Tootfinder

"London, San Francisco and Beijing achieve ‘remarkable reductions’ in air pollution"
#London #SanFrancisco #Beijing

Anyone have tips for #GlutenFree eateries in / near City of #London, Barbican, Farringdon, etc?
I’m comfortable finding my own (or just limiting what I eat), but any suggestions welcome.

Advert allegedly seen on #London #underground

When I moved out of London over a decade ago, there was some move towards having wifi availability in the deep tube lines, but there were still plenty of places where smartphones became dumbphones when you were in the tunnels.
This article is a very interesting and non-technical run through of how over the last few years they finally solved the problem of putting 21st-century wifi technology into 19th-century train tunnels.
#London #tube

An exceptional write-up on phone signal being added to #LondonUnderground tunnels and stations: How London finally cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
https://www.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #DriveTime
London Grammar:
🎵 Baby It’s You
#LondonGrammar
https://fernandoferreyra.bandcamp.com/track/london-grammar-baby-its-you-fernando-ferreyra-remix
https://open.spotify.com/track/1Yb6awhvnYL8W0PGk2sIbl

Old Street Works, City Road, #London #FensterFreitag

First day of the year back in #London and I'm shattered. It was a good day, even without any after-work socialising, but... blimey.
(I don't think I can blame the commute really, it's day 1 of an intense week of interviewing folk for a role)

Back to doing some improv, with a 8 week course on the mechanics and structure of story.
Seem to be a nice bunch. Everyone with the right energy and fearlessness. Nice diverse range of people.
Steve Roe leading the course. Him and his friend co-founded Hoopla 20 years ago and now its the biggest improv training school in the UK. Seems like a good teacher as you'd expect.
There will be a show on 19th of March. That'll be about the fifth one I've done. Its nice because you get to do some acting type stuff without having to learn any lines 😆
#improv #london #hooplaImpro

Is it April 1st again and I hadn't noticed?
BBC News - Concerns over Bakerl0.0 line advertiser's rebrand
#london

Crows in the Cemetery on a Hot June Afternoon (2024-06) - Corvids chatting in a green space between a suburban recycling centre and a building site under airport flight path #fieldRecording #London #crows

Crows in the Cemetery on a Hot June Afternoon (2024-06)
Corvids chatting in a green space between a suburban recycling centre and a building site under airport flight path #fieldRecording #London #crows

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
London Elektricity:
🎵 Don't Stop
#LondonElektricity
https://londonelek.bandcamp.com/track/dont-stop
https://open.spotify.com/track/5wIfmgcg1oaKcwhtkbHg2w

"Judi Dench backs campaign to protect London’s green spaces from developers"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #London

So we did the improv show.
Entertained a room full of people, made them laugh, played some games, told some stories.
It was a good time.
#improv #hooplaImpro #london

Half way through the Hoopla Improv Story narrative course and we actually attempt a couple of 20 minute stories.
One pretty confused one about a voyage to find unicorns which ended up about time-travellers due to mixups.
And one about the child of a missing astronaut seeking his father by joining a space mission.
Edits are what made the main difference here. Shouting "Cut to the jail" left half the players thinking they were in a flashback and the other half thinking they were in the consequences of the previous scene. Thus one ending up being a time-traveler.
A more coherent edit might have been "Flashback to jail", and these more coherent edits are key to what made the second story less chaotic and more whole. "Cut to the training test" or "Flashback to school where a teacher is impressed with the protagonist"
I like a game with a narrator. The narrator can give the story structure and theme and act as a director of the action. But we can do that without a narrator if the edits are well thought out and shouted clearly enough to keep the actors on the same track.
Mind you, the chaos is the funny bit usually.
#improv #hooplaImpro #london

With the eight week improv course ending last week, I timed it well to start a new group with a new set of eight sessions this week.
The Free Association seem more serious than Hoopla. They have 50% longer classes for a start. Three hours rather than two.
More instruction and notes rather than just positive encouragement. Clearer aim even from the early levels. More like a classroom than a playground.
First couple of sets of eight at Hoopla are just aimed at getting you to lose your decorum and allow yourself to be free and spontaneous. All really short form games, lightning rounds. Parlor games rather than theater.
But the Free Association's aim from the start is to get you building scenes and then stories. Their first set of lessons is titled "intro to long form". This one "Scene work".
Not so much the one minute parlor games, more focus on acting and characters and drama.
In vague terms at early stages that is. I mean, they have more in common than different. Plenty of short games in warm-up at FA and I just finished a whole set on drama and story with Hoopla.
Three hours is pretty long though. Starts half an hour earlier, ends half an hour later. Good thing it's also much much closer for me. Ten minute walk instead of 40 minutes on the bus.
We did lots and lots of first-scene head-to-head, mostly concentrating on trying to get specific. Check that after two minutes the audience knows where you are and who you are and how you know each other and what you're doing and none of the players are unsure either. Make it all specific as soon as possible, ambiguity is the enemy.
And everyone got that and exercised it pretty much flawlessly right away. So good group.
#theFreeAssociation #improv #london

"How a police data centre is heating London’s homes"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #London #Energy

How a police data centre is heating London’s homes
A west London project will use waste heat from a data centre to supply low-carbon heating to 4,000 homes and a new commercial district

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
London Elektricity:
🎵 The Numbers Man (Part 2)
#LondonElektricity
https://londonelek.bandcamp.com/track/the-numbers-man-part-1
https://open.spotify.com/track/0UrGnINs3mBfQhnjFtniGa

There are some people who will try to tell you how violent #London is these days but it's nothing new.
#ludlow

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AfternoonShow
London Elektricity:
🎵 Echoes in the Dance
#LondonElektricity
https://londonelek.bandcamp.com/track/echoes-in-the-dance-2
https://open.spotify.com/track/3ywcmwm0JqeLXlr8hrXmhg

Final Improv session before the show this evening and mostly just practice for the final event.
Steve Hoopla threw in some extra chaos with the half of us assigned 'audience' each time given cards to shout out immediate things that need to happen: A declaration of love, a sudden death, an appearance of a lost love-child etc.
In theory this means that final rehearsal is more chaotic and deranged than the final show will be. The lesson is that we can cope and continue even if somehow everyone dies in the third scene.
Stories about office romance and intrigue and bullying bosses, and about an art super villain determined to murder the whole world's inner-artist.
Both of which would indeed have gone more smoothly without the audience demanding sudden entrance by men with guns or that we find an excuse for a love child or impulsive marriage proposal.
So thats it until the show. Come along see it going more smoothly than that next Thursday in London if you want.
#improv #london #hooplaImpro

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
London Elektricity:
🎵 Echoes in the Dance
#LondonElektricity
https://londonelek.bandcamp.com/track/echoes-in-the-dance-2
https://open.spotify.com/track/3ywcmwm0JqeLXlr8hrXmhg

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #KEXP's #VarietyMix
London Elektricity:
🎵 Lovebombs
#LondonElektricity
https://londonelek.bandcamp.com/track/lovebombs
https://open.spotify.com/track/0XC1E7JdINwIbX94uT5YkU

Apparently last week's improv class, which I missed, did indeed talk about a story spine, a template I first heard from a Pixar story course:
Once upon a time there was... And every day they would.. Until one day... And because of that... (repeat 'because' till end)...
And this week was concentrating mostly on the first bits: Playing out some scenes introducing characters, setting up their normal routine.
The nature of improv can be tricky here. Things spiral out of control quite fast. Things start happening immediately, without time to build that normal routine which you then break.
Take for instance the scene tonight at an airport. Lady rushes in: "Get me on a place as far away from here as possible, right now".
Its a great offer, but hardly a normal routine for a person. Can you really have a person whose daily routine is to fly to the furthest place they can get to immediately?
Perhaps a flashback to their normal routine then? Or perhaps make the staff the protagonist and their daily routine is to deal with crazy customers.
Character is key in the early scenes of a narrative really. Get the audience to identify with a protagonist. Who are these people, how do they know each other and what's their normal life like?
#improv #hooplaImpro #london

Went out canvassing with the Green Party in ward next door.
The candidates seem nice and meeting other green members is nice, but the actual process of going around knocking on people's doors isn't really a great deal of fun for me.
Mostly nobody home, or else maybe peering through the spy-hole feeling intimidated by me I guess? Hard to tell.
Spoke to mostly Labour voters who claim not to be sure what they'll do next time. Couple of folks already Green.
Nobody around here is gonna vote Conservative or Liberal or Reform of course. "Your Party" not likely to get it together in time to even stand. It's a race to see how many Green and Independent opposition councilors can be elected to avoid a Labour full house. 47 Lab to 3 Green seats last time. Less than 200 votes in it in that seat. Probably will do better this time, maybe even win the seat. At least make some of the safe Labour seats a bit less safe.
Most exciting part was when the flat over the road went on fire and we had to call the fire brigade and a triplet of fire engines and couple of cop cars turned up to deal with it. Started with smelling smoke and wondering if that flat was on fire, by the time the fire fighters turned up remarkably quickly (someone else already called I imagine) there were flames licking at the windows.
An exploding e-scooter battery someone was saying, but dunno how they knew.
Nice to share a drink in the pub with the green crew after, but dunno that this canvassing lark is for me. I felt like either a spare part, or just backup muscle probably intimidating people into not opening the doors.
Probably I'd enjoy it more if I could get into an argument but apparently that's rare and the advice is to disengage anyway.
#green #london #greenPartyEW