Archive for August, 2015

Search across all national and local newspapers in the UK

A handy new Google CSE search engine for all national and local newspapers in the UK. Though setting up RSS keyword alerts for Google News is probably a lot less work, if you’re regularly tracking a set of topics.

BBC: stormy outlook

Looks like I won’t be enjoying the elegant design of the BBC’s per-day / 5-day weather forecast for much longer. The BBC is set to swop the Met Office data feed for either a Dutch or a New Zealand weather company, according to The Economist. Oh well. What’ll be needed then, come the Autumn, is […]

Extreme Land Rovers

A survey of some of the most extreme types of Land Rover to come out of Birmingham.

GRAFT

To accompany my JURN search tool I’ve made a quick way to search across all the world’s repositories. Repositories are the special Web servers that universities, museums and archives etc, use to house all their digital goodies — such as online collections, full-text papers and book chapters, and similar Open Access treats. The new search […]

L.S. Lowry and Arthur Berry: observers of urban life

The major show L.S. Lowry and Arthur Berry: observers of urban life premieres at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, until 10th January 2015 (£5).

Edward Robert Hughes

Enchanted Dreams: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of Edward Robert Hughes is a major show in Birmingham city centre’s Gas Hall, from 17th October 2015 (£7). Picture: Edward Robert Hughes, “Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale, I quake to follow?”.

Fifty-three Stages of the Eastern Sea Road

The prints of Hiroshige’s Fifty-three Stages of the Tōkaidō [Eastern Sea Road]” (1832, pub. 1833) are on show in Wolverhampton until 21st November 2015.

Workshop Birmingham

Workshop Birmingham wants to “create substantial new facilities” for contemporary arts / crafts production in Birmingham.

Latte artist-of-the-day, delivered by robots

It seems that the robot coffee-froth-art baristas are on their way, though not quite yet in kitchens on the High St. Once the bots are proven in the chain coffee shops and have a central database of latte art designs to choose from, could chains then have a curated “artist of the day”? With the […]

Drone Races

The new, underground sport of first-person drone racing. Don’t forget to take the air-sickness tablets, guys…

The insect hotel of Uttoxeter

A super new ‘insect hotel’ is due to open very soon at Uttoxeter in North Staffordshire. A very nice bit of garden/architectural/eco design.

Manchester accent map

Greater Manchester accent map. Interesting, but possibly somewhat of a summer silly season item — the sample size is 62 ‘non-experts’, the map looks like something made by undergraduates for a student magazine, and the local press’s description of the methodology seems suspiciously vague… “Participants were given a blank map of the area of Greater […]

Evil in the Shining Light

This looks like a possibly interesting art show: Evil in the Shining Light: art inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien… It follows the excellent Walsall Art Gallery show on Tolkien and the Black Country which happened last summer.