Portent

I’ve never been fond of Flash but there’s no denying that it lets designers do some amazing effects. Where theres a lot of Flash code to load, the better designers usually provide a pre-loader; an animation usually showing a %loaded.

That’s all this site does though they do let you filter by year and provide information about the site that each pre-loader was used in. There are some brilliant animations there…

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One weekend each year in September, London throws open its houses to anyone who wants to visit them. Not all houses, but designated buildings and houses. Lets face it London is full of them, but here you can go in places that are often never open to the public. But just for one weekend until next year.

They have a google maps and a half decent search, you can even see which are more children friendly (and visit the rest!). About the only annoying thing is the intro splash screen which is so 20th century and should be dropped immediately. I’ve linked directly to the search, not the intro page because of that.

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Cue theme tune:doo doo dooo doo… nope no Sculley or Muldaur here, just the UK Government releasing UFO archives from 1986–1992. It’s a collection of PDF files.

While probably 95% of all reports can be explained away there are some that are intriguing eg this report from a retired US pilot who saw something very big. Was it a secret experiment or a real UFO?

“I had a lock-on that had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier,” he added. “The larger the airplane, the easier the lock-on. This blip almost locked itself.” At the last moment, the object disappeared from the radar screen and the high-speed chase was called off.

Take a look and judge for yourself…

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This is not a website to recommend to those of a monotheistic outlook on life (“One God”). But if you’re into pantheism or just interested this has lots of information on Gods from many cultures- American Indian, Chinese and many more, 154 gods in total, 316 with their alternative names.

There’s also a lot of related stuff such as 578 Saintans and their alternative names, ancient numerology, even Lego Gods. It’s very well done.

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It is believed that our ancestors originated in Africa and about 60,000 years ago slowly spread through the world.

In the last couple of years National Geographic Magazine and IBM created a 5 year research project called The Genographic Project to try and trace through DNA the path’s that early man took.

The Genographic Project has recently published a report on human mitochondrial DNA data from the first 18 months of the project, published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. Most DNA is contained in the cell but separate parts of the cell called organelles (akin to organs in a body) such as Mitochondria also contain DNA. Interesting stuff.

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Not many blogs get covered here but I liked this one, I did a bit about the Edwards in a history project so have always retained a soft spot for this period.

This accompanies a website by the same author, Alianore (a female historical scholar who lives in Germany) that looks in some depth into the times of Edward II. He is of course best known for allegedly suffering a rather gruesome death with a red hot poker but whether that is fact or fiction remains a mystery.

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Everyone loves a historical mystery, think back to the Turin Shroud, the island of Atlantis, the Egyptian Pyramids (How Did they build them?) and the Marie Celeste for example. I also think it’s why the Da Vinci Code was so popular.

So this top ten list of mysteries that have been overlooked is well worth a trip. Whether it is about Rongorongo, the mysterious Easter Island script, the Lost City of Helike or many others, it makes for an interesting read. Oh for a working time machine! If this is discovered in the future and you have a time machine, come and say hello!

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In some parts of the world, people don’t really appreciate how evil the Nazis were and so the name of Hitler is regarded as just a historical leader.

So they must think “Hey why not open a bar and call it after old Adolf? We’ll get a photo or two or a Swastika and people will recognise the name”. South Koreans seem to have a few of these. The linked page has several photos and discusses some of them. Some owners have changed their minds once it has been pointed out who exactly they are using!

There is an interesting link to a serious piece about how South Korea was founded on fascist, ie nazi principles after World War II so perhaps that explains why these bars are so named.

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This site has more than just a massive collection of information about great buildings. It includes lists of places, architects.

It is though, more about the buildings than anything else. As well as the search and a very long alphabetically sorted list you can also browse by building type, architectural style, time period when constructed, construction types, climates, contexts, construction elements and you can even see by popularity which buildings or architects details people are looking at.

And there’s more. You can view and download free (or get the lot on CD-ROM) 3d models of many of the buildings. There’s free software (or pay a small sum for a more professional version) which lets you view the 3d models.

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PBR (Public Broadcasting Radio) in the USA is the nearest equivalent to the BBC in the UK. One of their longest running broadcasts has been Engines of Ingenuity that tells the story of how our culture is formed by human creativity. Written and hosted by John Lienhard, it is heard nationally on Public Radio and produced by the US radio station KUHF-FM Houston. The website is hosted at the University of Houston.

Fascinatingly they have all 2,299 episodes (it’s been running since 1988!) transcribed and available to read free on the site. An amazing amount. If you want to read stories about the famous and not so famous who helped shape our society this is a good place to start. Recommended.

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I love looking at old maps, this is a particularly good one. It’s amazing how many of the major European countries existed then. Also interesting is Spain which is mostly part of the Califate. Islam was spectacularly successful at conquering North Africa, the middle East and most of Spain. It took a lot of fighting for the Spanish to recapture Spain from the ‘Moors’ in the Reconquista which took seven centuries from 722 to 1492.

Warning- you may experience pop-ups on this site.

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PS. I have updated the links page to point to a new address which is on a site full of maps going back to the year 100. Definitely worth a look!

Well London Underground (who receive over £1,200 a year from me!) have only themselves to blame after the earlier fiasco when they got heavy with one of their supporters over his anagram map.

Ed Sanders, a Cambridge Uni Computer Science student (I guess) and Wikipedian sysop, together with JDFoster has put together individual maps of the various lines as well as Zone 1 and (shown) Zone 2 maps using public domain data and software he’s written to fit smooth bezier curves through the stations. They look very nice and are licensed under Creative Commons. There are also some derivative maps including the July 7th 2005 bombings and July 21st.

The maps are hosted on the Wikimedia site, part of Wikipedia.

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