"The Sistine Chapel of Crystals..."

Where in the world is this? And what's going on?

(Photo: The Telegraph)

Ottery St. Mary??

You could probably be forgiven if you haven't heard of Ottery St Mary - but this Devon town made the national news today after freak hailstorms caused "absolute chaos"...

Rather scary video and In Pictures from the BBC and an interesting set of photos and links on Great Geography (thanks Jo!).

And on a a related note, an interesting article from the BBC about the success (or otherwise of you read the whole article) of the new Boscastle flood defences.

Who said soil was boring?

One of the exhibitors at the SAGT Conference on Saturday was the Macaulay Institute, who describe themselves as "the UK's premier land use research centre". They have produced some fantastic resources about soils and succession, which some of the Year 13 geographers will have seen before, but I have just been looking at their website and there is loads more fantastic stuff on there which is well worth a look.

And on the topic of soils, I've also just discovered Soil-net.com! Enjoy!!

Oh, and if your eyesight is not that good and you are wondering just how many living organisms there are in a teaspoon of soil, click on the picture which will take you to a pdf of the original poster on the Macaulay Institute website!

Earthquake in Pakistan

It seems that whenever we are studying tectonics, there is an earthquake or a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world. Unfortunately, this time is no exception...

An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter Scale struck 35 miles from Quetta in the Balochistan province of Pakistan this morning at 4am. So far, the death toll is 160, but this is expected to rise.

The USGS has details here including a Google Map showing the location, and you can find out more from the BBC where there is a set of eyewitness accounts, an In Pictures series, and some video footage.

Yay! The return of the penguins!!

The seals have been back for a while, but I've just spotted the first penguins of the year on the South Georgia webcam! Webcam 1 is the original webcam, and you can also look at the seals closer up on Webcam 2...

Statetris!

Just spent rather longer than I should have playing on this...

Enjoy!!

Wet and windy Edinburgh...

Spent this weekend in Edinburgh for the SAGT Conference... An interesting lecture from Iain Stewart - "Unnatural Hazards: Creating Cultures of Catastrophe":


Two excellent workshops by Ollie Bray and Alan Parkinson - some great ideas coming soon to a classroom near you!

Lots of freebies including a fab notebook made from obsolete geological maps... Interesting conversations about the possibilities of trips to Norway or Switzerland... Excellent demonstrations of a twister in a jar and a clever way to show how warm and cold fronts move...

And a fascinating talk from "The Man Who Cycled The World":

The atrocious weather for most of the rest of the weekend meant that there wasn't much photography other than a quick snap of the Castle this morning:

Looking forward to next year!

360 Cities

If you have some time on your hands, have a look at this fantastic website which I had heard about before but hadn't explored until Ollie Bray reminded us about it yesterday...


360 Cities has some stunning panoramic photography from all over the world, and - despite the name - not all of it is city-based... This one, for example, is the beautiful Landmannalaugur in Iceland:

You can also use the little Google Earth icon in the bottom right hand corner of the image to view it in Google Earth...

More Earth as Art!

8CDr's turn this time, and some fantastic work which you can have a look at on Geogtastic's Flickr page. This one was my favourite today... Well done Liam!

If you want to make your own:
- find yourself a beautiful view in Google Earth
- save it as a png or jpeg file
- go here

Have fun!

Blog Action Day

By now you will have seen the fantastic World Mapper maps... As today is Blog Action Day, here's one for you to think about that links to this year's Blog Action Day theme:

How can YOU make a difference??

Our day out!

Lovely day out yesterday planning fieldwork along the River Dove for Year 12...

Earth as Art...

8KJe spent their lesson this morning using Google Earth to create some superb art work... My personal favourite is Kieran's "Fjord Claws" below, but you can check out some of the others on Geogtastic's new Flickr pages.


If you want to create your own, have a look at Big Huge Labs Motivator tool.

Cold Photo...

As promised Year 8, Laurel McFadden's fantastic blog about her adventures north of the Arctic Circle is here:

Plenty more about the Northern Lights here...

And for those of you who were interested in setting up your own blogs, go to www.blogger.com and click Create Blog!

You will need to have a Google account to do it - you can do that either through Blogger, or by going to www.google.com and then clicking Sign In in the top right hand corner - you will then be put in your password or create an account... (Even if you decide not to set up a blog, having a Google account is a good idea because it will allow you to use all sorts of excellent applications!)

Have fun!

South Georgia

Whilst it's getting colder here, things are warming up in South Georgia, and the seals are enjoying the sunshine on the beach...


This is the view from Webcam 2 at the moment:

And Webcam 1:

And this is what it looked like on 4th October last year:
Who will spot the first penguin?!