London 2 London

I've just come across this very interesting sounding expedition via Twitter. Sarah Outen left London on 1st April 2011 and her plan is to travel all the way round the world and back to London using only her own power - three continents and two oceans by boat and bike!



Check out Sarah's expedition website here. You can also follow Sarah's progress via Facebook and Twitter.

#UKSnowDepth

Following on from the #uksnow map started last year, Tom Barrett has set up a UK Snow Depth map... Measure the depth of your snow, and add it to the map:


View #UKSnowDepth in a larger map

Snow Missions...

I've posted a few times about the excellent Mission: Explore... but now there are Snow Missions! Try some of them out and leave a comment or send me an email with your evidence Or have a go at creating your own snow mission...

If you're a Twitter type, search #SnowMission...

Mission: Explore!

Not the first time I've mentioned Mission: Explore, but as well as the brilliant book (if you haven't bought it, you should) there's now an iPhone app - Mission: Explore London. The app contains a variety of missions located around London, and some "anywhere missions", that, surprisingly enough, you can do anywhere.

You can report on your missions via the app and on Twitter, but it would be great to hear some of your stories here too... Leave a comment or send me an email with tales of your adventures, preferably with photographic evidence... There might even be a prize for the best one...

Mission: Explore

I've posted about Mission: Explore before... But now the book is here, and it's excellent!


Check out the Mission: Explore website, follow @geocollective on Twitter, order a copy of the book, and get exploring!!

A day in the life in logos...

Another nice discovery via Twitter... This is part of 'A day in the life in logos...' Click on the image for the full version. Why not have a go at making your own? Who uses the most - or the fewest - "logos" in a day?

Is it raining?

Miserable weather here all weekend, and elsewhere in the UK too, according to Twitter. So, as a little experiments/investigation, I set up a wiki map which can be edited by anyone - add a marker with details of what the weather is like where you are...



Oh, and if you haven't already seen it, check out the brilliant Is it going to rain? which I discovered a while back but had forgotten about until it appeared in the latest GA Magazine...

If the Earth were a sandwich...

Have you ever wondered where you would end up if you dug a hole all the way through the earth?? Some of you will have seen Holey Moley before, but this new Google Maps mashup is a more recent discovery (yes... via Twitter!) and is fab...

Mt Redoubt

Lots of volcanic activity over the past week or so at Mt Redoubt in Alaska... Nice image from the webcam here:Plenty of stories if you do a Google News search, and you can follow the ongoing activity via the Alaska Volcano Observatory site and on Twitter.

More volcanoes...

Twitter (@geologynews) strikes again - 8 Hot Volcanic Eruptions from Wired Science is a collection of pretty impressive photos of volcanic eruptions including Mt St Helen's. My particular favourite is this satellite image (courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory) of Mt Cleveland, in Alaska...

Breathing Earth and Plug into Now...

Two fab new discoveries via Twitter (thanks @HelenNurton and @mbarrow)...

Breathing Earth

Plug into Now (also a Plug into Now widget at the bottom of the page...)

Is it going to rain?

Rather liked this - another new discovery via Twitter (@coolkiddo).

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.)

And more snow...

Actually, not more snow in our neck of the woods, just very cold so that the snow we had yesterday and last night was nicely frozen and dangerous... It looked very pretty though:


Lots and lots of stories, videos, photos, etc. on the BBC website, and a nice set of photos by Twitter users on Flickr (including mine from Smalley Dam yesterday)...

I particularly like this though...

More snow....

Plenty of updates to the Twitter snow map throughout the day...

Rather more snow here today than there was yesterday, but still not enough for a snow day...

Photos (and maybe a video for Callum's benefit) from my walk to Smalley Dam this afternoon to follow...

Snow...

You will probably have noticed the weather forecasts over the weekend, with Met Office warnings for "heavy snow", and, depending where in the country you are, you might also have noticed some snow...

The East Midlands was meant to be one of the worst hit areas... There was nothing, however, til the middle of this afternoon - then a sudden flurry that lasted all of five minutes. I was going to go out and video it but on opening the front door, I changed my mind. Instead, here's the view from the bedroom window:


Snow in Smalley... from victoria ellis on Vimeo.


All that's left now is a fine scattering, nicely frozen and slippy ready to cause mayhem in the morning...

You will also, most likely, have heard of Twitter in the news of late. Like many other people, I didn't "get it" at first, but it's grown on me and I've discovered lots of interesting things - especially, though not exclusively, about ICT in education... Anyway, across the "TwitterVerse", people are "tweeting" snow reports, which are being incorporated into this Google Maps mashup:
I suspect that it says more about the locations of Twitter users who are still up and about than it does about where it's snowing most, but either way, it's interesting from a geographical point-of-view.

Is it snowing where you are?