I’ve got two articles to write this week and a number of other important things to do (not least of which is to find a new job) but while reading an Observer article I found a link to www.1837online.com and now it looks increasingly unlikely that I’ll achieve anything useful today.
Author: Dave Cross
New Years Resolutions
Usual stuff. Lose weight, get fit (as Bob Mills once said “like most fat blokes, I’d do anything to lose weight – with the obvious exceptions of eating less or doing exercise”). Write more – not just here and not just technical stuff. I’d like to finish the NaNoWriMo novel that crashed and burned in… Continue reading New Years Resolutions
Return of the King
Another thing that happened just before christmas. I lost an Ebay auction for a VHS copy of the old animated version of The Return of the King. I’m sure it’s complete rubbish, but i’ve never seen it and it’s always annoyed me that The Lord of the Rings only told half of the story. If… Continue reading Return of the King
Catching Up
Been a while since I wrote, so here’s a quick catch-up. I left Guardian Unlimited just before christmas. In my last week there I re-engineered their RSS software so that they can easily produce an RSS feed for just about any page on their site. This seemed to get many people rather excited, so maybe… Continue reading Catching Up
You know you spend too much time on the Internet
…when you see the headline Amazon search for UK campaigner and you think it’s got something to do with online book shops.
The Big Conversation
When you’re looking for a political consultation web site it’s important to get the URL just right. Two of the following sites take you to that nice Mr Blair’s Labour Party site where they closely control what you can read. The other two don’t. bigconversation.org bigconversation.org.uk thebigconversation.org thebigconversation.org.uk
Public Whip
Ever wondered how your MP has voted in Parliament? Well now you can find out. publicwhip.org.uk have extracted the records from the online version of Hansard back to the start of the 1997 session and put them all into a database which you can query. For example, I now know that my MP has voted… Continue reading Public Whip
Logical Thought
Do you ever get into a discussion where something seems perfectly obvious to you, but other people in the group can’t see it? I saw a good example of this recently. I was in a pub with a group of friends when one of them showed us a “card trick”. This trick involved taking an… Continue reading Logical Thought
Apologies
It seems that Michael Howard has apologised for his part in the Poll Tax. It’s a start I suppose, but personally I won’t be happy until Thatcher has been made to travel every road in the UK on her hands and knees apologising to everyone she meets.
Pedantry
When did the meaning of the word “acronym” get changed? As I understand it, an acronym is an abbreviation which can be pronounced as a word. Like “scuba”, “nato” or “radar”. But many people seem to use “acronym” when they actually mean “abbreviation”. There’s already a perfectly usable word for abbreviations. It’s “abbreviation”. Why not… Continue reading Pedantry