I've finally chosen some of the pictures I took at the Weather Project and put them on gavinbell.com, previously I put one picture in this post and some of my initial thoughts about the work.
Now there 15 pictures to warm you up on this rainy cold night, those of you lucky enough to have snow, please be quiet.
December 2003 Archives
I'm about half way into Designing with Web Standards (UK, US) and it is a very enjoyable read. I'm reading it on the train on the way into and from work and it is perfect tech train reading.
Jeffrey Zeldman writes in an engaging manner and explains the history of why the Web Standards Project exists and the beauty of the new CSS XHTML world. A reassuring read for aware technical people & designers and a essential read for managers and print based designers dealing with webprojects.
First tech book I've read in ages that I'm actively looking forward to reading and trying to fit reading it into odd bits of time. Maybe that is partly because Practical RDF etc requires more concentration than this.
Recently, I bought Michel Thomas' French Language Builder, (UK, US) which is a novel way of enchancing your French. It is an Audio CD book and takes a slightly different approach to normal rote learning. He starts to explain quite complex sentences from the start of the CD. Explaining the constructs used in the real spoken French, rather than starting with small simple sentences. It enables you to quickly speak and understand real French
When combined with an iPod or similar it is a very immersive way to learn French, even if you do end up on the train mumbling away to yourself. They are an enjoyable and effective way of learning a language.
He also has full language courses, which is currently 40% discounted on Amazon. There are courses in French (UK, US); Spanish (UK, US); Italian (UK, US); and German (UK, US).
I'd recommend them quite strongly if you are planning on strengthening your lanuguage skills, maybe prior to a skiing trip.
I recently discovered that the train companies had managed to get their live running information on the web, based on a pilot of 275 stations from reading notes about the service.
So there are time tables for Forest Hill where I live, Brighton, Charing Cross, London Bridge and virtually every train service for the South and South East.
The service is run by National Rail, who have a nice disclaimer and a full list of every train station in the UK, plus information for WAP and other mobile access.
I have a feeling that this is old news, vague memories of early WAP sites are coming back, but the livedepartureboards site seems newish, National Rail seem to be trying harder to put useful information onto their website. They also have a page with links to lots of timetables, as pdfs mostly.
Moving onto the tube, Transport for London have a very useful realtime tube map, showing what lines are not working and why.
Recently people have been finding odd maps of the tube system, I think they are quite good fun and some of them quite useful. In the tube stations you can buy a map which has a list of which carriages put you opposite the exit for which stations depending on the line you are travlling. eg carriage 4 for north bound Bakerloo line journey between Embankment and Oxford Circus.
There is also the geographic map of the tube, which correlates its shape to the real physical geography of London, the TfL website has a similar map, showing the evolution of the current tube diagram, from this page of Tube maps,
The tube maps with walk lines are similar, all about saving you money and adding layers of extra information on top of a recognised structure. The 3d tube maps are also fun, but non-interactive.
It'd be nice to see someone integrate all of these together with a route planner.
Eg your journey to work today is going to take 20 minutes extra,
Due to delays between London Bridge and Charing Cross, (train information)
Then you should walk from London Bridge to Bank, as Northern Line is congested (tube info)
Bring an umbrella, as rain is forecast and it will be 4 degrees (BBC weather or similar)
Central line is running fine out to White City (tube information)
All of these information resources exist now, but are not in an easy form to integrate. A realtime layered Tube map combining the tube, carriage information and walklines, plus the geographic map of London might be useful too. It would have user controlled switchable layers, with travel and weather information. Kind of a few generations beyond the Tube Guru, which is broken in Safari, but otherwise looks like an interesting service.
Joe Simpson was on the Today programme last week talking about Touching the Void, the new film of his book. Listen to the clip from the programme 6 minutes in RealAudio.
Interesting article, with good questions being asked about the experience of writing the book and making the film. It is also good to see mountaineering getting a wider audience. The book, Touching the Void (amazon.com, amazon.co.uk) is an excellent read, not so much a mountaineering book, as about the will to survive and the loss of companionship. Other books by Joe Simpson are definitely worth reading too, This Game of Ghosts (amazon.com, co.uk) is a sad, but powerful account of the loss of life at the high end of mountaineering and the commercialisation of climbing which is leading to needless deaths in accidents.
A few months ago I wrote about the need for a confirmation phase in trackback pinging. I was inadvertantly trackback pinging people when making a list of links entry and wanted to stop some of the pings.
Yesterday, Jeremy Zawodny wrote about an intranet trackback scenario with a company letting the cat out of the bag wrt to a competitor. In the comments it turns out that it is to become a feature of a new version of MT, see comment by Ben, so maybe my article and email did some good.
Maybe then they can also consider the Notify me of comments to this article feature which I wrote about a while back too. The intention is to let people who do not blog, or have commented on a blog article stay part of the conversation
I really quite like Christmas, last year though things got a bit out of hand and we bought a tree originally destined for a hotel. A full 12 foot high, as you can see above, it took two people to carry it and was a monster, it took 400 lights, for reference the bookcase on the right is 7 foot high.
This year we have been more reasonable and have a 7 foot tree. Seems a little small in comparison, but 12 foot trees are eight foot wide… so it is for the better.
Over the past few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the most depressing way to spend what is jokingly called, your lunch-hour, is not eating it at your desk, which is in itself quite devoid of happiness, but in fact being tempted, due to pressure of work, to eat your lunch on the way back from the shop.
Lunch becomes a joyless, mechanical task of getting enough calories to satisfy your hunger, far removed from the ideal of a true lunch hour. Nothing like this would be recognisable in most of France, Italy or Spain, where food is valued as much as work.
Lucy and I are vaguely thinking of going there next year, it looks like this and this or this. Anyone I know been and have some ideas or experiences. I'm planning on getting the Lonely Planet or similar and having a root around online, but thought that my collected readership and google might have some opinions.
Comment away below, please.
Whilst I was waking one morning last week, I was very surprised to hear mention of mountain walking and Trail magazine on the Today programme. Not their usual area of interest, but a good story none the less, listen to the article again, probably valid for a while. I read the article in question myself last week or so and was surprised that somewhere in the Cairngorms would be snow free in winter. Now the local mountain rescue and Chris Bonnington have said that Trail are wrong and the routes are not safe for snow free winter travel. Someone was rescued from waist deep snow last year on the Lairig Ghru route.
Walking on snow is not a trivial thing, yet it should be possible to walk in the hills in winter, maybe just not in the Cairngorms.
UPDATE: I mean that if you don't want snow, then it should be possible in winter, myself, I'm really looking forward to a bit of snowy mountaineeing in Scotland in February.
I have been meaning to write about A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K Dick, for a few months. I read it last year and really enjoyed it, but found it challenging and disturbing. It is a dark exploration of drug addiction and it is a vaguely autobiographical account of Dick's life. It traces the life and decline of Robert Actor and his dual life as a crime fighting drug cop or Narc and as Bob Actor a drug using sometime dealer. The paranoia and madness that come from the book is quite powerful. I really enjoyed it as the plot works, but it is a book you put down for a bit from time to time.
I was reading on Matt Jones' site about the new Wired on "The second coming of Philip K Dick", so I did some hunting and it seems that Warner Bros. have an option to make a film of A Scanner Darkly. Read more on the Philip K Dick fan site
On Sunday night I saw Monica Vasconcelos at Ronnie Scotts in Soho. She is a singer and songwriter, based in the UK, but from Brazil.
Monica has a great voice and she sings with quite an infectuous sound. Nois the band are all quite talented and through them you get involved in the music. I was in Sao Paulo a few years ago and the feeling is similar, you want to be part of the show, rather than just in the audience. Lots of people were clapping along with the percussion on Sunday.
They play a good mixture of sounds ranging from their own material to covers of 60s and 70s Brazillian classics. Basically it is music to feel good to, relax and enjoy it.
She has two albums available, the first Nois is mainly Brazillian music and is sung in Portuguese, which makes for melodic and precussive sounds. They mix the different music styles from Brazil with European and Latin Jazz sounds.
Their latest ablum, Oferenda is also good, a bit more polished and has some songs sung in English, see this short review on the BBCi music site or listen to this short clip (30 seconds RealAudio).
Building Social Web Applications by Gavin Bell.