Along with the exhibitions, talks, guided walks, debates and parties there is a series of excellent architectural podwalks produced by Ruby Wright. I did one about my neighbourhood, entitled ‘Backstreets of Southwark’. It was featured on BBC Radio 4’s iPM programme on 14 June.
The walk passes both cutting edge and utilitarian architecture, secret pocket parks, an unconsecrated boneyard where 15,000 people lie buried, the wine bar where local magistrates go after hard day on the bench, the remains of the debtors prison where Charles Dickens’s father was banged up in 1824 and much more.
It’s about 2 miles long and starts and finishes at Southwark tube station, on the Jubilee Line. A map of the route (including a GPX trace) is over here.
Download including various file formats (128kb MP3, 64kb MP3, Ogg Vorbis) from here.
I spent Saturday at “barcampUKgovweb” and met a very interesting group of people who care about how government behaves online. Among the 60 or so participants, there was a roughly even split between people working for government, people working for companies and people who are - for want of a better term - civic hackers. (more…)
Many Eyes is a web-based data visualisation tool that is still in alpha but already looks impressive. It’s very simple. You cut and paste data (numbers or text) and then choose from a variety of data visualisation tools to make your dataset come to live. We hope to be doing some cool things with it over at caphealthcheck.eu and farmsubsidy.org. In the meantime, here is a rather silly visualisation of the most frequently used words in speeches made by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative Party Leader David Cameron. Can you tell whose words are whose? Answer after the jump.
Many Eyes has got some glitches but it seems a lot better than its rival Swivel. Here is a good comparative review of both.
At noon today at a meeting at the Trimdon Labour Club in his constituency, Tony Blair told a group of his friends and political supporters (link requires Real Player) that he has tendered his resignation as leader of the Labour Party and will be stepping down as Prime Minister on 27 June after ten years and eight weeks in the job. The much-trailed announcement is all-but-certain to result in a smooth handover of power to Chancellor Gordon Brown who will lead the Labour Party into the next General Election slated for 2009. (more…)
British campaigners against European Union plans to outlaw imperial measures like pounds and ounces have claimed victory, according to news reports today. The self-styled ‘metric martyrs’ say they have say they have won the battle to keep Britain imperial, after confirmation from the European Commission’s industry commissioner, Gunther Verheugen, that dual marking of goods in imperial and metric would “continue indefinitely”. Previously the Commission had set a 2009 deadline for the phasing out of imperial measures still widely used in British greengrocers, butchers and supermarkets. (more…)
On Thursday this week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce the date he will step down as premier, all but cementing a July handover to his long time political friend and rival Gordon Brown. As Chancellor Brown moves nextdoor into Number 10 Downing Street, he faces some big challenges on the economy and on reinvigorating the domestic policy agenda. But the only way he will be able to make the necessary break with the Blair era and restore the Labour Party’s electoral fortunes is to offer a full and unequivocal apology for the mistakes of the government’s policy towards Iraq. (more…)
The London Festival of Architecture goes from strength to strength and this year runs from 20 June to 20 July. 