Links from March 2009 (Phil Gyford’s website)

In Pictures: Secret Bits Of The Barbican - Londonist: Not that secret - only two or three photos are from inside the building that's currently being turned into flats, but still interesting.
Big Tent Atheism - Boing Boing: I often wonder what a really populist atheism would look like. Could it exist? If so, would it look like anything?
The Escapist : Video Galleries : Zero Punctuation : Gears of War 2: Quite enjoying these animated games reviews, although this is the only game I've played much, so far. Kind of sounds like old Victor Lewis Smith.
Charlie Brooker: To politicians, we're little more than meaningless blobs on a monitor | Comment is free | The Guardian: I'm going through that periodic "who can I bring myself to vote for?" dilemma and this just makes it worse. Just one good party would be enough. (via Lee)

Stu Nicholls | CSSplay | A css only dropdown menu: Sounds good but haven't explored it thoroughly.
CR Blog » Blog Archive » Meet Mr Chicken: Fascinating stuff about the man who designs "90%" of all the signs for fried chicken places in London. (via Chris Heathcote)
Hot gossip as Pepys and Austen go blogging - Times Online: Pepys in the Sunday Times. Reads as if it's only just started, rather than having been around for more than six years. And why do these journalists never get in touch with me?
A "port" to the US | Ask Metafilter: A way to convince an internet service you're accessing it from the US. (via Haddock)

BarbicanTalk.com :: View topic - Has anyone else received the faulty postal vote forms?: This all sounds a bit dodgy, in the City of London's bizarre version of democracy.
Get Your Walk Score - A Walkability Score For Any Address: Interesting idea for measuring how walkable the area around an address is. Despite appearances it appears to work with UK addresses too.
BBC News | Entertainment | BBC Two to show US TV's The Wire: Showing every night!? Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit, why does BBC2 screw up every single decent US show it gets its dumb hands on?

Nylon Backpack for All MacBooks : Incase Product: I saw a couple of Incase backpacks at the conferences and they look very nice.
Op-Ed Contributor - For Sale - The $100 House - NYTimes.com: This is fascinating, showing a way the make-up of parts of cities could change drastically due to the recession. Although I wonder whether the journalist is extrapolating from an isolated one-off incident. (via Kottke)
Property search engine for homes for sale & property to rent in the UK - Globrix: Not a bad interface for property searches. Bookmarking because I like window shopping (or being nosey) and I'll forget the meaningless URL.
MailSteward: A pay-for Mac app that archives email into SQLite or MySQL databases. Looks pretty awesome for searchable backups. Need the pro version for large volumes of email (>100,000 messages).

HowTo: EC2 for Poets: Nice simple instructions from Dave Winer on how to set up an Amazon EC2 virtual web server. (via Preoccupations)
Video: Batman Logo Evolution » Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog: I like how drastically the logo changes over the years and yet it's always recognisable (except maybe that Batman Nightfall X-Wing-style logo).
Gallery of covers from the 1990s version of Wired UK | Technology | guardian.co.uk: I guess all that scanning and stitching together paid off.
London CycleStreets: UK Cycle Journey Planner and Photomap: A new site for planning your cycle journeys, using OpenStreetMap maps. A great start.
The first one’s the hardest | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog: Nice description of someone designing their first font over eighteen months. I'd love to try this (you know, if I had ten times the time I do). (via Kottke)

London cops reach new heights of anti-terror poster stupidity - Boing Boing: It's hard to believe these posters aren't some kind of parody. And it's hard to react without using clichés (1984, Orwellian, etc).
Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: the kids are alright: And while I'm at it, Chris's post from a few weeks back. What kind of country are we living in now? We'll need someone to invade the UK and "liberate" us soon.
Daring Fireball: Obsession Times Voice: This "do the thing that interests you" advice (see also Tim O'Reilly) is all very well, but if you're interested in lots and lots of things it doesn't work nearly as well. You get spread too thinly.
Video Game Downloads on FileFront: Another site wiping oodles (apparently 48 terabytes) of user-generated/uploaded content. The "cloud" is the future you know. (via Waxy)

Links from March 2009