iTunes and Spotify . . .EAR heaven . . .

Life is good . . . there's more on SPOTIFY at

http://www.spotify.com/en/

After a year and a half of MacBook Pro ownership I'm doing two wonderful things for the first time . . . listening to FREE Spotify streaming '60's rock tracks (Cream, Doors, Brian Auger and more . . .) as I dump sixty CD's of music into iTunes. Whoosh, it is fast, about three minutes an album . . . I can't imagine why I never thought of doing it before . . . I did put 100 albums as mp3 onto my PC laptop, but without iTunes, it was a whole lot more difficult to arrange the music and listen to it . . . have you discovered Spotify . . . ?? Find out about iTunes at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store

Do you use iTunes ?? Tell all.

Broadband fixing

It worked fine for six days. then it slowed to nothing. Re-booting didn't fix it. It took forty-five minutes to find a telephone number for bt (it's the phone company, but they've not got a help number on the bill ! ). SIX telephone connections later I found out that I had ADSL2+, not old-fashioned broadband. And, that means it broadcasts wirelessly on different channels. Eleven of them. And, the nice lady on the phone helpline in India told me how to access the innards of the router from the laptop (Yes, I had it plugged in with an RJ45 lead at this moment. It was 'ip address' stuff, change the password, and change the preferred broadcast channel). Channel 6 was not good, but Channel 11 works real good. Pull the RJ45 lead out and 'hey presto !!' wireless super-fast loading again !!

Find out more at

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/howitworks/

It's that easy. Anyone can do it. It's just that I had to speak to five dummies at bt before I got the one who knew what she was doing. Ask for Anjulie when you call.

That darn RANKIN man . . .

I almost forgot . . . Rankin starts tomorrow from 10am to 8pm and runs until 18th Sept

RANKIN's doing his shoot of 1,000 people in The Old Truman Brewery. Find out more online at

http://www.ephotozine.com/exhibition/shoot-me--rankin--2567

7 - 7 memorial in Hyde Park . . .

We went for a look at it, as it's just been unveiled. There's a link at The Telegraph about the ceremony, see

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/architecture/5767512/77-Memorial-in-Londons-Hyde-Park.html

Very moving, but there's not a lot to say about the outrage on that day. I could only manage a few minutes hanging around and strangely it took me five minutes to actually get close enough to walk in and read the columns and the plaque. There were a couple of sprays of summer flowers, and of course a few new London Plane trees added to the existing groves around the monument. It's near the 'Queen Mum' gates at Hyde Park corner. Worth a visit, as it made me stop everything and contemplate . . .

FABULOUS ART DECO de la Warr Pavilion

You can read all about it at

http://www.dlwp.com/building/

I went with the Islington Art Society on Saturday, and yes, it's lovely. I used to be a builder, and knew a bit about Art Deco. Last year, when our class went to the Brighton Biennale, I think the de la Warr was a venue for one of the exhibitions, but I never went as it's about six miles from Brighton. I should have gone then, shouldn't I have . . .

I used the Canon EOS 350 DSLR with the 24-105 constant f4 lens. Exposures were from 1/30th to 1/800th second. The weather was the best, and the light was crisp. A swift warm breeze capped it all. These images are, of course, shrunk for the blog, but are also panoramae made in 'photomerge' in Adobe; the 24 mm lens was incapable of capturing the width of the building shapes and contours, up close . . . I was only there for an hour, but I'll find a reason to go back . . . yes, there was also a Joseph Beuys exhibition, pretty interactive and wonderful in its own way . . .

PHOTOGRAPHY at the V and A

I've loved it since I first saw it in a book a couple of years ago. And there it was, big as you please and stuck on the wall in Gallery 38a at the V & A. And not just Mr Robert Frank, there also Lorca diCorcia, McCullin, Sarah Pickering (she came to college two years ago and gave a talk), Thomas Ruff (Deutsch Neue Perspective and German School of Objectivity, isn't it ?), Tony Ray Jones, and more about whom I know less.

I've just remembered there's a tiny print by Dorothea Lange, 'White Angel Bread Line', of which it is said that on the day she took this shot, she shut up her fashionable studio and went out to work for the FSA, shooting the American Depression. Do you buy that ?

However, there's also Mr Gustav le Gray, from the 1860's. He did two photo negatives for his landscapes, one for the sea or the ground, and another for the sky. His skies all look good, when no-one else's did, because he could expose differently for each component. Too nerdy, eh, and it's at the V & A for a while. Check it out at

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/index.html

If you get tired of only fifty images to see in 38a, there's always the Photography archive way up on the top floor. Bring your cotton gloves . . .

SERPENTINE - What a place . . .

Yes, I know, I'm supposed to be checking out photographic exhibitions in London, but there I was next to the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, and I discovered Jeff Koons. He uses aluminium cast and made to look like inflatable beach toys, and his paintings are in oil, but look EXACTLY like a screen print having JUST THE CORRECT DEFINITION to be an inkjet print. it's on until September, but don't sneeze in there; it's tiny and you're about two inches from each exhibit . . .














It's a pavilion at The Serpentine Gallery, and its been designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, of SANAA. I saw it through the gallery window, and fell in love. Reflective undersides, and a varying ceiling height make it a whole lot of fun for kids and everyone wanting a wild photo standing next to themselves. See what you think . . .

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/

EXCITING Vigeland sculpture park -

Who would have guessed that Oslo has one of the loveliest sculpture parks in the whole wide world. It's at

http://members.cox.net/c.kau/Vigeland/

on the 'Net, and I think I must see it myself. it's just been described in a book I'm reading, called 'Enthusiams' (ISBN 051755352X )

What do you think ?