I had seen a couple of electric car charging stations a short while ago, but that was somewhere near Mayfair, the most expensive stop in Monopoly, and probably home to some of London's frequently absent mega rich. And of course all the charging stations were empty; I don't think there are any electric lamborghinis yet. So a bit of a surprise to see a couple of charging stations in our local suburb. And in use this time. And appropriately enough the car looked a little more modest - I'm not even sure this one in particular would offer me as much leg room as an airline seat.

Confirming suspicions that it's been a wet enough winter, it seems that it's also officially the wettest winter for 250 years. That seems to fit right in with 2013 having had the coldest spring in 50 years and 2012 having being the second wettest on record. There's been no flooding around here but closer to the river things look a little worse. The area between the sign and the fence (not to mention the sign itself) is not supposed to be the river. But now that important conservative party-supporting areas have been flooded too the government has taken notice and sent in the army. It's pretty depressing to hear that despite everything though, attitudes don't change Journalist: So do you think this could be caused by climate change? Vox Pop 1: Nah, this wouldn't have happened if they'd just dredged the rivers.. Vox Pop 2: That climate change thing is just a scam for the politicians to make money off those horrible wind turbines Vox Pop 1: It's impossible to know - sure the climate's always changin', innit? We're doomed.

I'm sure being a telemarketer is already bad enough but that's a pretty high probability that they're being replaced by robots. I'm also surprised (and unnerved) that pilots aren't much safer in their jobs. Fascinating: probability that computerization will lead to job losses in next decade, from Economist pic.twitter.com/mVKZ0g1bNW — Ben Malbon (@Malbonnington) January 20, 2014

Like most one year old's, Pigeon junior gets excited by any music and seems to enjoy moving his body (sort of) to the rhythm (except music that comes out of the disembodied scary box on the shelf, also known as the stereo). Some things get him up dancing immediately - like the countdown music to BBC news on tv for example. But the one thing guaranteed to get him moving more than anything else are the Shapes. It's just a two minute bit from another CBeebies program but he goes crazy when they appear. So how great is it (or perhaps as some weird kind of torture for parents) someone has put up a continuous 10 hours of Shape action on youtube. Guaranteed peace if only for a few minutes.

I don't get to leave my desk the privilege to sit in on too many of these anymore but this video really hits every conference call high note. Brilliant. via doobybrain.com

I don't mean for this blog to turn into a feed for kottke.org, but these earth simulations of current wind and ocean currents are well cool. 3d simulations you can drag with your cursor, the above is a screen grab of the wind one, while the ocean one is here. via kottke.org. Update 15.02: It's amazing how quickly the media have grabbed on to this site. With all the recent flooding in these parts I've seen screen shots of this website showing strong winds or currents on loads newspaper covers recently.

Firestarter doesn't look half as scary without the music to go with it. Jamiroquai and Queen here too. via kottke.org