Confusability

Christmas Tradition

Leslie Harpold has published her traditional online advent calendar for 2005.

See also Advent 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001.

Tinderwin Coming Soon Image

Tinderbox for Windows is launched.

http://www.tinderboxforwindows.com

Is it a plane? Is it a submarine? No it's a submarplane!

Combination Airplane and Submarine, H. Harrington, 1945

From "a gallery of airplane designs from yesteryear. The aircraft images in this collection were discovered in U.S. patent applications."

Google Maps - Let the games begin

On Location - "maid in manhattan"

Stating the Obvious - "search engine in mountain view"

and Childish Humour - "brothels near mountain view"

Dantes Project Plan

Better than a Gantt Chart.

Results Flash

The BBC have impressed me again with this delighful flash map that shows the council election results. I think that they could improve it by trying to make use of sound as well.

Trotsky takes top honours again!

I won the sniper award last month!

I am always amazed by what a human can do in a few hours with an idea and a keyboard.

I have been playing "Call of Duty" with a few people on a Sunday evening to prepare for the working week ahead and I was very pleased when Jason decided to knock up something to display the server stats.

Well after a few late nights he has come up with CombatStats, a customisable toolkit that anyone can use to display their sad cod stats. Time and time again I see how easy it is for someone to take an idea and then deliver a working system in a matter of hours. It then takes a lot longer to iterate through the next two dozen implementations, but you can be sure that these systems are all built with a lot of love.

So, I would like to say thanks to all the people out there who are creating bookmarklets, templates, utilities and full blown applications with no thought of financial reward or personal advancement.

I'm really proud of all of you, so keep up the good work, and keep producing these little gems. Who knows, if anyone ever sorts out micropayments we might even be able to make a living from this stuff.

Mulberries and White Crosses

60 Years On

"On the 50th anniversary of D-Day I thought 'well, it's a pretty amazing anniversary, let them celebrate.' The Germans weren't invited, but some of us went anyway, in small groups, some invited by the French. But now, after 60 years, I don't understand why they are making such a fuss. I don't think humankind has learned anything.

There have been so many wars since then, Iraq for example, and I think the media should concern themselves more with that.

The veterans from back then will soon all be dead, and now you've got the chancellor going there, probably saying clever things into a microphone, and I think: what's he got to do with it all? He's got no idea what that war was like. Well, that's the way I see things now. "

Werner Kortenhaus

The Joy of Maps

The Visual Collections site from Cartography Associates contains dozens of digital image collections from Museums, Universities and private collections throughout the world. Our mission is to encourage the development of future collections and facilitate their worldwide distribution to both scholars and the general public.

Cartography Associates strives to provide an on-line environment wherein all types of digital collections from a wide range of resources can be seamlessly fused together into one large, comprehensive collection. We have achieved this by allowing users to simultaneously view multiple collections from any category using the Insight® Java Client. While each collection is rich with its own imagery, character, and information, viewing several collections simultaneously creates a powerful set of images for all to study, admire, and enjoy.

Dock Stories

Dockstories was a project by Anna Oliver part of the Dialogue artists project, in which 13 artists made pieces of work alongside Bristol City Docks (UK) in July 2003.

For dockstories, I made a 'map' of Bristols City Docks, which consists of a collection of peoples stories of events which have affected them personally alongside Bristols City Docks. The stories are diplayed on the large hoarding situated on Redcliffe Backs (alongside Redcliffe Bridge, opposite Severnshed and Riverstation). They are placed geographically on the board, in other words where they are situated on the board relates to where they would be on a map of the docks.

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie : An Effective, Low-Cost Solution To Combating Mind-Control

You must visit the AFDB site, before it's too late!

How to make a flute

From : Ancestral Engineering

Flash Maps

Paradise Lost

The British Museum needs to spend a bit more time working on their flash map viewer. It's very easy to get lost when using this viewer.

The Geographical Distribution of Church Schools in England

I was able to use all the functions of this map without having to read the instructions.

Water Quality Map

Having the small selection controls so far away from the corresponding animation on the map is very confusing.

Environment Station Viewer

This Canadian viewer highlights the coverage area for each detailed map as you move across the main map.

Butte College Campus

This map also suffers because the information popups appear so far away from where the users attention is focussed.

Electoral Map

The interaction on this map is simple and effective.

The Plastic Hydrogen Bomb

"It turns out we were all wrong," he said, "and that is most disturbing."

In his evidence to the Senate armed services committee, Mr Kay repeated his assertion that there were no illegal weapons stockpiles in Iraq.

"I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed, militarised chemical weapons there," he said.

He said that the failure to find such stockpiles exposed weaknesses in American intelligence-gathering.

"It's quite clear we need capabilities that we do not have with regard to intelligence," he said.

From WMD intelligence wrong, says Kay BBC News 28 Jan 2004

The stockpiles of weapons cannot be found, but I have uncovered the plans for a plastic hydrogen bomb that can be hidden in a pocket and can be smuggled undetected through metal detectors. This is clear proof that the Evil Dictator has forced Iraqi children to assemble weapons of mass destruction that can be used as justification for his evil regime.

In schematic form, the bomb looks like this:

The result is a nice looking bomb

The full assembly instructions can be found at the Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids site.

A diagram of the Baird's Crystal Palace Studios from 1935

Love the pipe.

Soul States

There are seven possible states [globes] of the human soul. There are twelve possible transitions [arrows] between these states. These transitions are made via six event portals [discs]. Also note there are four possible deaths [dots] a person can die.

This helps me understand why I am an atheist.

To make a flying fish

Assembly Instructions for Eagle Transporter

Ahhh, 1999 seemed so far in the future in those days.

Model of Chandler and Monica's Apartment

I will be posting examples of diagrams or representations of things or ideas that take my fancy.