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Augmented reality, or AR, apps work by annotating real world scenes with information gathered from the virtual world. Imagine wandering around a foreign city as a tourist and as you look up at a historic building, your view of it is enhanced by information scoured from the internet about the building’s designer, construction style, its cultural and historical significance and comments left by previous visitors. Then as you turn around, information about a dozen other tourist attractions is added to the scene infront of you so you can choose your next destination. In future this could involve Jordi-la-forge style headsets; data projected onto your spectacles or even tiny displays on a chip embedded inside the eye. If you have an Android powered mobile phone or an iPhone, then augmented reality needn’t be a futuristic dream as there are apps for both handsets available now.
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Well it had to be done really. The promise of a decent cup of tea and some delicious cakes was too much, as well as the opportunity to try the Singapore Sling at the place where it was created, and we headed off to the Raffles Hotel for High Tea. On the way, we stopped to take a look at the statue of Mr Raffles himself and also for a quick visit to the Asian Civilisations museum.

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Arriving in Singapore at 7pm, we were struck by the humidity (This is not good hair weather). By the time we had got to the hotel and checked in, there was just enough time for a quick wander before bedtime.

The following morning, we had been booked on a sightseeing tour. This took us to various places including the Marina…

Chinatown…

the Botanical Gardens…

and Little India.

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Spending a few weeks away from the normality of home and work life and it’s easy to forget the mundane but nevertheless important things that are still going on. One thing that has been impossible to miss though is the furore over Nick Griffin appearing on the BBC’s Question Time program. Impossible because it has been reported on local news in Australia and Singapore (where I am now as I write this). My access to TV news and the Internet has been sporadic but when I got online this morning and checked my twitter feed, it was dominated by the bbcqt hashtag from last night. The same when I checked my Facebook newsfeed, so although I haven’t seen the program I managed to get a reasonable feel for how it panned out (thanks to @darrenb for his realtime tweets).

A couple of things I find either odd or misguided about the whole thing (and let me preface this by admitting that my understanding of the political system in our country is not nearly as good as it ought to be): The political output from the BBC should not favour one particular party and exclude another nor should the BBC censor the voice of political parties. Like it or not, Griffin and his party have received a substantial number of votes and therefore must have some degree of support and should be given a voice. I would hope that in the case of Question Time, Griffin is challenged by a competent set of panelists that show him and his party as ignorant racists (and that certainly seems to have been the case from the commentary I have seen).

Secondly, I think that the efforts of all those who protested against the BBC’s decision would be better spent targeting the people who voted for the BNP at various recent electiosn. Just like we were always told as children: if you ignore him, he’ll go away. If the BNP had no support, then nobody would be interested in hearing their views and the BBC would never consider broadcasting them.

From what I’ve read today, I can’t believe that Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question time has done him or his party any good at all. Which is a good thing.

Anyway, now that I’ve got that off my chest I can get back to posting photos from my holiday. Which is probably why you came here in the first place.

Our last full day on Hamilton Island (and in Autralia!) and we started with a sea kayaking trip. There were 7 people in our group plus the guide and we started by paddling out of the calm protected water of the marina and out into the bay past Titan Island (the smallest inhabited island in the world, it’s owned by a single family who paid $400K for it over 10 years ago and it’s now valued in excess of $12million!).

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