Canary Wharf

I've been working around here for several months now. It's pretty impressive - especially the towers.

Babbage's Difference Engine and Calculators

One Saturday morning we headed off to the Science Museum for a gawk. They some of Babbage's difference engines there to view - the oldest computers / calculators. Huge contraptions. Pretty cool stuff if you're a computer scientist.

The New Guinness Red ... hmmm :-)

Guinness have brought out a new brew of Guinness called Guinness Red. I think it might only be available here in London - haven't seen it at home yet. It's pretty nice - subtly sweeter than the normal variety.

Sushi

Tried Sushi for the first time ever. Pretty nice. Not nearly as fishy as I expected. John had a few more plates than I did ...

Fire in Stratford

There was a huge fire out in stratford. We didn't know where it was coming from at first. It looked like Canary Wharf was on fire. The whole sky was full of smoke ...

NFL in Canary Wharf

There was an NFL exhibition match in the city on the weekend. They brought an oversized player down to Canary Wharf ...

Taking Security to the Extreme in the Nanny State

I think they're taking to counter terrorism to the extreme here ...

IMAX

We went to the IMAX catch Beowulf. It's so big its incredible. The normal size cinema screen is dwarfed by it. And to make it even better we were watching in 3D - A what a film to pick for 3D :-)

The London Eye - Part 1

I say part 1 because I still haven't gone up it - but it looks great on the South Bank. Watch this space ...

Greenwich Observatory

I loved this place. Steeped in history. The Prime Meridian of the World. ... sounds very important. 0 degrees east and west is marked by a laser just outside the observatory ... hmm - or is it? Apparantly if you have your GPS receiver handy the meridian line is about 20 meters to the left - for "military reasons" so I'm told.



Apart from that, in the museum downstairs has Harrisson's H4 timepiece - amazing! The first accurate enough watch to calculate longtitude.



Upstairs in the observatory was a telescope where you could see Pluto.

Notting Hill Carnival

Our first weekend here we randomly met an old friend of Nici's in the tube station. He brought us down to Notting Hill where the famous Carnival was on that weekend. It was pretty cool. It seemed like a really affluent area and completely shut down for the weekend - there was a really fun band dressed as superheroes, where we stopped for ages.

Trafalgar Square

When I was here when I was a kid the big attraction was the millions of pigeons that lived in trafalgar square. However, some big spoil sport meany banned feeding the pigeons and now all that's left is protestors and random art on the empty fourth plinth.

The Millenium Dome

The largest tent in the world, cost a billion to build, totally flopped when it opened, and in a last ditch effort to recoup some costs the UK government did what it does best and privatised ... within a very short space of time the newly rebranded "O2 Dome" became a big success. I'm yet to go to a gig there, but the cinema there is great :-)

The Sweet Free Checkout

I'd like to see the one that isn't sweet free ...