London through a lens, through a lens

The Getty Images gallery is currently running a photography exhibition – Time Out’s ‘London through a lens.’

It’s an eclectic collection of black and white images spanning the past 100 years in the city, from a time before everyone had a camera phone. The exhibition offers a portrait of the variety and diversity of life in London – from an photo of huntsmen and their hounds at an eerily empty early 1900’s Oxford Circus (virtually unrecognisable with only one car, a handful of people, and no H&M), to children rushing to a sweet shop following the end of food rations in post-war, 1950’s Acton, to an image of the violence and hostility of the poll tax riots in Leicester Square in 1990.

You can see some of the images on the BBC London website here. The gallery is on Eastcastle Street near Oxford Circus: no huntsmen were spotted there today, however.

The world is your Oyster card

As someone who grew up in the country, I love living in London. I’m a big fan of all the advantages that this brings (like living right next to shops, restaurants, or a Hot Bikram Yoga Studio). I’m even like things other Londoners detest – like public transport – as to me it’s an easy way to get home after a night out, when growing up the only choice was to ring my mum to come pick me up.

One thing that does drive me crazy about London and public transport is slow people - my pet hate is people standing in front of the tube ticket gate slowly rifling through bags for misplaced Oyster cards, when there’s a queue of people behind them.

However, this could be thing of the past according to an article on The Guardian Online yesterday about the successful completion of a trial by 02 and TFL to turn mobile phones into Oyster-equipped ‘mobile e-wallets’. 500 testers spent six months using a specially modified phone handset, to make tube journeys and as a bank card to pay for small items under £10. It’s by no means a new idea – similar types of schemes have been implemented successfully over the past few years in other countries such as Japan.

The mobile technology behind the UK trial is near field communications – which can also be applied for other uses such as mobile gig ticketing, or to create electronic house keys out of your phone (so you really could ring your keys if you lose them).

As it’s likely that mobile travel cards will be rolled out to all users in the next few years, I’m not sure what the security implications for having this type of information on your phone are - especially in light of the recent Oyster card bug and outage. And considering how long it takes to replace a handset, how do you get to work if you lose your phone?

In theory though, the TFL/02 trial sounds like a positive and convenient use of technology, and I like the sound of something that requires me to carry less stuff around in my bag. Plus, anything that could help to speed up slow people on the tube can only be a good thing.

The Human Race

I took part in the Nike Human Race on Sunday – the annual Nike 10k run, but this year with a twist. People in 26 different cities ran on the same day, with the aim of competing to find the winning city with the quickest average race finishing time.

The London race started on rainy Sunday evening in Wembley Stadium, with all 20,000 participants in red t-shirts (which matched the seats, and co-incidentally my hair). There were four waves of runners – yay wave 3! – and a random but fun pre-run concert with Pendulum and Moby.

A couple of techy things I really liked about the race:
* Each runner was given a chip which measured times at start, finish and various points throughout the course. This information was constantly fed back to big screens around Wembley to show London’s overall position versus the other competing countries. London finished fifth overall, ahead of France and Australia
* Receiving a congratulatory text immediately after the race with my time and average speed per kilometre - I finished in 1.07.01
* Being able to log in to the website to see my pace across the course, position overall (135668th – go me!) and via city (11320th in London)

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of exercise (apart from Wii Fit, which I LOVE, because it tricks you into thinking exercise is fun – and where else can you run round a park with ‘celebrities’?) but despite the pouring rain, hilly track, and the ‘scenic route’ round the back of Tesco car park, I really enjoyed it. Although judging from my muscle-ache, it might take me a whole year to recover in time for the next one…

The official post-race Facebook group is here, with personal photos and video clips participants have uploaded.

View from the afternoon

Photos are here