australia gps NaBloPoMo photos · 300 words
GPS is a modern miracle. Using SPACESHIPS and RELATIVITY you can locate yourself anywhere on the planet. Fun fact! Your GPS won't work if you're above 18Km or going faster than 500 metres per second. Just in case you're a Soviet Guided Missile. But if you're on a regular international flight, you should be just fine! Here are some screenshots I took using the open source GPS Test for Android. …
Continue reading →culture NaBloPoMo netiquette Star Wars · 450 words
This post starts off talking about Star Wars, but it isn't really about that. I enjoyed Rogue One - the newish Star Wars film. It's not a perfect film, but it was heaps of fun. My only real problem was with Donnie Yen's character - Chirrut Îmwe. As soon as I saw a Blind Asian Monk, I knew that he would be a kick-ass warrior with almost supernaturally good sword skills. Even if you've never …
Continue reading →NaBloPoMo · 2 comments · 350 words
I travel a lot for work - and occasionally for relaxation - and I've always suffered from terrible jetlag. But, in the last few years, I've found a method which works perfectly. For me. Travelling East The week before you travel, wake up an hour earlier each day. Monday, wake up at 06:00. Tuesday, 05:00. Wednesday 04:00. Etc. Go to bed an hour earlier each day. Monday, sleep at 21:00.…
Continue reading →Book Review NaBloPoMo · 250 words
Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. Why do we…
Continue reading →demo hack hackathon NaBloPoMo presentation · 1,000 words · Viewed ~372 times
I go to lots of hack days and hackathons. Some are big corporate affairs, some are boutique community events. They all have one thing in common - Geeks suck at giving demos. You have 3 minutes to convince the judges - or your peers - that you've built something brilliant. How do you do that? One Hundred and Eighty Seconds. It is not a lot of time. So here are my top 3 tips for succeeding at a…
Continue reading →language NaBloPoMo · 500 words · Viewed ~255 times
This is a follow-up post to 2015's "What's Your Christian Name?". tl;dr "Christian Name" used to be synonymous with "First Name" or "Given Name". The majority of people in the UK are not Christian and, therefore, don't have Christian Names. Yet there are lots of local Government forms which still insist on this archaic phrasing. Here are a few of my "favourites". Local Government First up,…
Continue reading →language NaBloPoMo · 450 words
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. Terry Pratchett The law leaves indelible traces in our language. In the UK, cars have to undergo an annual vehicle…
Continue reading →conferences NaBloPoMo · 200 words · Viewed ~502 times
I'd recently given a talk at a conference and was gently basking in the glow of people telling me how fabulous I was, when some entitled prick came up to me and said... Great talk, mate! Really interesting stuff. But... "Oh great!" I thought. "Here it comes..." To play Devil's Advocate for a moment, have you... "No. Stop." I said. And, to my surprise, he did. "The Devil doesn't need any more …
Continue reading →economics NaBloPoMo · 1 comment · 1,350 words · Viewed ~689 times
I am not an economist - so perhaps someone more intellectually equipped than me has already written a better version of this blog post. "I, Pencil" by Leonard E. Read is an influential essay on the nature of free-market capitalism. It correctly points out that the modern world is so complex and interdependent that no one man can know his true place in it. The world is impossible to control, so …
Continue reading →NaBloPoMo WeekNotes work · 1 comment · 800 words · Viewed ~616 times
These are the lyrics to my constant earworm: Sometimes my life it feels like fiction Some of the days it's really quite surreal George Harrison - Pisces Fish I occasionally find myself having meetings in the Palace of Westminster with People From The News. I want to talk about what that's like. I'm waiting to go in to an office, quietly rehearsing what answers I'm going to give. Sat over…
Continue reading →art data NaBloPoMo python tfl wikipedia · 15 comments · 2,500 words · Viewed ~7,505 times
One of my favourite works of art is The Great Bear by Simon Patterson. At first glance, it appears to be a normal London Tube map. But look closer... Cool! But there is something about it which has always bothered me. Each Tube line represents a theme - therefore, a station at the intersection of multiple lines should be represented by someone who matches all of those themes. For example,…
Continue reading →Book Review · 250 words
Intrigue is swirling around Lyra once more. Her daemon Pantalaimon is witness to a brutal murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past. They learn of a city haunted by daemons, of a desert said to hold the secret of Dust. Powerful forces are about to throw Lyra and Malcolm together once again. And the dangers they face will challenge everything they…
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