It's a wonderful world

My current 'kitchen table laptop' desktop wallpaper (courtesy Vladstudio), which I'd assumed for months was imaginary.....but I was so wrong! Check out what you can find growing on the island of Socotra here at Dark Roasted Blend

BAD Santa!

I've a feeling this wouldn't get past the advertising standards people these days...

PS....LOVE those boots!

Party tricks

With the festive season fast approaching you're going to need some of the above tricks to keep those parties going with a swing....no really! Click the image to enlarge.

Found at ModernMechanix

Cold War Classic

Jested Telecommunications Tower and Hotel - Cold War Modern from Victoria & Albert Museum on Vimeo.

"Designed in 1963, the hotel and telecommunications tower on top of Ještěd mountain are one of the most extraordinary architectural achievements of the entire Eastern Bloc. A piece of bravura engineering on a very difficult site, the cone-shaped tower continues the profile of the mountain to a perfect vertical point. The theme of space travel is reinforced by decorative meteorites set into theconcrete core inside."

I've added this to my list of 'places to visit before I die'!

Bad Welsh

.....The English is clear enough to lorry drivers - but the Welsh reads "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

The rest of the story here

Wooden Mirror

Via Cut 'n Paste Weblog

"interactive artist daniel rozin works in a very particular artistic milieu, making mirrors from unreflective surfaces. one of his creations, 'the wooden mirror' is a testament to his skill in this area. the mirror uses 830 square pieces of wood which are hooked up to an equal number of small motors which move the wooden blocks according to a built in camera. the camera picks up movement in light and somehow transfers the signal to the wood. the result is an eerie representation of reality depicted in tiny wooden pixels. since building 'the wooden mirror' rozin has experimented with a number of other materials."

Watch it in action.....

Daniel Rozin's website

Giant Pool of Money

Promised Chris I would post a link to this radio programme. It explains the origins of the current credit crunch in a way that even I understood!

"A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money."

Link to listen online

The Corpus Christi clock and Chronophage

Amazing stuff....more details here

Bramble glut

For the last 3 weeks I've been picking the blighters at the rate of half a pound a day (that's an absolute daily minimum, sometimes it's been a pound and a half). I've eaten them raw, added them to yoghurt, made them into jams, jellies and crumbles, frozen them, pickled them in alcohol and vinegar, given them away....I'm running out of ideas. Would a bramble curry work?

Early visual media

EARLY VISUAL MEDIA "is an online Media_Museum explaining intriguing and mostly forgotten Early Vintage Visual Media and their history." Worth a click!

I'm (not necessarily)......

Due to the recent inclement (hah, that's an understatement!) weather I've been spending a lot of time delving into the (local) past in nice, warm, dry libraries. I came across a copy of my house deeds (that I'd forgotten I'd sent in to the Local Studies Centre some years ago).....here's the last covenant added in 1964 when it passed out of Methodist ownership (it had been the local manse until then, the church has since been demolished and replaced by a bland housing development)

"The purchaser hereby and jointly covenant with the vendor that no part of the premises hereby conveyed shall at any time hereafter be used for the manufacture, distribution, sale or supply of any intoxicating liquors or for use as a public dance hall or for any purpose in connection with the organisation or practice of gambling in any of it's forms"

.....not sure how that squares with the open bottle of chewy red on the kitchen bench, "Dancing Queen" by Abba playing on the kitchen ghetto blaster and the lottery ticket in my purse!

Damned clever waterfall

Personal rant - 'listen again' to BBC news bulletins suspended for duration of Olympic Games

As a coda to the previous post.....I was going to embed a brief soundclip of the news item covering the earth-shattering news that the World Leek Show 2008 had been cancelled, after all the world really needs to know! But apparently the BBC 'listen again' to news bulletins service is suspended because of the bloody Olympics. Click through to listen and you get this...

But hold on.....there's what seems to be a live link to the World Service bulletin on the same page (not entirely sure they would have covered the Leek Show story though!), click on it and you get this....

Y'know, I don't actually CARE about the Olympics, and there wasn't even anything about them in the news bulletin in question (why do I suspect a distinct lack of UK medals as probable cause?).....but World war 3 could have broken out and I would have been none the wiser. RANT OVER!

Leek Show Shock Horror.....breaking news!!

"THE GREAT North East’s tradition of prize leek growing has been dealt a blow with the scrapping of one of the country’s biggest shows.
For the last 28 years, the world open leek championship and world heaviest onion challenge at the Northern Club in Ashington, Northumberland, has attracted entries from across the UK.
Prize money of £7,500 was up for grabs in the Newcastle Breweries-sponsored show, with £1,300 for best stand of leeks and £1,000 for the weightiest onion.
As smaller club and pub shows have fallen by the wayside, the showpiece event at the Northern Club has helped continue the social and cultural tradition of leek growing going back more than 150 years.
But now the club has decided to axe the show, due to be held next month......"

The rest of the story here

But the writing was already on the wall, climate change warnings in 2006 from the BBC

Baby ouch

Check out that trusting look on the ageing mum's face and the dogged determination on Nursey's!
From ModernMechanix

Crowded beaches

Tynemouth Longsands, 23rd July 2008.....as you can see, unprecedented numbers (for the first week of the school holidays) were hitting the beach when I walked back from Tynemouth to Whitley Bay yesterday afternoon.

LATER.....A historical reference point, here's how popular it was before the days of foreign package holidays and the onset of possible climate change.

I guess SOMEONE had to do it.....

....click on the image to read. Found at ModernMechanix

The periodic table of elements (videos)

Chris.....you're going to like these! Here's Sodium...



And the rest you can find at the Nottingham University YouTube channel

Wonder whether it would work with Birds Custard Powder and the kitchen ghetto blaster?

"Here’s something to watch on a loop repeatedly at work. This awesome video shows the non-Newtonian properties of cornstarch mixed with water and placed on top of a subwoofer. Eerie isn’t it? It’s as if the “weird” liquid is…alive. It certainly plays with your mind as the fluid acts and behaves as if it has a mind of its own! TGIF everyone!" via Neatorama

Another early damming project

September 1930, and a plan conceived by a group of eminent English scientists to add 100,000 square miles to the overcrowded continents of Europe, is unveiled in Modern Mechanics. Interesting when juxtaposed with the German plan, of about the same vintage, to drain the Mediterranean (see earlier post re Atlantropa)