« Westside stories | Main | The FUME enigma »

December 05, 2003

Parties and tears

The party season's in full swing. Christmas is coming and as you have probably guessed, for me and a few of my friends and colleagues at least, Hammersmith will be no more. I have produced a 2.5 minute tribute pop video (with a "feelgood" song by Texas as the audio dub - the same one that was used as the theme tune for the film Bend it Like Beckham) Because I don't have a video streaming facility, if you want to watch the video you will have to go to the dowload page and do a right-click and "save target as" on the video file - which is around 11 megabytes in size - so it will take a few minutes to download if you have cable or ADSL broadband. If you are on dialup then there is a much poor-quality, smaller version of the video that can be downloaded at 4 megabytes - but you will not get the full experience as the director intended from this! (Thanks to Sat for reminding me that there are still people with Dialup out there - and also for prompting me to use DIVX/MPEG4) (For the best immersive effect of feel-good and sadness - make sure your volume is turned up loud.)
Hammersmith Street Art
The pop video stars all sorts of people: folks in the office and strangers in the street, but mostly featuring the sights in and around our office in Hammersmith. Some parts of the video are in "rush" style - and if you're observant - you will spot the following things: * Route79 bus * The long walkway interchange tunnel between the Jubilee Line and the Piccadilly Line platforms at Green Park tube station * Some guy nodding off over his suitcase as he travels to Heathrow on the Piccadily Line * Walking through the ticket barrier at Hammersmith tube * Getting the lift to the 3rd floor at Hammersmith - the happening floor * Coca-Cola HQ * Bloke who sells the Evening Standard outside the Broadway Shopping Centre entrance * Crowds crossing the road on the Broadway * Hammersmith Bridge over the Thames * The strange-looking building known as "The Ark" * The Carling Apollo (formerly known as the famous Hammersmith Odeon) * The sign on the Apollo showing that the comedy show "Bottom Live" is on show - for those of you who know about the sitcom - did you know it was set in Hammersmith? * The Hammersmith & City Line station entrance * Folks from the office dancing the night away at the Fabric (top London) nightclub venue the other night - where one of my colleagues was the DJ And finally - for those of you wondering why all the tearful goodbyes - a very big clue can be found in the dying seconds of the pop video. I'm too embarassed to spell it out here. Oh - and I'll probably not be updating my Views from Broadway pages any more. But Route 79 will survive - because it's still my bus journey home - and will probably always be - no matter where work takes me ... bq. "Somebody told me it was over Nobody told me where it began" From Insane By Texas

Posted by jag at December 5, 2003 11:56 PM

Comments

O cmon just tell us what u gonna miss Jag! I am totally clueless....... :-? (Hhehehe... My customised emoticon)

Posted by: Shobha at December 6, 2003 05:06 PM

16 MB is a lot to download on my reaaaaallly slow dialup connection. Take quite a long time for me crack the enigma!

Posted by: Anand at December 6, 2003 06:45 PM

Shobha: you have to watch the video for now. Here is another clue: the last second or so of the video gives away the reason. If you lived in London area - you would know why it's such a sad moment.

Anand: apologies you only have dialup - unfortunately the smallest I could compress the file was about 16Mbytes - and that's the lowest posible quality I could go without it being unviewable!

Posted by: Jag at December 6, 2003 07:38 PM

I'm not sure get it either Jag. Are you moving offices to Slough...?

Posted by: Stu at December 7, 2003 01:04 AM

Firstly, it does not take 15 min in a dialup. 2 and a half hours would be more approximate. And not only can you go and get a cup of tea in that time, you can also go and make dinner for an entire cricket team. (The speed of download I get is only about 3-5 K/s.
Secondly, You can actually compress it more than 16 MB. Go to http://www.divx.com and download DrDivX. You can make that 16 MB large MPEG file to about 3-5 MB avi file. Seriously. Just check it out.(I have tried it).
Thirdly, So can you tell me what happens in that last few seconds. Shobha, if you are there, do me a favor, download it and tell me what happens. Please.

Posted by: sat at December 7, 2003 07:38 AM

Fourthly, (I wanted to add this to the previous comment) You have re-introduced the two liners from songs again. Way to go

Posted by: sat at December 7, 2003 07:39 AM

OK, OK - yes our office in Ham is closing and we're relocating to Slough.

Yes.

I know.

Sat: Thanks for the tip re DIVX - have come across that before - but ages ago - when it was first being developed. And you know the score now: We're moving to Slough. Please don't ask me to describe Slough. :-)

Posted by: Jag at December 7, 2003 10:02 AM

Ah! I know nothing of London topography, but Hammersmith, the way you've described it seems to suggest a great deal of endearment. Hope you find the new place as interesting.

Posted by: Anand at December 7, 2003 10:35 AM

I will be a nice gentleman and I will not ask you. So there you go.

Posted by: sat at December 7, 2003 11:16 AM

Let's just say that Slough is a very exciting place.

I once wrote a little article in this journal about it:

http://www.route79.com/journal/archives/000010.html

Posted by: Jag at December 7, 2003 11:35 AM

Aw, shame, Jag. I was worried that you had been laid off just before Christmas, which would have been really awful!

Still... Slough. :-(

Posted by: Lisa at December 7, 2003 01:16 PM

Hi Lisa - thanks for your concern! Yes - well - I'm not sure which is worse :-)

No - really - I'm kinda looking forward to Slough in a different sort of way. All things come to an end - and it's exciting to be moving on to something new - you know - change and all that. New places, new people as well.

Posted by: Jag at December 7, 2003 04:36 PM

Post a comment




Remember Me?