My friend, the photographer Paul Clarke has an uncanny eye for detail. Every single shot he publishes is beautiful - they capture life in a way that I don't have the language to describe. I'm quite content to point my phone at someone, use the default settings, and grab a snap. My photos lack composition, clarity, focus, mise-en-scène, proper lighting and a thousand-and-one details that I've never even thought of. Paul has published an essay about official photographs of politicians. In it, he …
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Lots of people using banking apps on their Android phones. They're a convenient way to check your balance, transfer money to people, and get alerts about fraudulent transactions. But, like anything related to money, they can be abused. Nowadays, thieves are not only snatching phones, but forcing their owners to transfer money to the thieves. This is not an isolated incident. How can you protect yourself from such a situation? Broadly speaking, there are four ways to protect your sensitive…
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This starts out as a delightfully silly and charming book about the bureaucracy of Time Travel and ends up as something darker and more thought provoking. What would happen if the UK Civil Service had access to TIME TRAVEL!?!?! It's a brilliant idea for a novel and is written with a seemingly-real understanding of the number of forms, systems, emails, and subterfuge needed to set up such a premise. It is perfectly observed - both in terms of the protagonists' lived experience and their…
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I read this brilliant blog post by Wouter Groeneveld looking at how many dead links there were on his blog. I thought I'd try something similar. What is a broken link? Every day, I look at the On This Day page of my blog and look at that day's historic posts. I click on every link to see if it is still working. If it isn't, I have a few options. If the site is working, but the content has moved, I change the link to point at the content. If the site is dead, or the content isn't there, I…
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Either I'm particularly thick, or this is the most over-written and under-explained academic claptrap I've read in some time. Some of the language is pure poetry: the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion It doesn't actually mean anything. You have to be able to parse unexplained concepts like "an oedipal calendar" and deal with interminable footnotes which blithely declare "postmodernism release heterogeneity without a norm, and we are flattened". …
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Welcome to this very silly series of blog posts where I attempt to identify all the mobile phones used in Doctor Who. The 2024 Xmas special is fairly light on phones. Right at the end, we see Ruby Sunday calling her mum. And a shot of the base of the phone. It looks like it's the same phone as last season albeit now in a bright yellow case. Probably a Pixel 5 The only other phone-like device is Joy's Mum's iPad. I've no idea which model iPad that is, but it looks like the case…
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I have been "retired" for exactly one week. It's going pretty well so far! After handing in my laptop & badge, Liz took me for lunch at Gauthier Soho. Much as our previous visit, it was a meal of utter indulgence and fabulous service. The Christmas lunch menu was divine and, as I told the waiter, tasted "stupidly delicious". The next day, we went to see a fairly obscure musician play an understated gig. I honestly don't think I've stopped smiling since. Thursday, dinner and drinks with…
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This is a peculiar murder mystery novel. In truth, the murder mystery takes second-place to the internal monologue of a protagonist who is viscerally disgusted with his corporeal body. The majority of the book is about the protagonist's neuroses, self-loathing, and contempt for both himself and others. The central schtick is great - can a hacker solve a murder at a tech conference? - but there's very little in the way of detective work. The central mystery is mostly solved by hacking the…
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I go to lots of theatre performances, shows, and events. I am constantly baffled by how poorly thought out the pre- and post-show experiences are. From the moment you enter the theatre, you are having "an experience". The atmosphere created within the venue all adds up to how much you enjoy the show. Parts of that experience are usually outside the director's control - for example the number of toilets, price of drinks, or friendliness of the security staff. But so much is within the ability…
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This is an exquisitely detailed and righteously determined look about the how and why of Digital Government. Richard Pope was there at the beginning of GOV.UK and helped steer it to the magnificent beast it is today. He reflects, clear eyed, on the various successes and failures of the geeky attempt to turn the state into something approaching modernity. He's forthright on his views about the lack of vision in most projects: The aim of most digitization programmes is the status quo,…
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What can be said? Macca. Live on stage. All the classic songs, a band that hits all the right notes, and an arena full of people who are singing their hearts out. Way back in the 1990s, I bumped into Paul when he was doing a poetry reading at my university. I'd missed out on tickets because I was a lazy student and didn't feel like waiting in a long queue. So I hung around the stage door and got a quick photo of him. Those were back in the analogue days before selfies were a thing. I've no…
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Analogies are like soufflés - they all collapse eventually. Food can be delicious, but certain foods can cause people physical pain or, in some cases, death. In most parts of the civilised world, governments have food safety laws. They mandate how to properly prepare, store, label, and serve food. In the UK, the laws are onerous for a large food manufacturers because we recognise that introducing pathogens into the supply-chain could cause mass harm. But even small food shops are subject to …
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