Why Does It Have To Be Like This?

I am surrounded by poor design. Take my digital radio, for example. It’s generally a fantastic piece of kit, and does lots of funky things like allowing you to pause and rewind live radio, and record stuff onto memory cards (oh, and it also manages to receive XFM, which is more than can be said for the old analog clock radio we used to have). Unfortunately, the device has a pretty fundamental design flaw: the…

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The Age of Weddings

It’s becoming increasingly easy for me to worry about the passage of time. Last month’s XFM club night brought back some particularly vivid memories of music from long ago, and the crucial “Woah! Was that really ten years ago?” mark has already passed for such significant events in my youth as Definitely Maybe, The Holy Bible, His n’ Hers, Parklife, and the suicide of Kurt Cobain. This summer it will be ten years since Pulp’s…

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Hanging’s Too Good For ‘Em

I love those Evening Standard headline boards you see around tube stations in the evenings. Last night, I spotted this gem: OFFICIAL YOU CAN KILL A BURGLAR Was it wrong of me to read this as if it was saying something along the lines of “Yes: You too can lose days pounds in ten days”? Did yesterday’s edition include a double page step-by-step guide to how one might go about committing this act, perhaps illustrated…

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