For reasons too boring to go into, I’m currently reading The Big Picture by Douglas Kennedy. I really don’t recommend it. It’s a rather dull story of a rich American whose life is suddenly changed in dramatic ways. But one thing interested me in it. That’s the way that the topical references in the novel… Continue reading Topical References in Novels
Author: Dave Cross
No More Faith Schools
This all comes a as a bit of a surprise. But a very welcome one. The Government has decided against backing more faith schools, the Children, Schools and Families Secretary, Ed Balls, told MPs. In what is being seen as one of the most significant policy shifts of the post-Tony Blair era in education, he… Continue reading No More Faith Schools
Blasphemy Update
The debate on the amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which would repeal the UK’s law against blasphemy took place yesterday. You can read the full debate online or summaries from various news sources. Basically, following a half hour or so of debate the Justice Minister, Maria Eagle, said that the government had… Continue reading Blasphemy Update
Repealing the Blasphemy Laws
Tomorrow in Parliament, Dr Evan Harris MP will introduce an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which will seek to repeal the outdated and ridiculous UK blasphemy laws. To best explain why this is necessary I can only quote the letter that appears in today’s Telegraph: Sir – In the light of the… Continue reading Repealing the Blasphemy Laws
RSS in Firefox
Firefox (and, I assume, most other modern browsers) does some clever magic when viewing RSS feeds. It doesn’t show the raw XML, but instead shows a neatly formatted version of the page along with a button allowing you to subscribe to the feed in your favourite feed reader. That, at least, is how it’s supposed… Continue reading RSS in Firefox
Hating Computers
Right now I’m hating all computers with a fierce intensity. You all know about the server disk crash. I’m still dealing with the fallout from that. In addition to that, on New Year’s Day I upgraded my main desktop machine to Fedora 8 – with the result that the wireless network (which is how that… Continue reading Hating Computers
Good Customer Service
One thing I’ve often written about is the decline of customer service. I don’t often get the chance to praise good customer service so I’m going to grab the opportunity that I got yesterday. Yesterday morning I got up to find two mail messages from Ebay in my inbox confirming that my items had been… Continue reading Good Customer Service
Blog Progress
The hard disk that my old blog entries live on (along with a few other web sites) is still looking rather ill. It’s apparently possible to prod it in a certain manner and get it to work for a few hours until it gets tired again. The hard part is persuading the tech support people… Continue reading Blog Progress
Colossal Caving Adventure
About nine years ago I was on holiday in Somerset with my wife and stepdaughter. As part of that holiday we visited Cheddar Gorge and, in particular, the caves there. Whilst wandering round the show caves is all very interesting, my stepdaughter’s attention was grabbed by the fact that they also ran “adventure caving” trips… Continue reading Colossal Caving Adventure
Quoting Illiterates (Update)
An email has flooded in about my previous post confirming that I was being too harsh. My correspondent points out that the mother was illiterate, she was just using “txtspk” which, whilst not being a dialect that many people enjoy reading, is still becoming an acceptable language amongst the young. I don’t agree with this… Continue reading Quoting Illiterates (Update)