learning!

I've volunteered to do a 'Lunch and Learn' session at work next month focusing on blogs, wikis, RSS, and other nifty social computing tools. One of my colleagues suggested that I blog my creation of the presentation, and of course the blog provides a good record of where I've been and what's good!

Have been doing some research today, visiting Headshift, the Guardian Online Blog, BoingBoing and Demystifying Usability.

I went to the City Information Group presentation that David Tebbut gave a few months ago on blogging and social computing - I was up to speed with most of it already, but it was a useful summary.

Will be telling everyone about NewsGator as well which is the RSS tool I use for subscribing to content. Google Talk has just been launched today and I'll touch on that as well as Skype which has been big news recently.

If there's any librarians interested, there is a huge Google Directory page with links to loads of librarian created blogs, including Dispatches from a Public Librarian on old favourite McSweenys.net

On a less serious note, I'm not sure how I found it, but I stumbled across this great table today, plotting Global Average temperature vs number of pirates.

stunning!

Kt and I went to Kew Gardens yesterday to see the amazing 'Gardens of Glass' exhibition they've got on there. They have placed glass sculptures by Dale Chihuly around the gardens, both outside, on the lake and in the conservatories. They were just amazing - surprisingly it was sunny yesterday so the coloured glass glistened beautifully in the sun. I especially loved the 'walla wallas' giant pods of glass which were on the lake. A wonderful day out!

even cuter!

Current work obsession is the Polar Cam - the webcam at the Polar Bear plunge pool at San Diego zoo!

cute!

Nicola sent me this link to the San Diego zoo website which has a cute webcam (Panda Cam) of the new Panda cub and its mother Bai Yun. The cub was born on August 2 but the gender will not be known for a few weeks yet.

wayward!

Angus has set up his own blog detailing his often hair-raising kayaking adventures. It's a little bit concerning what he gets up to sometimes, but quite entertaining!

chilling!

Fruitstock on the grass
Originally uploaded by MhairiT.

Had a lovely day at Fruitstock yesterday afternoon. Fruitstock is an free festival that’s held in Regent’s Park every August and is organised by Innocent, a company which makes smoothies and fruitjuices. There are loads of foodstalls, including a very popular stand from our favourite piemakers, Pie.

The DJ tent was fantastic again this year with a good set from Hed Kandi, which saw Andrew grooving along with quite a few babies on shoulders.

Sitting eating Pies are (clockwise from Mhairi in hat) Geraint, Simon, Li-Ann and Melissa.

Fruitstock ambiance

Fruitstock ambiance
Originally uploaded by MhairiT.

renovated!

Visited an old Notting Hill favourite, the Hillgate, last night with John. It's just been renovated and is much more minimal inside than it ever was! No nick-nacks or decorations inside. The outside is much the same with hanging baskets and we had a nice sit outside on the picnic benches.

They stock one of my favourite new beers, Kronenbourg Blanc, which is a rival to the Hoegaarden white beer. It's very nice and refreshing - but I guess from reading the summary above, I'm the target audience!!

dramatic!

Went to Sadlers Wells on Saturday night to see the dance version of 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses', which was created and led by Adam Cooper. It was properly a 'dance drama' rather than a ballet, but the staging, although a little melodramatic, was quite enjoyable. The novel, and the film are mostly told through letters, so it must have been a little difficult to translate this to dance, but it all worked quite well.

innovative!

I visited the British Library at the weekend and took a tour (I was the only person on the tour so it was very personal guiding!). It was fascinating and I loved seeing the different parts of the library, especially the King's Library (donated by George III) and behind the scenes, showing the conveyer belt system that distributes the books from the basement up to the different reading rooms. We weren't allowed to go into the reading rooms as it's all very serious, but there were quite a few exhibitions to see as well.

The Turning the Pages room was really cool and is now available online - you can see pages from famous books and recreate the experience of turning the pages. The British Library has pioneered and sold on this technology. There was a very interesting Hans Christian Andersen exhibition with lots of things for children to play with, but also a good examination of his life. Apparently he went to London and stayed with Charles Dickens at one stage and overstayed his welcome!

musical!

So I'm planning a trip around the South East of the USA for October - my route is from Atlanta, to Savannah then to New Orleans. It's all very exciting and I'm sure a highlight of the holiday will be my visit to Athens, Georgia, home of REM and the B52s!

ethical!

Really liked the idea of Scarlet Mist, an ethical website where you can exchange concert tickets or sell them for face value - hope it catches on and also hope that some Belle & Sebastian tickets for September come up!

hungry!

Amongst all the depressing and frankly scary news there is at the moment, I loved this article about the Hungry Caterpillar, and how the book helps children to count as well as think about time.

Congratulations!

The Finish
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

Many congratulations to Julia, Craig, Finbarr and Megan who completed the 100 Km Trailwalker event at the weekend - we're still marvelling at the blisters, but more than that, we've admired the strength and fortitude they showed! They've raised about £5000 for Oxfam which is brilliant!

moving

We all stood silent for two minutes in the sunshine at noon yesterday to remember the victims of the bombing last week. Hundreds of people standing in front of City Hall where we were, and then we could see people standing outside on top of buildings on the other side of the river. The huge building site behind our offices fell silent for two minutes as well as the roads around the city.

Two recent articles in the Guardian have resonated with me recently, along with all the coverage of who the bombers were and the aftermath of the attack. The first, an article about the moving speech made by Marie Fatayi-Williams, the mother of one of the victims, shows the anguish and loss of a bereaved and confused mother. And the second is a letter to the terrorists from a young Muslim from Yorkshire, emphasising that the bombers are not representative of their religion or community.

I've also been following this diary on the BBC site written by a survivor of the Piccadilly Line train.

The Writer

The Writer
Originally uploaded by MhairiT.

The Writer is a new sculpture by Giancarlo Neri that has just been installed on Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath. It's huge! Hopefully you'll be able to see from the photo the scale of the table and chair.

Fabienne and I went up to Hampstead for a swim in the Ladies Pond. After such a warm day, it was lovely and cool and relaxing.

Afterwards, we caught the bus down to Kentish Town and bought fish and chips from the Five Star Fish and Chip Bar (this was Fabienne's first fish and chips experience) and went and sat in Charlotte and Annie's garden to eat them. We dodged all the grey haired stetson wearers at the Dwight Yoakam concert at the Forum!

groovy!

Went along to the very groovy Jazz Cafe Picnic at Kenwood House, Hampstead, last night. It was a gorgeously sunny day, and we sat in the sun and had our picnic, before retiring to the deck chairs for Lemon Jelly.

Unafraid!

unafraid
Originally uploaded by dario.agosta.

Thanks very much for your messages last week – it was so lovely and reassuring to know that you were thinking of me and everyone here.

I normally travel into work (from Caledonian Road tube to London Bridge tube) by bus and it’s only occasionally that I’ll catch the tube to work as it’s normally so crowded and hot! So thankfully I stayed with my normal plan yesterday. Thankfully also Kt, who works in Fulham went to work at her normal time, rather than 20 minutes later when she would potentially have been on one of the tubes that was bombed.

Didn’t really notice anything on the way to work, even though I was travelling above ground at the same time that everything was happening other than quite a few more people walking around, and a few ambulances. My bus takes me past Kings Cross and about 500 meters from where the bus bomb went off. When I got to the office, I noticed that the TV screens in reception were showing a newsflash of ‘Walking Wounded’ and so we checked the internet at our desks.

Realised what was happening and managed to get a text message to family before the phone system overloaded. E-mail was still working so I managed to check that everyone in London was ok. A friend of a friend was on one of the tubes but thankfully managed to get out with only glass scratches and smoke inhalation – she’s very lucky though and the scenes down there must have been horrific. I think people were down there for 30 minutes or more.

Our systems at work are pretty good with coping with an emergency, including cascading communications and contacting everyone. One of my team members, Charles, was AWOL and we had an anxious couple of hours trying to get hold of him. Finally he managed to call in from a phone box.

The transportation system was totally shut down and we were told at work to stay put. Our office building which is right next to Tower Bridge is brand new and pretty bombproof so it was a lot safer to stay inside. By about 4pm though, we were told that we could go home and so I met up with Charlotte and we walked to Angel together (took about an hour) then caught a bus home from there. Many people were walking as there weren’t many buses at that stage, but everyone was quite cheerful and there was none of the anger and annoyance when there’s a tube strike etc.

Unfortunately our section of the Piccadilly line is likely to be out of service for the next few weeks as there is probably quite severe damage to the tracks and tunnel so that’s going to make transport a bit harder than normal. There’s also a sense that we knew this was going to happen at some stage, London’s always going to be a target for this type of thing and has been in the past. So thankfully the emergency services were extremely well prepared and were able to cope with the situation.

I think everything should return to normal pretty quickly but people will be pretty shaky for a wee while which is understandable.

rockin'!

Went to see fab band Rilo Kiley last night at Koko in Camden. Band were good but I think I overdosed a bit on their CDs a few months ago! Good sound though with small extra horn section. They finished with a cover of Pete Townshend's 'Let My Love Open the Door' which is a bit of a favourite of mine.

Koko is a lovely refurbished old theatre with chandeliers, mirrors and lots of burgundy walls. Very confusing layout - I got lost in the toilet maze! Nice and convenient for us though - I'd in fact got the date of the concert wrong and had to do a dash down there at 9pm.

selected!

Big cheer in the building today when it was announced that London had been selected to hold the 2012 Olympic Games. Don't know if I'll still be living here then, but it's a great opportunity to revive part of East London and also an impetus to make the transportation system much better.