Wake me when September blogs
31 Oct 2005
Green an' yella
08:59 With the impending Sydney-wards departure I took the opportunity to go up to Lincoln with Rachel, thence to the chestnut woods I used to visit as a child (and later). It was a glorious autumn day and I'm sure that you'd agree it's all very English.
Which reminds me. All the family stuff is now at DeletetheWeb, hosted by my friend Jonathan (to whom mad props).
17 Oct 2005
Wooden heart
21:01 Received a very interesting email a couple of weeks back. Remember I told you about the chair from HMS Defiance?. Turns out that she was responsible for a reasonably interesting and important piece of history. Chap by the name of Trevor Day tells me that the Defiance was host to the very first ship to shore radio transmission, in 1896. Her Captain at the time, Sir Henry Jackson, was a contempory of Guglielmo Marconi, and had already experimented with radio telegraphy. He transmitted a signal the length of his ship in 1895 and later signals over several hundred yards.
Jackson was elected FRS in 1901, and sounds like quite a chap. Trevor kindly sent me an article which I'll make available on request to the usual places.
17 Oct 2005
Life imitates BioLOG
20:40 Two and a half weeks ago now we were driving down to Cheltenham in the evening - 30th September it was. Sophie was tired and wanted to go to sleep.
"Is it October tomorrow?" she asks. We agreed that it would be, yes, and with a smile she snuggled down into her car seat,
"Wake me up when September ends." Laugh? I nearly spun off the A40.
16 Sep 2005
Teh intarweb is teh win
11:34 The British Library's Turning the Pages™ site is the epitome of cool, and what this WWW business is really about. It would be churlish to criticize the HTML coding, so I'll just say 'wow'. Wow.
16 Sep 2005
Have you defied nature today?
09:18 Defying nature is what doctors do. It's what medical science is all about! Apart from that, they're absolutely right about IVF, and I'd go further and ask why the hell my taxes are paying for people to have IVF on the NHS.
08 Sep 2005
Towards a happy marriage
10:02 Tip for today: when your wife is pissed off with you because you are being denigratory about Glenn Miller (a second-rate musician who only became famous because he disappeared mysteriously) and she accuses you of saying that just because you don't like him, ensure that she's not really thinking of Benny Goodman (whose music I also don't like but readily concede he's very good).
08 Sep 2005
Happier times
13:00 Pleased to update, that after her first day at school, Sophie reports that she likes her new teacher. And Rachel hers, too.
06 Sep 2005
Cool playing
16:16 Sanderson posted a link to the ultimate chart-topper. I can't really add anything.
06 Sep 2005
VibraCar
13:35 One of the things that annoys me about the company cars when I drive them is that, being oh so very modern, the driver is incredibly insulated from the driving experience. The seat is soft, the cabin is warm, you can barely see out, the road and engine noises are dulled . . . sleep, gentle driver, sleep.
And finally the dickheads who are responsible for 'safety' in modern vehicles are waking up to this. And they plan to incorporate sensors so that they can add back artificial vibrations. Does anyone else feel that there is an imperial lorryload of point-missing going on somewhere?
02 Sep 2005
TerrorBeer
13:18 If you're attacked by terrorist beer, be assured that the South Koreans are training hard to defend us against such (s)hite. The caption reads A member of the South Korean Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team breaks bottles during a martial art demonstration for an anti-terror drill.
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