Nothing in this picture is real [via Slashdot].
Read More20Aug04 — 0
Technology
14Aug04 — 1
Babies And Bathwater
Bit of a ruckus breaking out in the comments of my jokey “Staff Shortage” post about the cloning of human embryos. I think the two Davids are both right. Yes, I should be cautious about speculation and yes, as a scientist I ought to try to share my understanding of the technology with others so […]
Read More12Aug04 — 15
Staff Shortage
Bizarrely, someone at the conference I was working at last week walked up to me and invited me to apply for a job here, despite my having told him to be quiet during a seminar that I later discovered he was co-chairing. He’s Australian; they have a different attitude to that kind of thing—and he […]
Read More12Aug04 — 0
Hopelessly Behind
People—especially Adam, Claire and Jon—have been sending me lots of fascinating material and I haven’t had the time to read, comment on, or link to it. I slipped behind on PooterGeek during my ‘Net-less weekend just gone and I haven’t caught up since. Here‘s one from Adam on possibly the nerdiest gathering since the Albert […]
Read More06Aug04 — 3
That Question Again
Yesterday at noon I was packing my bag in a hotel room, booked in advance over the Web, when the television turned itself on and told me that it was time for me to check out. A taxi with GPS picked me up and took me to Glasgow airport. There I waited for a ticketless […]
Read More23Jul04 — 0
More Science And Technology
I'm on a roll this week. I've been banging my head against a piece of code the past couple of days—until four o'clock Thurs, when my officemate and I went down for tea. One coffee and a Cornetto™ later, back at my desk, I nailed the bug. And I've just got back from a curry […]
Read More20Jul04 — 0
The Ultimate In Retro
Some of my earliest memories are of watching Apollo missions on television. I used to collect PG Tips picture cards of the space race. At infants school, every day that I could, I wore a blue cardigan with an embroidered lapel badge saying “Junior Astronaut”. Even grotty little jpeg pictures like this still make me […]
Read More28May04 — 1
Hang ‘Em High!
Claire will like this. Yesterday, SlashDot linked to Slate, where Steven E. Landsburg presented an economic argument for executing writers of computer viruses, worms and trojans.
Read More28May04 — 2
Trouble With My ‘R’s
My computer keyboard is driving me insane. The ‘R’ key is alternately firing twice or not producing a character at all. In the past couple of days PooterrGeek has had “resevoir” for “reservoir” and “amed” for “armed”. My apologies. Some time this weekend I hope I’ll get a chance to fix it.
Read More26May04 — 4
Joe Bloggs
The strangest things catch the imaginations of PooterGeekers. In this week’s ongoing debate about military theorists I have to admit Timbeaux and David Duff have me thoroughly out-read. Not since I ‘Blogged about The Passion of the Christ have the comment boxes been so busy. As if by appendix to the discussion, SlashDot pointed at […]
Read More02Mar04 — 0
Porn To Innovate
The argument that technology is driven by pornography is not a new one, but this old post from geek ‘Blog Slashdot makes it well.
Read More17Feb04 — 0
Just Like Us
Ultimately, the goal of the work I contributed to in my Master’s thesis (1996) was to find a new computational technique for examining 3-D images. With it, psychiatrists would be able to detect variations in in the structure of human brains (in something called their “torsion”) and identify schizophrenics without having to dissect their heads […]
Read More15Jan04 — 0
D-I-Y
Just before Christmas I had my (excellent) local garage re-connect and re-seat the underdash wiring of my car. The car was in for them to do a more serious repair, so I thought they might as well deal with the bunches of plugs that had become disconnected and were dangling into the passenger footwell. “Simple […]
Read More07Jan04 — 0
Quote for the Day
I am currently alternating between two of my Christmas books as bedtime reading: What Philosophers Think, edited by Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom, and Francis Spufford’s Backroom Boys. The latter is a polished crystal of popular science writing. Spufford describes technological phenomena in a concrete, evocative way (“smaller engines filled the air with the sound […]
Read More28Dec03 — 0
When Geeks Wore Beards
Dan Bricklin invented the spreadsheet. On his Website he has a lovely little history of the way Visicalc was born. Lots of now (rich and) famous computer personalities make cameo appearances.
Read More06Nov03 — 0
Whodunnit?
Microsoft will offer a bounty of $250 000 to anyone giving information leading to the conviction of virus writers*. Someone on Slashdot pointed out that this was reminiscent of O. J. Simpson swearing not to rest until Nicole Simpson’s real killer is found. *Yes, I know I should use the phrase “worm writers”.
Read More02Sep03 — 1
Ooh, Shiny Things!
Scroll down this page to see the new, sexy flat-panel speakers, available for your home cinema this month.
Read More28Aug03 — 0
Terminology, Psychology, Who-ology, Stringology
It’s a busy ‘Blogging morning. First: here’s a scholarly (or at least reasonably well-informed) argument for me to remove my usual distancing quotation marks from “Islamofascist”, “balanced” by more criticism for the U.S. administration over Iraq and terrorism (specifically Al-Qaeda and friends) in a ‘Blog interview with Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside […]
Read More21Aug03 — 2
Flypaper / Quagmire / Tarpit
Amber* sent a link to a New York Times article [free registration required yakety yakety] about how the United States’ postwar slackness has fostered terrorism in Iraq. She also writes to tell me that, like everyone else (but me), she has received 400 email messages from various worms. Ah, Microsoft. (According to Geoff, our head […]
Read More10Jul03 — 0
I’m Still Waiting
I imagine falling asleep in 1984 and waking up 19 years later in 2003. After a quick stroll round the block, my first question would have to be: "Where is my flying car?" Well, where is it? The explanation is the usual one, of course: TV lied to us.
Read More22Jun03 — 0
Sell Microsoft
Microsoft Windows XP Pro Upgrade: 247.00 EUR Microsoft Office: 449.00 EUR SuSE Linux Pro including OpenOffice: 74.95 EUR It’s a no-brainer.
Read More21May03 — 0
Phew
I’ve been too tied up with computer problems this past couple of nights to post anything to the ‘Blog. How did I fix them? Well, non-geeks might as well stop reading this entry now. I fried the Windows partition table on my Win98 drive. Running PartitionMagic 4.0 under DOS I was told to follow the […]
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