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Yesterday I went to Future Cinema Presents California Classics - Top Gun.

This wasn’t simply a case of showing up at a cinema to watch a film, though …

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Unquestionably the most exciting thing I have done so far this year - this is the audience I sang for earlier today:

The picture shows a capacity crowd of ten thousand people (mostly women) filling Wembley Arena for this afternoon’s Rock Choir Live event.

Plus, there’s breaking a Guinness World Record, recording a track to be released on a deluxe version of the existing Rock Choir: Vol1 album and not only that but it has all been filmed for a documentary to be broadcast on ITV later this year. Not bad going for one afternoon!

So, what’s the story? How did I come to end up on stage in front of that many people?

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Here are a couple of photos of The Herbaliser that I took last night at the Jazz Cafe in Camden. They’re not great pictures but do show nicely what it is I like so much about the Jazz Cafe, which is that you can get close enough to take pictures like these.

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This is the car I’d always wanted. It is a Ferrari F40. I liked it so much growing up that I had a dusty Airfix model of it on my bookshelf.

I took this picture at the start of the Gumball 3000 rally in London. The original picture was a little messy, so I used a photo-editing package (The GIMP - an excellent free tool) to remove the background and rotate the car to level it up a little.

There were all sorts of weird and wonderful vehicles to see at the event …

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I’ve been to a couple of the recent late night openings at the Science Museum. Definitely one of my favourite London museums, and their late night openings are really good fun. There are little events, demonstrations, music a bar, and best of all, it’s adults-only, so there are no hordes of kiddies running around fiddling with the hands-on exhibits.

This fellow may not actually be a real space man (space suit, actually - nobody’s inside) but I think it makes a great blog picture.

This weekend, thanks to a tip-off from a friend I visited Kinetica Art Fair. Having been to last year’s event, I knew what to expect and so I came prepared with my camera.

Immediately, the art afficionados amongst you will have noted “camera” - Kinetica is a very informal event. Photography is allowed as long as it isn’t disruptive and many of the exhibits are interactive.

The artists are usually on hand to discuss their work and are typically very keen to do so. Professor Frederic Fol Leymarie gave me a very interesting walk-through the art/research project on computation models of creativity that he is involved with, for example. I also chatted briefly with Giles Walker who I met at last year’s event when he was exhibiting his pole dancing robots.

So, what did the art look like?

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This Friday I attended the Fashion In Motion catwalk show of clothing designed by Erdem at The Victoria and Albert Museum.

As you can see, I’m no fashion photographer! Unlike my friend Titus Powell, to whom thanks are due for obtaining the tickets to this event.

More pictures after the break.

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Despite having been there twice a week every week since January, I still managed to find a reason to go back to London City Airport for a third time this week: The London City Airport Funday 2009

Strangely, despite leaving my house, then going back for my umbrella because it was raining, at the airport we were in for the hottest afternoon that I’ve seen so far this year. Perfect day to see some aeroplanes, and I took plenty of pictures, including the one above, which I was especially pleased with.

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This is another “watching, not doing” blog entry. Can’t see myself doing this anytime soon:

I took this at the Thames Festival last week. It shows a member of the Free Running (aka Parkour) demonstration team performing a hand stand on the specially built stage. We were also treated to running, jumping and somersaulting from the rest of the team, all neatly dressed in their corporate sponsor’s logo. (Barclaycard - Who, incidentally, caused me a great deal of inconvenience this week, so I’m not feeling charitable enough to give them a free picture advert on my blog.)

Other highlights this week …

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I spent yesterday evening with James Randi & Friends - about 500 of them.

The event was this one, which promised “A rare opportunity to share an evening with James Randi and his associates in an evening of discussion about science, pseudoscience, scepticism and the paranormal.”

James Randi, in case you didn’t know is famous for being a skeptic and used to appear on TV shows debunking people like Uri Geller the spoon bender. James’ website his here and you can read more about him on wikipedia here.

So, am I now a fully converted Skeptic?

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