One of my favourite bands of all time are The Icicle Works. I first heard of them when they briefly entered the UK pop charts in the early 80s with Love Is A Wonderful Colour and Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream) but I dismissed them as just another average pop band until I saw… Continue reading The Icicle Works
Me and Steve Jobs
I’m convinced that Steve Jobs hates me. There’s something embedded in every piece of Apple hardware and software that checks who is using it and if it’s me then it does everything in it’s power to make my life as painful as possible. It’s the only possible explaination. Everyone else seems to think that Apple… Continue reading Me and Steve Jobs
Magna Carta, Did She Die in Vain?
Read this. It’s very good. And then add Thoughtcrime is Death to your blogroll. That is all citizens. Now return to your labours. (Entry title lightly paraphrased from Tony Hancock’s “12 Angry Men”)
Unhappy Birthday
I’m ill and I’m grumpy, so this site hits my current mood nicely. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who hates to hear restaurant staff and customers singing “Happy Birthday” to some hapless soul sitting in their midst. The people who run Unhappy Birthday also dislike this as much as I… Continue reading Unhappy Birthday
Government Web Sites
The UK Government have launched a new web site to inform people about IT security issues. The links page on the site contains an image which proudly identifies the site as being built of valid XHTML 1.0. Sadly, clicking on that image runs the W3C validator tool which then demonstrates that the page is not… Continue reading Government Web Sites
Brian Sedgemore
Brian Sedgemore was my MP for a couple of years when I lived in Hackney in the mid-80s. He’s one of a small number of Labour MPs who still seem to understand what the Labour Party is supposed to stand for. He’s retiring at the end of this Parliament and last week he made what… Continue reading Brian Sedgemore
FOSDEM
Off to Brussels in a couple of hours to go to the FOSDEM conference. I’ll be running the Perl Developers’ Room. Hope it’s warmer there than it is here.
Newspaper RSS
I wrote last month about the irony of the Sunday Times praising RSS but not having RSS feeds available on their site. This got me wondering which UK papers currently offer RSS feeds of their stories. I’m planning to put a page up at some point that lists all the the feeds available from each… Continue reading Newspaper RSS
Rick Wakeman
See, even the title of this entry has sent my street cred plummenting. Now watch me completely destroy what’s left of it. I’ve never really enjoyed the “classic” Rick Wakeman albums like Journey to the Centre of the Earth or The Myths and Legends of King Arthur. They’ve always seemed like they are trying to… Continue reading Rick Wakeman
Greasemonkey and Ajax
Lloyd just pointed me at Greasemonkey which looks very interesting. Throw it together with something built using Ajax and suddenly the potential is enormous. Update: Here’s another nice piece about Greasemonkey.