Pete Baker’s Blog

It’s been a couple of years since Ed introduced me to the concept of sailing in London… no, not on the Thames, but in the old Millwall Dock, formerly the hub of the British trade empire, now home to skyscrapers, executive flats, and last but not least the DSWC, a rather cool not-for-profit trust-owned community sailing and watersports centre. I can’t emphasise what a great place this is – it’s basically non-exclusive, open to all ages and walks of life and funded by the trust and (I think) grant money. They also get local kids involved in the centre through their Youth Afloat program, so it’s really community facing.

But the real reason I go there is for the Twilight Sailing, which runs every Wednesday night over the summer. It’s an idea nicked from the Aussies – basically, you are all supposed to whizz round a sailing race course, downing a tinnie for each marker bouy you pass. This continues until sundown, at which point, in typical Aussie style, you all dock your boats and go have a massive barbie and get even more wankered.

Sadly, the public waterways laws over here are a bit stricter than they are in Oz, so instead of drinking out on the water, you just race your boats until sundown, then rush to the barbie and get pissed really quickly before closing, which is more the British style.

Still, it’s pretty cool sailing a boat on this massive dock, surrounded by the Canary Wharf towers and various other skyscrapers, as the sun sets behind the buildings, and you scramble to control the boat as another insane gust of wind nearly capsizes you. Yes, the presence of all those tall buildings makes for some very interesting wind patterns. Last night, me Ian and Chloe really thought we were going in the drink at several points….

Needless to say, the barbie is bloody excellent as well. And all this for 20 quid! It really is a great experience, and not the kind of thing you expect to be able to do in ole landlocked London.

I am now thinking of joining, and finally getting round to doing my RYA-1 and RYA-2 qualifications (been sailing since I was 11 without any qualifications at all!). They also do tidal / river sailing training, and the big Yachting qualifications as well.

However, I think ultimately I want to be able to learn how to sail one of these babies…. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 49er, a rather quick and somewhat unstable 16 foot skiff…. bit of a bugger to control, as this video demonstrates…

The virus like spread of social networking sites has led to an all too familiar real world situation for me – I’m registered with multiple sites, but have completely different groups of friends on each. It’s all getting a bit cliqeuy! You end up in the same conversation every day ‘are you on Facebook? Nah mate I use Livejournal, can’t be bothered to register with anything else.’ … ‘how about Flickr? What’s the point, I’m on Myspace!’ How am I supposed to look popular when my friends are distributed across hundreds of different sites? As my mate Ed has just said to me ‘at the rate it is growing there will be one social network site per person’.

To be completely honest, I really just can’t be arsed.

However, I do think it would be nice if I could use my main blog to post once, and cross post to both my Livejournal and Facebook accounts. I’m not going to bother with Myspace, because synesthasically speaking, it looks like tramps wee on a train smells.

Facebook already allows you to import posts via an RSS feed, which is nice. However, Livejournal does not, so I have had to use the LiveJournal Crossposter from Evan Broder, which pushes Wordpress posts up onto your Livejournal account. Finally, I have also installed Adam Hill’s rather funky Facebook Comments plugin, which periodically imports comments from your Facebook back into your Wordpress blog. I’ll bet I get loads of spam.

Crossposting to Flickr is a bit pointless – unless someone knows of some amazing Wordpress plugin that can convert your blog posting to a photographic representation. For this post, I’m guessing it would just be a picture of me breaking down and crying.

I’ll bet none of this works. Social networking sucks! Go down the pub and meet people for real!
Anyway… here goes… pressing the publish button.

I’m glad that I got this shot a couple of years ago….

Both the BBC and the Guardian are reporting that most of the important stuff (the masts, the decking, the rigging, the hull plating, the ornamentation and the figurehead) have been offsite during the recent restoration, and as long as the ship’s metal frame hasn’t been twisted by the fire, then restoration will still be possible.

Oh so very true….

Cats were specifically created for the purpose of making digital image sharing more interesting. They have just been biding their time, waiting for the advent of Flickr and Picassaweb.

Genius.

So, would you want to live here?

I’m starting to get tired of London… quite a few of my best friends have moved out in the last 12 months or so, or are planning to move out. It’s amazing how a city changes when you start to realise that people you depended on for an impromtu beer or trip to the cinema are all dissapearing. Most of my friends are now scattered across the UK, Leeds, Cambridge, Hull, Liverpool, and it’s now the case that an impromptu visit often involves hopping in my car and battling your way through London traffic for an hour or so…

So my sis and brother in law live in Spain, and I have a few other friends out there as well. The other day, my sis dropped me an SMS saying she knew a manager in a British IT firm based out of Malaga, and they were crying out for British IT people. Also, as it’s a British firm, the ability to speak Spanish isn’t a prerequisite! The downsides? Well, the pay is rubbish, and it’s in Euros, so that is why they are having a hard time getting Brits in to work for them (mind you Spanish tax is only 12%). The upsides? Well, improved quality of life, sunshine, a chance to properly experience Spanish culture, and to live somewhere that’s completely different from London. Oh yes, and the chicas!

Seriously considering it… I’ve been spending a lot of time in Spain over the past few months, and as I have family out there, it is starting to feel somewhat home-like.

Charlie Brooker’s latest blog posting has triggered a slew of sarcastic reviews of Richard Littlejohn’s latest book….

Some of my faves so far:

‘I loved this book so much, I left it for my cat to read. I couldn’t make this up!’

‘The moving true story of John LittleRichard coming to terms with and ultimately revelling in his throbbing homosexuality.’

‘Devastating. Through a series of extravagantly counterintuitive detournements, deliberate solecisms and a fresh and shocking schizoid logic, Littlejohn delicately intimates his troubled relationship with his own sexuality and his anomie in the face of a late capitalist society that has yet to afford him either respect or love. A startling account of spiritual desolation.’

and finally….

‘LITTLEJOHN’S MARTYRDOM WILL NOT BE IN VAIN!!!!!’

We can live in hope….

I have been a big fan of the Super Furry Animals for some time… a band I never get tired of. I love the fact that they never take themselves at all seriously, despite them being superb musicians with some really great songs. Their music videos are also often simultaneously inspired and tounge in cheek…. on one of my random YouTube jaunts, I found this little beauty:

It kind of starts out as a nice simple flash style anim, but then gets seriously weird… I mean what’s with all the chicks in burkas dancing in the church? Talk about random. The guy responsible for most of the SFA’s videos is a chap called Pete Fowler, and he has a website which will probably make your head explode. Genius.

Finally got round to starting a blog. Hopefully I can be more motivated to post stuff here than I could with my Joomla site!