Highlights
Count Binface and electoral theatre
Don’t be a costumed loon — It’s trivially easy to stand for Parliament in the UK. Any loon can do so. You need ten electors to nominate you and £500 for a deposit – and it’s actually been getting easier. The deposit was introduced in 1918 (£150 – quite a lot of money then). Before […]
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 […]
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 […]
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Digital divide – approx. 3000 miles wide
One look at this map (From the Public Internet Project via Werblog) showing Manhattan’s wi-fi nodes should be enough to prove that the biggest digital divide of all is the…
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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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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…