An excellent recreation of 17th Century London

A group of students from De Montfort University have created a highly-detailed 3D model of London (or at least a large area surrounding Pudding Lane) just prior to the 1666 Great Fire.

The model is just for fly-past purposes at the moment, but it could easily be repurposed to a game or some kind of interactive exploration experience. The model was built in CryEngine, the same engine used to create the Crysis series of video games and the forthcoming Star Citizen.

Food!

As a British SF&F fan living less than an hour from central London on the train, it is unsurprising that I make relatively frequent trips to the capital to see friends, to visit the city's plethora of comic shops and SF stores (Forbidden Planet most frequently, obviously), attend author signings and so on. One of the frustrating things about London is that despite being the biggest city in the country, one of the biggest and most important cities in the world and so forth, finding a decent place to eat can be tricky. The number of alleged 'restaurants' whose fare is little better than a Hungry Horse pub meal (but they charge you twice as much) is quite surprising.

For that reason, I found this blog, dedicated to finding great places to eat in London, to be quite interesting, and vow to put its recommendations to the test soon :-)