Monthly Archives: March 2008

Nine Lords a-blogging

All over the internet, people are welcoming a new initiative to bring peers of the realm closer to the rest of us.

Lordsoftheblog.net is a group blog by a cross-party bunch of peers who want to demystify the upper chamber.  And judging by the first few posts, it’ll be an interesting one to follow.

And loudmouth that I am, I have already found the need to weigh in with my opinion.

I came over to write a note about the sentence “we don’t know yet what really interests the wider blogging public,” and I find someone has already responded to precisely that.

Don’t write about what you think we will find interesting. Write about what you find interesting. Your enthusiasm and passion for the subject will carry you forward. You’d be astonished at what takes off and what doesn’t. And don’t censor your language. If bicameral is a word you use, then use it. If people don’t know what that means, they can look it up without your help, or they can choose to maintain their ignorance.

And, speaking as a modern languages graduate, I think Brits should do much more to get along with our nearest neighbours. We’re amongst the few people on this planet who think it’s normal to only speak one language fluently. My fear is that our school system forces us to specialise much too soon. A person who does well in all their GCSEs is a polymath at 16 and a specialist at 18. If you pass a foreign language at GCSE your options are little more than specialise in it – at the expense of something else – or drop it entirely. Our A level system does not help our young people maintain broad interests, and all too often foreign languages are squeezed out.

I saw an angel in the marble

Another photo for tonight, then I’ll hit the sack.

marble

I saw months ago this building on the Forest Road in Nottingham had neon lettering all around the side of it, spelling out the phrase “I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set it free.”  Google tells me it’s a quote from Michaelangelo.  It’s taken me months to go back to the Forest Road after dark and get a good picture of the neon lit up.  I must find time to go back at dusk when ambient light will help get a picture that shows the building as well as the lights. It took some time to get the picture technically right – I kept confusing over-exposure of the lights with camera shake, so kept taking measures to keep the camera steady.  Eventually, I twigged what was going on, and used the compensation setting to sort out the over-exposure.

The Michaelangelo quote is on two buildings in the Arboretum / Hyson Green area. It’s also painted along the top of the fencing around the building work that is the Wart Exchange, in one of those fab Mat Hand murals.

My new camera

I got a new camera last summer – an Olympus E500, my first digital SLR.

I found these photos languishing on the memory card from the first few weeks I had it. I was trying out how good the 40-150mm zoom lens was by taking some snaps from my bedroom window.

This is a reasonable close up of the flowers in the garden from the first floor window

Cam trials

Here are a series of shots of my neighbour’s pear tree at the bottom of their garden, 20m or so away.

Cam trials

Cam trials

Cam trials

And finally, the main reason for going SLR is the huge amount of extra control you get. EG this shot, where you can get the camera to focus on the near tree and leave the tower block artily fuzzy.

Cam trials

Who knew the view was so interesting?

Tweets on 2008-03-14

  • One of those confusing conversations based on a misunderstanding. Carpet-bagging is not the same as carpet-munching #
  • Back to work with tail end of cold. 3 meetings, two simultaneously. Then cllr sugary in library. #
  • Starting to get serious about my birthday party. Caterers not answering phone! #
  • Grabbing a coffee before Member Development Steering Group. #

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Numbers

Here are some numbers from various committee meetings this week

  • 128,300 number of households on the council tax register
  • 103,270 number of households on the electoral register
  • 188,442 number of people registered to vote
  • 28,000 number of  properties owned by Nottingham City Homes (decreasing all the time, partly because of the right to buy.)
  • 86,000 number of properties in the private sector
  • Therefore… 14,300 properties owned by registered social landlords (can that be right?!)
  • 1.5 voters in yer average household – obviously not counting children under 16, foreign nationals, people who haven’t registered to vote, etc.
  • Therefore… 25,030 households not registered to vote.

New recordings from Alex Foster

I have been keeping a careful list of everyone who has been kind enough to email me and tell me they’ve enjoyed my voice recordings of various stories. I’ve been meaning for ages to write and say I’ve finished my next big project, except, erm, for actually having to finish my big project before I can do that.

So today, in the absence of completed big projects, I wrote out to tell people I had completed two small projects instead. Below is the text of the email.

I am writing to all those who have emailed in the past to let me know they have enjoyed one of my recordings. If you would rather not hear from me in future, do please let me know.

I have been somewhat lax at completing my current big project, Jules Verne’s 80 Days Around the World. After over two years, I am only half through the project.  It will be completed some day soon.

In the mean time, however, there are some shorter stories recently recorded you may be interested in:

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
in the Short Story Collection 21 on Librivox

Award winning science fiction short story from the British Science
Fiction Association, and StarshipSofa.com (slightly racy story!)

You can find all of my recordings for Librivox here.

In particular, full works include
The Invisible Man, by H G Wells
The Mysterious Affair at Styles

(may not be available, subject to local copyright laws)

Happy listening,

Alex Foster
http://www.alexfoster.me.uk

The recording for StarshipSofa podcast came about because the author Tony Smith got in touch to commission it. I’m all in favour of people who’ve heard my recordings and liked them getting in touch and commissioning new material. I live in hope someday someone will want to pay me for it!