We though it would be best to actually see something in the festival, seen as how we live in Edinburgh. After reading a cracking review in Metro I’ve booked tickets for “Basic Training by Kahlil Ashanti”. Looks like it will be fun.

Toot, toot. De La Soul are playing at Scratch in September and we got tickets.

I had the afternoon off yesterday as it was Kerry and Is second anniversary. We went to see the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at the Dean Gallery. Bresson was a photographer who craved anonymity and would never stage photographs; instead he wanted what he famously called the “decisive moment”, when the click of the camera captures a moment of unexpected drama. He was brilliant at catching this decisive moment, illustrated perfectly in the photo to the left. He manages to get the shot when the guy has both feet off the ground above the puddle. The exhibition was good, it wasn’t just photos taken by Bresson. It had photos of him and other biographical photos and items to view. It was a little pricey at £5 but hey, it was a treat. Magnum have all the photos Bresson took whilst working for them online to browse (and buy). After the exhibition we dodged a torrential summer downpour and got expensive ready meals and fizzy blackberry wine from M&S for dinner. A great way to spend an afternoon off.

Update: Looks like Joe beat me to the Cartier exhibition

On Friday night Kerry and I met my parents, who were up for the weekend, at Fishers down on The Shore at Leith. Now, I’m not normally a sea food fan but hey, you gotta try something different now and again. I had a wee haggis thing to start and then spicy grilled monkfish with pitta bread salad. The starter was tasty but very small, the monkfish was gorgeous. I’ve never had it before but I’d certainly have it again. To finish off I had a lemon and ricotta cheesecake which was obviously home made and great after the spicy monkfish.

Saturday was shopping day and we hit the sales early. I got a couple of shirts in Next, some jeans in H&M and Kerry bought me a denim jacket in Gap. We were pretty knackered by lunch time so we went for lunch in No 28 Charlotte Square, a National Trust property that has a bistro and restaurant. Out the back, in between Charlotte Square and Princes Street it also has a secluded courtyard with tables. This was great to get a break from the hustle and bustle of the sales. It wasn’t bad value either. You could get soup and a sandwich or panini for about £6. We did a bit of non-clothes shopping in the afternoon and lurked around in waterstones before getting a taxi over to the south side and sitting around in Assembly for a bit. We then went to Khushi’s for Dinner which was aces and certainly an experience. The atmosphere is very friendly, the food is great, service was quick and it’s great value. Definitely recommended.

Kerry and I did a bit of the Make Poverty History march on Saturday and then mooched around the meadows for a bit, soaking up the atmosphere. It did feel good to part of something big, the amount of people involved was huge. When we got back to the Meadows (thinking we were the last to go around) there were still five huge queues of people waiting just to start off! I took lots of photos, which are available to view in pictures. We didn’t see any of the “trouble”. Although when we were waiting for the bus home, five police vans screamed past us towards Buccleuch street, probably something to do with this.

Kerry and I went to the see TES tonight at the Film House. He was showing a re-editing of the ‘The Warriors‘ with a live hip-hop soundtrack. It was prety damn cool. I’d never seen the film before but Kerry loves it, and now I want to see the full version. He was powering everything off a powerbook aswell, which added to the geek factor

In August the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival has loads of free (I think) screenings of upcoming game footage and talks by industry types. I missed it last year for some reason but heard good things about it. More info here.

I was just cleaning out my camera memory and came across this beauty:

I saw it roughly sprayed on a wall on the promenade down at Portabello in July last year. Someone certainly has a sense of humour.

I found this interesting site on current Edinburgh architecture and future planning for new buildings. The image above is of the new “Connery” filmhouse which is re-locating to Festival Square. It will certainly be very different once that is built.

After talking to Jed (our local friendly lawyer) I figure I should make my position clearer on the whole Joe firing issue. I understand that what Joe did was most likely in breach of his contract and can easily be called Gross Misconduct. It’s just I expected a company such as Waterstones, that sells books, to have a slightly more open-minded approach to this whole thing. A minor reprimand would have been a more apropriate response in my opinion.

Also, stop the presses, Joe has made the front page of boingboing. They’ve quoted a bit of his post where he talks about me, I wish I’d gotten on to boingboing under better circumstances.