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 [...]

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 [...]

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.

As the largest food retailer in Britain, what Tesco does has a massive impact on the rest of the British food industry, however, Tesco are not a charity and their primary purpose is to make maximum profit (supposedly within ethical guidelines).  The profit-vs-ethics problem is therefore one of ensuring that the right ethical guidelines are [...]

One of our favourite TV Chefs (and surrogate conscience for Tesco) Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has just announced a Summer Food Fair at River Cottage HQ, this summer, naturally. Now, normally the idea of a fair, replete with wicker cutlery and forced vegetables is not my idea of heaven, but factor in the fact that there will [...]

I couldn’t help but marvel at the efficiency of our local station café recently, as I watched the staff pipeline their customer orders. The busy morning rush was so great that they’d streamlined the operations; one person greeted customers, took orders from several of us at once, and processed the payments. This freed the second [...]

On a recent train journey I overheard a conversation about someone who’d enjoyed the first class wine so much on a recent intercity journey that they had difficulty staying awake so as not to miss their destination. Staying awake is a problem for many commuters and for those whose destination is not the terminating station, [...]

This is a true story. Two staff in a small convenience store are chatting as the queue I’m in slowly moves forward towards their dual tills: Shopkeeper 1: These plastic bags get thinner and thinner! Shopkeeper 2: Yeah.

Since we’ve owned our own home we’ve tried to always use environmentally friendly products for all cleaning and laundry tasks. This has been surprisingly difficult because the big four supermarkets in the UK have had a pretty poor record of having more than one “eco” product in any section at any time.

Meet Abdul Kareem Suleiman Amer (Kareem on Wikipedia). Kareem used the web to write about his opinions on secularism and his concerns about what he perceived as religious extremism, political repression and discrimination against women by his law school. For this “crime” Kareem has been jailed for four years.

The experimental petition system that Downing Street is running has generated it’s first 1,000,000 signature petition: it asks the PM to “scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy” and it’s a great example of how public opinion is not necessarily good for the public.

If you’re going to do something where you have just one shot, then you have to get it right first time, there can be no deviation. This is a very different requirement to just getting it right every time after a short teething period . Space exploration is full of one-shot right first time problems. [...]

Mr. Deity shows what can be achieved with a static camera, a simple script, minimalist set design and great acting. Episode 5 was released yesterday. By releasing an episode every 2 weeks the producers hope to garner enough interest to turn it into a full TV series.

There’s an interesting pledge underway at pledgebank which aims to find 646 people (one for every UK constituency) who are willing to purchase and send their local Member of Parliament a copy of The God Delusion, the latest book by Oxford University Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Richard Dawkins.

Christmas cards are lovely. A small personalised message from someone you know, providing assurance that they appreciate you and think enough of you to select, purchase and deliver a card all the way to your home. So everybody near and dear to us will be wondering where the hell our card has got to. Well, [...]

What are the best alternative presents for a geek? The typical geek has carefully selected and purchased their gadgets of choice, has a computer that’s tuned to perfection and needs no software purchased (because their entire suite is open-source) – so aside from comedy tee shirts with clever slogans that can only be understood by [...]

If you’re a pigeon, avoid Kingston Upon Thames until the pigeon cull is over. If you’re a human, don’t miss the comments on this Surrey Comet story about the pigeon cull, they’re internet gold.

Can everybody please stop sending me Thresher Discount vouchers? Ok thanks for thinking of me, I very much appreciate that bit; but it seems everyone I know is intent on passing me this little “under the counter number” and hasn’t twigged that they’re just part of a huge viral advertising campaign.

When re-reading the International Declaration of Human Rights the other day, I found myself mulling Article 1 repeatedly: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Shortly after, I found myself thinking the unthinkable. I found myself thinking Republican thoughts.

The British Government has never been more accessible and the DirectGov website now boasts over three million unique visitors per month, a figure that’s rising by 10% each month. Those users are primarily discovering public service information and not having an active say in government, but something is changing in a small but significant way: [...]

I heard last night that David Aldridge (the teacher who shepherded me through GCSE Maths) was sacked this week following a long suspension. If you’ll pardon the pun, it does not add up.

BBC news have been extensively reporting that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death, following his conviction for crimes against humanity. This sentence shows that a respect for human rights is not a part of the freedom that has been offered to the Iraq people by “the coalition of the willing”.

Wimmerfield Crescent is a residential street located in Killay, Swansea. It feeds three small residential cul-de-sac roads, one of which is called Heol Glasnant where I used to live. Heol Glasnant has the unusual property (in Wales) of being flat, and the lack of throroughfare made it an ideal venue for street parties.

Having converted my Grandparents stash of cine film to a digital format earlier in the year I’ve at last found a few minutes to extract something of general interest (as opposed to the family-interest stuff), so here it is.

The problem with summer is not the heat. It’s the music. Patio doors are thrown open and people migrate their lives to the garden. Naturally most people in the UK don’t have garden-based speakers that might deliver music to where it’s wanted at an appropriate volume, so folk just turn their indoor stereo up.

Q: How many Essex girls does it take to change a lightbulb? A: The same number as before, but the lightbulb lasts longer because its used less.

Channel 4′s Dispatches recently screened a jaw-dropping programme called “After School Arms Club” which highlighted several loopholes in UK laws concerning the import and export of torture equipment. Today the BBC is reporting that a UK farmer has a tidy sideline manufacturing and exporting execution equipment… that’s in addition to the pet food, animal bedding, [...]

I’ve mentioned previously about how the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) may be leaving us clues about His impending manifestation on Earth. I think I just spotted another, and it’s rather significant.

Happy St. David’s Day! Whilst the rest of the country seems to be covered in snow flurries, Portsmouth is intermittently bright and sunny and the daff’s in our front garden have opened just in time.

Would you Adam and Eve it, we’re at number 2 in the BritBlog top 50. Cor blimey! Love a duck!

Channel 4 will tonight air the first of ten programmes that amount to one of the largest television hoaxes of all time. Participants in the Space Cadets programme are a group of would-be astronauts who believe they have been flown to Russia, and that they will soon become space tourists, all in the name of [...]

For me, the arguments against nuclear power-plants in their current form are overwhelming; the most significant of these being the collapse of the “nuclear is clean” argument (because of the apparent hidden CO2 costs of preparing the enriched uranium).

I’m going to stick my neck out and make a prediction. I was thinking around the subject of Google Analytics just now, considering the increased information that Google now have. It’s a short leap of faith to guess that Google will use the data that Google Analytics provides in order to improve or reinforce their [...]

Bird Flu has reached Britain; smuggled in by a parrot who’s been living in quarantine for a few months. The quarantine is such that even the air is filtered, so there’s no threat to the public, but that’s not stopped the tabloid papers and 24 hour news channels from reporting it at length. It’s a [...]

This is an an everyday lesson that I shall try to remember next time I’m at the requirements gathering phase of system design, or the next time I’m explaining to someone why common terms of reference are such an important part of Software Engineering.

My local convenience store is typical of any corner store; there’s perhaps 100 square meters of shop space, with security cameras at the end of each aisle and (as featured on every smash-and-grab TV show) extra cameras focused on the checkout. The cameras curtail shoplifting, and the new Chip and PIN payment system reduces fraud. [...]

Hopefully I just spoiled a spammer’s whole week. How? I bought the domain that he’s trying to promote (MyNiceMailAt.com) before he did.

Jeremy Clarkson, the journalist who is most famous for hosting the BBC motoring programme Top Gear received an honourary Doctorate in Engineering from Oxford Brookes University today.

The road that passes our house was completely resurfaced two months ago; all the road markings were repainted in crisp clear paint and the whole place looked like new.

Britain is once again graced by three months of watching self obsessed people making themselves look stupid merely by their very existence, with little hope of achieving anything other than profit for the production and broadcast companies involved. Why is Big Brother such a terribly wasted opportunity?

My cousin Jo’s car’s been nicked.

The UK General election is now only three weeks away, so the country is awash with billboard adverts and whole pages of newspapers bought for the purpose of swaying the public’s opinion.

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