Blogs roundup

It's time for a quick roundup of what you can read about bridges on various other blogs, as something of a stopgap before I embark on a set of reports covering nearly a dozen bridges in the Merseyside area, as well as catching up on several posts that I've had gestating for some time now.

Tallbridgeguy and Bridge Photo of the Day form something of a triumvirate of the more prolific bridge blogs (together with this one, of course).

TBG is the most diverse, with everything from off-the-wall design concepts through to the sort of practical day-to-day issues that actually take up an engineer's time. It even strays away from bridges quite a bit - I have a self-imposed rule not to do so (simply because I spend more than enough time on bridges without getting distracted!) TBG also writes the Google Sketchup for Engineers blog.

BPHOD is the Ronseal of the two blogs, often featuring bridges chosen from fact-finding trips around the world to areas which have been hit by earthquakes, which in recent months means India and New Zealand.

Tabikappa is a similar blog from Japan, although with a focus on photographs of bridges, hardly ever much text. They've been quiet recently, but returned with a quite marvellous double lenticular truss bridge.

ArchDaily chucks out posts like bullets from a machine gun, corpuscles of architectural gloss splattered across an internet canvas. They featured a bridge recently, Caltrava's Bac de Roda highway bridge, one of the Spanish designer's earlier and hence marginally more orthodox designs.

It's not a blog, but a monthly email, but Bill Harvey's Bridge of the Month is often interesting. Bill is an expert in masonry arch bridges, and generally finds an interesting technical angle on the bridges he covers. The most recent issue features Pyne Bridge, a very unusual set of brick arch spans supported on granite columns.

I can also recommend Bridgink's Bridge of the Month, a monthly "name that bridge" quiz with a book given away to one of the successful entrants every month.

Finally, tired of all these bridges? Perhaps you need to refresh yourself with the blog from the British Water Tower Appreciation Society. Or lift your head up high with the Pylon of the Month blog.