March 2010
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“In just four months London will glitter with the twinkling dynamo lights of...”
– Boris Johnson, quoted in a TfL press release: London’s Cycle Hire scheme to go live on 30 July (via minority report)
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“Sixteenth-century maps of Africa were misleading in all kinds of ways, but they...”
– Larissa MacFarquhar, in How Paul Krugman found politics in The New Yorker
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Why I Don't Use Packrati.us
(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a tool for automatically posting links on Twitter to delicious.)
It links your feeds
It uses via: to indicate service posting when I use it to attribute
Twitter is private, delicious is broadcast
Twitter is for nonsense, delicious is serious
I could get around those if it posted private then let me share; it doesn’t
I...
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Changing Clocks
Today Europe changed its clocks for daylight saving time, two weeks after the US did. I’m not going to take part in the twice-a-year ritual of suggesting that the UK should move a further hour ahead, or the counter-complaints that changing clocks is silly. Instead, I’m going to praise the way Europeans change their clocks, and criticise the way Americans do.
The core of the question...
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“The Westway has everything you expect in great architecture, experienced at...”
– Rowan Moore: Westway is the best way, from the Evening Standard in 2000.
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“The rush to online mapping is causing some problems. Studies by the British...”
– John McKinney, in Paper Maps Not Ready to Fold Yet in Miller-McCune Online Magazine (via straup)
This seems to be another example of digital manifestations losing serendipity…
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“For people who think that paywalls or the iPad are the things that will be the...”
– Chris Thorpe: Newspapers as serendipity bundles and chatroulette for news
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GMail, Fitt's Law, Engineers
Tom Insam:
Coding Horror: The Opposite of Fitts’ Law
Every few days I accidentally click Report Spam when I really meant to click Archive. Now, to Google’s credit, they do offer a simple, obvious undo path for these accidental clicks. But I can’t help wondering why it is, exactly, that these two buttons with such radically different functionality just have to be right next to...
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A Tale Of Two Logos
The new UK Space Agency vs the Ministry of Space (see also, ta Tom).
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“The press will of course report this mainly as the site being “Hacked” rather...”
– Dan Catt: A quick timeline on the collapse of Cash Gordon
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“I’ll have a relationship of some kind with the magazine until I’m an...”
– Paul Ford, “the now-former web editor of Harper’s Magazine”, In Conversation at The Awl.
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TSA Screening and Photo Equipment
duncandavidson:
With the amount of equipment that I pack into my Think Thank Airport International, I’m a regular candidate for a bag check at airport security checkpoints. Two camera bodies, four or five lenses, batteries, and all the miscellaneous stuff makes for a dense bag. I’ve noticed, however, that there’s been an almost perceptible pattern to the airports where this occurs the most.
...
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“I tend to avoid the Circle line if I can. If it’s possible to do something...”
– Adriana Obloj (with a slightly more nuanced version of the stereotypical kneejerk response) quoted in an Evening Standard piece entitled “Longer waits and fewer trains after Circle line extension”. Of course, the Circle has always been rubbish.
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“Services to Brussels and Paris now speed through this none-too-photogenic...”
– diamond geezer, in a report on Dagenham Dock.
Call me odd, but when I was last on that part of track, on a sunny but cold day, the stark lines of the pylons, overhead cables, flyovers and wind turbines struck me as deeply pretty.
(See also: this great photo from yesterday’s post.)
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“If Boris wants me to take charge of TfL then he should say, and I would start...”
– Transport minister Lord Adonis, on how the Mayor ought to be handling the finances of Transport for London.
From London Reconnections’ dissection of the PPP Arbiter’s Final Report, via teflon.
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“Garlic bread has about one-third of the market, compared with one-tenth for...”
– What the ONS tells us about trendspotting at the BBC News Magazine.
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flibbertigibbet
dailymeh:
flibbertigibbet
Here’s an f-word for you, as far as I can tell not noted here or here (does that mean everyone knows it already?).
flibbertigibbet • noun • a silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.
I knew that word, but I always used it in an equal-opportunities manner (often aimed at myself) rather than at “pert...
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Attaining Hampstead
While researching the proper way SCREEN$ load on a Spectrum, I was distracted by somehow running across an old adventure game.
Hampstead was by Melbourne House, who put out a fair few classic text adventures in the 1980s. As the instructions put it:
Hampstead is a quest, but not for gold. The aim of it is to reach the
pinnacle of social status, and acquiring wealth is only one part of
the...
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Future-O-Matic Theory Maker
With apologies to Russell:
The +
LongSlowDarkBigPeakPost +
DigitalTailNowFoodMatterMoneyFlowEnergyOilBangHereBlackCity =
Theory
… on second thoughts, maybe it works better on a whiteboard. Ah well.
