How about an 'easy mode' for people too skittish to enjoy horror films. Peril warnings given in advance, that sort of thing.

Because I would genuinely like this to be a 'thing' this post is Creative Commons and you can repost it with me as author (feel free to edit it but please don't change my meaning). See at the end on how to credit me.

Image credit: Image by KTkato from Pixabay, with added text. (Note that the image is separate from the Creative Commons licence below).

 
The main problem I have with horror films is gore and unexpected jump scares. The jump scares are worse and so I rarely choose to watch horror as I don't enjoy being startled, then shown something unpleasant. 

Sometimes films use music, pacing, cinematography, tropes etc to warn the audience that something unpleasant is imminent and I tend to close my eyes at that point. This has got me through Silence of the Lambs and Pitch Black, both of which I actually enjoyed. Now that I know where the 'eek' bits are in both films I can watch them 'safely'. 

Sometimes films don't use music etc to warn and I do not like that one bit.

For me the ideal would be that thing they use in old silent films where an intertitle card warns "Peril ahead..." or "Watch out for that thing there." 

Accessibility means that it's now possible to watch almost any film with subtitles and increasingly more of them now have audio descriptions to describe to visually impaired people what's happening on-screen. I'd quite like a Timid Setting version of scary films with variable options. E.g. you could have the screen blur when something horrific happens, or an audio or text indicator warns you to shut your eyes.... right about... now. 

Creative Commons Licence

How about an 'easy mode' for people too skittish to enjoy horror films. Peril warnings given in advance, that sort of thing. by Jo Brodie is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Post inspired by my niece who was a professional scarer at a Hallowe'en event.

The bit below isn't part of the CC BY 4.0 licence as I don't own the rights to others' posts so can't grant permission to use.

Examples from other domains

Haunted houses

I remember reading a few years ago a post somewhere (can't remember details sadly) where someone said that they were too feeble to enjoy haunted houses and would like there to be a preview event before it opened properly where you could visit and learn about the story world without any of the actual scaring. The actors could talk about their roles, you could enjoy exploring the experience and no-one would jump out at you. Wish I'd kept hold of that. I found some that are conceptually similar, below.

Wholesome haunted house shenanigans - this Reddit post gives a couple of examples of fairly mundane things where people dropped their spectacles and a scarily dressed zombie helped them then went back to growling at people. Commenters add their stories too.

"I like haunted houses in theory BUT I have no idea how to react when the actors speak to you. They ask me a question and I just… answer it… The scariest part of a haunted house is the unscripted social interaction." - this Tumbler post considers the awkwardness inherent in haunted house events.

Related: Autism Dad Creates Sensory-Friendly Haunted House - inspired by his autistic son a man in Ohio created a quiet, no flashing lights haunted house experience where the actors were friendly not scary.

Gaming

I like this thread from Moose Allain where he mentions that he'd enjoy playing a version of a game where you just get to explore the landscape without any of the jeopardy of meeting with someone or something that might want to harm you.

Places in London that do talks and public events that I like (or might like) going along to

Since my old blog post (written in 2013, updated in 2016) has links that are out of date I thought it was time to give this a bit of a refresh and add some new venues. 

There are ~62 venues listed here and I seem to have been to events at 41 of them, so a few more to visit!

Science and culture

• Academy of Medical Sciences: Events
  
• Barts Pathology Museum: Events | Eventbrite page
• Blackheath Scientific Society: Programme
• Chelsea Physic Garden: What's on 
• Geological Society: Public Lectures 2025
• Gresham College: What's on
• Hampstead Scientific Society: Talks
• Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution: What's on
• Horniman Museum: What's on
  
• Hunterian Museum (surgery etc): What's on 
• Kew Gardens (the KMIS lectures are a treat, info about where they're held can be found on their Eventbrite page): What's on
• Imperial College: Events
  
• Institute of Physics: Events (filtered for public / family / STEM professionals)
  
• Linnean Society: Upcoming events
• Natural History Museum: What's on 
• Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garrett: Events 
• Old Royal Naval College: Homepage (scroll down for talks and events, e.g. 20th January celebrates Luke Jerram's Mars)
• RI - Royal Institution: What's on 
• Richmond Scientific Society: programme
• Royal Astronomical Society: Public lectures & events  
• Royal Geographical Society w IBG: Events / Upcoming events (London | online) 
• Royal Museums Greenwich (National Maritime / Royal Observatory): What's On | Planetarium shows
• Royal Society of Chemistry: Events (filtered for South East / schools etc)  
• Royal Society of Medicine: Events | Public Engagement Programme
• RS - Royal Society: Public events 
• Salter's Institute (chemistry): Events
• Science Gallery London: What's on 
  
• Science Museum: See and do
• South London Botanical Institute: Events
  
• The Crick: What's on | Public events 
• UCL (University College London): Lunchtime Lectures
  
• Wellcome Trust (Wellcome Collection): What's On | Events
  
• Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London: Events list 

Music, film and arts culture

• Antique Beat / A Curious Invitation / Salon for the City: | Eventbrite page
• Barbican: What's on 
• BFI: What's on (inc IMAX and London Film Festival info) | Previews and events 
• Blackheath Halls: What's on
• Blackheath Society: Events
  
• British Academy: Lectures
  
• British Library: What's on | All events
• British Museum: Exhibitions and events 
  
• Cafe Oto: Events
• Cinema Museum: Homepage | Spring Season 2025 | Kennington Bioscope
• Centre of the Cell: Events
  
• Century Club: The Soho Series (with Antique Beat and A Curious Invitation) | Events
• Conway Hall: What's on
• Design Museum: What's on | Talks, courses & workshops
  
• Garden Cinema: Homepage / What's on
• Guildhall Library: Eventbrite page
  
• Horse Hospital: What's on 
• ICA: Upcoming 
• Iklectik: What's on
  
• Interesting Conference: Interesting 2025
  
• In The Dark Radio - A celebration of stories told through sound
• King's Place: What's On
• London Month of the Dead (see also Antique Beat): Homepage (every October)
• Lost Lectures: Events
  
• Morley College: Events | Penny Lectures
  
• National Gallery: Events 
• National Portrait Gallery: Events
• QMUL (Queen Mary University of London): Events
  
• Regent Street Cinema: Homepage 
• Roundhouse: What's on 
• Royal Academy of Arts: Events | Exhibitions
  
• Royal Academy of Music: What's on
• Royal Albert Hall: What's on: everything 
• Royal Institute of Navigation: Community Calendar
  
• RSA - Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce: Upcoming events | Public talks
• Shakespeare's Globe & Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (candle lit): What's on
• Society of Antiquaries of London: Events 
• Somerset House: What's on 
• Southbank Centre: What's on 
• St Bride Foundation: What's on
  
• The Charterhouse: What's on 
• The Courtauld: What's on
  
• V&A - Victoria and Albert Museum: What's on 
• Wallace Collection: Events 
• Wilton's Music Hall: What's on 

 

 

Internet whimsy: I'm looking for more examples of quirky web and computing stuff, here's what I have so far

Part of my day job involves writing about computer science (in its widest sense) for the Computer Science For Fun (CS4FN) blog and print magazine(s). We write about computer science research, history of the topic, themed stuff, how to do something or other - all sorts. 

I'm also a big fan of the Really? No, Really? podcast in which the hosts (Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden) have a guest on each week to talk about something that's amazed, amused or baffled them and sometimes all three. 

There are lots of stories in the world of computing that do the same and I thought I'd write about some of them, but while I know lots (below) I'm sure there are others I've not heard of yet. 

What am I missing in the list below of quirky computer science type things? 

• Lava lamps and security - Cloudflare trains a camera on a wall of lava lamps and converts the images (incredibly random!) into a string of numbers to help with encryption.
  
  
• "Open Office can't print on Tuesdays" - a glitch which meant that if the word Tue appeared at a particular point in a line of metadata then the file was miscategorised and treated as a non-printing file. The fix was to replace all instances of 'Tue' with 'tue'.
  
  
• "Can't send email further than 500 miles" - a university stats team in North Carolina found that they could only email within a 500 mile radius. The culprit was the length of time allowed for a ping message and its response. It didn't time out when emails were sent 'locally' but the message took too long once the distance was over 500 miles so the emails failed.
  
  
• The UK Government website for Bank Holidays displays bunting if you visit it on the day of a Bank Holiday (on Christmas Day it displays tinsel).
  
  
• IP over avian carriers - an April Fool's joke written as a serious document discussing the transfer speed of data sent by pigeon. The real-world equivalent is river rafting tourism which used carrier pigeon to return camera rolls to the head office which could then be processed for guests to collect once the trip ended.
  
  
• Google's Pigeon Rank - another April Fool's joke with Google explaining that pigeons were used to pick websites to display when a user searched for information. The real-world equivalent is the discovery that pigeons are pretty good at discriminating photographs of healthy tissue samples from diseased ones.
  
  
• Broadband over wet string - this one is peak internet whimsy ;) Engineers had a go at getting a signal to transmit over wet string and managed to get an impressive 3.5 Mbps. Althugh wet string is conductive apparently it's more about the medium acting as a wave guide for the high frequency signal.
  
  
• I need to dig out the nice story on Twitter of someone's mum being paid to try and test software to destruction - she first used social engineering to get into the room and the program by carrying an awkward amount of papers and struggling through a door then simply asking people "what's today's password".
  
  
• Optical mice don't always work in bright sunshine.
  
  
• The first webcam was pointed at a coffee machine so that people could check whether there was coffee left.
  
  
• The Utah teapot as the first item rendered digitally in 3D.
  
  
• Ada Lovelace and the first dry run table.
  
  
• HTTP status codes - many fairly dull, one or two demonstrate a bit of whimsy.
  
  
• List of animals awarded human credentials (formerly 'list of cats with fraudulent diplomas') - edging out of remit but computational in the sense of logic - testing the weak points of a system where people can get PhDs without doing the work, as demonstrated by people getting qualifications for their cats and dogs. To make it a bit more computing-relevant I might add something in to this post about web certificates and keychains etc.
  
  
• "What kind of medicine does Dracula take? Con medicine" - this baffling cracker joke can be explained by jokes written in fonts with a ligature then printed on devices with fonts that don't have it, meaning that the word 'coffin' loses the ffi as ligature fonts treat that as a single glyph. Bonus material: non-English orthography and how many foreign names and addresses used to get mangled when people entered them into the old CS4FN mailing list database.
  
  
• Les Horribles Cernettes - first picture on Tim Berners-Lee's interwebs. See also Annie Rauwerda / Depth of Wikipedia's TikTok about them.
  
  
• Mark Rober's dartsboard that uses Arduinos, computer vision / motion capture, sensors and rapid trajectory calculations to ensure the dart always lands you an excellent score.
  
  
• Please add your example of computerish internet whimsy to this form :-)
  

If you work at one of these UK unis or educational institutions you can watch lots of free TV with "bob" from Learning On Screen

Note to university press officers checking this post for mention of your institution thanks to some Google alert it's simply a list of subscribers to Learning On Screen's Box of Broadcasts and your organisation is in the list (at the end).

How high can you hear planes flying? (They don't generally fly above 41,000 feet anyway)

tl;dr: The exact answer is currently unknown (to me), possibly it is untestable (as aircraft have a flight ceiling so would not normally go above a certain height anyway). Possibly it can be modelled (but not by me!).

41,000 feet = 7.7 miles
18,000 feet = 3.4 miles

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A large jet aircraft flying overhead at 41,000 feet is perfectly audible from the ground - but it helps if it's otherwise reasonably quiet outside. Few large jets seem to fly much above 39,000 feet so I'm not sure if this is a common occurrence. I only ever check to see what's flying above me when I hear it so it's technically possible that the sound from a higher-flying large jet wouldn't be able to reach me (and so I wouldn't know that they're there) but I don't think they fly much higher than 41,000 feet as that seems to be their comfortable limit. 

FlightRadar24 and ADS-B Exchange both colour code information about the height of a plane into their live maps. With FR24 the aircraft icons are the same colour but clicking on any shows its previous route and the colour changes (e.g. white is on the ground then it goes yellow as it starts to climb). ADS-B colours the aircraft icon so you can see at a glance if planes are coloured a vibrant pinky purple (those are going over at 45,000 feet). The ones going over at that height are generally the business jet types, much smaller and quieter than the bigger jetliners. 

FlightRadar24 tracking an ATR-72-600 arriving at Heathrow. Zooming out shows the change in colour (darker blue = higher, paler green = lower) throughout its flight from the Isle of Man. All aircraft icons are the same yellow colour.

 

ADS-B Exchange showing the same flight. The colour of the plane's icon indicates that it's travelling at around 3,000 feet and the green in the path trail behind it shows that it was previously higher. The pinkish aircraft near top left heading North was travelling at around 36,000 feet.

If a massive jetliner were able to fly over at 45,000 would I be able to hear it? Or 60,000 feet? (Assuming optimal conditions such as late at night when other ground noise is quieter and fewer other aircraft, air temperature etc). At the moment I don't know but of course it's moot as they just don't seem to fly that high. So 41,000 is the practical limit for aircraft I'm likely to hear.

Some military jets do fly much higher but they don't seem to be doing much of it over London where I am so I can't assess how audible they are.

Not that I've been keeping records or anything... but two aircraft that I've heard at 41,000 were Boeing 747-8R7F Cargolux (on 8 Feb 2024) and an Airbus A330-243 (21 May 2024). A week apart in May 2022 I heard two Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner going over at 39,000 feet and in June that year heard a Boeing 747-4R7F going over at 35,000.

My favourite aircraft to hear have propellers. These usually fly over between 18,000 and 25,000 feet and are very audible for a longer period of time (they're flying more slowly than the massive jets so take longer to pass). I've heard several of my beloved Hercules* C-130s going over up to 25,000 feet and the Airbus A400M Atlas going over at 19,000 feet. Another favourite is the Antonov fleet and I get the An-26B and An-12B going over at 19,000 to 21,000 feet - they are super loud (famously so, go and have a listen on YouTube).

*The Royal Air Force has swapped from Hercules to Airbus A400M Atlas though I don't have the audio acuity to be able to tell which is which by sound (possibly I could if I heard them in quick succession). So no more RAF Hercs going over but USA, Canada, Saudi and other militaries are still using them and so they do regularly appear in our airspace. Hooray!