Blogging ad at Richmond Station

"I've made so many friends since I learnt how to blog", says the nerdy, buck-toothed, geeky, specky guy hunched over his computer. As I was on the way to a friend's birthday that I met through blogging when I spotted this ad on Saturday night, it obviously caught my attention.


The ad continues: "Meet REAL people and LEARN new skills". So the message of the advertisement for Richmond Adult Community College is I think:

a) blogging won't help you meet REAL people
b) blogging won't help you LEARN new skills
c) bloggers typically look like nerdy bespectacled cartoon characters, with bad posture who need a good dentist
d) Richmond College is the answer to your networking and educational needs.

I have nothing personally against Richmond College. I "learnt" basic Dreamweaver there and as a result got free internet access in their "Business Library" for a year, which was handy when I needed to use the net when I was out and about in Richmond. The standard of teaching was passable to OK. I also did a much better two day Photoshop course there, with an entertaining and funny teacher (who also teaches digital photography) which fortunately restored my faith in adult education centres.

However, as a blogger I think the guys and girls at Richmond College should have hired a copywriter or artist who actually knew something about blogging and how to draw cartoons. But, as my council tax is somehow supporting the college, perhaps I should just be glad they didn't have the budget to spend on a better writer or cartoonist.

I certainly met REAL people at Richmond College, but haven't kept in touch with any of them, unlike a lot of my blogging friends, who I've not only met in real life but a number have been really supportive to me and sometimes been much more help than my "real" or rather "meat-space" friends.

The thing I really hate about the ad is that it makes you think of the internet as some weird place populated by nerds with no social skills who aren't "REAL". It's as though the friends you might "meet" through blogging are robots without feelings, who certainly aren't going to teach you anything. Or at least you won't LEARN any new skills through mixing with them.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but the vast majority of the people I've met through blogging have been funny, bright, witty & very clever folk. I don't necessarily have friends to LEARN new skills through them, if I do it's a bonus. It's ironic that blogging meant that I was out having a laugh on Saturday night, rather than sitting hunched over my computer with my specs on.


Thanks Darika for a fun time. It was lovely to meet your mates & see Shiny Media's Gemma again. Good to also meet in the flesh fellow Twitter tweeter Gary Andrews. Darika's mates also knew a number of my other blogging & PR'ry friends and one worked at PC something or other with a journo who'd been on the Dell Orient Express trip with me.

Anyway enough from me on the ad. Perhaps it just rubbed me up the wrong way and I'm being super sensitive. I'm only going to have to look at it for another month or so if I travel into town on British Snail. It would be great to have your views on it. Ah, but then you're not REAL people so probably don't have any opinions.

User-Generated Video Uploads Veoh, Napster, Google and Safe Harbors

In Io Group, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc., No. C06-03926 (HRL), a decision dated August 27, 2008 by Northern District of California Judge Harold Lloyd, discussed by PC Magazine here, the court found that the video uploading service found at http://www.veoh.com/ is not liable for copyright infringement.

The Veoh website permits users to view and upload their own videos and to share revenues generated from advertising revenues with Veoh. Veoh automates the process, so Veoh is not engaged in reviewing content before it goes up. You can also watch television shows made available by Veoh's "content partners". I note such shows as CSI and Ugly Betty from Veoh's home page.

The plaintiff sued Veoh claiming that its copyrighted films were posted on Veoh without bothering to give Veoh notice beforehand.

The decision has a great discussion of the technology involved in the uploading and storing process. It also has a thorough discussion of Veoh's user policies and the legislative history relative to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act that provides a "safe harbor" to online service providers who take reasonable measures to ensure that they are not helping copyright infringers. There is an informative discussion of why Veoh's case differs from the facts of Napster, although the underlying facts of Napster were not fully fleshed out. In today's New York Post, the Veoh case was reported as "Copyright case may aid Google".

Judge Lloyd found Veoh's policy to be reasonable, and rejected arguments that a stronger policy which would be more effective in barring people from creating new false user names was mandated as a condition for avoiding copyright infringement liability. He rejected the argument that the possibility of a banned user creating new false user names amounted to no policy at all. He also made clear that the law was designed to permit different approaches to developing an anti-infringement policy.

Certainly, this flexible approach has to be encouraging to Google, whose policies were not 100% effective against people who actively sought to foil them.

For Tube Fashion Victims?

First we had the Oyster card watches and now some other London Underground "fashion" accessories. Well, just one accessory, as sadly there's only one in stock.


I like the glittery background it's shot on. Other than that, I'll leave the jewellery maker to speak for themselves

"Handmade cababochon using a map of the london underground. This map has been protected using a plastic clear cab. Cababochon is set in a silver plated mount. I have added a silver plated chain necklace with bolt clasp opening."

If anyone has the slightest idea what cababochon is (without looking it up on Google), I'd love to know.

Many thanks to Jane Perrone for sending it through.

If you'd like to buy the necklace it's only $18 and is probably worth its weight in cababochon.

Roundels Not on the London Underground

Many thanks to everyone who has sent me a photo of a Tube Roundel not in it's normal home on the London Underground. As the roundel is 100 years old this year (see the Roundel Scavenger Hunt which is photographically celebrating this - BTW only 6 places left if you want to go), it seemed fitting to post the latest ones I've been sent.

Firstly we have the wonderful "Super Funky Station", taken by Jon T in Italy.


I also love this mini cab photo taken in Hucknall. Not in Mick Hucknall but in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.


The firm is called Torkard Cars and as Lizzie who spotted the cab said "Tut Tut".

If you'd like to see the full set of Roundels not on the Underground they're here.

Girl Geek Dinner at Google takes the cake

Last night I celebrated the 3rd year of the Girl Geek Dinners with a lovely dinner at Google's head office in London. You can catch up with most of what went on by taking a look at my Twitter stream.


I have been in Google's HQ once before, but for many it was their first time there and there was clearly some excitement about being at Google Towers. A number of us were taking photos and my friend L J Rich tried to take a picture of a screen in the reception showing all of the searches (minus the ones on sex) that were being made on Google. Apparently this wasn't allowed though.

For me it was great to catch up with friends I hadn't seen for ages, including my old boss, who is now Marketing Director at Webjam. As some of you may know we used Webjam's platform for the Nom Nom Nom site, where we did a blogger's version of Master Chef earlier this year. It was also a mini reunion as participants, L J & Nicole hadn't seen each other since the "cook off".


Nicole is one of the main helpers of the London Girl Geek Dinners, and plans to do some interviews and fun stuff with us over the coming months, so watch this space.

There were some interesting speeches after dinner including a great one from a Google girl on user centred design and how they build apps for mobile phones and the interesting challenge of putting YouTube onto mobiles.


It finished with a depressing panel session on work life balance which basically highlighted for me that even though it's the 21st century, we still mention the dreaded word "glass ceiling" and that women in particular feel they have to sacrifice success at work if they decide to have children. Luckily there were birthday cakes to brighten the mood.


I woke this morning to a lovely message from food blogger Rachel in the US who amongst other things runs a blog about cupcakes. She'd seen the excitement about the cup cakes & Google on Twitter and used one of my pictures in her blog and also noted that the toppings of the cupcakes were much more popular with one eater.

If you'd like to see the rest of my pictures of the Girl Geek Dinner at Google they're here. Hi to all the girls (plus a few guys) who were there last night and a big thanks to Sarah Blow and her band of helpers for organising it & of course to Google for their hospitality.

Somers Town - Not a Eurostar ad

If you've been following my Twitter stream you might have noticed that I was going to see Shane Meadows' new film Somers Town last night. It's been in the news a lot, not just because it's the first film that Meadows has produced that is shot outside of the North of England & not just because it's been wowing people at the Edinburgh Film Festival - but because it began life as a project funded by Eurostar.


Eurostar, sponsoring a film? Isn't it going to be all shots of people with luggage getting off the London Underground at King's Cross, close ups of tickets, people saying how cheap and fast it is to travel to Paris and lingering shots of The Meeting Place statue at St Pancras Station?


It's far, far from that.

It's a really gentle, funny and beautifully shot black and white film about the relationship between two teenage boys. A runaway from the North of England, played with a cocksure matey & comic arrogance by 16 year old Thomas Turgoose, (who also starred in Meadows' award winning This is England) meets Polish Marek played by Piotr Jagiello. Tommo stays "holed up" in Marek's flat in Somers Town - an area of London around King's Cross. They meet a beautiful French girl and both fall in love with her. That's essentially the plot, there's no real twists in the story but I won't say what happens in the end.

I saw the horrific and disturbingly brilliant Dead Man's Shoes by Shane Meadows a week or so ago on Channel 4 and it gave me nightmares. This film could not be further from Meadows' gritty and violent work, well it wouldn't with Eurostar being behind it. Can you imagine "Travel on the Eurostar and get drugged up & beaten around the head by a gas mask wearing vigilante"?

It's not a "glorified corporate video" though. The original 10 minute film commissioned by the rail company intrigued Meadows so much that he turned it into a 72 minute film which was shot in ten days.

Yeah, you get to see the odd shot of the new Eurostar station building works (Marek's dad is one of the workers) and the towers of St Pancras station form a cathedral-like backdrop to many of the outdoor scenes. If you're expecting a railway film, you'll be disappointed. But if you want a slice of working class & immigrant life in London living within the shadow of a major station, you'll be happy.


Somers Town opened on August 22nd and is in cinemas nationwide. I saw it last night with Jemimah and Rory at the Tricycle cinema in Kilburn, which was surprisingly empty. This was good news for us, as we got to watch a great film, not at West End prices, in a quiet and comfy cinema.

Metroland trip on 1930's and 1920's trains

On Sunday 14 September, two historic London Underground trains will be taking the classic Metroland John Betjeman / Julian Barnes suburban journey between Harrow and Amersham.


The 1938 art deco tube train that I travelled on with some friends earlier this year will be returning to passenger service again for this special day out. It will be joined by an even older Sarah Siddons electric locomotive first conceived in 1923, but now restored to its former glory. Sarah Siddons "makes her first return to passenger service for seven years, after a sparkling repaint in her original maroon colours. She is the oldest working main line electric locomotive in Britain, and will pull a set of 1950s coaches."

When you get to the end of the line at Amersham there will be some classic 1950's buses taking you on a free journey to Amersham Old Town to enjoy Amersham Heritage Day, where you can get free entry to the local museum or just spend your time in Amersham.

Tickets for the heritage trains must be booked in advance on 020 7565 7298 and are £20.00. However, if you want to make a full day of it and get the first art deco 1938 Tube train departing from Harrow on the Hill at 10.26 (the only trip on the day to run to Amersham via Watford) this costs £25.00 per passenger.

All tickets are then valid for unlimited travel on the Heritage Train services throughout the day (subject to space being available).

Visit the London Transport Museum website for train times & full details.

Pets on the Tube

As much as I love my cat Bolli, there's something about dogs that I can't resist. Yesterday morning I was faced by the big brown eyes of the hound below on the London Underground on the way to work


He or she looked so mournful and had that real "hang dog" look about it that said "commuting sucks and I so don't want to be on this carriage".

I spotted a much happier looking dog last week when I was travelling to Robert McInstosh's house for the Twitter Wine Tasting. Although the dog was only happier because it had the opportunity to run along beside its owner on a bike


I'm sure the boys shouldn't be riding their bikes down a platform like that, but it certainly took some skill working their way amongst the other commuter and exercising a dog at the same time.

I've still not seen a Tube or Train dog recently that tops the wonderful Elvis - my first and currently only Canine Tube Fashion Victim.


I never tire of looking at his screwed up little face and strange curled up tongue. He rocks!

Here's Bolli doing his Elvis impression at the weekend:


OK he was eating a spider, but it's a similar look.

If you spot a cute or not so cute pet on your train travels please let us know.

London Transport represents London at Olympic Handover

Sadly, I never watched London's eight minute piece in the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games live. However, thanks to the internet - BBC iPlayer, Twitter and various online news sources I managed to see how London took the Olympic torch from Beijing in yesterday's handover ceremony. Many people including myself believe that London won't be able to live up to Beijing when we get the Olympics in 2012, however in the ceremony a double decker bus transformed into a err ... hedge-like Transformer, so perhaps there may be a tiny glimmer of hope.

Video from BBC here

"Being on a lift in a London bus kicking a ball into a stadium is something I've never done before and as an East End boy that makes me proud", said David Beckham in an interview before the ceremony.

The Guardian described it well "Enter the bus. After the cinematic drama of Beijing's opening and closing ceremonies, the Waldorf and Statlers of Her Majesty's Press had been waiting for London's straight-to-video offering. It wasn't a complete turkey, but it's probably fair to say 2012 has yet to give the world its House of Flying Daggers.

Eight minutes isn't long, though, and the double-decker had to navigate its way round the edge of the stadium to a bus-stop queue of snazzily dressed folk with umbrellas. Apparently this was intended to symbolise "the British preoccupation with the weather", which seemed less than enticing. Come to London! It'll tip down.


There was no room on the bus, which would have made this a cinéma vérité look at capital life had the bus not begun turning into a hedge, like a particularly benign Transformer. Then it tipped out a little girl, chosen by Blue Peter viewers (if you can believe that these days).....


Could London do without having to succumb to its fifth "swinging London" rebrand since 1995? There wasn't time to dwell on it, because everyone knew the bus was saving its most precious cargo till last. And suddenly he was there, and in an unbranded tracksuit, of all things. Behold, world, our Beckham! Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair! This guy the crowd did recognise, and they gave him the biggest reception of Britain's segment by far. One free kick into the crowd later, and London shunted themselves off, umbrellas twirling rather wanly.."

Last week on this blog, we were pondering some real London Olympic sports or some London Underground sports for 2012 games and it appears that I have a little bit of Mystic Meg in me. I would have loved to seen Brompton racing in the Olympics and said "But why not have races in Brompton cycling? You'd have to unassemble your bike and get all your rucksacks & stuff together while leaping off a Tube train in the fastest possible time."


So "imagine my surprise" when I found out on Twitter (thanks JamesCridland) that the Olympic handover to London involved Gold medallist & cyclist Chris Hoy riding a Brompton bike.


Sweet.


Sorry James no idea who will win the National next year.

The BBC's coverage of the closing ceremony was very impressive and even I, as a card card carrying non sport watcher, enjoyed it on iPlayer. They gave some lessons to be learnt for London and lesson seven is "Trains, Trains, Trains", as the BBC presenter said that Beijing's subway system was exemplary.


You can join the discussion as to whether the Tube system will be able to cope with the Olympics in an earlier post.

I love China's take on London getting the games as chinaview.cn describes the handover "The transformation of the famous London bus also provides a powerful example of the urban and practical being transformed into the dynamic and spectacular, symbolizing London's vision to use the power of the Games as a catalyst for change."

Not quite sure how "dynamic & spectacular" a hedge is. But if it's a hedge sprouting London's Leona Lewis (the best thing to come out of X Factor - I predicted X Factor rejects for our opening ceremony) and Jimmy Page singing Whole Lotta Love, perhaps they have a point.


Here's hoping I'm proved wrong and perhaps we'll see a Tube train transforming into a "dynamic & spectacular" transport system for 2012. Or then again, it may just be trundled onto the opening ceremony and transform itself into sardine can!

Tube Kitchen Clothing & Roundel Scavenger Hunt

Something for the weekend. Even though the Summer Bank Holiday in the UK isn't a big "eating" or "large family meal" occasion, you might find yourself doing a bit more cooking over the three day weekend. If so the London Underground has you sorted with this amazing Tube seat moquette apron & oven mitt


Looks like the entire range of Transport for London's shop is now online. So no worried if you can't get over to Covent Garden you can still create that "in carriage" look for your own kitchen no matter where you live in the world. I'd love to see Gordon Ramsey in this. (Thanks to Whateleydude for the initial prod on this)

London Transport Museum Roundel Scavenger Hunt

If you can get yourself to Covent Garden on Saturday 27th September, the London Transport Museum are holding another of their popular photographic scavenger hunts.

"You've seen it at bus stops, you've seen it at every Underground stations from Morden to Edgware via Bank! But did you know this autumn the Roundel - The famous circle and bar logo will be 100 years old this year?

We're calling all photographers to celebrate with a Flickr scavenger hunt. Can you crack the cryptic clues leading you to a host of Roundels hiding in the City? There'll be prizes for the winners and photos taken on the day will have the chance to be featured in the Museum's brand new Online Roundel Browser - an interactive part of our website with games and resources all about the famous Roundel design.


To sign up to take part in the scavenger hunt you'll need to log on and sign up to Flickr if you're not already a member at www.flickr.com

Then go to the London Transport Museum Roundel Scavenger Hunt group on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/groups/ltmuseum_roundel_scavenger_hunt/ and follow the instructions to join in.

Deadline for signing up is 30th August 2008

Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis."

The last two were brill and places go very quickly, so if you want a place sign up ASAP.

Signs of Summer Ending on the Tube

It's Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, so no work on Monday - Hoorah. But that means it's nearly the end of Summer - Boo. Earlier in the week I saw people coming back from one of the last big Summer festivals - the V Festival. So no more flowery wellies or having to dodge dazed looking travellers lugging around muddy rucksacks on the London Underground.






Another sign of summer ending is usually people starting to wear more clothes. But as we've had such a wet and rubbish August, I haven't really been noticing much of that.

What I have noticed however is a bit of A Clockwork Orange trend with guys wearing bowler hats on the Tube.

I don't mean the typically British pin striped suited man I spotted a while back at King's Cross.


But much younger guys who appear to be looking a bit like Alex and his droogies.

Coming back from the Twitter Wine Tasting last night I saw a guy in a red bowler hat at Turnham Green but was too slow to get my camera out. However I managed to capture the following men at Holborn.




Weirdly reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange but they certainly didn't look as menacing. Anyone else seen more Bowler hatted guys or how do you know summer's coming to an end on the Tube?

Hugel Live Twitter Tasting

As mentioned in the post above, last night I was part of a Live Twitter Tasting, that's a Wine Tasting not tasting live Twitters.

Our excellent host of the physical tasting Robert McIntosh explains it far more competently that I could this morning: "What makes this tasting different from 99.99% of all other wine tastings happening in the world right now is that it will take place live, in Europe and the US, using Twitter and also, because it can happen simultaneously anywhere in the world, we are going to be able to be joined by Etienne Hugel himself."


Etienne Hugel's family have been producing Alsace wine since the 15th century, so goodness knows what his ancestors would have made of a bunch of us centuries later taking digital pictures of the tasting and chatting to people in the US.




What made it very special and great fun was that Robert had decided to put on a great dinner where he and Andrew Barrow from Spittoon (WineScribbler on twitter) matched each course with the Alsace wines we were tasting.




My twitter reviews are on the photos of the wines below:

Wine 1 Les Fleurs d'Alsace
Wine 2 Pinot Blanc
Wine 3 Gewurztraminer
Wine 4 Reisling
Wine 5 Dessert Gewurztraminer

And of course the company was brilliant! Many thanks to Kai, Lea, Sandrine, Lolly, James, Mex, Jeremy, Niamh and of course Robert & Andrew for making it such a great evening. The rest of my photos from the Twitter Live Tasting are here and you can catch up with my live tweets at my Twitter stream.

Document Production During Discovery: Search and Redact with Acrobat 8 Pro

Redaction is the process of removing information from documents. You can see from the attached image, which is a slide that I recently used in a litigation, I have redacted the title of the slide using Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro.

One of the most tedious and time-consuming jobs in litigation is producing privilege logs and redacting sensitive proprietary information such as trade secrets, medical information, credit card and social-security information from documents. Mistakes are often made, even by the largest and most sophisticated law firms. Computers and technology can ease the problem, but in the end, any mechanical device will make errors that need to be checked by thinking, trained humans.

The combination of high-speed scanning and electronic filing requirements in many courts have forced the electronic age onto many litigators, and now the game is figuring out how to sort through, organize and work efficiently with large quantities of documents in PDF format.

Fortunately, Adobe has created some powerful tools to save time and money. Let's say you have documents that need to potentially be produced to the adversary. Scan them. You can Bates-number them right in Acrobat (Advanced/Document Processing/Bates Numbering/Add). You probably want to break the documents down into PDFs of manageable size. Under the Acrobat "Document" dropdown menu, use "Recognize text using OCR". OCR is optical character recognition. It means that your computer will read the text contained in the PDF as text, rather than as an image. If a PDF is saved as an image, your computer will not pick up any of the words in the text.

To create a privilege log, in looking for attorney/client or work product-privileged documents, one could simply search, say an attorney's name and go through one-by-one each mention. This is a slow process. If you go to the "Advance" dropdown menu, hit Redaction. Then "Search and Redact". A search on the attorney's name will now mark every instance in the document that the attorney's name appears and give you a handy table so that you can jump to each instance the name appears. Since you probable want to eliminate more information than just the attorney's name, you would mark for redaction (see below) all of the privileged information.

To "blacken out" information that you wish to redact, once you have scanned and saved the PDF, go to the "Advanced" dropdown menu. Click on "Redaction". Click on "Show redaction toolbar". Now you can search the entire document to find every instance of a particular word, "Mark for Redaction" and then "Apply Redactions". Make sure to read the help features. Also make sure to save the document with a new name and to make sure to delete metadata as you are leaving the document (a self-explanatory screen pops up as you leave the document).

Why is this redaction function so important? Well, according to Adobe, it really gets rid of the underlying information so that a tech person cannot figure out a way around it. There are some famous instances, reported here and here of people thinking that they'd blacked out information, but people were able to simply look behind the blackened-out portion to find confidential personal information and important government secrets.

Caveat: read the help screens and warnings carefully. OCR is not perfect, and it will not pick up handwriting, images, or text that is not properly aligned. For example, the image above of Chief Inspector Benesch contained both text (the title) and a provenance of the artwork that had been scanned as an image. So if I searched the word "Benesch" to redact, the search function would not pick up the word "Benesch" from the image portion of the slide.

DO NOT WORK FROM ORIGINALS. You must make sure that you have an entire original set saved somewhere safe, because redaction actually removes information, thus destroying the original file. Adobe puts warning screens in to remind you of this. There is no technological shortcut that will bypass a trained set of eyes conducting the review, but proper use of this powerful tool should be a big timesaver.

Wood Lane Tube Station sneak peek

Thanks to James for sending me a picture of the new Wood Lane London Underground station. Work is still going on and it's not due for opening yet but some "unwrapping" was done last week.


The new station with an old station name (are you still following this) will be on the Hammersmith & City Line and should be opened later this year. There used to be two Wood Lane Tube stations. The one on the Central line opened 100 years ago in May 1908, but was closed in 1947 and replaced by White City station. The Wood Lane station on the Metropolitan Line also opened in 1908 but closed in 1914.

For more on the new Wood Lane see TfL's pdf " The first new station to be built on an existing London Underground line for more than 70 years. It will connect customers from central London with the new White City development, using the Hammersmith & City line. The state-of-the-art station has been designed to accommodate football match crowds and will benefit people who live and work in the area." There's also more here.

However one of the old Wood Lanes (no idea which one) saw light of day in the 1970's. It was featured in a seventies UK sci-fi TV series The Tomorrow People. The Tomorrow People were a group of trendy teleporting teenagers whose base "The Lab" was in a disused Tube station.


"With a hiss and a rumble the underground train moved slowly out of the station, treating its discarded passengers to a low, whining farewell as it disappeared into the tunnel. The assorted throng of theatre-goers and businessmen kept late at the office scurried for the escalators, hardly sparing a glance for the two boys in Hell's Angel jerkins who hung around a chocolate machine at the rear end of the platform. Watching until the attendant was out of sight, they immediately turned back and raised a small trapdoor hidden close to the tunnel entrance. In a moment they were bent low in a sewer-like gallery which ran off at an angle and eventually brought them to that little-known part of the London Underground which was doomed to remain forever sealed off and silent."

If you want to find out more about the old Wood Lanes, check out Hywel Williams' disused Tube Stations site.

Lucky Tube Seats - CCTV style ads for Nokia N-Gage

Nokia N-Gage have filmed a series of six "undercover" CCTV style videos on the London Underground to promote their N-Gage next generation mobile gaming service. The videos capture "the bemused reactions of passengers witnessing a man so engrossed in his game that he does anything in order to avoid any disruption to his match."


There's one of a guy in his bathrobe on the Tube playing the game as well, which is below. However, I found that one a bit lame and way too overacted, but maybe that's just me.


Anyway the videos aim to get people to visit www.n-gage.com/fifa08. There are four other simliar Tube filmed videos there. Plus if you're in the UK you've got till the end of August to get a free FIFA 08 license if you have a compatible Nokia device (N95, N95 8gb, N81, N81 8gb, N82). You can also download N-Gage from there.

I don't do gaming so it'd be wasted on me, but some of you may want to download it.

Thumbs up to the first ad though, the mildly curious, but not really interested look on the guy that gives up his seat is a fairly typical Tube reaction. Mainly he just wants to get back to sleep & be left alone in peace.

London Olympic Sports for the Tube

While we're all shocked at Team GB doing so well in the Olympics (We seem to be good at sitting down sports - rowing and cycling and BMX'ing), I thought it might be interesting to see what London or rather London Underground sports that we might excel at when the Olympics comes here in 2012.


So cycling, yes we appear to be good at cycling. BMX'ing we're tipped to win another Gold. But why not have races in Brompton cycling? You'd have to unassemble your bike and get all your rucksacks & stuff together while leaping off a Tube train in the fastest possible time.

Tug of War? That would be a good sport to re-introduce. How many times have you seen people pulling their bags and cases from the lock tight closing doors on the Tube?


It takes Hurculean strength to open the doors when they're shut. I've seen some pretty strong commuters on the Tube doing this.

Strap Hanging or that gymnastic thing where you hang yourself from rings on the end of ropes. We'd be good at that.


We might even get some branded Olympic strap hangers like the ones London Annie saw in Beijing (pictured above)

We could even introduce "hanging upside down bat-like from the Tube poles in weird boots" to the games


That would make for some err ... interesting viewing.


Any other ideas for typically London or London Underground sports (like the hurdles Jon suggested above) which would give us a fighting chance of doing well in the Olympics, much appreciated.