How refreshing to find a spammer who not only chooses a wholly apposite online indentity but, in doing so, also provides a suggested final destination for his wearisome output. Such honesty and civic-mindedness is to be applauded.
|W|P|112264224130170332|W|P|A rose, by any other name...|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.comLazy weekend with a bit of shopping and then down the local with the Sunday papers for a roast and a few pints? Slow Monday morning wading through emails and a Tuesday spent attending dreary meetings?
As previously mentioned, I and a few others did what we thought (at 120 miles in one night) was a long bike ride but this pales into insignificance compared to what my friend and fellow Tower Hamlets Wheeler Colin (above) did in the last four days. He cycled from London to Edinburgh and back. To get some sense of what that looks like, the green line on the map below is 100 miles (to scale) and he basically rode up the red line and then back down it with very few stops and not much sleep.
In an email to friends this morning, Colin provided an insight into what it had been like. “A very international field with a great spirit and amazing feeling of fraternity…fantastic considering they were also not sleeping more than a couple of hours at a stretch. My legs feel surprisingly good today, though they are a wee bit sore…recuperating at home with coffee, the largest amount of junk food you will ever see and Mister H. Potter. Nice!”
The hard numbers of Colin’s ride are as follows:
- Distance: 1417km (885 miles)
- Time: 102 hrs 18 mins (give or take a minute)
- Sleep: To Edinburgh 5hrs; In Edinburgh 2hrs; To London 9hrs
- Punctures: 0
- Mechanical Failures: 0
- Puddings with custard eaten: 19
Col, your humble friends salute you. Well done!
|W|P|112255636524091266|W|P|What did you do in the last four days?|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
SWMBO has just found this photo amongst some papers in an old box. I have no idea how old the photo is. I cannot even recall the circumstances in which it was taken but it is a Polaroid test shot from a large format camera so it might have been from my acting days. Judging by the earring, straighter nose and abundant hair and compared to the studio shot below, I’d guess there’s a fifteen to twenty year gap between the shots. That the sprogs fell about laughing when they saw it has driven home the fact that I’m not what I used to be.
NB: First one to email me the relevance of this post’s title will win a spot prize of some description.
|W|P|112233046597516158|W|P|A grainy rod|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
True_Halcyon|W|P|All told, I'd say you're aging quite well- if there can be such a thing! Nice to finally put a face to the moniker...I shall be attempting to blog the progress of myself and friends throughout tonight’s Dunwich Dynamo, an unsupported 120 mile night ride from London to the east coast so keep a look out over the next 14 hours or so.
Update: Due to GPRS issues and zero cell coverage in rural East Anglia, this plan completely failed. Mine and others pictures of the ride appear in this Flickr group.
|W|P|112214216762883881|W|P|Dunwich Dynamo: T minus 3 hours|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
Once again, there is a great deal of police activity in London today including the fatal shooting by armed police of a man on the transport network this morning, followed by a suspect package at a mosque and now the search of an internet cafe. This being the case, I think I might just take a nice, quiet circuitous route home this afternoon.
|W|P|112204293369218197|W|P|Riding up the Thames|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com Jerilyn Dufresne, author|W|P|Wanted you to know I put a link to your blog on my own. You write interesting "stuff." JerReturning from an appointment in North London this morning, I turned on the car radio to hear that London was once again in the throes of dealing with another four bomb alerts. Although none of us were on the Tube network or near the stations affected this time, the No.26 bus that was attacked was not too far my eldest’s school.
It was only a couple of days ago, BBC4 sent a film crew and director to interview me about my reaction to being in fairly close proximity to the terrorist attacks two weeks ago and another nine years ago. Like many others, I blogged the experience and posted an image to the We’re Not Afraid web site. It was this image, along with others, that caught the eye of Alison, the director of BBC Arts Television, who contacted me through the press team at We’re Not Afraid.
The documentary, which is to air on the BBC4 digital channel on the 7th August (one month after the explosions), is to focus on why people posted images to the site and the story behind those images. Over a couple of hours, the small crew filmed me and the area near my home, which is a few hundred yards from the 1996 IRA bomb at South Quay. Ian, the cameraman, like a good friend of mine at Associated Press TV, had covered civil unrest in the Eastern Bloc and various conflicts around the globe and I was amused to learn that, whilst he didn’t get paid ‘danger money’, he had been allowed to claim overtime where appropriate, which seemed delightfully English to me.
During the course of the interview, I explained that I didn’t post the picture as an intentional act of defiance or as some knee-jerk nationalistic reaction. To be honest, I didn’t give it much thought at the time, pretty much taking and posting the image before I had even had time to ponder why I was doing it. Upon reflection, my feelings in the wake of the latest attack are similar to those I had nine years ago and I would sum them up in this way.
I am an ordinary person with a wonderful family, good friends and trusting colleagues. Just as I rely on them to be themselves, they all rely on me to do the same: to be the husband and father that provides a loving home and security; to be a friend who will be there in times of need and celebration; to be a leader, a peer and a team member who has integrity. To let the actions of terrorists change such things would be to allow the perpetrators and those that guide them to alter the most fundamental and important elements of who I am. Quite simply, that is not something that I can permit for, as well as the great, the good and the worthy, this world needs ordinary people because it is ordinary, everyday folk that we turn to first in our lives.
I hadn’t planned to write in this way and my thoughts are far from the polished platitudes that we are used to hearing these days but I felt that I needed to put a stake in the ground to mark my feelings on this.
|W|P|112196294804824868|W|P|Thoughts on ordinary people and terrorism|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.comAlthough I am sure there will be the usual handout at the start, I thought I would plot out the general route and directions for this weekend’s Dunwich Dynamo for my own reference. Having done so, I thought I would make it available for others to use.
Using the list of villages on the Dunwich Dynamo FAQ listed on the DD FAQ and a bit of common sense, I ran the details through AutoRoute and have come up with with the shortest sensible route I can find. I want to stress that this isn't an official recommended route, a definitive guide or anything else of that nature; just a quick aide memoire I have knocked up to assist myself and others in their preparations. Likewise, the map is only an indicative overview and is not intended as a navigational aid. If I have time, I can work up more detailed maps.
Dunwich Dynamo Route and Direction (see below)
Dunwich Dynamo Overview Map (see below)
Feel free to give feedback on the route from the top of the Lea Bridge Road onwards…but there is no need to advise me of your favourite route from Hackney to the Waterworks roundabout at Woodford 
Just found this nice tutorial on secure file synching between two Windows machines via the good folks on the 43 Folders Google group, all with open source tools so the price is right as well.
|W|P|112185201369268614|W|P|Synching Files Between Remote PCs|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
PARK
Fans of Andy Cato and Tom Findlay should glide along to Groove Armada’s Lovebox Weekend which is taking place in Victoria Park on Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th. It will be their only gig of the year and, apparently, the largest music event ever held in the park.
RIDE
Meanwhile, at the same time, I and a few hundred others will be embarking on the umpteenth Dunwich Dynamo. The Dynamo is a 120 mile unsupported overnight bike ride from London Fields to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast – with optional sea swim and fried breakfast upon arrival. If you’d like to get a feel for the event, listen to this evocative podcast from Jack Thurston’s Bike Show on Resonance FM.
|W|P|112177278805747373|W|P|Park and Ride|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.comIt would seem that a few more folks read my online musings than I thought. If I was mildly amused and chuffed to have The Guardian quote a piece of mine last week, I am more than a little surprised to find that the BBC would like to have a chat with me tomorrow regarding an image I posted to the We’re Not Afraid website in the early hours of the 8th July. Following an email from the We’re Not Afraid media relations team yesterday, my commute home today was punctuated by a call from the director of BBC Arts Television asking if they could pop over tomorrow for a quick interview. Lawks! I’d better tidy up and run round with the Dyson.
I’ll keep you posted.
|W|P|112171035333680726|W|P|Having Auntie over to visit|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.comA different take on the democratisation of the news process and the true birth of the "citizen reporter".
“It was a new kind of story. Not in the sense of what happened, which was thoroughly and depressingly as anticipated, but in the way it was reported and disseminated. The mobile phone photographers, the text messagers and the bloggers - a new advance guard of amateur reporters had the London bomb story in the can before the news crews got anywhere near the scene.”
Guardian Unlimited - 'We had 50 images within an hour'
|W|P|112111246198862160|W|P|Hold the front page/index.html/SMS...|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
Since last Thursday’s bombings in London, I have been troubled. Like many other bloggers, I have posted a mixture of information, opinion and reflection on that day’s events. Whilst I believe that I have done so with good motives and a clear conscience, it is hard not to feel that one is, in some small way, taking advantage of a situation or exploiting it. Interestingly, when I shared this concern with fellow London blogger PinkFairyCat, she pointed me towards a post by Viennese Metroblogger Heinrich Hinterhalt, in which he questions where blogging ends and journalism begins. Although Heinrich’s piece is short and far from conclusive, it does go someway to starting to explore the nature of the relationship between newspaper reportage and ‘citizen journalism’.
“blogging is on the way to reestablish choice of news sources, an alternative to politically influenced (read: abused) mass media. bloggers were the first to announce bush's reelection, they tell you about all possible and impossible things you won't read elsewhere from every imaginable point of view […] in my personal opinion blogging and journalism are two very different things meant to coexist. journalism should be serious, well investigated, checked, double checked, spellchecked, authorised by independent editorial staff... not to speak of critical unbiased and well written. blogging on the other hand is fast, it's free and it's fun. and it opens it's readers a world of choice […] all in all it's yours - the readers - decision: read it, or delete it.” [all links are Heinrich’s]
How strange then that, this morning, I learnt from a friend that one of my posts to the London Metroblog had been quoted in today’s Guardian newspaper in Mark Honigsbaum’s article on the role that blogs play in covering such events.
“From messages of support superimposed on well-known London landmarks to angry weblogs and defiant postings on community message boards, the internet was fizzing with responses yesterday to the London bombings. Many of the messages were posted by commuters who narrowly missed becoming victims of Thursday morning's bomb atrocities. Others chronicled the appalled reaction of Arabs and Muslims eager to distance themselves from the acts of the terrorists. But interspersed with moving first-person accounts and agonised soul-searching there was also much defiant humour.”
Maybe I’m being arrogant and self-centred in thinking that folks actually care about what and how I write about in my blog posts. Whatever the truth is, I hope that what I do write is fair, has integrity and adds to the debate, rather than detracts from it.
|W|P|112109311395530875|W|P|Mixed feelings|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
pigpogm|W|P|> Maybe I’m being arrogant and self-centred in thinking that folks actually care about what and how I write about in my blog posts.One of the nice things about blogs is that those who don't care what or how you write won't be reading it.
For me, reading your coverage has added a more personal element to the whole thing - thanks.
Today, as with most other days, my inbox has a bunch of forwarded emails, jokes, pictures and spam along with the legitimate stuff. Amongst these were a couple of emails on the same subject – the East Anglian Ambulance Service's In Case of Emergency (ICE) campaign. In light of Thursday's events in London and considering the distress of those who are waiting to hear from missing family members, I thought it deserved a wider audience.
"The idea is that you store the word " I C E " in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted "In Case of Emergency". In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them. It's so simple that everyone can do it. Please do. Please will you also email this to everybody in your address book, it won't take too many 'forwards' before everybody will know about this. It really could save your life, or put a loved one's mind at rest. For more than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc."
You can read more on the campaign at the following links:
“A Cambridge-based paramedic has launched a national campaign with Vodafone to encourage people to store emergency contact details in their mobile phones.” – East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust
“Eight out of ten people aren’t carrying information that would help if they were involved in an accident. Storing next-of-kin details in your mobile phone can assist the emergency services if you’re unable to tell them who to contact.” – ICE sponsor Vodafone
|W|P|112107849557154289|W|P|ICE|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
This morning, I am sobered by the fact that the revised timing of the Edgware Road blast last Thursday now places me about 2 minutes away at the next station, Paddington. With SWMBO evacuated from a train in the City of London area and our second eldest safely off the train and walking the last 100 yeards to school, I am thankful our family has been spared the pain and grief others are experiencing today. Having also missed the 1996 IRA bomb at South Quay by just a few minutes (we live 200 yards away), one is tempted to read all manner of significance into such near-misses. However, I am convinced that we are no different to millions of families who live in London, Belfast, Madrid, Jerusalem, Gaza, Bagdhad – ordinary folk who have little choice but to pause, reflect and then carry on as normal.
As we look forward to a sunny afternoon in the garden with our extended family gathered around us, my heart goes out to those whose loved ones perished on Thursday or have not been seen since. I wear my London shirt for you all.
|W|P|112099840867583870|W|P|Glad to be here|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com Ian McKenzie|W|P|There is much we do in life that presents real risk. If we were to hide away from it all, it wouldn't be much of a life.Good to know you are okay!
Local cyclists enjoying the Lea Valley in June 2005
The same view of the Lea Valley in 2012
Whilst the politicians and the business people and the sports people are all head over heels, I and a good many others are not so happy with today’s news. I was born at one end of the Lea Valley and have lived at the other for most of my life. I have cycled up and down it many a time and enjoyed many happy times taking in the flora and fauna, not to mention the peace and quiet the valley has to offer local city-dwellers and visitors alike. I am sad that riverine landscapes and marshland habitats are to be lost. I am sad that well-used existing grassroots open-to-all facilities will disappear in order to make way for open–only-to-some ‘centres of excellence’. I suspect that compulsory land purchases and aggressive building schedules will mean that we have but a few short weeks in which to enjoy the Lower Lea Valley before public access is withdrawn and lost forever.
The London 2012 web site is showing ‘unavailable’ at the time of posting. The irony of the that statement is sadly pertinent.
|W|P|112066157311376261|W|P|Well, there goes the neighbourhood|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
This is a real picture of my kids – which one should I choose to lose?
Let’s play a game.
- Stop what you are doing.
- Leave the mouse and the keyboard alone for 60 seconds.
- Close your eyes and visualise a nice group portrait of your nearest family or friends.
- Once you have the picture nice and clear in your mind, now choose the one you love most right now – there are no favourites, of course, are there?.
- Imagine them dying suddenly – crushed by a drunk driver, knifed by a mugger or killed in a workplace accident.
- Imagine the police knocking at your door in ten minutes time and then imagine living the rest of your life without seeing them ever again.
Senseless? Inconceivable? Maybe. Try again:
- Imagine your loved one dying slowly in your arms.
- Imagine being unable to provide them with even one meal a day.
- Imagine them fatally ill for the lack of over-the-counter medication.
- Imagine holding them, touching them, smelling them, washing them, kissing them for weeks and months whilst you are completely and utterly powerless to prevent their passing.
- Finally, imagine what it would be like to know that their death was all because of what is basically an overdraft. Your loss of a loved one was directly caused by the crippling conditions and interest charges levied against a bank loan you never knew you were liable for.
Senseless? Absolutely. Inconceivable? In London or any other major city perhaps, but it is all too conceivable in the 28,800 other places where it will happen today. What is a macabre and unsavoury mind game for you and me, surfing the web over a mug of conscience-salving Traidcraft coffee on a lazy Sunday is daily reality for millions in Africa and elsewhere around the world.
– – –
OK, you say, but what about the G8 summit next week, they’ll have it sorted. Not really. The much-vaunted debt relief and cancellation program, worked on for years by many unsung folks, will be announced in a blaze of PR and hype by Blair, Bush and Co. However, the eight will announce that like it's just happened since they got involved and the Live8 concerts were all they needed to finish the job. Ongoing aid, via the organisations and charities who were involved before the world took notice, will continue. Their efforts will continue to be fractured, uncoordinated and derailed by so-called first world governments extracting whatever political leverage and votes they can by piggy-backing the efforts of NGOs and aid agencies. Whatever trade solutions are proposed or implemented will undoubtedly have the sheen of philanthropy but will ultimately benefit the first world just as much if not more than at present.
Enough of the ‘the greatest gig ever’, pompous pop star politics and credit cards easing consciences.
Do something. Inform yourself. Involve yourself.
If you really can’t be bothered then, at the very least, copy the game above and email it to your elected political representative and ask them: what are you doing about this? My eight year old wrote to Blair recently and got a patronising brush-off letter in return. Do you know what she did? She wrote back and insisted he answer the question in her original letter. Now, are you going to stand beside her or are you going to leave it to someone else?
my lo-fi ears are listening to She Cries Your Name/Beth Orton/Pass in Time
|W|P|112039675546286972|W|P|Live 8 and G8: It's about mortality not music|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com
I’m getting in the mood for today’s Tour de France prologue time trial by listening to the excellent KRAFTWERK - TOUR DE FRANCE SOUNDTRACKS. The prologue will provide the first glimpse of the much-touted battle between six-times winner Lance Armstrong and arch rival Jan Ullrich. Free UK TV coverage will be on the ITV2 digital channel.
Later tonight, BBC4 digital channel will be having a Tour de France evening including Death on the Mountain, the story of Tom Simpson, who died whilst on the tour; Sunday in Hell, the classic documentary about the notoriously punishing Paris-Roubaix one day classic and Belleville Rendezvous, the animated movie featuring the Tour de France and some exploding frogs.
Tom Simpson
|W|P|112031438170397449|W|P|Le Tour Prologue|W|P|bignoseduglyguy@gmail.com