I wondered last night about searching for “informational” photos of Balham in Flickr. So this morning I decided to look for all the photos on Flickr that had been tagged with “balham”. All I found was a set of photos of someone’s halloween party that seems to have taken place in a pub somewhere in… Continue reading Photographic Memory (cont)
The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad
Amazon link Guess what? Life in Afganistan under the Taliban was a bit shit. Particularly if you were a woman. And since the Taliban have gone it’s only got a little bit better. Seierstad spent a few months living with a family in Kabul soon after the Taliban were removed and this is her interpretation… Continue reading The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad
Read More Books
Last year, the number of books I got thru was appallingly low. I read more X-Men comics than I had in any year in the last twenty years, but I doubt I read more than fifteen or twenty books. So one of my resolutions this year is to read more. I’ve set myself a target… Continue reading Read More Books
Photographic Memory
Interesting discussion in the pub tonight about how people use cameras now that everyone[1] has one in their phone and therefore in their pocket all the time. It seems that people are using them as a photgraphic memory. Want to remember the opening times of your local supermarket over the christmas period? Don’t write it… Continue reading Photographic Memory
Comments Back
Whisper it softly, but I’ve turned comments back on. Actually, they were only off for about twelve hours. But it seems to have done the trick. Since I turned them back on I’ve had one piece of comment spam (as opposed to hundreds every hour). If you get overwhelmed by comment spam then simply removing… Continue reading Comments Back
Greater Intolerance
Lucy Mangan makes a plea for greater intolerance in the world. Now that the season of goodwill has passed, let’s make a plea for greater intolerance (carefully directed) in the world. The next time a woman (and it is always a woman – men have many flaws but at least they prefer to seek the… Continue reading Greater Intolerance
I Surrender
Last night, this site came under a massive comment spam attack which effectively crippled the server. Until I can think of a better solution, I’ve disabled comments. Whilst I like giving you all the ability to comment on my entries here, it’s far more important to me that the other services on this server run… Continue reading I Surrender
Getting Things Done
I was going to get a lot done during the christmas break. I finished working at Outcome before Christmas and I start a contract (hooray!) at Guardian Unlimited next Tuesday, so that left me over a week to get a lot of little jobs done. But I reckoned without the flu bug that was going… Continue reading Getting Things Done
Comment Spam War
From here it looks like the comment spammers have finally declared out and out war on bloggers. For the past three days I’ve had a constant stream of spam comments added to this site. This morning there were 400 new ones. The comments all seem to point to randomly generated URLs, so I think that… Continue reading Comment Spam War
Hungry Rats
In the tube station on the way home last night I saw a few of these posters. They have a large picture of a rat and a link to the web site www.hungryrats.com. This turns out to be a link to the people who run the “Keep Britain Tidy” campaign. The thrust of the argument… Continue reading Hungry Rats