-
Welcome to things magazine, an occasional weblog (and once an occasional magazine) about objects, collections and discoveries. We also have an irregular tumblr.
architecture
- A Daily Dose of Architecture Books
- A Rambling Room of My Own
- a10 magazine
- anArchitecture
- ArchDaily
- ArchEyes
- ARCHI Objects
- Archi/Maps
- Archimodels
- Archinect
- Architect Magazine
- Architects' Journal
- Architectural Association
- Architectural Comment
- Architectural Design
- Architectural Review
- Architectural Videos
- Architecture Lab
- Architecture of Film
- Architizer
- Archizines
- ArchNewsNow
- ArchPaper
- Arcspace
- Arts and Architecture
- Arup Thoughts
- Atlas des Régions Naturelles
- BLDG BLOG
- Cabin Porn
- City of Sound
- Citylab
- CityMetric
- Continuity in Architecture
- Cosmopolitan Scum
- Crimson
- Curbed
- Derelict London
- Dezain
- Diffusive Architectures
- Domus
- dpr-Barcelona
- drawing architecture
- Drawing Matter
- English Buildings
- Failed Architecture
- Greg Abandoned
- hawktraining
- Icon
- Judit Bellostes (resting)
- Kosmograd
- Less Adjectives More Verbs
- London Architecture Diary
- London Housing Architects
- London Reconnections
- London Sound Survey
- Mammoth (resting)
- Mika Savela (resting)
- Mimoa
- MobyLosAngelesArchitecture (resting)
- Municipal Dreams
- New Italian Blood
- Noticias Arquitectura (resting)
- Platforma Arquitectura
- Quintin Lake
- Reddit architecture
- Ruins of Great Britain
- Shed working
- Skyscraper City
- Skyscraper Page
- Socks Studio
- Strange Harvest
- The Funambulist
- The Pop-Up City
- The Spaces
- Top Architecture News
- Tower Block
- Urban Ghosts Media
- Workhuman
collections and archives
- A Penguin a Week (resting)
- Agence Eureka (resting)
- Archive.org blog
- Archives for the Unexplained
- Archives.Design
- Archiveteam
- Beinecke Rare Book + Manuscript Library
- Brilliant Maps
- Codex 99
- Cyber Heritage
- Dark Roasted Blend
- David Rumsey Map Collection
- Design Council Slide Collection
- Dull Tool Dim Bulb
- Entire Landscapes
- Found Objects
- Invisible Themepark
- Layers of London
- Letterology
- Letters of Note
- Mapping London
- Material World
- Mid-Centuria (2012)
- Militant Esthetix
- Museum of Jurassic Technology
- Museum of Online Museums
- National Archives Blog
- Niche Museums
- oobject
- Peter Harrington Rare Books
- Public Collectors
- Public Domain Review
- Recto/Verso
- Shorpy
- Smithsonian Open Access
- The Cartographer's Guild
- The Digital Antiquarian
- The Family Museum
- The Map Room
- The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things
- Treasure Hunt
- Victorian London
- Vintage Computing and Gaming
- Wellcome Library (2018)
- World of Spectrum
design, art and photography
- 50 Watts
- Adaism
- an ambitious project collapsing
- Art F City
- Art Show
- ArtsJournal
- Artsy
- automatism
- Bear Alley
- Behance
- Bellissimo
- booooooom
- Brand New
- but does it float
- Car Design News
- Cartype
- Conscientious
- Cool Hunting
- Core77
- Coroflot
- Creative Review
- daily tonic
- Death House
- Design is Fine
- designboom
- Dezeen
- Disegno
- DisegnoDaily
- Dribbble
- Elephant
- emma's designblogg
- Eye magazine
- ffffound (RIP)
- grain edit
- Graphic Exchange
- Hand Drawn Map Association
- HotWheels
- Hyperkit
- Iain Claridge
- Iconic Photos
- Idea Books
- Illustration Chronicles
- Imprint
- Influx
- ISO50
- James Gurney
- Juxtapoz
- Letter Exchange
- Letterform Archive
- Linefeed
- Lines and Colors
- Martin Klasch
- Mocoloco
- National Geographic Found
- New English Landscape
- Noisy Decent Graphics
- Notcot
- Nowness
- Open Culture
- Phase Mag
- Picdit
- Places Journal
- Plaster Magazine
- Present and Correct
- Printeresting
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun
- Saatchi Online
- Scientific Illustration
- Shepelavy
- Sight Unseen
- Slanted
- Sophie Munns
- Spoon and Tomago
- Stats, Maps n Pix
- Storythings
- Subtraction
- The Art Journal
- The Art Showcase
- The Big Picture
- The Calvert Journal
- The Culture Engine
- The Jealous Curator
- The Kid Should See This
- The Letter
- The Near-Sighted Monkey
- the New Shelton wet/dry
- The Selby
- The Ward-O-Matic
- Theo Inglis
- this is A456
- This is Colossal
- Tim George
- Time LightBox
- We Made This
- WePresent
- xBlog
- Yanko Design
dormant links
music
- Anti-Gravity Bunny
- Archived Music Magazines
- Attack Magazine
- Bandcamp Daily
- blissblog
- Bradley's Almanac
- Catatonic Youths
- CDM
- Chrome Waves
- Collective Zine
- Crying all the way to the chip shop
- Delicious Audio
- Dezeen Music Project
- Diskant
- Drowned in Sound
- Effects Bay
- Fluxblog
- Gig Posters
- Gorilla vs Bear
- GuitarPedalFX
- Invisible Oranges
- Johnson's Rambler
- Largehearted Boy
- Louder than War
- Music Machinery
- Noisegate
- Novation
- Offset Guitars
- Operator One
- Owl in the Sun
- Pedals & Effects
- Pennyblackmusic
- She Shreds
- Slicing Up Eyeballs
- Songs from the Shed
- Sredni Vashtar
- Synth Anatomy
- Synthtopia
- Teenage Engineering
- The Quietus
- This Recording (resting)
- Wild Patterns
- Words for Music
people
- Adam Curtis
- Andrew Losowsky
- Austin Kleon
- Bureau BCM
- Caterina Fake
- Celeste Olalquiaga
- China Mieville
- Christopher Stocks
- Clive Thompson
- Daniel Eatock
- Douglas Coupland
- Edward Tufte
- Ian Martin
- James Russell
- Jane Audas
- Jane Audas
- Jason Kottke
- Jean Snow
- Joe Moran
- Kate Bingaman-Burt
- Kazys Varnelis
- Kevin Kelly
- Marian Bantjes
- Peter Buchanan-Smith
- Peter Nencini
- Russell Davies
- Tobias Revell
publications
- Aeon magazine
- Ambit
- American Hauntings Ink
- Ampersand
- AnOther Reader
- Art Newspaper
- bookendless (resting)
- Books from Finland
- Byliner
- Cabinet Magazine
- Calvert Journal
- Contemporary Art Curator
- Fiell
- Gestalten
- Grafik
- Hopes and Fears
- Instapaper
- Issuu
- It's Nice That
- Lapham's Quarterly
- Linefeed
- London Review of Books
- magCulture
- Magforum
- McSweeneys
- Metropolis
- Monocle
- Moss and Fog
- n+1 magazine
- National Geographic
- Newspaper Club
- Paste Magazine
- Phaidon Agenda
- Premiere Issues
- Princeton Architectural Press
- Print Fetish
- Sabotage Times
- Smoke: A London Peculiar
- SNOW magazine
- South East London Journal
- Stack
- The Awl
- The Brander
- The Common Table
- The Millions
- The Modernist
- The Morning News
- The Peckham Peculiar
- The Pudding
- The Rumpus
- Today's Guardian
- Turps Banana
- Unbound
- Viewport Magazine
- Wallpaper
- wallpaper tumblr
reading
weblogs
- 99% Invisible
- Aaronland (resting)
- Adventures in Suburban London (resting)
- Airminded
- Anti-Mega
- Arts & Letters Daily
- Asbury & Asbury
- Ask Metafilter
- Atlas Obscura
- Badaude
- Ballardian
- Bandcamp Daily
- Ben Bashford
- Bifurcated Rivets
- Boing Boing
- Bowblog
- brain pickings
- Caught by the River
- Cope
- Coudal
- Dangerous Minds
- Diamond Geezer
- Disassociated [ended]
- Edible Geography
- Ephemeral New York
- Even Cleveland
- Everlasting Blort
- Feuilleton
- Greg.org
- haddock
- Heraclitean Fire
- http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/
- Kickcan and Conkers
- Languagehat
- Linkmachinego
- Londres Calling
- Low Tech Magazine
- Making Light
- Metafilter
- Microkhan
- Morning, Computer
- Mountain 7
- Museum of Ephemerata
- My ear trumpet
- Our God is Speed
- Paper Blogging
- Project Moonbase
- Quipsologies [ended]
- rag-picking history
- Rotational
- Sarah's History Place
- Sippey
- Strange Attractor
- The Dabbler
- The New Enquiry
- The New Vulgate
- The Vampire's Wife
- Threat Quality Press
- Time Out London Blog
- Transpontine
- Unlikely Words
- Voices of East Anglia
- Waggish
- Whatever
back issues
- About things magazine
- things 05 (Winter 1996-97)
- things 06 (Summer 1997)
- things 07 (Winter 1997-98)
- things 08 (Summer 1998)
- things 09 (Winter 1998-1999)
- things 10 (Summer 1999)
- things 11 (Winter 1999-2000)
- things 12 (Summer 2000)
- things 13 (Winter 2000-2001)
- things 14 (Summer 2001)
- things 15 (Winter 2001-02)
- things 16 (Summer 2002)
- things 17/18 (Spring 2004)
- +things 19/20 (Winter 2010)
- things 19/20 *special offer*
Archives
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
Category Archives: nostalgia
Tune out the past, and just say yes
Coming to an office near you: ‘One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of today’s jobs could be automated in the next two decades.’ / wish we’d thought of this: Craigslist Mirrors (via, and also picked … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia, technology
Leave a comment
Experimental jetsetting with no stars
Experimental Travel is the art of travelling in new ways, including such sub-genres as Aerotourism (‘in which a tourist visits the local airport and explores it without going anywhere’) and Erotourism (‘in which a couple travels separately to the same … Continue reading
Posted in collections and archives, music, nostalgia
Leave a comment
Blinking in the light
Twenty years seems to be a trigger point for all sorts of nostalgia, a drag net through the past that scrapes at the lingering memories of pop culture and then hauls them, kicking and screaming, into the light of the … Continue reading
Posted in esoterica, nostalgia
Leave a comment
Warming the soul
We haven’t really had enough time to digest the existence of the Southampton Nostalgia Scale, via this post on the Benefits of Nostalgia, linking to a recent NYT piece that explores what nostalgia is good for. From the article: ‘Nostalgia … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia
Leave a comment
Round and round
Another made-for-web piece of analogue fetishism, Kai Schaefer’s series ‘World Records‘, which brings together classic vinyl and classic turntables / as nostalgic vessels go, this is perhaps less involved and drawn out than creating an entire imaginary soundtrack that purports … Continue reading
Posted in art, nostalgia
Leave a comment
Cabinets, cases, collecting and display
And so we find ourselves on the edge of the year, without all that much inclination to look back (that’s a job that others can do with so much more depth and expertise). Things magazine feels increasingly marginal, hovering on … Continue reading
Posted in collections and archives, nostalgia, things magazine
12 Comments
High and mighty
Part of our ongoing and occasional series exploring Cold War oddities and instantly outdated pieces of military equipment: the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin, a ‘parasite fighter‘ designed to work in conjunction with the Convair Peacemaker / prints by Jantze Tullet / … Continue reading
Posted in cartography, nostalgia, photography
Tagged eiffel tower, photography, robots
Leave a comment
Mostly harmless
A few days of randomness ahead. Who needs a kick-starter? Griff Industries builds ships for Oolite / ‘Car dealer forced to hide Jimmy Savile’s Range Rover after hate campaign over abuse claims‘. The sale was greeted with characteristic nudges and … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia
2 Comments
From Russia with love
Rodcorp is embarking on a re-reading of the Ian Fleming James Bond books: Bond 1: Not Stirred, with ultra-pithy plot summaries (‘Doctor No (1958) is the one with guano, claw hands, Honey Rider and Jamaica.’) and an acute eye for … Continue reading
Posted in history, nostalgia
Leave a comment
A passion for pixels
The aesthetic of games gone by is now thoroughly blended into the mainstream. Dan Gray recently linked to a proposed Kickstarter-funded history of Sensible Software 1986–1999 by Read-Only Memory. As the galleries in Pure Machine Code suggest, there’s a rich … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia, technology
Leave a comment
We can remember it for you, wholesale
The Dutch Mountain House features an admirable reuse of an old Jaguar. This certainly isn’t recycling, or even upcycling. Perhaps downcycling? / related, Fantastic Journal on the visual symbolism of the Volvo 240 in mainstream Hollywood movies / exploring applications … Continue reading
Strangely nautical
Trying very hard to escape from nostalgia, but its gravitational pull is colossal. Renault 4 Ever was a design competition hosted by designboom, looking at how the values inherent in a classic piece of functional design, the original Renault 4, … Continue reading
Posted in architecture, nostalgia
2 Comments
Tracking the decline
We are living in a trackable world. As well as the fascinating Flightrader24 site there’s also Marinetraffic.com, which parcels up the world into chunks of maritime movement. There may be more, but our favourite piece of realtime cartography is this … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia, ruins
Leave a comment
Woods and patination
We’ve commented before on the relative paucity of pre-aged consumer electronics, in comparison to industries like guitar manufacturer, where patina is treated as a highly prized extension of craftsmanship (a post expanded upon at a456). As well as ‘artist-endorsed’ models … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia, ruins
2 Comments
Finding the path
Which games meddle with life? and When Video Games Get Stuck In Your Head (both via MeFi). The bleed between real and virtual has been fictionalised and exploited for decades, ever since the days of Max Headroom and the fumbling, … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia
2 Comments
Melting into air
Whatever happened to silicon film? The dream is that someone designs and manufactures a device that can be slotted into the back of a traditional 35mm film camera in order to use the optics and body to take digital photographs. … Continue reading
The ongoing allure of the old
Our God is Speed picks up on our recent post on internet-induced nostalgia and the pervasive “fetish of the failed, forgotten and the marginal”, and how it might be informed by “a deeper sociological narrative, springing from a sense of … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia, ruins
2 Comments
A lustre of charm
Amazing Retreats, a specialist in renting out castles for corporate retreats, is about to open Spitbank Fort, one of the Solent Forts scattered across the water between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The fort is being extensively redeveloped: ‘The … Continue reading
Posted in collections and archives, nostalgia
Leave a comment
I heard it from the valleys
Jason Orton’s latest photographs from the Olympic Park site, as things shift from the grubby earthworks of raw regeneration through to the banality of utopia-in-waiting. One person who won’t be at all impressed by Orton’s photographs is Iain Sinclair, who … Continue reading
Posted in nostalgia
3 Comments
The Imaginary Wilderness
We have returned from a fortnight of travelling that took in one of the most easterly points of Europe (related) and one of the most westerly. Our apologies for the lack of updates and slow order dispatch (things 19/20 available … Continue reading
Posted in architecture, linkage, nostalgia
Leave a comment