April 2009
6 tags
“Baggage is a very complex world.”
– A BAA spokesman quoted in a boring tunnel article. (via teflon; nice pun there, by the way) Of course, if you are interested in tunnels at Heathrow, this obituary Sir Alan Muir Wood, who engineered the previous Heathrow Cargo Tunnel, may be of interest. (I’d never have known about him if not...
Apr 30th
1 note
4 tags
“A lightbulb is just a hot wire in a jar and look how long that took.”
– jrconlin comments on True OAuth Confessions, or Why My Hand-Rolled Calls All Blew Chunks - kentbrewster.com
Apr 28th
9 tags
Lunchtime Guardian Reading
Usually I post links elsewhere, but when I have a chunk to post, with images and quotes too, they go here. Like this: Underground, underfunded, overrated Huma Qureshi on the Mercer Quality of Living survey putting London eighth in the world for infrastructure (“including public transport, traffic congestion and international flights from airports”, as it says): Eighth best city in...
Apr 28th
3 tags
iPhoto '09
“iPhoto ‘09 crashes like a drunk who can’t tell the difference between the brake and the accelerator pedal who’s been given a Ferrari.” The mean, short version of this post. The drunk then proceeds to forget what was in the car.
Apr 27th
5 tags
Apr 27th
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Apr 27th
2 notes
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Apr 27th
6 tags
Apr 26th
5 tags
“I stickered up my first MacBook, keeping the stickers in the same orientation as...”
– Billy Abbott: Never judge a reader by the cover of their book
Apr 26th
3 tags
“I couldn’t help but be struck by a formidable contrast tonight … between the...”
– Alistair Campbell, quoted by Lloyd Shepherd.
Apr 23rd
5 tags
On politics and professions
There was a lawyer, an engineer and a politician… at The Economist is well worth a read. Some quotes: Mr Obama’s inner circle is sprinkled with classmates from Harvard Law: the dean of that school, Elena Kagan, is solicitor-general; Cass Sunstein, a professor there, is also in the administration. President Hu, in contrast, is a hydraulic engineer (he worked for a state hydropower company)....
Apr 23rd
5 tags
Apr 23rd
5 tags
Damage Your Health
Being a list of things that “can damage your health”, rendered verbatim from the Daily Mail, based on a quick Google search: flip flops diets 4x4s sweetener in chewing gum HRT alternatives too many vitamins flying alcohol eating vegetables home tooth-whitening kits falling in love Valentine’s Day! being celebrity-thin fitness DVDs using a mobile phone before going...
Apr 23rd
5 tags
Apr 23rd
1 note
5 tags
“[Watchmen is] the 358th most successful film of all time in the US off the back...”
– Watchmen: 50 days later - Simon Brew at Den of Geek. Odd how it keeps getting compared to a particular movie…
Apr 23rd
3 tags
“Imagine a world where everyone uses typewriters: they write novels, manifestos,...”
– BLDGBLOG: How the Other Half Writes: In Defense of Twitter (via)
Apr 23rd
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Apr 23rd
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Apr 23rd
6 tags
WatchWatch
“The story of a young creatively minded man called Tom Foxcroft who was managed to get 4 decommissioned tube carriages and place them on the top of a railway viaduct in the heart of Shoreditch. The trains will be turned into artist’s studios.” From 2007, via the LU Tube Diary. One throwaway comment is that it, if it went wrong, they’d be down £10,000; seems absurdly cheap,...
Apr 22nd
6 tags
“The revolution here in our bus example is not the application, though — it’s...”
– stevenf.com waxes a bit semantic web in his continuing musings on the next revolution in computing.
Apr 22nd
5 notes
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Apr 22nd
5 notes
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Apr 21st
6 tags
Apr 21st
13 notes
6 tags
Apr 21st
4 tags
WatchWatch
remanence : variance from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo. via kasei; see also. It’s almost enough to make me get up at 6am and go down to Docklands.
Apr 19th
8 tags
“This particle-based system ran seven different layered simulations controlling...”
– 43,000 people and 2,000 vehicles an hour: why Oxford Circus is being re-built | Architects Journal (via) More on the Oxford Circus junction redesign, including some pretty pictures of people simulations:
Apr 19th
1 note
6 tags
“The family have been aware of the findings of the second pathology report for a...”
– Jules Carey, of Tuckers, Ian Tomlinson’s family’s solicitor, quoted in  The Guardian.
Apr 17th
10 tags
All Change On Oxford Street
There’s been coverage this week of the start of work to rework Oxford Circus, installing diagonal crossings and expanding the pavements (BBC News, Londonist). Obviously it’s hard to imagine this will be a bad thing; anyone who’s tried to get on or off the tube at the station there will have cursed the crowds of people who just seem not to fit the available space. ...
Apr 17th
3 notes
7 tags
WatchWatch
An animation of the images of Las Vegas taken by the Landsat satellite over twenty five years.
Apr 17th
5 tags
Apr 15th
6 tags
“After decades of fear, death and destruction in Northern Ireland, neither side...”
– David Byrne, quoted by jim in austin. I found the original piece to be full of simplifications (if I’m feeling generous; mistakes at worst). For example, it’s very bad on the history of the Reformation; the Ulster Protestants tend to be immigrants from Scotland, not England (and...
Apr 15th
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Apr 15th
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Apr 15th
1 note
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Apr 14th
5 tags
Some Railway Links
Some links from the Guardian and BBC: Victory of the ‘Shropshire Thunderbolt’ Its staff are polite, serve afternoon tea and let you buy your ticket on the train - and now they’ve seen off competition from Virgin A lovely story about a lovely railway; one of the four open access operators on the British rail network, and definitely one that tugs at the British love of the plucky...
Apr 13th
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Apr 13th
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Apr 12th
6 tags
“I have told Downing Street before that the quality of lenses and digital lenses...”
– Photographer who snapped Bob Quick has embarrassed the Government before Steve Back, who took the photograph of Bob Quick that made the news itself, interviewed (briefly) in the Daily Telegraph.
Apr 11th
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Apr 10th
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Apr 10th
1 note
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Concorde at 40
A couple of months ago, I posted a note on the 40th anniversary of the 747, and it seemed appropriate to do the same for Concorde. However, the 9th of April, 1969, wasn’t Concorde’s first flight. That was on the 2nd of March, when the Andre Turcat flew the French prototype for 27 minutes. (Here’s the Times archive’s report of that day.) Nonetheless, having missed that,...
Apr 10th
7 tags
IHT.com Folds In To NYTimes.com, Paper Redesigned... →
I’ve been trying to post a couple of entries on notes.husk.org this morning, and (as often happens) getting distracted. One thing that came up was a link to an Alice Rawsthorn piece in the IHT, but when visiting it, I got this unhelpful message. It turns out, as the paidConnent story makes clear, that the New York Times, which owns the International Herald-Tribune, has just closed the site...
Apr 10th
5 tags
WatchWatch
Mistabishi - Printer Jam from Hospital Records. Video by Tin Spider. via Chris (but this is in slightly higher quality).
Apr 9th
6 tags
“Swansea coastguard said the man was given hot tea and “advice”.”
– BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Kite surfer sparks 10-crew rescue “Advice”, eh? Like “stop bloody kite surfing”? See also: Kite surfer is found unconscious; Kite surfer airlifted to hospital; Danger claim against kite surfers; Safety rethink after kite surf crash; Surfer hurt in...
Apr 8th
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Apr 8th
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Apr 8th
3 notes
6 tags
“They built all these freeways all over Detroit and congestion is now probably...”
– John Norquist, interviewed at Streetsblog: “Back to the Grid, Part 2: on Reclaiming American Cities” via Anil Dash: Getting What You Design For
Apr 8th
Apr 8th
1 note
5 tags
Apr 7th
5 tags
Apr 6th