Bonnie Tyler as you’ve never seen her before.
From Jeannie Harrell.
Thanks to Ian Yorston for the link.
Total Eclipse of the chart
August 19th, 2009
The suit is back?
August 18th, 2009
A splendid piece by Paul Graham on how PR works.
Misunderstanding Dawkins
August 18th, 2009
Many people think of Richard Dawkins as a strident, aggressive figure. I think this comes mostly from passages in The God Delusion where he’s deliberately mischievous, in a way that is decidedly uncomfortable to those of a religious persuasion.
I read The God Delusion and then moved on to several of his other books, like The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene – all brilliant books, by the way, which transformed my understanding of many aspects of science – but the thing that got me started was really YouTube. Hearing and seeing him speak made me realise he was a very smart, very thoughtful guy, who wasn’t just out to poke fun at religion. He doesn’t always give that impression in his writing, especially to those who have only read small excerpts.
Here’s a little four-minute example of the man who has been christened “Darwin’s Rottweiler”:
Telling it like it is…
August 15th, 2009
I loved the Homeopathic A&E sketch from Mitchell & Webb. Dara O’Briain makes some similar points rather nicely here:
Detroit is in trouble…
August 14th, 2009
I pulled up behind this enormous truck, which towered over the (not insubstantial) car I had borrowed from my in-laws. There was one person in it, the driver, on his way to work, I should think.
There are two stickers on the back. The left one says, “Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign!” and the other, “Please don’t fly MY flag on your foreign car!”
Somehow I think that’s not the real problem…
iPhone/iTouch recommendations
August 13th, 2009
A few of my favourite recent iPhone/iPod Touch applications – all very different – all recommended:
OffMaps is a map browser. It lets you do similar things to the built-in Google maps, but based on OpenStreetMap data (which is sometimes better, sometimes worse, but generally more up to date). However, the reason you might want to use OffMaps is that the Off stands for ‘offline’. If you’re like me, one of the main times you want maps of an area is when you are in another country where roaming data charges are extravagant. With OffMaps you can download the maps for an area in advance and use them when you have data roaming turned off – very handy.
Glyder. I’m not much of a gamer, but I really enjoyed this, and played it through to the end. It’s a lovely demo of the graphics capabilities of the platform, and a very nice use of the accelerometers as flight controls. Passed quite a lot of time very happily with this.
RightMove is one of the biggest online estate agents in the UK, listing properties from very many sources. Their iPhone app is brilliant if you’re in an area and think, ‘I wonder how much it would cost me to move here?’. It can use your current location, and with one click list the properties for sale or rent near to you. You can enter an address as well, but that’s not so cute! Very easy to use and very nicely done.
HereIAm is a simple utility for iPhone users trying to find other iPhone-owning friends. It gets your current location, shows you an estimate of how confidently it knows it, and pops up an email-composing window which includes a link to google maps pinpointing your position. Desktop users clicking the link will get a browser window, iPhone users will get the Maps app. It works fine on my tests and it’s free… it would be nice to be able to preview the location before sending, though – something that should be possible in OS 3.0. But I guess you can just switch to the Maps app for that – it’ll be the same location.
Now, given that most iPhone apps cost a pound or two, it may seem ridiculous to pay £14.99 for one! It must be pretty revolutionary, right? No, it’s a dictionary. A Collins French-English dictionary, in my case, though they have a variety of other languages available as well. So, yes, this does cost about the same as a nice hardback edition of the same dictionary, but it’s really very good, much quicker to search, and much easier to carry in your pocket. If you look up ‘frog’, it will also give the translations for ‘to have a frog in one’s throat’ and ‘frogman’. It includes verb declensions, it auto-completes searches… well, anyway, I took a deep breath before buying it when going on holiday, and have absolutely no regrets.
Salisbury suggestions
August 9th, 2009
If you’re visiting Salisbury Cathedral, and you want to make sure your photos don’t look too much like those Constable paintings, here are some suggestions:
- Ask any passing peasants, cattle, haywains etc to keep out of the frame
- Take only an 80mm equivalent lens, which means there’s no way you can actually get a shot of the whole cathedral
- Arrive just as it’s getting dark.
(Click for more)
Grotto Garage
August 6th, 2009
Above Cotignac, Provence.
If there’s a convenient cave in the cliff next to your house, where better to park your Renault 4?
The American Counterfeit Guest
August 4th, 2009
The U.S. edition of Rose’s second novel in the Mary Finch series, The Counterfeit Guest, hits American bookshelves today.
In the beginning was Word
August 3rd, 2009
Jeremy Reimer writes a nice Ars Technica piece on why, after more than 20 years of using Microsoft Word, he now almost never uses it.
Is the age of the word-processor drawing to a close?
Thanks to John for the tweet.
Update: Well I never… at the other end of the table here, John was writing a blog post, and we both picked the same subject and independently came up with the same idea for the title!
All that’s best of dark and bright…
August 2nd, 2009
Just to stop my friends at home from getting too jealous, I should point out that the storm clouds sometimes gather even in Provence in the summer.
Some of the most impressive formations I’ve seen for a long time swirled overhead this morning, and the hills echoed with the low rumble of thunder.
Note that this photo was taken just before 9am this morning at the same spot as my post of a couple of days ago.
Still, I’m not expecting too much sympathy… we jumped in the pool, then had a splendid breakfast brought up by John and Fiona from the town below, and the sun is now shining brightly again…
En Provence
July 30th, 2009
It’s tough here.
Yesterday afternoon in Cambridge I had my headlights and wipers on. It’s amazing what a couple of hours in a plane can do.
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