what

he's also an epileptic with a wife and children - doing this for his own thrills, what a great guy..

lovely

Out drinking one day with my foodie wine guru Will, I had a pint of an obscure lager. "you don't drink lager!" he spluttered at me. I do drink lager, just not the fizzy gnats piss megabranded as "lager" in the same way Guiness extra cold is branded as a "stout".

Crossbill geek blog - crossbills are far, far more interesting than I thought

the line "I'd opened the flood gates by daring to speak out and say that enough was enough" says as much about modern-day casual sexism as anything - how dare you complain etc etc

Folding a note into a little shirt

In 1855 a little book was published in Paris to little notice - a Portuguese?English phrase book. It was nearly 30 years beore it was discovered to contain a rich deposit of pure hilarity. Carolinho, who knew no English, had constructed it by taking a Portugese/French phrasebook written by Da Fonesca and translated the French word for word into English using a dictionary. A masterpiece of unintended humour

How did this not only get comissioned, but as Channel 4's flagship show?

recreate childhood photos

...and a second newspaper prints archive photos from a match in 1987

Southampton ban press photographers at their match, local paper gets in a cartoonist to cover the match instead. Great stuff, but the final print was with photographs supplied by the rival team, Plymouth Argylle.

A bottle of the rum from the last stocks used for the Royal Navy's 300 year old tradition of rum ration. £599 a bottle. yum.

A great thing about the internets is how easy its made specialist nature networks - in this case, the Butterfly Conservation Trust - to enlist public help in nation-wide surveys. The Big Butterfly Count has to be one of the best recent uses of technology, with a simple ID chart, an easy count, instant results, and the ability to see your & neighbouring results on a googlemap. Even 10 years ago this would have been nowhere near as succesful. Also, you should go out this week and count butterflies!

The sequel to the 9 hour long Bergen to Oslo train journey

What! This completely passed me by

aaa my brain. I am saving this for the long winter nights.