August 13, 2007
Things I've Learnt Today
I was pretty amazed to learn from Boing Boing that Colossal Cave was based on a real cave. Presumably if you visit the cave you see various places where adventurers have scrawled XYZZY on the walls.
I was rather less amazed to learn that the Hatfield Galleria didn't have any shops whatsoever worth visiting. Many of the stores are boarded up; of those that remain, many are not outlets at all, or are just branches of discount chains such as The Works or TK Maxx. There are a few true outlets, but none of the high-end manufacturers' outlets I'm used to from other outlet villages. The M&S outlet store is particularly weak, with a few end-of-runs at small discounts (I would not be surprised to discover that the prices here are exactly the same as in other M&S shops; certainly one offer I particularly noticed was the same) and a 'clearance' area that appears to be a random jumble of unsalable customer returns.
Posted by Alison Scott at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2007
You Learn Something New Every Day
This feels like a new category for the blog. I certainly learn something new every day, and some of those things are even bloggable. One of the non-bloggable ones is that I was told this morning that the Met Office had added new areas to the Shipping Forecast for the first time for years -- Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire.
When I was young I had a jigsaw made of the countries of Europe, and a map of the UK with the counties, towns and major rivers on little bits of sticky plastic which you fixed in place. But the countries of Europe and the counties of Britain have changed a good deal since then. The US states, on the other hand, are a gratifyingly stable form of learning; no changes to the lower 48 for well more than my lifetime. Nevertheless, I've learnt more about the shapes and positions of states today than in the whole of the rest of my life, thanks to Statetris, a flash game where the states drop from the top of the board and you have to rotate them and get them in the right place. My top time on 'hard' is 3:23; not bad for a foreigner. Now, if we could just get someone to teach US children where France is on the map, we might be getting somewhere.
Separately, I learn from Green Chair Press that the rhyme I know as 'The Queen of Hearts' was published in 1782 and has four verses, one from each suit.
If this were LiveJournal, I could do a version of the Good/Bad poll, so you could choose for each YLSNED item whether it's new learning, or old hat. Feel free to comment instead.
Posted by Alison Scott at 11:48 AM | Comments (1)