The Sketchbook Project

Lamma Island.

If you lived here... by Debra Morris.

I am enthusiastically imagining doing this myself - making a story of words and book art. In my mind, each page is rich and resonant and meaning-filled.

By page two the disappointing realisation will dawn on me that I can never compose or create such a living work. I shall abandon it in a drawer, where it will shamefully remind me of failure. Maybe that should be a story in itself.

What sketchbook story would you compose?

The Great Barrier Reef

BBC publicity for new series starting January.

(Shark, you can watch it on my iplayer while I'm cooking dinner.)

The panda census

Pandas are counted once every ten years. It's reported that numbers have increased since 2001.

Try this article from The Guardian.

Here's a report with video. (I defy you not to sigh aahhh when you see the babies.)

Royal Institution Christmas lectures

Try the experiments on the Ri Channel.

And on the BBC iPlayer for a week.

Bookbinding extraordinary

The 2010 Bind-o-rama.

From a woman who has just stitched four signatures without making a mess, this is one place to aspire to.

Discover Antarctica

You think it's cold today in Hong Kong? Try finding out about Antarctica.

Swimming reindeer

A mere thirteen thousand years old. Still beautiful.

(A bit like me.)

For the podcast. And the close-up.

History Cookbook

Pick a recipe that we can use today, given our more limited ingredients.

I followed the Stuarts, and clicked to discover Stuart 'food facts'. See what you can find too.

Luminarium Encyclopedia Project

Check out the bar on the right hand side! It's like Christmas come early!

Use rope to bind sand

Explore Colossal

Art and design to seriously destabilise your thinking.

This is Colossal.

Drawing the face of the sun

the sun 'with a broad toothy smile seems a commonplace fixture ... but it seems to me that the Sun was an impressively dour character ... disappointed, and dark'.

What do you think? Are we making the sun too happy? Is it time to make the sun miserable again?

'Neil, your bedroom's on fire'

Ladies, when you argue, I sometimes recall scenes like this. Then I can laugh, and not cry.

Draw a stickman

The first stickman I drew just crawled off to die...

Red and green for Christmas

Who colour coded Christmas?

What would Banksy do in Hong Kong?

But the Chinese probably wouldn't get the humour.

Banksy here, here, and there.

Tell me a story

'Oh no! We were making such good progress! Now look what you've done. How are we going to explain this?'

Lunar eclipse, Hong Kong

It's not a man who lives in the moon, it's a rabbit. Look at the moon; you can see the ears. Or read the story.

Tonight the rabbit is covered by the earth's deep shadow, and we're all unreasonably excited. We'll be out on the roof tonight, and when it becomes too cold, watching the webcast.

Learn about the lunar eclipse on starryskies and on wiki.

British Film Institute on Youtube

So long as no-one wants me to do anything else all day long ...

I'm finding out about Pepper's Ghost, Lantern slides, and watching movies courtesy of the BFI.

Witch cottage

A brilliant find! Ordinary country England under James I brought slap into the twenty-first century.

Great for Lancashire tourist industry, too. I'm looking forward to what they do with the find. Um, I hope they're not going to demolish it. (How did they find the cat?) Let's hope they give us intelligent historical interpretation and sensitive reconstruction.

More background here, and check out what's with hero Simon Armitage on the iplayer here.

Remember the exhibition about the Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, in the fantastic Colchester Castle Museum? Let's visit again. Go here if you're brave enough.

(All the more info to help us talk about feminist interpretations of witches, about witchcraft in popular culture, and the practice of paganism.)

Of course I couldn't leave the subject without laughter.

Goldfish Salvation

Artist Riusuke Fukahori, who - alarmingly - has been salvaged and suffered by goldfish.

(When I first read that, I thought it said savaged.)

Nice fish though.

Le Voyage dans la Lune

Watch a black and white screening of this 1902 film by Méliè on Youtube. (I turned off the spoken narrative for the full silent effect.)

Hand-coloured versions were also available; one hand-tinted copy, discovered in 1993 and now restored, is touring from 2011.

Women in art

Beautiful, tender, modest, beguiling, graceful, fragile, here.

Alongside that, can we also hang out the flags for women who are fearless, determined, ruthless, cruel, angry, courageous, rebellious, pained, distressed, traumatised, vengeful, driven, triumphant, powerful, and downright scary.

Artemisia Gentileschi could lead the procession.

What's the story?