[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 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 MoreThis has been online for so long and is so funny that it’s hard to believe that no one has sent me a link to it before. Perhaps this is because it’s a German health and safety video and, for the first minute or so, is exactly as entertaining as that description suggests. But it […]
Read More…because I stupidly fried my archiving PC on Sunday evening: melted plastic, smoke, the works. I’m boring about these things so I lost no data, but I did lose too many hours to re-building and re-configuring hardware and software and restoring files. And now I’ve just rounded the tedium off by fishing the last couple […]
Read MoreLegal drugs, like illegal drugs, have drug-like effects on the brain. Apparently, by performing post-mortems on them it’s possible to reveal biochemical changes in their bodies that suggest that regular smokers develop a physical addiction.
Read MoreI’m sitting here eating a microwaved vegetable biryani in front of my computer, having returned from a Ginsters-fuelled morning shoot of a band at Shoreham Airport, a cute, art deco building surrounded by dodgy Italian mopeds of the sky—not just propellor aircraft that look like they are powered by elastic bands, but helicopters that were […]
Read MoreI’m in Dixons Currys.digital, buying a new computer keyboard. What sounds like a competent cover version of Starship’s We Built This City is playing. For a moment I wonder if it’s the start of one of those godawful trance retreads of 80s guitar hits. You know the sort of thing: Owner Of A Lonely Heart/Max […]
Read More[Warning: This post is slightly geeky.] I have to clean up and transfer all my mobile phone contacts from my old to my new phone before I move to a new provider tomorrow—thereby saving about two-thirds on my mobile bill. For Friends of the Geek (and clients) reading this, my mobile number will remain unchanged, […]
Read MoreLook at these fascinating slides of a 1959 lecture made about plans for the moon landings.
Read MoreWith their characteristically English lack of ambition, scientists from Newcastle University and KCL have applied for a three-year licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to make chimaeric human-cow embryos. The similarly small-minded Korean authorities have been doing their damnedest to bring low the genius of visionary Hwang Woo-suk: Seoul, South Korea (AHN) – […]
Read MoreIs it just me or is flickr completely screwed today? I have been trying to upload images to it all morning and the persistent “temporary error” message I’ve been getting is becoming increasingly inaccurate.
Read MoreBut how did he get up there in the first place? [Bonus school-of-journalism marks go to the BBC staffer writing the article for referring to the Rolling Stones as “the famous British band”.]
Read MoreI forgot to mention that my Thursday last week started with my being trapped in my car when its cheap-and-nasty central locking system went bonkers and shut me in (I had to pass the keys out through the window to a mechanic at local garage who got a passenger-side door open) and ended with my […]
Read MoreI’ve put all my bedroom furniture together now, and my bedtime reading over the past few days has been Philip K. Dick’s The Man In The High Castle. [Typically, Penguin publishes the book inside two different tarted-up covers, but with the same nasty old typesetting inside.] As “what if the Axis won the War?” novels […]
Read MoreHaving recently acquired a used Ford Anglia via eBay I no longer need the following longstanding PooterGeek subject category.
Read MoreI knew that in Turkey Mein Kampf is a bestseller. I didn’t know that the theory of evolution was widely rejected there. Thanks to Mick Hartley and this in The Panda’s Thumb I have another reason to fear for civilization: “As a result of the BAV campaign and other efforts to denounce evolution, he adds, […]
Read MorePerhaps one reason I don’t have a family is that I am the sort of person who would want to push his offspring around in one of these. [via boing boing]
Read MoreGood morning, Mr McKafka. Mr Counsell, we meet again. Not very often, what with your window only opening for business minutes at a time on days of the week with a “K” in their names. Your ready wit never fails to bring a smile to my routine. What quotidian but essential goal can I divert […]
Read MoreIf the worst came to the worst, you would, of course, stamp on the head of that annoyingly talented and inquisitive Pakistani girl who helps her mother out in the local corner shop, but luckily you don’t have to resort to direct violence to keep the little oik out of those places at Oxbridge you […]
Read MoreI’m not very good at parking. I have written here before about my driving my friend Auriol‘s car through a Genome Campus fence. Today I discovered why everyone avoids the cornermost parking space of the Campus’s underground car park when, moving into it, I managed to shuffle back and forth enough times to wedge my […]
Read MoreOf course, if I did own a TV in this year of 2004, I could watch the alleged ex-lover of a waning international football star masturbate a pig. [Er, thanks, Laban.]
Read MoreWell, it’s a start.
Read MoreYesterday 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 […]
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