Lotus

The lotus are coming...

 

[Hachimangu, Kamakura]

 

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Lichen 'n' stuff

Nature Geoscience said last week that lichen 'n' stuff is really important (see here). Up until now I have kept lichenish shots hidden away, as I didn't think anyone else would be interested. But now you are *supposed* to be interested!

Luckily, super-clean is not the only Japanese aesthetic, but sometimes a very particular level of dilapidation is cultured, and it is in such places that lots of lichen 'n' stuff may be found [Myohonji, Kamakura].

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Flowers...

Got a bit of a flowery photo backlog to blog. This is the famous Meigetsuin staircase in Kamakura taken from not your usual angle. The hydrangea have had a good innings this year, as it has been rather cold. By cold I mean that one can walk around not fast but quite happily in a lesiurely sort of a way in shorts tshirts and sandals, and do not have to vend an isotonic drink every 100 yards. In other climate news, rainy season, which is usually expected at the start of June, has not yet started. Perhaps it will not happen at all this year.

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Party

The party after Saturday's meeting was not actually at Standing Sushi (the establishment in the middle of this photo), but next door...at Lion, on the left as you look at the picture...

After a couple of beers things were, however, getting quite blurry. Or rather, my TX5 had gone wrong again. While I think the effect adds an authentic mood to an after work beer party on a Saturday, the fact that the blur appears on all shots gets a tiresome quite fast.

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Market Research

Still in little-camera quandary after giving sister in law my Canon S100. As no one will recall (cos hopefully you do not care, and only look at the pictures on this blog), I was going to buy the new Sony RX100. Then James was jealous, but finally he decided to wait for the rumored (sic) Pansonic LX7 to replace his LX5. This somehow left me with my Sony TX10, which has a firmware issue that makes me want to smash it to the ground and stomp on it, only I don't bother since being a "robust" camera that might not kill it. Picked up my Sony TX5 again, which is nice, and worked for a week (see recent posts on this blog for examples!) before its image stabilisation fault resurfaced.

So what to do? I thought I'd interrogate the man and woman on the street...


Left to right, top to to bottom: "getting the shot" DSLR style, NEX+adapter+Canon manual focus super-geek style (woot!), pinky P&S style, colour coordinated phone camera style, "does he realise he's photographing me?" style, backseat driver shooting style, shoot without looking style, and his 'n' hers shooting style x2.

But then I found image making enlightenment... [All taken at Hachimangu, Kamakura with my trusty DSLR... of course :-) ]

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Saturday!

Saturday!, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

How can this be Saturday again? This was never in the plan... Meetings on Saturday seem to be getting sadly common. Too much bureaucracy! Having said that the atmosphere is quite jolly, and we get to take a weekday off in lieu, which is advantageous for bumming around in Kamakura, a town that is only busy at weekends.

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Spot the difference competition

A bit of Tokyo

A bit of Lancashire (with probably Yorkshire in the background)

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Passion

They say you should photograph things you are passionate about. But David B Benson is confusing passion and beauty. My sports car passion is based in incredulous fascination, not desire. I have a superiority complex. I know that for 1/10th of the price you can have 10 times as much fun.

I also know that, in the unusual transport stakes, Hyper Viper red beats Ferrari red every time.
Yes, it is the sports car drivers who turn to look at us.

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Bladerunner-ville

Sadly favoured by organisers of climate conferences, Tsukuba is designed to be mind numbingly dull, but Tachikawa - whence commeth the mathematicians - is in a whole different league. It is so horrible it is kind of fascinating. More than just the usual Tokyo disarray caused by a lack of housing regulation, this is clearly deliberate. I wonder what went through the minds of the town planners. The feet of the Tachikawan's rarely touch the ground, which makes me think of flying cars and Bladerunner.

monorail - and those pedestrians are still several floors above terra firma...

grotesque underground mural - but at least people can escape into their phones...

endless overpasses Could have spent hours taking photos there but, as usual, James led the way home, and there was only time for a few snaps.

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BAYESCOMP2012

The day started off a bit wet...

trundling through the beautiful landscapes of urban Japan...

Where have all the wimmin gone?

We were reminded that when particle filtering, good particles are duplicated, but I still don't know why we needed so many power points at the banquet.

For the final speech, an old man told us about how he became a Bayesian on the floor of a men's toilet. Really. 

Away from the mathematicians we seem to be one the set of Bladerunner.

Mathematicians are pretty funny. Day 2 of the meeting is tomorrow, but there will be no lunch, because mathos don't worry about things like that, so there are no commercial establishments in the vicinity of their institute. Oh please bring back the social scientists!

 

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