At Home with John and Debbie

I went to play board games for the first time in ages.
Games: Puerto Rico and Ticket to Ride
Position: Not good

On the basis of reviews in the papers, and half a listen to the stream on their website, I’m rather excited about the new album “The Woods” by Sleater-Kinney, out in the next few days (tomorrow, in the States).
It’s produced by Dave Fridmann — of Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev production fame — but [...]

I popped over to the BBC’s podcast trial page, on the off-chance that some programmes had been added to the trial since I last looked, who knows how long ago?
They certainly have. There are 12 programmes now in the trial, 10 of which are already available as podcasts. I already subscribe to [...]

Last night we went to Bubbles for a birthday party expertly organised by JV, for Suzanne.
The place was packed: what a popular girl.
Young Rajiv showed his face, as did Ajay and Iciar (who we’d also spent some time with on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon — watching the football and meeting the dog at [...]

OK, it’s nearly time for the hartnup.net Macintosh 2005 judgement, but before I look at the whole, I can’t resist getting a little bit more specific, and talking about one application: iPhoto, and its primary Windows competition, Picasa 2.
(Moved the rest of this behemoth post to a page outside the blog)

The iTunes Music Store makes it very easy to browse and preview music for purchase. The prices are reasonable.
But, I won’t buy music from iTunes, nor from any of its similar competitors. The problem is the DRM. Apologists (pragmatists, even) point out that Apple gives you “generous” fair use rights, but the fact remains [...]

Why, why am I so susceptible to all this Star Wars hype?
I never loved the first trilogy as a child.
I caught up when they re-released episodes IV-VI, giving each one a revisionist half a thumb up.
I came out of Episode I feeling like someone who’d just fallen for a con artist’s scam. The three [...]

Me and Dalek - (Flickr user ukslim).

To my absolute horror, we found a Dalek in the IBM Warwick building. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be in the mood for death and destruction: it stood around quietly while we got a photo.
Maybe the little tentacly thing had been removed.

Looking at my server stats, it seems that a massive 4.33% of searches which led to the site were on the query “crotch”.
I imagine the page in question was this one. I hope it satisfied. Now searches for “crotch” will also lead to this entry!

I upgraded to Wordpress 1.5.1 — not a major upgrade, but if you notice anything odd as a result, please let me know.