Author Archives: James - Page 55
My top Camp Bestival Lessons 2015
I went to Camp Bestival for the first time last weekend. My wife and kids were with me (a nine year old and a three year old). We had an awesome weekend and really enjoyed ourselves. However, we barely touched the edges of what was possible. So here are my top Camp Bestival lessons and ideas for next year. Camp Bestival is Huge A really obvious Camp Bestival lesson is that it is huge. I mean physically as well as the acts. Our camping space was about half a mile from where we had to park the car, and it was a ten minute walk (admittedly at toddler speed) from the closest part of the festival. There were literally thousands and thousands of tents, each with several people in them. The Green 2 car park had well over a thousand cars…
2015 Camp Bestival Pictures
Yesterday I gave some first impressions from the 2015 Camp Bestival, today it is the turn of my Camp Bestival pictures. It was an awesome weekend and I took a shedload of pictures, both on my phone and with my proper camera. I've not properly looked through them all, the better ones will make it to my public Flickr album. Camp Bestival Pictures I posted a few of my Camp Bestival pictures to Flickr over the weekend and all of those were tweeted at the time. Here are a few selected tweets with the Camp Bestival pictures attached. NB: the official @dickndom account favourited that last tweet, which I'm pretty proud about! The reason that the tweets stop here is that is about when my phone ran out of battery, or rather the portable power bank didn't have enough juice left to recharge…
Camp Bestival 2015 Pt. 1
Since Thursday I've been camping with my family at Camp Bestival 2015. It's been a fun packed weekend with lots of outdoor stuff, exercise, music, comedians and general fun. I'll write more about it when I've properly had time to recover, but here's a picture from the highlight of our weekend. A very intimate Dick and Dom (not) reading the Jungle Book. Other things we got up to over the weekend included Dick vs Dom go wild Steve Backshall Mister Tumble Marcus Brigstock Level 42 Underworld Clean Bandit John Halpern on cryptic crosswords (twice) Lulastic and the Scummy Mummies Dr Seuss's The Cat in the Hat National Trust 50 things meadow plus loads of sideshows, carnival parades and other diversions I also remembered a lot I'd forgotten about camping and also learnt a little bit about festivals. More on that…
Author Interview – Greg Smith
Greg Smith, author & graphic designer This interview is with Greg Smith, a graphic designer turned novelist who has written two quite different novels in different genres. Greg is an Australian who has spent most of his life living in the US, but not quite enough to stop him signing off G'Day. Here are Greg Smith's answers to my questions. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I’ve been writing seriously for several years now albeit sporadically, but it’s been something in the back of my mind to try way long before that. And to answer your question as to what, or in my case who, made me start writing ... I can thank my wife for that. One day I mentioned an idea for a story and she quipped, “That would make a…
Autonomous Vehicles pt.2
Social Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles Perhaps Autonomous mobile homes will cruise round here: Catford Road (South Circular Road), London SE6 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) My previous article on Self Driving Cars covered some of the technical points, that self driving cars are starting to look safer than human drivers and that there are traffic management benefits to most vehicles being self-driving. But there's more to it than that. For a start there will be more than just 'cars' that drive themselves around, so properly one ought to talk about autonomous vehicles (AV). No More Professional Drivers The most obvious consequence of autonomous vehicles is that those who drive for a living will rapidly be out of a job. The cost base for taxis, truck haulage and bus companies involves driver pay plus the costs of the vehicle. I expect that initially there…