The problem in my area

At the moment Scotland is in the throes of an election, so on Saturday morning I had the joy of a big wodge of political junk mail being thrust through my door, all wrapped up in a pizza delivery leaflet.

One leaflet in particular caught my eye. It was from the Liberal Democrats, who I would normally vote for (being solidly bleeding-heart liberal and middle class). However, in a bid to encourage people to vote tactically, they included the following bar graph:

It's a two horse race: Tories and SNP have no chance of winning in this area, so vote Lib Dem or get Labour!

It took me a while, in my addled pre-breakfast state, to work out what was wrong with this graph, but when I did I was extremely irritated. The Liberal Democrats have a bit of a reputation for sharp practice in local election campaigns, but to me this is a vote-loser. The most charitable explanation is that it's a formatting error - they chopped off the top of the Labour bar to fit more stuff on the leaflet - but frankly, so what? As far as I'm concerned, this is a blatant and stupid attempt to mislead the electorate. Having politicians who lie to you is one thing - but you at least expect them to be good at it.

The ironic thing is that on the back of this self-same leaflet was a big blank area, headed by the question, "tell us about problems in your area" - so if anybody bothered to reply, the Liberal Democrat office will be awash with these bar graphs. Wonder if they've noticed. I wonder if they care.

Johnny Ball at the Royal Society

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/event.asp?month=5&id=6200
Those of you who were kids in the UK will probably remember Johnny Ball. His wikipedia entry doesn't do him justice - when I was a kid, he was this relentlessly joyous bundle of energy talking about crazy maths and sciencey stuff on TV, and I thought he was great. To my mind, he's still one of the greatest communicators of maths and science this country has ever had, and his stupid grin has probably launched more young people onto science careers than anything or anyone else.

He's giving a talk to the Royal Society on Tuesday, which will be webcast live, about his career. It's also free to go to, if you happen to be in the area. I guess that's why I'm really posting it - given the decline in popularity of science subjects in schools, I would have thought there'd be a lot of interest in finding out more about how and why Johnny Ball was so good at popularizing it. It seems strange (and maybe a little sad) to me that nobody thinks it's worth charging money (or even pre-booking) to hear him.

WhatTheFont : MyFonts

http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/


If you've ever come across a particular bit of writing and wondered what font it was in, then this is the tool for you. Upload a picture of the text (gif, jpeg, etc., etc.) and after a bit of jiggery pokery it'll suggest a list of possible fonts.

I tried it a while back and it worked brilliantly - but I was idly wondering about some text on the side of a drinks carton this afternoon, and I remembered what a brilliant tool this was.

Don't cross the streams (if you're UPS, that is)

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/eeedfa08-d108-11db-836a-000b5df10621.html
Wasn't it one of Steve Martin's characters (man with two brains?) who couldn't turn left? Well, apparently UPS are following his lead. By cutting out left turns (which are cross-traffic turns in the US) the vans spend less time waiting for traffic to pass, and less time sitting with the engine idling means less fuel... I know, it sounds like those 'shortcuts' you take on the way to work, just because moving beats sitting stationary in traffic, but there must be something in it.

I'm curious about the 'family in Oregon' mentioned in the article, though.

Crikey, it's Earthday!

http://www.earthday.net/
Quick, everyone think of earth.

(annoying scare story about wi-fi on the earthday homepage - grrr. There are better things to focus on, people!)

The Evil Mad Scientist 3D Printer Project

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/3printerpreview
Another home-make 3d printer, this time from evilmadscientist.com. Unlike RepRap or Fab@Home, this one prints out relatively coarse sculptures in suger, using 'pixels' of about 2-5mm. They are claiming a ver ylow price for it - they reckon a 'resourceful' soul should be able to make one for $500 or so. Wonder how 'resourceful' you have to be...

I seriously covet something like this, although I think Fab@home still gets my vote.

Sao Paulo No Logo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508212/


Since Sao Paolo city passed radical new restrictions on the size of billboards in the city, new Cold War-style surveillance aerials have sprouted up across the city. Or at least, that's what it looks like from Tony de Marco's photoset. You can feel the sudden silence descend, and the aerial-like quality of the former billboards only serves to heighten the impression of a sudden, breathless, attentive silence descending.

via core77, via boingboing, via the whole freakin' internet.

Call for list: darn that predictive text thingy

With only one slipped digit, I just managed to turn:

Well done!

into:

Elk food!

I think that's pretty impressive. Anyone care to share any other pearls they've (almost) sent?

Cool Hunting: Tea Time

http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2007/04/tea.php

Ceci n'est pas un Philippe Starck paintbrush. In reality, c'est un infuser de tea.

I've backed off a bit from the habit now, but at one point I was getting worried about the depth of my tea fetish. Seems I needn't have worried - however low you go, there are always those who've taken it to the next level. And some of them are gadget obsessed. Coolhunting has collected a bunch of these little gizmos. Personally, I thought I was doing okay with my Bodum Assam teapot and my beloved long handled infusers... not for me the variable-temperature electric kettle from Nothing But Tea, which does sound like every tea fetishists must-have...

Normal Room (normal my arse)

http://www.normalroom.com/index.php
It's a nice idea - people around the world take photos of their homes and upload them, letting you do a bit of sneaky voyeurism under the guise of ethnographic research. But really, how normal are these rooms going to be? Not very, and not for very long, is my guess. See how quickly this place turns into an audition space for 'Home and Garden' magazine.

Having said that, it's really interesting. What strikes me is how similar these rooms across the world are - there doesn't seem to be a vast amount of cultural difference apparent.



via core77

Call for some sort of competition: Frappucino Sculpting

Okay, so it's childish, and silly, and I should know better, but... I like to play with my food. and to be honest, I'm surprised I can't find any references to this on t'internet - crushed ice is great for making ice/sandcastles in, I'm surprised Starbucks or someone haven't sponsored some massive ice-slush-sculpting competition already

I'm calling this one 'Mocha Ice Goon Attempts Escape'. It errs on the side of simply finding out what's possible, and the answer is, actually, quite a lot. I was particularly surprised at the amount of tonal variation which was possible. I'm sure someone with actual talent must be able to do something attractive.

Anyone fancy having a go?

What the iPhone really has going for it

I've just recently got myself a new phone - a Sony Ericsson k800i (in a rather fetching silver colour), and while playing with my new toy, I downloaded and tried out various 'themes' - colour schemes, basically. I tried out a fair few, mostly made by amateurs, and they were uniformly flashy, ugly and badly designed. But then I found one theme that was far prettier and infinitely easier to use than any of the others. It left Sony Ericsson's default options looking decidedly clunky and awkward.

My one slight niggle with this far superior piece of graphic/interface design is more ideological than practical and it is this:

It's an iPhone clone.

Worn Again: First pants, then shoes

http://www.wornagain.co.uk/
The idea of wearing a pair of trainers made of someone's old underwear might not seem so appealing, but the shoes themselves look pretty damn good (although I was particularly tempted by the satchels rather than the shoes)


Via superuse, which I've mentioned before. Also among its top picks at the moment is this awesome table made from a bit of DC-3:

This is an open source car

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/cmmn_the_worlds_first_opensource_car__5847.asp
... it could only come from Holland. "Stichting Natuur en Milieu" (The Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment) and the three technical universities of Delft, Eindhoven and Enschede have teamed up to create the 'c,mm,n' (no prizes for guessing how it's pronounced). All the bluepriunts and technical drawings will be freely available online.



I'm not sure how this will work; clearly they're not expecting people to be able to knock these up in their backyards, and surely there are a large number of parts where open source will miss out on the sort of economies of scale which the big carmakers enjoy. Nonetheless, it's nice to have the information - and for free, too.