Cinephile Trailer Trash Every once in a while, a film trailer comes along that I can’t seem to stop myself watching repeatedly. I like trailers in general, which is definitely part of the problem, but some of them really grab hold of me. Two good examples of this are the final theatrical
Geek ...And Another Couple Of Things Something I forgot to mention in my last post was my trying to look at the iPad from a developer's perspective. I talked before about a programming side project that I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. Previously, I mentioned that I wasn&
Geek That iPad thing Originally, right after I got around the watching the keynote presentation which launched the iPad, I was going to write a blog post about how disappointed I was. I thought they'd screwed the pooch and I, for one, was seriously underwhelmed. Needless to say, I didn't
Geek The Goldilocks Dilema Daddy Bear's porridge is too expensive. Baby Bear's porridge is underpowered. Mummy Bear's porridge is just right... but has a monitor in it. Hhhmmm... perhaps I should explain... It's reached that time. My computer is starting to show it's age.
Bibliophile Just Can't Recommend Highly Enough Today I finished "The Girl Who Played With Fire", translated by Reg Keeland from the swedish book of the same name by Stieg Larsson. It's the sequel to 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (which is called "Men Who Hate Women" in
Globe Trotter The right kind of holiday It has been, by my count, at least 18 months since I last had a holiday (aside from one weekend spent in Cardiff). It's getting to the point where I'm starting to feel that I really need a one. But what kind of holiday? Having stopped
Hacker Web Frameworks, Desktop Application and My Newly Melted Brain Let's get the preliminaries out of the way: Hello, long time no see, how have you been? Etc... So, whilst writing up my PhD (experiments finally finished!) and working three days a week (going fully full time at the end of September!) I have a fair bit on
Geek Spending to make... While it's a fairly common and reasonably accurate maxim that you have to spend money to make money, I find myself wondering if the same is true of energy. To reword and disentangle the metaphor: Can you save energy by using energy? Here's a my train
Hacker Call by the what now? Some not work related computery bits and pieces have been percolating around my head for some time now. I think we should talk about them for a while. That is: I'll talk. You listen. I'm probably going to write a couple of more techy blogs, all
Audiophile Serendipitous Nostalgia Today I was walking home from work and absent-mindedly listening to music, when I noticed that that my supposedly shuffled iPod was displaying a definite preference for one band in particular. A band I haven't really spared a seconds thought in some years. As I walked I hatched
Geek Street Fighter Tutu So I like computer games. This isn't news, really. Not in a hardcore live-to-game type way, more in a general fondness type way. That said, I did, as a youngster in an age before mobile phones, catch a bus to the next town so I could play a
Foodie It Kneads the Dough I like bread. I like it lot. So I was quite pleased when my parents gave me their bread machine and associated recipe book a couple of years ago. Their reasoning was (believe it or not) that I was the only one actually able to make bread with it. Their
Geek Objects of Desire I haven't blogged in some, so it seemed only natural that I should do the churlish thing and write about items I would like, but do not have, post Christmas. First of all is a pod based coffee maker. When walking through House of Fraiser pre Christmas my
Blogger An Open Letter Dear Road User, Should you be located in the UK and in possession of an automobile, you may have noticed a strange lever positioned to the left of your steering wheel (the circular device which changes the direction of your car). If you are of the inquisitive sort you may
Globe Trotter Sasanach Helen's comment on my previous entry put me in mind of what I've felt as the Scottish attitude towards England and the English more or less ever since I arrived here (seven years ago!). It goes something like this: > The English? Bastards! We hate '
Globe Trotter Why Bristol Depressed Me, and Other Stories... So. It's not that I feel that Bristol is an intrinsically bad or depressing place. My attitude to it was coloured by the fact that I was a little tired of travelling, tired in general and didn't entirely want to be there. Also, and this is
Audiophile Flip side Two updates in one day shocker! The last one was a little downcast, though, and I felt a need to pass on something awesome by way of balance. Here it is: {% include youtube.html video="sxNmeMklFk8" %} Perhaps you're thinking "Huh? Who's this guy?
Hacker Ferðalangur I've been traveling around for work for the vast majority of the last month, so generally speaking I've been anything but at a loose end. Evenings were full of work or spent with the colleagues / friends I was traveling with. But now I'm back
Globe Trotter Being Yvan Petillot So. There I was, sitting across from a senior manager from Thales and two Professors, one each from Cambridge and Robert Gordon's Universities, discussing the precise definition of the term “emergent behaviour”... Wait. No. Rewind. Thanks to my current uncharacteristically basy schedule, I arrived late to the Forum
Globe Trotter Well... Here I am... ...In Iceland! I wanted to come here for a long time (this is no secret), and as the result of a highly unsubtle campaign of strategic hint dropping, here I find myself. It's not under ideal circumstances, though. I'm here for work and so I'
Hacker Celtx on the Acer Aspire One So I managed to get the Celtx screenwriting (and general preproduction) software up and running on my shiny new AA1, and in the interests of sharing the knowledge I thought I'd post how I did it. Please note, this should also work as general recipe for installing any
Geek I'll see your eee and raise you One My good friend Dougal got himself an Asus eee pc (relatively) recently. He likes it a lot. I like the idea of it, but not so much the implementation. On his version at least, the screen is too small for me, and the later versions are a bit too pricey.
Blogger Is it still limping if you're doing it with both legs? On Friday night I went to the Silent Disco and danced away until 4 am. On the whole I think it was excellent. I think it (or some progression of it) might well be the future of night clubs. It was £10 entry, which might seem a little expensive, but
Audiophile Eclecticism Seems the Facebook app does not do what it's supposed to. Never mind, I shall content myself with the (better) Wordpress interface. Maybe I'll look into writing a Facebook app which interfaces with my RSS feed. That would be cool. I thought I would write a
Blogger Starting again... again. Blogging. By my count I've had three previous attempts (on different services), none of which has entirely worked out. The problems which cause this to be are multiple, but two in particular tend to stand out. Firstly, I tend to write long rambling posts which take a lot
