David Coveney

A personal blog transitioning into an exploration of the intersection of design, technology and ethics

Tag: technology

  • A little change on this website

    A little change on this website

    In the past, this website was sort of my place to keep family and friends in touch. I first set it up in 2005, just before going away to Peru on travels. It was a great. Facebook had been invented but wasn’t generally available or popular yet, other platforms weren’t well thought through or scattered,…

  • The astonishing power of modern computing

    The astonishing power of modern computing

    Being very old (or at least, that’s how I feel being in tech!) means that after coming up to nearly forty years in technology, I’ve seen some changes. My first computer at home, that I owned, that I could truly call my own, was a Dragon 32. It was a small, 32KB computer using the…

  • The productivity paradox

    The productivity paradox

    I came across this chart recently and it gave me pause for thought as someone whose life work is designed to improve productivity. It shows that from 2008, although we know technologies have been growing in power, productivity growth suddenly dropped away from the trendline following the global financial crisis. Why? This is where I…

  • The EU are bullying the UK

    The EU are bullying the UK

    A short screenplay, by me. It’s a Monday morning at a small train station on a mainline. It’s bustling as business travellers head to London for their week’s business. The air is cool, with people blowing little clouds of steam as they head into the station from their taxis and cars. Mr Hock, a late-middle…

  • WordCamp UK – Great Stuff + a Little Controversy

    I went to WordCamp UK 2010 in Manchester… this is my write-up of the event, and its controversies along with my presentations…

  • Of WordPress Training and Learning

    Over at Interconnect IT, where I work, we’ve found that demand for our WordPress Training Courses has shot up over the past year or so.  And it’s certainly interesting to see where the work comes from. Curiously, it’s very polarised – we either work with smaller one man band companies like Jason Nevin who runs…

  • Saab 9-5 Aero (HOT) Estate For Sale – SOLD!

    Saab 9-5 Aero (HOT) Estate For Sale – SOLD!

    Given that I’m selling my motorbike at the moment as well, you may well wonder if I’ve had some kind of financial crisis of my own. But thankfully, no.  I just don’t need such a large and fast car any more.  When I was doing a lot of sprinting I needed something capable of towing…

  • Speed Limiting in Cars

    As part one of my campaign to introduce the concept of actually thinking to UK media, pundits and government, I’m covering the nasty little idea of automatic speed limiters being introduced to cars – so that people can, basically, stop thinking about the speed they drive at. That’ll work…

  • Very Cool Camera Tracking Technology

    The chaps at Cam-Trax have come up with a rather nifty bit of software that can turn practically any easily visible object and a cheap webcam into a game or PC controller. I wish I could code that sort of stuff…. Now I’ll get back to working on SQL queries when I should actually be…

  • 21 Years In IT

    I chanced upon a site listing the first 100 .com registrations ever made – and it rather startled me.  I started my IT career in 1987, first working as a printer operator on the mainframes at ICI, before moving to systems operations in at the beginning of 1988.  Later in 1988 I became a trainee…