Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The concept of “free” was, in retrospect, a little incongruous with Copenhagen. Although, according to the locals, Denmark is the cheapest of the Scandinavian nations, £6.50 for a pint is still something of a sting. Plus, of course, there was the irony of the Free Beer, released under a Creative Commons licence but which, at [...]

In the 14th century, friar William of Occam thought up a maxim that, in my opinion, should be drummed into the public from an early age. Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Or, to paraphrase: Of two equivalent theories or explanations, the simpler one is to be preferred. This is known as Occam’s Razor. [...]

Regrettheerror.com have posted a list of the year’s best apologies and corrections in mainstream news. Some highlights: A headline on page 1 on Saturday should have made clear that Oregon Health & Science University will be studying the effects of meth, not cooking it. – The Oregonian A listing in Sunday Calendar said hot dogs [...]

A few sites that have caught my eye: Wingmap – new Flash-based site for finding European flights. They don’t do everything right (date selection is particularly clumsy) but it’s always interesting to see a new approach. Semiotics for beginners – Daniel Chandler’s book available in full on Aberystwyth University’s website. Heavy going (certainly not for [...]

To celebrate the new design, premature meme banality. Feel free to ignore. – What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before? Explored. – Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? My only resolution was to have more fun. Not sure whether I kept it. [...]

I’ll be updating the layout of the blog over the next few days, and fixing a few things (such as archives – should now be back to normal, the new Blogger beta broke them). Sorry if things don’t look quite right for a bit. The new “add to del.icio.us” feature doesn’t work right yet. Maybe [...]

A fun day. A bit of wheeling, a bit of dealing. Listed my old phone on eBay only for it to be ‘bought’ by our old friend, a Nigerian “419″ scammer. Not a particularly good one either. Obviously I caught it, reported it etc, but now I’m struck by a more interesting thought. Would the [...]

Just upgraded to a Nokia N73. Very nice it is too. I’ve pretty much come to expect good usability from Nokia – I loved their older phones and they do an admiral job of keeping complex phones as simple as possible. Anyway, it being a 3G handset, Orange are desperate to foist 3G content on [...]