Another phone pic, this one explaining why the university bookshop has closed. It’s appropriate, as far as I’m concerned: a university without a bookshop being one of the harbingers of the apocalypse.
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One hundred and sixteen: futility
When the solar panels went up on campus (there are two of them) people cracked lots of jokes about the futility of trying to make electricity from sunlight in the [supposedly] wettest place in England. I like them, though, they add a certain eerie sci-fi feel to the place, moving as they do, to follow the sun, or the place where the sun should be.
One hundred and fourteen: Stickers
The sticker in the middle originally said “why not hang a fascist from this lamppost?” It’s been there a while, and I’ve wondered about it a lot. Recently, someone scratched out “a fascist” very clearly and deliberately, later, someone added the sticker for the Manchester Ant-Fascist alliance. I don’t think the Gohar Shahi poster has anything to do with either of these things, though.
It’s all quite odd, especially since the original sticker predates the English Defense League march in Preston earlier this year.
One Hundred and thirteen: hmmm
This was taken at Data Journalism Camp in Manchester, an event I was involved in with Francois Nel and Tom Johnson. This is Francis Irving, from a company called ScraperWiki that creates tools for data scraping and does it for companies with money as well.
That’s Jon Snow of Channel 4 news behind him – they worked on a big project with Channel 4 recently, and Francis was discussing it.
One hundred and twelve: teeny tiny functional hotel room
In Manchester. And yes, I know, it’s 40 minutes away on the train. Except, in true English travel fashion, it’s not, it’s good hour and a half, and not in rush hour, or after 8pm or before 8am. I need to be here early, and needed to be here late, and well, teeny tiny functional hotel rooms go for £33 a night, and I’m not paying.
It doesn’t have a kettle, but it has everything else you could need, two beds, a shower, a toilet (in an enclosure so small you have to get undressed outside and back in to it), sink, TV set. Only one power outlet, though.
Oh well, you can’t have everything.
One hundred and eleven: spikey!
At this rate, it’s going to take two years to do 365 pictures, and you know what, I think I may be happy with that.
Some days, I forget completely, some days, I just don’t have time to think of anything at all. I may start uploading two a day, if I have time and space to take multiple pics, but until then, this will have to do.
I like little flowers. I like unassuming flowers, and these are both, hanging on a bush on campus. As usual, I have no idea what they are.
One hundred and ten: soup
Or, more specifically, organic veg box soup. We get a box of assorted organic veg every week, and every now and again we look at the overflowing veg crisper and think “it’s time for soup”. This is minestrone, with, I think, four kinds of brassicas in it, and very good it was too.
I’ve been very busy, writing and marking, and have barely left the house. It’s not going to get much better any time soon, so expect lots of pics of food and knick knacks. Plus, the weather’s turned foul again.
From what I am writing now:
“This, of course, locates social media firmly within the realm of activism, as opposed to the simpler (or simplistic) idea of the news as ‘objectively’ reporting the facts. It is possibly this that creates the schism between some journalists and social media: fear of being coerced into taking sides, rather than simply being misled.”
After all, foreign correspondents have willingly and gratefully been misled by the authorities for as long as there have been foreign correspondents. Fear of being lied to by someone on Twitter is so much greater than fear of being lied to by some tinpot dictator’s flunkies. Why on earth is this the case?
This is, of course, just an aside in something much larger, but very interesting, no?
One hundred and nine: hungry
This is a sight and sound that greets me every few hours, whenever I am home. I suspect it carries on in the night, but I sleep through it. Oliver is hungry. So so very hungry. He’s starving, he hasn’t been fed since before the rinderpest and that time, the black cat ate all his food. And all the other times. He’s never had any food. Ever.
And so on and so on and so on.
When we first got him, we figured he had been neglected or something, but FIVE years later, he’s still doing it.
And believe me, we feed him. The guy who delivers groceries for us must think we’re running a shelter – pretty much all we buy is a truckload of cat food and some coffee. And Oliver eats it, and stays skinny.
Cat has several hollow legs, he does.
One hundred and eight: sky
I was in Manchester all day and forgot my camera, so this was taken on my mobile phone while waiting for the bus home. This is looking up Friargate, the main road north from the city centre. There are several pairs of shoes dangling from the overhead phone lines, I have no idea why, but this was really about the sky, which was an appealing mackerel pattern.