Status-Q

My friend Jade, helping me walk Tilly this afternoon.

I tend to post quick links to Twitter (from where they're cross-posted to Facebook), but I know from long experience that if you want to keep a record of anything and have some chance of finding it again in future, you need to keep it yourself.

So here are a few interesting things from the past week:

• TheConversation is a news-analysis and opinion site where the authors are academics. Their tagline: 'Academic rigour, journalistic flair'. If you want serendipitous news discovery with intelligent writing, but old media just isn't doing it for you, this may be worth a try.

• Old URLs don't die, they just get reincarnated. Beware of letting your old DNS domains lapse, especially if they live on in a tangible form.

• This map of the Granta Backbone Network will interest any Cambridge people wondering how the university networks connect together.

The Wolfson@50 talks continue to be interesting and informative. Andy Herbert brought his mobile computer, an Elliot 903, to his talk on Wednesday.

While he set it up, John recorded the event on his more powerful one.

While walking my dog in the fens yesterday, I saw a windmill, some miles away on the horizon.

That wasn't unusual around here.

But its sails were turning, and that was.

I set out on a search, and found it in the little village of Wicken, where Dave, Mary Ellen and Alan kindly showed me around.

It was a thoroughly inspiring visit - a beautiful sunny day with lots of wind, and as I climbed higher and higher, the whole building thrummed, almost purred, with an energy that rose and fell with the gusts.

I also captured some quick footage on my iPhone.

(Also on Vimeo here).

Definitely recommended if you're in the area when it's open - usually the first weekend of the month.

Tilly crossing the dyke, just north-west of Reach, this afternoon.

We visited Eltham Palace, in London, today. An enjoyable outing. Henry VIII grew up here, though he wasn't a great fan of Art Deco, so that was added more recently.

My new watch can be used as the viewfinder for my iPhone camera. So, of course, the first thing it wanted to do was take a selfie.

There's a slight delay in the image, and in the shutter release, which means that the shot the camera actually took was after my finger had moved off the screen, but the image on the watch, from a second before, still shows it in place. If you click to see the full-size image, you can see a few levels of recursion (which says something about the resolution of this 1.5" display!).

Very peaceful on Grantchester Meadows this morning.

Holkham Beach in Norfolk is an amazing place. It's just vast.

Yesterday, the car park was packed, and the path from it to the beach a queue of people and dogs, yet when we got there and walked for just a few minutes, it looked like this:

A few more, and it looked like this:

(Yes, that's Tilly - you can click for a bigger version.)

Looking away from the sea, you get this:

And I'm fond of that, admittedly less exciting, view, because it features in the memorable closing sequence of my favourite movie.

Tilly absolutely adored it, and seemed to keep running, flat out, for about an hour and a half.

All in all, a most enjoyable stroll.

The Fairfield Horseshoe, from Clappersgate.

This is supposed to be an excellent walk, but I've never done it. It's on the list, perhaps when it's a bit less snowy!

In the grounds of Wray Castle, Windermere. I thought each of the main branches had different and interesting characters.

Click for a larger version