....... loses himself in Google Maps

I have stated I want to use various public mapping facilities to record and map public art works in Walthamstow, and further afield around Waltham Forest. I am having a go at learning how to use a few mapping tools including OpenStreet Map and Google Maps.

This post is about the technicalities of getting lost and finding out.

Here is an image of a 'Lost and Found in E17' My Map - 'Public Art in Waltham Forest'.

As I understand this facility, this map will show up if 'Public Art in Waltham Forest' is used as a search term in the Google Search Engine.

There is a useful Youtube/Google video tutorial here about the basics of creating a 'My Map'. I have followed this and I managed to accomplish most of the tasks, except adding an image to the place marker or map pin.

At about 2min15sec, the tutor begins to demonstrate how to add an image to the place marker by pasting a URL of that image into the editing facility. This means the image has to come from an on line source. You cannot, e.g. download an image from folders on or in your computer.

So I went to Lost and Found in E17's Picasa web album to select an image for one of the public art works (Shying Horse) that I have mapped. I copied the web address - seen in the top left hand corner of the (edited) screen image below.

I hoped to apply this address (below) to get that image to appear in the place mark for Shying Horse, on the Public Art in Waltham Forest map.

https://picasaweb.google.com/hiveof/LostAndFoundInE17#5695910675985029234

What happened?

You might be able to see, rather than the image of a horse appearing in the place mark box, a square with a red cross did instead. I thought I had applied the URL for the on line image of the sculpture and mosaic. I hadn't. Notice the address above does not end with 'jpg', or some other abbreviation denoting an image file. The address above is for the location of the image but not the image itself.

Where on, or in, the Picasa album can you find the actual URL (address) for the image?

Go to the required image in the Picasa album and, if you are using a PC, right click on the image.

Click on  'Properties' and the properties box should appear. Detailed in this box is the URL address of the image. In this case, the address is about half way down. Copy the whole  address.....

....... in this case:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-qGjYjScnPcM/TwvwlOJxWHI/AAAAAAAAEx4/FNJcHFmh9Y4/s640/PICT2937.JPG

Notice this address has a .jpg at the end. Following the video tutorial, I applied this address and managed to insert the image of Shying Horse into the place mark.

Alternatively, come here and get lost and you'll more than likely find something less pedestrian than my mapping of this here 'oss'.

...... on the trail of a missing unicorn horn

Fellow field students (you noble lot you) I hoped to report on how I have been away with the Tomato Faery, and its familiars. After a bathe in the Canal of Fire, I have to admit my proven record in maintaining a firm grasp on fantasy was sorely tested. Stop pressing matters of an indoor market kind distracted me from my quest for total immersion in the realm of spurious E17 adventure. But I am back now and I am convinced I have (indeed) been away with the Tomato Faery; a sordid tale of which more will be revealed later. Thankfully the effects of the waters of the Canal of Fire are only temporary and are quite easily expunged by an ale or two or more in rapid succession.

Before divulging the details of my exploits within the mythic bounds of the great E17 faery ring, I need to take you back to a time and place much further afield but still within the annals of Field Study's Man in E17's  'adventures'.

Way back then, before my synapses were deviously manipulated by the illuminating designs of Wood St regeneration, I reported on matters of an ornamentally prurient nature. Let me transport you back there to my piffling concerns. Firstly, I was concerned about the photographic taking of others property, and secondly, the transgression of my 'U' - suitable for all ages - rating. Well, I returned to the host venue of the magically* endowed beasts and asked if I could publish photographs of the beasts on a blog. As I understood the proprietors response, there was no problem; I could publish.

So here are some pictures of a fabulous royal coat of arms for the United Kingdom .....

Coat of Arms, The Kings Arms, Newcomen St, Borough

It is so fantastically muscular! I was informed this coat of arms was removed from a London bridge (and or thee London Bridge?) prior to the bridge's removal or destruction. Let us move swiftly on from this site of hard horn (and corn) so as to return to the more innocent, less smut hardened territory of the E17 faery ring. Of course, the smut is all in and of my mind. 

Such prowess is all well and good for the worldly centre of town but out here in the third and fourth zones of 'burbia' there are matters of modesty to be maintained; a certain decorum. We don't like show offs here. You can take that cocksure dandy-ism back to the sordidly southern shores of the Thames.

Coat of Arms - Vestry Road, Walthamstow

This is a royal coat of arms that has not lapsed into degenerate spectacle. But wait a minute; while some features are dutifully missing - or rather, appropriately (fittingly even) retracted, there is one feature I was disturbed to see missing - lost. Where is the Unicorn's horn or 'alicorn'?

What has become of the magical and medicinal properties of Vestry Road's emblem of Great British unity? 

A Unicorn missing a horn?

One of our alicorns is missing, perhaps lost. Has one of our local representatives pledged unwavering allegiance to the MiliCam-paign against total Scottish devolution and gone about de-horning the magical beasties of their powers?

Here's Marc Bolan to provide a gambolling ditty of a comment on the matter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcOmQzW6tQE

Read his take on the situation here - 'ridden by the born of horn/ jigged like a muse on life's lawn'. 

Now here was I?

* - or 'mythically' as I preferred to say.  

   

...... contemplates crossing the Canal of Fire

This morning, while pedalling my way to work amidst the inner voices of routine complaint, I was stunned and caused to pause by the love of the morning rising over the south eastern edge of the marshes. By me the Lea became a canal of fire, its water such that, as in dreams, it might cheat the throats of men in hell. Nearby, the ghosts of chivalrous Morris and rakehellish Rosetti pranced about each other in poetically heraldic fisticuffery while Janey creaked to and fro between the trees.

Over in the Archipelago of Truth there is a discussion of Morris's love, his political credibility and the psychological and sexual implications of the ornate thickets he adorned domestic interiors with. Join me and Oliver Reed in the river (here) for a bit of Victotian (great typo - Victorian) frisson. 

A less lustful and more studious interpretation of Morris's life can be found here . It is not as iconoclastic an assessment of William Morris - the man, than that made by 'Monty the Visitor'.

(There is also a reference to Belfort Bax - uncle of Arnold Bax)

Having crossed the 'canal of fire' I discovered that the act (a strange mercurial feat) imbued me with the ability to converse with statues. Over lunch, I was able to discuss with Hogarth's pug, Rosetti's derivative application of Hogarth's (his master) use of symbolism and moral purpose. What a day!

(Hogarth, by Jim Mathieson. Photos: Julian Beere)

Field Study's Man in E17 was here 

...... wallows in rotten tomatoes

I apologize to Technomist for splodging on the sidewalks of his (and the) magnificent opus that is, The Archipelago of Truth. My crass and offending poop of a comment can be found here. In future I shall refrain from attention seeking field trips into his eminently more worthy territory, and keep my thoughts to myself, strictly within the bounds of Lost and Found in E17 for the delectation of my dedicated following of Russian spam sites.

It was amiss of me to make light of suicide and to do so on another's site - supposedly hurling myself in despair (at the failure of Tesco Leyton to provide the lowest priced value chopped tomatoes) from a bridge over the A406 North Circular Road. Not funny. Haven't I got anything better to do?

Of course the misdemeanour is not my fault. I am a victim of the indoctrinating forces of Hollywood and in particular I blame the Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi, for planting the seed of a rotten tomato of a joke in me. What I consider to be the offending seed is the opening scene of, The Hudsucker Proxy - a youtube clip of which can be found here - although I strongly recommend you do not click on that link; I might be deported.

It was Waring Hudsucker's board meeting and fall which inveigled its way into my mind as I read Technomist's 'Tinned Tomatoes of Doom' and listened to radio reports of Tesco's difficulties over the Christmas period. The "....... in short, we're loaded - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha " vignette sets the tone of how I have imagined the board meetings of major supermarkets. I am one, in the great throng of 'plebs', who patronizes Tesco and make it the loaded force it is - a personal choice at odds with some of my other local affiliations. Allegations of duplicity and hypocriticism are justly made. In my defence I do grow and source and sauce tomatoes locally although this year a particularly nasty bout of blight set in to test what are obviously flimsily held beliefs.  

Quite how the mood was in the Tesco boardroom as its share price dropped is a matter of speculation and one can only speculate further about the possible boardroom guffaw turning to the splutter of entirely disgusting (in my mouth) value instant coffee (even executives are making sacrifices in these straightened times) as news was released of the unfortunately timed sale of shares. Technomist has updated his post with Daily Mail flavoured reports on this matter.

How is it I have returned from the North Circular? As it didn't happen I plunged into a truck loaded with stocks of untinned tomatoes - all of which were rotten - throwing myself at the stocks! How ironic? How corny, except that's a different foodstuff and a very different loaded food issue. I narrowly escaped being tinned and was so eager to share my stuff of shameless tomato triviality I took no notice of which brand saved me. Thanks to Technomist for his ardent tomato which-finding work.

Haven't I got anything better to do? I have been visiting and documenting public art works about town. Here are some details from the Book of Manors on the staircase of Walthamstow Central Library. Always willing to confuse art and real life I will adopt the guise of this peasant and make my way to the allotment while there is still daylight.

  

...... loses himself in open street mappery

I have attempted to add the location of one of Walthamstow's public art works to Open Street Map; the art work being, Shying Horse, at Blackhorse Road Station. As yet the little green dot I can see on the map in my user OSM dashboard is not yet visible on the map in the public domain. The video guide for beginners says it can take quite a while for new information to appear if there is a lot of use of this facility. The dot may well be lost; though I don't imagine a lost dot poster (similar to those for lost pets) would help in it's being found.

Open Street Map can be found here

I last saw the green dot, with a yellow highlight, there (below)

For an existing map of public art in East London, there is Lawrence Rigal's web site, here and a direct link to his information about the artwork, here.

Field Study's Man in E17, boldly losing himself where others have lost themselves before.

.... rides out

I have wondered why the black horse at Blackhorse Rd station is shying. I found myself at it last night, guided there along and by the full moonlit paths of Walthamstow. On the way home my nerves were teased by the sound of clattering hooves on tarmac, and were the darknesses, the shadows of the street lights, really summoning themselves in the form of horses?

The artists responsible for this sculpture are, David McFall RA, and Trata Dreschna. There is a very informative web site dedicated to David McFall on which there is a page specifically about, Shying Horse.

  

........ languishes in a slough of despond

I have, oh yes I have been languishing in a slough of despondenc-E17. Come on man, get over it - move on! Each night of late as I have begun the descent into the bucolic of Beere's' electric Eden ( to Vashti Bunyan's twittering of another diamond day) I have looked over my shoulder and seen the flimsily cardboard repaired door - the still apparent infestation of intruder(s); mice the size of rats the size of cats the size of dogs and all that savage 'jaw' of 2012 (my new 1984). A psycho-drama out of a crisis indeed. A door, a door, my king-, or rather, serf-, dom for a door. Please me land lord, restore me door for the sake of me sweet dreams and all. 

Grumpily I have rolled off my bed in the mornings cursing and demonising the perpetrators of my sleepless and unsettled selfdom. A crisis of liberal guilt is what I am enduring; scratching at my chest, tearing at my flesh, in penance and recompense for my politically incorrect lapse - the demonization of the burglars (the person  or persons who burgled) rather than burglary. Dear burglar (or burglars), I referred to you as parasitic scum. I am so sorry. Of course you are not a scum bag. Your burgling behaviour, no doubt born of some conspiring societal constructs against you, was parasitic and 'scumly' or 'scumlish' or 'scumful' but you are not, definitely not, a scum-bag and a parasite. I forgot my aspiring liberal self and demonised you rather than the behaviour. Forgive my lapse into daily mail invective. See - read me here, flagellating. You are not 'a burglar' but a person who burgled and burglary is a behaviour into which you have been coerced by social construction - a mire.

'This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground.'^[1]

It is I who hath sinned, being complicit in your duping, the corruption of your tabula rasa. 

..... is burgled.

"Burgle" is a wonderful word but only in the etymological sense for the experience of being burgled is anything but wonderful. So it is I have had much occasion recently to practise the paradoxical pleasures of that Middle English combination of consonants and vowels.

So it was that at some point on 23rd December crack-head commandos dedicated to the relief of mediocre or modest affluence raided and plundered my home - a flat I rent with two others. The effluence (or 'effluents'), trained in the school of hard knock knock jokes reeled from their rejection from the crappest of crappest crackers and sought relief in the pleasures of other people's things and, not least, security.

Just briefly I marvelled at the artistry of the trompe l'oiel broken doors of perception before it dawned on me that the jokers possessed no such talent. In a paranoid moment I suspected I was the victim of a valiant operation to sabotage an equally talentless blog - or rather, blogging on my part that has wrongly assumed the mantle of E17. Grim. Sorry E17, I promise I'll try to do better justice to you.

Well this is an appropriate and very close to home subject for a blog with 'psychogeographic' pretensions entitled 'lost and found in e17'. I doubt the assailants will be found although I am unhappily happy to report there appears to have been a slight loss of blood at the scene of the incursion. Perhaps it will provide more telling evidence as to the identity of the parasitic scum, who, going by the two hour wait for the (apologetic) police to arrive, have been very busy during the festive season. 

My commiserations to the fellowship of the burgled in E17 and further afield.

  

......... blinded by the lights of E17

I tripped the light fantastic along Wood Street, bathing in the Fantasia of its apparent regeneration by means of up lit trees, disco pavements and flourescently adorned lamp posts. In the midst of all the dendro-illumination I half expected the paving stones to light up beneath every step and with this thrilling experience, reformed zombies to emerge from the dark recesses to dance in an imaculate formation worthy of a Nowhere's Got Talent competition winner. I could hear the grunts, moans and scowls of the darknesses seeking refuge in their stygian niches, nooks and crannies; the ominously close and less prettified zones of this neurophysiological experiment. Might there be new shadows formed by the apparatus of psycho-retinal stimulation?  I was just a small  presence on the street and I wondered, despite or as a result of the superficial fizz and crackle of my excited dendrites, what the decoration will do to revive the area commercially and culturally. I decided to participate in the festivities, taking out my camera to flash the trees, berries and high flying shredded detritus, and so contribute a little to the immersive spectacle, before retreating to the decidedly more dull and pedestrian ways of Lost and Found in E17's dashboard.