Futureshorts

Went to an outdoor film festival on sunday night, in Greenwich park, part of Stella Artois' effort to associate cinema with their overpriced Gallic lager. The main feature was Ferris Beuller's Day Off, an inspired choice - lots of people joining in with the singing, or shouting 'do it!' at that bit when Cameron pushes his Dad's ferrari out the window. (if you haven't seen it, there's no point in attempting to explain how a ferrari can be pushed out a window...)

The best bit was the short films tent though. It's worth getting along to any event that Future Shorts puts on. There's one this weekend in fact. Sunday night at Tooting Lido, the pool is celebrating 100 years of splashing, and there's a programme of short films about swimming on the sunday night. If you're fortunate enough to have a decent independent cinema near you, (Brixton Ritzy, Rio Dalston, Greenwich or Clapham Picturehouse, etc) keep an eye out for their monthly set of films too. There are trailers for each month's programme on their myspace site.

get swimming

I fully understand why councils are reluctant to maintain lidos, since you only really want them for about six or seven days of the year. But they say today might be the hottest day ever recorded in this country, which means you need www.lidos.org.uk

Lidos in the United Kingdom

Blogged with Flock

The London Noise Map

This is my online toy of the day, a map of london by decibel level. My old flat was there, on that noisy pink road at the top, with noise levels at 70-75Db.

and here's where I live now, in the middle of  all that blissful quiet 45-50Db yellow on the right there.

The London Noise Map 

Blogged with Flock

News

It's a bad day for Politics students and newsreaders everywhere as Polish president Lech Kaczynski prepares to announce his twin brother as prime minister.
Just thought it was interesting.

Also news related, have you ever come across 10x10? It's a website that monitors the news wires and picks out the top 100 words being used in the news for every hour. It's quite an intriguing visualization of what's going on in the world at any given moment.

'Zidane' is word number 36 at the moment, and 'Italy' is only number 52. If I were Italian I'd be a little upset at the news today. All the headlines are about Zidane, and I'd be going "excuse me, world champions, yes? Italy?"

Blogged with Flock

Hampstead ponds

This weekend I was introduced to the joys of Hampstead Heath's swimming ponds. So cold, and so green, but so different from swimming in a pool.

Here's Lou, self professed evangelist of the pond swimming cause, at Hampstead yesterday.

Just one word of warning. If you go, follow the signs and swim in the designated pond. If you rock up and swim in the first pond you come to, it'll be this one:

technorati tags:london

Blogged with Flock