At 8:30am I was shoveling from the council gritter into a wheel barrow. Now I don’t mean the kind of crappy ball-jobbies that lilac-shirted maker of crap vacuum cleaners (give me a Henry) James-Bastarding-Dyson designs but a proper agricultural wheel-barrow. One that I had just previously tipped-out of snow and something vaguely organic that I [...]
Posts under ‘Real life’
Pratchett 2.0
I know there are a lot of Terry Pratchett fans among the Kitty Kounters (we even have a quote in the sidebar), but his daughter, Rhianna, is less well known. She started out as a journalist, but now writes scripts for videogames. The rather marvellous but misunderstood Mirror’s Edge was one of hers, and I’ve [...]
Crime of the Century…
Well, it’s been bitter cold a few days ago. I know I was varnishing an external door.
I then thought for dinner I might fancy (It was my wife’s idea) making a hearty Spanish style stew. So I went on a hunt for chorizo… and found it at the Co-op which staggered me for it was [...]
I thought I’d died and gone to Hebburn…
A few days ago I was in the local Co-op buying bleech or some such. Anyhows, they have an area manager in and he is uttering the latest diktat. The woman on the till is astonished, gob-smacked by it. It went like this…
“You have to stock aubergines - tell Terry*.”
“But, but… what do you ever [...]
Cheshire East
That is where I live according to the gubbermunt. I call it East Cheshire but clearly that isn’t as dynamic as “Cheshire East“. “Go East!” as the Pet Shop Boys didn’t sing.
Anyway, through the door I get today the free-sheet detailing all the wonderful things Cheshire East does for me. There is some stuff [...]
“Darwin Award” Is Barely Adequate
Down below, Paul has written a post about the “fall of the Moron civilisation”, and a very good post it is too. It describes how a certain South American civilisation, facing the invasion of the Conquistadores, responded by, er, killing their own people and setting fire to their pyramids, which turned out not to be [...]
Two Interesting Facts about Samoa
There are precisely two entries under “21st Century” in the Wikipedia article about Samoa. One is about the country changing from driving on the right to the left in 2009. This goes against the trend somewhat, but it turns out that it’s easier and cheaper for them to import cars from (relatively) nearby Australia and [...]
Hip-Hop Diplomacy and the War on Cameras.
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time:”Send an American rap crew on a tour of Pakistan to help build bridges between two countries whose relations have plumbed new depths this year”.
But after being detained by security officials in Rawalpindi and then seeing a major concert cancelled by a venue in Lahore [...]
RIP
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 8, 2011)
And if you don’t know who he is, your opinions on computers don’t matter.
This is the age of the train…
Remember those ads with Jimmy Saville in full child-molestation mode?
So they are still on about building a railway from London to Birmingham. Or specifically from Euston to New Street stations. This matters. I used to live in “London” (specifically in Mile End - which even if it is Zone 2 is probs two tube trips [...]
The PC is alive and well at 30.
The days of the personal computer are numbered, a leading IBM designer has claimed. Dr Mark Dean, who worked on the original IBM PC, the 5150, wrote in a blog post commemorating its 30th anniversary, that “they’re going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs”
OK, right, whatever. In [...]
Loadsa Money!
I have posted something very similar to this before. I make no apologies whatsoever for reposting a rather slicker visualisation of what very large sums (national debts) of money look like.
I would like to add just two one things.
Most businesses in the USA don’t tend to accept denominations larger than $20 due to forgery [...]
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you
There is one religion in the world that kills you when you disagree with them and they say ‘look, we are a religion of peace and if you disagree we’ll f—ing cut your head off,’
Bill Maher, and Andrew Sullivan, and Eliot Spitzer, ELIOT SPITZER for Gods sake, of all people, as well as some anchor [...]
WOW!
Now this is what I call solar energy!
H/T WUWT
You know that bloke on the grassy knoll…
That was me that was.
And I have done consultancy for the Red Brigades.
Oh, that Osama fella… I once lent him a text book on nuclear physics. Never got it back!
We have mentioned security theatre and even security opera but this is the full Barnum and Bailey in Vegas with elephants and like everything!
My [...]
