Archive for the 'General' Category

Tesco MP3 Player

Monday, January 21st, 2008

It’s got warm enough to tackle some jogging. I have a lovely new iPod, but by going for capacity rather than compactness, it pulls my shorts down as I run. I don’t run for long, so I don’t need my whole collection on-tap. Something like an iPod Shuffle would fit the bill, but I [...]

‘I heartily endorse this product or service’

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Debbie bought me season one of Twin Peaks on DVD for my birthday. It was a great success, so she sought out season two for Christmas, and what she ended up with was the new ‘Definitive Gold Box Edition’ of the whole lot. It’s smashing — season two is where the real weirdness kicks [...]

Christmas and New Year

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

We had a nice Christmas, marred only by a nasty cold on my part, and distance from friends and family.
We went to New York, staying in an apartment in Brooklyn’s trendy Williamsburg, which Debbie arranged having found an advertisement on Craigslist.
I didn’t keep a proper diary, so here goes from memory:

Drollness

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

New Scientist’s cover headline today is: “The Santa Delusion”.
Ho ho ho.

Kindle, Mobipocket and file format standards

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

In wondered what the details of the Kindle’s main file format, AZW, was. It’s well know that it’s based on the common .mobi format, which has been used by MobiPocket for eBooks for some time. But where is that format documented? Nowhere public, it seems.
There are enough interested parties to be working it out, [...]

eReaders and newspapers

Friday, December 7th, 2007

More Kindle-inspired thoughts.
I’m fairly convinced that, at least in principle, an ePaper screen with accessible buttons for flipping pages, can be as comfortable way to read a novel as an ordinary book is. For other kinds of book, my opinions vary: certain kinds of textbook or technical manual work better than others; a pop-up [...]

Tokyo’s downside

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

Courtesy of XKCD. 

Weekend in Tokyo - Sunday

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

On Sunday, I had arranged to meet old gaijin family friend Zak and his wife Kanako, at their home in Shin-Urayasu. I repeated a mistake from my previous visit, in which the Metro map does not indicate that a pair of linked stations linked by a mile of pedestrian tunnel. Still, I made it [...]

Weekend in Tokyo - Saturday

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

Did I mention I was in Tokyo? This follows a sequence of exchanges with my management chain which, if I were to personify a bunch of managers as once voice, could be paraphrased thus:
Management: Hey John, there’s a possibility you might be needed in Japan in the next couple of months. Would that me [...]

Diane Abbott wrote to me!

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

I received an email from Diane Abbott. Yes, that Diane Abbott. The MP. It seems a bit shady. She seemed so principled when I saw her on telly…
Dear Friend,
I am Diane Abbott. Elected to the House of Commons when I was elected in the
1987 General Election; representing the London Constituency of Hackney North
and Stoke [...]



Spam Karma 2 has sent 64936 comments to hell and 183 comments to purgatory. The total spam karma of this blog is -32752. What's your karma?