Not that I’m watching Celebrity Big Brother you understand, but something interesting has come to my notice. The “official” biography of Jackie Stallone gives her age as 71 which means she was born in 1933 or 1934. IMDB shows that her son Sylvester Stallone was born in July 1946. Now it is, of course, possible… Continue reading Stallone Ages
Good Customer Service
In the past I’ve been quick to use this site to rant about bad customer service, so I’d like to take the opportunity to redress the balance slightly and mention some good customer service that I recieved yesterday. I was browsing the Jessops web site looking for information about digital cameras when I noticed that… Continue reading Good Customer Service
Soundblox
So Lloyd wrote something pointing out this piece by Jon Udell about the Lazlo Soundblox which is a Flash front-end to a server for streaming MP3s. I’m not completely convinced by Soundblox. You can either run it from the installation hosted on the author’s server (and I don’t know how stable that installation is guaranteed… Continue reading Soundblox
Open Source
And while I’m posting links from today’s Guardian, Victor Keegan is very positive about the Open Source movement. In recent months, as readers of Online will be well aware, open source has entered a new era with the arrival of a browser (Firefox) that is better and more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and an… Continue reading Open Source
Chain Letters
Nice piece by Jack Schofield in today’s Guardian about the damage that pointless email chain letters do. Everyone should read it and then STOP SENDING ME CHAIN LETTERS BY EMAIL!
In The Dragon’s Den
I’ve been enjoying the BBC programme Dragon’s Den. In the show a group of entrepreneurs describe business ideas to a group of “dragons” (potential investors) in the hope that the dragons will give them some money. Most of the investment requests are in the order of £100,000. The dragons question them on the details of… Continue reading In The Dragon’s Den
Geekspotting
About half an hour ago I spotted Ben Hammersley wandering around on the fifth floor of the Guardian Unlimited building. I know he writes for the Guardian, but we don’t often get writers slumming it over this side of the road :)
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Amazon Link This is number two in my attempt to read fifty books this year. It was certainly a very simple read. The prose is very plain. I’m told that this is part of its charm, but I find it hard not to see it as a limitation of the author. It’s not that I… Continue reading The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Concept Album
Who remembers concept albums? In the 70s we all listened to them. There was no shame in it. But then punk rock came along and opened our eyes. We all realised what a pile of pretentious nonsense they were all and they were all consigned to the back of the wardrobe with all the other… Continue reading Concept Album
Lou Reed
I’m still slowly working my way through ripping all of my CDs to .ogg files. Yesterday it was the turn of Lou Reed. I’ve got some really good Lou Reed albums (Transformer, Street Hassle and New York) but I’ve also got some dross that I bought in the late 90s when I had too much… Continue reading Lou Reed