Today marks 70 days to go, and its also the day that the Olympic Flame finally arrives on British soil on the gold ‘firefly’ BA plane 🙂 Hopefully it won’t be pouring with rain when it arrives like it was in Athens yesterday for the handover!
I do hope that people will line the streets to see the torch, and there won’t be any (or at least not many) protests or disruptions. Lets get together and prepare to celebrate the Greatest Show on Earth!
Ever since they were announced, I’ve wanted the official TeamGB and ParalympicGB supporters scarves (I know, sad right?). Only available from Next, I really wanted to see them before I splashed out on them though just in case they looked (in reality) a bit rubbish! Many times I went to the Next store in town, and even asked a couple of times (very much out of character for me!) but no joy. Finally this past weekend they HAD THEM ON DISPLAY! Woo hoo! Not quite sure how I’m going to wear them, but they look GOOD!
Finally after days of avoiding, I’ve got around to (or at least starting to) buy my train tickets so I can get to London for the Olympics. Luckily my other half is a seasoned commuter, so as we get a Zones 1-9 travelcard free with each ticket (yey!) I only have to buy tickets return to East Croydon – result!! AND I can buy tickets through Quidco getting 6% cashback – result again!!
As it gets ever nearer to the actual Games time, and especially as the Olympic Torch is nearly on UK soil, more and more firms are trying to cash in on the games but without paying for being an official partner. Todays tenuous marketing ploy comes from Easyspace who have sent out a ‘Celebrate the Games with 25% off GB registrations’ email which includes that we can confirm our ‘allegence by choosing a gb.net or gb.com’ domain! How bad is that???!
Whilst I have confirmed tickets, my mother-in-law and some friends are still trying to get tickets via the official London2012 site having failed in all previous ballots. Yet, despite this being the 7th, 8th or is it even more time that the tickets have gone on sale, the site is still struggling to cope and they are getting extremely frustrated! They are having all sorts of problems including just getting on to the site, and even if they get there the pages don’t load or they just get a ‘connecting’ page with no indication of what is going on.
Its a mess! Again!!! Ticketmaster have more than enough clout and money to have sorted this out by now – shame on you!
I’ve seen rumours recently that Lego are producing a set of Olympic minifigures for the Olympic market (http://www.brickset.com/news/article/?ID=2991). No mention yet of them on the official set but YES PLEASE!!!
In the meantime, maybe I’ll get myself this… http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/R2-D2-10225 Its smaller than the death star, so maybe my other half won’t notice when I put it on display…
No, not us orbiting around the Sun (phew!) but the Anish Kapoor sculpture called the Orbit Tower at the Olympic Park. Apparently the idea is to take the lift up, and then walk down 455 steps do me a favour! I know you’ll get good views across London, and different views as you walk down but thats going to take for ever!
I never thought I’d say this, but now its finished the Orbit is growing on me. I’ll reserve judgement though until I see it in the flesh in oh 79 days! 😀
As the start date of the Olympics gets ever nearer, my thoughts turn to how I’m going to capture the action at the various events I’m going to. I currently have a Panasonic Lumix TZ3 which I am happy with but its getting a bit long in the tooth now and also suffered an unfortunate accident at the hands of my other half which makes the battery & memory card hard to extract.
I have a Nikon D40x DSLR camera with a telephoto lens which I think would be ideal to capture the sporting action, but I’m worried that it will be bulky to carry around particularly in the crowds, and also that I won’t actually be allowed to take it in (its unclear at the moment what limits there will be on personal camera equipment allowed within the games venues).
Because I’ve liked my TZ3 so much, the Lumix TZ30 to looks like a good bet to replace it but I’m wondering whether I should go for a Superzoom/bridge camera instead as it will give me a better zoom as there will be times (many I’m sure!) when I’ll be far from the action. And then of course theres all the choice out there – how on earth am I supposed to choose?! I want something thats relatively easy to transport, can take good, fast pictures both inside and out with as high a zoom as possible. If it can record HD video, have a flip out screen for those times when I can’t line up directly and have GPS (some things that my D40x can’t do at all!) then all the better!
Not sure there are any cameras that might that restrictive criteria… 😉
Not that I could really see the ceremony which was so annoying! Even though I work in a media centre, it appears that having a fast connection is not a priority so I had to cope with the stream (even from the ultra reliable BBC) cutting out, jumping, pixelating so badly I couldn’t tell what was happening etc etc. It all meant that I missed the speech from Lord Coe, the moment that the torch was lit and moment that it was first handed on. Nothing important eh? 😉
Today marks 79 days to go, and part of the news from Team GB today is the announcement of the GB Archery Squad for the games (http://www.archerygb.org/news/2440.php) which includes Alison Williamson going to her SIXTH Olympics – wow! Coincidentally, the first event thats that I will be going to are the Womens Team Archery competion on the 29th July with my mum. Really looking forward to it, and to seeing Lords for the first time!