Paris breaks January 29, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : eurostar breaks, Paris Breaks , 4commentsParis Breaks are not just for springtime
Last year I managed to take two Paris breaks, one in April and the other in the autumn. Both times Paris was wonderful, but quite different. The chances of a bit of sunshine during a short break to Paris are very high, but even on a slightly cold and windy day, you can’t help but be enticed to go outdoors and walk alongside the Seine, through the endlessly surprising streets and squares, crossing the magnificent bridges. You can probably tell already that I love Paris.
I love Paris
For so many people who have spent any time there, Paris is a very special place. In my case, it’s where I spent the first part of my life away from home. I visited on a whim at the age of seventeen and stayed for two years! For the first few months I lived in the North, off the Rue LaFayette near the Opera, big shops, and boulevards Magenta and Strasbourg. Then I moved down to the Latin Quarter, where the other musicians hung out. So I gradually learned enough about Parisian life to get right under my skin, and I’ve been going back irregularly ever since. Paris hasn’t changed that much since the 1970s, or for that matter since the 1870s after Haussmann laid down the plans for six story high buildings of slate and sandstone arranged onto an intersecting star shaped street map.
** book online Eurostar breaks with central Paris hotel**
Paris breaks from London.
In the old days, I used to have to catch the night Ferry. This was available at a special student rate for anybody under 23 but it took all night to get from Gare du Nord to Victoria, or back. At Victoria station you had to go right to the end of the far platform to a little office called “Transalpino” and buy a ticket for £10. The night ferry also took first class passengers in a special Paris Pullman carriage which was actually rolled onto the car ferry and onto the track to continue from Calais, so they could sleep the whole journey in their couchettes. But we had to wait around on draughty platforms for hours either side of the channel, and contest with winter gales and noisy children all night on the old British Rail Sealink ferries.
Paris breaks by Eurostar
But now we have Paris breaks by Eurostar, and what a blessing that is. Even before the St Pancras terminus was brought into service last November, the Eurostar was a huge improvement in comfort and convenience over the train and ferry system. And better than flying because you disembark in central Paris ready to catch a metro, hire a car, or just walk down the Rue Lafayette as I did. The new route means no more trundling though south London and Kent at slow speeds. The Eurostar train enters fast tunnels underneath North and East London, then another under the Thames, and before you know it you’ve passed Ashford and are about to enter the Channel Tunnel at Folkestone. Total journey time can be as little as two hours and fifteen minutes, which means I might be able to fit in a short Paris break at times which simply weren’t practical before now.
Favourite places in Paris
Everybody has their own favourite places in Paris, and maybe I have more than most so I won’t list them, but maybe it’s worth explaining that you don’t need to plan everything in advance. One of the biggest pleasures in Paris is simply to take off on foot and wander off in a new direction around the streets, stopping to notice anything that intrigues. It works every time, North or South, in the Marais, the quartier Latin, the big boulevards, little street markets, around Montmartre, the little parks, churches, and of course the cafes, bars and restaurants.
Batobus
A recent innovation is the Batobus service, which is meant to be part of the transport system rather than a visitor attraction like famous Bateaux Mouches. It’s a hop on hop off service and the passes are priced in such a way that you might as well buy one that covers the whole period for short breaks in Paris. The trip itself is spectacular and enjoyable, and the route allows for easy exploration of Jardin des Plantes, Notre Dame, Champs Elysees, Eiffel Tower, and many other important destinations. I tried to do the full round trip twice in one day, but one boat terminated at Eiffel Tower, so I caught the metro back from there. No problem.
Choosing a hotel
Ever since that day when I was seventeen, wandered down the street from Gare du Nord, checked into a hotel off the rue Lafayette and stayed there for three months, I’ve never bothered to book a hotel in Paris. I’m not saying that’s the best thing for everybody, it’s just because I can. These days I generally have an idea of which area I want to head for, and sometimes choose a Hotel I’ve stayed in before, because I know the rooms look out over an interesting quarter. But if they’re full, I can find another, maybe better. Probably best to book if you’re arriving after 4pm though. Location is more important than having the biggest indentikit modern room with trouser press and everything, so get out the map and make sure your intended hotel is either located near one of the interesting central areas, or else perhaps by a fast RER metro station that’s only one or two stops from for example St Michelle.
** book Eurostar breaks with hotels in central Paris **
Getting to London first
St Pancras station is right next to Kings Cross, so if you are setting off from Luton, Watford, Milton Keynes, Rugby Birmingham, or anywhere in the Midlands it’s easy to transfer. Likewise the East coast line makes Paris breaks from York, Leeds, Sheffield or even Newcastle or Edinburgh very easy. From South London, Surrey, Kent or Essex though, you can board the Eurostar at Ashford or Ebbsfleet. Coming from the West, you’ll need to make your way around on the underground and here’s a good tip for Paddington Station. When you get off the train don’t follow everybody else down the platform towards the main part of Paddington Station and the escalators down to the tube. Instead turn around and go up the stairs and over the bridge. This leads directly to the platform for the Hammersmith and City Line, which follows the same route as the circle line straight to Kings Cross St Pancras for the Eurostar.
Food and drink on Paris Breaks
I’m a bit of a foodie so restaurant dining and cafe bars are one of the main pleasures of Paris breaks. It’s also a great opportunity to buy some good wine, baguette, camembert, saucisson and salads and have a delicious picnic in the hotel room, or maybe in the park. I take a corkscrew, glasses and cutlery to make this possible. There are both fine restaurants and cheap and cheerful tourist menus everywhere, including most cafe bars which double up as brasseries at lunch and dinner times. The concentration of restaurants in the pedestrianised area of Rue La Huchette in the Latin quarter is also a magnet, with their brochettes of giant prawns and lamb chops out on display. The prevalent theme changes every few years, from North African couscous, through Greek Cypriot to Swiss fondue, and currently featuring a newly fashionable ethnic cuisine - regional French! Unlike in England at this period, you can order a Pastis without getting blank looks, red wine will be in the classic style, not new world, and Leffe beer is always served in chilled glasses. One of my passions is to champion traditional cider so is this a problem in Paris? No, because there are Breton pancake houses everywhere, Creperies which serve savoury buckwheat pancakes with bowls of breton cidre bouchee. That’s lunch on arrival sorted then, one of the things that make Paris breaks an instant change of gear for relaxation and inspiration.
Paris Breaks blog
I realise I’ve gone on a bit in this post, which is not really central to the theme of this research blog, whatever that’s supposed to be, but I haven’t even covered the half of what I was intending to write about Paris, there’s so much to go into. I could just write and write about Paris whenever I have some time or need to escape into memories so what I’ll do from now on is to try starting up a new Paris Breaks blog and post a short series of articles and images occasionally over there as well.
London Bloggers January 28, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : london bloggers, blogs and community, London , 1 comment so farAndy Bargery, who I met at a London Geek dinner last year, has set up a new home for London Bloggers, which is a blog of course, and a meetup tomorrow evening near Waterloo. I’ll be there. If you haven’t registered already, it’s too late but why not subscribe to the blog and come to the next one in February.
Welcome to the Home of London Bloggers
If you live in London and write a blog then you might be interested to come along to the regular London Bloggers Meetup. The next event is on Tuesday 29th January at the Camel & Artichoke Pub near to Waterloo, check out the Meetup page for more info.If you can’t make it, check back here in early Feb for a round-up of the event and quite possibly a handful of photos. Then of course you can register for the next event in Feb.
If you are a London Blogger you might also want to add yourself to the London Bloggers Wiki page
Movable Type and WordPress January 25, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wordpress, tools, Wiki , 8commentsVictor Acquah wrote to me asking about blogging software. I can’t answer his request to recommend a blogging tool which has a robust wiki module incorporated into it. I use a combination of WordPress and MediaWiki but does anyone know of a good “Bliki” combination?
To explain why I migrated my own blog from Movable Type to WordPress a couple of years ago I said that my Movable Type blog was hosted for me by an organisation which now no longer exists, so a move to my own domain was a sensible step to take. At the time, MT was the best blogging software available, but it was overtaken by WordPress several years ago. What is the current situation though?
WordPress is getting ever more popular but there may be signs that the core code is getting slightly over ambitious, with successive new releases breaking established plugins and themes. People are sometimes frightened to upgrade.
And Movable Type 4 has been developed, released as Open Source with maybe some of the fancy features from Vox incorporated, but I don’t have direct experience of that.
If you were a new blogger with no baggage or archive to lug around, starting completely afresh what would be your choice of platform and why?
Evidence of life on Mars and figures found in rocks January 24, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : spain, randomness, Art, Flickr , 6comments
Life on Mars
In both of the freeby London newspapers yesterday on the tube there was a story about the picture from planet Mars which seemed to show a human like figure walking across the Martian surface. At first glance the picture looks like a joke or a fake, reminding me of the “Elvis found on Moon” headlines from the launch of a new tabloid in the eighties. But in the articles they seem to claim that it’s a genuine photograph from a Mars Explorer that shows a part of the rocky terrain that just happens to look very much like a bipedal torso with head and arms. Here it is again on the BBC website. Now the newspapers may have enhanced the illusion slightly in their image processing, but it does beg the question what are the chances of a randomly formed piece of rock looking so much like a recognisable figure competely out of context?
Evidence in rock
Then I remembered the rock I saw with my own eyes when travelling along the Canyon de Sil in Galicia, northern Spain. This photograph is straight from my own camera in 2005
It’s the old ink blot phenomenon again, like seeing faces in clouds. Our human brains are so wired by evolution up to recognise the specific patterns of faces and human forms or figures that we tend to over-detect them, and given enough random material to look at, we’ll eventually notice one somewhere. So is there really any evidence of Life on Mars? - that’s for another post!
How to make image links in MediaWiki January 21, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Enterprise 2.0, mediawiki , 12commentsMediawiki Images
Mediawiki handles uploaded images on pages in a way which is perfectly suitable for a free encyclopaedia. If you click on an image you get taken to special page which tells you more about the image itself. Who uploaded it, where it came from, any revision history and which other pages link to it. But what if you want to use an image just as a graphical link, such as a button or banner that takes you to the page which the image is about? That’s quite a reasonable requirement because it’s how the internet usually works, it’s what what visitors are more likely to expect. Sending them to a dead end meta page full of technical data might not be what you want to do. So this article will show you how to make image links work properly in mediawiki.
Upload a file
For my example I’m going to upload a new image file to UsefulWiki. The file is a logo button for the Better Reading Partners section of the wiki, which I want to feature on the Main Page. Not all installations of mediawiki have enabled the uploading of images, but this one does. You can tell because there’s a link in the left hand side Toolbar: “Upload File” The upload process is straightforward, but it’s worth copying the hint which appears there, as it’s harder to find again later.
To include the image in a page, use a link in the form [[Image:file.jpg]],
[[Image:file.png|alt text]] or [[Media:file.ogg]] for directly linking to the file
I tried something like that in the Sandbox with this result (screenshot):
The orange BRP logo is a bit too large so I can adjust the syntax to ask for it to be rendered only 70 pixels wide.
[[Image:Brp-logo.gif|thumb|Description|70px]]
That’s better, but you see how clicking on the button takes you here? when you might expect to go to the Better Reading Partners page. I’m going to fix that by getting rid of the syntax for direct image linking and using the syntax for building an external link instead, using the full URL of the target page:
[http://usefulwiki.com/page/Better_Reading_Partners description]
then replacing the description with the sytax for rendering an external image directly onto a page - which is just the full url of the hosted image. In this case I can find out the exact location of the image file by right-clicking ( ctrl-click on my Mac ) the image itself and choosing “Copy image location”. That’s then pasted in instead of “description” above to give
[http://usefulwiki.com/page/Better_Reading_Partners http://usefulwiki.com/w/images/thumb/a
/a6/Brp-logo.gif/70px-Brp-logo.gif]
( all on one line, just one space chracter between the two urls )
What’s happening here is that the image is being retrieved and then used just like anchor text for the link, like a hyperlinked description, except that it’s a picture. That works fine in the sandbox, but there’s one more thing I can tweak. The little blue arrow which denotes an external link needs to go, because it’s an internal page which I’m linking to.
I can get rid of it by wrapping the whole piece of code in a little bit of CSS:
<span class=”plainlinks”>…….</span>
so all I have to do is transfer the code over to the UsefulWiki Main Page.
Done. Any questions? Ok….
How else can this technique be applied?
You might use it with externally hosted graphics instead of uploading image files to the same mediawiki.
Problems you may encounter
If your mediawiki does not have direct rendering of image files enabled, it won’t work. So in LocalSettings.php, set $wgAllowExternalImages = true;
more in comments….
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Mariza - Portuguese Fado singer January 18, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music, video , 15comments
Paul Velho sent me this you tube video within facebook and I just had to embed it here in memory of Amalia Rodrigues.
“The Pride of Portuguese Passion. For those who are Portuguese, you’ll shed a tear. For those who are not, you’ll wish you were born here.”
Declaration of Interdependence January 18, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : General , add a commentFrom the desk of IKEA
- Tell no more lies. We deserve to be told the truth, and so does the public. Otherwise there is no hope of building the trusting relationship necessary for any success.
- Keep no secrets. Building up expectations with false promises of ’surprises’ is divisive and again, undermines trust.
- Relinquish control. Only by allowing truly devolved local autonomy will there be a genuine willingness to make the required sacrifices for global change to happen.
- No more grids, tables and spreadsheets. An obsessive desire to box things in is the sign of an ill mind. Let there be narrative and multi-directional discourse.
- Open source means the source code is made freely available. Where is the source? Where is the application?
- Dump the control freak. Nothing but an opportunist who won’t stop manipulating behind the scenes until the entire organisation consists of just one person.
- Have a nice weekend, there are always plenty more Mondays.
Bird flu fiction as a blog January 14, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : blogs and community, UK , 4comments
The avian influenza or Bird flu H5N1 virus represents an all too serious threat to the world population as experts are predicting an pandemic not as a question of “if” but “when”. Here’s an effort in public consciousness raising through the medium of fictional writing, and in the format of a blog.
dominieschronicle.blogspot.com
The story has already started but it won’t take long to catch up on all the posts from January 2nd to date and then probaby the best way to experience would be by subscribing to an RSS feed but there doesn;t seem to be one working at present.
Also there has been an outbreak of visitors from the Flu wiki who don’t seem to appreciate the subtleties of “in character blogging” or that the events are situated in in a Scottish cultural setting.
TeachMeet08 at BETT January 12, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : edublog, web2.0, Wiki , 2commentsI never went to the BETT education exhibition at Olympia when I worked in institutionalised education but I went yesterday. The main reason was to attend TeachMeet08 where lots of interesting people would be gathering and presenting, including some old colleagues, people only known online through various networks, and Linda’s twitter friends from the scottish edubloggers. I was asked to video Drew’s presentation including the use of a Mobius strip so here it is.
There’s also a recording of the Flashmeeting which can be replayed
BETT itself was pretty dire, with all the usual vendors trying to flog their old technology, unlikely promises and crap content to the people who get to spend money in the education sector.
Death of a community member January 12, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Community, online facilitation, UK, cider, listservs , add a commentOn the E-Mint listserv there’s a discussion about what happens after the death of a community member. Should their profile be taken down? Can the next of kin access their email?
My story involves the death of a prominent member, waybackmachine ,
wiki and transfer of websites.
A prominent member of uk cider stopped posting for several months
and people began to inquire after him. Eventually his wife found the
group and explained that he had been in a car accident and was
recovering very slowly. Then we heard that he suddenly died of a heart
attack.
I was approached by a couple of members who were concerned that
Paul’s own website and accumulated content should not be lost to
posterity and they tried writing to his wife as tactfully as possible,
but understandably she had bigger worries at the time.
So I created a wiki page linked from the members page, which contains
tributes written by the group as a reaction to hearing the tragic
news, and links to Paul’s site as archived on the “waybackmachine”
where I assume the content will remain indefinitely, even if the
original site is taken down. It’s the saddest task for a facilitator,
but seemed very necessary.
http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Paul_Gunningham_In_Memorium
Interestingly I later discovered that the domain names and content had
passed on to another small scale web developer in a similar niche. I
don’t know how this was arranged, but I assume it was agreed with the
next of kin.
If somebody dies owning domain names and nobody inherits them, then
they eventually expire and come up for resale. There are then
companies who specialise in auctioning off the means to acquire them.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
