Mail Rail Map

If you read yesterday’s post about my Mail Rail trip, you’ll remember that my slight quibble with the experience was that there weren’t any maps showing the route that the tour takes. Well, I’ve found one. And I think it explains why they don’t shout about the route. I was Googling for any maps of… Continue reading Mail Rail Map

Riding the Mail Rail

I rode the Mail Rail yesterday. It was very exciting. More about that in a minute. Before that, I went to the Postal Museum. I’ve often thought that the UK needed a museum about the Post Office. And the new (well, newish – it’s been open a couple of months) Postal Museum is a really… Continue reading Riding the Mail Rail

Modern Perl for Non-Perl Programmers

Normally I keep my Perl posts over on my Perl blog. But although this post is about Perl, the regular readers of my Perl blog aren’t really the target audience. That’s because I’m running a training course that is aimed at programmers who don’t use Perl. If you’re a programmer who is interested in learning… Continue reading Modern Perl for Non-Perl Programmers

Olympic Clock Watching

Yesterday, in Trafalgar Square the London Olympic Games organisers unveiled a clock that was supposed to count down the 500 days to the opening ceremony in July 2012. Today the clock stopped. There’s an obvious metaphor there, but we’ll ignore it and move on. There’s another problem. The clock was started at 19:30 GMT on… Continue reading Olympic Clock Watching

Opentech Overview

[Update: Details of this year’s Opentech conference are at ukuug.org/opentech] Yesterday was the annual Opentech conference. I’m going to have some more to say about it in some detail over the next few days, but those thoughts are still peculating so in the meantime here’s a list of the talks that I watched. Community and… Continue reading Opentech Overview

Non-Magic Bus

Last June, writer Ariane Sherine wrote an article on Comment is Free complaining about the amount of religious advertising on the side of London buses. As part of the research for the article she calculated that it would take about 4,500 atheists donating £5 each to get together enough money to have an atheist advertising… Continue reading Non-Magic Bus

Livery Companies – Project Complete

(Well, stage one of the project, anyway.) A couple of years ago whilst I was working in the heart of the City of London, I noticed that my lunchtime wanders were taking me past a few of the City Livery Halls. I’d always been aware of the Livery Companies, but I’d never really investigated them,… Continue reading Livery Companies – Project Complete

Cross-Eyed Texan Warmonger

Time for our newly elected mayor to start earning his money. I may not agree with him on many things, but I love what he said about George W Bush. The President is a cross-eyed warmonger, unelected inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy. I wonder if Boris will be meeting Dubya on… Continue reading Cross-Eyed Texan Warmonger

Livery Halls

Long time readers (and followers of my Flickr stream) might remember that a couple of years ago I developed an obsession with taking photos of the City of London Livery Halls. The obsession waned when I stop working in the City but over the last couple of weeks I’ve been wandering around the city a… Continue reading Livery Halls