London Flood Risk map - check your postcode

So, this is where I used to work (the map comes from the environment agency "Flood risk" map) showing what would happen (in dark blue) if local rivers breached their banks, and what would happen (in light blue) if there was an "Extreme flood"...

...pretty safe in Islington then, even though they do have the odd canal...Anyway, according to rumours going round "the Wharf" at the moment, the tidal surge is due to hit the barrier at about 1600hrs...now, compare the above map to where I am currently sat -

- oo-er! Rather a stark difference, however, note the purple lines, these are flood defences designed to stop us all drowning like rats in the London underground on the way home (just to serve us all right for working on the London Floodplane)...included among them is the mighty Thames Barrier (as I mentioned already), which gives London an odds of flooding of 1:2000 years (about 0.05% per year), add to that the fact that the surge is about 8 inches lower at the moment than expected previously (according to the latest measurements), and we will probably be just fine...goodness knows what the Romans used to do though, all get into boats probably... ;)
Anyway, if you want to check your postcode for the possible need to swim back home from work tonight, here is the postcode checker...

Views of Kings Cross...

...just a few more shots of the area (as I found it at the end of last week), won't be much chance to explore from now on! ;)

Mysterious Chalk Drawing - Balfe Street

Spotted this the other day, on the pavement outside one of the houses in Balfe Street...any ideas? The writing says "Artificial"...

Definitely a technical drawing of some kind, but what of, I wonder? It reminds me of the "idiot's guide" animations they do on Scrap Heap Challenge (to explain the mechanical principles to the layman)...

London Canal Museum (in the rain)

Join me, in a peek out the cell window at the cloudburst happening currently a few feet behind my desk...nice weather for ducks...*shiver*...

Online Marketing 07

So yesterday took a trip up to Angel to visit the NMA sponsored Online Marketing 07 conference, got a little bit lost trying to actually find the place, happening first upon the tradesmens entrance in Liverpool Road, and being directed to walk around the block (back the way I had come) by a burley security guard when I tried to follow a lorry driver in through the loading bay -

- so, I finally managed to locate the *proper* way in -

- where there was a queue of about 20 people waiting to pick up their badges (which I joined the back of), the person who was two in front of me hadn't registered, so was sent, blushing, to go and fill out his demographics by the front door and then (like a naughty school boy) join the back of the queue, next the person in front of me (who smiled smugly and presented her filled out demographic form) was then left stuttering when it was announced that the "on the door" registrants had to pay TWENTY QUID ADMISSION! "But why is it so much?" she asked, to be told "Admin costs", "But it's free to register online!" she protested (to a shrug and a "sorry"), at which she acidly flicked over her credit card...(personally I would have gone and found a cyber cafe or walked up to the library and registered rather than cough up, but she probably just expensed it)... ;) Anyway, being a good boy, and having pre-registered, I handed over my e-ticket, collected my complimentary "Doubleclick" neck strap, attached my newly printed name badge to it, and headed towards the doors...being handed a complimentary bag of popcorn (courtesy of "Big Mouth Media") as I did so... ;)

Muching handfulls, I wandering the stalls, spotting (and politely endured sales pitches from) content management providers, SEO/Search specialists, end to end agencies, SEO/Search specialists, design studios, SEO/Search specialists, email and banner serving providers, SEO/Search specialists, the odd new media association (trying to invent themselves), SEO/Search specialists and yet more SEO/Search specialists (who by then I was hurrying past with my NMA carrier bag in front of my head) -

- went to a number of the (generally very interesting) workshops, the best of which (about current general marketing strategy and trends) was largely ruined by the young lad who was *supposed* to be doing the AV for the PA system, but seemed much more interested in sneaking bits of his Burger King lunch from the drawer beneath the controls) -

- tut...anyway, had a really good day, will certainly attend again, as it's facinating to see things from the "other side" (i.e. what the marketeers are being advised to do, going forward), oh and I also got a load of pens, and (a *real* coup) a doubleclick T-Shirt (when I volunteered us to be on the public beta for their widget dashboard) (don't ask)... ;)

Kings Place, York Way - Finishing touches

Got in super early today, so I thought I would take a quick peek at what's going on with Kings Place (just up the road from my office) and it looks like they are almost done with it, most notably you can now clearly see where they are going to attach the wave-like glass facade to the front of the building, it's certainly changed quite a bit since my last pics, really starting to look like a building, rather than a building site now... ;)

Chamber Maid - Vacancy Greys Inn Road

Hang on, we still have Chamber maids!!??

Pentonville Road closed - Accident

The train got me in to Kings Cross Thameslink quite early today (despite being late to leave Redhill by a few minues), my ticket wouldn't work in the barrier for some strange reason, meaning I had to queue up to get it checked in the procession of people either being issued fines, charged extensions or holding/dragging massive suitcases which gave me a minute or two peering out the window in boredom...then it struck me...the road was empty...bit odd...got out and the flashing lights hit me like a brick, the road was closed (shades of 7/7 reared up in my mind, so I grabbed my phone, only camera with me, and took a few snaps as I followed the trail of police cars to the source of the emergency)...

I passed 5 or 6 police cars blocking the road and offices directing traffic away from the Pentonville road -

- which was startling in it's appearance, not crammed with rush hour traffic -

- as I got nearer (I could see 8 or 10 police vehicles and a load of police tape just up the hill) I started hearing people talking about helicopters, and just then a Virgin air ambulance shot up from behind a building to my right, the rotor sound was obviously baffled until it came into direct line of sight to me and headed at speed northwards...

My curious nature got me in trouble this time, and I saw something I really didn't want to, it was a battered, dusty ten wheeled truck, the kind used to move tons of hardcore around for building sites, behind it in the road a tangle of metal with a bent bike wheel sticking out of it at a strange angle (could have been one or two bikes, it was impossible to tell it was so crushed)...and just being covered with a silver sheet was the totally mangled body of a young girl (no more than 10 or 12)..."Rosie" I gathered from the wails of her school friends as they clung to each other in confusion, desperation, devastation and horror...

I staggered away, my sense of reality robbed from me just as a member of the family was jogging, still perhaps none the wiser, up the road towards the police yelling out "I'm here, I'm family, now what's happened?"...

Can't make any judgement, as I don't know all the facts (just what I saw) but regardless - Sleep tight little one... :(

Science versus Nature

Spotted just up the Caledonian Road the other day, a really rather "out of the ordinary" (position-wise) poster site ad for one of our competitors...made even more amusingly strange with the addition of the blue mushroom motif (lovingly daubed by one of the local Islington spray artists) in respect...

One would have to take a minute or two, to question the motive of the ad planner that decided on this particular spot, the rest of the local audience probably being quite as appreciative of the subject matter as the mushroom commentator... ;)

Kings Place, York Way - Basic Structure in place

Well, here we go, another update on the "Kings Place" building project on York Way in Islington/Kings Cross. It seems to have stopped growing vertically (for the time being, at least), and so we may now actually have a good idea what the basic structure of the finished product is going to look like...

If you look back at the last time I took a few shots (which was in August last year) you can see exactly how much they have achieved in that time (despite the fire that caused the whole area to close thanks to the risk of exploding gas tanks) I tried to take these couple of shots from roughly the same angles as before, so you can see the progress more clearly-

- Haha...Well, God bless the local permanent-marker-wielding youth...much improving the work of the local primary school with added "dumplings" (even on the vaguely male-looking pieces, transforming what were probably supposed to be mixing desks into what now looks like an oversized bra) -

- walked up to see the view from the bridge over the canal (looks like we have a layer to go on the wedding-cake bit at the end to top it off) and was approached by a guy in a suit who walked right up to me and said "May I ask, who are you working for?", turns out, he is the guy in charge of the whole project, so I introduced myself, told him about the blog (and how to find these entries and photos, although not too difficult with the power of Google)...

So, Mr Head of Construction (nice to meet you by the way), and anyone else interested, if you want to really go back in time, check out what used to be on the site (before they demolished it, and dug a huge hole)...1 minute's silence (quiet cry)... ;(

There is another blogger intermittently documenting the build, "at one remove", an artist who either lives or works hereabouts, I think it was he that mentioned that there was going to be an official photographer to document the work but they were cancelled for financial reasons, so I feel duty bound to catch a bit of the construction...just for histories sake... ;)

Parking suspension, Balfe Street

Spotted this morning (so that worked really well then! The road is still absolutely packed with parked cars... ;)

As well as all the parked cars there were also lots of "Bill Stickers" down there being angry with gesticulating members of the public clutching their valid parking tickets...quite funny to watch, they really should have turned off the ticket machine, or covered it up (or something...! ;)

Brass studs in the pavement

There are literally hundreds of these things stuck in the pavements all around Kings Cross, they are about the size of an M&M, shiny brass and each one has a little serial number scrawled next to it (this one is somewhat faded)...anyone got any idea what they might be?

Google has come up a little light for me, the only clue being a Surrey county council document about defining boundaries for pavement cafes, but there really aren't that many in Kings Cross, in fact, only 3 places I can think of have any kind of outside seating...so what are they for?

Answers on an IP packet...

York Way accident

Whoops, looks like someone hit a lamp post in York Way overnight, leaving it at a bit of a crazy angle...the odd thing is, to do that you would imagine the vehicle in question must have been going quite fast, but the road (at that point) is a one-way street, in the wrong direction! And how did the thing next to it survive?

*Fink scratches his head*

(Previous crashes - bus crash (same road) and lorry crash (2 streets away) plus pictures of the aftermath)

Bowlarama at the Trocadero

Last night was the office "Bowlarama!", we all met up for a quick drink in the Lincoln Lounge (it of the naughty artwork) then managed to split up into about 10 different groups in the crush and confusion on the tube -

- arriving staggered over the space of about 20 minutes at the Strada in Panton Street (near Leicester Square) -

- as a result we were cutting it pretty fine for the alloted slot for the bowling alleys -

- thus it was straight to main courses, I went for the "Pizze rosse" (sic) which was spicy sausage, caramelised red onion, red peppers, tomato and cheese (and jolly good too, once I had added freshly ground black pepper and a generous amount of peri peri oil, which was thoughtfully left on the table) -

- then it was on to the Trocadero, which is much less exciting for the death of SEGA World (the owners just put a coke machine in front of the escalator that used to lead up there), "The Aliens Experience" and the IMAX cinema, the majority of the machines that comprised the former are now scattered around pretty much everywhere, so it looks like FunLand bought them all up and just expanded over the whole place...

...there is, at least, one cinema still in there, lending a small illusion to the contrary...the shops, of course, survive in various reinventions of themselves, and a slightly seedy undertone is lent to the place by the addition of a number of market stall affairs touting cheap jewellery and mobile phone accessories (this is not the Trocadero of old)...

The crew descended on the dodgems, with a similar enthusiasm to that witnessed at the climax of "Carry on at your Convenience" -

- and then onto the main event of the evening, amazingly they had bowling shoes in my size(!), and the finger didn't get in the way of an almost respectable performance from me (once I had warmed up)...but I was no-where near the league of the heavy hitters who seemed to manage to effortlessly get strike after strike (a mis-spent youth, obviously) ;)

Then, equally amazingly, "B" and I had a relatively stress free journey home, my train (from Victoria) dropped me right at Earlswood, so I had a lovely spooky walk through the (full moon lit) fog across the fields, back to the house, and bed...

Crinan Street

- my team moved desks a few weeks back, so I thought I would share a picture of the space we now inhabit...(I've spoken about my office before), but this should give you an idea what it's like to work in this "imaginatively converted warehouse"), from up above, with all the walkways and netting it kind of feels like being in a grown up adventure playground, but in the depths (where we sit) I'm afraid it feels a bit like working in Alcatraz (might do, obviously I never actually worked there in order to make the comparison)...

There is also the fear factor, the constant upward glances in case someone accidentally drops a pen on you when you are walking to the tea machine (the old lags don't do it, being jaded to the risk)...but for the new inmate it's intimidating - in places the nets are littered with previous accidents that no-one has bothered to retrieve (pens, books, rulers...the odd *coin*)...

Touch wood though, nothing has hit me yet... ;)

I also don't like it when the wooden bridges creak under you, that's unpleasant...I've had at least one dream where I have been trapped 3 stories up hanging onto a tiny bit of remaining structure...*shudder*...and the really odd thing? Just very occasionally getting the crazy notion in your head that you should test the netting by leaping off (and that's from a confirmed acrophobic)...does funny things to me, this place... ;)

Wharfdale Road - Closed

...weather permitting??

What is this, a school fête...? ;)