Simon Willison's Weblog: zeppelins

After ten years, it's time to stop making videos.

2024-01-01T22:59:23+00:00

After ten years, it's time to stop making videos.

Ten years ago, my friend Tom Scott started a deliberate streak of posting YouTube videos - initially about one a day before settling into a cadence of one a week. He kept that up for the full ten years, growing his subscribers to over 6 million in the process.

Today he's ending that streak, in unparalleled style.

(I'm proud to have made an appearance in video number 13, talking about Zeppelins.)

Tags: tom-scott, youtube, zeppelins, streaks

The world’s largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley

2023-11-08T22:12:06+00:00

The world’s largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley

“At 124.5 meters long, Pathfinder 1 dwarfs the current Goodyear airships and even the massive Stratolaunch plane designed to launch orbital rockets. It’s the largest aircraft to take to the skies since the gargantuan Hindenburg airship of the 1930s.”

Tags: airships, zeppelins

When Zeppelins Ruled The Earth

2023-06-15T20:16:42+00:00

When Zeppelins Ruled The Earth

15 years ago I put together a talk about the history of Zeppelins which I presented a bunch of different times in various different configurations. As far as I know there are no existing videos of it, but I found an MP3 recording today and decided to splice it together with the slides to create a video of the 6m47s version I gave at the Skillswap on Speed lightning talks event in Brighton on the 28th October 2008.

Notes on how I edited the video together using iMovie in the via link.

Via TIL: Syncing slide images and audio in iMovie

Tags: my-talks, zeppelins

A Zeppelin, A Cat, and The World's First In-Flight Radio Message

2014-01-14T23:05:45+00:00

A Zeppelin, A Cat, and The World's First In-Flight Radio Message

Tom Scott asked me for “something you might not know” at our leaving party in London before we moved to California. I went with the story of Kiddo the cat and the first attempt at an aerial Atlantic crossing. Here’s the resulting YouTube video.

Tags: tom-scott, youtube, zeppelins

Airships: a second age

2010-08-09T12:34:00+00:00

Airships: a second age

Telegraph profile of Hybrid Air Vehicles, a company that is building a new generation of ultra-lightweight airships at Cardington in Bedford, initially aimed at lengthy surveillance missions over Afghanistan.

Tags: airships, zeppelins, recovered

Around the World by Zeppelin

2010-02-12T22:37:04+00:00

Around the World by Zeppelin

If you’re in the UK, you have four days left to catch this fantastic 90 minute documentary on iPlayer. It covers the first ever flight around the world, in the Graf Zeppelin in 1929, from the point of view of Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, a reporter for the Hearst media empire and the only woman on the voyage. The archive footage is incredible.

Tags: bbc, documentary, zeppelins

DRGBLZ

2008-11-11T15:13:15+00:00

DRGBLZ

lolzeppelins?

Tags: airships, funny, lolspeak, zeppelins

Zeppelin 101 in 5 mins

2008-10-30T17:05:16+00:00

Zeppelin 101 in 5 mins

Ribot videoed my five minute lightning talk on Zeppelins at last night’s Skillswap Brighton.

Via SkillSwap Brighton

Tags: brighton, lightning-talks, ribot, skillswap, speaking, my-talks, video, vimeo, zeppelins

DjangoCon and PyCon UK

2008-09-15T15:20:20+00:00

September is a big month for conferences. DjangoCon was a weekend ago in Mountain View (forcing me to miss both d.Construct and BarCamp Brighton), PyCon UK was this weekend in Birmingham, I'm writing this from @media Ajax and BarCamp London 5 is coming up over another weekend at the end of this month. As always, I've been posting details of upcoming talks and notes and materials from previous ones on my talks page.

DjangoCon went really, really well. Huge thanks to conference chair Robert Lofthouse for pulling it all together in just two months and Leslie Hawthorne for making it all happen from Google's end. Google's facitilies were superb: the AV team were the best I've ever worked with and an army of Google volunteers made sure everything went smoothly. It's hard to see how it could have gone better; the principle complaint we got was that at only two days it was hard to justify the travel, something which future DjangoCons will definitely address.

Every session was recorded and the videos ~~should be going up on YouTube shortly~~ are now up on YouTube. For the impatient, you can subscribe to an Atom feed of a YouTube search for "DjangoCon". I recommend starting with Cal Henderson's keynote "Why I hate Django" which was both funny and insightful in equal parts. Malcolm's talk on ORM internals was another personal favourite.

PyCon UK was the second I've attended, but last year I only stayed for the first day. This time I stuck around and was enormously impressed by the grassroots feel of the conference and the enthusiastic atmosphere. I presented a tutorial on extending the Django admin and a lightning talk on Zeppelins, prepared two hours in advance after Jacob mentioned that the lightning talks were tending too much towards the technical side. It went down very well; I'm tempted to extend it to a half hour session for BarCamp London.

Unlike most conferences I attend, PyCon tickets included a sit-down dinner for all attendees complete with a "dramatic lecture" on the Lunar Society presented by Andrew Lound. This was a great fit for the conference, both for the Birmingham connection and the many analogies to the modern open source community - loose collaboration, patent concerns and what you might call an 18th century equivalent of the modern hacker ethic.

Next year the PyCon UK team will be hosting EuroPython, and I'm certain they'll do an excellent job of it. Meanwhile, Rob has already started making plans for a Euro DjangoCon in around six months time, probably taking place in Prague.

Tags: barcamplondon5, cal-henderson, conferences, djangocon, djangocon08, leslie-hawthorne, google, pyconuk, pyconuk08, robert-lofthouse, speaking, my-talks, zeppelins, python, django, andrew-lound

Goon City

2008-09-14T23:09:47+00:00

Goon City

Every internet meme ever, rendered in pixel art. See if you can find the Zeppelin.

Tags: funny, gooncity, memes, pixelart, somethingawful, zeppelins

I love Zeppelins, and you should too

2008-09-13T18:38:49+00:00

I love Zeppelins, and you should too

Slides from my PyCon UK lightning talk on Zeppelins. I’ve annotated them using SlideShare comments.

Via My talks page

Tags: airships, lightning-talks, pyconuk, pyconuk2008, slides, speaking, my-talks, zeppelins

АЭРОКРАТ КОНЦЕПТ

2008-08-16T23:50:19+00:00

АЭРОКРАТ КОНЦЕПТ

Another great Airship blog. I don’t speak Russian, but the photos and videos speak for themselves.

Via Airshipworld Blog

Tags: airships, russian, zeppelins

Historic Airship Pictures: the Shenandoah, the Los Angeles, the Akron and the Macon as well as the Zeppelins and many more

2008-08-16T23:49:05+00:00

Historic Airship Pictures: the Shenandoah, the Los Angeles, the Akron and the Macon as well as the Zeppelins and many more

The US Navy built some truly beautiful airships back in the 1930s.

Tags: airships, usnavy, zeppelins

Up Ship!: New Branding

2008-07-07T11:13:56+00:00

Up Ship!: New Branding

I hadn’t realised the Airpship Ventures Zeppelin (en route to San Francisco) is going to be used for the Stella Artois Star Over London promotion—they’ve just changed the livery.

Tags: airships, airshipventures, staroverlondon, stellaartois, zeppelins

Could Zeppelins soon grace our skies again?

2008-06-07T14:10:30+00:00

Could Zeppelins soon grace our skies again?

The new Zeppelin NT can travel at 125 mph, the same speed as a high speed train—and could cross the Atlantic in 43 hours. This is the same model Airship Ventures (the Californian startup) are using.

Tags: airships, airshipventures, zeppelins

Airship Ventures

2008-05-12T18:41:24+00:00

Airship Ventures

New startup providing tours of Silicon Valley in a frickin’ Zeppelin. Strangely enough I’ve been complaining about the lack of Zeppelins over Silicon Valley for several years. Really.

Via Gizmodo

Tags: airships, pubchat, siliconvalley, zeppelins

The movie that time forgot

2007-05-27T23:58:39+00:00

The movie that time forgot

The tragically unmade “Zeppelin vs Pterodactyls”.

Via MetaFilter

Tags: film, hammer, pterodactyls, tragedy, zeppelins