Thursday 30 July 2009

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter



Dan Zambonini's alternative tube map has got me thinking about suggestions to make for the right hand side of the map, which is looking a little thin compared to the Northern Line and zone 1.

Tuesday 28 July 2009

Test tubes and Tesla coils

As it happens, there's a copy of this book in my office waiting to be catalogued and added to the cultural travel section of the library when my holiday is over. If there wasn't, though, Bill Thompson's blog post about The Geek Atlas would have persuaded me to order it.

It looks like an excellent companion to the (now out of print) The Scientific Traveler: A Guide to the People, Places, and Institutions of Europe by Charles Tanford and Jacqueline Reynolds from John Wiley, and will hopefully provide some balance to the more literary and art-history focused travel books.

[The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science & Technology Come Alive, was written by John Graham-Cumming and is published by O’Reilly Media.]

Monday 20 July 2009

Enter and rejoice this pedestal


Thanks to being on summer break, I've missed a lot of the ambient One & Other exposure I'd be getting if I was in work as normal, although I did finally manage to time my tea break today to be wandering past at a change over!

The live-feed on the website, and the Guardian's @plinthwatch on Twitter has been keeping me up to date, though.

I think my favourite in-person plinther so far was the gentleman conducting a small group of musicians below him, which must have been last Monday? - this afternoon's bubbles also pleased me.



It's a fascinating project, and it's a lovely thing to see something on that corner that makes me smile every time I cross the square. The only frustrating thing is that, unless you have a decent zoom, it's practically impossible to photograph of any of the things people get up to up there!

* OK, so that's not One & Other, in this bottom image, but it is an excellent photograph - too good to resist.