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Mid May Time Capsule

When I surfaced at Greenwich on Thursday, there were two remarkable  ships on view. The newly reburbished and reopened Cutty Sark is looking great now, with all the scaffolding and stuff gone, so you can see the glass building that surrounds the bottom half of the hull as it should be seen. With a slight lengthwise curve to the roof, the old ship has an impression of movement, more like she’s back sailing on the water than when it was just sunk in a darkened concrete hole of a dry dock.

Lynx helicopter

And out on the river Thames itself,  before embarking the motor cruiser to see the Cable Car Crossing and the Thames Barrier, the scene is dominated by an enormous grey warship. From the waterside, the shape of HMS Ocean is disorientating. The superstructure is asymetrical, and the main hull looks like it’s been sliced lengthways, revealing two big holes at the side. Seeing the platform jutting out on the port side, it looks a bit like a traditional aircraft carrier, but it isn’t. It’s a helicopter ship, carrying eight Lynx helicopters there to patrol the no fly zone during the London 2012 Olympics.

HMS Ocean at Greenwich

According to information I looked up later, there are both Army and Navy Lynx helicopters onboard, as well as serving as a base for anti terrorist units during the period of the Games. Greenwich is used to seeing large Navy ships moored in the Thames, such as HMS Illustrious last year.

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HMS Ocean Helicopter Warship at Greenwich

The slender suspension masts were erected last month and after weeks of testing, the gondolas have now been attached and can be seen slowly passing each other in the videos and photographs I took from the deck of a cruise boat en route to the Thames Barrier yesterday.

So the cable car gondolas are in place and operational, the next question being will the service be fully tested and open to the public in time for the London 2012 Olympics starting in less than 100 days time?

For the duration of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics the Emirates Cable Car Crossing  will help to transport spectators and athletes between two Olympics venues: The O2 dome (renamed North Greenwich Arena for the Games) where gymnastics and basketball  will be competed, and the Excel Exhibition Centre, temporarily(?) home to combat sports.

But what about after the Olympic Games are over – the legacy? Will enough  Londoners  find a cable car more useful than the Jubilee Line, DLR or buses on a daily basis or will it become little more than a compliment to the Orbit Tower, a visitor attraction for tourists and photographers?

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London Cable Cars Crossing The Thames

So what is do they do there exactly? Well, pretty much what it says on the tin, but what they omit to say in the title is that it’s all linked to the Crossrail project.

The establishment of a Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy (TUCA) is central to Crossrail’s delivery plans and its legacy to the industry.

What is TUCA?

The Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy (TUCA) is a purpose-built training facility that supports the key skills required to work in tunnel excavation, underground construction and infrastructure.

By building and establishing TUCA, Crossrail is contributing to the development of new qualifications and Health and Safety standards across the industry.

Crossrail is working with industry, professional bodies and other organisations with a requirement for skilled underground workers, to ensure that the facilities and training at TUCA  are aligned with the needs of the industry.

from http://www.crossrail.co.uk/delivering/skills-employment/tuca/#.T55h6sRYuco

Crossrail itself is the huge engineering project to build a new underground east west railway line underneath London, connecting Heathrow and Paddington through to the City and Docklands, and out through Manor Park and Ilford to Shenfield. Its the beginning of an extra deeper, faster layer to the London undergound system which should really have begun in the 1970s like the RER in Paris. The first trains running on part of Crossrail are due in 2018 with a full through service sketched in to commence in December 2019.

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Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy

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Chicken Noodle Stir Fry April time capsule

New Routemaster Bus in the rain

Thomas Heatherwick (born 17 February 1970) is an English designer known for innovative use of engineering and materials in public monuments and sculptures. He heads Heatherwick Studio, a design and architecture studio, which he founded in 1994.

By incorporating an open platform at its rear, the bus reinstates one of the much-loved features of the 1950s Routemaster which offered a ‘hop-on hop-off’ service. The new design will also have three doors and two staircases, making it quicker and easier for passengers to board.

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New Routemaster Bus Returns to London

WordPress London is not really a mainly social gathering like some of the bloggers meetups, it’s a business learning event and last night there were three sections, each packed with fast moving presentations full of detail, actionable insights and deeply understood data.

First up, a round up of news from the world of WordPress from Chris Adams  of Headshift with a peek at the new drag and drop file upload interface for WordPress 3.3, out very soon. There was also a heads up for the ManageWP service launched this month, a service which I use myself and would also heartily recommend for anybody who maintains more than one self-hosted WordPress installation, in fact it’s brilliant if you have dozens or more.

WordPress London Meetup

Then David Bain delivered a comprehensive briefing about SEO for WordPress, including an outline of a hub and spoke structure for content based on using pages for the main parts of a site, supported by posts  All based around keyword targeting, which, while possibly on it’s way to becoming somewhat old-school,  is after all what search engine optimisation is all about. One or two plugin tips to be followed up there.

Finally, Keith Devon a WordPress developer explained how and why to use WordPress Custom Post Types. Custom post types are not types of posts at all, but other types of content alongside of posts or pages. The example given was that of a real estate property rental site, for which the element “Property” needed to be a thing of itself, with it’s own display template in the theme, neither a post nor a page but with it’s own “add Property” section within the dashboard. This gave me some great ideas for how I might have designed one or two of my existing sites much better had the concept been around a few years ago. Keith showed us how to implement custom post types by dropping in chunks of code into functions.php “because it’s easier” but discussion from the audience suggests that using specialised plugins for the purpose may be the way to go if you want to be able to keep your site up to date with new software releases.

Time for some brief discussions and an optional visit to a Samuel Smiths pub afterwards, so I walked back along the south bank and over London Bridge back to dry land.

Hashtag: #WPLDN

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/chris.d.adams/wpldn-monthly-new…

Video: http://youtu.be/gdGOvoDmRSc

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/13pillars/the-3-ps-of-wordpress…

Video: http://youtu.be/rAeqcP0CHLk

Slides, video and write-up: http://keithdevon.com/2011/tuts/custom-post-types/

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WordPress London #7

I saw a car driving up the Romford Road the other day with “Air Ambulance” written on the side.
It didn’t fool me, I know what a helicopter sounds like.

later….

Ok, there is a perfectly good explanation for why the Air Ambulance Service needs to send cars when it’s too dark or difficult for the helicopter to land. That makes sense. But it still doesn’t make sense to label the car as an “Air Ambulance” which is how it appears. They’re going to have to keep explaining that one over and over again to more and more people for as long as the silly branding exercise continues.

The other question that comes to mind is, in what circumstances is it more effective  to dispatch the London Air Ambulance replacement car service all the way from Whitechapel rather than a local Ambulance from the neighbourhood hospitals ambulance services?

London’s Air Ambulance is not just an airlifting service. We carry a highly experienced doctor on board, usually an Anaesthetist or A&E consultant. We also carry a specially trained paramedic. The service is about the expertise of the medical team. They are the only roadside trauma team who look after London and the helicopter is a means of getting them to the patient quicker as London is one of the most congested cities in the world. As well as being too dangerous at night to land, due to objects such as telephone wires, it is also not as busy and our rapid response vehicles can get about London quite quickly. The team generally patrol central London waiting for a call to a serious incident so they are positioned to get to any area of London quickly. They do not always base themselves at Whitechapel. We are different to a normal ambulance service. Our services will be called upon because our team performs procedures on scene that are normally only found in the hospital emergency department. This has included open chest surgery and bringing a patient back to life who would otherwise be clinically dead and this is a procedure only our team are able to do at the roadside.

One of our paramedics is always based in the London Ambulance control room, monitoring the thousands of 999 calls which pass there every day. As our trauma team are indispensible we have to ensure they are dispatched to the right jobs. The types of incidents they attend include serious road traffic collisions, industrial accidents, falls from heights, drownings and penetrative trauma. We have also attended every major incident in London since inception, including the 7th July terrorist bombings.

I understand that having London’s Air Ambulance labelled on the cars might be confusing, however when the service was initially set up we only had a helicopter. The cars were introduced as it was found there was a need for them as more people where dying unnecessarily at night time in London. Last year, with the help of donations from the public and LAS, we were able to go 24 hours. We probably will have to keep explaining this one over and over again but each time we have to; we are educating one more person as to what our operation is about and hopefully to the fact that we are a charity. We provide an imperative service to London and the cars are a very important part of our service.

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London’s Air Ambulance

Leaving the house I could feel the air was cold but on approaching the green open space that is the flats I could see layers of mist suspended over the frosted grass. When the sun poked up over the lines of trees it lit up the landscape with golden light.

Wanstead Flats Sunrise October 15th

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Sunrise on Wanstead Flats

Many more Kew Gardens photos are amongst my photosets on Flickr such as :

Kew Gardens October 2011

Kew Gardens

Collection of Kew Gardens Photosets

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Kew Gardens

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London Riots and Social Media

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Time capsule for July 25th to August 8th, 2010

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time capsule from May 25th to June 8th, 2010

This Red Breasted Goose appeared on Alexandra Lake in Wanstead Flats today, having a rest on its way home to Siberia.

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Red Breasted Goose

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Article: BBC News – Tidal energy trial in Thames offers glimpse of future

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Real Food Market | Southbank Centre.

Dear Forest Roots Folk

NEWSFLASH

not only will Dave Peabody and Brendan Power www.brendan-power.com be
playing this friday but we also have the Karen Grace Band
www.karen-grace.com. including Nick Allen, local cello teacher. This
is a 6 piece band who are finalists in the ‘Battle of the Bands’
competition plus local performers and surprise guest. So looking
forward to seeing you all on friday at Forest Roots, the Lord
Rookwood, 314, Cann Hall Rd, London, E113NW. Starts 8.30, free entry
with a voluntary whip round

see you then
stay forever young

Jenny and Caroline

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Dave Peabody and Brendan Power plus Karen Grace band this friday

Andy Roberts

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Folk music legend Loudon Wainwright on his musical family

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Thousands march in London against spending cuts

Some interesting ships can be seen docked in the Thames, such as the Greenwich warship a couple of years ago. This weekend brought a Spanish Navy training ship, the four masted tall ship called Juan Sebastián de Elcano which is one of the largest and oldest tall ships still operational.

The video was taken from onboard one of the Hurricane Clipper river boat catamarans which provide a commuter service as well as sightseeing on the river Thames and now accept Oystercard onboard for payment as well as pre-paid tickets.

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Greenwich Tall Ship – 4 Masted Juan Sebastián de Elcano