June 2004
welsh negatives
i got an email earlier today containing these negatives which mase found in the street in Cardiff. he says:
“I found a negative strip of 4 frames whilst walking to work today I work in Cardiff and found the strip discarded on a side street. The details are 8:55a.m. on Windsor Lane, Cardiff. I’ve scanned the print and have attached it.”
after a bit of manipulation in photoshop it looks like this when un-negatived:
soon and very soon i shall update davescollections with my latest finds and add it. thanks Mase !
divergent
i have a degree in control engineering. one of the fundamentals (if i remember anything about it) is that systems converge or diverge. mostly you want things to converge so they are stable.
for example, you want air conditioning systems to converge on the target temperate.
unfortunately most British trains have divergent systems. you tell it what temperature would be nice for travellers to sit in. and it adjust to make it much colder on a cold day and much hotter on a hot day. it’s more of a question of extremes.
“pah” says the aircon, “you think this is hot ? do ya ? well, do ya ? i’ll show ya what hot is”. and so it goes.
UPDATE: my train on the way home was so hot the air conditioning broke and dripped water from the ceiling. it may have been condensation. it was in effect raining commuter sweat. escence of commuter. i should have bottled it.
no bikes
i love a good ‘don’t chain your bike here’ sign. this has got to be one of the best. it’s a few metres up the road from this no bike parking sign
click to view the details
lost cat
i saw two more dead birds this morning. and now this lost cat sign (don’t worry, it’s about 30 miles away from where i saw the dead cat on monday).
what is the world coming to ?
this poster is quite interesting (if we can get past the sadness). For a start it’s wrapped round a lamp post making it really tricky to read without falling off the kerb and swinging your head round.
but more significant are the pictures which look like they were taken with a security camera. you don’t really get the effect here, but the three pictures show:
1) cat lying down keeping a lookout
2) cat attacking man in red jumper
3) cat on the prowl
there’s more to this cat than meets the eye.
shop mirror
a shop front mirrored wall by covent garden tube station
the continued journey of the milk
here is some milk about a mile away from the previous milk. is it the same one ?
venus
as you may know venus got in the way of the sun today for a bit.
i tried taking a photo of the sun directly (by sort of hiding behind this polling sign), but it obviously didn’t work (not that expected it would). don’t worry. i took all the usual precautions such as closing my eyes as i took the photo.
luckily across the road were some bearded old men who were constructing a ‘thing’ which displayed it on a piece of paper. they were very pleased with the results and asked me to stay for a few seconds whilst they adjusted it.
i gave them 10 seconds, took my photo then zoomed off to my meeting round the corner.
black and white
why did the milk bottle cross the road ?
found photo
one for davescollections in due course
fan
a broken fan. no wonder it’s so hot out there today
sign corrected
it’s great when people can join in on a sign. here someone has changed some words to make it more grammatically correct or something (i assume. i have no clue).
it says “staircase is closed due to for health and safety reasons”
dead bird as art
there’s an empty room in the tate modern at the moment which is art. that’s my kind of art.
but in the window space was this dead bird (taxidermied i assume). interesting that it should turn up the same day as the dead cat .
and, as always, i passed the Slough dead dog in a box today too …
thames chair
chairs with wheels work well as transport on land. less well in water though it seems.
if you had zoomed on the above photo with your bionic vision you would see this:
see, i’ve saved you some bionic vision exercisions which should help you in the long run.