Blackberry

I got a Blackberry Curve for work - and have been using it for about 3 weeks. As a smartphone it is horrible - screen is small, navigation within the screen is horrid, and in general doesn't have much going for it. And the famed keyboard - I find it too small, and tend to make a lot more mistakes than with my iPhone while typing. 

But it's not all bad - the battery life is amazing; it is quite responsive, and the enterprise integration for email and contacts work very well; and viewing office documents is easy. That doesn't mean that the iPhone doesn't do these things well (except for the battery life); but the Blackberry does show what focused purpose devices can do.

Regardless, I am not giving up my iPhone - maybe the Z10 would have changed my mind - the iPhone remains the superior platform.

Winter Sculpture Fair

I saw the advert for the Winter Sculpture Fair, by accident on a billboard at Hyde Park Corner - accident, because I took a wrong turn. I was intrigued enough to Google for it, when I got out of the car - and the attraction of good food in an interesting location was too good to pass up.

Unfortunately the good food part didn't turn up completely. By the time, M and I got there (about 1pm), most of the food was sold out - and the remaining stalls had long lines waiting for food. There was also a lack of parking - since all parking was on the side of the road, outside the venue - and the parking easily stretched 1.5 km! This is the first such event, and should there be future events, it could do with a bit more organisation in these regards.

All that said, the Nirox Foundation's Sculpture Park is an amazing venue. Rolling green lawns, with amazing landscaped gardens and ponds, make perfect spot for picnics - although picnics are usually not allowed! There is a warning regarding a stray hippopotamus, on the outside fence - but that was nowhere to be seen. 

It is a large park, which takes quite a while to walk around. Unfortunately, there are no labels as to the title of the work, the artist or any other information. Some sculptures - such as the bakkie made of plastic clothes hangars were easy to identify - the more abstract pieces less so.

One of the cool things about sculptures, is that is very tactile - and whether allowed or note - some of the larger installations led young children to use them as their playground. That alone brought some extra life to installations.

Some of the abstract pieces were at least cool to look at - such as the fractal heads - I counted 8 - but perhaps there were more I couldn't see.

The hunter and her dogs was my favourite installation - it is quite simple in some respects - but at the same time, the complexity of balancing the dogs on one or two legs is more impressive - and the level of detail up close is amazing!

The head of a doll, in a mattress (stripped of all the foam) was weird (and there are a line of such doll heads). Quite a few of the installations featured skulls (human and animal) - and it seemed to be strong theme.

There were a few installations which leveraged off the water features. I particularly liked the reflection of the dog in the pond water.