I still remember a lunch in one of the last genuine Pie and Mash houses in East London only days before their closure a few years ago. The owners sold the popular business to a chain of hamburgers, Gourmet Burger Kitchen.
Goddards Pie and Mash in Greenwich
May 25th, 2008 — London
Sir Cliff, Franco, Ken Lee and other videoclips.
May 12th, 2008 — Characters
Franco (Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde) robbed Sir Cliff Richard (read Great Britain, one can’t say where one ends and where starts the other) of the Eurovision win in 1968. La Sexta, a Spanish television station, only recently aired a documentary claiming to uncover the vote-rigging.
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delicious down - again and again
April 18th, 2008 — acute accent
Just as I began to get used to search in delicious very much as I search in Google, I find that the service is getting pretty unreliable in the past few weeks.
Madrid - Golf and Cruiser motorbikes
April 3rd, 2008 — Madrid
I left Madrid to work abroad a few years ago. I visit the city often, that is more than four times every year.
I find that Madrid is changing rapidly. For instance, foreign immigrants used to be rarely seen in my teenage years apart from the pioneering Chinese; now Sudamericanos, Romanians and Polish seem to be everywhere. That is particularly noticeable in the public transport, where, in many cases, immigrants clearly outnumber native-looking people.
The Metro (Madrid underground) is extended and now it is probably the cheapest and best that I never seen anywhere, and that includes a few American and European countries.
British Airways Baggage Claim and Compensation for Lost or Mishandled Luggage
February 22nd, 2008 — Companies
British Airways reported record profits in 2007 but they also broke another record: losing my baggage on the same route twice. British Airways has the poorest record of lost, damaged or mishandled baggages among 24 European airlines.
The Air Transport Users Council published in 2007 that British Airways mishandles the baggage of 23 passengers in 1,000. In other words, the chances are that at least 5 passengers in an average plane will have their baggage mishandled by BA!
Linux and Creative Live! Cam Optia AF - no joy with Fedora 8
February 9th, 2008 — Photography
Saint Klaus brought me this sophisticated webcam: Creative Live! Cam Optia AF. I tested it in the Windows XP partition of my computer and it works fine. The problem is that I hardly boot Windows and, when I do, it is depressing in an indefinite way, so I reboot in Linux with any excuse.
The problem with is webcam is that it doesn’t work in Linux or, as far as I know in Fedora 8.
The Childrens Mutual, Capital One and other Junk Mail
January 28th, 2008 — Companies
Anthony Hilton, writing for the Standard, is one of my favourite commentators of the City in London. This last Friday, four days after the Black Monday of 21st of January 2008 he reflected that It would be nice to think the world’s bankers could be left to twist in the wind, paying the price for their mistakes, but the world does not work like that. The credit-crunch […] may be entirely caused by their greed and excess but everyone else will pay the price.
Escape from the Antarctic by Ernest Shackleton
January 25th, 2008 — Characters
I read part of South by Ernest Shackleton. Initially, I was reluctant to read anything from someone had the entirely futile idea of launching an expedition to carry the British flag across the Antarctic. I can’t think of a more banal way of spending such an amount of money, time and energy with no gain in knowledge or return to mankind in 1914.
Biking in London - rain, frost and wind
January 10th, 2008 — London
I travel by tube during the winter months and use my bike when the weather is more benign.
Transport for London increased their season tickets by a whooping 5% (a monthly travel card for zones 1 and 2 was GBP89.10 and, from 1st January 2008, GBP94).
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Procopius’ Anecdota - The Secret History of the General, the Emperor and their Wives
January 2nd, 2008 — Characters
Tyranny, corruption and sex in a decadent civilization. No, this is not a post about a regime of an oil-rich country nowadays; it is about Byzantium in the sixth century.
I just finished reading a vigorous translation by G. A. Williamson of The Secret History of Procopius.
Procopius worked as a legal advisor of Belisarius, the incumbent General that extended Bizantium domains to the West. The Emperor Justinian and his wife ruled the Eastern Romans at the time.
Alan Friedman, photos of the Moon and an animation of an Earthrise
December 16th, 2007 — Photography
I found a few astonishing photos by Alan Friedman, an amateur photographer of the sky and its objects. Alan’s website, www.avertedimagination.com, contains a small gallery with dramatic pictures of the planets, the Moon and the Sun.
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Camidoc - a couple of good experiences
December 6th, 2007 — London
Camidoc provides urgent medical care in North London. I hadn’t heard about the service until our little baby suffered from fever late at night during a weekend. We phoned Camidoc at 020 7388 5800 and they returned our call a few minutes later. After a few questions, the baby was prescribed a couple of generic medicines.
Tracking Alfred Russel Wallace in Sarawak, Borneo
November 25th, 2007 — Natural History
I found all Alfred Russel Wallace’s writings online. Not only all the original works by Wallace are available there; the webmaster, Charles H. Smith, includes some summaries and comments that help understand the texts.
Wallace’s wrote that a traveller in the Malay Archipielago finds himself sailing for days or even for weeks along the shores of one of these great islands, often so great that the inhabitants believe it to be a boundless continent.
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Best animations of Juan Carlos vs. Hugo Chavez
November 13th, 2007 — acute accent
The best animated gif about King Juan Carlos of Spain rebuking Hugo Chavez of Venezuela:
Source: elmundo.es. Author: unknown
The later was repeatedly interrupting Spain’s Prime Minister’s speech at the Ibero-american summit this weekend.
Wind highways: from Macquarie Island to Tierra de Fuego
November 10th, 2007 — Natural History
I am stunned by the work “Wind as a Long-Distance Dispersal Vehicle in the Southern Hemisphere” published at Science. It provides empirical evidence of a hypothesis from mid-19th century that postulated that the wind is an efficient agent of dispersion of plants in long distances, even more so than spatial vicinity, for many plants.
Source: Science
Taking drugs when you are pregnant - Search and contextuality
November 6th, 2007 — Companies
While looking at the traffic logs of Acute accent, I stumbled upon this query: what happens if you are taking drugs when you are pregnant. I haven’t written about drugs, and certainly not about taking them while pregnant. So why would this blog rank anywhere in any search engine for this query?
Citibank - data protection and outsourcing to India
October 25th, 2007 — Companies
I’m used to receiving changes to terms and conditions of my accounts with Citibank from time to time. The last one caught my eye:
The current terms and conditions already permit your data to be transferred to, stored and processed in other countries related to the operation of your account. [Damit, is that so?]
Geographic North Pole and North Magnetic Pole
October 21st, 2007 — Natural History
Not that it will change my life for ever, but I happened to wonder how far away the Geographic North Pole and the Magnetic North Pole are from each other.
I used Google Earth to get an approximation of the distance. I used the ruler (menu Tools > Ruler in the version 4.2.0198.2451 (beta) of Google Earth).
ZrSiO4 and nuclear waste
October 14th, 2007 — acute accent
Scientists don’t find an adequate material to store nuclear waste in. A traditional candidate for the job was zircon (ZrSiO4), a ceramic mineral that is known to survive geologic processes like erosion, transport and even high-grade metamorphism.
Car free day in London 2007
September 23rd, 2007 — London
I celebrated the Car Free Day yesterday by contributing with an open proposal: make car manufacturers add warning labels to their 4×4 models.