I had planned to take Jake to the London Aquarium today. We left at around 10:30am and took the train to Waterloo East from Ladywell station. It was grey and overcast, the usual British summers day 😉 but at least it wasn’t raining. Jake was very excited on the train. He took delight in informing the whole train carriage that he had seen a train, or a house or some track!
When we arrived I bought a cappuccino and some frothed milk for Jake, along with some granola bars to chomp on. We walked over to the London Eye and I took the opportunity to take a photosynth. This is a new service from Microsoft. In essence it allows you to view a panorama in 3D space. As well as stitching together separate images it works out the depth and angle of each image in relation to the others. To make a synth you install and run the photosynth application on your computer, add all the photos(the more the merrier) and once synthed the result is uploaded to the Microsoft photosynth server to be viewed. At present there is a 20Gb limit, which is very nice! There is an example of one of my synths here.
Anyway I have digressed slightly, when we got the aquarium I found that the queue was stretching almost the whole length of County Hall. I explained to Jake that it would take a long time to wait and that we could go for a boat ride instead. Fortunately he seemed happy with this idea. I did feel bad though :-(. On the way to the jetty we sat and listen to a busker playing slide guitar. I took a few photos while Jake gave him some money. Jake then discovered the ‘popping water’ fountain next to the Haywards Gallery. He took great delight in running up to the jets and then stopping before running back down.
We walked across Hungerford Bridge where I photosynthed the whole vista. While waiting for the Thames Clipper at Embankment Pier we had a nice lunch and just chilled out. The ferry was good fun. It turned around at the London Eye so we got some nice views of it from the river. We then cruised to London Bridge. This took about 20 minutes and was well worth the £2.50 I paid for the trip.
I have just got back indoors and Jake is now tucked up in bed for his afternoon nap. It’s 2.30pm so I will have to wake him in an hour or so. This will give me time to synth my photos that I took today.
