You're a geek, you. Yup. There's no denying it. As are we. And the whole population of London is too. We're a big stinking sweaty cauldron of geekiness, us Londoners, with our love of wi-fi and all. It's something we're rightly proud of, and now we've got the stats to prove it. Online consultant Enhance Media asked some 12,000 people across the UK to fill in an electronic test on their computer usage. Entitled......

Oxford pulls ahead. Image courtesy of Simon-K's photostream via the Londonist Flickr pool Oxford prevailed. But you probably know that by now. And the view from the shore? Wet. But Londonist was there. In the name of journalism, we packed ourselves into the Doom Bar tent in Furnival Gardens yesterday with 300 of our closest newly acquired friends and did our best not to spill/be spilled on/grind/be grinded on whilst waiting optimistically for the rain......

A school in east London has hit upon a novel way to reign in the young'uns and keep them from that common bugbear, anti-social behaviour: get them pondering philosophical questions about life, the universe and everything. Gallions Primary School in Warsall, Beckton, introduced a course called Philosophy for Children in 2004, and in just a few years it has reaped great rewards. Behaviour at the school has dramatically improved so much that they've launched......

Whilst the Sex Pistols and The Verve were hawking their wares for the proper reviewers, Londonist was hightailing it down to the Empire for an early start. Since The Broken Family Band cashed in the cool Cambridge climes for our dirty old town, we can now legitimately claim them as our favourite London band (no doubt to howls of protest from the other Londonist writers and possibly the guys themselves). TBFB (for all you......

25. More Road-Related Horror! Lord John Angerstein’s coach has been sighted pulled by four headless horses, in the vicinity of Trafalgar Road, travelling onwards to Vanbrugh Hill in southeast London. Why the horses appear headless no one knows. On the Bayswater Road near Hyde Park, another phantom coach and horses is said to travel, without sound. But the most astonishing vehicle to haunt Greater London has to be that of a spectral bus, sighted......

It really does seem like the Osbournes are taking over the world, doesn't it? You can't turn on the telly without seeing Sharon on The X-Factor and America's Got Talent, Kelly on Project Catwalk or Jack on one of those extreme sports adrenaline addict shows he seems to be so fond of. Kelly's released three albums and starred in the US teen drama Life As We Know It. Jack's written an autobiography of his......

Nearly a month after Fopp shut their doors for administration, HMV have announced today that they have purchased 6 stores. Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Nottingham and most importantly (for us!) London will all be getting the stores back and depending upon landlords' consent will re-open as soon as possible continuing to trade under the Fopp name. London won't be getting the gigantic Tottenham Court Road store back though, instead it'sthe Earlham Street one by......

London's got its share of surgical history, but our newest scientific exhibition space has strapped the operating theatre concept to a gurney and wheeled it into the 21st century. Last night at the Wellcome Collection a full house watched Dr Frank Wells perform open-heart surgery on a 68-year-old man. It was all done via a remote link to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, so although the audience wasn't in the same room as the patient......

As the buzz surrounding the weekend's Tour de France action in London builds steadily, more and more people are asking where will be the best places to watch, especially during the Prologue individual time trial on Saturday afternoon. Unlike the annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, where the best vantage points are well established, there's no obvious form to go on for this one-off cycling spectacular in terms of where to set out your viewing stall......

Bit of a dull one this week, but worth highlighting for its sheer prolificness. This startled face can be found all over Hackney, particularly along Cambridge Heath Road. The scrawl occasionally carries the legend 'YTE'. Has anyone found examples in other parts of town - and any speculation as to what YTE stands for?......

. Catherine Bullen is just finishing her studies at Cambridge School of Art. Her final show is being exhibited at Free Range 2007. Londonist has a cup of tea and a chat with her to find out what it's all about. What should Londonist readers know about your work, Catherine? I try to base my work around issues that effect me personally or the world in general, drawing inspiration from news stories and personal experience.......

Still haven't had enough new art? Here's the lowdown on Free Range this week: Degree Show 2007 Who? Havering College (Design) What? DESIGN (2D & 3D) Where? G3 Gallery (Shop 14) Lacuna Who? University College for the Creative Arts Rochester What? PHOTOGRAPHY Where? F Block T2 (...) Who? University College for the Creative Arts Farnham What? PHOTOGRAPHY Where? Boiler House Ideal World Who? Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University What? PHOTOGRAPHY Where? Atlantis......

Maybe it's the heat, but May in London has become a veritable political gay-fest. Last week, a gay man took the helm of Richmond Borough Council for the first time, and announced 'diversity' as a key theme for his year in office. This happens just as rumours intensify that popular gay copper Brian Paddick might run for London Mayor. And now, to complete the hat-trick, the leader of Westminster Council came out in some......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

OpenStreetMap is a map of the world created, like all the best things, by amateur enthusiasts. Farting in the general direction of professional mappers, these collaborative cartographers prowl the streets collecting GPS data and building up their wiki-based map. We caught up with charter-in-chief Steve Coast, to find out why they're bothering. So what's it all about? OpenStreetMap exists because map data is very expensive in the UK. It's owned by a monopoly provider......

Assuming the crews are able to make it past the semi-final, Cambridge and Oxford University's mens' eights will take to the Thames on Saturday at 4:30pm for just under 20 minutes' worth of water borne endeavour that will be watched by between 15 and 100 million television viewers around the world (depending on whose figures you believe) as well as some 250,000 spectators thronging the riverside vantage points. Oxford are the defending champions and......

"Whole crew... from backstops... full pressure... GO!!!" It's our first journey to the Thames of the series and we start with 286 crews of women rowing the wrong way up the river. Well, in fairness to the majority of oarspersons it's really the right way, 4 miles and 374 yards (or just under 7 kilometres) from Mortlake church to Putney Bridge. It's just that the most stratospherically well known contest over the same stretch......

So the police have a suspect in custody for the recent spate of letter bombs: A primary school caretaker has been arrested in connection with the recent spate of letter bomb attacks. Miles Cooper, who is in his 20s, was arrested at a house in Cherry Hinton, near Cambridge. Police will finish searching the school where he works on Tuesday and expect to spend several days searching the house. But the postal system being......

Today’s snow made us feel quite festive, even though it’s the wrong time of year for all that. But with all the unpredictability of our modern changing climate, we need to enjoy these sorts of things when we can. So instead of contributing to the rising tide of dissatisfaction with how poorly equipped our services are to deal with a small amount of snow these days, we thought we would turn our thoughts to......

This Day In London’s History 1788: Lord Byron born at 16 Holles Street, just north of Oxford Street. Born George Gordon Byron, but inheriting the family title at the age of 10, Byron was an extravagant, eccentric and hugely prolific writer. However he was just as famous for his tumultuous lifestyle as for his writings, both of which attracted much attention. Shortly after his birth in London, his mother moved him to Aberdeen. He......

Event of the Week Battle of Ideas at the Royal College of Art, all weekend The Battle of Ideas is, according to their website, 'an annual festival of social, political, scientific, academic and cultural discussion'. In other, more juvenile words, it's a mass debate. And it's probably going to get quite messy. The panel-led discussions, organised by the Institute of Ideas, are designed to cut through the crap and get down to some genuine......

Heathrow update: A man has been arrested under the Terrorism Act and passengers have been let back in to Terminal 2. A new initiative launched by London Underground and the RNIB means that soon blind and partially sighted people will be able to navigate Tube stations using books of tactile maps. Ultra cool. More from the file marked 'ultra cool': an £85m aquarium containing a massive coral reef in the East End. Sensors are......

In case you missed it earlier: The Met have pleaded not guilty to health and safety charges relating to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. It's a 'test case' apparently. Police patrols at churches and mosques in London have been stepped up following the protests over Pope Benedict's remarks about Islam. A survivor of July 7 has criticised TerrorBull Games of Cambridge for creating War on Terror: The Board Game. The game includes......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. August is a quiet month for book launches and the like, so lucky there's a good old fashioned book brawl to hot things up! Yes, it's Greer versus Rushdie. The two have famously never seen eye to eye (Greer went to Cambridge University in the late '60s with Rushdie, and have had several reported......

With Download, The Isle Of White Festival and Bon Jovi's Milton Keynes shows all coming this weekend, festival season is well and truly upon us. For agrophobics everywhere else, may we suggest the following for consideration. Tonight: Upbeat, uncynical quirky Brit punky pure pop from Circuits upstairs at the Garage alongside Popular Workshop and LR Rockets. £5 in, doors at 8. Tuesday: From those nice folks who bring you Rock'n'Roll Soul and Health and......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Event of the Week Hearing Colours, Seeing Sounds at the Dana Centre, tonight What flavour is Londonist? Salt and vinegar with an unwelcome hint of mustard? Or like the smell of a satellite, with green-tasting screeches? What sounds like nonsense to most of us can smell perfectly to people......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

The Harringey barister accused of filming up women's skirts has claimed in court that he didn't get any sexual gratification from his 'hobby'. You see it was "collecting and cataloguing the images" that he enjoyed....not the wanking. Snoop Dogg has been arrested at Heathrow airport after an argument caused by the refusal to let his '30-strong entourage' into the British Airways first-class lounge (Terminal 1). And talking of Heathrow, it's been announced that the......

There are only two fixtures involving London’s professional clubs this week and neither of them are taking place in the capital, but both have much hanging on them. Arsenal travel to Turin with that all-important 2-0 lead to face Juventus for a place in the Champions League semi-finals, while on Friday evening Crystal Palace continue their improbable late dash for automatic promotion to the Premiership with an away clash at Leicester City knowing that......

In case you hadn't noticed, the Boat Race is taking place this Sunday. The 152nd meeting between the crews of Oxford (dark blues) and Cambridge (light blues) will begin at 4.35pm near Putney Bridge and will finish 17 minutes or so later at Chiswick Bridge. Around 250,000 spectators will line the sides of the Thames, cheering on their favoured boat, with the most popular vantage point being the 'Surrey Bend' near Hammersmith Bridge. You......