GROW

Nice video to launch Oxfam's new food security campaign.



Click here to find out more and get involved.

Twitter Snow Map

I mentioned the other day about Twitter and the UK snow map, and also about the arrival of Google Earth 5. The two have been rather neatly combined to produce this nice animation:



And there's more snow on the way, according to the Met Office... (Although still actually rather sunny outside at the moment here.)

Iasi

Since I added the FeedJit widget to the blog, the most interesting thing has been watching the various odd locations it seems to think I come from - at the moment, it thinks I live in Worksop, but whilst I've been sitting in the very same spot I'm in now, it's had me in Rotherham, Doncaster, Nottingham and Mansfield. At my parents' house in Bradford, it thought I was in Mansfield and Huddersfield, mainly. It's also been pleasing to see that there have been a good number (though perhaps not as many as there should be, given the intended audience of the blog!) of visits from Alfreton (or maybe the visits registered as Alfreton are actually in Sheffield somewhere...).

Anyway, another interesting thing about it is that I have discovered a regular visitor from Iasi in Romania. Being a geographer, and having never heard of Iasi, I felt the need to go and find out more...

Iasi (which should have an accent on the s which I can't do in Blogger (does any one know how?!)) is, according to Wikipedia (which can't always be trusted, admittedly!) pronounced Jassy. It's a city in the northeast of Romania, as shown on the less than brilliant Google Earth screenshot below...

Although there are a good many videos about Iasi on YouTube (the "sad city", the "city of dreams" etc) I haven't found it particularly easy to find out much more about Iasi - other than that it is sometimes known as The City of Seven Hills.

Iasi is also home to the oldest Romanian university, and is a city known for its culture.

The Wikipedia entry (approach with caution!) is here, and there is more information on the Iasi City website.

Hopefully Suzzmoon, (my Romanian is not great, but I think that she is a geographer and student, perhaps a geography student) will be able to tell us more....????

For a more general flavour of Romania, have a look at this video from http://www.romaniatravel.com/:

ShakeOut

On Thursday, more than 5 million people across Southern California took part in a huge earthquake drill...



Find out more about ShakeOut here.

ShakeOut!

How would you cope if a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck? Very unlikely in Swanwick, but a real possibility for people living near the San Andreas Fault... which is why, on 13th November, more than 5 million people in Southern California will be taking part in The Great Southern Californian Shakeout - "the largest earthquake preparedness activity in US history".

Have a look at this video which shows what could happen when "the big one" strikes, and check out the ShakeOut website where there is lots more information, more video clips, and you can test your earthquake preparedness by playing Beat the Quake.



Thanks to Bob and Alan...

The Tinsley Towers are no more...

One of the many videos already on YouTube of the demolition of the towers which took place at 3am today... BBC story here...



Very sad...

A novel twist to travelling the world!

Mr S of the History Dept alerted me to this today...



And delving a little deeper reveals that Matt Harding hasn't just done this once - he's been dancing around the world a few times, and has his own website with tales of his travels... Brilliant!!