.oO Tailwind

New Piccadilly Cafe London

Originally uploaded by Gee Bee

RIP New Piccadilly Cafe, which closed in September 2007.

I was hoping to have a meeting there a few weeks ago when I soon realised that plan was a flawed one.

An awesome venue for cheap eats in an authentic 50s style surroundings. Proper caff fare was to be had for a small amount of hard-earned.

The interior was amazing, Formica lovliness and 50s streamlined styling on everything from signage to lampshades. A veritable banquet and postcard from yesteryear slap bang in the middle of horrid, touristy old ‘Lie-Cester Sqware’.

I was first introduced to this gem of a venue, just off Piccadilly in London, by my mate Fosta’s then girlfriend. It’s been closed, no doubt , to make way for some crappy chain venue where they make enough money to pay the rent.

From Classic Cafes: “Described by the Financial Times as an “orgasm of searing yellow Formica”, this is truly a cathedral amongst caffs run by the irrepressible Lorenzo (a true son of Soho) and his crack team of uniformed waiters. This is the last of the big hitters left in Soho and one of the largest original cafes left in Britain: pink Formica coffee machine, big plastic horseshoe shaped menu, wall-to-wall laminate surfaces and lots of brilliant booth seating. Even the New Piccadilly menu is a stone design classic. A place of reverence.”

I loved the way that the guys used to wear white uniforms with epaulettes on their shoulders and served a can of coke with a glass. So classy.

I love authentic Cafes. I’m going through a bit of a ‘Fry-up’ revival which contradicts my half-marathon training.

Oh well, everything in moderation…

Here are some images of the well wishing message written on the hoardings:

Wow. 3 for 3.

Okay, it’s Saturday, but you got last weeks a day early.

Reet bonkers slide show on the future of our planet and galaxy.

New street signs springing up all round London. Thanks Mr Hellens.

Some bonkers nanotech for you.

VideoJug shows you how to compose your photographs in this instructive little video.

Here are some batteries that charge via USB.

Photos from nuclear tests. Pretty scary but beautiful stuff.

For those who like cartoons, did you ever get into Calvin and Hobbs?

Ever wondered how to classify lists of animals..? What do you mean no?

Twango allows you to upload files that will automatically have geospatial data added to them based on the text associated with the file.

Based on consumer insight from over 1000 guests in 5 countries, Swisscom are about to reinvent hotel connectivity (thank God!). Called room 2.0 it’s an interesting story about innovation, whitespace and conducting primary research.

Yay! I remembered to share some more links with you this week. This could become a Friday habit (okay, technically it’s Thursday evening here) but I’m promising nothing. You hear me? Nothing!

Award winning Honda TV advert ripped off and applied to a website. I think I actually HATE this.

Playing football with binoculars on. Funny. Want to play.

Ever wondered how much space in our transport network is lost through choice of vehicle..? No..? Are you kidding me? Well check this image showing the amount of space required to transport the same amount of people by bus, bike or car.

Some haunting images from the day before. This is why I love photography and why I hate post production photo-engineering. I’ll argue with anyone that photography is about capture (though ‘capture’ may be interpreted).

This is what I hate about manipulated photography. It should be on the bedroom wall of a stoner student.

More photography, but this one feels personal, old and from a bygone era.

Need some new business cards, don’t be lame and print on card, try some of these. I wish we had, ours are rubbish. The divorce one is quite sweet and I like the one with a seed embedded within it.

I’m sure you’ve seen this transparent screen trick, I still like it. the effort people go to is amazing.

Move your mouse about and feel sick and disorientated. Wicked.

What’s your favourite keyboard shortcut? I wish I could ‘Apple-Z’ sometimes in life.

Quick one this morning as I’m just about to leave the house to buy my sister a birthday present (too much information).

Two things, firstly Google is planning to buy Panaramio the geo-tagging photo service that you often see in Google Earth. It’s curious to me that they’re planning to buy Panaramio rather than build geo-tagging functionality into Picasa.

Very strange.

Also, check out the Street Level features now available in major US cities on Google Maps.

You can now zoom down to street level and drag/pan/zoom your way along the street and see building fronts all the way. Zoom in and you can even read signs.

This is cool and it’s interesting to think where this might go when you consider the Panaramio purchase. These pictures in Street Level are obviously bespoke, geo-tagged shots commissioned by Google. But Panaramio opens the doors to user generated content filling the gaps.

I can’t see Google paying for the shots in my home town, so maybe UGC via Panaramio will will that gap.

The gap between online mapping services and 3D virtual globes continues to fuzz.

[Xposted: Frankandpat]

I was just re-downloading Shozu to my phone so that I can send images directly to Flickr, video to You Tube and other stuff to my blog on WordPress when I was presented with the following madness:

Shozu Using Captcha

Originally uploaded by Snowbadger.

Captcha is not the most accessible of form validation, bot-destroying nonsense in any form, but this use of hieroglyphics astounded me. I have the feeling that anyone with dyslexia would be sent into a tailspin. It certainly made me think.

The best solution I ever heard of was the use of a field that users wouldn’t see and bots would, bots would fill it in and thus render the form submission invalid – I can’t remember where I saw this though.

10 things to ring my bell this week.

1. See how much of a cliché you are
2. Cool panoramic of Paris by night.
3. New easy to read wine labels from Wine That Loves…
4. Bruce Mau’s ‘Incomplete Manifesto for Change’ - A list to make you ‘do’ differently not just ‘think’ differently (Via Brand Autopsy)
5. Sing n search, you sing it, it will find it (provided you have a decent mic built in that is)
6. Record last.fm and other stations if you have a PC
7. Gmail keyboard shortcuts Improve productivity with Gmail, some secret delete shortcuts in here.

Twitterlinks:

1. Twitthis Tell people via Twitter about a blog or posting.
2. Twitterbuzz See what ‘Twits’ are linking to.
3. Celebrity Twitter Follow the lives of your fav celbs on Twitter. Yaaaawn.

Continue reading ‘Tailwind Lazy Links 2′

Myself and an old uni fredn Fosta are firm believers of the idea that any picture with lots of the same thing in always looks cool. infact, we did a book on it. 

I saw this image and loved it.

Not sure why.

http://unaesthetic.net/

Blogged with Flock

Uuurrrgh.

Yahoo! Whom I love, have left a bad taste in my mouth.

The cynical little fellas have only gone and used Flickr community photos in an advertising stint:

Here’s the link to Yahoo Wii.

There is a Flickr badge that aggregates photos tagged ‘wii’ in a page aimed at promoting the Nintendo Wii. I checked the Creative Commonsand it seems most are under Attribution.

But reading a bit further it seems that Yahoo! are going to change it to pull photos with the appropriate rights.

I bet the parent of the child in a basket isn’t too chuffed:

Naughty Yahoo. For that I take away your exclamation mark.

I’ve just migrated from my old G4 Powerbook with Starving Hamsters to a shiny new super-fast Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, which I have to say was an incredibly easy experience.

I was kinda worried that setting up my new machine would take a while, to copy over all my data and to set-up all my widgets, plugins, apps etc but it was lickity split quick and altogether a very pleasant experience.

That said, you always ‘lose’ a few things on the way and I am gutted to have lost my FlickrExport plugin from iPhoto.

I had this little plugin that gave me an extra tab on the iPhoto Export dialogue that hooked me up to Flickr. It was great because it allowed me to add tags, descriptions, create photosets, define privacy settings etc and it was free.

I went to download a new version from Sourceforge and discovered that they want £12 for it!!!!

£12?

For a plugin?

My God. You are kidding right?

No..?

If it was a couple of quid I’d have bought it but I can’t help thinking this is a bit out of line. I appreciate that the guy needs paying and I’d gladly do so for such a useful tool but this price is ridiculous especially on top of a Flickr Pro license.

I’m held to ransom!

I have no choice but to scour the web for an alternative so if anyone sees anything…holler!

So.. I’ve been struggling to decide which to buy. And after much considered opinion and useful advice (from people I trust on these matters), I’ve shot for the Nikon.

It’s been much of a mac Vs PC debate (and we all know who comes out top there!).

I bought a D80 and boy is it good!

Expensive, but good.