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 […]

6 Sep 2024

Some bullet-points about regulation

In case you’d got the wrong idea about how the ’regulatory state‘ is supposed to work — UPDATED 23 May 2025. I could update this thing daily. Regulation is always a news story in the UK (Search any news service for ‘regulation‘ right now and you’ll get a long list of current news stories about […]


  • Always on, man

    Broadband is widely misrepresented as being all about speed. In fact the speed of a broadband connection is the boring part – a simple incremental improvement to narrowband. The exciting…

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  • The Puttnam Report

    I’m getting bored downloading Communications Bill documents and searching them for references to the Internet. Lord Puttnam empanelled twelve peers and MPs for his parliamentary committee and took evidence from…

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  • For a slightly less hermetic blogosphere

    WAP blogging is a thing — I’m posting this from my mobile using clever Wapblogger. Not sure if I can stand tapping out many entries like this but it does…

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  • All the world’s a blog

    Ravings of a recent convert — When you think about it, everything’s a blog. Blog-form seems to be very basic – large parts of the web can be neatly analysed…

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  • Blogging – is this the hypergrowth phase?

    Apps that add comments and notes to blogs and web sites are booming but some can’t take the demand — I got comments working – so now you are required…

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  • A chink of light for file sharing

    The FT reports that, in one market at least, file sharing may finally be damaging CD sales. In the US, three years after downloading became widespread and a year after…

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  • New words

    — Crixton — Kids living in Cricklewood in glorious but unglamorous North West London have borrowed some South London style from more newsworthy Brixton and renamed their neighbourhood ‘Crixton’. How…

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  • Not whining but drowning

    Hard copy from March’s PC Forum makes compelling reading (how do you blog hard copy?). The pace of change in the real world adds melancholy footnotes to the proceedings. Joe…

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  • an obvious money-spinner Introducing the

    an obvious money-spinner — Introducing the Cage-o-Gram — Today’s silly idea is to sell thousands of copies of this astounding recording of John Cage’s diaries and thus bring the planet…

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  • Indirect Current

    The North London Line (timetables here) is one of London’s marvelous oddities – it doesn’t go anywhere. Or at least not in the purposeful, busy sort of way that the…

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  • industry awards Strike a medal,

    industry awards — Strike a medal, hire a band — New media awards come and go ? these days mostly go. Most of them are thinly disguised promotions ? wobbly…

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  • Now this is a good idea

    According to the FT, a new DTI report on speeding broadband adoption is not very optimistic. It concludes that wider availability and falling prices will not be enough to persuade…

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