Urban patterns and matters: January 2011

20110131

Life after winter

The weather has been quite wintery temperature wise this week but still these green darlings are pushing up from the grounds. Spring is here!

20110130

20110129

Black Swan

I saw the movie Black Swan today. It is excellent and horrible at the same time not to mention beautiful. Now I need to see Swan Lake again. Last time was in Helsinki.

20110128

I have sometimes checked how my blog ranks in Google search. At the moment it is 7th link that Google suggests with the key words 'urban patterns'. I must say I am impressed that it has gone so up as my circle of readers is not vast nor have I done almost anything to market my blog.

One thing I have not done earlier is to check Google image search. I was amazed to see how many of my images rank quite high in it. Top images are above. Funnily, about half of them are very recent, from my alpine tour last Christmas. Someone has been viewing them a lot and that is not me. I always try not to visit my blog so that I would not twist the results of the visitor tracker.

20110127

Old drawings, part II

I bought this portrait of a soldier from Salzburg last year. The drawing dates back to year 1792. I am not sure is the soldier in the picture called Anton Esterházy or is that the artist. Esterházy name refers to a Hungarian noble family that was a major landowner magnate in Hungary from 17th century onwards. Anyway, I love the detailing of the picture and especially those rosy cheeks.

20110126

Old drawings, part I

I bought two prints from year 1809 from Cambridge last autums. One of the prints shows the wall structure of Cambridge's famous King's College Chapel and other one its ceiling ornaments. I love the patterns and symmetry of them. I should finally have them framed.

20110124

A transport pattern

An imaginary tube illustration

There is one pattern I hate in London. It is the unreliable tube and especially Jubilee line. It is very rarely when the Jubilee line works like it should be. Most mornings and early evenings when I use this useless tube line, it has delays or suspensions because of variety of reasons. For example this morning I had to wait for a train to come more than 15 minutes in the peak hour because of a signal failure in Finchley Road. Then again, I had to tolerate another delay when commuting back home from work. And that was just a tip of the iceberg during the last few weeks. I do not know what is the ultimate problem with London's underground. It is very badly maintained, expensive and unreliable. The network is extensive, but obviously it can not handle the load it is having. Improvements are being made, but the upgrade works are badly late.

Usually, I compare things in London and Helsinki to my colleagues when I want to point out something that really works. In this case I will not do it, because Helsinki has only one undeground line compared to the vast network in London. But there are working metro systems in other big cities, like in Tokyo. Tokyo has three times more people than London but still their subway works like a clock-work. Maybe Boris Johnson and his advisors should make a excursion to Japan? I think the key thing to learn from the Japanese would be taking pride on what one does. Now I feel no one really cares about the tube and that shows in every aspect.

20110123

Goldbeater's house

20110122

Choosing glasses

I have been thinking of getting new glasses for some time. I do not use them all the time, but only when I am working or home using my laptop i.e. many hours of the day. Face furnishings are important and they seem to be extension to personality. That is why choosing glasses is incredibly difficult. I have been eyeing some models from Persol and Moscot. Now I should take the next step and start fitting...