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 […]


  • Hijacking license payer-funded audio

    Audio Hijack Pro is a nicely put-together OS X app for capturing sound from any application, including stuff you might not strictly be allowed to record, like the BBC’s RealMedia…

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  • Adbusting or whingeing? You decide

    Consumer activism is a good thing (don’t get me wrong), especially when it takes a street-wise, media hacking, spray-paint-and-stencil kind of approach, but – really – this is just whingeing…

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  • A changing city

    If it weren’t a really crass thing to do I think I’d probably say that Walter Benjamin would have loved this mournful photo-record of change in the built fabric of…

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  • It’ll all end in tiers

    Higher education in Britain is in a rut. The post war revolution in access has left behind an effective but dreary monoculture. The end result of 50 years of hopeful…

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  • Fast track elf

    At the weekend – while you were translating Artaud or arranging a Bartok quartet for the tuba or whatever you do with your free time – we went to see…

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  • More about Creo’s Tokens

    I’ve been thinking about Creo’s interesting attempt to improve on P2P file distribution – a product called Tokens (I blogged it here the other day). If you want to try…

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  • Looks like a bow-tie to me, mate

    Yeah. Definitely a bow-tie. Click the small image for a forensic enlargement.

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  • Bush = Bartlet?

    Neo-con doctrine and tough liberalism collided in George Bush’s positively Bartlet-esque Banqueting House speech last week. Bush said: “we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression…

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  • Solution seeks problem, finds problem…

    Things change at different rates. Bandwidth, for instance, is all over the place. At the net’s core – in the trenches between ISPs and data centres – aggregate bandwidth in…

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  • Like my new look?

    Handsome, huh? I used Firda Beka’s excellent Firdamatic to generate the stylesheet and basic templates and Paul drew the picture of me. I’ve got to finish detailing the stylesheet, reinstate…

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  • Davis is wrong about the death penalty

    David Davis thinks he’s got his finger on the pulse. He thinks the opinion polls support his enthusiasm for the judicial execution of serial killers (how do you qualify, by…

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  • Murphy drawn

    Paul Murphy, noted blogger and curator, who’s been drawing me lately, has been drawn himself ??by my five year-old Oliver. We gave the artist a picture of Paul standing around…

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