3 Jun 2026

I hate this

But does it matter? — I don’t usually say that sort of thing here. I try to be more measured, less personal. I’m talking about the police face recognition vans obviously. This might not surprise you: I mean that I don’t like them. I’m an old git after all, a man who’s written here before […]

29 Jul 2025

Nearly half a bicycle

The atomic theory in Kilburn — This place (on Kilburn High Road) has been morphing steadily from dry cleaner’s to bike shop over the last few years. I remember being surprised one morning to see a few kids’ bikes lined up for sale outside but I’d say the shop is now approaching 50% bike shop. […]

13 Jan 2025

Where is my patriotism?

Come, love of country, fill my heart… — I do love Britain. I guess I love England more. London most of all. I hope that in my life I’ve honoured the place I live and not disgraced it or undermined it (I support England and GB in sporting events – I fly a little flag […]


  • This is fun…

    iTunes playlists are becoming an obsession. Here’s my “sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers” list – every track that features one of those words in its ID3 tags. For some…

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  • Today’s Guardian article

    I persuaded The Guardian to print my blog address so maybe I’ll get some traffic today! I posted the full text of today’s article about Super Audio here a few…

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  • Another unicorn!

    Yoz has done the donkey work on legendary software engineer Mitch Kapor’s latest product, a ‘Personal Information Manager’ (PIM) called Chandler. A useful analysis, lots of links and even some…

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  • Distressed geeks

    Some scratched and mangled black & white photos I took at Dave & Danny’s ‘Village Fete for the Twenty First Century’ back in the Summer showed up in the post…

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  • Powerpoint in pedagogy

    We’ve pressed the Powerbook and MS Powerpoint into half term service for our four year-old’s revision. In kiosk mode it’s easy to create a constrained sequence of words, letters, numbers…

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  • New ways of listening

    As I said, it took me a long time to adjust to the new ways of listening implied by clever tools like iTunes. A concrete example: what I used to…

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  • Fireworks

    Today we bought fireworks. I mean we really bought fireworks. They’re having a toofer at Tesco’s so we wound up with a shopping trolley-full of fireworks for half price. Driving…

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  • Sublime Audio

    The recording industry did noble work in giving us routine connection with the sublime. Now they’re risking everything by misdirecting their energy into spoiler technologies like Super Audio CD. Meanwhile,…

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  • Big brains stay home

    Esther Dyson’s European Tech conference, High Tech Forum – the choice of big brains and moguls alike – has been cancelled for the second year running. Last year’s event was…

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  • I spoke too soon

    Erm, I said the other day that Ellen Feiss’ lease on fame had been cut short. Looks like I was wrong. From Wired News, I learn that 250 Mac-heads gathered…

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  • ecommerce is rubbish

    New data: 51.3% of ecommerce purchases are unnecessary, 16.9% rubbish, 13.9% embarrassing, 11.4% stupid, only 6.5% life enchancing. Poor Ellen Feiss was a celebrity for less than the regulation fifteen…

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  • My come-back

    I haven’t blogged for nearly a month. It was the shock. My carefully constructed blogger.com weblog exploded. I won’t go on about it. I’m better now. Anyway, I can confirm…

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