Miscellany

I haven’t completely lost my desire to blog. Honest. I’ve just had a lot going on in the past few weeks, what with job, a man, a painful back, etc. None of which stop a person from blogging — it just gets easier to slide. So I’m sorry, and here is a selection of interesting links. Mostly so that you can go ‘cool, that’s interesting’ but also so I can know I provided them.

The precise reasons for having a full-size missile mounted on a train escape me. Mostly because a missile can’t really do a very tight u-turn in the air to obliterate the troops that are chasing the retreating train. Hmm.

Carniola doesn’t much like Austrian prisons. Well, that’s unfair — clearly this blogger likes the prisons very much. As do I. It’s just that the concept of giving prisoners quality surroundings in return for their own self-sponsored rehab is lightyears away from the clunky, violent reality of most Western systems.

Now that we’ve had a couple of clear sunny days and clear cold nights, I’ve got interested in what exactly I’m looking at when I crane upwards. Is it a plane? A satellite? A real star? WikiSky will tell you, in a nice star-mapped kind of way.

Be Jackson Pollock - take a splodge for a walk. If you move your mouse quickly, you’ll be amazed and enchanted and generally wonder why this hasn’t been everyone’s favourite pastime since forever. Then, as a suitable jolt into the other side of human endeavour, take a look at a tool for making big holes. Wow, and ugh.

If you have ever had vertigo, or a fear of dark gaping chasms, don’t visit Mirny, Russia. You probably will, anyway, just like a kid can’t stop watching a very scary film, or like I couldn’t stop looking down dark corridors when I was very little.

I assume this is Quartz. Via this site.

Music scores are meant to be played. Occasionally you will listen along with the score in front of you and wonder, in the name of all that’s human, how anyone is able to translate one thing to another. But this score — of the marvellously refined piece Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz, is definitely a feast for the eyes.

Crane and Container Ships. Big ones. I swear, it’s good. And so are these signs. Bon voyage!

tags: [miscellany]