If you've been wondering what I've been doing, workwise, of the last few months, and want a fairly full and comprehensive update, then I've put it over on Blogiculum Vitae, my portfolio blog.
Due to technical difficulties, such as the shops being shut on Monday morning when T'Other and I had a scrap of time to go shopping for my birthday present, I didn't get my Moleskine until yesterday, but to make up for the delay, T'Other bought me a nice (and reasonably priced) Lamy pen. We can't […]
Where you wake up late, (due to being woken up by chavtastic neighbour's daughter's ex ringing all the bells available and bellowing to be let in), look at the huge pile of unread email that's come in and just think, “Eww, do I have do?”. The sun's starting to come out, it's Friday, I had […]
I think the fanbelt is going. It squeaks like a canary with its tail feathers caught in a cat's teeth. I also am starting to realise that working from home seems to correlate very strongly with quantity of blogging. Whether it's because I feel more like I can blog, or whether it's a time thing, […]
It's generally a bad idea, if one is covered in a flammable gel as part of a medical treatment, to then light up a ciggie – the resulting flames are usually bad for one's health. Update: And indeed, a Darwin Award is now under consideration.
Article on teaching teenagers to be happy, from the Guardian. I wish adults would spend more time learning how to be happy, and that more bosses would decide that happy employees were important. Instead, we have this mad mindset that says happiness in the work place is obviously a sign of skiving, and should be […]
The weather forecast said there would be sunshine from 10am this morning. The weather forecast was four hours out, but finally, the cloud has cleared and the warm rays of the sun are making the new Arsenal stadium glint like a, er, big new stadium in the distance. It's Good Friday today. Most normal people […]
So, if you're a long-time reader of this blog, you'll already know about my writerly leanings. You'll have seen me talk about my scriptwriting; you'll have seen me writing about learning languages (still not finished); you'll have heard about my acquiring a literary agent (whom I still have, by the way, and who is still […]
So T`Other`s brother (ooh! that rhymes!) has this really great PDA/phone called a QTEK 9100 or an XDA mini S depending on who`s selling it to you. I've been thinking of getting one of these for a while and now I'm getting to play with one and I have to say that so far I […]
Adidas have reissued the Gazelle. I have a pair of Campus which are over a decade old and which were still serving me well until Christmas in Brugge when one started to leak. I loved them, and the Gazelle is a very similar design. I am on a mission to find a pair. Right now. […]
I rather stupidly put 70 quid's worth of silk skirt through the washing machine. It is, to say the least, a shadow of it's previous silky black self. I mean, the dye hasn't washed out completely or anything, but it now has a grey sheen to it that it didn't have before but which makes […]
Cory Doctorow, ORG Advisory Council member, famous novelist, copyright activist and one of the driving forces behind BoingBoing, has kindly donated a Razr mobile phone and a signed fist edition of his novel Eastern Standard Tribe, to the Open Rights Group for us to auction. We have duly put both together as one lot on […]
The clocks have gone forward. I've got that strange, dislocated seasonal jetlag feeling. The sun is only just now going down, and it's 7.30pm. It feels like 4pm instead. I suppose I should go home and get some dinner. Or alternatively, I could enjoy the high-speed wifi here at Stanhope whilst I still can, and […]
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Matt is fascinated by the story of Argleton, the unreal town that appeared on GeoMaps but which doesn’t actually exist. When he and his friend and flatmate Charlie are standing at the exact longitude and latitude that defines Argleton, Matt sets in motion a chain of events that will take him places he didn’t know existed… and which perhaps don’t.
From the identification of the Horsehead Nebula to the creation of the computer program, from the development of in vitro fertilisation to the detection of pulsars, A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention brings together inspiring stories of how we achieved some of the most important breakthroughs in science and technology.
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Every year, on May Day, a young woman is stolen away by the faeries to become their Queen for a year. This year, though, the faeries have bitten off more than they can chew. Shakti Nayar will do whatever it takes to get her own life as a botanist back. As she struggles to work out how to get home, she uncovers Faerie’s dark secret and finds that she is not the only human who needs saving.
All the threads looked the same to the innocent eye, but Maude could see the black heart running up through one strand as it wove its way through the lace roundel. She busied herself with tidying her bobbins as a customer browsed the lace mats on her stall.
“I’ll take this one,” the woman said, holding up a square piece, twelve inches across. Maude winced, picked up the piece she had just completed and held it out to the woman for her consideration.