Rainin' in my heart - Al Green (live, acoustic)

Paula Meehan at Women of the World 2014

Many highlights. A great communicator, with humour and ranging the gamut of emotions.

Wood End

Looking east 1

Looking east 2

Update, Saturday 24/10/2015

Bombs, war crimes and our diminished sensitivity - Rana Dasgupta

'The recent bombing of a hospital in Kunduz highlights a decline in Western efforts to make wars less brutal. ... The vision of a consensual internationalism built on parliamentary and judicial process remains the only way to restore to global affairs the kind of legitimacy that might give young people in Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan a feeling that the world is not entirely lawless and senseless - and it does not need to be burned down. And the starting point of such a "society of societies" must be that the strong - as in any society worth the name - be bound by the same rules as the weak. ...' (Read)

The new library centre is open

It's pleasing that the new library centre has not been saddled with the awful Stalinist sounding working title of "Willesden Green Cultural Centre". There was nothing wrong with the original name, the library centre. Now it's called The Library, which actually is a misnomer, because it's a lot more than that. But at least it's a bit better than the painfully patronising old proposal.

If you think about it, calling it "The Library" is probably only a marketing tactic for the new block of foreign investment units, sorry I mean flats, that occupies the space where the car park used to be. It's still really the Library Centre but you don't want that for selling flats in Singapore, where the block of flats was advertised as having "no affordable housing and no key worker housing". That's because a "centre" might mean local people would be hanging around, and you certainly don't want that, if you're a Singaporean investor. Not that you're ever likely to visit.

But if you do, by the way, there are loads of public services you can avail yourself of, which will save you whatever the same things cost in Singapore, probably a lot, right? It's all paid for by those invisibles and key worker types you never want to see. As well as contributing via P.A.Y.E. most of them pay in monthly to the local council as well. What a brilliant wheeze!

Tuning stone

The original Victorian library (left) is only a shell.

Grange Road side still has Bin Laden's phone booth, updated.

Periscopes?

"Inspire and be inspired"

Elle magazine's clever illustration of disparity

How it would look if men were Photoshopped out, leaving very few women in position #morewomen

Monsanto and Starbucks versus the People of Vermont

Mothers Want To Know What They Feed Their Children!Historic Showdown on Food Safety versus multi national corporate...

Posted by Neil Young on Friday, 2 October 2015

Meal of the day

At Sudbury Hill

Late summer flowers

Wood End

Happiness reigns in Sudbury Hill

"Opening Soon: The Catch - Award Winning Fish and Chips"

Blood red moon

Ukrainian borscht etc.

Menu (next to Sudbury Hill station)

Dance fun

Horsenden Hill views

West London horizon

Horsenden Hill

A walk around Horsenden Hill

Horsenden Lane

The way in from Horsenden Lane

Capital Ring waymark

It looks okay at first...

Eh...

Okay, Deliverance

Out of the woods, into a clearing

This is what you see next, Horsenden Hill golf course.

Pomeranian

Fulham Palace Road

Shopping parade

Melville Avenue

Patterns by Anderson / Door to Door

Anderson's website

Dry cleaners

Nour Dry Cleaners, 169 Greenford Road, HA1 3RA

Hospital bus stop closed. Nobody working on roadworks.

Charing Cross hospital bus stop closed, Fulham Palace Road 

I happened to pass by here for the second day in a row and the bus stop is still closed and there is still nobody working on the hole in the ground, where some pipes are exposed. Did they think it was okay to close the bus stop for the hospital and leave it with no one working on the problem? How long has it been like this, and how long before somebody comes and finishes the work?

Meanwhile outpatients are taken to the next bus stop and have to make their way back to the hospital entrance. Today the pedestrian walk around was flooded up to about three inches and the ramp was out of position at one end. I understand that work has to be done on the pipes or whatever, but I don't understand why no one is working on it, and meanwhile the bus stop for the hospital is closed. Who is responsible? What is their answer? Hammersmith and Fulham Council?

Ossian

Sculpture by Henry Moore

At Charing Cross hospital

This is a model for the full sized version of the same thing, outside the Rockefeller "Center" in New York. There's a plaque with all the details. [Unfortunately not in this post! Ed.]

Moby-Dick, unabridged

Moby-Dick Unabridged
presented by The Special Relationship and The Southbank Centre

1-4 October. Follow the link above for details.

"Over four days, hear the unabridged Moby-Dick by Herman Melville being read aloud.

The epic Romantic work is being performed by actors, writers, members of the public, comedians – and Herman Melville’s great-great-great-granddaughter.

This live reading also includes newly commissioned work from illustrators, artists and musicians – expect surprising contributions every day."

Windows 10 update experience

Microsoft Windows 10 free update. Yeah. It told me in its cheery way that my Dell Optiplex 330 system with Windows 7 Pro and all my apps and devices were fully compatible and assured me we were "good to go" and there were no issues.

However, immediately after the upgrade three very important little things didn't work: Wi-Fi adapter, wireless keyboard driver and monitor driver. That's right, screen, keyboard and internet. The only thing that worked was the wireless mouse. And that was only because it was a recent replacement one that came with the keyboard. If that hadn't worked I would not be typing this now.

If the thing that connects you to the internet, in my case a USB wi-fi gizmo, doesn't work after the upgrade, it's not much good it trying to look for updated drivers - because it can't connect. If it had only been the keyboard I would have found a way around it, but the wif-fi adapter was the killer. The messages I got from "Troubleshooting" were:

Broadcom Bluetooth 3.0 USB adapter driver has a problem
D-Link micro USB driver has a problem
Video controller has a problem. (The display was wonky).

I found my way through "Troubleshooting" to "Return to Windows 7 (available for one month only)". At one point it asked me to describe the problem but I couldn't type anything - wireless keyboard, remember? After several hours my system is back to how it started, i.e. working fine.

I won't be signing up for the free upgrade again. You might be lucky but I wasn't.

Simon Moribund

Outing Amazon

I have suspended the Amazon bookshop until Amazon reforms the terms and conditions for its workers and pays its full income tax on sales in the UK. (Steve)

Ref: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/18/amazon-regime-making-british-staff-physically-and-mentally-ill-says-union

This afternoon

The sun behind a cloud