Childhood Brain Modification May 23, 2006
Posted by Mark Mitchell in : Blog, Web , add a commentWhile tapping my way through the usual interpipe sludge I come accross something fresh.. even if it looks old. Well it is old, but it has some extremely fun suggestions and there were a few things I had never seen before which I could do sitting at my desk such as:
Make ’smoke’ with your mouth
Compress the air in your mouth, then let off the pressure, then let the air out slowly. You’ll see fog!
This works! Apparently the site is about discovering your inner child by doing funny and different things that you often just dont bother with as you cruise through life.
Longer Seeing
Modify your perceptions with physics rather than psychopharmacology: put an infrared filter in some welding goggles, then wear them outdoors on a bright, sunny day. (Choose a filter that is in the near-IR, so a bit of light is visible still. Or try theatrical gels, congo blue combined with primary red, several of each.) The world will become EXTREMELY BIZARRE. Wait a couple of minutes until your eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. Then the bright pink clouds drift in the dark sky above the frosty white trees. The world is dusk, yet the sun still shines. Car tail-lights blaze brightly. The houses and roads are dark. But the grass! The trees! They are frosty blazing red, like snow which has been sprayed with cherry Kool-aid powder. Everyone’s clothes are altered. Blue-jeans are almost white. Some black clothing turns light grey. The artwork of T-shirts is almost invisible, and everyone’s hair is grey. (New: see the article.)
I’ve heard that some types of clothing are transparent to the infrared, so stagger on down to the beach and verify if this is so. “Mister, why are you wearing those goggles?”
I think this site has some superb ideas and some rather childish ones but then again I suppose thats the point.
http://amasci.com/~billb/cgi-bin/instr/instr.html
Brighton History May 22, 2006
Posted by Mark Mitchell in : Blog, Brighton , add a commentI love facts about Brighton, and there is always something new to find out. I remember talking to a taxi driver who mentioned about an old book called the The Old Ocean Bauble, where he said it is stated that there was at one point an Open House for every five people in Brighton. I think ill try and track down this book and have a look. There was also a Vapour Baths run buy a guy called Sake Dean Mohammed who was a regency ‘Shampooing Surgeon’- fascinating.
One of the things that has held particular interest to me is the old freight railway from Kemptown to Brighton station as it passed directly under our school yard at Elm Grove School. There used to be a great rumour that a worker on the line was killed in an accident and you could still hear him moaning in the now sealed tunnels. Superb!
So I am going to have a little look around as I cannot find any old maps of the route. I have the start and end points and I thought next time its a nice day and I am out and about I will track where this railway line went and put the map on here. So in the mean time I found this great picture of Volks Railway in a storm. The interesting thing to note is that it appears to be at least 10 feet raised above the ground. I wonder if the land was raised or track lowered?
