The world around us
This is a bit of a catch-all topic for anything that occurs outside a computer – geography, history, politics, whatever catches my eye.
Sub-topics:
It’s cool to care
Caring deeply – about art, my friends, and shared experiences – has brought me so much joy.
Plates and states
On a recent trip to the US, I learnt a surprising amount from watching the license plates on passing cars.
A day out at the Bure Valley Railway
My photos from a delightful day on a steam railway with smol trains.
A day out to the Forth Bridge
Photographs from a trip to North Queensferry to see the Forth Bridge, the Forth Road Bridge, and an unexpected light tower.
A visit to the Crossness pumping station
Pictures from my recent visit to Crossness, a Victorian pumping station for London’s sewers.
11 articles
Can you take an ox to Oxford?
Let’s work out exactly when you need to pay Oxford’s new congestion charge.
We all lose when art is anonymised
When art loses its creator, we lose the story behind the image – a plea for attribution in our endless scroll culture.
Google is showing outdated results from the UK’s election
Dozens of MPs who were re-elected to their seats are still labelled “former Member of Parliament”, days after the election results.
Preserving pixels in Paris
I went to France for a conference about archiving the web, and I came back with thoughts and photos.
What is psephology?
It’s the scientific study of elections and voting, and it comes from the Greek word for “pebble”, because pebbles were used for voting in ancient Greece.
The Star-Spangled Ballad
If you listen carefully to the Ballad of Willie Watkins, you might hear another song peeking through.
What mammal is that?
In which Apple Photos accidentally tells me about a cool new animal.
Fictional phone numbers in For All Mankind
Where did this UK phone number come from?
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Feeling the weight of death in a former concentration camp.
Ten braille facts / ⠼⠁⠚⠀⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇⠇⠑⠀⠋⠁⠉⠞⠎
Where does braille come from? How was braille originally written? What can you write in braille today? And more.
Reading a Chinese dictionary / 读一本中文字典
Although paper dictionaries are mostly a thing of the past, knowing how to use a Chinese dictionary helps me learn the rest of the language.
12 notes
The “strangler” pattern is named after a tree, not an act of violence
It’s named after the strangler fig tree, which wraps itself a host tree and gradually kills them.
Place with the same name, but different etymology
The @ symbol was added to Morse code in 2004
It was added in May 2004, it’s the first new symbol since the Second World War, and the French have a cute name for it. The rest of Morse code has some surprising omissions.
Some countries have “poison centers” as part of their healthcare service
Poison centres are specialist services offering expert medical advice when you’re poisoned. They’re common in countries like the US, but barely visible to the public in the UK.
The Panamanian Golden Frog communicates by semaphore
What does the word “gubernatorial” mean?
It’s anything related to a governor, and mostly used for the governors of US states.
The British Forces Post Office (BFPO) and the Loamshire Regiment
The BFPO sends post to the armed forces and MoD personnel, but they’ll never send it to the Loamshire Regiment, which is just a placeholder name for documentation.
Not all coal is the same
What does “insomnolent” mean?
There’s a musical that tells you the number of minutes in a year
The song Seasons of Love from Rent starts with the line “Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes”.
Calley-ope (calliope) Syndrome is pronouncing a word wrong because you’ve only ever read it on the page
Germany has longer telephone numbers than the rest of the world