Incensed by a “no tresspassing” sign, Jeff Deck launched a cross-country trip to right grammatical wrongs. He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they got to work erasing errant quotation marks, rectifying misspellings and cutting unnecessary possessive apostrophes. The Great Typo Hunt is the story of their crusade.
Read More[A] bat, seen clinging to the external fuel tank of the Space Shuttle Discovery before its launch on Sunday, apparently clung for dear life to the side of the tank as the spaceship lifted off. … The shuttle accelerates to an orbital velocity of 17,500 milers per hour, which is 25 times faster than the […]
Read MoreThis has to be one (if only one) in the eye for all those people who say there’s no point in listening to passenger plane safety announcements about how to slide down the inflatable ramp and put on your flotation aid because if there’s a crash the best you can hope for is to be […]
Read MoreTim Newman is a blogging engineer, currently terraforming the far eastern Russian island of Sakhalin, a place Wikipedia describes as “less cold than inland Siberia”, with a view to it being fit for human habitation some time in the 22nd century. His account of his ten days spent on a Russian icebreaker is entertaining.
Read MoreIf you’re over six feet in height, squeezing yourself into an economy seat on a plane can be torture, but if you’re seriously overweight and on a domestic flight in Canada, you get another seat: The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a regulatory ruling requiring the country’s airlines to provide an extra seat — […]
Read MoreIt was quiet here last week because I had a lot of things on—to the extent that I had to stop off at the 24-hour Tesco superstore in the small hours of Saturday on the way back from singing at a gig to do my week’s shopping. I’ve read some extreme tales about the goings […]
Read MoreA couple of days ago, I was driving along the front at Worthing and saw for the first time the amazing spectacle of the drifts of wooden planks washed up in the recent shipwreck. This was days into the operation to clear the spill and long after sunset, yet the timber loomed unignorably two storeys […]
Read MoreThis video not only contains a collection of excellent car-buying advice (which is almost as useful in the UK as in the USA), but a fine lesson in how to use presentation software to support a talk and in how to give a talk that’s no longer than it needs to be.
Read MoreSorry about the silence. I’ve been working hard in Portugal and working hard here. Stevie Wonder says I look just like him in these shades My exact ethnic background isn’t immediately obvious from my appearance. Most Sierra Leoneans would call me “white”; most Brits wouldn’t. To a large fraction of the people on this planet […]
Read MoreUnlike, I suspect, most remaining readers of The Independent newspaper, I believe it’s to the credit of the people of the United States of America that one of the most common questions they ask of tour guides as they are shown around the Grand Canyon is: “How did we make it?” If the Martians are […]
Read Morethe middle of nowhere[click image to enlarge it] [A dirt track in Wales exactly seventy-five miles from the nearest Starbucks. POOTERGEEK is laden with three cameras, several lens bags, and a tripod. He is trying to open the gate to a field full of sheep by pressing a London Transport Oyster card against the hinge […]
Read MoreThey call themselves “Paramount Vehicle Solutions“, perhaps because the vehicles they sell are seen by some as a solution to the problem of having a small penis, but would you hand over seventy thousand pounds to someone who thinks the plural of “Aston Martin” is “Aston Martin’s”?
Read MoreWhen I was in Belgium last week, I was surprised to discover that it was just like the movies:
Read MoreIt’s true, I tell you.
Read MoreFor regulars here not also regulars at Norm’s place: the Prof is currently in Upsidedownland watching the cricket between Australia and England. Yesterday he linked to an article from The Australian about England bowler Monty Panesar. Reading it, this passage, er, struck me: [T]he safest way to dive into the water is to keep your […]
Read MoreI have returned from the lands of my childhood: the Midlands. With me I’ve brought six crates of my old books, reclaimed from storage at my parents’ house, a new water pump in the engine of my car, and a stinking cold—thank you, Maisie and Sam, you cute little bundles of virions. Naturally I took […]
Read MoreI’ve been away for a few days. If you are waiting for me to reply to your email message or phone call or if you are waiting for another post here at PooterGeek then you won’t have to wait too much longer.
Read MoreI enjoyed a beautiful drive through Autumn English countryside to a job in West Sussex yesterday. Driving back blind into low sunlight wasn’t quite so pleasant. This random November photo from flickr is lovely too.
Read MoreLook at these fascinating slides of a 1959 lecture made about plans for the moon landings.
Read MoreI suffer from vertigo. If you do too please don’t follow this link. [thanks to d2s]
Read MoreA month or so back I was in the farthest darkest reaches of Hove, Actually (practically in Portslade, for the locals reading) having a repair done to my car. While I waited I wandered into a new café called “Intenso”. It’s an unlikely outpost of another Intenso in Ibiza—though not so unlikely with the weather we’ve […]
Read MoreA warm “welcome back” to Amsa, Gravesend’s best-looking resident. Paulie, your blog ate my Collymore comment. I would love to visit Portsmouth, but I’ll have to be invited first. Trevor in Sheffield, a man in a long coat will bring you good news of a distant relative.
Read MoreMy darling readership has solved two PooterGeek mysteries. Remember the “hair guitar” version of Pachelbel’s Canon? This New York Times article [PDF] tells the tale behind it. A couple of weeks back, on the way back from the site of a wedding reception, I managed to get myself stuck in one of the few actual […]
Read MoreOver at Drink-Soaked Trots, frustrated holidaymaker Eric objects to the pre-emptive arrest of the alleged terrorists: “This all seems a counter-productive effort really. I mean actually arresting them before they actually carry out the attack may alienate these oppressed young men and further radicalise them. Not to mention that their civil rights have probably been […]
Read MoreI’m booked to shoot a Sunday wedding on an island in the Thames. Unsurprisingly this address confuses my sat nav. When I met the couple there in advance to case the joint, I travelled on public transport with just one camera. Driving is a different matter. I get within a few miles and then do […]
Read MoreWhen I was a kid I was fascinated by a 3-D photo viewer called the View-Master. Last night as I lay in bed with my ThinkPad having finished off my latest post on the Wedding Photography Blog, I followed Design | asides from my blogroll there to the Magnum Photos site and experienced the same magic I […]
Read More[via The (normally very geeky) Daily WTF]
Read MoreMy car is parked just round the corner. Yesterday I went to it to get some stuff out of the boot and found that it had been picked up and moved two metres from where I had parked it. The city council had been painting new road markings and it had been in their way. […]
Read MoreA service station just off the Fifth Circle of Hell, very early in the morning, somewhere around the peak hour for suicide attempts: My journey time has been tripled by the closure of relevant sections of the M11 and the M25. The woman who lives in my sat nav has been asked to re-calculate the […]
Read MoreYesterday, as I waited for my new upstairs neighbour’s double-parked mother to move her car so that I could drive away from my flat, I noticed that her shiny Smart had a deep, long scratch in its paintwork, a deep, long scratch the height of which corresponded exactly with that of the stump of my […]
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