Here.
Category: Design
Haircut selfies
Yes, a few days ago now, I had a haircut. I like to get value for money, and get rid of lots of hair whenever it gets cut. Here’s the before and after of it:
Both of those photos are examples of Multiple Selfies, where, one way or another, you get two or more selfies instead of just the one. The one on the right, if my camera screen and my camera and my mirror and your screen were all perfect (which they are far from), would have been an Infinitely Multiple Selfie, but in reality it only makes it to being what the one on the left is: a Double Selfie.
Note how in each case I artfully disguise the state of my chin(s?). On the right by holding my head high and stretching it. On the right with the careful (but alas not quite perfect) placing of the camera. Sometimes, when selfie-ing I try to look my best. Often, I just don’t bother.
I know what you’re thinking. Selfies aren’t cool. But look at it this way. The human face is interesting, but you can’t just photo Other People and shove their faces up on the WWW, WWWithout their permission. It’s not polite. It could make trouble for them, if they are strangers who didn’t want it known that they were in London, or if they are friends of mine and don’t want it know that they are friends of mine. Which leaves my face as the only face it is convenient for me regularly to photo and then stick up here, with my oWWWn full permission. I had to crop the Double Selfie on the left to cut out another bloke. I did this because of internet etiquette, not raging egocentrism. Besides which, if selfies are raging egocentrism, this is my blog and I’ll do whatever I want with it.
So anyway, back to the haircut. I have been going to the local haircutting shop, Adriano’s, at the corner of Horseferry Road and Horseferry Road (it does a right angle kink), pretty much ever since I moved into my home in about 1990. Every time I go there, I say: very short please, shorter than you usually do. And the old bloke there (Adriano?), who has a full head of hair, starts snipping away, very carefully, and goes on for as long as he considers seemly. The result looks great, but not as short as I want. Once, I very nearly got what I wanted, when another bloke with shorter hair cut my hair shorter.
This time was different. It was another bloke, with no hair on his head at all. He is not completely bald, but he had that look where he was pretending he wasn’t partly bald by saying, I’m deliberately bald. On purpose. Without such deliberation, I would have hair all over my head! It fools nobody because his hair immediately starts to grow again, and his actual baldness is quickly evident.
Anyway, I felt optimistic about this guy. Make it almost as short as your hair, I said, but not quite. Said he: OK. Maybe, finally, I’d get the haircut I wanted. I did. Instead of the agonising, disapproving and prolonged snipping I was used to, Mr Baldie got an electric shearing device and just sheared it off, as if my head was a sheep. It took less than a minute. The next three minutes was just tidying up, and it was all done.
Next time, if Mr Baldie does it again, I will take photos during as well as before and after, because these would have been outstanding.
I rather think that in the left hand one, above, before, a weird effect is that my hair is shorter on my right side than on the left. This is because, being right-handed, I pull out more hair from the right side than the left side, when washing it in the bath. (I wash it in the bath.)
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Hippo with lid
So this evening I dined at Chateau Samizdata, where hippos assemble, from all parts of the world. This hippo, with storage space and a lid, is the latest arrival:
I said I thought it looked a bit like a sheep. It’s the legs. I was told, no, it’s a hippo. The food was great and the drink was even greater, and I even got a present of some drinks glasses that were superfluous to Chateau Samizdata’s current requirements. So yes, now that I look at it again, I see that it looks exactly like a hippo. No question about it. Not like a sheep at all.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Weird Piccadilly photos today
Fortnum & Mason are promoting their tea with their window displays just now, with giant teapots.
Here is a giant teapot made of bits of broken mirror, promoting Royal Blend:
And behind the teapot is me, and Piccadilly, and a woman walking along Piccadilly, into a giant pile of liquid-but-solid tea. Reflections can be very strange.
And then, when I reached Green Park tube, I saw this, in the distance, maximum zoom:
It’s Nova, complete with its crane for cleaning its windows. Weird because the light is so weird. Cloudy, just getting dark, but not dark yet.
I love these window cleaner cranes. Roof clutter above and beyond the call of duty. Best of all are ones like these, which sometimes you see and sometimes not.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Quota taxi covered in quota red flamingos
I’m trying to wrench my sleep patterns back into something like sanity, and this now leaves me very tired. Which is the plan working, but it makes blogging rather difficult. So, today, one photo, and that’s your lot:
Plus, although I’m tired, here is a detail, that emphasises the flamingo aspect:
The relevant bit of the website.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The Devil’s Dice in Piccadilly
On March 21st, Roz Watkins, author of The Devil’s Dice, will be signing copies of that book at Waterstone’s Piccadilly, an event which I will attend. This afternoon, finding myself in that part of London on account of needing a new battery for my ancient Casio watch, I dropped in on Waterstones to see what, if anything, they were doing with the book.
They had just one copy on show, in a New Crime Hardbacks display:
Can you spot it? Memo to self: If I ever design a book cover, make the title on the front either in dark lettering with a light background, or with light lettering on a dark background. The Devil’s Dice, with its light orange title on a light coloured sky, is second from the right, bottom row (on account of Watkins beginning with W). Another memo to self: When I become a published author, have a surname starting with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet, rather than almost at the end.
Anyway, here’s a close-up of it, just so you know it was really there:
I needed another copy of the book, because I gave the advance copy Roz sent me to someone else. But I was reluctant to buy the only copy of The Devil’s Dice that they had on show, thus depriving Waterstonians of any further sight of it. I asked at the desk if they had a paperback. Oh no, they said, not for at least six months. I asked if they had any more copies on order. Yes, said the lady, sounding rather impressed when her computer told her, we have eighty copies coming, ordered this morning.
I have no idea what that means. Maybe those copies are just for the book signing, and maybe many will be sent back after that. But maybe this is good, and reflects how well the original launch in Derby went, assuming that this did go well. Anyway, with eighty more copies on their way to Waterstones, I bought that one copy that they had today.
See also, The Devil’s Dice with dog, in Waterstones Brighton. Again, right down by the floor with the other Ws.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Worse than bad form
There were so many fun things in Churchill’s underground wartime lair. Some of my favourites were not to be seen among the genuine antiquities. Rather were they mere reproductions, on sale in the gift shop. Of these, I think this one, a wartime poster, spoke to me most eloquently, from that far off time, just a handful of years before I was born:
I have always been very careful to refrain from dressing extravagantly.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Another London logo (and a selfie)
I have spent my day fighting against infrastructure overload and now I am tired.
Here, instead of nothing, is a selfie that I took, on a train, exactly one year ago:
That reminds me: I could now use a haircut.
But I wasn’t really photoing myself there. What interested me was yet another of those London logos, in this case in aid of all this, with a random selection of Big Things, this one featuring the Gherkin, the Wheel, and St Paul’s. The Shard, oddly, didn’t make the cut.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Pavlova dances on a sign and next to a clock
Once more I find myself at tomorrow morning, without a posting here. However, as luck would have it, I was photoing Pavlova today, my two favourites being this … :
… , and this:
The sign.
The clock.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The delivery scooter – first improvised now designed
Do you remember when those things started appearing on top of the cabs of articulated lorries, like the bonnets of Volkswagens, for pushing the air upwards, over the rest of the lorry. Something to do with the price of petrol having got so high that it made sense to buy a big lump of metal to stick on the lorry, just for the sake of lowering the air resistance and thereby saving a small amount of petrol?
And do you further remember how, in due course, lorry cabs started appearing where the lump on the roof of the cab had been incorporated into the design of the cab?
Course you do.
Well, now, something similar has happened with those scooters that delivery guys ride about on, delivering stuff. They used to be regular scooters, but with a big cube of a box attached to the scooter at the back. Regular scooter, big box attached.
But now, take a look at this:
That was photoed by me this afternoon, in Warwick Way, when I was out shopping earlier this evening.
And that’s right. The box is now seamlessly incorporated into the design of the scooter.
I did not see this coming. I should have. But I didn’t.