Filming Somers Town September 27, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden , 2 commentsWhen Eurostar arrives at St Pancras on 14 November, it seems that Somers Town too will get its fifteen minutes of fame. Shane Meadows has ventured from his Nottingham stomping grounds to make a short film about two children living in Somers Town which will be screened on Channel 4 later this year.
Through this blog, I had an email yesterday from Jennifer Lee, a young director who is making a documentary about life in Somers Town to support the film. She and her partner are meeting people in the area and interviewing them about their views on the place and life here, and wanted to talk to me. I’m always happy to chat to just about anyone, so they came over with camera and now I’m a film star (or the star of the cutting room floor).
It will be interesting to see what affect the regeneration of Kings Cross has on Somers Town. All the redevelopment is happening on the other side of the railway, although I understand from Ms Lee that there is government money to refurbish some apartment blocks close to Euston Rd before the Olympics. So far, we’ve seen southern Charlton St scrubbed up, and and the Somers Town Coffee House turned into a gastro-pub, but little else. Flat prices in Bloomsbury have rocketed, particularly around the Brunswick Centre, but the rises seem more modest here.
Having a swanky new shopping / commercial / residential district on our doorstep will probably help make the area more attractive to flat-buyers and those wanting to live in the inner city, but while most of the housing stock is owned by the Council and Housing Associations I suspect this will always be an interesting area of small flats and mixed fortunes. And that’s no bad thing.
Technorati Tags: somers town, shane meadows
Gas repairs - another pack of lazy shysters. September 24, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , 1 comment so farA couple of weeks ago, I had PlumbForceDirect fix my boiler. They seemed good, turned up on time, did the repair quickly and said they’d quote me for the rest of the work within a day or two.
About a week later, they hadn’t got back to me, so I rang. They said they’d talk to the engineer, and get back to me. Another week later, I called again, and got their Stuart Hall. He seemed efficient, getting back to me quickly, quoting me for the work, and taking a deposit. They were supposed to turn up this morning between 10 and 12.
So I waited and waited. Noone answered their phone from noon til one. When I eventually got through they’d had some sort of problem getting the part, hadn’t bothered calling me. Couldn’t even find the phone number they’d rung the previous week and gave the general impression of having no idea what they are doing. For £95 an hour, I expect a bit more than that. No apology or explanation, though I was welcome to cancel the order if I wished. Which I did. I guess these people don’t need the business.
It’s not the first time I’ve had these sorts of problems. The chap down the road seemed good enough, but never returned my calls. Another firm are fine when you can get hold of them, which is rarely.
It’s enough to make me wonder if I’d be better off with an electric boiler.
Technorati Tags: plumbforcedirect, gas repairs
BBC iPlayer to be reworked? September 14, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Internet , add a commentLast week, it was reported that the government was asking the BBC to make iPlayer available on a wider range of operating systems, rather than just on Windows. There has been a lot of comment on the desirability (or not) of this Microsoft tie-in, DRM issues and the use of peer-to-peer networking, but all of that misses the point.
The real issue with the iPlayer the random selection of available programmes. Even for an iconic BBC series like Dr Who, they aren’t able to consistently make episodes available as promised. As I write, iPlayer tells me that the two episodes which screened in the last two days are available, but when I go to download it changes it’s mind. They’re stopped loading up Mock the Week, Cosmos has been erratic, and the messageboards are full of frustrated users asking what is going on, while conspicuously lacking replies from the ‘iPlayer host’ BBC staffers who normally respond.
Utterly unsubstantiated rumour from a girl in the pub with a developer mate who’s been working on the iPlayer project suggests that they are going to ditch the whole sorry experiment and try again. I hope they do. The BBC is far too important to allow this to blight its excellent online reputation.
Investing, without the middleman September 7, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Investing , add a commentWith all the doom and gloom around financial markets at the moment, its hard to know where to invest. When the banks are reluctant to lend to each other, I certainly don’t want to be lending my hardearned, albeit small, savings to them. The green stocks have stayed up rather well, though the funds make me nervous. This probably isn’t a good time to be playing with shares, unless you really know what you’re doing.
An interesting thought from Zopa, at the end of a good simple explanation of the problem with collateralised loans, is that they may well benefit from the credit squeeze if it hits the small loans market. I put a few hundred pounds in here a couple of months ago as an experiment, and so far, my money has gone out to help people buy cars in Reading, Dudley and Brighton, do home improvements in Salisbury, plus a few consolidating existing debts. The interest rate beats ordinary savings, and defaults are low. The risk of default is spread across many lenders, so even if one of my borrowers disappears, I’ve only lent them twenty quid. Apparently Zopa have plans to be available to SIPPs, which will make it even more attractive.
Most importantly, its pretty clear where the money comes from, and where it goes and, because its simple, fees are low. Right now, even those who spend their lives at it don’t seem to have a clue where the fallout from all this is going to land. For the rest of us then, transparency and clarity are even more important than usual.
Technorati Tags: zopa
Can the mint survive?
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , 1 comment so farI’m not sure what it is with me and mint. Its supposed to be a plant which, 500 years after the collapse of civilisation and near-extinction of the human race, will be waiting for the intrepid explorer returning to a derelict London to make a nice cup of herbal tea. It should never be planted in the ground, for fear it will take over the entire garden. A survivor, is mint.
In my flat, in pots, it is a delicate beast. My sister gave me one when she cleared her new allotment. It died. I bought a couple at the Camden Green Fair, planted them in a windowbox with coriander which promptly got aphids and died, to be followed by the mint a few weeks later. I water them. I leave them in a sunny place. I don’t take too many leaves. What is their problem?
Now I have two new ones, applemint and spearmint, installed on their own in a pot on the windowsill. Let’s see if these are made of sterner stuff.
Technorati Tags: mint, windowbox
The Doctor and the PC next door September 4, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Internet , add a commentThanks to the BBC’s new iPlayer service, I’ve been watching the reruns of Dr Who which are screening on BBC3 four nights a week, and boring my friends silly with how great it is and how David Tennant is wonderful thinking girls crumpet. They all, being TV owning people, saw it a couple of years ago.
The iPlayer is a great idea, works well and quickly, though it does have a few foibles. They missed putting the last two episodes of the second series up last week, so I had to watch Daleks over London through my shaky laptop freeview card, and missed the second to last one completely. Its a beta programme though, so the odd glitch is fair enough.
More importantly, and something I think the BBC (and for that matter, Channel 4 with their 4oD product) should be a lot more clear about when you sign up, is the way the downloads work. I imagine that most people believe that they are downloading programmes from the BBC itself, but this is not the case. The system uses peer-to-peer networking, meaning that everyone with iPlayer is providing bandwidth and space for others to download, using a piece of software called kservice. While I’m watching the Doctor battle Cybermen, my neighbour may be getting the programme from my PC. In theory, this isn’t such a bad idea, and is perhaps a fair price to pay for a free service, but it does cause problems. If you’re on a capped service, where you are limited to a maximum amount of bandwidth used each month, it may not be long before you exceed this limit and are charged more or perhaps even cut off. It also uses up bandwidth and space on your PC which you may want for something else. Worse still, it runs all the time, even when you’re not using the iPlayer, unless you explicitly turn it off in the Windows Task Manager.
Personally, I don’t have an issue with it because my Virgin / Blueyonder 4Mb cable can chew through just about anything and I’m grateful enough for the Doctor to be happy to donate, but for many people it may be a problem. TV companies need to be much more open about this when they release iPlayer
into general use, and provide a way for non-technical users to switch
it off easily.
