This is Star Trek before Star Trek. It is Alien long before Alien. It is the template for so much modern science fiction. What it is not is particularly good. I don't intend to dump on the classics (and this is undoubtedly a classic) but 1950s sci-fi takes place in an almost alien media environment. Even if you ignore the anachronisms (like having to develop film in order to see photographs)…
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Email isn't an obvious business benefit. Imagine it is the early 1980s and you need to communicate with people across the country. A first-class letter will cost you 17p - about 60p in today's money. The letter will be delivered the next day and you'll have your answer back the day after. By contrast, a single computer terminal was likely to set you back around £3,000 - and that's before you …
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Is it possible to "die well"? We have midwives for births, should we have "deathwives" for the other end of our lives? I think this book was recommended to me in the depths of the pandemic. I was too much of a chicken to read it while those around me were dying. The book aims to normalise the process of death and mostly succeeds. Unlike a lot of books, it doesn't just identify a problem - it…
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You've read the books, listened to the original radio performances, re-read the books, worn the t-shirt - and now it is time to be part of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy. *Cue the music from Flight of the Sorcerer* This is a 90-ish minute immersive experience. As well as a full cast of actors and a puppet android, there are ✨celebrity✨ voice cameos. And songs! So many songs! Pre Show …
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So! Much! Melodrama! This is a gently funny (and slightly tragic) romp with a band of travelling vagrants actors as they attempt to ply their renditions of Shakespeare to an indifferent 1700ish audience. There's a lot of charm to the characters and the plot is relatively straightforward. The characters are a bit one-note. The baddie never actually twirls his moustache - but you'll instantly…
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One of the dreams of Web 2.0 was that website would speak unto website. An "Application Programming Interface" (API) would give programmatic access to structured data, allowing services to seamlessly integrate content from each other. Users would be able to quickly grab data from multiple sources and use them for their own purposes. No registration or API keys, no tedious EULAs or meetings. Just …
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This book is excellent at describing the symptoms of madness which have beset the world. It expertly diagnoses the causes which have led so many people into a mirror-realm of fantasy. Sadly it falls short of prescribing a cure. I doubt anyone who has fallen into the conspiracy mindset will read this book - but I hope if you read it you will become inoculated against the brain-worms. Let's…
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I'm absolutely addicted to the Reddit's UK Personal Finance forum - where people mutually support each other through the difficult world of managing one's personal finances. It's a great community and full of people eager to help others. In amongst the confusion around pensions, tips for budgeting, and complaining about debt-collectors is a persistent drumbeat encouraging people to save money.…
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After the pretty good Her Majesty's Royal Coven, the excellent Shadow Cabinet, the law of reverting to the mean hits the conclusion of Juno Dawson's Witches of Hebden Bridge trilogy. By now you know the tropes - Bitchy-Witches, 90s pop-culture references, and wry chapter titles. It's all done well enough, the plot is a little twisty, the story entertaining, and the repeated mentions of Buffy…
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Notes to myself because I keep forgetting. tl;dr Unzip it into the /opt/ directory. I want to install Filezilla - so I can SFTP files around. Sadly, the Flatpak version is unmaintained and the version in apt is out of date. Luckily, you can download the zipped version. Their Wiki helpfully says: If you have special needs, don't have sufficient rights to install programs or don't like…
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This is a hugely extended version of Will Harris' "An oral history of Airplane". It goes through the pre-history of the project, how it eventually got made, and the aftermath. In many ways, it is like an old-fashioned DVD extra. The whole book consists of snippets of interviews with the cast, crew, and various talking heads. Like all DVD special features, it is fairly sycophantic. Yes, there…
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Problem: I've received a PDF which has a large "watermark" obscuring every page. Investigating: Opening the PDF in LibreOffice Draw allowed me to see that the watermark was a separate image floating above the others. Manual Solution: Hit page down, select image, delete, repeat 500 times. BORING! Further Investigating: Using pdftk, it's possible to decompress a PDF. That makes it easier to look …
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