Terminates Here

Comics stuff

2012-02-08T08:41:00.010Z

I've been a fan of comics for as long as I can remember. I started off as a kid with Buster, moved on to Battle and then 2000AD. Moving to London aged 17 I fell in with a bad crowd and got onto the hard stuff - Watchmen and V for Vendetta. I've never really been a fan of the Superhero comic, most of the comics I read ended up in the DC Vertigo line, so I suppose they would be classed as horror. For some reason I always preferred DC and didn't really get into any Marvel lines and I seemed to gravitate towards English writers, although that maybe because there was such an explosion of talent in the mid-80s and early 90s.

In the late 80's I started collecting original comic artwork, thanks mostly to the now defunct Comic Showcase store on Neal Street. I think my first purchase was a blue line from V for Vendetta.

In the mid 90's a wrote and drew my own tongue in cheek, derivative comic. 8 whole pages of Section 6, a superhero team of inept squatters. It was actually published in a small press anthology, but all 8 pages were shrunk to 1 side of A5 which didn't really do it justice (or maybe it did). I'm planning to put together an "Absolute" edition of the comic for my friends who were featured in it.

Anyway, to the point of this post. I follow quite a few comic artists on Twitter and in the last 2 days I saw a couple of links I felt I needed to share. David Peterson, author and artist of the fantastic Mouseguard comics (@mouseguard on Twitter) posted on his blog about his process. It's a fascinating and educational look at one artist's methods.

Neill Cameron, author and artist for Mo-Bot High (@neillcameron on Twitter) posted a link to a Disney "Comic Strip Artist's Kit". The Disney kit has been around for over 35 years but is just as relevant today.

As to my process, looking back at the sketches from about 15 years ago it appears to be: Make a doodle during a particularly boring meeting at work; base whole comic around single doodle. I did actually do thumbnails of each page, although they sometimes differed radically from the finished page. I definitely didn't plan how much text was going to go in each panel. In fact, in order to fit the text in and make it readable, after drawing the comics on A4 paper I photocopied them and blew them up to A3, re-inked them and then created text panels and speech bubbles on another sheet of paper, cut them out and glued them onto the A3 pages.

If you're interested in creating comics I recommend Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud and How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema. There are lots of other good books out there too.

If you have children and you want to get them into comics and reading, check out The Phoenix Comic, a great new comic for kids with some of the top UK writers and artists working on it, which includes Neill Cameron's How to Make Awesome Comics.

For a taster of comic talent in the UK now you should read Nelson edited by Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix, a completely brilliant anthology. 54 British comic artists come together to write the story of Nel, from 1968 to the present day with each artist tackling 1 day in the life of Nel for each year of her life.

In other comics news, DC have announced a slew of Watchmen prequels. Hrrm.

The Firelight Isle

2011-12-05T09:51:00.006Z

Paul Duffield, artist extraordinaire of online comic FreakAngels, is starting a project for a new online comic The Firelight Isle. The project is looking for funding on Indiegogo:

A Couple More Kickstarters

2011-10-18T13:11:00.006+01:00

Here are a couple more Kickstarters I'm following or backing:

Effigy Miniatures is Tom Mason's Kickstarter to fund his project to go it alone producing his own miniature lines. I'm backing this as the sculpts for his Sci-Fi line look fantastic.

Warparty is Mark H. Walker's fantasy battle game that combines Axis & Allies style play with Dungeons and Dragons. There's a bit of roleplay and a lot of strategy. It looks like it should be a fun game from the demo video.

Also, my Coffee Joulies from a previous Kickstarter arrived this week. I tested them at home, but I keep forgetting to bring one in for work.

Domesday Reloaded

2011-05-12T13:01:00.000+01:00

The BBC has today relaunched their 1980's Domesday project on the web as Domeday Reloaded. The project started in 1986 and over a million members of the public contributed to it, collecting data about their local area that they thought would be interesting in 1,000 years time. The data was then packed onto 2 special laser disks that could only be read by a BBC Master computer running special software. Due to quick obsolescence of the hardware, the data soon became almost impossible to access.

Recently a team has taken the disks and painstakingly taken the analog data from them to recreate it all on a website.

The project split the country into 23,000 squares, or D-Blocks and each was assigned to a volunteer to record. I remember going on walks with my Dad in 1986 to take pictures of our assigned D-Blocks.

eBay auctions

2011-05-10T11:07:00.004+01:00

Just a quick post to plug the eBay auctions I have up this week. There are a few Joe Ledbetter Finders Keepers figures from Kid Robot, some Minimates Lord of the rings figures, and an exclusive Palisades Adventure Kermit figure, which is Kermit in Indiana Jones costume with a whip and a gold Gonzo idol.

There are also a few vintage cameras and some cosmetics that I have put up for my wife, including a hard to find MAC Hello Kitty compact.

Kickstarter

2011-05-06T14:26:00.005+01:00

I've become a bit of a Kickstarter addict. If you haven't heard of it, it's a way for projects to crowdsource fundraising. The project generally has a video and some text to describe it and various levels that users can pledge funding towards the project and get rewards. If you back a project and it meets its funding target the money is taken from your Amazon account. If it doesn't meet its target the project doesn't get any money and nothing come out of your account. Kickstarter takes 5% of the total, and I think Amazon takes another 5%.

I'm currently backing 2 active Kickstarter projects, both of which are gaming related: DungeonMorph dice and Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.

You can pledge as little as $1, which might get you a mention on the project's website. Larger amounts have better rewards, such as downloads of the finished product in the case of music or film projects, or the actual physical product if it is a board game or electronics project. Some of the projects have pledges in the thousands of dollars with exclusive rewards, like being a guest at a film premier.
Previously I've backed a couple of short animated films:

And Coffee Joulies, something to cool your coffee to drinking temperature and then keep it warm. This project had a goal of $9,500 but proved so popular that they actually raised more than $300,000 in funding!

One that I'm not currently backing, but I'm tempted to once my current active ones have finished is The Troll Bridge. An Australian film company is trying to complete their film version of a Terry Pratchett story:

There are lots of projects in all sorts of areas, from fashion to film to food so have a browse around the site and see if you can help someone get their project off the ground.

New baby and moving soon

2011-05-05T09:15:00.002+01:00

We've had a new baby - Louis Jack Tysoe was born on 24th Jan 2011 weighing 9lb 4oz.

And, we're nearly ready to move house again. Hopefully we are going to be exchanging contracts by the end of the week, and then we just have to complete. After that we're going to get the kitchen knocked through to the dining room, a new kitchen put in, a new boiler, wooden floors downstairs and new carpets upstairs and the whole place redecorated, so hopefully we'll be ready to move in 2-3 months.

Saving money while you commute and earning money online

2011-05-04T15:25:00.015+01:00

I’m trying to win an iPad 2 in the iSave, iWrite, iPad competition from PlayPennies.com! So here's a money saving tip:

As a long suffering user of London Underground, and having moved house so my commute has increased from 25 minutes to over an hour, I was happy when a friend showed me My Tube Was LATE.com. It's a handy site that, once you have set up your details, automatically fills out the forms for you to get a refund from Transport For London whenever your Tube journey is delayed by 15 minutes or more. If you let it know the normal times of your journeys and the lines you take it even emails you to tell you when a line was delayed that might have affected your journey. It just takes a few clicks, then sit back and wait for your refund voucher to be sent through the post.

Typically my journey hasn't been delayed for a few weeks, but I still have a pile of vouchers waiting to be cashed in when I buy a new travel card. I may even be able to claim back more than the daily cost of a ticket during the upcoming Tube strikes, if I don't choose to ~~watch CBeebies all day~~ work from home.

Not only will you save money, but it might even make the Tubes more punctual. If everyone on the Jubilee line used this service I imagine it would make Boris cry!

I also make a bit of extra money working online with clickworker.com. Clickworker is a site to distribute crowdsourced work. I do all the work while watching TV or looking after the baby. The work can be anything from writing about travel destinations (most of which I've never been to) or researching companies online. Last month I earned more than €60, paid straight into my paypal account. Just 20 more months like that and I can afford the rest of the Star Wars Stormtrooper armour that my wife won't let me have.

If you sign up to clickworker.com through my link and earn $10 I will earn $5 for referring you.

Watch out for free listing days on eBay. It's free listings all this weekend, so it's a good time to clear out your cupboards. Take a good picture of the item you want to sell (the first picture is free but you pay more for extra pictures) and weigh the item to work out the postage cost at RoyalMail.com (don't forget to add the cost of any packaging like a jiffy bag). I normally offer more than one postage rate so that people don't have to choose 1st class recorded mail if they don't want to. Set a sensible starting price. Have a look to see if other people are selling the same item, or check the completed listings to see what it has sold for previously. There's nothing wrong with starting at 99p, if your item is going to sell people will bid the price up anyway.

I'm selling some ~~junk~~ valuable collectibles that have just been sitting in a cupboard taking up space. Hopefully they will fetch a good price and add to my Stormtrooper armour fund.

Visit PlayPennies.com for more money saving ideas for pennywise parents.

Another year (and a half) goes by

2010-12-02T13:03:00.003Z

It's more than 18 months since I last posted here. In that time we've moved house to Essex (although we're still on the Tube) and we're expecting another baby (a boy, in January. Still not thought of a name yet).

Julian's Journal, March 12 2009

2009-03-12T12:00:00.004Z

Saw Watchmen last night. Hrrm.

As you might be able to tell from the previous post, I'm a bit of a Watchmen fan, so I've been waiting 20 years for the film to come out, and I think it was worth it. If you haven't seen the film then be warned - ahead be spoilers.

First off, the casting was great. Each of the main characters was pretty much spot on. Jackie Earle Haley was excellent as Rorschach, Patrick Wilson was great as Dan Dreiberg and Malin Akerman was just right as Laurie Jupiter.

While the film for the most part stuck to the story and structure of the comic, a lot had to be cut away to fit it into 150 minutes. All the sub-plots were stripped away, which pretty much meant the ending had to be changed. All of the newsstand scenes were removed, so that meant that all the stories of the newsstand customers were gone, along with the parallel story of The Black Freighter. The newsstand is there in the shots of the intersection, but we only really see the newsstand owner and the comic-reading boy right at the end.

Visually the film follows the comic pretty well. Little things like the neon sign outside Moloch's apartment stood out, and, like Snyder's previous work 300, frames from the comic continually stand out.

I understand that The Black Freighter will be included with the DVD, and a film version of Under The Hood (you know, after all these years I just got the joke that Hollis Mason is a mechanic as I typed that). I'm not sure how The Black Freighter will fit in without the newsstand scenes as context.

Overall I really enjoyed the film and I'm looking forward to seeing it again to catch more of the little details and references. I think Dr Manhattan would give it a 4 thumbs up.

I know Alan Moore is not associated with the film, but without him there would be no Watchmen.

The man who wasn't there

2009-03-06T22:44:00.002Z

I noticed today that the pictures of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons on Wikipedia are missing something. Namely, me:

Fanboy that I am.

Nearly another year passes

2009-02-28T13:55:00.002Z

As usual it's almost a year since I posted. I don't think I've got the hang of this blogging thing. Since I last posted I have drunk a lot more beer and gained a son (those two facts aren't necessarily related). Joe was born on 30th October 2008 and he's now 13lb. His hobbies are singing loudly at 7am, watching Diagnosis Murder, bouncing in his bouncy chair and standing up with someone holding his arms (he thinks he can stand up without anyone holding his arms but he's wrong). His legs know how to crawl but his arms don't, so he's not very mobile.

We're trying to get the flat tidied up ready to sell up and move to North East London so we'll have more than one bedroom and a garden.

Bloody typical

2008-05-29T11:19:00.004+01:00

So, typically, just as I start blogging a bit more regularly again, I lose my internet connection at home.

I went out last Thursday evening and met up with a friend at The French House in Soho. A lovely little bar, with lots of character, but it only sells John Smith's extra smooth on tap or Theakston's Old Peculier in bottles. They also don't do pints, and they don't allow mobile phones. It was a hot day and the cold John Smith's was quite refreshing and went down surprisingly well. I used to drink proper John Smith's all the time, but I'm not a fan of pressurized bitters. I had a couple of bottles of Old Peculier, and a Duvel too. While we were there Peter O'Toole popped in and stood right next to me! Which was nice.

Friday evening I discovered our internet connection was down, and it has been down ever since. Tiscali technical support are useless, except to tell us that it is a problem at the exchange and their engineers are working on it. They appear to have no idea what the problem is or when it will be fixed.

In the meantime I've drunk a few more ales from Suffolk, but I guess I'll have to sample them all again if I'm going to review them.

Ridley's Old Bob

2008-05-21T20:26:00.003+01:00

Ok, I know. Ridley's were an Essex brewery, but, like so many breweries, they are now owned by Greene King and Old Bob is brewed in Bury St. Edmunds, as are the other 2 beers in the picture. I hope I don't offend anyone by counting these as Suffolk beers, but I was too lazy to walk to Hammersmith to look for more beer.

I had this beer with a vegetable casserole and the two went together well. The initial aroma was quite chocolaty, followed by the scent of hops. The taste is full bodied, not as overpowering as some of the stronger ales, which this isn't at 5.1%, but it's good for sipping or gulping, which is the kind of beer I like! It's a good, proper, no-nonsense bitter. The bottle says that it is "rich and spicy", but since I've been drinking stronger beers the last couple of days I can't say I agree. At least it doesn't say it has a fruitcake aroma. It does say it is a twice gold medal winner, but it doesn't say where.

Adnams Broadside

2008-05-20T20:43:00.009+01:00

Tonight's beer is Adnams Broadside, possibly not the best accompaniment to pasta and pesto as it is another strong dark ale. It has an earthy aroma and a treacly taste. Like many strong ales, the bottle describes it as having an aroma of fruit cake. While it is a good beer, it's a little strong tasting to drink more than a couple of bottles of, which is probably just as well as it is a strong beer at 6.3%.

As an aside, Adnams use the wonderful iconic lino engravings of Christopher Wormell on their beermats and advertising. You can't fail to recognise an Adnams beermat. He is also (I should say primarily) an illustrator and has produced some wonderful children's books like The New Alphabet of Animals and Teeth, Tails and Tentacles.

You can buy Christopher Wormell's work from The Illustration Cupboard.

Beer, beer, beer

2008-05-19T22:15:00.003+01:00

I think I've found something to write about since I'm not moaning about London Underground so much. Beer. At the moment I'm drinking a bottle a night, for purely medicinal purposes of course. This week I'm trying out Suffolk beers, as my wife is from Suffolk, there are plenty of breweries there, it's fairly local to London, and I like Suffolk beers.

The following "reviews" have already been posted on the Beer thread at Neil Gaiman's boards.

Greene King Strong Suffolk Vintage Ale, bought by my wife as she is originally from Suffolk.
To start with, the bottle says that it is "a unique blend of two classic ales, BPA and Old 5X. Old 5X is aged in oak for 2 years". I don't think I've ever had a blended ale before, or a 2 year old one (except perhaps from one of those pubs that only sells 1 pint of bitter a month, so the beer has been sat in the cellar for 2 years in an aluminium cask).

This beer is good. Very good. It's strong at 6%, dark, and quite sweet. On first taste it reminded me of honey, but the notes on the back say it has a spicy, fruitcake aroma and flavours of oak, caramel and burnt toffee, which I can't disagree with. I probably couldn't drink more than a couple of them at a time, but it goes very well with food. Highly recommended!

Tonight I have a bottle of Adnams East Green Carbon Neutral Beer.

Immediately on popping the cap I could smell the fresh, crisp aroma. it's a fairly light beer, both in colour and strength at 4.3%, with a fresh, crisp taste to match the aroma and a light citrus hoppy flavour. (I decided to describe the flavour in my own words and found I was very close to the way they described it on the bottle, so this thread is educating my palate.)

It is made at their new brewery in East Green, Southwold, which is the UK's newest and, they believe, most energy efficient. The Adnams bottles across the range now use 33% less glass and feel quite lightweight and delicate. The ingredients for this beer were locally sourced (Maris Otter malted barley, Boadicea hops) and the with a little offsetting it makes the beer carbon neutral.

I think this will become another favourite, as it is light enough to drink at lunchtime. MrsK says she has had so many sips of real ales in the last 2 weeks that the baby will be born with a beard.

Another year?

2008-04-16T19:09:00.000+01:00

I can't believe yet another year has passed since I posted.

Must try harder.

Wembley Stadium

2007-05-27T18:39:00.000+01:00

Just got back from the new Wembley Stadium where we went to see Yeovil vs Blackpool in the Division 1 play off final. Blackpool deservedly won 2-0.

The new stadium is stunning. Coming up Wembley Way, the arch dominates the skyline with the statue of Bobby Moore visible below it. We stood and watched the fans come up from Wembley Station waiting for our Blackpool supporting friends and then our Yeovil supporting friends. We walked round to gate A and got in quickly (the majority of the fans were already inside). Escalators whisked us up to level 5. The view back out over London would have been amazing if it weren't for the low cloud and rain. Fortunately the whole stadium is now covered (although the pitch was uncovered for the match) so the rain didn't effect us. The top tier seating is steeply pitched, steeper than any stadium I've been to in the UK, but less than Yankee Stadium. There is loads of leg room and elbow room.

We'll be going again in a couple of weeks to see George Michael, so we'll get to see the view from the pitch.

The Nuclear Gang

2006-01-16T17:55:00.000Z

What exactly can the UN do to Iran, the worlds 4th largest oil producer?

Sanctions, as we know, don't work. If we enforce sanctions we turn the Iranian people against us, they suffer, and the Iranian goverment says "Screw you guys, we're taking our oil and going home". So the price of oil goes up again, Bush's Saudi cronies make even more money, a percentage of which they give to fundamentalist madrassas who indoctrinate young muslims into hating the west.

An invasion? If you thought Iraq was a clusterfuck then Iran would be your worst nightmare. A large majority of the people support the government. Those who don't are even more hardline. The type of Iranian who would support UN military action got the fuck out of Persia a long time ago.

Surgical strikes on nuclear facilities? Well, we all know how accurate these surgical strikes are. At the merest whiff of a threat of surgical strikes you will have a few thousand hardline women and children sitting on top of those nuclear facilities burning American flags and singing the Iranian equivalent of "We shall overcome". Then the government will say "Screw you guys, we're taking our oil and going home".

The Iranian government says they want nuclear power. The Iranian people can see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to have nuclear power. "Hell, the French are allowed to have nuclear power and the whole world knows that they are cheese eating surrender monkeys, so why can't we have nuclear power?".

Now, rightly or wrongly, the rest of the world thinks that Iran wants to make nuclear weapons. What is Iran going to use it's nuclear weapons for? A deterrent? The UK has nuclear weapons and we say it is a deterrent. Why shouldn't the Iranians have a deterrent? It's not like the UK has a neighbour who has recently been invaded by a bellicose nation on the back of lies and poor intelligence who have been fomenting war in the region for decades.

Is the Iranian government stupid enough to actually use nuclear weapons? What do they, and the rest of the world, think will happen if they were to use nuclear weapons? They would be bombed so far back into the past that the stone age would look like the distant future.

Tony Blair and his government keep telling us that we have to have nuclear power, it's clean, it's safe, it's the way forward. But those dodgy Iranians can keep burning their dirty oil.

So I ask again, what exactly does the UN think it can do?

Frankly if I was the Iranian president I'd be doing the "screw you" speech right now, before the UN do anything. Let's see how the UN feel about letting Iran have nuclear power when Iran says "if we can't have nuclear power we'll have to double the price of our oil so that we can afford to clean up after our oil fired power stations".

Here's an idea for the UN:

Instead of sabre rattling and sanctions, how about calling Iran's bluff? Iran is a bloody great desert. The sun beats down on it the whole time. We have the technology to capture that solar energy and turn it into electricity. George Bush thinks technological change is the way out of global warming. So why don't we offer to build the Iranians the mother of all solar plants? It'll be clean and efficient. The Iranians will get their hands on some technology that won't cause their fingernails to fall off and their palms to grow hairs. If Iran is serious about only wanting the nuclear facilities to create electricity they can't complain. They'll get the whole lot for free and we won't have to send our troops halfway round the world to protect the oil that we'll be paying twice as much for as we did last year.

Straight Outta Camden (via Charing Cross)

2006-01-16T14:26:00.000Z

When I hear the new(ish) recorded announcement for Oystercard that is repeated at Tube stations which tells us that they are available "daily, weekly, monthly and yearly" it always reminds me of NWA's Straight Outta Compton. For those that don't know the track, there is a sublime version available for download from Nina Gordon's (from Veruca Salt) website. Be warned - this song is definitely not suitable for work, your mother, or your children, or anyone who is easily offended by foul language.

Red line news

2006-01-15T19:42:00.000Z

I just wrote a post about the red line and my damn Dell laptop overheated and shutdown just as I was about to save it. Let's see if I can get it posted before it shuts down again. (This time the laptop is propped up on 4 empty fag packets to let some air circulate. These are old fag packets as I have still given up smoking, despite the mother-in-law bringing us 200 cigarettes back from holiday.)

A friend of my wife pointed out that the red line closely follows the postcode divisions in that area, which you can see at streetmap.co.uk, where it is marked with a red line! It's close to the red line for a lot of the route, but strays where the line goes down Neal St. and Long Acre, again around Chancery Lane and is a bit to the East at the start of the line.

Where Tottenham Court Road meets Euston Road the postcode division is set slightly to the South of Euston Road and there is a T-junction of postcodes. The map is not quite up to date as that area is where the new University College Hospital building is. This convergence of post codes means that the front entrance to the building is in NW1, the rear entrance is in W1 and the ambulance entrance is in WC1. One of the lifts must be in all 3 postcodes.

Feeling Mooreish

2006-01-13T20:57:00.000Z

Today I booked tickets for Alan Moore on Gothic Nightmares at the Tate Britain. I've had a bit of a Mooreish week. I heard on Wednesday that Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore would be "in conversation" at the Vanbrugh Theatre on Malet Street next Wednesday. I went down to Blackwells bookshop to buy tickets yesterday only to find out it had been advertised in Metro that morning and had sold out. I bought myself the hardback of V for Vendetta to console myself (and a signed copy of China Mieville's Looking for Jake and Other Stories).

At lunchtime today I was fidgety and bored (I should add that I gave up smoking last Monday, which might explain the flurry of posts over the last 2 weeks compared to the previous 2 years). I hopped on a bus with the intention of going to Forbidden Planet, my normal bored lunchtime destination. On the way down Gower Street I decided to get off at Museum Street and visit Gosh instead (for the uninitiated Forbidden Planet and Gosh are comic shops). I had been tempted by the new Absolute Watchmen in Forbidden Planet, but at £50 it was a little too much to justify having a 3rd copy of Watchmen (not to mention the £190 I'd like to spend on the new editions of Frank Miller's Sin City). In Gosh however it was just £35 so I grabbed a copy. Chatting with the guys at the till about Alan Moore they told me that he no longer autographs any of his works that he doesn't wholly own, due to a falling out with DC. They then told me about the talk/tour that Alan Moore was doing at the Tate Britain.

V for Vendetta was supposed to have been released in the cinemas on November 4th last year to coincide with Bonfire Night. Due to the scenes where a Tube is blown up it has been delayed until March. I'm unsure what to think of the film since most film versions of comics, particularly British comics, are appalling, I'm not going to hold my breath. Judge Dredd and Tank Girl spring to mind. From Hell is an exception, although it does not really do the comic justice it is a good film. I haven't watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but from what I've heard I'm lucky. I also haven't seen Constantine (who started out as a character in Moore's Swamp Thing). I have heard good things about Constantine, but I can't understand why a blonde English character should be played by Keanu Reeves. Watchmen is allegedly in pre-production, again.

V for Vendetta stars Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving, supported by John Hurt, Sinead Cusack, Stephen Fry and various others, so it has some things going for it from the start. On the other hand it is written by the Wachowski Brothers and I never got sucked into the Matrix. I understand they have changed the setting, or at least moved it forward in time (I have heard that the Watchmen screenplay is suffering the same fate). Alan Moore is not happy with the film, but I'm going to reserve judgement until I see it.

The End of the Line!

2006-01-11T08:46:00.000Z

Passing UCLH this morning I saw Camden Council employees busily attempting to remove the line by painting it with some greasy stuff and spraying it with a high-powered water jet. Is this the end of the line?

Council worker Ripley: Uh oh. I made a clean spot here. Now I've done it. Guess I'll just have to do the whole thing. Hard to believe...there's a pavement under all this.

Thin Red Line News!

2006-01-10T20:45:00.000Z

The Thin Red Line was on BBC London News this evening. Camden Council deny responsibility (well the representative of Camden Council wouldn't actually say anything on camera, but the BBC said he denied it), as do Transport for London and the electricity suppliers. The BBC theorised that it could be graffiti, a utility company or a drunken prank. I think I've heard those theories before...

The BBC claimed that it started on Euston Road and finished at the Embankment, but I still say that the solidity of the line indicates that it starts at Embankment and fizzles out on Euston Road.

Stop killing Orangutans. Yes, I'm talking to you.

2006-01-10T14:00:00.000Z

Ok, so today I move from moaning about parochial problems to something a bit more international.

5 years ago my wife and I went on holiday to Borneo. We had taken a train to my mother's one weekend and someone had left the colour supplement from the Mail or some such paper on the train. Flicking through it we came across an advert for a Kuoni holiday to Borneo. We hadn't had a holiday that year so when we got home I looked into it. Included in the holiday was the flights, 10 nights at a 4 star hotel and 3 excursions and the total price was less than the cheapest return flights I could find on the internet, so we thought we'd go for it.

Now I have to admit that even up to a week before we went away I thought that Borneo was that big island off the East coast of Africa. It turns out that island is Madagascar and Borneo is the even bigger island half way to Australia. I had wondered why the flight was going to take quite so long.

Anyway, the holiday was very nice, thankyou. One of the trips was to Sepilok Orangutan rehabilitation center on the East coast of Malaysian Borneo. We were staying on the West coast at Kota Kinabalu so flights were laid on. Flying across the country was amazing. Looking out of the window at miles and miles of rainforest. Except that it wasn't. Closer inspection showed the trees to be regimented lines of palm oil trees.

Seeing the Orangutans at Sepilok is one of those experiences that you have to do for yourself. I can't really describe the sense of wonder at being confronted by these large, intelligent, gentle animals in the rainforest.

But the reason they are in the rehabilitation center is the palm oil plantations. Every minute an area the size of 3 football pitches is cut down, ostensibly to create palm oil plantations. The reality is slightly more complicated - palm oil can just as easily be grown on already degraded land, of which there is plenty available. The fact is that the palm oil producers can make a fast profit by clearing an area and then selling the logs without having to grow a single palm. After the logging comes the burning.

Palm oil is used in many everyday products including ice cream, chocolate, biscuits, crisps, soap, toothpaste and cosmetics. In the UK it is often labelled as simply vegetable oil. A recent survey by Friends of the Earth revealed that most UK companies don't know where their palm oil originates. This is where you can help. If you visit www.safepalmoil.org you will find pre-printed letters on their "How to Help" page that you can send to the main UK supermarkets, asking them to ensure that their palm oil supplies and those of the manufacturers they stock are sourced from non-destructive, sustainable sources.

You might wonder why I brought this up today. Well, my wife is a member of the freecycle London email list and recently there was a request for medical books from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK for help with medical books and all things medical. As I work in a hospital, and as we recently moved from our old building to our nice new shiny building, I was pretty sure we had left some of our old books behind. So I picked up a few bags of BNF's and other assorted medical books and today handed them over to Michelle Desilets who is a director of BOS.

You can see the work of BOS on BBC2 tonight at 7:30 on their program Apes in Danger.

In local news - Londonist has reported on the Thin Red Line, including a handy map and a picture. One of their commenters suggests it might be a piece of work by Banksy, as he did a white line on the riverside. I hope so as I am a fan of Banksy's works.

RMT down the Tubes

2006-01-09T14:54:00.000Z

I'm on annual leave today as I didn't want to take the risk of having to walk to or from work during today's Tube strike by the RMT and the wildcat strike on the Northen Line. It looks like I needn't have worried.

Now, I'm a union member and I'm all for strong unions. Generally I support the Tube unions when they strike, whether it be over safety issues or getting a better deal, but today's strikes are pathetic and give the trade unions movement a bad name.

The RMT are striking over a disagreement on rosters, or that is what the union leadership would like us to believe. The fact is 40 out of 44 station groups have agreed the new rosters. The RMT is concerned that there will be not enough staff on duty at the stations. Perhaps this is because last year they went on strike to get a 35 hour working week? At the time Bob Crow and his dummy Bobby Law (you can get his phone number on the internet as some idiot released it to the press) celebrated the successful negotiation of the deal by telling his members that they now had 43% of the working year off (they get 52 days a year off now). Maybe they should come and work for the NHS where everyone is being moved onto a 37.5 hour working week and 27 days annual leave. Don't forget the RMT guys don't actually drive trains. The RMT guys are the ones who are "responsible" for looking after the stations. These are the guys who let you wait 1/2 hour before giving you incorrect information, or, in the case of Shepherds Bush H&C line station are responsible for standing around outside smoking and turning a blind eye to fare dodgers.

Meanwhile te ASLEF drivers on the Northern Line are holding a wildcat strike in support of a sacked driver and seem to be doing a better job than Bob Crow's lot (maybe because he was sunning himself in Egypt when he should have been organising the strike or negotiating a deal). A comment on the Going Underground blog sheds a little light on the situation. It seems that the sacked driver went through a closed station at 29mph, 24mph faster than he should have done, then failed to stop at the next station, then lied about the whole incident.

And the Tube unions are always telling us they have our safety in mind?

The only good thing to come out of this is that the RMT strike seems to be a bigger failure than the New Year's Eve strike. Bob Crow has shot himself in his suntanned foot and RMT members aren't supporting him. It wasn't that long ago you needed lines of police and baton charges to break a union, now you can just leave it to the idiots in charge.

There and Back Again (or The Ends of the Line)

2006-01-07T17:12:00.000Z

Today I went out to investigate the line. Anything to take my mind off being a non-smoker for 6 days. I took the Tube to Temple and walked back to the end of the line I had discovered yesterday, along to Waterloo Bridge and over to the South Bank (I actually had my passport with me, just in case). I walked along past the National Theatre and the back of London Studios but there was no sign of the line, so I went deeper into South London and looked along the road at the front of London Studios and the back of the National Theatre. Still no sign of the line. I did see the back of the London Duck Tours DUKW though.

I walked back over Waterloo Bridge and up to Covent Garden for a detour to Seven Dials and a quick visit to the London Transport Museum shop, then took the Tube up to Kings Cross. Walking alog the South side of Euston Road there was no sign of the line, so I crossed over just West of the British Museum at Mabledon Place. No sign of the line there either, but a few yards along I could see the line on the other side of the road so I crossed back over. Disappointingly the line petered out at the Westbound Mabledon Place bus stop.

So, from the evidence I've gathered the line appears to start at Victoria Embankment, runs for about 3 miles (I'm guessing that based on how long it took me to walk it) and eventually just runs out (literally, there's a few splodges and it just ends). Of course, the line may not be complete. Someone maybe along next week to continue it South of the river and East of Mabledon place. Or it could be just a drunken prank, but it seems a bit much to think a drunk would walk 3 miles laying a neat line along the pavement, carefully skipping the roads.

The Thin Red Line

2006-01-06T14:13:00.000Z

Walking to work from Euston Square Tube Station (don't get me started on London Underground, this morning was another pathetic display of incompetence) I noticed a red line painted on the pavement. I followed it along Euston Road past UCLH and round the corner onto Tottenham Court Road, where it continued while I went into my office.

I jokingly asked the art curator if it was a new piece of art for the hospital. He said he had seen the line at Kings Cross and followed it up to the hospital. So at lunchtime I endeavoured to follow it to one end. Before setting off I jokingly said I would take a picture of St Brides church on Fleet St. as I went past it.

I headed down Tottenham Court Road following the line. The line is evenly painted and appears to have been done by a machine. It stops at each road intersection and continues the other side when the pavement starts again. At around Store St. I was waiting to cross the road with 2 policemen so I asked if they knew what it was for. One of them suggested it might be for a fibre optic cable. The line continued to the end of TCR and turned left into New Oxford St. then crossed over almost immediately, through Centrepoint via St Giles, across the top of Shaftesbury Ave. then up Neal Street. At the end of Neal Street it turned left into Long Acre, past the Masonic building, along Great Queen Street to Kingsway where it turned left upto High Holborn. Along High Holborn to Chancery Lane, then right into Fleet Street, where I took a picture of St Brides (with RM2071), along the Strand a bit before turning left into Surrey Street, where it appeared to end at Temple Place, except I cut round to Victoria Embankment where it came out of a wall again to cross over the road only to end again at the river, at the pier for El Barco Latino.

I didn't have time to cross the river and search the opposite side to see if the line continues there.

Does anyone know what this line is for? Next week I will follow it north past Kings Cross and see where it goes and take the Tube to Waterloo and look for the line again South of the river.

Bloomsbury

2005-12-19T17:29:00.000Z

Walking along one of the sidestreets parallel to Gower Street I heard a harsh screeching from the narrow strip of grass, trees and bushes the other side of the road. It sounded like squirrels mating or a corvid warning call. I crossed the road and spotted 2 angry Jays sitting in a tree, along with a female blackbird and a tit. The Jays were furious, screeching at something on the ground and hopping from branch to branch. I couldn't see anything on the ground that might be angering them, so I hung around to see if they would do anything.

The Jays hopped around and screeched, and suddenly I saw a flash of white. A tabby with a white bib was sitting under a bush, totally camouflaged until it raised its head revealing its bib. The cat looked at me as if to say "I don't know what all the fuss is about", so I spoke to the cat for a bit while it continued to proclaim its innocence in the whole affair and the birds continued to screech noisily at it. After a few minutes the cat got up and slinked further into the bushes in an attempt to be forgotten.

The Sleeper Wakes

2005-09-29T18:40:00.000+01:00

I can't believe a year has passed since I last posted. I am obviously not as bitter as I thought, although in my defence the Hammersmith & City line has been a lot better this year, but it seems to be deteriorating again. Only once have I had to change trains 3 times at Edgware Road before they decided which one was actually going to go to Hammersmith.

Mail Fraud

2004-07-21T11:06:00.000+01:00

Time to set my sights on Royal Mail (or the delivery company formerly known as Consignia, formerly known as Royal Mail).

When I returned from work on Monday there was a card through the letterbox stating that they had tried to deliver a parcel that was too big for the letterbox. I brought the card into work with me yesterday and called up the post office to get them to re-deliver the parcel today, as my wife will be at home. The person who answered the phone took the details of the parcel and put me on hold (that wonderful rendition of Greensleeves). When they returned they said the parcel was not back at the depot, and must be at the post office. They took my number and said they would call me back when the parcel arrived back at the depot.

This morning, as I left the house, I spotted a parcel, cunningly concealed under 2 rolls of recycling bags. Now, that parcel was not there when I got home yesterday so it must have been left this morning, when both my wife and I were in. I might be a heavy sleeper, but I'd hear the doorbell if it rang. So the postman took the time to conceal the parcel but couldn't be bothered to ring the door bell.

Now, I was expecting 3 parcels. Since the post office didn't call back, I have no idea if this is the parcel they tried to deliver on Monday or one of the other parcels.

Feeling Groovy

2004-07-16T10:34:00.000+01:00

Well, I've burnt out ranting about London Underground, so it's time to move on to another target.

Yesterday I spent my entire lunch hour attempting to purchase an England Home shirt with "authentic" lettering from JJB sports for my niece's birthday present. I selected my shirt from the JJB store at The Plaza, Oxford Street, London, and queued up to pay for it (only half of the tills were manned). Then I joined the queue for shirt printing. There were 5 people in front of me in the queue and only one person doing the printing.
After 20 minutes I reached the front of the queue, handed over my shirt and requested my name and number, only to be told that the store was out of "E"s. Since the England UEFA Euro 2004 27 man squad was made up of James, Bridge, Campbell, Cole, Southgate, Woodgate, Neville, Neville, Terry, Walker, Cole, Beckham, Carragher, Scholes, Dyer, Gerrard, Hargreaves, Owen, Heskey, Vassell and Rooney whose names all include an "E", this leaves only Robinson, Kirkland, Butt and King (2 of which didn't actually play in the finals) available to customers.

On the way back from Oxford Street, I jumped on a 73 bus back to the ofice. They recently changed the bus stop at the start of Tottenham Court Road so that all the buses that go to Kings Cross now don't stop there but round the corner on Oxford Street. Obviously most of the passengers haven't noticed this, as they still stand at the wrong bus stop and wave their arms irately as the bus goes by, while those waiting to leave the bus have to wait until the next stop. That is, unless the bus slows down and they decide to jump off, as happened yesterday. A bunch of people decided to jump off as the bus slowed for the endless roadworks on TCR. The first few people made it, but the last lady was too slow and went sprawling along the road, while one of the successful dismounters stood by laughing her head off.
Many people say that this particular safety aspect of the old Routemasters is reason enough to take them out of service. I say it is natural selection in action (although I have to admit to doing the same thing some 17 years ago).

And finally... Just to prove that I'm not always complaining about things, I went to see Simon and Garfunkel last night. Well, I didn't so much go to see them as sit in the park next to where they were playing to a paying audience and watch the screens and listen to the music. I can't have had a much worse view than those in the back of the paying customers, although I couldn't actually see them on stage.
Now I'm not old enough to remember them from the first time around, but they bring back a memory of childhood car journeys and summertime. They played just about all their standards and had the Everly Brothers join them on stage for a few songs. As my wife pointed out, from that distance, they didn't look much different from 1966.

Normal service is resumed

2004-06-22T09:13:00.000+01:00

Not much to report for the rest of last week, Thursday evening's train ran fine, as did Friday morning's and evening's.

Monday morning I arrived at Goldhawk Road at 8:12 to find a notice saying the next train would not be leaving Hammersmith until 8:25. I thought about walking up to Shepherds Bush Central line, but it being Monday morning I decided I could take the extra 10 minute wait to sit down and read Metro. When I got to the platform I could see a train pulling out from Hammersmith anyway, so the advertised delay didn't occur.

In the evening, the board at the entrance to Euston Square said that the Metropolitan line was suspended, but the H&C had a "good service". By the time I got to the platform they were announcing severe delays to the Circle and H&C due to an earlier person under a train at Great Portland Street. To add insult to injury, a Met line train came through. Despite the reported delay, an H&C train turned up in 4 minutes and I got home at about the normal time.

Maybe this is a new London Underground customer satisfaction tactic - announcing non-existent delays to manage customer expectation.

Delayed

2004-06-17T09:04:00.000+01:00

I got to Euston Square to find the Metropolitan Line is suspended between Baker Street and Moorgate, which should free up the track for more Hammersmith and City trains, but for some reason they are announcing delays to the Circle and H&C line anyway. The train pulls in promptly enough, but by the time we get to Latimer Road we are delayed by the backlog of trains going into Hammersmith. I'm no line controller, but I'm sure it can't be that difficult to sort out trains so they smoothly run in and out of a terminus. Perhaps that is the problem, the H&C line has no controller.

This mornings journey was easy enough, and I even got a seat, so so far this week we have 71% reliability.

Track Failure

2004-06-16T10:18:00.000+01:00

Well, 4 hassle free journeys in a row would be too much to ask. Last night the Hammersmith and City line train arrived promptly at Euston Square (so I don't have an excuse to rant about the frequency of H&C line trains yet). I should have known something disastrous was about to happen as the front carriage was almost empty, so I had my pick of seats. When we reached Baker Street however, the driver announced that due to something on the track in the Westbourne Park area we were being held up and the likelihood was that the H&C line was going to be suspended. Sure enough, the platform announcer then announced the suspension. The train was held at Baker Street while the trains in front made it through Edgware Road. I got off at Edgware Road and joined the milling throngs between platforms 3 and 4, listening to the confusing advice from the tannoys. It really doesn't help for passengers to be advised to take the Wimbledon train on platform 2 when there is no train on platform 2. Eventually the Circle Line train on platform 3 pulled out and I changed at Notting Hill Gate for the Central line down to Shepherds Bush.

At least the communication of the problem was better than the last time, when I waited 1/2 hour for a Hammersmith train without any announcements being made, only to be told by a pimply faced customer service representative that there was no delay, it was a "reduced service".

The Rastafarian flautist who often plays outside Shepherds Bush Central line station wasn't there, which was a shame.

This morning's journey was relatively easy, although there were no seats free by the time the train had come 1 stop from Hammersmith and the train got quite busy, it didn't turn into a sauna like some mornings.

Nothing to report

2004-06-15T09:40:00.000+01:00

An easy journey home last night, although I was worried when the display showed the next train as being delayed, even as it was pulling into the station.

I seem to have got into the swing of arriving at Goldhawk Road just as my train is about to pull into the platform. This morning I resigned myself to standing, when I spotted that a seat was taken up by a woman's bag, so with a quick "excuse me", I got a seat. One stop further a man with crutches got on, so I gave up my seat.

First Train

2004-06-14T11:57:00.000+01:00

Since my wife has become addicted to London Underground blogs, and I'm getting tired of complaining about London Underground (and my colleagues are also getting tired of my complaining) I thought I'd start my own blog and try and record my daily journeys between Goldhawk Road and Euston Square.