Simon Willison’s Weblog

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.)

# 1st January 2024, 10:59 pm / youtube, zeppelins, tom-scott

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.”

# 8th November 2023, 10:12 pm / zeppelins, airships

When Zeppelins Ruled The Earth (via) 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.

# 15th June 2023, 8:16 pm / talks, zeppelins

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.

# 14th January 2014, 11:05 pm / zeppelins, tom-scott, youtube

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.

# 9th August 2010, 12:34 pm / airships, zeppelins, recovered

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.

# 12th February 2010, 10:37 pm / zeppelins, bbc, documentary

DRGBLZ. lolzeppelins?

# 11th November 2008, 3:13 pm / zeppelins, lolspeak, funny, airships

Zeppelin 101 in 5 mins (via) Ribot videoed my five minute lightning talk on Zeppelins at last night’s Skillswap Brighton.

# 30th October 2008, 5:05 pm / video, speaking, lightningtalk, ribot, skillswap, vimeo, zeppelins

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

# 14th September 2008, 11:09 pm / zeppelins, somethingawful, pixelart, memes, gooncity, funny

I love Zeppelins, and you should too (via) Slides from my PyCon UK lightning talk on Zeppelins. I’ve annotated them using SlideShare comments.

# 13th September 2008, 6:38 pm / zeppelins, airships, pyconuk, pyconuk2008, lightningtalks, speaking, slides

АЭРОКРАТ КОНЦЕПТ (via) Another great Airship blog. I don’t speak Russian, but the photos and videos speak for themselves.

# 16th August 2008, 11:50 pm / airships, russian, zeppelins

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.

# 16th August 2008, 11:49 pm / usnavy, airships, zeppelins

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.

# 7th July 2008, 11:13 am / airshipventures, staroverlondon, stellaartois, airships, zeppelins

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.

# 7th June 2008, 2:10 pm / zeppelins, airships, airshipventures

Airship Ventures (via) 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.

# 12th May 2008, 6:41 pm / zeppelins, airships, siliconvalley, pubchat

The movie that time forgot (via) The tragically unmade “Zeppelin vs Pterodactyls”.

# 27th May 2007, 11:58 pm / hammer, pterodactyls, tragedy, zeppelins, film