The Richie G Website

September 29, 2009

Dreaming

Filed under: Life, the Universe and Everything — Tags: , , , — Richie G @ 1:55pm

So, last night I was asleep. Nothing unusual there (well actually given my sleep patterns recently, but that’s another post for another time!) except that I found myself dreaming – which actually isn’t that unusual either.

I have heard that you only know you’re dreaming when you’re not in a deep sleep, or that you can only remember that you dreamed if you weren’t in a deep sleep when you were dreaming. Anyway, I’ve digressed slightly.

Last night in my dream, I realised that I had come across an idea that I needed to remember. Of course, in that subconscious way you do sometimes, I knew that I was in a dream and that this idea needed to become reality so had to think of a way of doing this. The cartoon from XKCD as shown above came to mind, so I found a keyboard and started typing.

I could feel my real fingers moving as if I was typing, and I assumed that I was using my laptop keyboard to do so – my laptop being still switched on on the floor beside my bed (no officer, I wasn’t downloading anything…) so I assumed that I had managed to pick it up, open it, and start typing.

You can therefore imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up to find that absoutely nothing had happened.  I hadn’t typed a message to myself in my sleep, nor had I remembered this idea that I needed to remember.  Knowing my dreams though, it was probably either a very extraordinarily good idea or a pathetically bad one. I also found that my laptop had turned off as the night went on as the power went in the house at some point during the night and the battery ran out. This is also the reason why I was late for work, because I woke up and looked at my phone and realised that it was half past 8.

The moral of the story? Well, there isn’t one to be fair. There usually isn’t.

September 23, 2009

Petroc…

Filed under: Work — Tags: — Richie G @ 8:18pm
Petroc Logo

Petroc - the new name for East Devon and North Devon Colleges

Edited 25 Sept 09

I have decided to delete this post. There has been a lot of talk around Petroc about the new name and how it may or may not work and not all of it has been positive.

While this post was, in my opinion, fairly positive towards the new name, I’ve decided to delete it as I don’t want any problems from on high.

The new name is growing on me though, shame it doesn’t seem to be for a lot of people.

September 20, 2009

Photographs, London, May 2009

Filed under: Photographical Genius — Tags: , , — Richie G @ 2:39pm

I know these are photographs from the beginning of May and it’s now nearly the end of September, but I’ve finally got round to editing and uploading some of the photos from around that sort of time.

The Life of a Leaflet. This person was distributing leaflets outside of Oxford Circus station on the Underground.  Many people – myself included I’m afraid – ignored her as we walked past as she thrust the leaflets into our paths.  Some people took them, immediately dropped them on the pavement (if you look under the distributors foot there’s one there too) where they were trampeled over by the hounds of people trying to get into the station.  Others ended up squashed with their fallen comrades with the discarded drinks cans and cigarette butts on the steps into the station, to be (unphotographed) washed away and made soggy on the next rainfall (which happened that night).

Non Drying Paint. There are loads of these signs on walls around where my friend lives in London, and they always make me giggle inside when I see them.  Apparantly, the ‘non-drying paint’ is supposed to deter either people who are intending to climb the walls, or people who are intending to graffiti the walls.  I’m not entirely certain what non-drying paint is, so bear with me for a few moments while I Google it for you. A few moments later: Yes, indeed the non-drying paint is an anti-climb measure, and is supplied by this Australian company. Seems quite interesting really. Still got no idea how it works. Perhaps that’s the idea.

Don’t you forget about me. Don’t You Forget About Me / Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t / Don’t You Forget About Me / Will you stand above me? / Look my way, never love me / Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling / Down, down, down / Will you recognise me? / Call my name or walk on by / Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling / Down, down, down, down (Extract from Don’t You (Forget about Me) by Simple Minds). So how many times do we see somebody sitting at the side of the road, in a shop doorway, or wherever and just walk past them? Do we forget about them within five minutes? Do we not even notice them any more? I also liked the symmetry that the bloke sitting in the middle of the bridge approach gave :)

Photographs of Photographers 6. OK, no photo set would be complete without at least one photo of somebody else taking a photo!  Actually, there were a lot more in this set that I haven’t got round to sorting out yet.  I believe that the backdrop for this photo would have been St Paul’s Cathedral.  I do have an intro to the Photos of Photographers (‘p-o-p’) series somewhere; might post that here sometime.

Bikes. A simple photograph taken outside the Cyber Candy shop near Covent Garden in London.  While waiting for my friend (who had gone into said shop for the third time that day), I just saw these bikes all lined up and took a photograph of them.  Actually, I took a few but this was the best one.  Unlike other pictures, this is exactly as its come out of the camera with no editing done at all except resizing.  Others usually have some post-production done on them in the GIMP.

That’s it for now.  All of the photographs here link to larger-size versions on my deviantART page where you will also find other photographs and some other stuff too.

(Later that same day…) And here’s more!

Art on the Underground. To celebrate 100 years of the ‘Roundel’ (London Underground’s iconic logo), TfL asked 100 artists to create 100 pieces of work (one each, not 100 each!) based on the Roundel. These are two of those pieces of work on posters in situ at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. If you’re interested, you can see my ‘version’ of the Roundel which I’m using for my Tube Challenge for Tearfund charity thingy on the ‘Tube Challenging’ page.

Pipes. Also at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station, these are the steps down to the station with a maze of pipes and cables and other stuff in between them. Somewhere, somebody out there knows what each of these pipes and cables does, and where they’ve come from, and where they’re going…

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