A week or two ago, when I was complaining about the difficulty of untangling ethernet cables from a big box, the office hive mind came up with the idea to use old switches to hang the cables up, given that they've got convenient RJ45 connectors anyway. Hence:

Not a sight you see every day, not even in Cambridge: (and it was just parked off the street by the Corn Exchange!)

Some photos from La Palma have been processed. More to come, but as and when. Mostly views and rocks, but also one canarian lizard.

One of the buildings at work is currently hosting a swarm of bees. They're swarming, so they're quite docile, and most people don't even seem to notice them. Fascinating, really. Of course I had to go out in the end and take a photo myself. Otherwise it's not real.

Even though I've never been in a position to have any use for it, I love the shipping forecast. And somehow, today, it triggered a memory of hearing, on the Belgian radio, similar reports on the situation of various inland waterways. A lot of people will remember, with some amusement, things like "opgehaalde schotbalken" and "geopende doorlaatklepjes".

Sadly, some research reveals that Belgian radio ditched these reports many years ago, and most weirs have now been motorised and automated anyway.

So much for writing an interesting post about shipping forecasts. Damn you, progress.

(And if there is an English word for "peilgebied" then Wikipedia doesn't know of it. Anyone?)

Last week, I bought a Joby GorillaPod SLR Zoom from Amazon. Sadly, when it arrived the adapter screw (which allows the use of a tripod head, see photo of dubious artistic merit) was missing.

I couldn't find any for sale online (not wanting to deal with Amazon's returns department), so I mailed Joby. And they sent me two in the post the same day! Now that's fantastic customer service, which I thought was worth mentioning in public.

I'm scanning (bits of) Ponting's book about Captain Scott's failed Antarctic expedition. Ponting died 75 years ago, so copyright-wise I'm safe. The book's rather old and yellowed. Vaguely haunting to see Scott's final written words.

In the photograph: condensation on the outside some "double-glazing" foil on a Velux skylight window. Where "outside" is, in fact, the inside, or at least, the side facing into the house. I like to think that the swirly pattern depicts the turbulent airflow between the cold outter glass layer and the foil, channeled to the sides by the blind. Because otherwise it's just some damp patches. And who cares about them, anyway.

And yes, I thought it was sufficiently interesting – and aesthetically pleasing, that random air currents could create twists and eddies of such exuberance, enough to make Mr Whippy green with envy – to take several photos of. I don't see why you're acting all surprised at this.

The little stripey thing at the bottom, by the way, was my poking finger, when I checked which side the moisture was on, like a clumsy, pokey chimp who can't see anything without poking it in a pokey way. Pokey, pokey, poke, poke, poke. Tchah.

You may (but probably don't) remember the sanatorium from such previous Livejournal posts as this one. Site cleanup has started; the developer currently seems to be planning service flats and a restaurant "to maintain the semi-public nature of the building".

The building has lost its melancholy; now it's just a building site. But it should come out so much better.

The Grand Arcade shopping centre in Cambridge has a floor with fossils in it, particularly noticable on the first floor. Extra points for confusing other patrons by shuffling round pointing at the floor.

Today, in the nice warm Belgian autumn sunlight, I went for a short walk around the nearby Joseph Lemaire sanatorium. Built in the 1930s to accomodate tuberculosis patients, it was once one of the most striking and beautiful Art Deco/modernist buildings in the country (as this photo from the 1950s shows). Once, in the early '80s, we went for a visit and took the lift to the top floor, which had a magnificent view. The gardens were, even then, still beautifully maintained, and the building's tilework seemed to glow in the sunlight.

Since 1987, though, it's been derelict. It has been completely ruined by vandals, and is being reclaimed by nature. It's a sad sight. Because it's cheaper to build a new building of the same size than to renovate a listed building like this one, noone seems willing to sink money into it, although there's now talk of a Dutch developer converting the place to luxury flats. I think it could be fantastic, and I hope they succeed. Ideally before the entire thing just collapses.

More photos here. More information here and (in Dutch) here.

Keith Loutit makes time-lapse videos around Sidney using tilt-shift lenses to distort perspective and make everything look toy-like.

I think they're fantastic. Too damn awesome for words.

I just finished reading Anathem.

My word.

Very weird. Very Stephenson. Surprising. But I like it.

Edit: this isn't some Photoshoppery, that was what the lift at work was displaying around lunchtime...

I received a leaflet from the University's Institute of Continuing Studies. It tells the tragic story of ambition gone wrong.

It started out so well. The classes, acquiring management experience. Founding his own business, using his newly-found notary skills.

But then, a patch of bad luck. The Incident. Mangled bodies everywhere. The many grieving relatives. The many grieving relatives getting kidnapped. The negotiations for their release. The dispute over the media rights, culminating in a massive legal battle. His life, in ruins.

If only he'd stayed at home.

This Sunday, there was an earthquake in Belgium, with the epicentre near my parents'. While it wasn't a big tremor by global standards, it was still magnitude 3.1: enough to be unmistakable. The main difference with the earthquake we had in the UK in february was that the motion felt vertical, rather than lateral. I was sitting on the ground, and felt a distinct up-and-down wobble, as perfect an example of a damped sinusoidal motion as my bottom ever had the good fortune to experience. During the february UK quake, on the other hand, I remember feeling the house sway as I stood in the hallway. Nothing pleasurable about it for anyone's bottom, I would've thought.

The other difference with previous earthquakes I'd experienced was the noise - a loud, deep rumble. That was a first, as I'd never heard the Earth itself make a noise before, just the creaking of whatever structure I happened to be in at the time.

I'm guessing we (my dad also heard and felt it very clearly; my mother didn't because she was in the cellar, odd as that may seem) were just sitting on the right spot to feel and hear the maximum amplitude of the seismic waves. Reports from neighbouring towns were much less spectacular (the Belgian National Observatory has, like its UK counterpart, an online form to solicit for people's experiences during 'quakes).

Now this is an awesome recumbent bicycle.

This is awesome, in a way that is, itself, awesome in its awesomeness: