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Entries from November 23rd, 2014

Todays bright idea #10 – smartphone video feature

November 23rd, 2014 · Comments Off on Todays bright idea #10 – smartphone video feature · Technology

Tonight I was being a grumpy old man at a concert in London, where I could hardly see Toyah onstage because of all the smartphones being held up by people filming it. I think we have reached the point where this is now considered normal and it is too late to stop it but perhaps […]

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Say cheese!

November 21st, 2014 · Comments Off on Say cheese! · Life

Watching the news tonight I saw the familiar sight of prisoners being transported into a police station in those vans with the little heavily-tinted windows and the odd photographer breaking loose from the pack to hold their camera up to the heavily-tinted window at arm’s length to try and snap a photo or two. With […]

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Crisis? What Crisis?

November 18th, 2014 · Comments Off on Crisis? What Crisis? · Politics

I finally finished reading Crisis? What Crisis?: Britain in the 1970s by Alwyn Turner. It took a while. I would probably have read two or three novels in the time it took me to read it, even though it is a much shorter book than many other history books that often weigh in at 700 […]

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Nothing Has Changed

November 17th, 2014 · Comments Off on Nothing Has Changed · Music

Right now I am on Spotify, listening to Nothing Has Changed, the new David Bowie ‘Best Of’ album. I shan’t be buying it for several reasons. Firstly, I don’t buy CDs any more at all, but even if I did I already have a 2 CD David Bowie hits collection and used to have quite […]

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The Turing Test

November 17th, 2014 · Comments Off on The Turing Test · Technology

The concept of the Turing test has been cropping up a lot on the news lately, due to the current film about Turing and a competition hosted at Bletchley Park. For some reason it sparked off a whole bunch of thoughts.

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So

November 17th, 2014 · Comments Off on So · Life

The last few months have seen the regular annual influx of new graduate joiners at work, which means two things: a temporary tendency for the building to smell of Lynx and a permanent increase in the number of people who start every answer to a question with the word “so”. This habit used to be […]

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Commoners Knave

November 4th, 2014 · Comments Off on Commoners Knave · Life

I think I stumbled across an infinite source of potential band names – crosswords. You don’t even have to solve them, just look at the answers for the previous day. All you do is look for a pair of answers on the same row that just sound right together. You do get some brilliant pairs. […]

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Cast the net wider

November 3rd, 2014 · 1 Comment · Life, Politics

To adapt Oscar Wilde a little: To lose one chair of an inquiry into historical child abuse, Mr. Cameron, may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness. People have been asking whether the failure of the government to find somebody to chair this inquiry who doesn’t have some sort of personal […]

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