Category: Uncategorized

John Coombes gets all entropic about his coffee. Delicious.

I missed this from Gia last week:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XbVRTM4F7Bs

She had the script with her at the SciCast Awards last Friday, but would only show me her contract, stapled to the front cover, and that she wouldn’t let me read. She wouldn’t even fan the pages so I could confirm it was indeed a screenplay underneath.

Now, I more-or-less lost interest in the X Files after a couple of series, when it became clear that they didn’t know whether it was an episodic or ‘arc’ show either. I also became completely confused by the order in which episodes seemed to be broadcast, a situation not helped by my not having a TV in the early days. Of course, there wasn’t really a web at the time on which fans could write episode guides – I think the first such site to be anything like comprehensive was the Lurkers’ Guide to Babylon 5.

Nevertheless, if Gia carries on posting stuff like this I’ve a sneaking suspicion that her enthusiasm is going to infect me. Like some insidious black oil, presumably.

Drat.

Hoefler & Frere-Jones write about ¶, ß, and &.

I love that people care so much about this sort of stuff. Also, that exploring it leads me to places like this. Should I ever find myself employing printworkers towards the end of August, I shall have to ensure I throw theme a wayzgoose.

From my hotel this morning I managed to be just sufficiently coherent to publish the list of SciCast Awards 2008 winners to the SciCast blog. It’s taken me this long to muster enough strength to note them here.

We had a terrific afternoon with the ceremony yesterday – lots of excitement, lots of impressed guests, lots of palm trees, and hotdogs inhaled at a frightening rate. Huge thanks to everyone who helped out, turned up, cheered, clapped, etc.

Photos and video over the next week or so.

Personally, I’m going to have a bit of a sleep on this train. Yay for cheap weekend first-class tickets.

New devs circle in Glasgow: MacMacDev. See also NSScotland, which has merged with the former, for the terrific line:

I’ve heard a rumour that John Gruber is pricing caravans in Kirkintilloch, that’s how good it’s going to be.

First meeting is tomorrow night. Sadly, I’ll be in London. Also… well, I’ve enough of a passing acquaintance with Cocoa to get the NS reference, but that’s about it. Is it possible to be a poseur at a developers’ meet? Is there any point?

Jem Stansfield, erstwhile of this parish (well, we’re on the phone monthly picking each others’ brains and he’s one of the judges on SciCast – does that count?) was featured on Treehugger earlier this week. It looks like the community there has taken his ridiculous machine a bit seriously, but I can vouch that the man himself regards it as one of his best builds.

Not ‘most useful,’ note, nor ‘most practical.’ Just ‘most pleasing.’

[tip o’ the hat to Flossie for the link]

Unless there’s a secret stash I don’t know about, I think SciCast is the third-largest producer of science video for children in the UK. We’re not far behind the big boys, either. In the last year:

• Nina and the Neurons (CBeebies): 23(?)x15 minutes = 6 hours approx.
• Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (five): 5×45 mins = 4 hours approx.
• Planet SciCast (NESTA/IoP/ETB): 100×2.5 mins = 4 hours approx.

So that’s why it feels like hard work. Crumbs.

Andy Baio has his mitts on what he calls ‘The Infocom Drive‘. It’s the network share of the legendary adventure game pioneers, circa 1989. It contains emails, staff lists… and lots of stuff related to the never-finished sequel to the Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy adventure game. Parts of which are still playable.

Oh. My. Heavens.

Eddie Mair is ‘the main weekday presenter of PM. No-one knows why’. Rrrright. PM, for the uninitiated, is one of BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programmes, daily at 5pm.

This week, Eddie’s taken to introducing the business correspondent as ‘Nils “Bad News” Blythe.’ For reasons I can’t quite get my head around, this cracks me up every time.

BBC news have an article about photographers being (incorrectly) stopped by police while taking pictures in a public space. Surprising that it doesn’t link to this terrific resource.