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The stories of early space exploration from the original NASA transcripts. Now open to the public in a searchable, linkable format. Well, this will eat chunks of my time…
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There's a short film competition happening here. Prize is a grand, and, well, it's a bit thin on the ground for entries. I'm just sayin' that if anyone fancied making a short film, they'd stand a decent chance of winning cash.
Reverb 10: One Word
Dreadful title “Reverb”, but I enjoyed something similar I did last year, so here we go with a month of blog posts in December. As before, I reserve the right to ignore or replace any prompts I think are just plain daft. Prompt one challenges me to sum up the last year in one word, explain that choice, and then pick another word for next year.
2010: Inspiration
I’ve a number of friends, old and new, who have directly or indirectly inspired me this year, but none more so than Miranda. I’ll spare you all the gushing stuff I could put here – for all I know, there’ll be a later prompt I can use it for, and I’ll nauseate you all then. For now, I will simply and sincerely say that, by virtue of her own drive and passion she pushes me to do better, for which she has my thanks and more besides.
And one of the ways I’m doing better is that for the first time in years, I have a fiction-writing project I’m excited about – I’m inspired to write. While I’ve mentioned it to a few people, I’m trying not to talk about it too much, and not at all on-line (beyond the odd bit of twitter-based venting which doesn’t count). I’m mostly avoiding talking about it because every time I’ve done that in the past, I’ve dropped the ball, lost interest, or in some other way, failed to bring the thing to fruition. I really don’t want that to happen here, because I love this idea out of all measure, so this is all you’ll hear about it on this blog for now – I have an idea I’m excited about, and I hope it goes well. Shocking stuff, I know, but it’s actually the first time I’ve felt like this in a good few years now. So I’m pleased, and that’ll have to do for now.
And so I need to pick a word for my hopes for next year, and I chose “perspiration”, after Edison’s famous quote. Actually, I don’t think my idea is genius-level, but I’d also quite like to get back into regular exercise next year, so it seems like an apt one to pick, when talking about a year I hope will be filled with productive work, with something nearing completion by the end of it.
See you tomorrow.
Links For Tuesday 23rd November 2010
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Web API for extracting clutter from web pages and just returning the content. Nice!
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Americans! Have you ever wondered why everyone hates you? It's because you elect people like this, and then apparently give them a chance of being in hugely influential of policy areas where they can fuck up the planet for people who didn't get a say in electing them, on the basis of some bullshit religious beliefs, that, in a civilised country, would disqualify them as a candidate for dog catcher. Seriously, America, please get on with reforming your political system and society to get rid of people like this. By force, if necessary.
Links For Monday 22nd November 2010
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I have elderly family who have to wear bags exactly like this. The thought that anyone could consider it acceptable to humiliate someone in a manner like this makes me furious – I just keep imagining what it would feel like if it happened to my family. I reckon I would expect them to have legal recourse, and the assurance that someone had lost their job over this, because I don't care about security half so much as I care about basic human dignity and respect.
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Stop what you are doing, and go and look at this link. I promise you: it will make your day 100% better. This is amazing and wonderful stuff.
Links For Friday 19th November 2010
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I'm reminded of reading someone's new definition of cool "If I'm hanging out with you, I never see your mobile phone". I know I'm, ah, less than faultless with this, but then, I've never claimed to be coo (althought I've tried to do better since reading that particular article). Still, getting one of these might be a good start. Although, reflecting on it a bit, there's a fine line between signalling to someone that they're important to you, and acting like you want brownie points for simple politeness…
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No idea what I'll use this stuff for, mind. But I bet I will at some point.
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I imagine that I'll find a use for this information at some point.
Links For Thursday 18th November 2010
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Good, harsh, honest, smart. Worth reading.
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The BBC are squaring up to fight ISPs who indulge in traffic shaping/two-tier internet type behaviour that affects them, by making it clear when ISPs do so, and refusing to pay for faster deliverry. Which is good news, I guess. Here's hoping other big internet firms do the same.
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I'm getting kind of tired to linking to idiocy perpetrated by our governement. I can only assume that Ed Vaizey is either evil or a moron, because it is simple not reasonable that I should pay my ISP for a service, and them for them to tell me that I cannot have the level of service I want because *a third party* has not also paid them. *I* am paying for the fucking service. And while I appreciate that the counter argument is "well, then go elsewhere for your service", but what happens if there *is* no elsewhere to go, or when I'm locked in by a fixed term contract, the terms of which my ISP can vary, but I can't. Argle argle rant!
Links For Tuesday 16th November 2010
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This is bound to be extremely useful.
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The waggle-dance that bees use to communicate appears to be a function of 6 dimensional topography. Further, it may also imply that they can in some fashion sense quantum particles in a manner that violates some of the common held ideas about quantum physics. I for one welcome out new apian overlords.
Links For Saturday 13th November 2010
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Horrifyingly, I may have a use for this. I don't want to complete with the record, and I won't died of misery of if I fail to get the lot, but it, er, may come in handy as a chart of a way to get a job done a lot quicker than I might otherwise have thought.
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Lots of things to think re: the future of literary publishing here.
Links For Friday 12th November 2010
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Joel Johnson treats people who write the comments on gizmodo like they deserve to be treated.
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Between this, and the whole "the universe is actually only two dimensional" thing from a few weeks back, I'm becoming concerned about the informational underpinnings of reality. Of course, it's statistically more likely that we're all participants in some vast simulated reality than it is that we're actually really here, so y'know, whatever. I'd just like it if we were in a high resolution universe without the memory leaks.
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Amusing conceit, slightly flawed movie. Has anyone written the Facebook equivalent of an epistolary novel yet, I wonder?
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The London bloggers directory updates. Nice! I've just been through most of the Tooting Broadway ones, though, and most of them are dead or no longer updated, and I can spot a couple of people in there who I know don't live in Tooting any more. It's just me left hanging around, making the place look untidy…
Battersea Power Station
Today’s exciting news is that Battersea Power Station looks like it is, at long last, going to get the redevelopment that it has long been promised.
I love Battersea Power Station. It is a London totem, a lodestone for my internal compass of the city, and I’m delighted to see it properly preserved as part of the redevelopment.
I grew up in suburban South London, where they do not have the tube. Our quickest route up to London was by overground train in to Victoria, which meant passing Giles Gilbert Scott’s magnificent brick cathedral on the South Bank of the Thames. We weren’t in London until we’d gone past it, and my face was always there, pressed up against the glass of the train window to watch it slip by. If I dredge my memory, I think I can just about recall passing it where there was still smoke coming out of the stacks, as a very young child on what must have been one of my first trips up to London.
Even as a teenager, heading up to London with my friends on a Saturday afternoon, our route took us into Victoria, and while I was far too busy clowning around with my friends (and doubtless annoying everyone else on the train), and far too cool to press my face up against the glass, still, the fleeting glimpse of it was my marker that we were nearly there, that we were in the city proper, as opposed the shitty suburbs.
And as an adult, when I first joined the company I currently work for, one of the big selling points for me was that the office was just next door to the power station. I could, and often did, walk up there on my lunch break, to eat a sandwich while staring at the building – I couldn’t approach very close, but I could see it, nonetheless, and in some way, it made me feel like I was a proper grown up now – that I was sufficiently autonomous to be able to go and see this magical structure whenever I wished.
A couple of years back, I was absolutely delighted to get to look around the power station on an open day, and was amply repaid for doing so. Even in decay, it’s still a marvellous structure, and remains a fantastic feat of engineering and architecture.
There is a little bit of me, if I’m honest, that would sort of prefer that it wasn’t redeveloped. Part of the magic of it was that it was so recognisable, so much a part of my internal landscape of London, and yet so remote – not somewhere I could generally get to. If it becomes a building in whose shadow I can easily stroll around, then I worry that familiarity will breed contempt. Or I worry that the new development will block sight-lines, or re-contextualise that building in a manner that makes it less special. But if the alternative is that the building fall irreparably to ruin, then I’ll take whatever will keep it going.
I am just a little sad, though, that the transport option that’s gone along with these plans is a couple more tube stops. I mean, don’t get me wrong, more tube stops is good news, but I know that one of the transport options that got shot down in an earlier redevelopment plan that didn’t get approval was that Victoria station would be altered a bit to include a cable-car connection across the river to the power station. Tell me that wouldn’t have been magnificence itself.
But this one includes something that other didn’t, which makes me even happier, is that (part of) the power station will be used to generate power again – green power from biomass and waste this time. And while it’ll be steam, not smoke in the future, still, those massive stacks will breathe again.