Blog archive April 2008
27.04.08 / 01 / weather forecast
i'd always wondered why the weather forecast in my dashboard [set of widgets for macs] was so optimistic in its sun and temperature forecasts. turns out it was giving me the forecast for london arizona not london england! good job i wasn't relying on it for anything.
the forecast to the widget is supplied by accuweather.com [oh irony], who along with the usual air quality readings give their US readers a frizz index to warn of a bad hair day caused by atmospheric humidity. over here the bbc doesn't concern itself with such things, and i can't say it's an issue for me anyway ;)
accuweather also features the unfortunately named joe bastardi. "Mr. Bastardi is one of the most influential forecasters in the business. He is referred to as 'almost a legend' by colleagues." that's not quite how he'd be referred to by colleagues in england, but americans are so polite ;)
20.04.08 / 01 / moscow again [and again and again]
i've been to moscow three times in the last month or so working on a new project, and when i'm here i've been working late night after night, so i've had no energy for blogging. there were no photographs because the work laptop i was carrying, being windows :P was very heavy and i didn't have strength or space to lug my big SLR around as well. so this trip i bought a nikon coolpix s700 to stick in my pocket. it doesn't do a bad job, although i miss the wider angle on my SLR lens - struggling to get the whole church in across the street when i could have easily made it with the SLR - also a factor when shooting video out the taxi window, although the quality is much higher than my phone - something which isn't apparent in the compressed versions on youtube. [the other challenge of shooting video in moscow is that one is either bouncing along at 50mph or at a complete standstill for ten minutes at a time in a traffic jam between trucks.]
when in moscow one always has to work at a thousand miles an hour, because of the limited trip duration, so i tend to crash mentally and physically when i get home. but it's not all slog though - here's a glamorous moment in the city space bar [stills here]
the view wasn't as good as it could have been, because it was snowing. bar manager bek narzibekov, seen putting the finishing touches to a cocktail and explaining it to the customers, is now recovering after being poisoned, probably by a business rival. the young guy who grins at the camera is my work colleague dimitry, who knew bek when he was one of london's top bartenders/managers.
