Britton Street Plaque

[Gazza]

This one isn't a poll but I've posted it here to keep it with the other Britton Street stuff.

We don't have a date for the ceremony yet, but it's never to early to start thinking about it. What I'm after is ideas to do with unveiling the plaque and, more particularly, ideas about how those of us who can't make it to London can be involved in some way.

Obviously there will be plenty of people there taking photos and stuff like that (I'll probably be heartbroken if I don't get some sort of vicarious connection to the events) but what I'd really like to see in place is some sort of live webcam feed that could be posted back to the site.

I have it in mind that we could perhaps do this with either a laptop and a wireless connection (which might well be possible in such a central part of London) or by securing the cooperation of the building owners/tenants and using their broadband connections.

Do we have any technical experts who can advise further and perhaps help get something sorted out?

Next on the order of business for the ceremony is how we unveil the plaque itself.

If we're going to have a webcam feed that those of us (desperately, sadly) stuck in Australia can watch at a reasonable hour, we probably need to have the ceremony not much later than noon in London.

On the assumption that those of you who can make it to the ceremony have got better things to do than stand around watching builders on ladders, I'd suggest that the best thing is probably to have it installed the day before and then have a curtain-raising on the day itself.

Having a curtain installed as well is probably out of the question, so I'm inclined to think that with the cooperation of the building owners/tenants, we could have an attractive piece of material (perhaps some black silk with a printed Triffids logo*, perhaps something else entirely) on a string running between the two windows. At the appropriate moment this would be cut, allowing the material to fall out of the way.

Any other ideas or suggestions?




[*In which case I'm putting in my claim for bagging it as a souvenir before anyone else does!]

[Gazza]

Which brings me to timing. Graham hasn't issued a finalised release date yet, but I'm currently working on the assumption that the plaque needs to be ready by mid to late May. I've also heard rumours (which I think I can safely pass on) that there may be some passing Triffids towards the end of June.

If that were to be the case, it strikes me as an even better time for the unveiling than the release date. Though the plaque is clearly tied to BSD, in my mind it's really a celebration of the band rather than a particular piece of work. And given that this is basically a gift from us to them, I'd rather like to think that they'll be there to receive it, even if we can't all make it ourselves. (All the more reason for the webcam, not to mention photos and home videos, of course.)

If we're going to rely on the cooperation of the building owners/tenants, that suggests to me that we should be looking at a weekday rather than a weekend, which would probably be better from a publicity point of view as well. Your thoughts?

[Gazza]

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for (another quick drum roll, please, Mr McDonald) … the plaque itself.

This is pretty much final, and has received an enthusiastic nod from our host, Mr Graham Lee, but there are one or two details that may change. Slightly.

The most significant, in all likelihood, is the ellipsis after 'It's a Wide Open Road'. At the moment it's out, because it balances the type better, but ommitting it detracts from the meaning so it's probably going to go back in. I've also just noticed that the closing quote mark has slipped down slightly and I'll be fixing that.

I've got a full size mock up (black and white, six sheets of A4) that I'll be sticking up on the wall a little later on so that I can check the letter spacing and so on. Being a bit of a type geek I reserve the right to fiddle. (Unless you're a fellow type geek, you probably won't notice.)

On Monday I hope to get a large colour print out from a local copy shop so that I can check that the colours stand out as well as they do on screen, but I'm not really anticipating any problems there.

Finally, because this in being done in enamel rather than on paper, I may need to make some changes to accomodate that, but we should be okay as we are.

Anyway, with no further ado, here it is:



Edit: image deleted.

[Gazza]

For anyone who wants to see it full size without those irritating little jpeg artifacts, here's a pdf version. (With the same provisos as above, of course.)



Edit: image deleted.

[Gazza]

Rather tasty, even if I say so myself.

[glee]

Yep, at the risk of repeating myself - it looks great.

[geoffm]

Oh,Aye.
Done good,played strong Gazza

[Kieren]

It looks fantastic.  I'm sure some of our London members can help out with at least photos/a video of the ceremony and maybe even a webcam. 

Gazza - well done.

[Urpal]

That's looking exceptionally good, gazza.

As it happens it matches the decor in my living room give or take so miniatures might be required (with the text "at this site" replaced by "somewhere else"/"someotherwhere" of course)

Well done.

[Adam]

Smart Gazza, ta.  I will get you an e-pint on the day.

[Eke]

Very nice Gazza, it looks really gorgeous. "It's a Wide Open Road" is the only part of it I've ever had problems with. I know what you mean about the ellipsis and I've also always been unsure about whether the "a" should be upper case or not. I've gone along with what you've done until now but as you've raised the question about the ellipsis I'll mention it now. Obviously it's such a completely minor point I feel embarrassed to bring it up so sorry about that. How about "...it's a wide open road..." to balance the ellipses and remove all the capitals? Oh bollocks I don't know...

On the subject of webcasting I've been talking to colleagues at work who are a bit techno-geeky about webcams and such and find myself completely confused about it. There's been talk about the differences between spycams and webcams, bluetooth and wi-fi, laptops and PCs, this that and the other and I don't think in the end I'm able to help out with anything of that kind I'm afraid, not having a laptop, webcam or spycam let alone anything with wi-fi.

As Gazza said, I understand the main problem is going to be a direct feed into the web which is going to be reliant on either that area of London having wi-fi or the offices in the building allowing us to use theirs (if they have it). Once we have that sorted it would then be a case of getting the hardware together to do it.

An alternative would be taking a video and getting that posted somewhere aftter the event. I have a friend with a digital video camera who has experience with getting the films he takes onto his home PC. I'd be happy to let him lend me his camera and help me get the video onto a PC from which point I could probably host it somewhere for people to download it. Obviously that'd take a while so everyone not in London would have a bit of a wait.

[vps]

It really does look magnificent, Gazza.
As for the "wide open road" bit, I agree with Eke that  "...it's a wide open road..." would probably work better but it's very good as it is... sorry for being wishy-washy but that's just me .

[Urpal]

I passed through London on business today and took the opportunity to visit Britton Street (I happened to be carrying an A4 print of your final design with me gazza, but I didn't try to stick it up as a temporary monument pending arrival of the full monty. Perhaps I should have, but I was a bit shellshocked at the time). It started raining as I arrived but here's the evidence. Looks like the first floor offices are proving a bit slow to let .....

[Urpal]

Here is the view of the basement from roughly where Eke would have seen it as he teetered atop the railings....

[Urpal]

And as I stood there I looked up at the building opposite and read this message....

Someone up there on the second floor has a sense of humour and got in first with their own signage .