Occasional links - 29.08.2020
Ohai,
It's a long weekend in the UK so I need to finish this before heading out to ride bicycles and tune out for a while and recharge. Hope you're doing nice things this weekend. Here's ten things to ponder whilst you listen to the rain.
Frank the Parrot
Some lovely BBC archive footage from 1988 about Frank the Parrot who lives in a local cafe. The Environmental Health officer wasn't so keen apparently.
Classy flying
Very pleasing footage of a specialist aircraft taking a big gulp of water from a lake and then carefully plopping it down over a forest fire. Clever stuff.
Streets in the sky
Bill Stephenson's 1988 photography of Hyde Park estate — the higher rise, now demolished, sister to Park Hill in Sheffield. Via Phin.
Your navigation app
...is making traffic unmanageable.
I'm sure it's all fine. Nothing to worry about.
The sound of a key in a lock is enough for someone to make a new key for it
Extraordinary stuff. Very Mission Impossible - when is the next one out?
A train ride from Vilnius to Tallinn
Photos by David Turnley from 1989. A very late 80's heavy set of links today it seems.
A bluffer’s guide to surviving Covid-19
Really interesting from Tim Harford on levels of risk for various activities. Always like his writing and podcasts.
Britain’s Fastest Self-Powered Human: Mike Burrows
Beautiful story and photos. Via Matt.
Blockchain, the amazing solution for almost nothing
Really interesting, largely non-technical, look at the promise of the blockchain. Spoiler: it doesn't solve much whilst wasting a load of energy.
Love as always,
Andy x
It's a long weekend in the UK so I need to finish this before heading out to ride bicycles and tune out for a while and recharge. Hope you're doing nice things this weekend. Here's ten things to ponder whilst you listen to the rain.
Frank the Parrot
Some lovely BBC archive footage from 1988 about Frank the Parrot who lives in a local cafe. The Environmental Health officer wasn't so keen apparently.
Classy flying
Very pleasing footage of a specialist aircraft taking a big gulp of water from a lake and then carefully plopping it down over a forest fire. Clever stuff.
Streets in the sky
Bill Stephenson's 1988 photography of Hyde Park estate — the higher rise, now demolished, sister to Park Hill in Sheffield. Via Phin.
Your navigation app
...is making traffic unmanageable.
The bomb sitting in the Thames...around 2013, Here Technologies, TomTom, Waze, and Google went beyond just flagging traffic jams ahead. They began offering real-time rerouting suggestions, considering current traffic on top of the characteristics of the road network. That gave their users opportunities to get around traffic slowdowns, and that’s how the chaos began.
I'm sure it's all fine. Nothing to worry about.
The sound of a key in a lock is enough for someone to make a new key for it
Extraordinary stuff. Very Mission Impossible - when is the next one out?
A train ride from Vilnius to Tallinn
Photos by David Turnley from 1989. A very late 80's heavy set of links today it seems.
A bluffer’s guide to surviving Covid-19
Really interesting from Tim Harford on levels of risk for various activities. Always like his writing and podcasts.
Britain’s Fastest Self-Powered Human: Mike Burrows
Beautiful story and photos. Via Matt.
Blockchain, the amazing solution for almost nothing
Really interesting, largely non-technical, look at the promise of the blockchain. Spoiler: it doesn't solve much whilst wasting a load of energy.
That's all for now. I'm going back to trying to recover from my hangover and feast on trash TV.Carrying out a payment with Visa requires about 0.002 kilowatt-hours; the same payment with bitcoin uses up 906 kilowatt-hours, more than half a million times as much, and enough to power a two-person household for about three months.
Love as always,
Andy x
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