Mostly Harmless

I’d been wanting to get a hold of this for a couple of years but had never actually come across it in a local book shop. ‘The Road’ is possibly the bleakest fiction I’ve ever read.  The story follows a boy and his father struggling to survive in a journey south to the coast across [...]

An innovative cross between a Dickens novel and ‘Crime and Punishment’ (without the  moral / psychological quandry of the latter being at the forefront)  ‘The White Tiger’ is the black as coal and worryingly humourous story from childhood to success of a man from the Indian “darkness”. How true to life the story depicted is [...]

One of the worst things about being a heavy web user when it comes to shopping is that you rarely just go out and buy something. Instead you waste a substantial portion of time trying to get a feel for if you’re getting a good price, whether the company will give good service etc etc. [...]

The search terms people use to come across your website are a constant source of amusement. This has to be one of the best ever *drumroll*
“free harmless bs media player”
Microsoft, I hope you’re listening for Windows Media Player 12… I wonder if this particular visitor found what he was looking for, or if when he [...]

Article on the BBC about search sites indexing information from social networking sites as well as the usual sources such as websites and newsgroups.
The interesting thing is that these sites don’t really change anything – yes they provide a “picture” of sorts of a person’s dalliances online that is accessible to the ordinary person but [...]

I’ve been a reader of Bruce Schneier’s CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter for some years now and it always inspires mixed feelings. Schneier writes with authority on security, terrorism and the psychology of both. At the danger of being misrepresentative, here’s a quote
“We worry about airplane crashes and rampaging shooters instead of automobile crashes [...]

It has been such a very long time since there was a record that really mattered, a record that can get under your skin. Something that tries to take on the world, chew it up and spit it out, snarling and cool all at the same time.

Spent an enjoyable evening yesterday playing the Viking Game with Jen and family (yes yours truly really knows how to live it up of an evening). It’s a Tafl game or basically one where the teams are not equal. The King (who has a small guard of pieces) has to escape and the attacking team [...]

Anyone who hasn’t yet go check out Nine Inch Nail’s new release Year Zero (go on you can listen to the whole thing online I’ll wait). You also NEED to swing by NINWiki and read at least some of the back story.
Most importantly it’s the first album I’ve heard to actually mean something since [...]

la redoute appear to require a lesson in basic manners. Sending letters out to your customers which state “you haven’t bought from us since 2004, so if you don’t buy something soon we won’t send you a catalogue” is somewhat unlikely to inspire customer loyalty. Especially when they’ve had recent orders from the same household, [...]