A few years ago, my work sent me on a training course. It involved the usual things, trust exercises, team bonding, and personality profiles. I filled in a few forms, answered some questions, and the very professional looking lady marked up my paper and said, "I see that you're a Scorpio. That means you're focused externally, and you deal with things rationally and logically. You do have a…
Continue reading →
Give As You Earn is a wonderful system; I can donate to charity directly from my monthly pay cheque. I don't have set up any Direct Debits, or standing orders, I get a tidy tax break, and the charity gets a chunk of change. For every tenner I donate, it costs me £6 - and the Government chips in the rest. I used PayrollGiving.co.uk to set up my donations - but your workplace may have specific …
Continue reading →
I've written before about CDI's AppsForGood initiative. They work with schools and help students develop apps. Currently, they are working with 100 schools across the UK to deliver courses to more than 5,000 students. If you work in the mobile industry, you should volunteer to be one of their experts. Spend just 30 minutes having a Skype chat with a group of excited teenagers, share your…
Continue reading →
I've always been a bit obsessed with space. I think all true geeks are. It was probably Star Wars that set off my star lust. For the last few years, I've been pondering getting a telescope. Like many of my plans, it sat in the back of my head waiting for me to get off my lazy arse and do something about it. I halfheartedly researched telescopes online, glanced at them occaisionally in the shops, …
Continue reading →
Uber are a private taxi firm trying to get a hold of the lucrative London market. Their main selling point is an incredibly easy to use app, a fleet of luxury cars, and a hassle free experience. I agree with Paul Carr when he describes Uber's crushing desire to "disrupt" as a fanatical form of hyper-libertarianism which could have decidedly nasty consequences. However, I thought I'd try it out …
Continue reading →
Man! Instagram sucks! Let's all move to Flickr! The Internet - December 2012 The same flickr which capriciously deletes the photos of paying customers? The same flickr which has catastrophic accidents? The same flickr who bans paying customers for commenting on political issues? The same flickr which one day decided that paintings and drawings weren't suitable for its site? Yeah. I'm not ok…
Continue reading →
Wandering around the steets of London, I came across this excellent initiative from Camden Council on how to use QR codes on street furniture. If you see that a light - or anything else - is damaged, you can scan the QR code and report the issue. There's even a phone number and vanilla URL for those who aren't quite up to speed with new technology. There's only one slight issue - the QR code…
Continue reading →
I unashamedly love QR Codes. But every so often, I see one which makes me wonder if there should be some sort of licence for creating them :-) As I was walking around Camden the other day, I spotted this monstrosity. I figured with a code that dense, it probable contained a URL to a rubbish iPhone app, or perhaps a link stuffed full of tracking parameters. Still, what the heck, I scanned…
Continue reading →
A few months ago I reviewed the UK grown wasabi of The Wasabi Company. The good folk at Kazari saw my review and offered to send some of their wasabi to review. Their Kazari rhizomes are imported from Japan and America, and they're about half the price of The Wasabi Company. After months of procurement, we successfully diverted a portion of Asia's natural wasabi harvest from Tokyo's sushi bars…
Continue reading →
I wrote this before the Presidential election. I didn't publish it because it looked like Obama was going to win without my help. Also, it feels unseemly to meddle in another country's politics. Recent events have stirred me into posting. I don't know much about Mitt Romney's position on gun control. It doesn't seem to have come up much in the run up to the election. I can, I think, infer…
Continue reading →
One of the most pernicious memes is "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." It implies that the only reasons for opposing a law is that you would find yourself guilty under it. The phrases is, I think, a contender for a new form of Godwin's Rule. Any discussion about laws eventually boils down to "Only a criminal would oppose this measure." The annoying thing is, it's…
Continue reading →
In October, I was interviewed in Econsultancy about the BBC's new "responsive" website. I said: The BBC's mobile site is fairly responsive. If you view it on different sized phones and tablets it adapts quite well. But it is an entirely separate site from the main BBC news site. The BBC are doing device detection and redirecting mobile users. It's not a bad strategy per se - but it is not…
Continue reading →
