Without shadows is without magnificence

Developed in SwankoLab for iPhone using Vinny’s BL94, Vinny’s BL04, Noir Fixer, and Noir Fixer.

Wonder how long the SwankoLab “blue” bug will remain? Has been quite some time now.

Click here for Lightbox version

You can see the erroneous blue tint in the upper right of the photo; amusingly, Riverbend Condominium does have strips of blue lights on their buildings, just not quite like this.

Lloyds Bank Ltd Law Courts Branch

 

London

a beautiful old ornate lobby, but I don’t think I got any good photos of it. In a hurry to make it somewhere before 5, so didn’t linger working on proper interior exposure…

doh, camera Raw is more resilient than I thought.

The lobby of Lloyds Bank Ltd Law Courts Branch

and

lobby of Lloyds Bank Ltd Law Courts Branch

Not your typical bank lobby – I mean where is the ATM machine located?

 

The Royal Courts of Justice

The Royal Courts of Justice
The Royal Courts of Justice, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

London. Lightbox version


From Wikipedia:

The Royal Courts of Justice, commonly called the Law Courts, is the building in London which houses the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. Courts within the building are open to the public although there may be some restrictions depending upon the nature of the cases being heard. The building is a large grey stone edifice in the Victorian Gothic style and was designed by George Edmund Street, a solicitor turned architect. It was built in the 1870s. The Royal Courts of Justice were opened by Queen Victoria in December 1882. It is on The Strand, in the City of Westminster, near the border with the City of London (Temple Bar) and the London Borough of Camden. It is surrounded by the four Inns of Court and London School of Economics. The nearest tube stations are Chancery Lane and Temple.

Those who do not have legal representation may receive some assistance within the court building. There is a Citizens Advice Bureau based within the Main Hall, which provides free, confidential, and impartial advice by appointment to anyone who is a litigant in person in the courts. There is also a Personal Support Unit where litigants in person can get emotional support and practical information about what happens in court.

Actually right across the street from Twining’s

Doorway at Twinings

Doorway at Twinings
Doorway at Twinings, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Established 1706. Purveyor of fine teas…

Apparently this was their first tea room
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinings

Went inside for a moment, but the room was so narrow, that I became a bit claustrophobic, and left without purchasing any tea. Smelled great though.

William Lilly – Master Astrologer

London

From Wikipedia:

William Lilly (1 May (O.S.)/11 May (N.S.), 1602 – 9 June 1681), was a famed English astrologer during his time. Lilly was particularly adept at interpreting the astrological charts drawn up for horary questions, as this was his speciality.

Lilly caused much controversy in 1666 for allegedly predicting the Great Fire of London some 14 years before it happened. For this reason many people believed that he might have started the fire, but there is no evidence to support these claims. He was tried for the offence in Parliament but was found to be innocent.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lilly


“William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times from the Year 1602 to 1681” (William Lilly)

I had not heard the term, Hoary Astrology before

Horary astrology is an ancient branch of horoscopic astrology by which an astrologer attempts to answer a question by constructing a horoscope for the exact time at which the question was received and understood by the astrologer. There is disagreement amongst horary astrologers as to whether to use the location of the person who asks the question – the querent – or the location of the astrologer. Normally they are in the same place, but in modern times many astrologers work online and by telephone. These days the querent could be in Australia and send an email with the question to an astrologer in Europe. The horoscope would in this case be radically different. Many European practitioners take the location of the querent, but there are strong voices in traditional English schools who advocate using the location of the astrologer. The answer to the horary question might be a simple yes or no, but is generally more complex with insights into, for example, the motives of the questioner, the motives of others involved in the matter, and the options available to him.

(click to continue reading Horary astrology – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Mary pontificates

Mary pontificates
Mary pontificates, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

My godmother, Mary Rauton, in J Spellerberg’s backyard in Toronto, ca 1995. Note, she grows her own tobacco (being a child in Depression-era Georgia does have a few advantages, I suppose), which is what she is holding in her hand.

35mm color negative scanned into PhotoCD oh so many years ago.

She’s ill, and I miss her. Immensely saddened that I didn’t go to Toronto a summer or two ago because of problems with fucking borders and passports and such. Now I might never see her again.

Sharp Wizard OZ-7000

Sharp Wizard OZ-7000
Sharp Wizard OZ-7000, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Pistil

Cleaning up and packing my office prior to a move, discovered this old, old piece of equipment. Not sure why I keep it, but…

From Wikipedia;

The Sharp Wizard is a series of electronic organizers released by Sharp Corporation. The first model was the OZ-7000 released in 1988, making it one of the first electronic organizers to hit the market.
The OZ-7000 was about 6.1 inches (155 mm) tall, 3.5 inches (90 mm) wide closed, 7.25 inches (184 mm) open, and 0.75 inches (19 mm) thick closed, making it much larger than current PDAs. It featured a connection port to attach to a Windows PC or Macintosh, an optional thermal printer and cassette tape backup, 32 kilobytes of memory, a 8 by 16 character black and white LCD, and an expansion slot for accessory cards.

The functionality of the OZ-7000 included a memo pad, a telephone pad, calendar and scheduling with alarms and repeating events, multi-time zone clocks, and a calculator. All the basics found in PDAs since. The keyboard was not QWERTY, although later models changed the orientation of the screen and keyboard to allow that.
The expansion cards were about the same size and shape of PC Cards but predated that standard and were incompatible. The slot was behind touch sensitive plastic allowing for up to twenty “buttons” on the card. The original selection of cards included memory expansion cards, a thesaurus dictionary, and some games.

The model numbers start with either OZ (for the USA, a prefix that’s meant to be a pun on The Wizard of Oz) or ZQ (rest of the world) followed by a number, for instance ZQ-770 is a non-US organizer with 3 MB memory.

The organizer was spoofed in the Seinfeld episode The Wizard when Jerry Seinfeld gave one to his father, Morty, who perceived its only function to be a “tip calculator”. Morty tried to give organizers to board members of his condo association as gifts, because Jerry supposedly had gotten one at a discount price. Jerry can only get them from Bob Sacamano’s father and they turn out to be low quality imitation Wizards, “Willards”, which do not calculate tips correctly.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Wizard