Wednesday 17 February 2010

Poetry on the Rocks?



Well yes and no.
Yes poetry was projected onto
the Castle Rock here in Edinburgh. It's all part of 'Carry-A-Poem', a joint venture between Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, the Scottish Poetry Library and City of Edinburgh public libraries which is happening for the month of February at four locations plus the Castle Rock for St.Valentine's night only.
Poets include Douglas Dunn at Edinburgh Castle where I shot one of three 360º panoramas, Robert Burns on the City Chambers on Cockburn Street, Gael Turnbull on the High Street, Lord Byron and Robert Louis Stevenson.
No poetry isn't dead. Tweets have been whizzing back and forth on Twitter on just this aspect of the poetry. Elsewhere there must be scores if not hundreds more talking about all aspects of the project. Scotland and beyond is clearly in love with poetry.

PS 18th Feb : CarryAPoem have now blogged me. First time I've ever been the subject of a blog at that. Check it out here and leave a comment if you fancy. I'll try to get another couple in the bag over the weekend and add them to my amalgamated page here.

Friday 5 February 2010

A walk around Edinburgh's QuarterMile

Old hospitals never die, they just move away. Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary closed it's doors a few years ago and moved to the idyllic sounding Little France on the outskirts of the city. There it continues it's proud role in the city's health care. Founded by charter in 1736 this is in fact it's second major move with the recently vacated site at Laureston Place being occupied since 1879. See Wikipedia for a fuller history.
Recession or not the site is now being developed as a 'village within Edinburgh' with a mix of residental, recreational and office use. Situated just north of The Meadows and south of the city centre the site will no doubt prove very popular when it's completed over the coming years.
And as the development isn't finished so my 360º Virtual Tour also includes corners that haven't been touched. There are two formats available; Flash or Quicktime. Flash has a slightly lower filesize while Quicktime is higher quality but doesn't seem to like the Firefox Browser. And with Quicktime you should enable 'hotspots' for each scene to see where to click through for the next POV, while it's obvious with Flash.