IanVisits…

Today, London’s iconic Tower Bridge “saluted” the arrival of the replica slavery ship, The Zong which passed through for a visit to London for the next ten days.

Typically, when a ship passes through Tower Bridge, the roadways are lifted to about 60 degrees, but today - they were lifted to the full 83 degrees, which is generally reserved for special ships passing through.

Anyhow:

Got there about 10:30 for the expected arrival at 10:45, and there was a small crowd of fellow enthusiasts there already. As it was bitterly cold, and spitting rain, waiting was not pleasant.

However, by 11:30 – still no ship!

Then a chap came around with some leaflets and explained that the arrival had been delayed to 12:45, due to tides. She was due to come up by tug “with the tides”, but they decided quite late to wait for the full tide so she could come up without tugs.

So, a quick wander round to warm up and grab a coffee – then back for 12:15.

By then several camera crews had arrived to film the arrival.

Almost on time, the bridge did its raise – and went right up to do a “salute”. As I said, normally the bridge raises to about 60 degrees, today it went the full 80 odd degrees, which is in itself quite rare and reserved for very special occasions.

As HMS Northumberland approached though – a tug pulling large container barges approached from the other direction, and the naval vessel had to hang back. Someone is going to get a right bollocking for that!

Finally, the Northumberland came through, with sailors saluting on the sides, and a band playing on the deck.

Then two tourist boats left the local pier, and you could hear this cry of annoyance along the riverbanks as it was obvious that the bloody things would block the view. I think I got one shot of the Northumberland without any blockages.

Fortunately, they got out of the way as The Zong came through Tower Bridge afterwards – and it was quite a sight with the band still playing music and quite a lot of people on the riverbank cheering her arrival.

Despite the very late arrival, and the frozen hands from the cold – it was an amazing experience and I am really pleased I hung around to see this.

I have lots of photos, which need cleaning up, but for a larger version of the above photo - click here.

You can read about an exhibiton which is being held on board The Zong for the next 10 days here:

http://www.free-at-last.org/

Just had an email from Amazon Associates - and they are launching a contextual ad program which could be rather interesting.

The Amazon banner selection is usually quite good - but it always seems to lack a certain “something” - the search queries to generate the banners are a tad narrow in range.

Contextual banners will deliver banners based around the webpage textual content - very similar to how Google AdSense works.

Fortunatly, Google also recently updated their own T&C’s to allow other contextual ad platforms to run on websites along side theirs - so long as the other adverts don’t look similar to the Google adverts.

The Amazon banners look utterly different and this makes is possible for me to run the program.

This coming Thursday, a replica of 18th century Square Rigger, The Zong – an infamous slave ship will moor near Tower Bridge and remain there for 10 days.

According to the MoD website, it will go through Tower Bridge at 10:45am and will be accompanied by HMS Northumberland.

Should be quite a sight as it goes under the Bridge, and I shall dutifully race along on Thursday morning to get some photos.

I am tempted to risk taking the river taxi and see if we can zoom past the sailing ship and get some really good close up photos, but if the taxi gets held back, I would lose all the photo opportunities. Might try that as the ship leaves in a couple of weeks time though.
http://www.free-at-last.org/1kit/Default.aspx?alias=www.free-at-last.org/1kit/wilberforce

Wikipedia can be prone to malicious editing.

Fortunatly, the edits are usually discovered very quickly and fixed - so for your viewing pleasure, here is a screenshot.

The Wikipedia entry can be seen here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugababes

Had a really odd email this morning from a Chinese firm claiming that they have been approached by another person to register the chinese variants of my own domain names – and asking me to verify that I do not own the trademark in China.

Now there seems to be two scenarios…

a) this is legit.

b) they are expecting me to panic about losing my Chinese domain names and try to stop the cyber squatter by registering the domain names myself – presumably via their friendly service.

…I am edging towards the “it is spam” option, but I have to take my hat off to them – it’s a bloody good spam.

Dear Manager?

We are Shanghai Squile Network Information Technology Co., Ltd, which is the domain name registrar centre in China. We have something need to confirm with you.

On the March 14, 2007, we received an application formally. One company named “Yinli Investment(China) Co.,Ltd ” applied for the Internet Brand “brandname” and the domain name “brandname.cn” “brandname.com.cn” “brandname.net.cn” “brandname.net” “brandname.biz”.

Today we are dealing with it, hope to get the affirmation of your company because that may relate to your intellectual property on internet. We have not finished the registration of Yinli company yet,in order to deal with this issue better, please let someone who is responsible for trademark or intellectual right contact me as soon as possible.