Yesterday, I was wheeling my bike past a grubby, antique^D^D^D^D junk shop in the the city. In the window was a piled jumble of cheap, nasty, mass-produced crap from the last century. This included a bronze plaque, about 5 inches in diameter. Now, I happen to know what it was - these things are nicknamed "widow's pennys" and were given to the ( Read more... )

Katsmeat is currently feeling all Bletchley Park.

I borrowed form a friend the box set of The IT Crowd. Season 2, episode 6 includs a fairly obvious data stream in the corner:


( Read more... )

I've been DIYing... my idea was a wooden box, about book-sized, that had a light fitted to it and that therefore be slipped into a bookcase at any point. Thus bringing a certain amount of variability and customizability to the whole illumination business ( Read more... )

Wow.... the Beardmore Inverness flying boat (1924) was equipped with masts and sails, carried in case of engine failure or running out of fuel.*Unfortunately, it seems a truth that as soon as a technology matures, it becomes very very boring. In comparison, with historic ones, modern aircraft are large dull, utilitarian appliances, nothing more ( Read more... )

I spent Christmas Day playing with Hugin - a panorama stitcher; it works quite well.
See under cut for a panorma I took on the Athabasca glacier in Summer 07. It needs a lot of tweaking for the exposure, but I have more important things to be doing right now.

Although you don't quite have the full effect of being there unless, by a staggering ( Read more... )

Today, we had the vague plan of going to Bordeaux. SFR wasn't working on account of her USian employers taking Thanksgiving day. A late start, and interesting diversions along the way put an end to that notion. But it is on for Sunday.

( Pictures and rambling commentary )

Taken this morning, outside the Catholic Cathedral. Some random type had something to say about the LHC.


( Read more... )

Last week, sunflowerinrain was in town and we did a 12am tour of the Norwich Elephants as she was going the next day.

The elephants were removed last weekend, but the one that was painted in safety-jacket yellow and covered in reflective strip (no. 20) made a a wacky picture which I'm sort-of proud of - the reflecive stuff and the flash freaked out the point'n' ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I found this. I don't know whether to feel admiration for the chutzpah, or seething annoyance that yet another possible surface that daily comes under my view has been conscripted into the cause of advertising.

( Read more... )