Disappearing meeja

c.f. my post below re: books, why not trawl over to www.kottke.org/05/04/the-sony-librie for a peek into the future. Let's hope publishers are quicker on the uptake than the music business.

30th April 2005 Two posts to make up for a recent shortfall. Also at Kew today - Egyptian goslings.  

30th April 2005 Beautiful day to go to Kew. This photo made with the assistance of http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html 

Plus ca change

It occurred to me this morning that the fight over the production and distribution of music put up by music industry lawyers has similarities with the miners strike here in the UK in the early 1980s. No, wait, honestly - think about it. Then there were workers fighting to retain a traditional way of life that had been superseded by economic and technological change (though of course their power to bring down goverments was a large part of what Thatcher was after when they were successfully defeated). Similarly today, with digital ownership of music, the traditional method of making a product once valuable to a mass market has become obsolete – there is no need for the CD or the shop as these can be undercut in price by the virtually free distribution of material online yada yada. While it isn’t surprising that the music industry is putting up a fight, in their case the politicians are behind, and not ahead, of the curve and are therefore trying to support them. But it’s changing, it’s changing, and there isn’t anything they or politicians can ultimately do to stop it. DRM free music is what the market wants and it is a case of adapt or die. Thus, hard though it might be to see the similarities between a sharp-dressed coke-stoked music marketing exec and a grimy-faced human mole, they are there.
Other dying trends? Well, fox hunting has thankfully gone. What about boxing next? Then newspapers. Books? Maybe. See you all online….

A couple of points

No pictures from yesterday (none taken) or today (rubbishy street scenes that did no one any favours and would have been a waste of web space) so some maunderings instead.

1. Overheard today: "I thought your mother was being a little insensitive mentioning my haircut when our child is in Intensive Care."

2. Why do we have to pay £5.50 council tax per day for, er, binmen? Binmen who can't even be arsed to put the lids back in the front garden?

3. Who to vote for? Not Tory, obviously (Daily Mail writ large, asylum seeker scare stories, jettisoning of the Human Rights Act). Labour? I don't believe Tony is a liar per se, but why his obsession with secrecy? He's published the Solicitor General's advice now, when forced to - why didn't he do this at the time? Who was it going to harm? Was it going to give the opponents of the war an advantage - weren't the arguments outlined in the advice already being used? Servicemen and women? Hard to see how it would affect their safety. In a similar vein, what really happened to David Kelly?
So, what about the Lib Dems? Erm, according to their Axe the Tax site, our Council Tax would be replaced by a local income tax that would result in the aforementioned lazy bastard binmen (shouldn't say that I grudgingly suppose - they are probably on minimum wage despite massive council tax) that would be approx 15 - 20% higher than the current outrageous payments we have to make. So who's left? Who, indeed, is Left? I know the aforementioned tax rise under the LDs is perhaps most left-wing of all policies so far put forward and therefore ought to appeal but really, it is hard to justify paying £6.50 a day to have the bin lids thrown all over the street. Suggestions on an email please. And yes, I know, schools, lighting etc - I'm (half) kidding with the above really.

26th April 2005. Who ever thought this was going to be a good idea? The National Theatre in all its glory.  

22nd April 2005 On the way back from The Rugby Tavern.  

25th April 2005 Ah me, London: it's not pretty but it is home.  

24th April 2005 

18th April 2005 

23rd April 2005 

21st April 2005 Evening sunshine.  

19th April 2005 Happy 1st Birthday Mrs Lemon! To celebrate I changed the weather in today's pic.  

17th April 2005 Spring has now truly burst forth.  

14th April 2005 I wouldn't have minded but this is at the back of a design shop. Isn't design meant to extend functionality?

15th April 2005 A great day out.  

12th April 2005 Beginning to look a little rough around the edges...  

11th April 2005 Yep, another from today but I am trying to make up the numbers owing to those days without pics throughout this, the first year of this project. Taken outside Waterloo Station.  

11th April 2005 Figure of Aspiration from the Gladstone Mermorial outside St Clement Danes Church on the Strand - statue by Hamo Thornycroft completed in 1905. I might have overdone the heroics on this one mightn't I? 

10th April 2005 

10th April 2005 A couple from Kew today to make up for some of those that I've taken down in a new found spirit of perfectionism. I've deliberately hyped up the colour to almost supersaturation levels in an effort to make the Japanese theme more at one with the style.

A good blog requires work

and perhaps more severe editing than I have allowed for to date. Thus are two more maxims born. I will try I promise.

9th April 2005 

7th April 2005 At St Pancras.

6th April 2005 Got this piece of inspired junk mail through the door today. Normally I wouldn't have given it a second glance but as a piece of Sino/Soviet Communist era advertising pastiche I thought it worthy of posting on here. Fair play to the builders (?) concerned if it generates any work for them - they deserve it with works of art such as this being put out in their name.
Update: 12th April 2005 - I don't know why it took me so long but I have just realised what an inspired piece of homoerotic work this is as well. Those DW boys clearly have a well-developed sense of humour as well as style.

Glastonbury

I know they are trying their best, but limiting people to two tickets each and then having the usual bun fight on the net (our experience was that the tickets sold out in a little over two hours) means that there must be loads of people who'd hoped to go in a big group (the best way to enjoy the festival IMHO) only to find that it was them and their nearest and dearest who would be going. Now, I don't want to be a killjoy and leave myself open to accusations of a lack of romance, but going to Glasto solely with your partner would not be a recipe for a wild time I wouldn't have thought (unless you were in the early stages of your relationship in which case you probably wouldn't come out of your tent anyway).

4th April 2005 OK, so it isn't Kew Gardens, but it is a little patch of greenery alongside the A316 near home that the local council (Richmond) is thinking of turning into a car park. Objections have been logged but it remains, of course, a very real possibility. Croydon anyone?  

3rd April 2005 Almost perfect isn't it (the flower, not the photo)?  

2nd April 2005 

1st April 2005 Old but good. Not taken by me but I'm sure Z won't mind. I'm next to Catwoman.