It was actually among my professional objectives this year to play Portal. So last night I sat down with it for a few hours. It was enjoyable, and short (which was good); and original, which was also good. Well, the portal mechanic is certainly original (counting Portal as the true…
Adventures with GnuPG
For a couple of years now, I’ve been using GnuPG in my email. But I had a couple of keys out there that were old, and lost, and that I’d forgotten the passphrases for. A while back, I found my old secret keyring (from back in the day when I…
Quick music recc
Steadman are a UK band who spent some time in California a few years back. They’re the sort of underground band who occasionally pop up in the mainstream media, only recognised by the cognoscenti. They currently have a track (“Come Alive”) being used in a K Mart commercial in the…
Periodic (Table) Videos
The University of Nottingham has this excellent page of videos about each element in the periodic table. Educational and fun. And Prof. Martyn Poliakoff has excellent scientist hair.
I moved house
I’ve been mostly offline for the last week as a result of moving house. A week ago Thursday the movers arrived and packed everything up and loaded up a big truck. We had previously packed a few dozen boxes, mainly books. Thursday night we slept on the floor (and various…
Earthquake!
This one (epicentre about 40 miles away) shook us pretty well for about 30 seconds. A few things fell off shelves, light fixtures and projector screens swung about with some violence, and my friend’s go board fell down. No damage or injuries though – thankfully it was fairly mild, although…
What’s on your “quickstart bar”
…to use a hopefully somewhat generic term; or whatever you call that thing that sits at the edge of your screen and has icons for stuff that you launch a lot? Not the menu(s), the single-click launches. Or if you roll that way, what do you have hotkeys for? Here’s…
The next Big Thing is not a Big Thing
It seems lately (for the last six months or so) that I keep running into tech news about social networking sites. Myspace, Murdoch, Facebook, Zuckerberg. Trading soundbites and claiming that they’re hot and others are not. Myspace peaked, Facebook overtook, everyone’s wondering what’s around the corner or who will be…
Summer of Love
It’s 2008, so what better way to celebrate a new millennium’s twist on the summer of love concept than by remixing 1968 vs 1988? Break out the bittorrent and chill out to the stylings of Buffalo Springfield VS 808 State VS Deee-Lite VS Prince VS Duran Duran…