Toulouse, La Ville Rose, the “Pink City”, deep in the south west, is one of the venues for Euro 2016. Wales played there on June 20th. It is of France’s most handsome cities, mid-way between Atlantic and Mediterranean and close to the Pyrenees, it contains elegant ancient wonders alongside the modern marvels of the European… Continue reading
Lille – French city transformed by high speed train
Lille and Lens The Euro 2016 football venue is the small industrial town of Lens, centre of the swirling carnage of the First World War, which was happening here exactly 100 years ago. Today the pre-eminent attraction is the new Louvre-Lens gallery, opened in 2012 as an offshoot of the great Paris museum to display some… Continue reading →
How my Motorola Moto G is most useful item I’ve ever owned
If you wondered about how our personal worlds may change through technological advance in the not very distant future, consider this. I bought my first computer in 1983. It didn’t have an operating system. The Internet was a shadowy technology few people had heard of outside the military and academia. On my computer all… Continue reading →
Natural Capital – how free things make us all richer
Why do we know the value of the things we build, but not the Natural Capital that the planet provides for nothing? There’s a price for property. Walk past any house in your neighbourhood, and if you know anything about local values, you can take an informed stab at the asking price if it went… Continue reading →
Capability Brown’s Golden triumph
Capability Brown worked on many garden landscapes in England, and there’s a glittering list of day trip possibilities. These places display his creativity and his genius, but on the scale of epic poems compared to the exquisite little sonnet that is the Golden Valley. There are days throughout the year when the National Trust’ s… Continue reading →
Pavegen’s major walk-on part in renewable energy
In 2015 renewable energy start-up Pavegen broke its crowd-fiunding target and was able to fund expansion and product development. Pavegen’s latest development in its renewable energy-generating technology (announced on May 11, 2016) is a triangular tile, the V3, said to be far more efficient than the company’s previous models, generating 5 watts per step. It… Continue reading →