Robot plays guitar (WN0022)

Been a little too busy to post much of late, but it's always worth throwing an arbitrary something up from time to time - just to keep the blog ticking over.

I came across this rather fine video on YouTube recently of a robot playing guitar. Not an android unfortunately, but a rather fine piece of music all the same. Guitarbot comes courtesy of the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, who also have a pretty dandy array of other musical machines on display at their website.

Last day of being 37, with a birthday coming up tomorrow. Edging ever closer to 40, and still alive!

Proud to be on parade...

My wife and I took her mother along to Pride this weekend, Brighton's annual parade of gay abandon and probably one of Britain's biggest LGBT events. The slideshow above showcases some of the delightful outfits and colourful characters taking part in the the parade.

According to Brighton Pride's official website, the event goes back to 1992 - the year that I first returned to the city. The funny thing about coming back here to live again is that all these moments and crossovers from my past (in this case, just the date of 1992!) keep reappearing.

The event has grown to quite some scale these days and is probably much more of a family-oriented thing than it started out as. It was also the first one I'd been to, and in keeping with this year's spirit of checking out plenty of the things going on in the city to make up for lost time.

There was stacks of joy and exuberance on display, along with some outrageous costumes and curious characters that went past on the parade. We tagged on to the end of it as it passed us and trooped towards the park. However, it started to rain once we arrived and there wasn't a great deal else to keep a Japanese mother-in-law hanging around for, so we headed back home again.

All-in-all though, quite a day...

New photos online

With a little bit of time to myself this week, I had all sorts of plans for making effective use of the time. In the end, life rather got in the way of my plans and I didn't get anywhere near as much done as I'd wanted to. However, I did at least manage to get a few hundred pictures uploaded that have been hanging around waiting to be shared with the world for a couple of months. As usual, they've all gone up on my Flickr site.

This album is a short one that may in time grow. Before I left Scarborough, I took a couple of PCs apart in order to destroy the hard drives (which is a really difficult thing to do, even with a hammer - they're pretty solid). I found a kind of mysterious beauty in the parts and bits of broken kit so took some pictures of them. It's not an original view I'm sure, but I felt that motherboards and chips resemble streets and cityscapes in miniature and was keen to try and capture that.

I took some shots of cables and wiring today, which I'll add to this album if they come out good enough.

Shortly after my wife and I moved down to Brighton, we spent a sunny Sunday in the rather pleasant village of Rottingdean, just a little further along the coast. While she had some company to keep, I took a wander around the village with my camera.

It was very a quaint place and somewhere that I hadn't really explored much in the past. A real old feel to it, with a sense that time might just have stopped there. It also has a famous windmill up on the hill that overlooks the village, setting itself out as a local landmark.

Her mother is also visiting at the moment, over from Japan. Aside from catching up with family, this also gives us a good opportunity to go out and do some touristy things too. I've chalked up two UK firsts this month.

The first of the above albums is taken from an afternoon spent at the Brighton Carnival 2009. It was a glorious day weatherwise and I'd never seen my hometown's stab at a splendid parade before. Admittedly, this particular version began in 2007 (when I was living in Tokyo), but it seems there have been carnivals in Brighton on and off since 1923.

We had a great vantage point, right near the tail end of proceedings, and got to see the whole thing. I was very impressed with the fabulous costumes that people went past in and we all got swept up in the lively atmosphere.

Last weekend, we got in the car and trooped off to Britain's best-known contribution to world heritage - the mighty Stonehenge. Again somewhere I'd never been, it was pretty impressive. More in a conceptual sense and a 'How did they do that?' sort of way I suppose, because when you get there it really is just a stone circle on an open plain surrounded by hordes of tourists. Mind you, on the stone circle front, there's not really anything else to beat it!

Not too far away from this country's most ancient piece of heritage was Avebury, another set of standing stones from roughly the same era. There were far fewer people there and the stones were more spread out, but it was a great little add-on for the day out. Pictures from both places can be found in the album above.

One more before calling it a day. The Brighton album has now almost doubled in size, with the addition of several new shots taken from this year's Brighton Festival and some summer beach fun too.

If you like any of the pictures, do please feel free to head over to the page and leave a comment - all input is much appreciated!

Brighton Carnival 2009

Yesterday's post was intended to be short, snappy and completed in next to no time - got to get me into the habit of blogging more often yet wasting less time when I actually do write something. In the end however, it actually took me about an hour and a half, which was far too long! As I'd like to have a little more community action around this blog, I realise it needs a little more input from me, so the art of writing snappier posts more regularly is definitely something I'll have to get sorted out.

I visited Brighton Carnival today, along with my wife and mother-in-law. It was the first one I've seen in Brighton and it was great fun - so lively. I don't think there used to be one when I lived here before, so it makes for a very welcome addition to the city's calendar. Who needs Notting Hill or Rio de Janeiro when Brighton Seafront's got it all (well, Rio might be nice)?

Following are a selection of photos from the day. This is turning out to be a great summer.

A reveller in bright costume, early on in the parade

Somehow based around a deck of cards...a fabulous outfit

No carnival is complete without a little input from death

Brighton + Carnival = 'Green Floats'

Spread those wings

The Brighton School Of Samba makes their presence felt

A carnival queen

Clown on a unicycle

Kids street dancing

One group makes it an anti-smoking campaign...

...and really gives it some with their message

Tiger kids with drums in orange

...and it's pretty damned proud of that fact too!

The 'Wow! factor' starts raising on the costumes front

Now that one's really quite spectacular

So much to carry around with you

The end of the parade brings out the boldest and best

A fine outfit you have, sir

Part of a complete dinner service

Positively radiant, my dear

Let it end with beats and rhythm, as it began