December 2011
1 post
8 tags
Thank God that's over (2011)
Presuming I do not choke on a pretzel, drown in a gin and tonic or get run over by a minicab driver hurtling around the streets of Manchester in order to maximise his double fare revenues, I should see out 2011 in the next few hours.
Thank the invisible big man in the sky who probably isn’t there for that.
This year, I was hospitalised, my girlfriend broke her arm and spent 2 weeks waiting...
October 2011
1 post
8 tags
How Steve Jobs made me want to "Stay hungry, stay...
The moment Steve Jobs’ and Apple’s work first came into my life was back in 2002. That first brush, I hated it.
In time, I came to see him for the genius and pioneer that he was, and the work that Apple did - and does - as amongst the most extraordinary in the World today.
First some context:
In 2002, I was at the European BSD conference and Jordan Hubbard, founder of FreeBSD and then...
August 2011
2 posts
Mitchell Heisman's "Suicide Note"
In a couple of weeks time, it will be the first anniversary of a 35-year old intellectual killing himself on the steps of a church on the Harvard campus.
I discovered Mitchell Heisman’s “Suicide Note” via a concise article on responses to the story.
I’ve been reading “Suicide Note” since I found the article, on and off. Mitchell might have benefitted from an...
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July 2011
1 post
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Amazon Vine has lost the plot
I’m a member of the Amazon “Vine Program”. If you’re unaware of it, this is a cool little channel Amazon run where top reviewers on Amazon’s website get to choose a couple of items from a pre-defined list every month, to receive for free. In return, you must review on the Amazon website at least three out of every four items you receive.
It’s a good programme,...
June 2011
2 posts
Long Term Life Tips: Top 5 Regrets People Make on... →
An astonishing “top 5 list” blog comes to us via longtermtips and I’m pleased to say I’m pretty sure I won’t have any of these regrets when my time inevitably comes.
By Bronnie Ware (who worked for years nursing the dying)
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was...
6 tags
Sometimes I wish I was a bookmaker...
As I write this, outside the sun is burning lazily down on a quiet, sleepy and green corner of Manchester as the day draws to a close. Fine weather, often makes me think about an alternate career I considered about a decade ago. I thought I’d share the story. In 2002, the dot.com crash was in full effect. The internet era looked like it might be over for a while. As a software developer...
May 2011
4 posts
5 tags
Randian Heroes
The role of heroes has been occupying my mind this week.
On Monday night I attended Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge at the Royal Exchange. It’s a marvellous production, and despite the few moments where forced American accents inevitably slipped it, is a performance I would recommend to anybody.
In Miller’s play, he tries to present to us about a rather unconventional...
A toothache that got out of hand...
I’m starting to get a little bored of telling the story every time I pick up the phone or run into somebody, so I’ll just post it here, and then we can all move along from it.
Headline synopsis: I had a tooth abscess, it was really bad, I got hospitalised, and because I suffer from sleep apnea ended up on a high-dependency unit for a night (because sleep apnea and general anaesthetics...
4 tags
AV Referendum result: oh bobbins...
In the time between me publishing my list of 10 reasons for supporting the Alternative Vote and polling closing the next evening, it was read over 1,000 times. I still stand by every word of it, even though - as you no doubt have heard - the “No” campaign won it.
Annoyingly, it seems the majority of people who voted “No”, did so because of one of the following reasons:
...
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10 reasons you should vote "Yes" in the AV...
There has been a lot of mud-slinging over the referendum on the Alternative Vote. The “No” campaign have been particularly bad at avoiding sensible debate and resorting to fear-mongering and smears.
The polling shows they will likely win by a significant margin. They shouldn’t. And with apparently 20%+ of people still undecided, I’d like to share some thoughts that might...
April 2011
10 posts
4 tags
5 tags
Give up on the idea of retirement. Now.
A typically cynical obituary from The Telegraphy for Buster Martin appeared last week.
I’m not sure if I care about whether he really was as old as he said or not, but he was clearly working into his 90s. His work ethic was simple, he said he would give up “when they put me in a wooden box”.
A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about retirement. And I think it’s wrecking our...
3 tags
Preparation and reaction
I got to go flying this week. A lot. It’s why I’ve not been around.
I’ve been mostly in a Piper PA-32R, but also managed to ride shotgun on a Beech King Air 200 - a very beautiful and powerful turboprop that moves businessmen and celebrities around ridiculously efficiently.
The thing about flying - and by flying I mean jumping in one of these things and actually flying it, as...
5 tags
Tara Hunt on "Getting Real"
This morning I was pointed to a video of a TEDx talk by Tara Hunt which left me in two minds. On the one hand, it was great to see such raw passion. On the other, it was slightly uncomfortable, a little like watching somebody about to go over the edge into a breakdown.
That’s what happens when people get passionate, but there was something different here: I think she’s chasing the...
5 tags
*.99 no long optimal price point →
EDIT: It seems this was an April Fool’s Joke. That a couple I’ve been taken in way, way, way after the 1st April. The clue was towards the bottom which I skim-read: demand and supply curves being the opposite of what we know they must be. Dammit!
I hate the £1.99/£3.99 style of prices. Pleased to read at the blog lined above then that:
Prices ending in .99 no longer have any...
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I am not a "community leader"
Today somebody called me a community leader. I felt I had to correct them:
[…] please readjust your sensibilities: I’m nothing of the kind. I just do stuff sometimes. I have never sought nor been appointed a leader of anything beyond my business interests and in part Fly The Coop.
I’m wary of being seen as leading something so ill-defined and as self-forming as a...
CSS3 Slideshow →
Hakim.se is the kind of site I’d like to have if I had the time. His experiments are amazing.
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The Secret World of Whitehall
I’ve been fascinated by the recent BBC 4 documentary series ‘The Secret World of Whitehall’ about what goes on behind the scenes in that most famous of London addresses.
3 episodes in total, available for the next week. My favourite bit is in the third episode where there is an admission to forgery and what amounts effectively to a coup d’etat by one minister, shortly...
5 tags
AIDS vaccine goes to final stage of testing →
Twenty years after HIV geneticist Bette Korber first began tackling HIV, her hard work—some would say “obsession”—may be finally paying off as she and her team gear up for the first round of human trials of an HIV vaccine.
Early tests showed powerful immune responses in animals and raised hopes around the world of finally achieving a scientific breakthrough in the AIDS health...
March 2011
5 posts
5 tags
WatchA good treatment of an intractable problem. And towards the end, I like how he shows this isn’t a new problem for US presidents. Like I say, it’s all just opinions and subjective judgements, every time.
8 tags
Adam Curtis on Goodies and Baddies
I absolutely love the work of Adam Curtis. He is described as a documentarian, but I honestly think his blog highlights his work as a thinker, and his documentaries are more like narrated visual art.
You can almost guarantee that whenever he posts something there, I will respond with something here.
His most recent blog piece “Goodies and Baddies” is very much in his style. He shows...
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Diseases of Affluence →
The article I link to above is striking. I am very much overweight and have been half my life. I listen out for compelling arguments to help win over my subconscious into letting me eat less and more healthily. I did not consider previously the answer might simply be moving to a non-Western diet. From the article:
Here is our normal: 40 percent of North American adults have metabolic syndrome....
6 tags
Being optimistic about things that are broken
If this blog is about things that have got better, or will get better, or at least have the opportunity to get better, or whatever else I end up choosing in that vein, perhaps I should scope it out by discussing things that I think might be - or clearly are - “broken”.
(Image has some rights reserved - courtesy of y-a-n)
There is little quite so disheartening as witnessing...
1 tag
It's back.
Like most people starting up new blogs, I don’t have a clear and coherent idea where I’m going with this, but after a long hiatus I’ve decided to start occasionally blogging something here at this domain once more.
The general theme this time: things that could be better.
A wide brief, but I realise it’s all I’ve ever been interested in writing about. This time I...