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.)
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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 …
Posted by jag at December 05, 2003 11:56 PM“Somebody told me it was over
Nobody told me where it began“
From Insane By Texas
O cmon just tell us what u gonna miss Jag! I am totally clueless.…… :-? (Hhehehe… My customised emoticon)
Posted by: Shobha on December 6, 2003 05:06 PM16 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 on December 6, 2003 06:45 PMShobha: 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 on December 6, 2003 07:38 PMI’m not sure get it either Jag. Are you moving offices to Slough…?
Posted by: Stu on December 7, 2003 01:04 AMFirstly, 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.
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 on December 7, 2003 07:39 AMOK, 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 on December 7, 2003 10:02 AMAh! 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 on December 7, 2003 10:35 AMI will be a nice gentleman and I will not ask you. So there you go.
Posted by: sat on December 7, 2003 11:16 AMLet’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 on December 7, 2003 11:35 AMAw, 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 on December 7, 2003 01:16 PMHi 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 on December 7, 2003 04:36 PM