kimbofo

New look for BBC News website

Take Google and Amazon out of the equation, and the website I frequent most is BBC News. Imagine my shock this morning to find it had been redesigned! Initially I wondered if I was looking at the low-res version by mistake. But when I realised it was simply a new look and the panic was over!

The site now features a new banner, more white space, bigger pictures and a different font. I quite like it, although I'm not convinced by the typeface. You can find out more about the redesign on The Editor's blog.

A visit to Veryan

All pictures taken: Veryan, Cornwall.
Date: February 25, 2008.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

One of the best things about going on holiday is exploring places off the beaten track and so it was when we went to Cornwall last month. We came equipped with The Rough Guide to Devon and Cornwall and a detailed road map, and each day we set out in the hire car to see what we could find. Generally we had a vague idea about where we were going to go -- for instance, "let's go to Land's End" or "let's eat fish'n'chips at Rick Stein's posh fish'n'chip place in Padstow" -- but if something caught our eye along the way we'd welcome the diversion and see what we discovered.

Visiting the little village of Veryan was never part of the bigger picture, although I had spied one sentence in the Rough Guide that suggested it might be worth a look -- something about round houses and thatched roofs and little crosses on the top warding off the devil.

On the day -- or should I say very late afternoon/almost evening -- we visited, we'd already wasted an extraordinary amount of time exploring another diversion: a tour of the St. Austell Brewery in which our party comprised two other "civilians" and about a dozen teenagers with special needs from the local college. From there, we'd visited Mevagissey, and then with the light fading from the sky we decided to make a quick run to Veryan.

After 12 years, one engagement and a child later...

...it seems I acquired a brother-in-law on the weekend.

Yes, after possibly the world's longest engagement my sister and her fiance finally tied the knot on Saturday. Congratulations to them both.

(And I still remember the night they had their first kiss -- a winter's night in 1996 if memory serves me correctly! Shhhh, don't tell anyone.)

This week's media round-up #3

What I've been watching
After a marathon viewing session stretching over both Friday and Saturday night, I'm still reeling over The Sopranos, Series 5. The penultimate episode was particularly harrowing -- and I was sad to see one of my favourite characters meet a rather dire and horrible end even though I knew it was going to come sooner or later.

The wonderful thing about this TV drama is its ability to convince you that certain characters are good people when clearly they're not. It's like you get sucked into the belief that if you met them in real life you'd quite like them but then, just at the point when you've forgotten that they are actually one of the bad guys, they FLIP and do something incredibly violent because someone looked at them the wrong way or said the wrong thing ... and then you realise if you actually met these people in real life you'd best just move right along and HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM. I think it's the illusion that they are NORMAL people when clearly they are all deranged that is the key to this show's success -- aside of course from the superb writing, directing, acting and casting!

Can't wait to watch The Sopranos, Series 6 now.

What I've been reading
It's been a busy week. I ploughed through Garden Spells, a newbie that the publisher sent me for review, and I can't say it was terribly good: a light, fluffy read, no more, no less.

I also finished Per Petterson's wonderful In the Wake, about a 40-something man coming to terms with the death of his parents and two younger siblings on a ferry that caught fire six years earlier. Yes, it's dark and a little bit morbid, but by god Petterson can write a good story! It was one of those novels that wormed its way into my brain so I thought about it even when I wasn't reading it. To me, that's usually the sign of a damn fine book.

What I've been listening to
I listened to Moby's new one, Last Night, yesterday afternoon. (Or is it called Yesterday Afternoon, and I listened to it last night?)  It's very good, very Moby, very dance-orientated, very electronic, very layered.

Oh, and that Liam Finn album is still getting a fair bit of airplay on my iPod shuffle. Surprise, surprise.

What have you been watching, reading and listening to this week?

Two reasons why I'm glad I wasn't planning on flying anywhere this weekend

1. Cancelled flights and baggage chaos mar Terminal 5 opening

2. 15,000 bags stranded at Heathrow

This week's media round-up #2

As the Easter weekend draws to a close, let me fill you in on all the lovely books and TV shows I've been watching. I have to say the weather over the past few days -- we've had everything from high winds to pissing-down rain, a thunderstorm, occasional hail and very many snow flurries -- has been highly conducive to staying indoors and doing as little as possible.

What I've been watching
I half-watched Once, the low-budget Irish movie that's racked up £14 million at the box office and been lauded wide and far. I was plugged into my laptop doing other things at the time, so I didn't completely follow the storyline and typically missed out on the crucial (surprise) ending. But I loved the music, so will probably watch the film properly at a later date. It seemed to have a true-to-life romantic feel-good factor to it, which probably explains why it's ticked the box for so many people. (If you're not convinced by the hype, check out all the glowing reviews on Amazon.co.uk)

I've also been working my way through the DVD box-set of Series 2 of House (a present from T for Christmas). In the meantime, I took a punt and risked finding out crucial plot developments by watching the first episode of Series 4 on Channel 5 on Thursday night. It was one of the most humorous episodes I've ever watched, so now I'm going to have to make sure I'm home every Thursday evening to watch the season in its entirety.

After an extended hiatus, we've dug out our boxed sets of The Sopranos to watch the last two series that we did not see on TV. So far we've watched four episodes of Series 5 and I'm itching to watch the rest as soon as possible.

And finally, I watched an episode of Monty Don's Around the World in 80 Gardens, a 10-part series on BBC2, last night. In last night's show Monty visited several gardens in Europe, including Sissinghurst here in the UK and Monet's garden in France. This is a brilliant series that looks at garden history, landscape architecture and horticulture in an interesting and accessible way. Having studied garden history during my undergrad degree I have to admit to loving this kind of thing. I only wish I'd watched the series properly from the start (it's been on TV for several weeks now), but I guess I can always buy the DVD whenever it's released. At the moment I'm contemplating buying the book of the same name....

What I've been reading
After I finished Nefertiti by Michelle Moran, the dead-pan humour and fable-like quality of Magnus Mills' The Scheme for Full Employment kept me amused on Friday/Saturday. On a whim, I bought Robert Harris' latest thriller, The Ghost, while browsing in my local Borders on Saturday afternoon and I raced through it simply because I couldn't put it down.

Earlier in the week I read the full judgement in the Heather Mills -- Paul McCartney divorce case (you can download a PDF from the BBC News website). You know that old saying "you couldn't make it up" or the other old saying "truth is stranger than fiction"? Both apply in this case. All 58 pages were strangely compulsive reading. I wonder when the mini-series or Hollywood movie version will be released!

What have you been reading and watching this week?

An almost white Easter

Place: View outside my bedroom window, London.
Date: March 24, 2008.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

This is the view I've woken up to every morning this Easter weekend: flurries of falling snow. Fortunately, the ground has been too wet and therefore too warm for the snow to pile up on the ground. But it hasn't been like that in other parts of the country, as this photograph gallery on BBC News attests.

The snow flurries, however, have been the least of our concerns. In the course of 24 hours we experienced a thunderstorm, severe winds, hail (on several occasions), bright sunshine, grey clouds and rain. This, coupled with the early morning snow flurries, has been repeated on a seemingly endless loop across the course of Saturday, Sunday and today. I'll be glad when things settle down and this changeable weather gives way to proper spring sunshine and blue skies!

WEEE Man at the Eden Project

Place: WEEE Man sculpture at the Eden Project, Cornwall.
Date: February 27, 2008.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

Ever wondered what happens to all the waste electrical and electronic equipment you throw away during your lifetime? I'm talking keyboards, washing machines, tape decks, mobile phones, vacuum cleaners and the like.

To be honest, I've never really thought about it. I suppose most of us don't think about it. Which probably goes some way to explaining why this giant sculpture is on display at the Eden Project in Cornwall. WEEE man is made from the 3.5 tonnes of WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) an average person living in the UK throws away during their lifetime. Impressive, eh?

You can see more of my Eden Project pictures here.

The inn that inspired a novel

All pictures taken: Jamaica Inn, Cornwall.
Date: March 1, 2008.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

Daphne du Maurier fans might recognise this building on the edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall as none other than Jamaica Inn. Yes, it's the very inn which inspired the 1936 novel of the same name.

The inn was once a coaching house that smugglers used as a base for their crimes. Ms du Maurier apparently sought refuge in the inn after becoming lost in thick fog on the moor while out horseriding. While she was recovering here, the local rector entertained her with various ghost stories (the inn is supposedly haunted) and tales of smuggling that inspired her to write her novel.

All pictures taken: Jamaica Inn, Cornwall.
Date: March 1, 2008.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

Daphne du Maurier fans might recognise this building on the edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall as none other than Jamaica Inn. Yes, it's the very inn which inspired the 1936 novel of the same name.

The inn was once a coaching house that smugglers used as a base for their crimes. Ms du Maurier apparently sought refuge in the inn after becoming lost in thick fog on the moor while out horseriding. While she was recovering here, the local rector entertained her with various ghost stories (the inn is supposedly haunted) and tales of smuggling that inspired her to write her novel.

Mevagissey Harbour

Place: Mevagissey Harbour, Cornwall.
Date: February 25, 2008.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

I'm a sucker for fishing harbours, especially if they're filled with brightly coloured boats and lined by equally colourful buildings. So I was pretty much in my element when we visited Mevagissey on the Cornish coast.

The tide was out, so the boats -- a mixture of pleasure vessels and working fishing boats -- were nestled on thick, black mud (of the strangely odourless variety) and everything was eerily quiet, with only the sound of aggressive gulls filling the wintry air.

After wandering around the little town with its narrow streets and strange mix of shops, we found a little cafe facing the inner harbour and treated ourselves to a light bite. I opted for the quintessential Cornish "cream tea" -- a pot of freshly brewed tea accompanied by a gigantic scone, a little dish of raspberry jam and a tub of rich, thick clotted cream.

I didn't want to leave...