London Magic Eye
December 9th, 2005
London has got to be one of my favourite places, I just like the buzz. The heightened anonymity. I’ve lost count how many times we’ve been, but last Saturday was the third time this year. I think it keeps me ticking over until I am in a position to go travelling over the world.
And Then There Were None
Waited for ages in a line outside the Odeon for some half-price tickets to the latest Agatha Christie stage adaptation “And Then There Were None”. It was performed at the Gielgud Theatre, a cozy little affair in the Soho area. We actually wandered through Soho killing time before it started, but then quickly made for the theatre foyer as you can’t really do anything else than stare fixedly ahead of you while walking down the cobbled streets lined with the plethora of sex shops. No sex please, we’re British.
The highlight of the play had to be the projectile vomiting–it was erm, realistic. We had front row seats, but luckily were slightly off centre, so weren’t in any immediate danger from being covered in what looked like Minestrone soup. Though an affluent family sitting next to us did, rather pleasingly, as one of the teenage girls had an annoying jangly bracelet that seemed to jangle at the most impromptu moments.
And Then There Were None is definitely not one of Agatha Christie’s usual storylines. There is no “come into the library with me, and I’ll tell you who did it” moment at the end; there is no character that you can feel safe with. Before the play I overheard an old woman who was dissing Christie’s work as being formulaic, I guess a lot of it is, but this is most unlike the TV adaptations with the idyllic sun soaked English town with a nice presentable middle class murderer.
London Eye
They say you have to go on the Eye twice, during the day time and at night. However I don’t think that the daytime can beat London by night. Right at the top I just spun round, it was dizzying, the lights were beautiful. I managed to take some good photographs (below). Some of them would make good desktops. Here are some hints for taking night-time photography on the Eye:
- You can jam and rest your camera up against the perspex: there is a small ledge going all the way around the edge of the pod. In the absence of a tripod, you’ll need this to keep the camera still.
- To this point, you might want to use a compact camera as a SLR won’t be able to fit on it.
- Put the camera on a slow shutter setting. This is easier to do with a digital, as you probably have some sort of hardware method of doing this, my Canon has a wheel that you can turn to get to slow shutter speeds.
- Put the camera on a two or something seconds delay, the vibrations caused by you pressing the capture button can muck up shots with a long exposure.
Well that’s what I did. Oh, and a quick shoutout to a little restaurant called the Stockpot, been there twice. Designed for theatre goers really: proper food with speedy service.
December 10th, 2005 at 2:23 am
Sounds like you enjoyed yourself. Oh, by the way, could I grab that python script for the thumbnail borders? I feel like dissecting it.
Cheers,
Pascal
December 10th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Automated Pixel Borders
Basically you edit the PixelBorder(4, “file.jpg”) bit, at the end of the script. The 4 bit controls how far in the border goes, the file bit is the file you want to open.
It gets saved as the file in self.image.save. Oh, and you’ll also need PIL.
December 11th, 2005 at 1:53 am
wow- london looks amazing. I wish I could go someday… t’is a possibility. Those pictures you took are amazing.
December 12th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Aranil, don’t you take photography? You’d probably know what I was going on about slow shutters and things.
Although I just leave it up to my camera once the option-wheel is set. I don’t know enough to do it manually.
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
[…] I enjoyed And Then There Were None around this time last year. Though the staging of The Mousetrap was rather more conventional of the Agatha Christie murder genre–I say genre as it’s hard to say otherwise, glancing over at the 66 books my Mum owns–but the plot, like And Then There Were None, is different from the usual Poirot or Marple mysteries. […]