David Coveney

Archives

All the posts below have been written by David Coveney.

31 March, 2012

Bell & Coggins Pattern 1321

I have a little selection of Bell & Coggins Porcelain that I inherited but which isn’t really something I’m ever going to make much use of – it doesn’t really fit with anything else we have and it’s too delicate to have around when you have young children. So, better that somebody who would enjoy […]

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4 March, 2012

Why Gay Marriage Matters

Two people meet. They decide to live together and grow old together.  Let’s ignore whether they are a man and a woman, or gay, or two brothers without any other relationships.  Doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that they’re not married. Together, these two people set up home back in 1970 in a house for which […]

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26 February, 2012

Why You Should Be A Secularist

All these arguments about Britain being a ‘Christian’ country at heart (see Baroness Warsi here, here and most importantly here) are so much bull, and I’m tired of it.  It’s part of an attack on the growing secularist movement but framed in such a way that it’s designed to scare the religious into thinking they’re going to be […]

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3 February, 2012

Bye Bye Skoda

It’s always sad when you decide to get rid of a car that you’ve enjoyed owning.  Not because it’s no good, but because your needs have changed.  And the biggest problem was that we’re now parents to one growing toddler and another relatively new baby. Which nearly did my back in.  Both the Skoda and […]

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3 November, 2011

Do You Need an SLR?

OK, I’ve always said that you don’t need a fancy camera to take good pictures.  All that a good camera does is add flexibility and choice, but so long as there’s a decent amount of light (and even then, not necessarily that much) a compact or a smartphone camera could well be adequate. This lunchtime […]

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10 August, 2011

The Liverpool Riots Do Not Indicate That Our Society Is Broken

Ok, the riots matter.  Especially if you’re unlucky enough to have had to face rioters in your district, near your home, or near your business.  In fact, the riots and disturbances are full of tragedy, deaths and ruined lives.  They are, frankly, horrible. And strong action is needed to stop it turning into a joyfull […]

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11 July, 2011

Getting Quicker

One of the most important things that gets forgotten about when running a WP site is that performance is important.  We see many sites with page load times way in excess of 2,000ms per page.  Often the site just gets progressively slower over time and the change isn’t really noticed.  That had happened with mine, […]

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10 July, 2011

Blog “Reboot”

Hello – here’s the refreshed blog. I’ve decided to revert to a more typical blog format, after many months of soul searching on the issue. I previously had a layout based on a framework we used at interconnect/it for a couple of clients But not only have I opted to switch to a blog layout, […]

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24 May, 2011

Thinking Digital University (2011)

So, here I am again at Thinking Digital.  Only this time I’m no longer driving the seemingly doomed Golf TDI I had last year that did one of it’s self destruction tricks en-route.  Consequently I’m not missing out on the workshops here. In fact, I’m doing better than that – an additional workshop was added […]

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17 May, 2011

Homage to Beatrice Warde or a bad idea?

I recently saw in the book “Just My Type” by Simon Garfield a poster by Beatrice Warde, the famous American born typographer who spent much of her career in the UK*.  There seem to be many variations of typesetting for the poster, so I’ve no idea if she designed one herself or if it was […]

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12 May, 2011

Baby 2!

Here it is – the scan you’ve all been waiting for: Everything is perfect, due date is still the beginning of October, and I could tell he was a boy before the operator said anything.  No hiding the fact!

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12 March, 2011

Freedom of Information is Abused

In 2000 in the UK, the Freedom of Information Act gave us all the ‘right to know’ what our public bodies were up to.  We can ask for information about a huge range of items, and it’s a great idea.  Information should, in my view, be as open and transparent as possible. But there’s a […]

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18 February, 2011

Yummy Yummy!

All I did was say “yummy yummy” on every mouthful of food, and he started laughing like mad.  By the time I did this video he’d long finished his dinner, so I just carried on…

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26 January, 2011

Doug’s Stag Weekend

The Mission: Have fun, and find subtle and not so subtle embarrassments for Doug Watts, the stag for the weekend. Equipment: A lesbian DJ, two hovercraft, alcohol, four cars, Oswestry, and Manchester. The Evidence: Pictures after the two group shots are by Andrew Lewin – they’ve got Doug in!

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26 September, 2010

Peru, Chile & Bolivia Gallery

A gallery of some of my favourite in-camera images from Peru, Chile and Bolivia a few weeks ago.  They’re not necessarily strong photos or selected as such – just photos I myself enjoy.  I have more, but they either need tweaking (straightening horizons, etc) or some real work to bring out the best.  I’ll post […]

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22 September, 2010

New Spectacu.la Discussion Updates

My colleague James has been extending the threaded comments plugin that I use(d)* on this site.  It’s available from http://svn.wp-plugins.org/spectacula-threaded-comments/trunk for those of you with SVN clients, and for download and easy installation from WordPress.org and Spectacu.la within a few days. If you wish to test it out, feel free to comment here… It adds […]

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21 September, 2010

Headshots

The new company website will be launched shortly, and today we were taking new headshots of most of the team (James won’t play, meh) for the site. I think I like this one best:

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12 September, 2010

Dogs of San Pedro

I had an afternoon to kill, prior to heading back towards Arica.  So what’s a boy to do?  Well in my case I wondered around the village taking pictures of anything that caught my fancy.  But one possible theme leapt out at me – the many dogs around the streets would make a lovely topic […]

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11 September, 2010

A Better Type of Criminal

Arica is a relative crime free city, but as with anywhere it pays to be attentive. Most crime in Chile is opportunistic in nature, as opposed to the occassional strangle muggings and minor ATM kidnappings you have to be wary of in Bolivia and Peru. So I heard this story, of an eminent British archaelogist* […]

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9 September, 2010

Border Crossings and Empty Airports

I’m sitting in the emptiest airport I’ve ever experienced. I suspect they only operate a couple of flights a day from Tacna.  Consequently my only company appears to be a bored check-in attendant for a different airline and a barman who’s mopping the floor. And I’ve finished all my books. I have little else to […]

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8 September, 2010

Extreme Landscapes

I’m now back in Arica following my trip to San Pedro de Atacama and Bolivia.  I have a couple of things to deal with here before heading back to Lima for my flight home. I’ve been foiled by this computer in the hotel from getting a decent image gallery up from the last eight days […]

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