Six Things, Volume 110

Orbis | Lose Yourself | Compost | Breakfast | Kodachrome | Calculator

Thing 1 – Orbis

Well, there goes the week.

I’ve seen Orbis knocking around the place for a while now, but never taken the time to explore it – and I do like to spend at least a bit of time playing with something before throwing it your way.

The subtitle of Orbis is “the geospatial network model of the Roman world”. What it allows you to do is reconstruct journeys in the Roman Empire. How long would it have taken you to travel from, say, Londinium to Constantinopolis in an oxcart in winter? 127.5 days, apparently – an army, marching quickly in summer, would have covered it in a third of the time. MAKES YOU THINK.

The possibilities are endless and fascinating – I particularly enjoy seeing how long the same journey would have taken at different times of year.

The makers are at pains to explain that this is a top-down model, simulating the average experience of a large number of travelers, rather than trying to reproduce specific single journeys for a single person. But what the hell. It’s brilliant fun.

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Thing 2 – Lose Yourself

The Unusual Suspect has made a supercut of clips from 331 films to recreate Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’. It’s quite the thing. You will indeed lose yourself trying to see how many of the 331 films you can name.

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Thing 3 – Compost

“Making compost isn’t difficult. Pile up some dead things and compost will happen.”

I loved this piece by Fraser Macdonald about the joys of compost. Beautifully written, and a paean to the mysteries of the rotting heap.

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Thing 4 – Breakfast Machine

I’ve been following the progress of Joseph Herscher in his quest to recreate in real life Wallace’s Breakfast Machine, which has given so much pleasure to so many people in the 32 (I had to check that – THIRTY-TWO) years since it first appeared on the big screen. At times it’s seemed like an impossible task, but he (backed up by an endlessly resourceful team) is nothing if not persistent. And the end result, as well as all the excellent behind-the-scenes stuff as he explains some of the difficulties inherent in such a daunting operation, is well worth it.

Cracking film, Gromit.

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Thing 5 – Kodachrome

Old photos hold a special fascination. Who were these people? What are their stories? And this collection – from a box of slides found by photographer Thomas Hawk in an antiques shop – delivers some excellent moments of quiet history, made especially vivid by that special Kodachrome colour. Some have captions – ‘cat at the Grand Canyon’ and ‘Spain, man with two goats and boy’ are favourites – but others allow you to draw your own conclusions.

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Thing 6 – Unsure Calculator

Oh this is nice. A calculator which allows for built-in uncertainty. Instead of 700 x 800, how about ‘between 650 and 750 x between 750 and 850’? A simple idea with many possible real-life applications. I first saw it in Tom Scott’s newsletter and have encountered it several times since.