… there was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom.

At my last job I maintained the voice-menu/voicemail server, one of the number that went to server worked as a test number and played that clip when you dialed it. If you heard Marvin then you knew that the server was running. I wonder if the number still works …

And that demonstrates why, despite it’s flaws, wikipedia is great because I didn’t doubt for a second that there would be a Marvin page on there. I wonder what the most obscure/unlikely page on wikipedia is, one that has actually content rather than a stub. Just clicking ‘Random article‘ a couple of times in a journey in itself.

You may have gathered that this post contains little real content, there’s still not that much to talk about. The picture viewer I’ve been rambling about is actually live on the site but I’m still not happy with it, so no fanfare until I’m satisfied or I admit defeat and decide to put up with it as it is.

If you’re looking to create an Earth-shattering kaboom of your own I can recommend this page on How to destroy the Earth (with handy current Earth destruction status page, in case you’re worried that there was a kaboom and you just missed it.) Although it might be better for all of us if you devoted your time to solving this puzzle which has been annoying me for almost two weeks now.

A selection of warning signs we might be seeing in the future. These should really get made into stickers or fridge magnets in time for Christmas. “Existential Threat”, classic.

Yeah, I’m getting round to pictures and some posts about the trip, it’s just taking a while.

Thirty days, nine time zones, eight cities, six languages (at least), five currencies, four countries, three different alphabets, and me doing a thirteen thousand two hundred and sixty two miles (ish) round trip.

There should be some stuff appearing on the site, but we’ll have to see how it goes. In the meantime I thought I’d share some links that I’ve been using to help.

First up, “The Man in Seat Sixty-One… ” the site mostly responsible for this whole trip. Basically it covers how to travel to anywhere without flying and how to get around by train and ship once you get there. It has a dedicated Trans-Siberian page with pictures of the trains, tips, timetables etc. It’s a fantastic site, more so because it’s not profit driven but done by someone who just has a love of the subject. A good read even if you’re not planning a train journey anywhere and required reading if you are.

I’d like to recommend a travel site with good country or city guides but most of them aren’t great, you can always try Rough Guide or Lonely Planet but they want you to buy the books so the free stuff is patchy at best. Sites like tripadvisor that have user content are only has good as the contributions and I find most of them badly laid out and too full of ads. Late in the planning of the trip I found Wikitravel, pushed down the Google results by all the sites wanting to sell you stuff. It’s exactly what you think it is, a travel guide in wiki format — again only as good as it’s contributors but nicely laid out, ad-free, and it has lots of decent content all licensed under creative commons. It also took me ages to find a site with decent health information for travellers until I found MDtravelhealth.com which is, simply put, excellent.

Shopping wise I picked up a lot of the stuff I’m taking second hand from friends (thanks all) and a fair bit of stuff off ebay or Amazon* (mostly the Marketplace). The rest is from good old fashioned bricks and mortar shops. Bookwise I’ve really liked the Lonely Planet phrasebooks, the Berlitz city guides but my main reference on the trip will be the Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway* book. For travel money I’ll be trying Travelex, I normally go with the Post Office but Travelex seem to have much better rates and I can pick the money up at Stansted Airport meaning I don’t need to lug around a ton of cash while I’m in London.

I think a quick link to all the travel companies and on-line booking services I’ve used is in order, so here goes: EasyJet (flights out), Eurolines (bus to St. Peterburgh), HotelClub* (Guangzhou hotel), Expedia*(Hong Kong hotel), British Airways (flights back) and, of course, Vodkatrain for everything else.

I’ve also found Wikipedia useful for providing me with interesting facts to tell people when they ask where I’m going, and here’s the City Distance Tool I used to get my miles travelled figure at the start of this post. I’ve been using GMail and Writely to ensure that all my travel documentation is only as far away as the nearest ‘net connection.

Finally to keep you occupied until more content appears either read Simon of Space or play with a White Jigsaw.

Have fun everyone.

[Full Disclosure] The links with a ‘*’ are affiliate links and earn me (or Seat61.com in the case of the Trans-Siberian book) money if you buy after clicking through.

More festival stuff is coming but I couldn’t resist sharing this example of how odd your brain/body connection can be (from The Brown Stuff):

1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor
and make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction.

Aha, I thought, that’s just a con to make people look stupid. But then I tried it and it works. So I tried it several times, and it still works. Try it yourself, see if you can outfox your foot …

Found via NHS Blog Doctor

Since I’ve now got the last thing I wanted, it’s time to for the materialistic part of my mind to focus on something else.

And it’s has, the Ice Cream Ball:

I’ve seen this before but previously it was only available in America, once again FireBox comes up with goods and are offering it over here. I’m not actually sure how much I’d use this since I don’t eat a lot of Ice Cream, but it’s just so damn cool (no pun intended) that I want one.

Just don’t put your hamster in it by accident.

Oooo, it’s a box …

… filled with paper …

It’s too damn hot.

Anyway, here’s a couple of games to waste some time. A slick little asteroids type thing: Neon and a deeply annoying patience/puzzler card game: RSVP.

Finally, proof that everything is somewhere on the internet, Marmaduke Explained. Quality, my favourite is this one.

Games, as always, from JayIsGames. Random internet link thanks to Freakgirl.

The Edinburgh Film Festival lineup is online. The horror lover in me is drawn to Them, nothing else jumps out at the moment but I’ll probably go and see a few things if I have time.

What I’d really like to mention, and you knew this was coming, is the website: it’s great. It’s not perfect, but it’s both stylish and useful, just take a look at the daily view. Now that is how you present listings information, the pane scrolls so no reloading the pages, it makes it obvious what clashes and you can mouse over films for full information. Perfect for people who want to find something to do on a particular day, if you don’t like that you can just display everything alphabetically and page through it, sadly only shows ten entries per page but you take what you can get.

Each film has it’s own full details page with a good long blurb, full show times, links to more information and recommendations for other films you might like. That last feature combined with the Suggest-O-Tron, which suggests films that are similar to other films, allows you to really browse through the site.

To be fair they’re probably the smallest of the festival sites but it’s still the only one that hasn’t annoyed me. It’s intuitive and easy to use but still has some great features. If I was being picky I’d want more search results per page and to have to click through less pages to bookmark a movie or book tickets. The keyword search function does seem to be flaky, that might be a temporary glitch and they have so few events that it hardly matters.

What’s even better is that, if my memory is correct, they’ve changed and improved the site this year rather than just sticking with what worked last year. If only other sites would follow their lead.

Win Stuff. Ewan’s stuff to be precise, Paypal him a fiver, get random stuff in return. I’ll let you know what I get.

Watch TV. T in the Park for instance. The BBC are flexing their extra channels with a ton of coverage this year. Look out for me. I’ll be the drunk Scotsman.

Be Anonymous. With your very own black bar.

Make Art. with toast. Originally on this site, which has some pretty … eh … interesting other stuff on it.

Send a Message. in a bottle.

Watch More TV. Particularly the last episode of Baby Mindreader next Monday, which should be stunning if he continues to up the ante from this week (yes, I watched it again). See what he can come up with to top literally bursting into tears whilst ‘channelling’ a two-year old’s fear of growing up.

Get a Widget. From Widgetoko.

Find More To Read. Amuse yourself by searching Google News for classic phrases such as “politcal correctness gone mad“, or “sick as a parrot“. Make an RSS feed of them and add them to your news reader. Share your phrases and stories — my favourite: Bonnyrigg Primary renames classes ‘1a’ and ‘1b’ so the bs don’t feel second best. Idiots.

Take a Step. The longest journey begins with a single step …

Credit to Slashfood, Ben Werdmuller, and Defamer. This post 98% filler. May contain hints of future postings. Written in an facility that handles nuts. Enjoy your weekend everyone.

I’m feeling vindicated today, one of the ideas I’ve had for a while is that there’s a market for making affordable housing out of old train carriages, airplanes fuselages, shipping containers etc. Useful for areas where the prices make it difficult to get started on the property ladder or just where there’s a demand for easy, cheap, small footprint housing. Mostly people have scoffed at this idea — I get that a lot — but it’s actually happening. Here’s a SFGate.com article about shipping containers and here’s a proposed design for a library using recycled airplanes. I can’t find anything about railway carriages but the same ideas could apply to them. A lot of these ideas might seem a bit strange, but I think that there’s a lot of potential in unorthodox housing ideas. I just need to come up with something that’s not already been done.

Of course, they’re not really recycling the containers or the airplanes, essentially they’re downcycling them. This stage is the end of the life cycle, we’re just postponed the eventual disposal, and it takes significant resources to adapt them to their new use. Imagine if, say, train carriages where designed for eventual easy conversion to housing, or some other purpose, once they’d served their time in their first use. Instead of designing things fit for one purpose, design things that have an entire life cycle built in. For more, or just to find out where I swiped the term downcycling from, read Cradle to Cradle.

That little bit inspired by a post on Treehugger. Also from there, and almost too late, I discovered that Green Design: Creativity with a Conscience is on at the National Museum of Scotland. It ends this Sunday, but I might still get a chance to go have a look.

Speaking of things that I’ll probably never get round to seeing, the Edinburgh Book Festival launched it’s 2006 listing today. If you’ve read my previous comments about listings sites you can guess what I think of that one so I’ll skip that part and just say I gave up looking for things. I’ll pick up a paper copy at some point.

Try as I might I can’t make that link into my final bit so just have a look at a Little Illusion that’s been doing the rounds on the web. It’s pretty cool and he’s got a nice tutorial showing how to create the effect from your own photos.