Not stepping on the lines in the infant playground. Girls drawing hopscotch numbers on the paving stones and singing “who stole my watch and chain”. Wondering why the girls never wanted to play war. Lining up when the whistle went before classes. The day The Whistle was replaced by The Bell. Learning the golden rule: [...]

Are there any tools out there that can be used to analyse SVN check-ins? I thinking it would be interesting to run a series to checks to be able to understand metrics such as how many characters of code per day does each developer on a project commit; what percentage of committed content is comment, [...]

I couldn’t find a MediaWiki extension for Eventum when I needed one, so this evening I knocked one up. It’s fairly basic, very unoptimised, and probably far from perfect, but it works for me, and someone might use it as the basis for something better. It uses PHPs MySQL library to open a connection to [...]

Every season has it’s harbinger. The first train service disrupted by leaves reminds us that autumn is on the way. Eddying drain pools tell us the leaves are now successfully clogging the sewers, and winter is near. These temporary blockages are swiftly removed, making a terrific compost that nurtures the first daffodils of spring, giving [...]

As a five year old in 1977, punks scared me. In the village where I grew up there were only two bits of graffiti that I can recall, one was the anarchy symbol, daubed large by the shoe shop, and the other was the word “sex pistols” enhancing the wall near the public toilets, just [...]

A quick thanks to www.myvouchercodes.co.uk who just saved me a tenner on a delivery pizza. I’ve used them for a couple of deals and they’ve proved to be well worth a visit. If you’re ordering something online and there’s a special field for the lucky few who have a voucher code, then traditionally, it’s someone [...]

I’ve been using a Scosche Power Converter in the car for just over a month now. It converts the power output provided by from an older “auxiliary input” that connects an iPod to the stereo, into a power source that’s compatible with the iPhone 3G. Apple, in their wisdom, decided the old mechanism was too [...]

Sometimes you forget the root password for your MySQL instance (because you don’t write it down, that would be silly). When this happens it’s useful to be able to disable the authentication and authorization engine. On Debian Linux I recommend a small script. /etc/init.d/mysql stop /etc/init.d/mysql start –skip-grant-tables It can also be useful to have [...]

It’s now two weeks since we added a Mac to our arsenal of machinery. After some minor teething issues, mainly to do with finding various characters on the keyboard, we’re both agreed that it works very nicely.

At last. The Velvet Hearts debut album, Into the World, has just been released. It’s currently available exclusively from CDBaby. It is the best of times, and the worst of times, to be trying to build a career as a musician. The online revolution is both generous in its audience and stingy in its fiscal [...]

In every Pixar movie, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, etc. there is a small yellow ball, with a red star and a blue stripe. You have to look hard to find it, but it’s there. The ball was originally a central prop in the 1986 animated short Luxo Jr. I want one of those [...]

Modern mobile devices (phones, PDAs, laptops, etc) could deter theft by all but the most hardened criminal, and it would only require the simplest of modifications to the firmware in many of the devices already on sale.

Is it wrong to gain commercial profit through somebody else’s law breaking? Perhaps its morally wrong, but its not necessarily unlawful: so every day, when the corner shop near us profits indirectly as its customers ignore parking laws, where does their responsibility end?

Today at lunchtime I was alerted by a colleague, to an uncommon sight: a uniformed officer of the law, smoking. A smoking plod is probably just as likely as a smoking anybody, but I can’t remember ever seeing an officer smoking in uniform. This one wore little blue epaulettes and a bright yellow arm band [...]

In March, the US federal reserve made a 29 billion dollar investment bailing out the collapsing Bear-Stearns bank. Last month the behemoth mortgage lenders Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were underwritten to the tune of 200 billion dollars. Yesterday the seven hundred billion dollar bail-out bill on federal intervention in financial markets was rejected by [...]

The iPhone has a quirk that is starting to become a hindrance. Every time the phone goes through a patch of dead air where there’s no cell signal, it pops up a dialogue box saying “network lost”. This obviously could be useful at times, but it’s bad for two reasons:

Idea: a season ticket that can be used by any nominated person, but only one person per day. Perfect for: families returning to work after a baby, where parents share the stay-at-home duties and commute on alternate days, never using the ticket at the same time.

If you’re considering a move to a new country, learning from the experiences of those who’ve done it already can do wonders for cutting through red tape and easing the transition from newbie to seasoned knowledgeable resident. My cousins Ros and Rich moved to Gran Canaria several years back, and they’ve just launched a website [...]

Please help! A comment just arrived on the “contact us” page, and it’s a work of art. I can’t decide if it’s a flame, or something intentionally funny. The irony is beautiful.

My colleague Barrett Abernethy has drunk from the WordPress fountain for the first time and found it to be good. He’s writing at bv2.co.uk on coding for GPUs, games consoles and (I predict) cycling.