11 March, 2014
Bono’s office, some time in 2014
Hi guys, I suspect you know why I’ve called you in here for this meeting. Adam, Larry, uhm… hat guy… you know that costs have been rising and, what with piracy and everything we just don’t get the receipts we used to. Obviously that means we have to find some savings and, after looking through […]
2 March, 2014
What a difference a tyre makes – mini review of Yokohama Advan Neovas on track
Yesterday, finally, after a break of nearly four years, I returned to the race track. Not for a competitive event, but for a track day. And I learned a little… The scene has changed. Maybe. Track days were mostly full of road cars. Lotus Elises were hugely popular, but you’d see a collection of Porsches, various […]
5 June, 2013
Liverpool Central Library
So, Liverpool Central Library has had a revamp. The reading room was always ace, but had been closed for ages and I’d not been able to show it to friends. It’s now all been lovingly restored, and the ‘modern’ bit done in a much more interesting manner with wonderful natural light. It’s great to see […]
2 April, 2013
Twitter is about to die. Here’s why.
Something odd has started to happen on Twitter for me, and it’s cutting my usage of it down quite dramatically. Why? It’s because it seems the spammers are winning… @majorie6474 @davecoveney haha you bite so easy Toye :P Actually my mac is arriving tomorrow :P — Nick Hanson (@nrhansonp) April 2, 2013 @prestonrupemo @davecoveney haha […]
22 February, 2013
Finding a missing person in South America (and elsewhere)
I promised, ages ago, that I’d write up some tips on how to find somebody who’d gone missing in South America. Recently I had an email from somebody in the same situation which has spurred me into action. Since 1997 I’ve found or been found by my mother, my brothers and my sister. Here I’m […]
5 October, 2012
What It’s Like to Dine Out When You’re Veggie
Imagine, you arrive at the restaurant. It’s slick, it’s luscious. Wonderful smells assault your nose. You’re hungry. Very hungry. This is going to be great! So, you sit down, the waiter comes over. Oddly, he doesn’t hand you a menu. Instead, he decides to tell you what you can eat. “Tonight, for starters, you can […]
1 September, 2012
In Love With My Kids
I’m not going to say much, but I’ll just pop a gallery here of some recent shots of my two beautiful children. I’m in love with them. I can’t stop thinking about them. Everything else comes second. Doesn’t mean they don’t wind me up sometimes, of course…
18 July, 2012
It’s OK, Coming Second Isn’t So Bad
One of the lessons I’ve learned, from motorsport and life in general, is that coming second is actually OK. You’re brought up in school to believe that winning is important. Anything else is being a loser. Well, they’re wrong. The minute you learn to accept that you win by being the best that you can […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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!
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 […]
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…