Highlights
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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Mapping the Obsolescence Space
This weekend I threw away (I mean really threw away, like into a skip): three Apple inkjet printers (obsolete interface, Appletalk), an Apple 40MB (that’s MB, not GB) hard disk…
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I heart shopfronts
Got a little project going over at flickr. It’s called The Global Shopfront Library (grand, huh?). I love shopfronts, you see. Good ones are like vivid, friendly paintings. Walking down…
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Is Gordon Brown depressed?
I think he’s depressed. I suspect he’s been depressed for his whole adult life, mind you. But he’s just moved to a big new job and that’s triggered a crisis.…
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Cynical? Moi?
Parties to the Middle East talks in Annapolis fall into two groups: those who frankly don’t care if the ‘Palestine problem’ is resolved and those whose lives and livelihoods depend…
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Data abuse thoughts
The child benefit data cock-up highlights all sorts of public data issues, most of which are missed totally by both participants and observers. Data literacy in Britain is non-existent. Here…
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I’ve got a Child Benefit question
Update: it turns out the answer to my question (‘why does the National Audit Office need my National Insurance number?’ below) is ‘they don’t’. I feel like a bit of…
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“My wife wants a Kindle. She’s dead to me now…”
I’m feeling a bit guilty about yesterday’s Kindle post, which was sarcastic. But since then I’ve been tracking ‘Kindle’ on twitter and I’ve seen no more than two or three…
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McDonalds and virtual coffee bars
McDonalds are going to roll out a big coffee chain. Good timing. Coffee’s mainstream now. Intra-day refreshment used to be divided sharply down the middle with tea in a styrene…
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Kindle. Segway for books?
Some people are calling Amazon’s Kindle ‘iTunes for books’. I’m calling it ‘Segway for books’. Not because it’s got two wheels and a giro-stabiliser but because it’s got Jeff Bezos…
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Trivial, fabric-of-everyday-life stuff really
Ordinary-sized people riding around in truck-sized 4X4s now look as silly as the fat blokes in bubble cars we used to laugh at in 70s sketch shows. AND I think…
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Speechification improved!
Hey. You should get over to Speechification. We upgraded (actually, Roo upgraded). So we now have comments, links in the navbar, better programme credits. Oh, and comments. Did I mention…