I was awake soon after 5:30 yesterday morning. As I got to my computer, the EU referendum results weren’t confirmed, but it was looking certain that the country had voted (narrowly, but decisively) to leave the European Union. My thoughts during the day are nicely summed up by my tweets and retweets. My initial reaction… Continue reading Brexit
Ten Years?
It’s been some considerable time since I wrote anything about Nadine Dorries. I still keep an eye on what she’s up to, but most of the time it’s just the same old nonsense and it’s not worth writing about. But I was interested to read her recent blog post explaining why she had given up… Continue reading Ten Years?
Twitter’s Early Adopters
just setting up my twttr — jack (@jack) March 21, 2006 You’ll be seeing that tweet a lot over the next few days. It’s the first ever public tweet that was posted to the service we now know as Twitter. And it was sent ten years ago by Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s founders. Today,… Continue reading Twitter’s Early Adopters
My Family in 1939
Here in the UK, a census has been taken almost every ten years since 1841. There were a few censuses before that, but before 1841 they only counted people – they didn’t include lists of names. These census records are released 100 years after the date of the census and this data is of great… Continue reading My Family in 1939
2015 in Gigs
As has become traditional round these parts, it’s time for my annual review of the gigs I saw last year. I saw 48 gigs in 2015. That’s up on 2014’s 45, but still short of my all time high of 60 in 2013. I saw Chvrches, Stealing Sheep and Paper Aeroplanes twice. I was supposed… Continue reading 2015 in Gigs
Doctor Who Festival
In 2013, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, the BBC put on a big celebration at the Excel centre in London’s Docklands. They must have thought that it went well as this year they decided to do it all over again at the Doctor Who Festival which took place last weekend. Being the… Continue reading Doctor Who Festival
Eighteen Classic Albums
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about a process I had developed for producing ebooks. While dabbling in a few projects (none of which are anywhere near being finished) I established that the process worked and I was able to produce ebooks in various different formats. But what I really needed was… Continue reading Eighteen Classic Albums
How To Travel From London To Paris
Imagine that you want to travel from London to Paris. Ok, so that’s probably not too hard to imagine. But also imagine that you have absolutely no idea how to do that and neither does anyone that you know. In that situation you would probably go to Amazon and look for a book on the… Continue reading How To Travel From London To Paris
Writing Books (The Easy Bit)
Last night I spoke at a London Perl Mongers meeting. As part of the talk I spoke about a toolchain that I have been using for creating ebooks. In this article I’ll go into a little more detail about the process. Basically, we’re talking about a process that takes one or more files in some… Continue reading Writing Books (The Easy Bit)
Financial Account Aggregation
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled Internet Security Rule One about the stupidity of sharing your passwords with anyone. I finished that post with a joke. Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a really good idea for an add-on for your online banking service. Just leave the login details in a comment… Continue reading Financial Account Aggregation