Category: life

I took some time off yesterday and ended up in Trafalgar Square during the broadcast of the memorial service for the victims of the July bombings. There were a lot of cameras there, both TV and press. Most people watched and contemplated, except for 2 I noticed. The first was a guy who wondered round […]

The Government are starting a citizenship test from today, to test applicants knowledge of the culture, laws and lifestyle of the country they wish to be join. I took the BBC’s pretend version of the test. Unfortunately I only scored 66%, not the required 75%…right, I’ll get my coat then..

Although I think Debenhams is just slightly too early for me…let’s get Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night out the way first. The decorations were going up all over the street today, with much of the pavement roped off to allow the men access to the trees along the street in complete safety. Of course, the people […]

Whilst on the subject of the increasing female interest in all things geek, Danah Boyd posts about a Long Tail Camp. In keeping with an open-souce camp, there’s a page asking for topics to be discussed. Somehow I think this particular topic may not be that popular in open forum… Long-Tail Camp Requests How to […]

Interesting little snippet in the Telegraph today, about how women now make up 51% of viewers on the SciFi channel. Adam Roberts, a professor in English gave an insight into his reasoning about women watching The Matrix.. More women are tuning in to see the relationships develop between wittily-written, complex central characters they can identify […]

In a complete waste of advertisers’ money*, to ‘celebrate’ the 400th anniversay, an ITV programme made an accurate reconstruction of the Palace of Westminster as it was in 1605 and then proceeded to blow it up, using the same amount of gunpowder that was packed into the cellar in that failed plot. Somewhat predictably, the […]

I’ve been following Clayton Cubbitt’s Operation Eden blog, about his family’s life after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home. Today, he posts about an act of generosity I received the email from a guy named Kenny…In it, he told me how his “sweetie”, Elizabeth, had stumbled upon Operation Eden, and how she related to my mom’s […]

I’m refreshing my car insurance and one of the sites (and now I can’t remember which one) had the following list as one of it’s pre-screening questions. These type of questions usually point to increased premiums or people they will not insure – an interesting list putting together professional models and fast food deliverers. – […]

Very busy working and meeting up with people – lots of fun but tiring. Not going to have anytime this trip to do sightseeing or shopping, although a rarely do any shopping when I’m here. Normal service may be resumed later.

I met up with Lee Wilkins yesterday in New York, who was here to attend Blogon. By one of life’s strange co-incindences we were in hotels next door to each other. Spent a nice evening tlaking blogging and podcasting and plans for the future (and sucking up the W’s free wifi in the bar!)

The BBC are reporting that a Ministry of Defence worker left his gun in a public toilet in Sainsbury’s. What was he doing to take the gun off? And why was it loaded with blanks – what use is a gun loaded with blanks!

Yesterday my sister and her husband decided to reinstall Windows 98. All was well, it was working a lot faster and they were happy. Until they rebooted this morning and it asked them for a product key. Which they could not find and did not know it was needed. This resulted in a call to […]

Currently sitting in a hotel lounge after a day’s team building. The hotel is one of the nice country houses that got converted after the war to a hotel. During the day we’ve been disturbed by camera crews filming various people. At one point I stopped to see if I could recognise anyone, only to […]

Lloyd Davies has a write up from a talk by Theordore Zeldin on the art of conversation, both face-to-face and online. conversation is an art, so there is no guaranteed way of becoming a good conversationalist and everyone develops their own style. Until recently people had to fit into fixed categories. Now the individual is […]

The weather in Britain is about to get better – or at least that is what the weather presenters are going to be telling us. The Meteorological Office have issued new guidelines, to ensure the presenters emphasise the positive and don’t dwell on the negative. So instead of Occasional Showers, it’s going to be mostly […]

A colleague at work had an interesting experience last week; the Evening Standard (local London paper) rang her to ask her to submit a letter to the paper on a specific subject (the resignation of newsreader Philip Hayton over personal clashes). She’d sent in a letter about a year before, so they had her details […]

There’s an annular solar eclipse today, which will probably not be visible from much of the UK due to cloud. The BBC are again requesting everyone’s photos, a cheap way to get photo stock as well as incuding people. Meanwhile you can watch the eclipse over the web, instead if damaging your eyes, via various […]

..or something like that ;o). Via the BBC, DDB London* have conducted a poll about the ‘average’ persons** knowledge of new terms, iincluding blogging, podcsting and broadband. “Our research not only shows that there is no buzz about blogging and podcasting outside of our media industry bubble, but also that people have no understanding of […]