Friday, July 29, 2005
Tornado
Pal Pete Ashton has a bunch of photos of the tornado that hit Birmingham (including Moseley where I live), here. He's also done a post about it here.
Our place is pretty much unscathed. A small pane of broken glass and, as far as I could see, a few roof tiles missing, and some severed plastic ducting along the side of the house - basically cut in half by flying roof tiles. We were very lucky. The tornado seems to have been worse further north of us. The next street to the south is fine, the next street to the north is worse than ours, and I don't know what it's like after that. Piles of rubble and sawed-up trees at the sides of the road. Like being in a bomb site.
Pete and I helped friend Jez out with occupying his house until they got back from Cornwall at 2:30 this morning. They'd done the place up immaculately for putting it on the market, and while the insides are OK there is a lot of broken glass about. The back back garden is another matter. Apparently it was really immaculately done up etc. However there's no sign of this because a huge tree fell across it and is filling it so completely that you can't see the garden itself at all. This tree, toppling in the direction of the house, fell just short of smashing into the house itself.
What a day... this morning there are lots of helicopters flying around and utility trucks in the street, they're starting putting things back together. The streets had been cleared by the time I walked back at 2:30 this morning. An old VW Golf with its back window smashed was sitting alone at the side of the street with its right blinker lights lit. I reached through the partly unrolled window and fiddled with the controls to see if I could turn it off. But I think it was just broken.
Our place is pretty much unscathed. A small pane of broken glass and, as far as I could see, a few roof tiles missing, and some severed plastic ducting along the side of the house - basically cut in half by flying roof tiles. We were very lucky. The tornado seems to have been worse further north of us. The next street to the south is fine, the next street to the north is worse than ours, and I don't know what it's like after that. Piles of rubble and sawed-up trees at the sides of the road. Like being in a bomb site.
Pete and I helped friend Jez out with occupying his house until they got back from Cornwall at 2:30 this morning. They'd done the place up immaculately for putting it on the market, and while the insides are OK there is a lot of broken glass about. The back back garden is another matter. Apparently it was really immaculately done up etc. However there's no sign of this because a huge tree fell across it and is filling it so completely that you can't see the garden itself at all. This tree, toppling in the direction of the house, fell just short of smashing into the house itself.
What a day... this morning there are lots of helicopters flying around and utility trucks in the street, they're starting putting things back together. The streets had been cleared by the time I walked back at 2:30 this morning. An old VW Golf with its back window smashed was sitting alone at the side of the street with its right blinker lights lit. I reached through the partly unrolled window and fiddled with the controls to see if I could turn it off. But I think it was just broken.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
The most human-like robot ever
She can flutter her eyelids and appears to breathe. "I have developed many robots before," Repliee Q1's designer, Professor Ishiguro, told the BBC News website, "but I soon realised the importance of its appearance. A human-like appearance gives a robot a strong feeling of presence."link
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
'Pictorial writing and illustration'
I've done a very plain vanilla Web version of my research paper for BIAD - the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, sounds grand doesn't it? I wanted to have some portion of the paper that could be read more or less stand alone. This is the result. I tried to relate all the stuff I was interested in into an overall framework. Not sure how well it works but it was good to think about it in some kind of organised way. Subjects include medieval art, Hogarth, popular prints, etc.
The HTML version is here, but it was way too much trouble to put all the graphics in. They can be found in the PDF version (1MB) here.
The HTML version is here, but it was way too much trouble to put all the graphics in. They can be found in the PDF version (1MB) here.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
London burning
I agree with this. Remember how hundreds of thousands marched in London to protest the invasion of Iraq? The fact that the majority of people in the UK were against the Iraq invasion seems to have been erased from the political landscape, as though it had never happened.
"We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings." -Respect MP George Gallowaylink
