Combining Google Accounts

Somehow over the last few years I have acquired two Google accounts. One of them is associated with my Gmail email address and the other is associated with my dave.org.uk address. Recently I heard that the G1 phone ties itself to a single Google account when you activate it, so if I’n going to get… Continue reading Combining Google Accounts

“Selling” Photos

A couple of days ago I received through the post a copy of Diplomat Magazine – a magazine which is sent free to all foreign embassy staff in the UK. It took me a minute or so to remember why they would send a copy to me. This issue contains an article about the London… Continue reading “Selling” Photos

Happy Elections

Four years ago I drew a comparison between the US Presidential Election result and the 1992 British General Election. This year the comparison seems even more apt. The footage we saw of the celebrations in Chicago and elsewhere in the US as Obama was confirmed as the winner brought back memories of how we all… Continue reading Happy Elections

Phone Company Web Sites

My current mobile phone contract has finished so I’m looking around for a new phone. This means that I’ve spent some time over the last few days looking at phone company web sites. And it seems that although they might be selling cutting edge technology, phone companies still get their web sites built by the… Continue reading Phone Company Web Sites

Non-Magic Bus

Last June, writer Ariane Sherine wrote an article on Comment is Free complaining about the amount of religious advertising on the side of London buses. As part of the research for the article she calculated that it would take about 4,500 atheists donating £5 each to get together enough money to have an atheist advertising… Continue reading Non-Magic Bus

42 Days is Dead

It’s a strange world when you have to rely on the House of Lords to throw out ridiculous legislation from a Labour government. But that’s exactly what happened yesterday as the Lords voted against the government’s proposals for 42-day detention of suspected terrorists. Pretty much everyone in the country now agrees that the proposals were… Continue reading 42 Days is Dead

Technology Hates Me

About ten days ago, I took delivery of a new toy – a Dell XPS M1330 laptop. I spent last weekend happily repartitioning and installing Fedora Linux and I was planning to write an entry this weekend about how well I was getting on with it. Except, I’m not. It’s stopped working. I did some… Continue reading Technology Hates Me

War of the Worlds

I’ve always had a massive soft spot for Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds. I think that the album must have originally been released pretty soon after I read the book for the first time. And it must have really struck a chord with me. I borrowed a copy from the… Continue reading War of the Worlds

Michael Reiss: Creationist

Following last weeks entry about the media and MMR I have another post brewing which goes into more detail about the central message of Ben Goldacre’s excellent book. That central message is that you usually can’t trust science and health stories in the press because they are usually written by people who don’t understand the… Continue reading Michael Reiss: Creationist

The Media on MMR

This makes me very angry. Yesterday the NHS Information Centre released data showing that take-up of the MMR vaccination was lower than it should be. The national level has stalled at 85%, whereas it really needs to be at 95% in order to achieve “herd immunity” – an unflattering term which simply means that immunity… Continue reading The Media on MMR