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 […]


  • She blogs. She blogs…

    …(paraphrasing Ricky Martin). Juliet, who is my wife (and – some of you will remember – the author of the near-legendary proto-blog ‘bird’ back in about 1996), is blogging –…

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  • A work of art…

    …if you ask me. Michel Gondry’s video for The White Stripes’ The Hardest Button to Button (helpfully ripped from TV by Ryan Cerbus because all the official versions seem to…

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  • Paul drew me, which is a good thing

    Enigmatic Paul Murphy has drawn my portrait from a photograph he found on the Internet. I think there’s a reasonable chance that this isn’t a drawing at all but just…

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  • Endless deferral

    Voodoo Pad is one of those applications that promises to get me organised. Of course, I long ago resigned myself to never actually getting organised – in fact, downloading and trying…

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  • I dreamt this

    If you dial 1471 from a BT phone you can find out the last number that called you (you can get the last five numbers now, in fact). If you…

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  • Should I buy a Tivo?

    Never shy of jumping on a bandwagon nearly a year after it closes its UK operation, I’ve been bidding on Tivo PVRs (‘Personal Video Recorders’) at eBay. Do you think…

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  • places and camphone privacy

    Camphone hysteria is building. Gadgets with built-in cameras are being banned all over the place. Looks like we’ll see an arbitrary patchwork of camphone rules emerge ??some will ban them,…

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  • How strange are the Electric Light Orchestra?

    Juliet asked me to download some of their stuff so that she could be fifteen again for a while so I did and now I’m speechless at how we let…

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  • Looking for Laurent

    Laurent Byford (or is it Bayford?) used to work at a web design firm called Designercity (now defunct). I need to contact him urgently on some another.com business. Do you…

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  • Dancing

    I’m in the kitchen washing up and watching Twyla Tharp‘s staggeringly beautiful In The Upper Room on BBC4 ??a piece from 1986 with a score by Philip Glass (They’re having…

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  • Why I won’t be buying any Google shares

    Actually, it’s quite boring. I won’t be buying any shares in Google because I never buy shares in anything. The only businesses I’ve owned shares in are my own. This…

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  • Things I’d have been reading if I’d been reading the right things lately

    Tom Standage’s survey ‘Beyond the Bubble‘ from the Economist a couple of weeks ago. You could use these, beautifully written, periodic Economist surveys to plot a pretty accurate graph of…

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