Have some madeira m'dear...

Listen and watch to some vintage Flanders and Swann....just because you should when you get the chance!

Finding this tonight on YouTube had me searching for the "The Complete Flanders and Swann" 3 CD Boxed Set that I bought years ago.....mission successful and currently listening to "At the drop of a Hat" (recorded, according to the notes, at the final performance at the Fortune Theatre London on my 8th birthday)

And the reason for the "wrap-around-funnel-with-integral-condom" contraption would be...?

Let's be generous and assume rotten tooth induced drool!

From ModernMechanix

Millie the Model

I'm saying nothing.....except there's a great post at Learning2Share

Extreme Mah Jongg?

Just a taster from "The Pageant of the Century". This comes from 1924....and who's to say whether this is the "sub-aqua" or "strip" version, because there's no mention why the players of this game of Mah Jongg seem to be in state of semi undress and in 2 cases sporting uncomfortable rubber goods on their heads....but hey, it's probably better not to ask!

Who took this one?

Filched and scanned from Ma's photographic suitcase archive a few weeks ago. Where, who, when, what and why? Whatever.....it's a good snap!

UPDATE....Apparently Dad/Grandad, somewhere on the Tyne, sometime in the 80's

St Tropez report

Apparently Chris and Nick are still watching dvd's in the "less than stylish" caravan....it's "House" tonight. So much for the Med!

Fanfare for a new (old) book

Bought this on the Haltwhistle visit. Published in 1933 and covering the period from 1900....700 pages of sepia pictures for 50p. Expect occasional extracts when I can't think of anything else to say!

All is not what it seems

And there's a blog to prove it! Photoshop Disasters is always worth a visit.

The British Museum Image Database

If you have an hour or six to spare, some small picture frames, ink in your printer and a wall to fill, you could do worse than visit the advanced print search page at the British Museum. With free registration you can request up to 100 images a month (they email them out to you within a day or so) Just as an example to show the size of the collection online I searched for "design" and I got 17071 results

UPDATE....I received the higher res version of the above in an email this morning after ordering it yesterday, it printed out well at almost A4 size.

More cats....

.....this time "The Engineers Guide to...."

Some laid-back Saturday morning listening

By the way, the above album comes courtesy of Jamendo, "On Jamendo artists allow anyone to download and share their music. It's free, legal and unlimited" (and as of today, 8285 albums available online)

Probably a good thing it never happened!

From ModernMechanix....

"Pleasure-Tower Half Mile High
Towering almost half a mile above the ground, dwarfing such gigantic structures as the Empire State Building and the Eiffel tower, a huge concrete tower 2300 feet high, surmounted with a beacon and built with a spiral ramp for autos to climb up its sides, stuns the imagination with its vastness. It is the design of the French engineer, M. Freyssinet, intended for the 1937 Paris Exhibition. He estimates the cost at less than half the Eiffel Tower, or in the neighborhood of $2,500,000. It will be called the “Phare du Monde,” or Lighthouse of the World- The project appears far removed from the visionary and a new all-time “high” in buildings seems in a fair way to being achieved."

Hmmm...so let's get this straight, you drive up to the top, turn round, then drive back down again? Wow...they certainly knew how to live!

Boxing Cat

Bow Street Runner.....Update

All 5 Episodes now available to play online

Dynamic Architecture

I can see problems....let's say you live on the 13th floor and Mr Arbuthnot in the appartment next door decides he wants to face North while he paints a series of watercolours, meanwhile you, being a keen gardener and having a seed tray of prizewinning leek seedlings on your windowsill, favour the South..........

A mystery to be solved....or a hoax?

From Wikipedia....

"The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious illustrated book written in an indecipherable text. It is thought to have been written between approximately 1450 and 1520. The author, script and language of the manuscript remain unknown.Over its recorded existence, the Voynich manuscript has been the object of intense study by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including some top American and British codebreakers of World War II fame (all of whom failed to decrypt a single word). This string of failures has turned the Voynich manuscript into a famous subject of historical cryptology, but it has also given weight to the theory that the book is simply an elaborate hoax — a meaningless sequence of arbitrary symbols."

Wikipedia entry

Scans of the book on Flickr

Late April Fools...or a good idea?

From the Metro today.....

"Food company Aunt Bessie's claims it is breathing new life into the fortunes of the ice cream van by replacing the 99 Flake with an all-weather alternative." Now, replace that ice cream cone with a crispy Yorkshire pudding look-alike and their "Mash Van" fleet might just make a killing!

Isadora Duncan...fashion victim

Chris and Nick are apparently currently sheltering in their (apparently not very stylish) caravan from the (St Tropez) cold watching dvd's tonight....oh, the wonders of SMS!. But today they saw the hotel, close to which Isadora Duncan was throttled by a floaty scarf. Her reported last words were: "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire"......though how she managed even that short statement after being garrotted leaves some questions! Some links.....
On Wikipedia
On YouTube

Newcastle....the insiders guide

Newcastle: The Insider Guide from James Hill on Vimeo.

Online Web Publishing

Create your own magazine, convert it to pdf and upload to Issuu for some free, slick, web publishing. And before you ask, no I didn't do the one embedded above!