- Mike Heffernan – Ghosts of the London Underground – Unexplained Mysteries
Mostly bookmarking this for myself, although I imagine a few people here might be mildly diverted by it.
Tag: london
Bookmarks for October 20, 2010
- First they came for the quangos…
I imagine this one will be doing the rounds today.
- Kupenga Kwa Hamlet at Oval House Theatre 16th November to 4th December
I am told that this is "An exhilarating re-telling of the classic story of betrayal and vengeance, told by two outstanding, award-winning Zimbabwean performers using music, dance and a fusion of traditional African storytelling with contemporary Township Theatre practice. Fast, powerful, moving and unlike any other Shakespeare you have ever seen." I'm planning on going. Anyone else?
- Osborne will escape public wrath if Labour lets him win the blame game | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian
Good piece on the importance of the blame game in today's cuts. Remember: it is not Labour who is responsible for these cuts. If you are disposed to blame someone other than the current government, I suggest you blame the bankers. And if you are disposed to suggest that they should have been more heavily regulated, then, well, I agree with you. And I suggest you ask yourself how the Conservative party of the time argued they should have been regulated. (Hint: it was not more heavily.)
- london futures | images that bring ideas to life and frame the climate change debate in a way that everyone can understand
Will have to try and get to the Museum of London to see this.
Bookmarks for October 12, 2010
- Amazon Introduces The Digital Pamphlet With ‘Kindle Singles’
Ooh, now this is very interesting indeed. I could probably assemble 10,000 words on any one specific subject quite easily. They might even be entertaining enough to be worth buying.
- Pass The Parcel by Delilah Des Anges
Del has made her frankly excellent book, Pass The Parcel, available for purchase, for which you should all be very grateful. Del is a writer of no small talent, and deserves your cash, so you should fork it over at your earliest convenience. In exchange, you're going to get a novel containing Weird London and collection of freaks, losers and bastards with will have you clamouring for more. Go.
Bookmarks for August 24, 2010
- Archipelago | URBAGRAM
Heatmaps for the city. Ten kinds of awesome.
- Setting Up Twitter Bots with OAuth
This will be useful in the near-to-medium future.
Bookmarks for May 19, 2010
- ReclaimPrivacy.org | Facebook Privacy Scanner
If you're staying on facebook, I thoroughly recommend that you use this, to be absolutely sure of what your settings are. Remember, if you don't set everything correctly, you friends can share information about you without your knowledge, so do make sure to check…
- People are walking architecture, or making NearlyNets with MujiComp – Blog – BERG
Yes, someone at BERG has done a thing, and I'm linking to it again. What this thing is is a short exploration of bottom-up ubicomp, and how it is making our cities come alive. Cleverness is basically the art of drawing useful connections that others don't, and Matt Jones is bloody good at it, skating here from Archigram to Clay Shirky via Muji and Guy DeBord, and laying out a way of bringing on the future of our public spaces. Plus, I love the idea of the porch being the point where the public and the private mesh. Much friendlier that the computer-nerd term DMZ, much more useful.
- Museum of London – Street Museum
Nifty little app for visually mining the history of London while out and about.
Bookmarks for May 4, 2010
- Find is a beautiful tool – Eric Wendelin’s Blog
I invariably wind up doing something convoluted with needless scripts when I am trying to do some of the things find allows. I am bookmarking this to remind myself that find exists, and I should use it.
- Slyck News – The Effort to Save Duke University's Usenet Server
The original Usenet server is shutting down. I can't imagine anyone will notice – anyone still using Usenet probably has a very specific form of brain-damage, and in any case, this isn't killing Usenet, just a bit of it's history – but still, it's an event worth marking, in the same way that Tim Berners-Lee's first web server is now a museum piece.
- Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art – Stephen Walter's The Island
This is a brilliant map of London, that I would like on my wall. Failing that, I shall just content myself with spending hours zooming in on different bits of it…
Bookmarks for March 9, 2010
- BBC – BBC Radio 4 Programmes – Belfast: Re-imagining the City
Bill Drummond on Belfast. Available on iPlayer for the next 7 days, well worth a listen.
- GameCamp
Am going to try and get a ticket for this, and if I do, I guess I should sit and throw some notes together based on some LARP related stuff I've been thinking about/testing out, just to run it by some fresh minds…
Bookmarks for February 12, 2010
- Light Blue Touchpaper » Blog Archive » Chip and PIN is broken
The tech details will be lost on most of you, but in brief: if an attacker can get your card cloned, then they can also pretend to know your PIN – fraudulent transactions they make will be reported to the bank as "Verified by PIN". This is bad, because if a transaction is reported as "Verfiied by PIN" then as far as the bank is concerned it's legit, and not disputable. Chip and PIN is, and always was, design to protect the banks, and not the consumers. Just y'know, saying. You might want to write angry letters to your banks, and suchlike.
- Liberal Conspiracy » Astonishing transcript of Boris evading questions
Well, what did you expect when you all voted for the fuck? Someone who might be good for public services in London? I know Ken was a weasel too, but he was at least London's weasel, with the interests in London in his weaselly little heart (possibly some distance behind his own interests, but they were *there*), and every time I read a story about Boris, my blood pressure spikes something dreadful.
- Liberal Conspiracy » Glenn Beck comes to UK; advertisers run away!
This, I feel rather neatly sums up some key differences between the UK and the US. Just occasionally, I'm happy to live in the country I do.
- Fuck you, Google « Fugitivus
And this is why google buzz is poorly implemented, badly designed, and generally a massive fuck you to all google's users. I'm still trying to work out how to switch it off completely.
- Introduction to Square
Not sure if this is available to people in the UK yet, but if and when it is, this is could make life a lot easier.
- Cope » Caillois completeness
Interesting set of metrics for judging the game-ness of something.
Bookmarks for February 11, 2010
- Boris Johnson is waging war on our city’s subversive south | News
All true Londoners have a south London past. There they experienced their first flat, their first date, their first taste of city life, with nothing too exotic. They dallied in Clapham, flirted with Dulwich, tested their mortgage muscle on Stockwell. (I lived awhile in Upper Norwood.) South London is the kind of place, as was said of George Bush, that “reminds every woman of her first husband”.
Bookmarks for January 20, 2010
- Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report — Rogozov and Bermel 339: b4965 — BMJ
Ever wondered what it would be like to perform surgery on yourself? No? Why not? Well, anyway: here's a description of what it's like to have to give yourself an appendectomy. In the Antarctic. With next to no help.
- A Rant About Women « Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky opens up a serious can of worms, noting that women do not push themselves forward in the way men do. Part of me wants to say "well, *duh*". Shirky suggests that if women behaved in a more self-aggrandising manner, they'd get more equal treatment. I'm just not sure that I want to encourage any more people to behave like some of the self-promoting male pricks I've met.
- plasticbag.org: Should we encourage self-promotion and lies?
Tom Coates identifies some of the problems with what Shirky is suggesting – the problem isn't just that women don't push themselves forward, but often that the wrong people do, and what we should be focusing on is ensuring that everyone correctly advertises their own level of experience and ability – that those that *do* self-promote heavily while they can be useful, can just as often be a total pain.
- apophenia: whose voice do you hear? gender issues and success
Danah Boyd's repose to Shirky and Coates is excellent reading.
- Mass Photo Gathering – I'm a Photographer, not a Terrorist
Trafalgar Square at noon on Saturday. Anyone interested?