dcinput

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Jim Henson’s Creature Shop - the final supper,
originally uploaded by dcinput.

A sad day for the visual effects industy as the London Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has its final gathering at bottom of Primrose Hill. People past and present are here, beer is being consumed and there’s even a life sized kermit for old times sake. These are some of the guys and gals that over the years have inspired the imagination of kids all over the world. May you all continue to do wonderful things wherever you go.

…from my mobile

Tags: london, vfx, film, animation, cgi, moblog

Phew! Made it into work and no one tried to blow me up.

What a strange journey though. Never have I been in a train carriage with so many people on edge. Even mention the word terrorist and I reckon every last one of us would have tried to jump out the windows. The fact that you’d actually only be able to fit a 12 inch pepperoni pizza out of any of these windows wouldn’t have put any of us off, not even a little bit.

Everyone, including myself, was looking from side to side out of the corners of their eyes at every bag more than 15.5 cm away from a commuter. I think the only thing relieving the tension a little was the very scary picture of Steve Jobs on the cover of MacUser that I was reading. I imagine that the fact that I was reading a copy of MacUser made everyone think that if we did all get blown to little bits then at least they weren’t the biggest looser on the train.

So my 3/4 empty carriage did have a man on it with a massive bag above his head. I thought this was kind of odd since there were so many free seats he could of just stuck it on the seat on front of him. Also noticing that several other pairs of eyes seemed to be flicking back and forth between their copy of the morning newspaper and said bag with as much attention as would be given to a Wimbledon final…I leaned over taped the gentleman on the shoulder and asked him if it was his bag. He turned around, smiled as if he kind of expected it and said it was. I said something stupid like “Well you can’t be too careful these days” and the tension in the carriage lowered to DEFCON 3.

I think we’re just going to have to get used to doing this sort of thing. I think everyone there actually found it pretty funny in the end.

What we should do: get people really into bag fashion so that people won’t mind you asking them if its their bag. Quite the opposite: “Excuse me is that your bag” Response: “It certainly is! Its Prada you know. I got it in the sales.” And there are lots of polite ways to ask people…

“Oooh that’s a nice bag…is it yours?”
“Wow what a co-incidence I happen to own the same bag as that. Who’s is it!”

If you can think of any more than add a comments…

Tags: london, explosion, blog, blasts, london bomb blasts

The blogosphere never ceases to amaze me. There is already a wikipedia entry for the 7 July London Bombings with information on the awful event itself, the state of casualties, the cause, official statements from various heads of state and world leaders, responses, the timeline, infrastructure and transport status on the bus, tube, rail, road, air and even river networks; as well as links to blogs, news articles, live streams, photographs and a survivor list.

At some level its kind of weird that all this is up and available as soon as it has happened. I think some people will feel kind of uncomfortable with this sort of communal coverage - this kind of thing where people are recording history as it happens. My view is that different people react to terrible events in very different ways and I don’t think for a second that anyone wishes an event like this to occur. What is amazing to me though, is to see people all over the world reaching out and working together, whether it be to make people aware of what has happened or to offer condolences or indeed to be part of the relief services that have done so well to manage on this day.

Tags: london, explosion, blog, blasts, london bomb blasts, history

The New World Order blog reports that the Home Office has announced that their planned ID card system would have stopped the London blasts.

“Whether these explosions were caused by bombs, terrorismists, communist dictators, weapons of mass destruction or a leaking gas main, we’re confident our proposed ID card system would have prevented it. We are also confident that if there hadn’t even been any explosions today, we would have our ID scheme to thank.”

I wonder at what point exactly the terrorists may have been asked for their ID cards? While they were making the bomb? Maybe as they boarded the bus that blew up? Or maybe indeed as they decended into the underground? Total rubbish.

If ID cards are introduced because of the London blasts….the terrorists will have won.

Tags: london, explosion, blog, blasts

Just heard from an inside source that potentially 4 more bombs in and around London have been found.

[friend of a friend sort of thing]

Tags: london, explosion, blog, blasts

Kosso of the podbat blog has set up a way to keep London blast updates flowing to the net via Google maps using the Google maps API.

Tags: london, explosion, blog, blasts

The BBC reports on the ripples spreading accross the blogosphere.

Uploaded by Peter Nixey of the webkitchen blog.

Tags: london, explosion, blog, blasts

A possible terrorist attack has occured accross the London tube network. The whole network has been shut down. On my way to work on the Silverlink this morning we were told that due to an emergency the Victoria line was closed. News reports say that all major stations are closed. A work collegue has just arrived from London Bridge were he says they were announcing the lost of various lines one by one….in a “We have just lost the Jubilee line” sort of fashion. He says he saw fire engines everywhere as well as ambulances. He didn’t see any casualties.

Hmmm the G8 starts today in Scotland. A coincidence: I think not.

Another work collegue is in Trafalgar square and apparently they are not letting people onto busses. Sky news reports that a bus has exploded.

The 2012 Olympics will be held in London, East London to be precise (which is where I live) — yey!

The whole voting process was really amusing as they decided to go for an electronic voting solution this time. I tell you if there was ever an advert for why using good old fashioned paper ballets was better, this was it! I laughed as the IOC members struggled to get to grips with the logistics. They had to get a technical guy up on stage to clear up an ambiguity, they even did a little test where they voted for painters….(Da Vinci won it). Then some idiot…there’s always one…voted too late and the IOC president had to call over some other important guy and ruffle his feathers.

And I have to say its pretty nice to beat those frenchies, especially after Chiracs comments ealier this week about how the only thing Britain had contributed to European agriculture was mad cow; and also his comment about how the English weren’t to be trusted because they had the second worste food in Europe after Finland…and that you couldn’t trust people who can’t cook. Admitedly both funny comments, but come on Jacques your the friggin president.

Anyway congrats to Seb Coe and all the other Britsh Olympic bid team guys and girls! Hold on 2012 thats like ages away. I wonder if I’ll still be here?

london 2012
sport

Just had an interesting conversation with my dad over dinner. It was mainly about the stuff in my last post and how incredibly fast the world was changing. He made an interesting prediction: could it be that with things like Google Earth, GPS, technorati and other fancy things, that the year 2005 will become a human milestone - everything before 2005 will be known as pre-history - a time when the recording of information was so poor that there is hardly any point making the effort to delve back into it. Google Earth changes everything. Soon we will be able to map out the history of everything as it happpens…and it literally will be “we”, as in all of us.

internet
history