Feb 02 2009
Snow Day and Twitter
It just has to be done … a post about the snow in London! However, I will try to add a few thoughts on Twitter as well, and its role in helping people what is going on with the weather. In terms of transport, as opposed to looking out the window and seeing that it’s still snowing.
As soon as I got “the call” at 7am, just before I left the house, but was already warmly wrapped up (”the call” being, of course, snow day: school’s closed!”), I decided to head out anyway but with my camera rather than my rucksack. The sky was still a bit brown-grey, just beginning to clear, the air was crisp, and the snow was (still is, in most cases, at the moment) clean, crisp, fluffy, white, light and airy. I wandered around the local area, and took quite a few photos, before heading back to my back yard, making a couple of snow angels, and building a snow-face (the snow was a bit too soft and fluffy to impact together to make a full sized snow person!). I then decided that, since I was still awake, to upload my photos before going back to catch up with my sleep (now at 81% uploaded, been going since about 9am and it’s now 2pm …) and see what was happening in the world of Twitter.
A lot. Also, a lot of people were twittering using “#uksnow” (this made me discover that I’ve no hash sign on my computer, which is a bit weird); there are sites dedicated to looking at these “hashtags” and how they are used on Twitter. Exploring these links helped me find a number of interesting pages: Broadstuff reflects on how Twitter has helped people find out what the transport arrangements have been like around the UK; there’s a great map mashup showing how much snow is falling in different parts of the UK; I’ve started using TwitPic because so many others have been showing off their snow photos, and Channel4News were wanting people to upload pics (and to get their 3000 follower – it could be you!).
Anyway, it’s all been fun, and later I’ll see about posting some of my favourite Flicker snow pics here!
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