Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Anthropomorphism
Over here, when the train gets to the end of the line, they say, as they do in the states, that it is 'no longer in service.' However, they preface it with 'This train has completed its journey,' which I think is a pleasant image. I see my old Thomas the Tank Engine, panting into the station, its journey done, its race won, its service to the world needed no longer.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Two quick things
First, I still haven't learned to carry an umbrella with me every time I step out the door here. Still.
Second, I just got off the tube at Euston to find the station being evacuated, due to "a reported emergency", under the guidance of a soothing uninflected male voice on repeat. It was a very sedate process of removing ourselves from presumable harm - I imagine the average pace through Grand Central on a normal day would have left us far behind. There wasn't even any show of ire, at the fairly significant disruption of the morning commute. It was a calm, effective, workmanlike evacuation, and I haven't figured out what I think about it yet.
On a train now, shooting away from London. M-blogging! The web needs a better lexicographer.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
In search of lollipops.
Pictures. Phenomenal.
Seen here is the pretty striking view from my window these days, at about 7:46 this evening, when the last of the day's rains had given way to sunshine. That white arcy bit on the left is the London Eye, an immense sort of ferris wheel (observation wheel, I suspect they call it), that's been lofting people into the sky since 2000. I had hoped that the rainbow would be concentric with it, but clearly it's not. Out-of-frame on the right (I'm not so great at this photography stuff) you would see Big Ben & Parliament, as well as a large dome that I earlier mis-identified as belonging to St. Paul's (not so great at map reading, either).
I hadn't noticed that the rainbow marks a boundary between the appearance of light and the appearance of darkness. Does anybody know what causes this? Is it an artifact of photography or a phenomenon in the world? And, you know, what is reality, anyway?
Pretty rainbow, though. Right?
Friday, August 8, 2008
London Advertisements
They've got a number of video ads here, in the Underground. I'll try to get a photo at some point (the only thing this blog is missing, besides words, is pictures). I should specify, they're not always, or not even often, dynamic ads, but they are static images presented on video screens, generally beside escalators in series as one ascends, or descends. I saw a fairly good one where a bit of movement (a bug? a car?) was tracked to the pace of the escalator, so as you ascended this virtual companion ascended with you, hopping from panel to panel and crawling through each. The fact that I can't remember what it was nor what it was for is more a reflection of me than the ad's effectiveness, I think.
But as I say, most of them are not moving, they're static, just like posters, except they can be updated really quickly. British Airways is relying on this ability to run a series that smells (okay, looks, but they actually don't look similar) like Microsoft's new Vista campaign in the States. In MS's case, of course, they combat Vista's bad reputation by inviting 140 skeptics, none of whom have used Vista, all of whom have heard others grouse about using Vista, to participate in a 15 minute demo of Mojave, Vista's successor. The skeptics are duly impressed and inevitably astounded when it is revealed that Movjave was really Vista all along. The ad has been criticized by slate as well as others for being disingenuous - after all, the point of an Operating System is not to work well when experts use it, it's to work well when grandma uses it.
In BA's case, the burden they're trying to shed is the completely botched opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow, dedicated only to BA's flights and by many early accounts a horror. The most striking story from those first few days of chaos had to do with the efforts to connect luggage with its rightful owners - having scrambled everything up, apparently they decided that the best way to get it sorted was to send it all to Italy. One is reminded of efforts by 19th century Englishmen to recover their health in the drier, more hospitable continent. It is quite likely that things have improved a bit since April, but convincing people of this may very well be difficult, as the Times is reluctant to publish headlines along the lines of "T5: Everything Hunky- Dory". Hence the ad campaign, with the main message that "T5 is working" and the reliance of up-to-date information to prove this. So you have ads in the morning that will say, "Yesterday, 90% of flights from T5 were on time", which sounds, I don't know, pretty good I guess. Ninety percent, 9 out of 10, these are real numbers, statistics! But on some days, all you get is a picture, a photograph of something that happened at T5, and when it happened. A boy ate a slice of pizza, 12:30pm yesterday. Two women walked somewhere, 7am. And I'm not sure what these are supposed to say about the terminal's effectiveness. There are people in it, true, which is good. Not many though. In these shots, everything looks clean, functional, and quite empty.
But as I say, most of them are not moving, they're static, just like posters, except they can be updated really quickly. British Airways is relying on this ability to run a series that smells (okay, looks, but they actually don't look similar) like Microsoft's new Vista campaign in the States. In MS's case, of course, they combat Vista's bad reputation by inviting 140 skeptics, none of whom have used Vista, all of whom have heard others grouse about using Vista, to participate in a 15 minute demo of Mojave, Vista's successor. The skeptics are duly impressed and inevitably astounded when it is revealed that Movjave was really Vista all along. The ad has been criticized by slate as well as others for being disingenuous - after all, the point of an Operating System is not to work well when experts use it, it's to work well when grandma uses it.
In BA's case, the burden they're trying to shed is the completely botched opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow, dedicated only to BA's flights and by many early accounts a horror. The most striking story from those first few days of chaos had to do with the efforts to connect luggage with its rightful owners - having scrambled everything up, apparently they decided that the best way to get it sorted was to send it all to Italy. One is reminded of efforts by 19th century Englishmen to recover their health in the drier, more hospitable continent. It is quite likely that things have improved a bit since April, but convincing people of this may very well be difficult, as the Times is reluctant to publish headlines along the lines of "T5: Everything Hunky- Dory". Hence the ad campaign, with the main message that "T5 is working" and the reliance of up-to-date information to prove this. So you have ads in the morning that will say, "Yesterday, 90% of flights from T5 were on time", which sounds, I don't know, pretty good I guess. Ninety percent, 9 out of 10, these are real numbers, statistics! But on some days, all you get is a picture, a photograph of something that happened at T5, and when it happened. A boy ate a slice of pizza, 12:30pm yesterday. Two women walked somewhere, 7am. And I'm not sure what these are supposed to say about the terminal's effectiveness. There are people in it, true, which is good. Not many though. In these shots, everything looks clean, functional, and quite empty.
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