A version of the Substrate Processing code to paper, from Papercamp 2 in London.

"In these maps, activity on the Foursquare network is aggregated onto a grid of ‘walkable’ cells (each one 400×400 meters in size) represented by dots. The size of each dot corresponds to the level of activity in that cell. By this process we can see social centers emerge in each city." "we can show how Paris contains a much more contiguously walkable structure than both New York and London." Interesting (and pretty) stuff.

"If we have used computers to build intentional flaws into the numerical heart of our deepest and most cerebral games instead of using them to elevate our understanding of the computational heart of the universe, then we’re doing something wrong." A good post that's doing the rounds but is well worth looking at.

"addLib changes your photos into graphic design pieces. The types of design are infinite. It produces beautiful and sophisticated pieces one after another based on the golden ratio and a fractal theory."

Compare with Lisa Jardine: "e-books have some powerful benefits: they are small, light. A dictionary is few clicks away. You can have lots of different books with you" "What I did enjoy most was the one-handed effortless usage of reading and clicking next page."

"it's up to the entrepreneurs who are building applications in the valleys between those hills to make the tough choice: do you live off the largesse of the feudal lord on top of the hill, and enjoy the short term benefits [... or] do you go your own way, and attempt to amass enough strength to take the hill yourself?"

Momus on the Barbican. "[It] has grown on me. It has its own charm. With age, it's becoming more weird, eccentric and unique. Yesterday, before running through the Brel show in the big theatre, I had a good rummage through the building." I think it does perhaps take time and effort to like the place.

"why end it? Why why why? Because the LiveJournal platform I'm using is being wound down. Because there's a kind of tumbleweed feel to my Friends List these days, as people migrate to Twitter or Facebook." LJ definitely has the feel of a death spiral at the moment. Shame. It got a lot right, early.

Khoi Vinh, slightly edited: "We’ve spent the better part of a decade and a half debating digital privacy, but compare the number of people who have been exposed to the sheer amount of manipulated, unreal and just plain fake imagery that assaults each of us every day, and the case for a more robust discussion about digital imaging looks like a pretty good one."

The series of images overlaying the Apollo astronaut tracks to scale on London, from Apollo 11 up to Apollo 17, gives an idea of how much further the later missions could explore - and how much there still is to examine.

Kevin O'Neill's notes from yesterday's talk at the British Library. I should go through mine and see how they compare, but this probably does a better job of capturing the event than I would have anyway. Hurrah.

""Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?" And, of course, once you ask the right question, the right answer follows almost automatically." The right answer, obviously (in retrospect), being no. Curiously, the bulk of the interview is about O'Neill's difficulty in getting the idea out.

A post on what sounds like a fascinating talk about the process behind the building of the British Library.

The Hoxton wanker take on thrift. "Everyone seems to be taking a lot of (perverse) pleasure in faux-austerity and mock phlegmatic belt-tightening."

A short post introducing the Flickr Clock pool, which takes videos and puts them into what looks like it'll be a very nice looking Stamen... interactive thingy? Interestingly, submissions have to use machine tags with the time:hour namespace:predicate pair, because video sucks and doesn't have metadata.

I always wondered about making a Shipping Forecast twitter bot, but I've been beaten to it. A very nice writeup.

Or, rather, "how to officially download low quality MP4 files with DRM". Why bother when you can stream better quality versions and not have to faff about with an Adobe Air app, which (as one commenter notes) isn't even particularly Macish?

I dug this out of Matt Jones' Twitter, because somehow Bruce Sterling has managed to achieve some sort of negative Google pagerank- all the posts I could find were just quotes of this rather than the original. Anyway, there's some good stuff in here. I think.

A good post by Russell on the future of advertising. "We need to stop describing ad-supported things as 'free'. Their might be no exchange of cash but there's an exchange of attention and cognition." Lots to pick over here.

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.

"Scriptwriter Steven Moffat was today named lead writer and executive producer on hit BBC1 drama Doctor Who [replacing] Russell T Davies." About time too. Here's hoping for less use of the Tardis as deus ex machina, then.

"an extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope will be installed at both ends which will miraculously allow people to see right through the Earth from London to New York" Tower Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, £1 a go.

I saw (and photographed, pointlessly) an advert for this on the Tube only to come in and find that nice Mr Jones had bookmarked it, and I do want to go - I do like his stuff, even if it feels as much design as art - so here's my aide-mémoire.

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.

"Weapons against the city's intelligence. Almost no-one reads books any more. London litened, littered, public transport desolated into a time waste land." And look, almost time to brave the gauntlet down to Farringdon.

"Wolpaw referred to this philosophy as achieving a 'low story delta,' meaning that the gameplay and the plot were so carefully intertwined that one simply wouldn't work without the other."

This tries to be an introduction to the Culture, but flubs it with a bunch of errors and spoilers in their book descriptions. Either that, or as a Proper Signed Up Fanboy I'm too touchy to read such things.

"[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?

Thoughs on packaging, fuel use, and product longevity.

"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?

"Apart from environmental frugality, innovation and the arts, what have cities ever done for us? There is one more thing and it is growing ever more important as global trade demands that our economies become more flexible: cities are resilient."

Some lovely photos of supercomputers, along with looks at neglected corners of the British Empire.

Observatories putting real-time data (updated every 15 minutes) into Google Sky.

So that's what all those Flickr photos of breadboards were about: Olinda is a prototype, standalone DAB radio with a novel (easier to use) interface, built-in social listening, and a hardware API.

Scathing putdown of Channel 4. I wish the Humphrys interview on Today last week had been so biting.

The stranding of the Napoli has focussed people's minds on container shipping. Overdue, really; most people don't understand the vast infrastructure that supports them.

se71summarises: " SL is just another fad, like the last incarnation of 2D worlds". I'm amazed there's still anyone clear-minded enough to write stuff like this in the midst of Bubble 2.0, but hurrah.

A look inside Ning, by gnat

via blackbeltjones, who inexplicably failed to actually link to it from any of his entries

"A writing game devised by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard" to explore at home