Good to see a great photographer celebrated!

One of Googles more (only) endearing items is it’s ‘Google Doodle’ – very often this celebrates the birthday of a historical figure that you have never heard of – which can be quite educational!

Other times it can be amusing – especially when it is animated or interactive….

It is nice today however to see that they are celebrating what would have been Sir Norman Parkinson’s 100th Birthday – if you don’t know anything about him do a Google search – he was an interesting man and a great photographer…

 

A fabulous iPhone weather app….

I love my iPhone apps – especially my weather apps, it probably has something to do with being British and our obsession with the weather.

I have one particular app that I rely on – WeatherPro – it is pretty accurate and has lots of useful data (well I think it’s useful). The data provider is also European based, so this helps greatly with it’s accuracy. The downside? It’s rather monotone in design (very blue and yellow) so is not particularly pretty to look at!

But, every so often an app appears in the app store that moves things along and is amazing. When it does it has to be added to my iPhone – Flipboard was a classic example, it is lovely to use and look at, but up until now there hasn’t been a weather app of the same calibre.

Until now that is – Yahoo have just released their new weather app, and it is just lovely, pure eye candy, and it has lots of data all presented in a gorgeous way. The opening screen presents a simple set of data (current temperature, description of the current weather etc) over a photo of the weather location.

Scrolling down provides an hourly scrollable forecast, a five day forecast, wind speeds (shown by animated revolving windmills), plus a radar map of the area to show rainfall etc.

But my favourite bit is at the bottom of the page – an animated graphic that shows the time from sunrise to sunset, and the current position of the sun in its arc across the sky!

The app also uses photos from Flicker which relate to the location you are looking at (randomly chosen as far as I can tell) – it is amazing and makes the Apple weather app – which I haven’t used for years as it is so bad – look even more rubbish!

It is worth downloading – do it!

 

Only a singer…

We live in a culture that ‘loves celebrity’ – this is not a good thing in my view, and sometimes it creates ‘monsters’.

The Anne Frank house and visitor centre

This last weekend has seen frankly one of the most ill-judged comments by a celebrity for a long time. The celebrity? – Justin Bieber – apparently he is quite a popular Canadian singer, not one that I have really listened to (or intend to). My only knowledge of him to date is that recently he failed to turn up for some concerts at the O2 (he was hours late on stage). I don’t do late – it is rude and inconsiderate unless you have a very good excuse (and apparently he didn’t) – so not a good start for ‘the Bieber’ in my eyes!

The comment he left this weekend in the visitors book at Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam was however unbelievable!

“Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.”

It is 68 years since Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, her story is a reminder to us all of the horror that was the holocaust. Something tells me that in 68 years time no one will remember who Justin Bieber was!

Obviously self publicity doesn’t stop with someone like Justin under any circumstances.

How sad….

 

Do something amazing – give blood, or at least try……..

That’s what the strap line on the blood service website says and they are always keen for donations – so why do they make it such a slow and disorganised experience? I have given blood on and off for many years – in the old days you turned up to a session and they fitted you in – the experience was OK and normally took around an hour.

So why when we now have an appointment system does it tend to take twice as long to give the same amount of blood?

This time around I had an appointment at 6:50 – as I work this is ideal for me. On arrival I was told by the receptionist “we aim to get you through in an hour from your appointment time” – sadly experience told me this wouldn’t happen – and it didn’t, it took almost an hour before I was even seen!

Don’t get me wrong, I really want to give blood, but the system seems to do everything it can to frustrate me. I get the impression that the people at the top have no idea how it actually works in the real world – someone needs to tell them…….

 

Preconceived ideas…..

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I have always been a lover of a good cup of tea – not the sort of tea from a tea bag, that is just a drink (and I do lots of that!) – a proper cup of leaf tea – earl grey or Darjeeling! Equally I have always thought of tea as a very British thing, something that we do more than any other country of the World.

However, a recent visit to Paris suggests that the French drink lots of proper tea – this tea shop was frankly amazing. The selection of teas was huge and they have shops all over France (this one was in the Carousel next to the entrance to the Louvre).

I would love to think that we have educated the French in the ways of tea – sadly I don’t think this is the case though!

Interesting how wrong our preconceived ideas can be….

 

Europe’s most romantic city?

This week I have been in Paris with my family – including two teenagers – so not at all romantic, but great fun. Paris is often sold as the most romantic destination in Europe, whether this is true or not remains to be seen (depending on a couple only trip in the future), but certainly there are signs that it may well be!

I am aware that the idea of locking a padlock onto a bridge to show your love for someone is not a new one – and I have no idea where it started (I have certainly seen it in various parts of the world). However the locks on the Pont de l’Archevêché which lies very close to Notre-Dame are the most I have seen yet – and perhaps prove the French claim that theirs is the most romantic city?

 

More French flair

I am a fan of the French (really! – despite what I said yesterday) and the way they do things – they have a certain flair and also appear to get things done! I realise this is not a generally held view in the UK, we love to bash the French – I really don’t understand why……

A classic example of the flair that the French have can be seen in the design of the metro station at Arts et Métiers which has its roof finished in a ‘copper style’ – it feels like something out of a Jules Verne book or Captain Nemo’s Nautilus (perhaps that is the idea), whatever the reason for the effect it has a real impact when you first see it and just adds to your day.

You’ve got to love the French………

 

How not to manage one of the worlds busiest museums….

Ok, so I admit I am not averse to complaining – in my opinion no one should be, it is the only way things improve. So when there is a total lack of information or perceived management of a situation it annoys me…..

The situation I refer to relates to the closure of the Louvre in Paris on Wednesday 10th April – now the French are very proud of the museum (quite rightly) as it is one of the largest and most visited in the World. This would therefore assume a good level of management. So when we arrived as a family and found barriers up, security staff guarding the doors and very small messages saying the museum was closed – but giving no reason why and no idea when it would reopen – we were naturally somewhat annoyed.

But what really didn’t help was the total lack of real information, it took us at least 45 minutes to discover the reason the Louvre was closed – a strike by staff due to pickpockets – and also that there was no chance of it opening at all on that day. This last point was not clear from the note at the entrance (and the ‘help line’ mentioned on the message was never answered – on strike too?)

Who did I find out from? A security guard – no one else was around from the museum staff.

But what really annoyed me? The fact that the message on the website (which only appeared many hours after the strike started) was so incongruous. One might almost say it was deliberately vague – perhaps they didn’t want visitors to know that the staff strike and that pickpockets are a big problem? I would hardly call a strike in France ‘exceptional circumstances’!

Come on – this is Paris, France – the home of strikes and now it appears Europe’s capital of pickpockets!

So in trying to ‘keep it quiet’ it appears to me that the Louvre’s ‘management’ may well have scored a huge own goal – typically French?

 

A Parisian discovery…

I am in Paris for a few days, a city that I like to think I have a reasonable feel for, but today proved that you can always discover something new, even in a city you think you know…

New York is well known for its HighLine or ‘park in the sky’ – I am looking forward to seeing it in the summer when we are there as a family as I have heard so many positive things about it. However, today I discovered Paris’s own HighLine – la promenade plantee. This is a similar thing – a former railway line and viaduct in a city environment that has been formed into an amazing linear park. In addition the arches below have also been refurbished and created into workshops and retail space for artists and artisans. This in fact was the original High Line, built sixteen years before the New York model, and apparently it served as inspiration to it’s American counterpart.

The promenade stretches for almost 5 kilometers across the 12th arrondissement following the path of the retired ligne de Vincennes railway track from Bastille to the boulevard Périphérique. It is highly popular with runners as well as for ‘promenading’ and was quite busy mid morning when we were walking it. It is also beautifully planted and in places you would be hard pushed to believe that you weren’t in a larger garden rather than on a city viaduct!

It is great to see regeneration on this scale in a city – the walkway itself is great, but the conversion of the arches below is simply stunning and provides fantastic space for new businesses. Sadly I can’t see this level of planning commitment or general vision in the UK – somehow I feel the use of bulldozers would have been more likely?

 

Getting to grips with it…..

Around Christmas I splashed out on a new camera – an Olympus EM-5 – it was a bit of an extravagant move, but I felt it would help me further develop my photography which had been in the doldrums for a number of years until I purchased an Olympus PEN EP-1 a few years ago. The time was right for the next step…..

I was right and have been amazed by the cameras capability to produce stunning results even in my hands! It is well up there with the quality of a full frame digital SLR (it is a 4/3rds camera). And it has allowed me to hopefully develop my artistic side a bit more….

This photo was taken at the orangery at Calke Abbey in March, I quite like it, especially the way the shadows run…..