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One year ago today: “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”.

That day I had a strange feeling something wasn’t quite right about half way through my journey to work. When I arrived everyone had gathered in the kitchen watching the TV. We were all in shock, hardly anyone spoke as we watched the live coverage on the BBC. All mobile networks were down and so we sent out emails to all our friends to make sure everyone was safe.

Having only recently started blogging, I searched the web for information and was completely amazed by the ripples accross the blogosphere. It was my first ever experience of networked journalism and also of how the web community could come together to offer support.

The comming months were to be pretty difficult times for Londoners. The atmosphere on the daily commute was seriously tense for many weeks and I know of several friends that were routinely stopped by police and searched simply becasuse of the colour of their skin. One friend was stopped so many times by police wearing machine guns that he temporarily moved back to Australia.

One year on and London has recovered well though I still am very aware that another bomb could be on every tube and bus I board.

Steve Gibby interviews Jim Jannard founder and chairman of Oakley and RED Digital Cinema about their new digital video camera called simply RED. The camera has been hotly anticipated. It can shoot at 2540p, 4K, 2K, 1080p and 720p.

Mike Curtis gives his thoughts on why this camera exists.

So if you can have a completely digital pipeline from capture to display what’s going to happen to digital intermediate companies? Are they going to have to some up with a new name for what they do?

This evening I’ll be at the CFX Short Film Awards. Looking forward to it.

I heard about this yesterday in the pub and didn’t believe it but now I’m, watching it on the news: there’s a whale in the Thames. The BBC News coverage is very good. Lots of rare cinematic shots of over London taken from a helicopter as the sun sets. Boy London is beautiful at night. Seems like the whale is in with a fighting chance. It seems it is a baby that has been separated from its mother and gotten confused by the water and noise pollution.

The whale has managed to get pretty far into London. A friend said he saw it outside Westminster. They are taking it to open waters in order to release it.

Reports filtering through to news stations of a very large security alert in south London. Stockwell tube station has been closed. Passengers witnessed Police shooting a man in Stockwell tube station. Police then shouted “get out, get out” and passengers were evacuated from the station.

There were reports of another man being arrested earlier at Kennington station around 30 minutes ago, which was closed but re-opened earlier. Also reports of an incident at Vauxaul.

An air ambulance has been sent to Stockwell.

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

It seems terrorists have returned to the London transport system as reports are now emerging on television networks around the world of bombs at Oval and Warren Street tude as well as on a bus at the Hackney Road/Columbia Road junction.

I’m OK…not caught up in it at all. Its my second last day at Henson’s and I’m safe in Camden.

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

In June 2005, 3 vfx programmers disappeared in the catacombs of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, London UK while taking pictures they were to later post on their blogs.

27 days later their pictures were found.

Motorola V3 Razor
Some fancy welsh camera

Tags: london, vfx, film, animation, cgi

Another trip to work, another “is this your bag type” incident. It seems I’m not the only person who has decided speak up in unattended bag situations. A french guy next to me took the batton this morning and asked me whether the two sports bags at my feet were mine. I hadn’t actually noticed them as I was on the phone as I boarded. After I said no, we both looked at each other…paused… he then asked one side of the train carriage and I asked the other. It was kind of neat, we sort of knew exactly what to do. Sure enough two old timer american tourists were the culprits.

Dave Winer linked to these two interesting articles about blogging and their possible unforseen consequences to the blogger: Blog now, regret it later? and Bloggers Need not Apply. Certainly worth a read if you’ve just started like myself. I was already well aware of these things but its nice to get reminded of them. All the more pertinent as I don’t have much longer here at the Creature Shop. I sense a job hunt on the horison….so if you fancy giving me a hand by like making me some offers Email me!

Tags: london, explosion, blasts, blogging, blog

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

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.