(Part 2) Best products from r/london

I work in a popular indie bookshop that is also a bit of a tourist destination in London. if you came into my shop an asked this question, i would suggest these two new books on londons rivers: 1 and 2. Same title, but both different and very good books. Also secret london. I've been a londoner for 15 years, and my parents both are from here, but most of the places in this book i had never come across. My better half, who is training to be a city of london tour guide, and I, have been using the book to get to know our city better for the last few months. Another awesome way to look at the city is through lost london an awesome (an reasonably priced) coffee table book of historic photographs of the city, illuminating for any londoner. If you are looking for any other sort of book on the city (novel, history of a particular period, esoteric guide, etc...), let me know. It's what I do.

P.S. While i have linked to amazon above, if you can afford to, buy from your local independent bookshop! you'll miss us if we go!

Thanks very much for stopping by :) I was heartened by your link, and the progress described.

> That doesn't necessarily exclude alternative medicines... but not sure how many of those have been established to effective by the scientific community.

Actually, that definition would exclude everything that calls itself "alternative medicine". Anything that has been proven to be effective is simply called "medicine" :)

I recommend Trick or Treatment if you'd like to read a review of the evidence by experts for laymen, or Bad Science (book or blog) for more stuff.

Lastly - and sorry to bang on for so long - you could do worse than get in touch with former MP Dr Evan Harris, who gave this talk along with Prof David Nutt. It was a most enjoyable evening - but more importantly, Dr Harris is part of a campaign to make more policies based on sound evidence, and he could probably tell you a lot more than I could :)

Glad your dad was found. Same thing happened to my mother when we lost her in central London. Fortunately she was caught be a charitable stranger about 4 miles from home and they called us. The police helpfully went to pick her up.

One thing I would recommend is buying him a GPS tracker something like this I slip it into my mum's coat where she cannot remove it whenever we go out. It works using a standard SIM and can txt you their position as a GoogleMap reference or if you are technically inclined you can set up a server it can connect to over the internet to give you real time positions information. These devices are very clever and can allow you to make a Geo-fence where if the device goes outside of a set of coordinates it will alert you. Likewise you can also get it to trigger if the speed of the device goes over a threshold. So you will know if they are in a vehicle.

The only caveat is that is it is a mobile phone signal and so if they are inside some buildings then the device will not be able to report.

For a full list of features for this device look over the manual

A medi-braclet is something else I would recommend for your dad. At least with some basic contact information. It helps a lot when they are somewhere they don't recognise and act confused.

It is no fun looking after someone with Alzheimer's disease and I know the feeling when they do something unexpected and you don't know where they are. But technology can help and it is not that expensive.

Good luck!

Nice one on the taxi green badge :)

And no worries! You don't have to go with a company, but going at it on your own takes a lot of hard work and a long time to build up the sort of demand you need to go at it full time.

The City Guides course was I think around £300 maybe, plus exam fees. Between that and books it was probably near the £500 mark.

If you're looking for just history, the City does a course for just that as well. I knew it as 'Exploring the City' but looks like it may be called History of the City of London now. Also worth keeping an out on the Bishopsgate Institute and City Lit for any Londony courses.

Gosh where to start on books :D. A really great reference one is The London Encyclopaedia. For a nice overview of just the City, The City of London Companion Guide is quite nice. The series of Restoration London, Elizabethan London, and Victorian London by Liza Picard are handy as well.

Google is an American company which has brought across their American culture and thus pretty much only hired those that will fit that culture. The free lunch perks again keeps staff on site. It's a really clever trick which benefits both employees and employers.

Startup culture is a different beast (and one I'm looking forward to get back into). But again there are a few tricks used to get people to work late/hard. Such as minor equity for less pay. So people feel like by working hard they are directly going to get rich. Which never happens except for founders.

Check out "Built to Last". Explains it much better than I can.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Built-Last-Successful-Visionary-Companies/dp/1844135845/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1344421208&sr=8-3

Compares visionary companies with 2nd tier companies and what the difference is, but runs through a few of these methods of getting employees to commit themselves to the company. Nothing bad or evil about it, but there are ways to shape a companies culture.

And yes there are exceptions, but the general British culture is they are out of there at 5pm. Banking for example is a different culture where 1-2am finishes are common on a daily occurrence.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fan-Dabi-Dozi-The-Krankees/dp/184454026X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396463097&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=fan+dabbi+dozi

"We liked to have fun, especially at these wild parties and we sort of knew what each other was doing and with whom, but we always ended up back in our own hotel suite or in the house together at the end of the night. They were never anything very serious. But it's fair to say The Krankies were not as pure as driven snow." pg 131


" Ian: Good, filthy fun. Everyone was up to no good at these parties and we were no different." pg 132

If you were on children's television in Great Britain in the 70s or 80s you were a deviant of some sorts. History is only now revealing the full extent of what should have stayed buried away to stop us all vomiting over our keyboards.

FAN-DABI-DOZI!!!!!!

p.s. Do you have any mind bleach that I could borrow? I desperately need it after bringing the above back into my consciousness.

Not therapy, but know someone who had great success with this book (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Panic-Attacks-Workbook-David-Carbonell/dp/1569754152). It's like a workbook so takes you a few weeks to work through and I think it works like CBT but not sure exactly. Just thought I would mention incase it helps.

I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-DJ-Properly-Science-Playing/dp/0593058119/

Easily the best book on the subject and covers a lot more than just 'how to mix', which is a relatively small aspect of DJing and increasingly becoming less necessary with modern digital DJing equipment.

If playing around in the bedroom and at home then I recommend going for a digital controller such as a Pioneer DDJ-SB2 or the Traktor Kontrol S2. Traktor has far superior software but does cost a little more.

If vinyl is a must then locate a second hand pair of Technics SL-1210 turntables, although they will not be cheap and you'll also need a mixer. However, this would be an excellent long term purchase and the value of the 1210's is unlikely to drop. Alternatively, go for some cheaper turntables available from a site such as djstore.co.uk.

After noting the name of the estate agent it's good to see the spirit of Roy Brooks lives on - they published a collection of the best of his advertisements in the book Brothel in Pimlico - here are a couple of examples:

> FASHIONABLE PIMLICO. Early VICTORIAN TOWN HOUSE of 9rms., 3 with pretty grim baths stuck in corner. Decorative defects include a fine growth of fungus on the wall of ground floor rear room. The first floor 27ft. drawing rm. is marred by the marble mantelpiece which has left its moorings and is sprawled across the floor. A fussy purchaser would presumably have the gaping hole in the top bedrm. ceiling - open to the sky - repaired. Lse. 80 yrs. G.R. £70. ONLY £8,650.

and

> ONE OF THE FILTHIEST HOUSES I'VE SEEN FOR A LONG TIME. A crumbling corner PERIOD RES. There are many things that can be said about FASHIONABLE PIMLICO: Dingy, for instance. 9 rms (Some quite fine altho' they've kept coal in a bedrm & the Drawing rm chimney piece is sprawled across the flr.) Built in an age of elegance, contemporary, I should think, with Emperor LOUIS PHILLIPE, to restore it is about the only challenge left to a rich young couple today. ONLY £8,450. Lse 80 yrs. G.R. ONLY £70.

It's worth trying the people next door. If they say no: you could use the Clapham North bike racks and get one of those alarm padlocks that goes off if the bike's disturbed. They give three initial warning beeps as a deterrent, then if the bike keeps moving, they go into full siren mode. Useful thing to have attached just out of sight under the saddle.

I think there are bike-security tags you can get that notify your phone if your bike moves, but can't vouch for whether they're any good.

I hope your neighbours turn out to be nice and friendly and say yes to you.

I'd recommend this, but depends what your budget is. That one will keep you going for a few years at least. Easy to store as well.

If you go to the bottom floor of Wunjo guitars in denmark street, you can try one out. Musicroom (just over the road) also have a lot of keyboards.

Alternatively if you have a computer with a good sound card (not a built in one), or a mac, you could get this for cheaper and set it up with a cheap DAW like Main Stage (£30 for mac) or FL Studio (free for windows). But you do need to have a good sound card for this to work or you will experience sound delay.