Gremlins 2 is the hardest iâve laughed at a film in some time â a movie written and directed by cocaine.
I think i broke something when the smart gremlin started talking in a New Zealand accent.
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A dispatch from Barnard Castle
Hello. Iâve been to the Bowes Museum. I thought i might tell you about it.
Housed in a gloriously incongruous French mansion in the small town of Barnard Castle1, it was built to house the art collections of the noble Bowes-Lyons â a family lucky enough to count the Queen Mother herself among their members.
Its collection lies largely parallel to the âmainâ visual arts: ceramics, fashion, textiles, furniture, and other such things which must account for function as much as form. Most of it plunges headfirst into the latter, a bit frilly even for my often anti-modernist tastes, but i did like this caduceus-adorned wooden cabinet:
The star of the show here is the Silver Swan, a gorgeous eighteenth-century automaton which preens and sways on a bed of glass water. Unfortunately, itâs broken, and the closest youâll get to see it is its dismembered corpse awaiting restoration, so [raspberry noise]. You can, however, see their exhibition on its legacy, which houses a wonderful collection of modern animatronics made by crafters and tinkerers from all over the world, like this 10/10 pianist:
There are a few items which donât fit into the above. Theyâve managed to snag some real Goyas, Canalettos, and El Grecos. (Los Grecos?) They even have Charles Babbageâs Difference Engine, somehow â i assume itâs on loan from London?
Information for visitors
- Admission: ÂŁ15.50 for an annual membership; ÂŁ13.50 for locals â donât be fooled by the eye-watering ÂŁ18 day ticket for shmucks!
- Address: The Bowes Museum, Newgate, Barnard Castle, DL12 8NP
- Accessibility: The museum has an accessible entrance and a lift serving all three floors.
- Getting there: Bus networkâs fucked at the minute. Sorry.
?
Mx Tynehorneâs link roundup, volume XXIV
- Rudiments of curvilinear design
- woahhh
- The Hot Ones crew unveils Pepper X, the new worldâs hottest
- The Economist has a lovely obituary for the Sycamore Gap tree â may it rest in peace.
- Two iceberg charts of surreal movies and strange films. I may have to watch, erm, all of these â especially Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, which keeps coming up in my dives into net-art historyâŚ
Yep, that one's going in my Rich Evans Folder (2.1TB)
Hope whoever felled the Sycamore Gap tree enjoyed whatever kicks they got out of destroying a centuries old piece of local heritage. Sick cunt.
De Sledgehammerprojectie
Deze pagina berust op chique nieuwe functies in HTML, dus werkt mogelijk niet op uw browser. Sorry.
De Sledgehammerprojectie â vernoemd naar het Peter Gabriel-lied â is een nieuwe oppervlaktegetrouwe kaartprojectie in dezelfde niche als de Winkel-tripel. Een samenstelling van de projecties van Hammer en Peters behoudt oppervlakte, geeft aantrekkelijke curven aan zowel meridianen als parallellen, en haar puntige polen vervormen verre noordelijke regioâs veel minder dan haar afgeplatte equivalenten. (Ik durf wel te zeggen dat zelfs de Antarctis er goed genoeg uitziet!)
De precieze formule, afgeleid van het techniek Strebe (2017):1
De inverse:
En eindelijk een formule voor de buitenrand van de kaart:
The Sledgehammer projection
This post relies on some spiffy new browser features, and might not work on your machine. Apologies.
The Sledgehammer projection â named after the Peter Gabriel song â is a novel equal-area map projection designed to fill the same niche as the Winkel Tripel. A composite of the Hammer and Peters projections, it preserves area, gives both parallels and meridians pleasing curves, and with its pointed poles, it does not distort areas in far northern latitudes to the extent that flat-topped projections such as Equal Earth do. (I dare even say that it handles Antarctica alright.)
The exact formula, based on Strebe (2017)âs technique:1
To invert:
And, finally, an equation describing the outer boundary of the map:
An interactive version is available here. Happy mapping!
</hiatus>
Welcome back, ladies and gentlefolk! Iâve been trapped labouring in a Colombian salt mine for the past four months, but after a daring escape which my lawyers have advised me not to speak of, iâve returned to safety to provide you all with yet more contentÂŽâ˘.
Some links iâve had sitting around gathering mothballs to start you off:
- One Adel Faureâs collection of ascii art
- Tedâs pawpaw page
- I am, admittedly, a big sop, but this 3D reconstruction of the city of Tenochtitlan made me cry a little. All the things weâve lost!
- Tom Scott visits Englandâs first longbarrow in a thousand years â file under âPagan interestâ, of course; in general, i just love to see modern revivals of our ancient traditions
- See It. Say It. Sorted.
Looking at the Big Sky: the world in 2025
I was, tentatively, putting off finishing this until iâd gotten the relevant part of the main site in a working state. But, given that iâm rebuilding the whole thing from scratch, and i was itching to put it out there â behold! The world in 2025 of Looking at the Big Sky, a sci-fi alternate-history -type setting iâm working on. (Itâs not particularly sci- at the moment, iâll admit â this is just a stepping stone on the way to 2338.)
You can find the full resolution image here. Wordpress is just being something of a shit.
Hey, wanna see the most beautiful thing iâve ever seen?
I donât know if itâll come across too well in photo form. I was lying on the grass, as one does, and lo and behold, there in the sky appeared what i could only describe as a double-backwards-double-rainbow:
Iâve never seen anything like it. Maybe that makes me a shut-in? I donât know. Some quick prodding around revealed it to be not a rainbow, but a halo: a circum-zenithal arc, its iridescent colours made by the low sunâs light filtering through the icy clouds above.
The Sagrada Familia. The view from a Pennine peak. My home town from above, caught by pure chance on a flight to Turkey. The first sight of the Tyne Bridge down Grey Street. And now this. Thatâs the top tier â sights iâll never forget in my life.
A minor pause
Hello. Youâve probably figured this out by now, but my personal life has been getting quite busy at the moment, and postings on the site will be taking a back seat until, hm, letâs say the end of June or thenabouts. Donât call it a hiatus â itâs just a minor pause.
Please enjoy these filler photos in the meantime:
Mx Tynehorneâs link roundup, volume XXIII
- Chinaâs reincarnation ban has found a Mongolia-shaped thorn in its side
- A visual book recommender â like a big map of the literary world, designed to simulate the experience of looking through a used book store. Wish there were something like this for films!
- Along the same lines, hereâs Gnod, the âglobal network of discoveryâ⌠and i suppose thereâs never a bad time to link to Every Noise at Once
- The State of Neocities â largely orthogonal to why i packed up ship for a proper host, but interesting nonetheless
- n
- Atlas Altera: âA Wealth of Nationsâ
Good evening, âGreeceâ was a 1000-year social experiment conducted by Oxfordâs classics department. Thank you for your coĂśperation.
2008 Tom Scott video: The First Annual Yorkshire Pudding And Spoon Race
2013 Tom Scott video:
The Blinking Light That Keeps Pedestrians Safe
2018 Tom Scott video: I Got To Go-Kart Around A
Particle Accelarator
2023 Tom Scott video: It's like a TARDIS for foxes.