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90 Days
Yup – the stupid British public think that it’s a great idea that the police can lock someone up for three months without even charging them. Isn’t this another blindingly stupid idea? Politicians well know that the public at large simply don’t understand what the full ramifications of this kind of legislation truly is. Your…
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Kakuro
You don’t know how much of a sense of achievement I had this evening when I’d finally managed to solve a “moderate” Kakuro puzzle in The Guardian. It’s the new Sudoku don’t you know. I suspect that doing these things regularly is the only real way of solving them easily.
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Eating In Supermarkets
No, I don’t mean eating in the supermarkets’ cafeteria areas. Although I always feel that if you’re eating there, you’re probably pretty desperate. And they never have all the menu available. No, what I’m talking about are those people who start consuming their soon-to-be-purchases before they’ve actually reached the till. They drive me mad. I…
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Idea For Greasemonkey Script
Can somebody please write a script that de-Christmases sites like Amazon? All I want is the holly-festooned graphics removed or replaced…
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Mars
Mars really is spectacular at the moment. Without even trying, and just looking up in a firework filled, and streetlight heavy London sky, it’s very easy to spot – just near The Pleiades. In other news, Inmarsat is launching a massive satellite on Monday afternoon which is part of their global broadband system. It’s being…
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Current Word Of Our Time
Juicy
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Magazine Malarkey
I love reading magazines, and buy far too many. But some of the marketing scams are beginning to really annoy me (As a small aside, people who call magazines “books” should be shot, and then frogmarched down to their local Ottakers, Waterstones, Blackwells, Borders or library and shown what a “book” looks like). I think…
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Free DVDs
While the newspapers continue to spend money on promotions like it’s going out of fashion, I’m happy to reap the rewards. So this weekend, on Saturday there’s Like Water For Chocolate in The Independent, which I haven’t seen for years, but enjoyed at the time. On Sunday, the Sunday Telegraph has the slightly strange Orlando,…
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Talk to the Hand
This time two years, Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves was the de facto gift for those people you hadn’t already bought a Christmas gift for. And yes, I do know that we’re not in any way close to Christmas yet. It really annoyed me seeing the “gift” sections of Waterstones and WH Smiths today.…
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Good Night And Good Luck
“Good night and good luck” was the sign-off given by Edward R Murrow, and it’s the title of an astonishingly good film directed by, and co-starring George Clooney which examines Murrow’s battle against the tyrant Joseph McCarthy. Clooney plays Murrow’s produced Fred Friendly, but the real star of the show is undoubtedly David Strathairn as…
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The Sun Editor
While spousal abuse is no laughing matter, there’s something ludicrous about this remarkable story. I did a double take when I saw it come up as “Breaking News” on Sky News (who, to their credit, ran the story as big as it deserves, despite being a fellow News Corp outlet). [Update] This story gets stranger…
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Bach To The Drawing Board On Downloads
It looks like the Beeb have backed down on the issue of downloads, and there won’t be any Bach Concertos, Suites or Masses available free of charge at the end of the year when the BBC plays his entire repertoire. I’ve argued before how this is exactly what the BBC should be doing – particularly…
Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Yellowface/All The Lovers In The Night
Yellowface by R F Kuang I first came across R F Kuang with last year’s very enjoyable Babel, an alternate history of the British Empire told in a world where magic exists and is controlled by an elite group of individuals. Yellowface is very different, but no less enjoyable. It’s a book about books, and…
Hadrian’s Wall
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