graduated filters, with a Cokin P-style filter holder and 58mm adapter ring
* Pinball table
* Glider
* Something for tea tonight

So I decided that we could do something with the garden. The gf and I agreed that we didn’t want any grass, but wanted to avoid a concrete wasteland look. Looked like we simply needed to get rid of the concrete blocks that were there at the moment, add in a patio, and fix up the bottom half of the garden to have some patio slabs interspersed with some hardy low-growing stuff. Easy.

The parents are coming down to help us out this Thursday night. So far I’ve had about five slightly panicky phone calls to my dad, with him trying to explain what preparatory work we need to do, and me trying to figure out what he’s talking about. Last weekend was primarily spent with a medium duty breaker, bashing the hell out of about seventy square feet of concrete. It turns out that this
a) takes a long time, and
b) is really hard work.

My body has just about stopped aching today. I really genuinely wanted to have nothing more to do with the stupid project by 8pm on Sunday evening, with a couple of square feet left to go. It wasn’t helped by the fact that we’d made a hurried trip to the local garden centre to have a look at stone paving flags, only to discover that the car wouldn’t start to return us home, and neither of us had our mobile phones, or indeed the details of the breakdown service. Waiting an hour for a breakdown truck to show when you know that you’ve only a few hours before it gets dark and you’ll start really annoying your neighbours is a bit stressful. The gf took over for a little while, only to have a chisel snap while she was drilling away. We then went to the local chippy for badly needed hot carbohydrate, to discover that it’s closed on Sundays and Mondays. It wasn’t a good day.

While the gf was trying to borrow cars on Monday so that we’d actually be able to return the tools we’d hired before 10am, I was trying to get an idea of how much sand, cement and gravel we’ll need. That was ordered yesterday: a ton of sand, ten bags of cement, three bags of gravel. Next job: work out how much patio there is and what slabs we’ll need. I downloaded Inkscape and was quite impressed, although it still took me the best part of two hours to get the diagram done. It should be to scale, but who knows whether that’ll work in reality. A copy has been mailed to my dad for his feedback before I start ordering large quantities of Indian sandstone. I now know a lot more about how to lay a patio…

Friday night: Ikea Croydon
The words are enough to provoke a glimmer of fear in even the hardest man’s eyes, which is why they almost always prefer going down to the pub for a few cheeky beers. However, the gf and I decided that we would quite like to have:
* New dining room table
* New chairs for said table
* Bookcase
* CD/DVD rack
* Armchair for spare room
* Blinds for bathroom
* Filing cabinet
* etc, etc, etc.

Highlights: A relatively stress-free time. Friday nights are probably the best time, as you get a lie-in the next day (unless you are the gf, who sadly had to work) and it’s not so ludicrously busy. The only slight annoyance was the lack of food; we should have really paused at some point for a quick sandwich or (god help me) Ikea hotdog. As it was, the hunger drove us onwards.

Lowlights: The continual “will they have it in stock” annoyance: I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve been to Ikea many times and they never seem to have the birch CD rack that I want in stock. How hard can it be? Also, having to wait for half an hour for some poor sod to find me the last armchair in existence - boring and stressful.

Annoyingly the slight guilt at purchasing underpriced furniture is assuaged by the joy of having nice clean shiny Swedish tables and chairs adorning my lounge. Solid, well-designed, attractive furniture that’s cheap and you only have to briefly endure hell to get it? Why not?

Saturday
Morning was spent sleeping and then reinstalling software onto my new HD after the old one nearly snuffed it. Managed to resuscitate my old iTunes library so I’ve not lost all my ratings and so forth. Hurrah!

Afternoon consisted of sanding down the wooden windowsills, then slapping a load of woodstain on them in the hope of preventing them from rotting and falling off. Similar work needs to be done on the upstairs but we’ve yet to find a long enough ladder. Also did the back gate (inside). Followed by: assembling Ikea furniture (table, two chairs, armchair).

Evening: pub!

Sunday
Up, straight over to Sainsburys, back with tons of food. The gf prepared lunch while I woodstained the outside of the back gate. Lunch, then on a bus to Kingston to buy lots of nifty clothing for summerwear and trips to Australia. Managed to buy one very bright T-shirt which I’ll no doubt be too shy to actually wear in public, one more subtle one, and some rather stylish lightweight trousers.

Back home, prune overgrown bits of garden, water excessively considering proposed hosepipe ban, rip unstable legs off barbecue and replace with some bricks, start fire, burn meat, eat, and drink Corona with a slice of lime.

Executive summary
Did loads of stuff, had a good time!