blech + blogcomment   121

London Blitz Map | Mapping London
"The image above is a photo of part of a large map of London, created just after the Second World War and showing buildings that were damaged or destroyed in the Blitz. The map is the centrepiece of a small free exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archive in Finsbury." Nice, but a scan online would be nicer (please?)
london  map  maps  worldwartwo  londonmetropolitanarchive  via:straup  blogcomment 
8 weeks ago by blech
It's not me, it's you | Phil Gyford’s website
"I want Today to be good. I want it to be in-depth and have an interesting agenda. I want it to be the radio equivalent of, say, the very best of broadsheet newspapers (not the highest bar in the world, but you’d think it might be possible). Instead, it all too often ends up as the radio equivalent of mid-market tabloids."
radio  radio4  bbc  today  news  philgyford  blogcomment  from delicious
august 2010 by blech
Flickr machine tags for film photos | Phil Gyford’s website
Phil Gyford follows up on my automated copying of machine tags from digital photo EXIF by suggesting some versions for photographs for film.
photography  flickr  film  tags  machinetags  exif  metadata  blogcomment 
november 2009 by blech
all watched over by screens of loving grace | anti-mega
Chris writes sensible things about the new BT wrap-around screen, currently broadcasting across London.
london  bt  advertising  screen  display  planning  blogcomment 
november 2009 by blech
it's out | diamond geezer
An exhaustive, well-written and readable look at the new poster and folder versions of the London tube map, complete with a comment thread featuring Max Roberts, author of Underground Maps After Beck.
london  underground  transport  map  design  blogcomment 
september 2009 by blech
What's on a baggage tag? | John Graham-Cumming
A bar code that's only good for a million items per airline, apparently, which is less than useful when a big carrier gets through that much in a few days. Of course, this is because baggage tags aren't for you: they're for the airlines, to stop another Lockerbie-style attack. (See BBC Four's excellent Secret Life of the Airport.)
transport  aviation  barcode  information  design  terrorism  blogcomment 
august 2009 by blech
Anyone can write this crap | Phil Gyford’s website
Phil on newspapers. Anyone can indeed regurgitate wire copy, but not everyone can write a spirited rebuttal like this.
newspapers  journalism  uk  blogcomment 
july 2009 by blech
iPhone 3GS and the Bay | James Duncan Davidson
Lovely photos of San Francisco Bay. It also seemed an appropriate place to comment on the variability of ISO speed that the iPhone has.
photography  iphone  sanfransico  blogcomment 
june 2009 by blech
London Undersound & Oyster Challenge | Dan W
"The data is imported from Oyster via a greasemonkey script that runs when you log into your online TFL account." Which is great, except that Oyster card holders who don't use auto-top-up pre-pay get "Journey history displays records for journeys taken using pay as you go credit." when they look at the Oyster pages. Still, nice hacks for those who do have data.
london  tfl  oyster  hack  data  visualisation  transport  tube  personalinformatics  blogcomment 
may 2009 by blech
Airstrip One | MetaFilter
MetaFilter discuss the Guardian's story of Klaus Matza's run-in with the police in Walthamstow Bus Station, and I comment that, while it's hard to find anything explicitly saying so, personal-use non-flash photography is not forbidden on the Tube. (I could also add that Matza should have paperwork from the officer involved; if it was me I'd be identifying them, as they're overstepping their powers significantly.)
uk  london  photography  guardian  tube  blogcomment 
april 2009 by blech
Daytum I love you but please join the web | Derivadow.com
Tom Scott calls out Daytum for lack of individual panels (actually there, but well hidden), lack of alternative representations, and the lack of an API. The latter is forthcoming, apparently.
daytum  information  visualisation  blogcomment  api 
april 2009 by blech
London: Friend or Foe? | Women and Dreams
Ashley Pomeroy's list of photography-friendly (and unfriendly) places in London. I've had no trouble at the Transport Museum, though, and the Tube definitely allows amateur non-flash photography. Nonetheless, it's a worthwhile page.
london  photography  museum  gallery  tube  blogcomment  ashleypomeroy 
april 2009 by blech
iPhoto #4294975663 | a set on Flickr
Commentary on how my iPhoto/Flickr sync experiences are panning out after a month or so. There are some significant niggles, but there's also a glimmer of hope for back-populating previously uploaded Flickr photos into an iPhoto set.
flickr  iphoto  blogcomment  software  objc  pyobjc  fscript  metadata 
march 2009 by blech
On the move | meish.org
I need to steal, well, pretty much all of these for snaptrip, except per-country trips, which it already does (hurrah). Per-mode distances should be a quick hack on the current infrastructure [edit:done]. Personalised Flickr images and CSV export had come up before, but are no less good as ideas for that. Trip categorisation by stashing tags sounds like a nice idea. And I never did finish my 2008 stats graphs. So many ideas.
dopplr  snaptrip  visualisation  statistics  export  todo  blogcomment 
january 2009 by blech
Tags do work (for me, at least) | 0xDECAFBAD
"I don’t really care what this means for folksonomy and the rest of Web 2.0 - tags work for me on Delicious." As they do for me on Flickr. I think that's probably the biggest point I'd make about them if I ever did make a long form post: my tags work for me. Anything else is a bonus.
flickr  delicious  ui  tags  tagging  via:lee  blogcomment 
january 2009 by blech
A Typographic Survey of the City of London | Vimeo
A nice survey of the various typefaces used by the City of London, its Corporation, and the Barbican Art Centre. (Maybe a video would be a good way for me to talk about highwalks, finally.)
london  design  type  video  documentary  blogcomment 
january 2009 by blech
Flame for the iPhone | jerakeen.org
Still very much a proof of concept, Tom Insam's written Flame for the iPhone - only for the emulator, so far. The comments turn into a bit of an argument about git between Tom, Sven-S. Porst and myself about git and dvcs in general.
iphone  app  development  flame  bonjour  svn  versioncontrol  blogcomment 
december 2008 by blech
iPhone local web applications | jerakeen.org
"I do, however, want to write local apps in a language that’s a little higher-level than Objective-C. It’s nice and all, but I prefer things to be more flexible."
iphone  webkit  javascript  development  html  blogcomment 
november 2008 by blech
Two Macs: Fail. | Fraser Speirs
Syncing isn't good enough, but MacBooks are now (storage in particular). Also, hurrah for US keyboards (something I definitely agree with.)
apple  mac  hardware  laptop  desktop  computing  keyboard  blogcomment 
october 2008 by blech
MTV Launches Music Video Archive | Laughing Squid
This looks nice. Of course, what would a video service be without geoblocking? This doesn't disappoint, showing big red "not outside the US" screens. Just as annoying, there's no upfront warning of it either in this post or on the archive itself.
music  video  archive  media  copyright  blogcomment  via:ffg 
october 2008 by blech
Politics, GTFO | Game-ism
Commentary on the presence of early-voting ads, paid for by Barack Obama, in Burnout Paradise. "Do you really want them campaigning in your hobby? I don’t."
games  burnout  advertising  politics  blogcomment  via:infovore 
october 2008 by blech
Stripes and Surrealism: Playing with the Moo API | Infovore
A nice hack, doing something a little less obvious with Flickr and Moo stickers. Complete with source code.
flickr  moo  favcol  stickers  design  code  api  blogcomment 
october 2008 by blech
Dopploadr at Yahoo! Open Hack Day | Richard Crowley's blog
I think I'm going to move to using all the tags he mentions here, as well as offering to put in "proper" location data (with the flickr.geo methods). Also- nice hack, and a really good prod for me.
dopplr  flickr  uploader  yahoo  api  geo  snaptrip  blogcomment  machinetags 
september 2008 by blech
Beautiful? Nope. Useful? Nope. | Noisy Decent Graphics
Ben Terrett considers saucers, and finds them wanting, complete with bonus Chris Heathcote footwear in one photo. Tom Armitage comments on the usefulness of mugs, a sentiment I can only agree with.
tea  mug  cup  saucer  blogcomment  via:blackbeltjones 
september 2008 by blech
Google Mobile App for iPhone | YouTube
Yet another web site wrapped in an iPhone application. Oddly, it's not available in the UK, despite being presented on the UK YouTube site by a British person.
apple  iphone  google  application  mobile  blogcomment 
july 2008 by blech
Request: optionally return JSON in Explorer | Flickr
I seem to be on a bit of a JSON crusade at the moment; hopefully I'll be able to get a few other people to sign up along with me.
flickr  api  json  xml  blogcomment 
june 2008 by blech
Aggregating people | philwilson.org
Phil distinguishes between what he (sensibly) calls data-centric and people-centric aggregation, and goes on to note that duplication is a problem. As I note in the comments, there's beginning to be a consensus here.
aggregation  blogcomment  rss  feeds  software  social  socialgraph 
may 2008 by blech
Fermi's Paradox and Peak Oil | O'Reilly Radar
Are technological civilisations curtailed by the lack of cheap energy, and is that what's going to happen to our civilisation? It's not a new thought, as I note, but it's good to see it getting coverage.
environment  future  oil  doom  energy  comment  blogcomment  via:blackbeltjones 
may 2008 by blech
Please check if I violate anything | Flickr: The Help Forum
Consensus on the Flickr Help Forum now seems to be that any third party showing non-CC images is in the wrong. I can't help but be disappointed even if this puts me at odds with the new mood of politeness some advocate.
flickr  copyright  sharing  api  politeness  blogcomment 
april 2008 by blech
Transport informatics | cityofsound
A nice big dense post of resources about transport information, visualisation and how to increase usage
transport  visualisation  cities  buses  train  walking  london  helsinki  design  maps  blogcomment 
april 2008 by blech
Basically, fuck Sheldon Silver | Speedbird
Adam Greenfield is not happy about the loss of the NYC congestion charge, and I can see why.
newyork  transport  blogcomment 
april 2008 by blech
The tabbed interface schism in OS X | rc3.org
It's this sort of thing that persuades me I'm right to reject tabbed interfaces. (Yes, even now, when Terminal has tabs, I don't use them. Not on the Mac, anyway. Windows is another matter.)
macosx  interface  comment  ui  usability  blogcomment 
april 2008 by blech
On First Installing Photoshop Elements 6 | Thought Palace
A nice rant about non-standard Mac installers, in particular Adobe's one. I have a bit of a rant about Adobe Updater in the comments.
adobe  software  development  blogcomment  via:ssp 
april 2008 by blech
URL as UI | Traces of Inspiration
Not exactly a groundbreaking observation ("good URLs are hackable"), but it's nice to see people thinking about them. I mention the del.icio.us tag navigation, as it's an interesting (failed?) experiment in the field.
web  url  ui  design  development  blogcomment 
april 2008 by blech
Another mac bites the dust | Laurent Haug’s blog
"I am locked because I have Time Machine backups, [and] Time Machine backups can only be restored on macs" What use is a Windows backup without Windows? Anyway: hfsplus on Linux will read your data. (Hm, can it cope with the directory hard links?)
mac  backup  linux  blogcomment 
march 2008 by blech
InFFFFringement!? | Random Etc.
More on that ffffound infringing image. As I mutter aloud in the comments, does this mean the site's getting more attention again? Also, removing it hardly stopped people finding the image.
fffound  copyright  blogcomment 
march 2008 by blech
X.5 Time Machine | Quarter Life Crisis
A pretty detailed run through of Time Machine, including hard links, UI critique, plist inspection, how multiple machines back up to one drive, and FileVault interactions.
macosx  backup  review  blogcomment  via:g 
march 2008 by blech
Make test fails at the 29th of Feb | rt.cpan.org
My good deed for the day: I fixed the test failure in DateTime that only occurs once every four years. Well, I think I did. Hopefully it'll be useful to someone, anyway.
perl  calendar  bug  blogcomment 
february 2008 by blech
Can the Science Museum be up-to-date? | Mssv
Adrian Hon suggests that the only way for museums like the Science Museum to present topical information is to employ a group of people dedicated to rapid development of exhibits.
science  sciencemuseum  london  news  blogcomment 
february 2008 by blech
Why your resources want links | Just a Summary
Piers Cawley on returning URLs in RESTful APIs. I think generally he's right but I wonder if there are cases where the individual bits are better.
api  design  development  rest  rails  url  blogcomment 
february 2008 by blech
Northern Line To Divorce? | Londonist
I hope it does, even if there are Tory idiots in Barnet handing out leaflets campaigning against it. Mind you, it's not even a plan yet, being confined to a "vision document" and being well over a decade away.
london  travel  transport  tube  northernline  planning  blogcomment 
february 2008 by blech
Youth of today | Charlie's Diary
"[Eighteen year olds] probably remember 9/11 vaguely, and all the grown-ups being very upset. They were ten at the time." But is environmentalism a distinctive feature?
politics  culture  youth  blogcomment  via:blackbeltjones 
february 2008 by blech
FlickrTouchr.py | /~colmmacc/
As the bit of the title I truncated says, "keep your flickr album and favourites on an iPod Touch or iPhone". I was thinking about going about this a different way, but the favourites are a nice touch. Interesting Flickr API library commentary too.
flickr  python  api  iphone  photos  blogcomment  via:straup 
january 2008 by blech
"The Earth is becoming unearthly” | Blackbeltjones/Work
Matt Jones writes up Geoff Manaugh/BLDGBLOG at The Bartlett, so I didn't have to go. The Dubai paragraph is great, and the idea of the US Army as post-Archigram is interesting too.
architecture  culture  talk  transcript  climatechange  blogcomment 
january 2008 by blech
Macworld Reflections | Fraser Speirs
Another MacBook Air sceptic, at least for his own needs. I'm not sure the iPod touch upgrades count as a Christmas present, though, given the (SOX mandated?) charge for them.
apple  macbookair  laptop  hardware  comment  blogcomment  ipodtouch 
january 2008 by blech
MacBook Air: Apple's Portable Cube? | Memex My Brain
"Too expensive" "Too clumsy" "Too big" "I still think the Air is a great product, but so was Apple's Cube."
apple  macbookair  hardware  laptop  comment  blogcomment 
january 2008 by blech
Bernard might be Shaw but I'm not | Ace Jet 170
Penguin book swapmeets, anyone? Not an entirely bad idea, but why not include the Penguin Collectors' Society?
design  books  penguin  blogcomment 
january 2008 by blech
I am your density | Speedbird
Adam Greenfield on science fiction's urban futures, and in particular near-future overcrowding dystopias. There's stuff here I haven't read that I should look for.
sciencefiction  adamgreenfield  urban  nyc  blogcomment 
january 2008 by blech
Drawing with sight and sound | cityofsound
Continuing my obsession with the Alphabet vs the Goddess, this time commenting on Ang Lee's musings on pictorial language and montage.
design  film  language  blogcomment 
january 2008 by blech
Multi-touch Raises the Bar | O'Reilly Radar
Tim O'Reilly expects devices to have touch screens, now he's used the iPhone. Funnily enough, I know an 18 month old who's the same.
interface  usability  touch  iphone  kindle  oreilly  blogcomment 
december 2007 by blech
On Art and Advertising | meish.org
Meg Pickard on the (unhappy?) interface between art and advertising. I wish I'd thought a bit harder about my comment, because it's not just looking at one example of the genre, it's all about
advertising  art  article  images  blogcomment 
december 2007 by blech
Unsolicited Testimonial: Clear Card | Anil Dash
"It was fanastic. In literally less than 3 minutes, I'd gone from frantic about making my flight to all the way to the metal detector" "anybody who's a privacy zealot is not gonna be able to get behind the whole Clear thing."
travel  dopplr  blog  blogcomment  review  privacy 
december 2007 by blech
Frequently Asked Questions | Legible London
FAQs about the new Legible London wayfinding. I've always preferred up=north to up=faced, so I ask about that, and also about the existing Islington and City signs; is there a reason to replace them with this design?
london  design  maps  transport  blogcomment 
november 2007 by blech
David Emery Online: Animate & Transform
Turns out there's even more interesting stuff showing up in WebKit. I just hope it gets released before 10.6. Meanwhile, David Emery's blog has some interesting use of images for indexing.
macosx  safari  webkit  html  css  design  blogcomment 
november 2007 by blech
Launch day for video site Hulu.com
One of the Guardian's technology blogs reports breathlessly on Hulu, without actually mentioning the geographical restriction on most of the videos hosted there, which, for a UK site, certainly seems like an oversight.
guardian  tv  video  online  digital  blogcomment 
october 2007 by blech
Magnetbox - The wisdom of clouds
Social weather forecasting. Lovely idea, this, although I'm not so bothered about the "what are you wearing" bit, given I have the same outfit more or less all year. I just hope it's not irredeemably UScentric.
web  weather  social  via:everyone  blogcomment 
october 2007 by blech
Web2Summit: Flickr Places Announced
This was sort-of demoed at dConstruct, but it's nice to see a proper announcement (and it'll be nicer still to see it launched).
flickr  geotagging  news  maps  geowanking  photography  blogcomment 
october 2007 by blech
Technovia: Twitter Pro? Please god, no
I agree with his basic point: if you want to witter, don't use Twitter. However, I thought it was worth noting that the 140 character "limit" only applies to the Web. (More evidence of US web-centricity, as if it were needed.)
twitter  sms  blogcomment 
october 2007 by blech
The Forum: adactio.com using my pictures? | Flickr
Possibly more depressing than the thread about Talk Like A Pirate Day. If you don't want your pictures on the internet, don't make them public. (Posted partly because bookmarks are the easiest way to track discussions on Flickr, still.)
flickr  copyright  morons  blogcomment  via:preoccupations 
october 2007 by blech
russell davies: wattson
"It's a simple, clever thing that tells you how much electricity you're using." ... "The big problem with it at the moment is the unit price, it's a lot, £150. That makes it mostly a bourgeois indulgence." Will smart meters bring these to the masses?
environment  money  electricity  consumption  design  blogcomment  via:blackbeltjones 
october 2007 by blech
hauntedcastle.org » Blog Archive » Dopplr Offsetr
Looks like a nice Dopplr API addon, when it launches. Looks like he's taking note of feature requests too.
dopplr  environment  metric  blogcomment  via:mattb 
october 2007 by blech
I Want a New Platform | Union Square Ventures
A plea for Level 3 service hosting. I mention Zimki's failed future in the comments. (One day I'll talk about that properly, probably when I announce groupr's vanishing.)
web  development  platform  level3  technology  zimki  blogcomment 
october 2007 by blech
The Enemy: We’ll live and die in these towns | Sleevage
sleevage.com examines the cover artwork of this new album. I remember seeing the poster for this on St Pauls Road and thinking it was nice.
music  artwork  rant  blogcomment  via:gilest 
october 2007 by blech
Dan Saffer » Thinking the Unthinkable about iTunes
I think he's a bit harsh, and as I point out in the comments, iTunes is really a different class of app to Winamp or Foobar2k; it's a library manager, not a player. Nonetheless it has got crufted up over the years, and Cover Flow isn't really helping.
apple  itunes  itms  comment  blogcomment 
september 2007 by blech
iTunes 7.4 (Quarter Life Crisis)
Sven-S. Porst's writeup of the latest iTunes update (before ringtones were released). As usual, a good roundup of what's new, and where Apple are being odd. I'm also wondering about the interaction of song and album ratings.
apple  itunes  review  comment  metadata  ssp  blogcomment 
september 2007 by blech
Flickr: Discussing Centralised tag palette in Flickr Ideas
Other people want EXIF searchability too. (I mention my vaguely-but-not-really released Flickr EXIF machine tag script thing.)
flickr  exif  machinetags  blogcomment 
august 2007 by blech
ISS passes on Twitter | Astronomy Blog
AboveLondon gets mentioned on Astronomy Blog, which is nice. Yes, it would be better if it was more personalised. Unfortunately that means messing with d messages or, worse, a real SMS gateway.
abovelondon  twitter  astronomy  blog  navelgazing  blogcomment 
august 2007 by blech
Anyone for a greasy? (Phil Gyford: Writing)
Phil on the closing of the New Piccadilly (which is picking up plenty of attention) and the more general decline of classic cafes (less so).
london  food  cafe  culture  change  blogcomment  via:mondoagogo 
august 2007 by blech
Journal of acme - Dynamic Languages
On why there's no Perl compiler down to dynamic runtimes, and comparing to the state of Cocoa bridges.
perl  cocoa  camelbones  blogcomment 
july 2007 by blech
Random Sampling: Scientific American, October 1960
Great adverts from an old science magazine in the states. Makes me wish I'd done a better job on my photographs of The Consulting Engineer a month or so ago.
science  culture  advertising  history  blogcomment  via:candacep 
june 2007 by blech
Beyond Stupidity: Google Maps Useless WhiteSpace
I hate the sidebar. It's vaguely useful if you're on a My Maps page or reading directions, but it really should go away if you tell it to.
google  ui  usability  state  blogcomment 
may 2007 by blech
The Future is Orange - Asymptotia
Clifford on the solar heating power plant in Spain.
energy  environment  blogcomment 
may 2007 by blech
JavaScript URI Objects
"Within a few minutes, I realised that I needed something like URI.pm, in order to resolve URIs into an absolute form." Could be useful for Zimki stuff (and indeed Mark's already looking at it).
javascript  url  internet  code  blogcomment 
april 2007 by blech
Londonist: Yes, We Have No Banksy Bananas
Yet another report on the painting over of the Banksy Pulp Fiction bananas graffiti near Old Street. I'd have expected these folk to actually fact-check, though.
londonist  london  art  banksy  graffiti  blogcomment 
april 2007 by blech
inessential.com: Weblog: ‘The Complexifying Instinct’
I don't agree; I'd love badges showing who restricts their tweets to friends only, for example. I also pointed out that it's already possible to switch off people's messages to your phone (something I do aggressively).
twitter  software  design  blogcomment 
april 2007 by blech
acme's use.perl.org journal - scribot is back!
The linklog bot from #london.pm now feeds twitter, after a year or two of downtime. It's like it's the new IRC or something.
twitter  irc  navelgazing  blogcomment 
march 2007 by blech
Wonderland: Champagne PSP
Pink PSP base pack now £100; black and white still £135. The DS price is the same for all three colours. Hmmm.
games  gadgets  sony  nintendo  hadware  blogcomment 
march 2007 by blech
Londonist: Card Players Sick To The Gut?
Londonist's commentary on the decision by a Snaresbrook Crown Court that poker is a game of chance, not skill, so it's illegal to profit from it. I point out that the "profit" bit is important- low stake games are probably OK.
london  news  londonist  poker  games  blogcomment 
january 2007 by blech
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