Look out the window. The clouds you can see are 1059 m up. They?re coming in from the North North-East at a steady 9.3 mph.

How do we know this? UCL?s new weather display, which gives fresh data on London?s weather every three seconds.

It?s addictive. As well as realtime information, the site also presents graphs and record sheets, so you can track changes over time.

The weather centre was installed by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. As London?s premier mapping nerds, they?re now working on a Google Earth interface to allow 3-D visualisation. Stitch that, Tomasz Schafernaker.

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break.

La Bodeguita
Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre SE1 6TE
Nearest Tube:
Elephant and Castle
0870 011 3810
Monday 12:00 noon - 5:00 pm
Tuesday - Thursday 12:00 noon - 11:30 pm
Friday 12:00 noon - 2:00 am
Saturday 12:00 noon - 3:00 am
Sunday 12:00 noon - Midnight
Expect to Pay: £8-15 for mains (£5 two course lunch deal)
Rating: 9 out of 10

Colombian cuisine. Well, this Londonist had never tried it before. Thanks to the large Latin/South American community in South London, we have a chance to try it without leaving Zone 1. La Bodeguita, while being firmly a mbian eatery for the London Colombian community, is very welcoming to the non-Colombian Londoner.

The atmosphere? Welcoming, friendly, with very efficient (without being pushy) service. If you go in the evenings of the weekend, a deejay emerges at about 9pm playing a set of Latin music. In fact when we were there, he played a superb Latin version of Happy Birthday as it was someone's birthday. The volume was very cleverly set to being loud enough to shut out the conversations of other tables, yet quiet enough so you could easily hear all at your table.

Onto the food. The most important part of any restaurant. Well, being somewhat inexperienced in the cuisines of South and Central America, it was a delicious introduction to Colombian food. Starters like chicken and beef empanadas which looked a bit like Findus Crispy
Pancakes to my uneducated eyes. They tasted much better though, and were served with a fresh but fierce chilli sauce. Or cassava chips which, while containing more starch than a 50s nurse, were surprisingly light. The main courses were generously sized dishes.Things like a seafood stew, which consisted of seafood in a creamy sauce with hints of coriander. Or beef cooked in a creamy Mushroom sauce. Served with rice, plantains, and vegetables. Very
rich, but so well cooked, that it was impossible not eat on even after this Londonist's stomach was as full as a rush hour tube carriage.

Lastly the price. The quality and generosity of the dishes, are not reflected in the prices. We were pleasantly surprised by the cheapness. A bottle of wine, two starters, two mains, and a pudding came to about 40 quid. If you are coming here for lunch, then they have a five pounds, two course lunch deal. Well worth braving the Elephant and Castle shopping centre for. This Londoner will be eating here again. They also have a shop and a deli, ideal if you get
sufficiently inspired by the food here to try cooking it at home.

Words and photography by Oliver Gili

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Kate Percy is a marathon runner and a cook ? and, as of the 10th of January, a blogger. With her Go Faster Food blog, Kate intends to share her progress in training for the Flora London Marathon 2008 and to talk about different foods and recipes which she finds helpful to her training.

One such recipe of Kate?s is spaghetti with mussels, which serves four to six people, ?depending on hunger.? According to Kate it (along with ?some delicious fresh prawns, fried in butter, garlic, a little finely chopped fresh red chilli and parsley with plenty of fresh bread to mop up the juices?), did just the trick stoking her up the night before her first 15 mile run of 2008. However, she states that:

I wouldn?t eat mussels, or any type of seafood for that matter, before a race, but I love them so much, I am prepared to take a risk otherwise. Also, I feel much more confident about eating seafood if I have bought and prepared it myself.

Go Faster Food is an inspirational blog. We intend to keep reading it to follow Kate?s progress. Go Faster Kate!

Doig employs immense canvases upon which he layers textured melancholic colour upon colour, executing incredibly complex fragments that appear effortless from a distance. The exhibit follows his beginnings at Chelsea Art School in London through to his most recent work rendered in Trinidad, where the Canadian-raised artist now lives. Although Doig has represented the frenetic urban London life in his immense breadth of work, this exhibition emphasises his mastery of the landscape genre, a turf generally overlooked in contemporary painting. The Canadian landscape of his youth is deftly explored here, in all of its wintry, quietly wistful splendour.

Most of Doig?s figures are ?blotted out? in one way or another; bodies are shadowy outlines, bereft of the colours so rich in the landscapes or houses eclipsing them. There are elements of Van Gogh?s deep harvest tones and texturing, of Gerhard Richter?s photographic blurring techniques, and the watery purples and greens in his later Trinidad series can?t help but call Gauguin to mind. Most of Doig?s canvases glimmer with snowflakes in the extreme foreground, as though caught and held there by a photographer?s lens. He uses water to reflect many of his images onto themselves, imbuing the paintings with an evocative dreamlike quality.

The real magic, however, is how endlessly captivating his paintings are. Their sheer enormity, complexity in composition and chaotic texturing and branching can find you unearthing something new after several minutes of standing gape-mouthed in front of it. The Independent and the Guardian seem to feel the same way we do, so get down to Tate Britain before this remarkable show moves onto Paris. Thanks for our New Favourite Artist, Tate.

By Kira Hesser

Peter Doig is at Tate Britain until 27 April. Tickets are £8, students get in for £6. Exhibitions daily 10.00-17.40 (last admission 17.00)

Image of Peter Doig 'Swamped' 1990 courtesy Victoria Miro © Peter Doig, Oil on canvas 197 x 241cm

Well done chaps, we've all been installing wireless routers like Billio, usage in London soared by 156% in the second half of 2007 and now London is the Wi-Fi capital of the world. Choc ices all round.

Do you remember what it used to be like in the pre-Wi-Fi days when you wanted to be on the internet and in your garden at the same time? You needed an ethernet cable longer than Dixons would provide. You had to turn to the black market where squat, grey skinned men in long raincoats would peddle you a 10m cable in return for use of your residents' parking vouchers.

If you wanted to take your laptop to a cafe, you had to trail the cable down the street. People tripped over it. We said sorry out of courtesy, but didn't mean it. It wasn't our fault. It is integral to the dignity of mankind that one must be able to read his or her emails in a public place. It is a freelancer's human right that he or she should not have to tidy their own boxroom office and should be able to use a cramped corner of Costa Coffee as a workplace. Back then, using the internet on a train involved hundreds of miles of cable and a 70ft high iron spool. Greasing that spool was the bane of our lives. Bloody spool.

They were dark days, friends, dark days.

Image taken from Jem's flickr photostream.

Our friends at Film Friends Forever are holding their monthly film night tomorrow night, and they have an absolutely cracking line-up of Oscar, Bafta & other award winners and nominees. Check out the viewing list here, all to be enjoyed in Corbert Place, Truman Brewery from 6.30pm - there's animation, arthouse, short music movies and live music as well as £3 beers. Sounds good? Yes, it does and it should, seeing as this monthly film night comes alongside the mailing list and online community that is Film Friends Forever. You're never lonely with these guys.

"We started our events in the intimate surroundings of The Parlour in Sketch in Mayfair for industry professionals and enthusiasts to come and show their work, have a drink and chat in a relaxed atmosphere.

Our monthly events showcase the best of short films, music videos, feature films, and talks from industry figures and are attended by those who love film and work in the creative industry and their friends."

You need to get on the guestlist to get in but it's not as daunting as it sounds. Click on the links to the Film Friends Forever website and just fill in your details in time for tomorrow night, then kick back and enjoy some moving images with friendly people.

Film Friends Forever monthly event, Tuesday 18 March, 6.30pm. Corbert Place, Truman Brewery, doors open 6.30pm. Entry is guestlist only with a £2 donation. For more information and to join the guestlist, go here.

The septuagenarian Walton resident appeared in court accused of a host of modern white-collar crimes: conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to steal, conspiracy to transfer criminal property and conspiracy to remove criminal property. It relates to attempts between January and October of 2004 to electronically transfer £220 million from the London offices of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation to a number of accounts worldwide. Davies was charged along with three middle aged male accomplices, and the case has been ajourned until May.

We'd like to say this is an isolated case, but recently we've noticed a growing trend of criminality among London's senior citizens. Forget knitting, backgammon or wittering on about the good ol' days: the modern OAP is far more interested in running benefit frauds, dabbling in a spot of the old ultraviolence, or giving the neighbours an ASBO-worthy tongue-lashing. And devilishly, they've thus far escaped blame and managed to finger those hooded youngsters as the cause of societal ills.

It ain't safe out on the streets of London - not with those pensioners shuffling about hog-wild. Next time a nice-looking old lady smiles sweetly at you, we recommend you run like the wind - she's liable to shank you and pinch your sneakers, given half a chance.

Image from m0dlx's Flickrstream

Regular reader Mehrdad collects unusual look-a-likies on his blog Aref-Adib. His latest discovery is that the Tube can bear a striking resemblance to the work of Dutch neo-plasticist (hey, we can use Wikipedia) Piet Mondrian.