Ireland trip
Have booked plane tickets. Flying into Dublin afternoon of Sunday 23rd July. Plan is to stay a couple nights in Dublin, then probably move on to somewhere else. Haven't been into the country or at the seaside in ages, so some combination of those might be an idea. Depends on the weather though.

Thursday 27th heading to Belfast to see my sister and family, flying back to London on Saturday 29th.

Haven't booked hotels yet. Have got hold of a couple of guidebooks which I've had a quick look at. They keep going on about racist attacks in Dublin: maybe I should stay out of the sun for the next couple of weeks.

Museums
Went to Tate Modern. Trip a bit of a pain: I'm usually OK with transport problems since I can travel by either the Central Line or the North London line, but they were both out of action this weekend.

Saw Kandinsky: the Path to Abstraction. Impressive: lots of canvases, covering mostly the first half of his career where he took the titular path.

Does work pretty well as an argument for abstraction in art, since the earlier canvases are pretty boring compared with the later ones, though it's not exactly fair to compare immature works that way.

On the other hand, it also makes it a bit too clear how subjective abstract art is. Some of the WW1-period stuff is apparently intended to be a shocking display of emotional turmoil, but if you're used to the bright swirliness of Sixties, they can seem quite cheerful instead.

Fairly crowded though not too hot. Very high child count and child noisiness.

Review, review.

Also went to the other exhibition space to see contemporary exhibit Celebration Park by Pierre Huyge. Will have to go back for that one I think: seemed impressive but I wasn't really in the right frame of mind for it. Covers various things, from big skeletal sculptures, to cryptic neon and textual slogans on the wall, to several video installations. I normally can't take video installations, but managed to sit through part of one; which had some impressive big screen Arctic shot video and some throbbing concert footage.

Review.

Museums 2
Also dropped in at the National Portrait Gallery to have a look at the BP portrait exhibition. "Dear Demented Mother" seemed half touching and half disturbing. An interesting novelty was a conventional painting with the head replaced by a video screen of the subject's face. Also saw one called Sisters with five women of different races.

Me
Been very irritable lately. Need a holiday.

Web
Bug report: cannot send emails more than 500 miles.

Gulf Stream myth: it's not that that keeps Europe warmer than North America.

UK-centric: ID card problems.