Sal and I returned late last night, coughing, sniffing, and in need of a good lie down, from a thoroughly entertaining weekend up in Edinburgh. We can’t quite blame the city for our colds–I’m pretty sure we had those before we went–but I’m sure our activities over the weekend can’t have helped in their slow gestation. On the way from the airport to our hotel, I realised that I’ve clearly been living in the south…

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As you may know, I do seem to spend rather a lot of my time hanging around with Australians, for some reason, so if England do somehow manage to win the Ashes this year, then I will be a very happy man. Of course it’s not as if I’ll actually have watched any of the games: I’ve mostly been following the series on a small auto-updating Firefox window secreted at the bottom right of my…

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Now I know that the first rule of the affiliates program of a certain well-known, large international online retailer, is that you don’t talk about the affiliates program of said well-known, large international online retailer, but just this once I’m going to make an exception. I’ve been signed up to said program for a couple of years now, so that if anyone clicks on the links in the books and music lists over there on…

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New Old News

– Apparently attractive 18 year old girls have done well in their A-Levels this year (via Rhodri). – Apparently David James isn’t very good. – Apparently listening to loud music for a long period of time will damage your hearing. – Apparently working long hours is bad for you. Yep. It’s definitely August…

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Last night’s “Britpop Night” on BBC4 was entertaining, but a little repetitive. I suppose that’s rather appropriate, actually, but even I was getting bored on hearing Inbetweener for the fourth time in the space of a couple of hours. I think the problem was that much of what John Harris’s new documentary had to say was repeated in the film that followed it, Live Forever. Both interviewed a member of Blur in the Good Mixer,…

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Not With Real Intent

As I mentioned earlier, but have so far failed to blog properly, Sal and I headed off to Barcelona the weekend before last. Ostensibly visiting to see U2 play the Nou Camp on the Sunday night, we also had the chance to eat tapas, drink, and enjoy the sunshine. By the time we reached our posh, plush hotel bed on Friday night, barely a few hours after arriving in the city, we’d already been ripped…

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Couldn’t Give a XXXX For Public Sector IT Projects?

One of the main reasons why I’ve been such a staunch supporter of ID cards is that the government has such a fantastic track record on large-scale IT projects. Look at what EDS did for the Child Support Agency, for example. I have every confidence that, once they find a suitable large American corporation to outsource the project to, it will all be well managed, and your and my private and confidential data will be…

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Dun Der Der Dun Der Der, Dun Der Der Dun Der Der…

Thursday already, huh, and I still haven’t found time to blog our weekend in Barcelona. There are pictures, of course (and indeed here), but if it’s witty, incisive commentary that you’re after, then you’ll have to wait. Maybe this afternoon, who knows. Last night we went to see the Australian-backpackers-in-London play, The Vegemite Tales, over at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. To anyone like me who was in their late teens in the mid 1990s,…

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The Award For Stupidest Comment of the Month Goes To…

“Rodrigo De faria”, who arrived here with the wonderfully gramatically accurate Google “Heathrow Express Complains“, and uses a typo-filled comment to call me on my poor grasp of the English language, failing to quite grasp my point in the process. Perhaps I need to start marking entries with a great big SARCASM flag or something. (Oh, that wouldn’t work, would it–I’d have to flag pretty much the entire blog. Oh well…)

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