Neat Feature

Having joined librarything.com I've been exploring some of the features.

One very nice one is the ability to create mosaics using the book covers in your library.

It's really surprising just how satisfying this process can be. 

To the right you can see one of my early efforts. 

Click on the picture to see the book covers.

Librarything

If you like books you might want to take a look at Librarything.com. At its heart it's a site that lets you catalogue your books. It makes this easy,  just enter the title of ISBN and your book is added, along with cover art and other details including tags which allow the books to be grouped in numerous ways. 

Whilst it's unexpectedly pleasing to create the catalogue, its the connections this provides that make the site interesting. The site has over six hundred thousand members and a catalogue of 35 million books, so there is an undoubted fascination in finding books that you own uniquely, or better still share with only one other member. Alternatively lists of libraries that best match yours are the start points for delving into the catalogues of fellow members. These are but one source of suggestions for new books that you might want to read. Elsewhere books are rated in terms of how likely they are to appeal to your tastes. 

A favourite feature is Zeitgeist which provides a host of fascinating perspectives on the most popular books and authors. There's also the opportunity to create or join a wide range of forums which each pursue lines of boo related interest.

If you'd like to try it, you can catalogue up to 200 books and access all of the site's features at no cost at all. If your library grows beyond 200 titles, there is a fee, but if you've decided you like the site, the fees are very reasonable.

www.librarything.com

To Iran by Train

I've had the great pleasure of making three trips to Iran to speak at conferences. 

Each time in addition to visiting Tehran I've been able to visit other parts of the country. 

Following trips to Esfahan, Shiraz and the desert city of Yazd, this time I made the road trip to Hamadan and Kermanshah. 

I travelled with my Iranian Friend Hesam Aref Kashfi on a delightful trip, made all the more so because we travelled by land - a distance of a little under 600km.

To make my flight back home we returned to Tehran by plane which highlighted the contrast between driving through and flying over a country.

The trip resurrected an idea I'd had some time ago, to travel from the UK to Tehran overland. 

The plan, though that's too grand a name for it at the moment, would be to travel via Istanbul.

The marvel of the Internet is that there is a web site dedicated to just such journeys.

At www.seat61.com there are details of train journeys to most places you could imagine, and many that you'd never imagine. 

There's a section devoted to the trip from London to Tehran. http://www.seat61.com/Iran.htm

What's really great is that it includes travel diaries from people who've made the trips with real on-the-ground hints and tips that really whet your appetite to give it a go.

It's certainly got me thinking.

By the way the photograph is of rock carvings at Bisoton, Kermanshah one of hundreds of amazing spectacles to be seen and largely unknown to most in the West.

Calendar Wallpaper

Berghaus, the outdoor clothing and equipment company have used some beutiful photographs to create a calendar that can be used as PC screen wallpaper. 

The photos, many of them stunning, can provide an inspiring backcloth to your work environment, with a fresh picture for each month.

You can download the pictures in a variety of sizes and resolutions direct from the Berghaus web site at http://berghaus.com/clubhaus/Downloads.aspx

No Reception

I was listening to a phone-in competition on the radio today. One of the contestants explained that it was their birthday, and they were going away at the week-end to celebrate at a hotel in Scotland.

The highlight, she explained, was that the hotel had no mobile phone reception and she would therefore be forced to relax by being cut-off.

As the host of the programme joined her in describing how wonderful this would be, I was left wondering how we could have reached a point where something as simple as a phone, could have been changed from a tool designed to help us, to a burden we have to tolerate.

If, like her, your phone doesn't seem to have an off-switch, simply remove the battery it silences it just as well. Failing this for the chance to relax, place it in a bucket of water or kill two birds with one stone and relax by taking it apart.

Concorde

Yesterday I had the chance to visit Manchester Airport and learn of the ways in which they are responding to change. At the heart of their approach is a shift in their business from being focused on infrastructure, to a focus on customer service.

Security measures increasingly make air travel more of an ordeal than a pleasure, and clearly the airport are responding to this in some innovative ways.

It was interesting to see the complexities of the business which span the technologies required to prepare for the new Airbus A380 super jumbo, through to manging the British habit of joining a queue whenever we see one. Apparently this habit has on occasion almost closed the airport on health and safety grounds.

Of course this blog entry really serves only to allow me to include a photograph at the controls of Concorde, a highlight of the visit, and an aircraft that in its own way changed the world.

The Pirolette

A new slant on an old optical illusion.

You can have your profile turned into a solid wood vase called a pirolette.

http://www.turnyourhead.com/pirolette.php

The Future

A short video to illuminate how difficult it is to know the future, very nicely done.

As Niels Bohr said, "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."

Many thanks to Paul Sloane for telling me about this.

We Shall See

I was listening to the radio this morning and heard an advert for a new Audi car with Lane Assist. It's a system that alerts the driver if they get tired and begin to drift from their lane on the motorway.

It reminded me of the 'We Shall See Story' I posted earlier.

Lots of people die because they fall asleep at the wheel, so it sounds like a good idea.

Of course it could be that it simply means that drivers who are likely to drive whilst tired, will feel even more inclined to do so, with a system that 'wakes them up'.

So the net result might be less deaths, or more deaths, or round about the same deaths, achieved by drivers who just had to be even more tired so that the alarm didn't wake them.

We shall see.

Essence of Da Vinci on video III

A final video of extracts from Essence of Da Vinci. Here set to the music White Night by Ludovico Einaudi.

Essence of Da Vinci on Video II

More extracts from Essence of Da Vinci.

This time set to the music Band of Brothers by Michael Kamen.

Essence of Da Vinci on Video

I've created three short videos using extracts from my book Essence of Da Vinci set to music. This is the first which uses Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy.

I hope you like it.