Meeester Nik

There’s nothing quite like a real book

2012-02-14T08:48:37Z

The subject says it all, although the last time I read a printed book in place of my Kindle was… umm…

Cutesy collapsing chimneys

2012-02-10T16:13:53Z

This is lovely…

Pyramid at the Louvre, Paris

2012-01-28T12:17:01Z

A picture from a couple of years ago, very late one night on the way back from dinner. The Louvre is swamped with tourists during the day, which doesn’t make for good photos. Come back late, though, and it’s deserted, as everyone has headed off in search of dinner and nightlife. You have the place almost to yourself. The water on the shallow pools that surround the pyramid, itself the entrance to the museum and its ticket hall, are still and undisturbed, making for perfect reflections.

As any Dan Brown fan will likely tell you, the Pyramid apparently has 666 panes of glass spread about its four sides. In truth, it doesn’t, though. The actual number is 673. The 666-pane myth has been circulating since the 1980s, first appearing in the construction brochure, which you might reasonably have expected to be accurate.

Tollesbury, Essex

2012-01-20T13:29:12Z

Down by the water there’s an open air bathing pool, deserted at this time of year…

Blackout

2012-01-18T14:40:27Z

In case you were wondering why Wikipedia and a host of other sites are blacked out today… you owe it to yourself to watch this short video.

Lay back and think of Germany…

2012-01-13T09:03:28Z

This is from the Telegraph:

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year….

Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit…

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.

The full story is here: ‘If you don’t take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits’ – Telegraph

Glass silos at Autostadt

2012-01-08T15:31:31Z

Glass silos at Autostadt

Autostadt is a park surrounding the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. We went there just before Christmas. These two glass silos may be technical, architecturally impressive bling, but they are more or a proper business tool than the attractions that surround them. From Wikipedia:

There are two 60 meter/200 ft tall glass silos used as storage for new Volkswagens. The two towers are connected to the Volkswagen factory by a 700 metre underground tunnel. When cars arrive at the towers they are carried up at a speed of 1.5 metres per second. The render for the Autostadt shows 6 towers. When purchasing a car from Volkswagen (the main brand only, not the sub-brands) in select European countries, it is optional if the customer wants it delivered to the dealership where it was bought or if the customer wants to travel to Autostadt to pick it up. If the latter is chosen, the Autostadt supplies the customer with free entrance, meal tickets and a variety of events building up to the point where the customer can follow on screen as the automatic elevator picks up the selected car in one of the silos. The car is then transported out to the customer without having driven a single meter, and the odometer is thus on “0″.

Each silo holds 400 cars.

Firing range on Rainham Marshes

2012-01-03T18:41:44Z

Former military firing range on Rainham Marshes

Happy secular festival

2011-12-24T11:47:11Z

The Christmas branch is up and adorned. The presents are wrapped. 40 pieces of shortbread, baked and ready to give to the neighbours.

Just about the only thing I’ve not been able to do is buy a religious Christmas card. I only need one; the rest of my cards were stencilled stars and winter scenes, but that one religious card is proving highly elusive.

Nothing close to home could serve up the goods, unless you wanted one ‘to a great vicar’, ‘to the best vicar’ or ‘to a special vicar’ – plenty of them (but none for the non-protestant MC). There were cards ‘to the cat’, ‘from the bump’ and even ‘to the house’, but nothing that might have been vogue before Christmas was reinvented as a mail order relay designed to bolster a dying postal service and still nascent industry for selling – and shopping – online. Multi-packs, yes. Singles, no.

Even the cathedral, which was well-stocked with cards bearing puppies, flowers, cars and yachts couldn’t help. I could have bought a multi-pack, of which there were just four designs to choose from in a tiny section hidden away from line of sight. And one picture of a candle.

Eventually we hauled ourselves out to late night shopping at Lakeside, and found just one… roughly three minutes after giving up and buying a picture of a present strapped to the back of a bike dusted with snow.

So it’s the snow-dusted present card that we’ll be giving, and we’ll bear in mind that a bookshop of all places – Waterstone’s – was the only place we could find a non-multi-pack religious card this year.

It’s no surprise that for a lot of people – most – Christmas is about family, presents and the unfulfilled promise of great festive telly, yet I find it hard to believe there are more people who would rather send a card ‘from’ their dog or unborn child, or to an inanimate object like a pile of bricks and a roof, than there are who would like to send a traditional design that reflects the Christmas story.

However, and why ever you celebrate Christmas, I think that’s a shame.

On Europe, Britain and saving the euro

2011-12-11T22:01:21Z

From Andrew Rawnsley in The Guardian:

Even Eurosceptics will soon find that there is nothing splendid about isolation. Our capacity to shape the future of the world’s wealthiest economic bloc, which is also our most important export market, has just been dramatically diminished. This will have consequences not just for Britain’s influence in Europe, but its standing in the world. A Britain with reduced clout in the European Union is a Britain of less interest to the United States, China or any other important global power.

Though David Cameron acted in the name of protecting the City of London, the City is aghast. Far from safeguarding British banks and other financial interests from Brussels, Berlin and Paris, Britain is now locked out of crucial negotiations on the future form of regulation. As for Tory Eurosceptics, once their misguided intoxication has worn off, they will sober up to find that their agenda of repatriating powers from Brussels has been retarded, not advanced.