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Entries from December 31st, 2011

2011 – glad to see the back of it

December 31st, 2011 · Comments Off on 2011 – glad to see the back of it · Life

What a year 2011 has been. It was as if the world had suddenly noticed the proliferation of rolling news channels and social media, noticed how much waffle was on them all and decided it had better come up with stuff to fill them all. And so we had tsunamis, floods, a royal wedding, phone […]

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Kindle vs Sony Reader

December 30th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Life, Technology

A lot of people got a Kindle this christmas, according to Amazon’s PR and verified by my Twitter feed where half the people I follow seem to have one now. Jayne and I bought each other a Kindle. I thought it might be fun to do a little review and compare the Kindle to the […]

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Chavez out-crazies the Daily Mail

December 29th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Life

With Gaddafi and Kim Jong-Il out of the way the world had the potential to have a little less crazy in it, but Hugo Chavez has stepped in to compensate by suggesting that the US government has found a way to infect left-wing Latin American leaders with cancer. Even the Daily Mail hasn’t come up […]

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Scrap the Paralympics

December 20th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Life

I have been saying since at least 2008 that the Paralympics should be laid to rest, so I was glad to see the other day that it is an opinion that is gaining a bit more support (as well as a fair bit of opposition). It is too late to make any change in time […]

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The tide of spam

December 20th, 2011 · Comments Off on The tide of spam · Life, Technology

I seem to be getting a lot less spam e-mail now and I am not sure exactly why. It sort of started when my PC packed up because ever since I set email up on the new one I have had hardly any spam. Ther is still a fair amount of junk mail but nearly […]

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Black boys – slight return

December 20th, 2011 · Comments Off on Black boys – slight return · Life

Some time back I wrote a little about the unfortunate mnemonic used to remember the colour codes for resistors, well now XKCD has come with an alternative. As it happens, I think their version is not very memorable, but I am greatly amused by their topical xmas mnemonic for remembering the order of the planets: […]

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National treasures

December 15th, 2011 · 1 Comment · Life

Like many people I have used the term ‘national treasure’ before. What I idn’t realise is that the term can have a formal status and actually does in many countries. The term used by UNESCO is living human treasure and they even have a 12-page set of guidelines for how a country should organise an […]

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The Sprouts of Wrath

December 14th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Life

It was xmas lunch day in the canteen at work today. As usual the staff there put a lot of work into the preparation, presentation and cooking, and while our canteen is never going to get any Michelin stars it was a good mealespecially for only a few quid. And yet I was a little […]

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Guid tae see ye

December 7th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Life

I love the fact that, amongst all the different language versions of Wikipedia, alongside French, Spanish, Russian, German, Finnish and all the rest there is a Scottish version of Wikipedia. This is not in Gaelic or anything like that, but written in Scottish dialect. Of dubious actual value, but that is why it is so […]

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The Clarkson incident

December 1st, 2011 · Comments Off on The Clarkson incident · Life

I may not like what Clarkson said yesterday, “with his outrageously politically incorrect opinions which he has for money” but I can hardly complain about it – last year I absolutely cracked up when I saw Stewart Lee in Horsham and he did this routine. Remember “it’s just a joke, like on Top Gear” You need […]

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