Archive for the ‘Fun Diversions’ Category

The Horniman Museum is another of south London’s little-known gems, and arguably contains the most eclectic collections in all of London’s museums.

Hardly a TV news item on the US election seems to go by without at least one reporter or pundit trotting out a line like “As the race for the Whitehouse hots up, the Internet is increasingly becoming the main political battleground….”
The political parties on both sides of the Atlantic do seem to have woken [...]

There was a very interesting piece in today’s Guardian about new clinical trials in which hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) are being used to treat patients with a variety of conditions. These include headaches, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and even helping patients come to terms with terminal illnesses.

It seems as though someone proposes a new harebrained scheme an ambitious new regeneration project for Battersea Power Station every few years. The latest plans for the redevelopment of the power station are still at the pre-planning application stage, but this month the site is open to the public as part of the promotion/consultation for [...]

Just in case you’re one of the five people that haven’t yet seen Simon Tofield’s fantastic Simon’s Cat animations, here’s my favourite:

Patrick didn’t think the previous Star Wars video was ‘darkside’ enough, and suggested this instead:

The video for Radiohead’s House of Cards is rather beautiful, not to mention very clever.
In Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data.

The ‘making of’ video [...]

Nothing, but nothing, is going to make me laugh more this week.

By lunchtime yesterday I felt in need of a break from staring at the computer screen, so decided to go for a little stroll. The clouds threatened rain, but it didn’t materialise – just as well, as my little stroll turned into a six mile walk! I headed east from London Bridge station and followed [...]

Six interesting photography sites for you today. The first one, Balakov’s classic photographs recreated in lego, has been doing the rounds for a while now, but I see he’s added more recently. My favourites are still the Lego version of Cartier-Bresson’s “Behind the Gare Saint Lazare”, and the classic 70s poster “tennis girl scratching [...]

A couple of “Oh my God!” links that I’ve been meaning to post for a while, and one I’ve only just seen:
El Caminito del Rey is a 200 meter high walkway that runs along the walls of a gorge in El Chorro, Spain. The one meter wide walkway was constructed between 1901 and 1905, [...]

Slinkachu, creator of the wonderful Little People, has launched a new site: Inner City Snail – a slow-moving street art project. I thought the inclusion of ‘Tox08′ was a particularly nice touch – there can’t be many Londoners that haven’t spotted one of his tags around the city over the years.
For more street art, try [...]

I was in Covent Garden the other day and decided to take a little detour across the Strand to Carting Lane, which is home to London’s only remaining sewer lamp. The Webb Patent Sewer Gas Lamp was invented in the late 19th century, primarily as a means to burn off smells from the sewers running [...]

I had time to pop up to Tate Modern to have a look at their Street Art exhibition at lunchtime today. It’s the first commission to use the outside of the building, and consists of 15-meter high wall mountings by six international street artists, plus a Street Art Walking Tour around Bankside.