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40 days ago
There is an annoying Americanism creeping into our language. Young American-influenced people when being interviewed and asked a question, start their reply with “so….”. Its entirely meaningless, adds nothing, and drives me completely up the wall ! I wonder where it came from, and I wonder how it can be stopped…
51 days ago
Installed it on my laptop, took about 30 minutes I think, rebooted after just a couple of questions, and it worked. I had to go looking on the nvidia website to get “Aero” working for the graphics card. None of the fn-keys work on the keyboard though, because Samsung don’t have a driver for my 9 month old Samsung Q210 yet. Apart from that it just works, and is comprehensively unexciting. However, on this laptop, Vista has always been great, so I’m going to continue to boot to Vista until they release the drivers to make the laptop work fully.
84 days ago
My friend Adrian Cooper is doing a huge 500 mile cycle across Scotland. He calls it ‘SOSNOS’ – South Of Scotland to North Of Scotland. He’s on his 2nd last day I think, and has done really well, despite some awful weather. To find out what he’s going through I just cycled 21 miles in the pouring rain and am pleased as punch with myself, soaked to the skin, and exhausted. Today Adrian cycled 60 miles, with 400 behind him! Please consider donating something – its in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care http://www.justgiving.com/adecooper/ Well done Adrian !!
92 days ago
I've been thinking some more about the scrappage (UK) and clunkers (US) schemes. Maybe its my upbringing, where I was taught never to waste anything. But no, I think its more than that. I absolutely hate these schemes. I understand the concept, but its horribly, horribly flawed. Firstly, couldn't they have done something useful with the cars, all of which have further life in them? Couldn't they have sent them to a poor country or given them to people who can't afford cars at all? Secondly – “the green thing” – it would be greener to make less new cars, and keep the old ones going (except maybe the REALLY thirsty ones). Also, in both the UK and US, many domestic cars, which are maintained by local mechanics using domestic parts, are being scrapped and replaced by foreign cars (needing no local mechanics and no domestic parts). If you look on youtube for clunkers, you will see how they ‘kill’ these cars in the US, so that they cannot be used again. They put ...
169 days ago
I’ve always loved the radio, since I was a wee boy. I’m not quite sure why, but I remember spending hours listening to the Moscow World Service and other things from around the world on my tiny transistor radio, under my bed covers! One of my greatest (sad) luxuries nowadays is to lie in bed dozing, listening to the radio. Yesterday morning, Saturday, I did just that – Radio 4 was on top form – first the news, with lots of interesting stuff going on the world these days, then Saturday live, which again had lots of fascinating topics, and a great feature about the Queen Mary’s maiden voyage! Then there was another interesting programme – Punt Pi about the people who live in a large luxury 1930s block of flats in London, who think it was going to be Hitler’s base in London… great stuff and made me want to break out wikipedia, which i probably still will! Then this week in westminster – which was more interesting than normal due to all the goings on, and had a live studio debate – ...
