Non-Edinburgh residents may want to look away at this point. If you were me, you’d either already have tickets for, or seriously be considering, attendance at the following:
April
2nd Larry Lessig - Royal Museum (Edinburgh Science Festival)
3rd What If… - Dynamic Earth. Free, but by ticket only (Edinburgh Science Fetival)
5th Do Me Bad Things - The [...]
Another example of Craigslist becoming a forum for social commentary. ‘FOR SALE/BARTER: My body in Persistent Vegetative State…’ is just genius.
On a related note, I keep forgetting that Craigslist has an Edinburgh section. The last time I checked it, about a year ago, there were something like 5 posts on it, all months old. It’s [...]
Ken Meikle built a full sized, motorized Dalek, drove it over Tower Bridge and parked it in front of the Houses of Parliament. Whereupon he was dragged away by armed police, and his Dalek impounded. I’m assuming that the police armed themselves because they couldn’t find a couch to hide behind…
Spay Your Catgirl! Randy [...]
Waiting For The Sirens’ Call - New Order. It’s a lot more indie-rock than I was expecting; even more so than ‘Republic’. For whatever reason, the dancey tracks tend to feel more half-hearted and meandering than the guitar-heavy ones, though I guess the band does have an extra guitarist these days. The whole thing [...]
An unintentional exclusively sci-fi/fantasy book diet recently…
Stamping Butterflies - Jon Courtenay Grimwood. This is more directly sci-fi than any of his previous books, though it has a very similar feel to his ‘Arabesk’ trilogy. It’s laid out in three intertwined, self-referential strands, and the structure is fairly reminiscent of M. John Harrison’s ‘Light’ even though [...]
Despite have far too much nauseating marketing weasel-speak on their website, Zazzle have some nice prints for sale. The two that led me to the site, are these prints of 3D strange attractor traces. They somehow remind me of these Chuck Anderson lithographs, but with, you know, bonus maths-y goodness.
March 22nd’s APOD looks [...]
This right here… this is cool. It’s a program from NASA called World Wind, which gives you access to a whole pile of satalite and USGS data (~10 terabytes) and lets you zoom around the world in realtime. It’s a pretty slick bit of software, and is updated continuously with new data. The sad news [...]
… as car designer John Z. DeLorean dies, aged 80.
In other news, this site allegedly contains the full set of Feynman’s ‘Lectures on Physics’ in PDF and MP3 format. Unfortunately it’s been linked by kottke.org among others, and so is running dog slow, meaning that I can’t make any comment on the actual contents yet.
Finally, [...]
For any of you who have this fortnight’s copy of The List , there’s a fairly interesting artice by Mark Brown on page 10 about the attempt by the government and the media to trivialise this summer’s planned G8 summit protests in the minds of the rest of the country. Obviously, this being The List, [...]
A day of strangely frustrating news.
First up, Steamboy opens in U.S. cinemas today. No sign of a UK release however. Apparently movie studios still don’t understand why Bittorrent is so huge. Also, since we know that the UK leads the world in T.V. downloads, it’s no surprise to hear that the new Doctor Who episode [...]
Bonnat Chocolatier are selling chocolate and hazelnut-praline filled eggshells. They look cool, but at $35 for 6, they had really better be the best tasting easter eggs in the world.
On the other hand, a DIY version of these should definitely be feasible for any adventurous types who remember their childhood Blue Peter training.
It’s been a pretty good month for music, and an almost completely unremarkable one for films:
The Dresden Dolls: We went to see them play live a little while back, and they were just stunning. One of the best gigs I’ve been to in ages, despite taking place in a damp, leaky cellar. Anyone going to [...]
Presumably being developed into a new and improved prototype for ED-209 even as we speak, this could also be a good starting point for bringing Baba Yaga’s hut bang into the 21st century.
Also with videos.
This is pretty old now, but I’d still like one for the kitchen. (Although the original version had better knife placement.)
I don’t think I’d ever use a watch with a built-in circular slide rule, but it’s still lovely.
“This is what [...]
Bakers in Denmark attempt to improve communion wafers: because apparently the downturn in church attendance is at least partly due to influential foodies telling their friends it’s just not worth the bother? Maybe next they should start offering jam, or a cup of tea to dunk them in? Possibly start offering a choice of wines, [...]