If so, you've most likely heard Billy Bragg's "A13, Trunk Road to the Sea".
Coming from England, the song was written because Bragg couldn't visualise the American towns on the classic "Route 66" which led to him penning his own version.
However, I'm from the UK and I've only been to a handful of places mentioned in the song. So I thought it would be cool to sequence some glimpses of this journey.
I punched the co-ordinates in Google Maps
Which gave me this route
Hit play
and its off we go!
Starts down in Wapping
By-pass Barking
Straight through Dagenham
Down to Grays Thurrock (to the right)
Basildon on your left
Pitsea
Thundersley
Hadleigh
Leigh-on-Sea
Chalkwell? (By mistake, I dropped the google street dude in an old clock shop that offered a 360 panaromic walk around.)
(I tried to find the kitchen - cup of tea hunt - but ended back on the street mesmerised by the ghost cars. AHEM, back to the song...)
Chalkwell
Prittlewell
Shoeburyness
Phew!
Well, it's one way to synchronise a 2 hour journey to a 2 minute song.
"Imagine what the physical gathering... would be like if every participant wore a badge proclaiming how many friends they had in that room?"
Quote from an interview with Ben Grosser, creator of Facebook Demetricator, a browser add on that filters (and questions) the numerical influence of interactions on social media.
I love this article about a disappearing island, Île de Sable in the pacific (owned by La France). The island doesn't exist, or isn't where it's supposed to be.
One theory is it was a cartographic trap, intentional mistakes used by clever people to outsmart copycats. If so, openstreet map win the original work award (or maybe they just updated in time)
Google Maps (now you see it)
WikiMiniAtlas (now you see it)
OpenStreetMap (vamoosh!)
The intriguing thing is this, as the ruler of many islands, are you upset your island's gone? Is it akin to being told your volvo/rose bed/leopard skin pill box hat went missing and not realising you had one? Whether in this instance you throw chairs around or return indifferently to your cavier and shotgun, here's the extended hypothetical scenario; a year from now your butler informs you they found your island a mile south from its old spot.
In the words of the great philosopher, Donnie Brasco, "fuggetabout it"
A small band of architects and engineers here at Team Cakelettes have worked over night to produce this energy efficient replacement for the Underground escalator.
I had always the feeling, I wasn't sure that I'm good, not at all. But I was always sure I'm allowed to do this
- Gerhard Richter
Over the past 6 months I've become more and more obsessed with this painting.
There's a sugary distortion that conjures up another obsession, My Bloody Valentine. As I projected a floor to ceiling wall of sound on to the image i was surprised to read it's no bigger than A3.
This actuality was jarring to my daydreams of jumping into the canvas and being swallowed into a pigmented dot
Bouncing back and forth between the intergalactic decisions of 'Colour' or 'Black & White'.
One could compare it to the PC vs Mac campaign in the sense if your life was interesting you wouldn't concern yourself about it.
But if you don't have an interesting life then look yonder to the horizon to receive salutations from your brother, moi (okay, this wise overlord is actually turtled under a desk).
