Salisbury cathedral was built on thin foundations
… or so I’m told. It sits on gravel, and has only remained standing
as long as it has because the church invested in a complex water
management system, controlling the water level in the nearby rivers so
that the gravel doesn’t get waterlogged, and the cathedral stays up.
you into the guts of the building, and during which I might perhaps be
able to find out more. I would like to do this.
Creative arts funding
For £2,000 over three years, an orchestra lover can sponsor a musician from the Northern Sinfonia, based in Gateshead, through its Principal Partners scheme.
Supporters of the Northern Sinfonia can meet its musicians for dinner
You choose a principal musician to support, and get exclusive access in return. “You meet that principal on a regular basis over lunch or supper, and become close to that instrument and understand what it is to be a player in an orchestra like this,” explains director of marketing and development Lucy Bird.
Salman Khan at TED
Can anyone recommend a good battery charger?
I'm looking for a good quality, built-to-last, handles-everything domestic battery charger. We're getting through extraordinary numbers of AA, AAA and 9v batteries and I want to buy a bunch of rechargeables. I need a charger that recharges multiple batteries (of different shapes and sizes) at once, but treats each battery independently. It needs to tell me when each one is ready, and how much charge remains in a used battery. If anyone has already found such a thing, and can let me know what it's called, I'll be most grateful.
What they used to say
In the 1970s: “A20, M25, M1, M6, M54, A5.”
In the 1980s: “For your maths homework tonight…”
In the 1990s: “Giles, can you cover mags court today please?”
Early 2000: “No, that’s all wrong. Do it again.”
Late 2000: “Sorry, we don’t take freelance contributions.”
Between 2000 and 2005: “The deadline for completing your tax return is only
a month away.”
Recently: “I’m not doing a poo in my pants.”
People whose lives have been transformed by the internet
At the local school recently, attending an Open Day for prospective new parents (Barney will be starting school this time next year – how quick is that??), the head teacher made a fascinating point.
He said that the school’s ethos is not to train kids for a career, but to train them to learn anything that comes along.
“After all,” he said, “how many of you parents now do a job that didn’t even exist when you were at school?”
Kate and I looked at eachother. That’s both of us. And many of our friends.
Loads of people I know have had their lives completely changed by the internet and their interaction with it.
People like Dan Hon, who joined a multiplayer game and ended up making new friends, a new career, almost a whole new life out of the people he met as a result.
Or Joel Veitch, who I interviewed years ago about some crappy ‘web soap opera’ that never came to anything; but his stupid animations, and those of his stupid mate Rob Manuel (who made me a custom CMS once, years ago; in return I bought him some fags and a four-pack of lager) helped him carve a path to being a professional animator and director.
Or me. My own life has revolved around the net since 1997. I got a job, I moved from Cambridge to London, I earned a (reasonably paid) living for four years, purely because I knew fractionally more about the internet than my colleagues. Since going freelance, I have done the majority of my professional work for online publications, not print ones.
And that’s just three people I can think of while sitting in my living room, listening to Talk Talk and sipping beer on a lonely wet Monday night. There are dozens more that I know, millions of others elsewhere.
The net. Gawd bless ‘er.
Barney and his treasures bag
Barney and his treasures bag
Originally uploaded by emmajc.
Men in hats
We went to the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, and took some pictures.
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