Category: Misc
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Risk
Our understanding of risk is very much misplaced. When we hear about fatalities in train or plane crashes, the news is widely reported. New safety regimes are put in place. There are large scale changes made. But the reason these incidents are reported is because they’re so unusual. Sadly, the biggest transport killer is our…
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King’s Cross Pond
At 8am this morning, I was one of only three people swimming in the brand new pool that has opened up near King’s Cross. The pond is an outdoor unheated pool set amidst the ongoing redevelopment of King’s Cross. It’s actually located behind the old grain store that has become Central Saint Martins art college,…
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High Altitude Balloon Flight
Those with longer memories may recall that I once tried to send a camera up on a bunch of helium balloons from a rooftop near work. We had, er, “mixed” results when a knot I tied turned out to be particularly poor. More recently I’ve launched cameras on kites with varying results. But the ultimate…
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Hot Battery
Note: This post is only likely to be of interest to some Sony Xperia Z3 users. I’m writing it as much as anything in case solutions should surface via Google. I’m having some fun and games at the moment with my Sony Xperia Z3 compact. It’s only a few months old, and I bought it…
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Near Miss (Not Me)
Diamond Geezer published these thoughts on “Guerilla Pedestrians” yesterday. Let me relate what I saw happen – and what very nearly happened – this morning, because it scared me. I was walking across the Euston Road – crossing at the pedestrian crossing between St Pancras station and the Burger King just opposite. The crossing is…
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Pavé
This weekend sees the Tour of Flanders, and next weekend is Paris – Roubaix. Since it’s been a while since I last did some screen printing, I thought I’d try to make a print based on the cobbled classics. I’m quite pleased with the results, but I thought I’d run through my process. I actually…
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Rail Priorities
Over Christmas Network Rail managed to inconvenience thousands of travellers – particularly around King’s Cross and Paddington stations in London. The reason was that the scheduled works that they’d planned for Christmas Day and Boxing Day massively overran and therefore people travelling on the 27th found that either they couldn’t, or it would be particularly…
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Happy Christmas!
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How Retail Works… I Think
Judging from my inbox, this how retail works towards the end of the year: October Only x number of days to go. Buy now. November Offers. Buy now. Black Friday (Actually a full week) Cyber Monday (Another full week) December Buy buy buy. Offers. Twelve days of Christmas (despite 12 Days of Christmas being after…
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Administrative Note
I’ve just updated my WordPress theme to make it responsive. There may be the odd thing broken around here. If there is, then I apologise. But do feel free to drop me a note if you find anything that seems a bit odd. Hopefully I’ll be able to use some slightly bigger pictures and generally…
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Bad Visualisations
There’s a really interesting piece to write about Taylor Swift, Spotify and iTunes revenues, and the music industry in general. But this isn’t it. I’m writing this because TechCrunch has an interesting piece about European Spotify earnings overtaking iTunes earnings. The piece reports that Kobalt, a publishing company that collects music royalties on behalf of…
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Payments and Data
When Tesco first introduced its Clubcard in 1995, it was to enable it to capture data on its customers. Most people who use loyalty cards realise this. In return for the retailer being able to tie specific sales to an individual, that individual earns some kind of loyalty points. It seems to be a win/win.…