Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from August, 2007

Honouring Mandela

The following comment was left on the picture above on my flickr account: Hi, Zefrog. I salute your promptness in getting these photos up and running. This is a great shot, and so I have borrowed it for a piece on www.londonist.com Thanks. You can read the article in question here .

Madiba

This morning I put my legs on and got myself out of the house for a short walk up the road to Parliament Square where a new statue of Nelson Mandela was being unveiled. The ceremony was scheduled for 11am but the blog on which I found this information suggested to get there at about 10. This is what I did and was grateful for it as people were already waiting when I got there. While a short film on Mandela's life was shown on the giant screens, we watched as guests arrived and were directed to their seats by GLA staff (I recognised the Mayor's LGBT advisor, on the breach). Most faces were unknown to me though I spotted (Dr) Brian May (former Queen), Darren Johnson (leader of the Green Party at teh GLA), David Cameron, John Prescott and Peter Hain. There was even a representative of the BME LGBT community which was a nice touch. Jesse Jackson was there too but he arrived late. The ceremony had already started. He was quick however once it was finished to step up to the stat

High Ranking Islam

Just when I said I had nothing to blog about, I had a look at the traffic counter for this blog (to be found at the bottom of the sidebar) and realised that a picture I uploaded in February 2006 is ranking second (out of just under 2M) in the Google Images search for Islam . I am getting quite a few hits from there. This was at the time of the controversy surrounding the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by a Swedish paper. I had used the pic to illustrate one of my posts on the subject (the others can be found here , here and here ). So far, I haven't received any comment or reaction but I am fully expecting some nutter to take offense of my western liberal anti-religious views on the subject. This extra traffic will probably not even bring me any extra readers since, just like the other high ranking pic on this blog (number 8 out of about 4.5M), it probably won't be the favorite search term for people who would be interested by the content of this blog.

Blank

After several weeks without a computer, I am indeed finally back online and I know I should be blogging like there is no tomorrow. However, and please note that I am not moaning or being depressed (or even asking for help) about it, my life is currently a complete blank. I have no social interaction to speak of with any one and I spend most of my weeks at home. I went out only three times this week. Once to Tesco for my food shopping, a second time was a lovely outing of the Southwark LGBT Network at the National Portrait Gallery for a queer view of a few of their paintings. Finally, yesterday, I had a meeting with my business partners. The rest of the time is more or less a blur of nothingness. If you are really missing reading what I can come up with (although you won't find opinion pieces), you can find me on the LGBT History Month blog of which I am the editor. The blog provides information and events details of events linked to LGBT History. I hope you find it interesting.

It's New, It's Shiny and it's Mine

After 8 weeks of customer service comedy, phone calls and toing and froing of all kinds, I received on Saturday a voucher to replace my laptop which had been deemed irreparable after having been lost and found (more on this later). So today, I went to PC World on the Old Kent Road and gave myself over to the dark side. TADDAAAAH! A Macbook! In the first few weeks of my troubles, I had been lent a laptop running Vista and I have to say I was not impressed. What I like(d) about PC's is that you can fiddle. You can tweak things, go behind the screen and adapt. To an extent. Mac on the other hand runs smoothly, is all about integration and in many ways is for people who are more interested in results than in learning how to use a computer. Vista, in my few, unfortunately and unhappily sits on the fence and ends up to be more frustrating than anything else. This herralds the end of the fiddly PC as I liked it. Mac is also the machine of choice for people working in the creative industry