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.

This sunshine map finally gives me a precise reason for being so pasty faced and also miserable in winter. I really didn't expect to see that most of Europe can't match even the least sunny places in the US, never mind somewhere like California. Would love to see similar results for Australia but I imagine it would be largely one colour. via reddit

The clocks go forward this coming weekend for British summertime. Summertime!!? Everyone is still busy freezing our asses off. It was snowing the other day and I bet this Easter weekend I'll see snow again. Nothing to do but stare out at the bald trees and gray sky. Take me back Sydney, all is forgiven.

This speaks for itself so it's hardly worth mentioning. But I have to admit now that I'm leaving that Sydney must have one of the best climates on the planet. Even in the middle of "winter" I could often go out to get lunch without a jacket and in even in the worst of the summer heat you'd don't need to worry about sweltering humidity. And you can't beat being able to sit outside late at night in shorts and a t-shirt (especially as I don't have to worry about being burnt). By and large when it's not raining it's sunny, and when it is raining it can often be accompanied by some fantastic storms. Heading off to a Northern winter, where I'll have to spend December through to April (and possibly more) moaning about the cold and the rain is enough to remind how much I've taken for granted all this time here how great it is.

This week has been hot. Waay too hot. Last Tuesday it was 33C at midnight and today it just hung around 41C for most of the afternoon and evening (it was still 35 at midnight!). I thought I'd experienced this sort of thing last year but it seems that this week's run of 30+ days has broken some 150 year record for Sydney. With all the flooding in the rest of Australia and the huge Cyclone this week the weather is truly crazy here. 75% of Australia's banana crop has been wiped out and already the prices have double in the supermarket. Thankfully the prices aren't quite what they've been advertised in work.. Update: ok that's a huge change in the space of 24 hours! It started out in the mid 30's this afternoon when we went to a shopping centre to abuse their air-con (just like everyone else) but when we came out literally a couple of hours later it was 20! Thats a whopping 21-degree drop in 24 hours..

Incredible footage of an approaching storm on a beach in Finland of all places. Its hard to believe a storm can actually movie this fast. I thought this would have turned out to be special effects but there's other photos of it on the intertubes. via boingboing

Didn't see anything about this on the news here, but in this following video I can forgive the guy for one or two "oh my god"s and "that's insane". Things get pretty incredible at around the 1 minute mark..

I usually wake up briefly at around 6.50am, thanks to the annoying gap in my window blinds, and squint at the morning sun before falling back asleep. This morning though, I was left wondering if there was horrible huge bush fire or I'd been teleported to Mars during the night. The orange colour in the sky, everywhere in the sky, was so unnerving I actually got out of bed at 7am - that's very unnerving. Stepping out onto the balcony the whole sky was just the strangest rust colour I've ever seen. Turning on breakfast TV at least let me know that the world wasn't on fire and that, logically enough, it was a big dust storm. Having said that, nothing like it has been seen in Sydney in more that 60 years. The colour had faded by the time I went to get my train to work (dust everywhere on the seats). The air was still dusty enough to taste and the visibility next to nothing and stayed that way for the next few hours. Lost of amazing photos on the Sydney Morning Herald site..