Tuesday, November 23, 2004

BBC - Norfolk - Kids - My Life As a Teenage Goth

BBC - Norfolk - Kids - My Life As a Teenage Goth

Great use of user comments on a site. And bless the likkle 12 year old rebels. Heh. Let's hope the site's still there when they're 20...

Friday, November 12, 2004

rodcorp: At the exact centre of London, Britain's smallest police station

rodcorp: At the exact centre of London, Britain's smallest police station

This is lovely - the tiniest policestation imaginable. And also a discussion of the centre of continents and cities, which is one of those idle memes that pops into my head every now and then.

Actually, it brought back a memory. There was a Professor at the University of Kent, called Cyril Eisenberg - I don't know if he's still there. His specialism was, I presume, fluid dynamics, as once in a while he would give open lectures for my dad's young scientists organisation about things like bubbles, rainbows and smoke rings.

It was from him I learnt, age 7 ish, how to make a smoke ring machine out of a cardboard box and a condom. These are now marketed as Airzookas - wish I'd made that leap earlier. Although I doubt they're still made out of condoms.

Anyway, at his bubble demonstrations he would show a method he had devised for determining the centres of irregular shapes, and ways to determine the shortest distance between a number of points on their perimiter. It, of course, invovled bubbles.

He would trace the irregular shape in pins, stretched between two sheets of perspex. When dipped vertically into a bucket of bubble concentrate, the sheets of bubble automatically fall into the most efficient arrangement of planes and vectors between the points around the edge - by simple dint of surface tension. The patterns can be simply measured to determine the precise geometric centre of the shape.

So elegant, and also quite beautiful. And a huge ammount of fun if you're a 7 year old geek, as you can imagine.

Hey, Cyril still gives his lecture - check him out.

Inklings of importance

A presentation on Flickr given by one of it's creators.

It's totally fascinating, and relevant, but I understand a tiny fraction of it.

Someone explain?

Monday, November 01, 2004

Mildly Diverting is out there

Mildly Diverting

Aaaah.

My family appeared to have discovered this site.

Hi Dad. Hi Laurence.

Be warned. I don't really censor myself here. So... decide what you want to know about me before reading on.