I’ve been a happy customer of First Direct since a month or so after they opened, almost twenty-five years ago. One of the things I really liked about them was that they hadn’t followed other banks down the route of insisting that you carried a new code-generating dongle around so that you can log into […]
Category archives: tech
National Rail Travel Alert
This is the text of a National Rail travel alert email that I received this morning. Problems have been reported which may affect your journey between Balham (BAL) and Shepherd’s Bush (SPB) More details of this disruption can be found here: http://nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/76437.aspx To see how this disruption affects your journey and to get alternative options […]
Free Web Advice: Marvel
It’s been a few years since I wrote a “free web advice” piece, but I got really annoyed by the Marvel web site this morning. About a year ago I subscribed to Marvel Unlimited – a plan that gave me access to all of Marvel’s digital comics for about £40 a year. This morning, I […]
Sky Broadband
Back in October 2009, I wrote about how I had cancelled my Demon account and switched to Be Broadband. Be were the broadband provider of choice for the discerning geek. None of their customers had a bad thing to say against them. All was well with the world. And then, just over a year ago, […]
Macs and Me
“It never stops raining!” ranted the lorry driver. He thumped the table, spilt his tea, and actually, for a moment, appeared to be steaming. You can’t just walk off without responding to a remark like that. Of course it stops raining,” said Arthur. It was hardly an elegant refutation, but it had to be said. […]
Year of Code on Newsnight
You’ve probably already seen the section on the government’s Year of Code initiative that was on Newsnight last Wednesday. But, in case you haven’t, here is it. We’ll wait while you catch up. Most of the commentary I’ve seen on this concentrates on Lottie Dexter’s performance in the interview that takes up the second half […]
Jessica London
Recently, I started getting unsolicited email from a company called Jessica London. They sell women’s clothes and they seem to think that I’d be interested in all of their latest offers. I have no idea where they got my email address from. I know I have never dealt with them so it’s not a case […]
Public Wifi
We’re finally reaching the stage where public wifi is becoming ubiquitous in London – at least when you’re indoors. It’s now quite strange to be somewhere that doesn’t have wifi available. But as it’s all supplied by commercial operators, it can all get a bit confusing. I know a few people who leave wifi turned […]
OpenTech 2013
Yesterday was the (almost) annual OpenTech conference. For various reasons, the conference didn’t happen last year, so it was good to see it back this year. OpenTech is the conference where I most wish I could clone myself. There are three streams of talks and in pretty much every slot there are talks I’d like […]
MPs’ Web Sites
When I set up Planet Westminster in 2006 I thought it would be a relatively simple project to maintain. Over the years, more and more MPs would start blogs. Every couple of months I’d add the new ones and everything would be great. It hasn’t worked out like that at all. MPs’ web sites have […]