Too busy to…

Unfortunately the server on which this website runs experienced a fatal hardware problem on Christmas Day, and the admins were unable to resuscitate it until today.
Happy New Year!

I just wanted to wish the world a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
My long absence from posting is explained by the fact that I haven’t felt I have had anything interesting to blog about recently, although I have some exciting holidays planned for next year which will hopefully generate more posts!

It’s nice to know that even when the whole world seems to be going crazy, the Australians manage to retain their sense of humour: Last call for Mr Al Kyder and Mr Terry Wrist. [via Metafilter]

While I was in New York last Autumn, we managed to organise a weekly London v New York football game in Central Park which was a lot of fun, and represented a real cultural exchange as we informed the New Yorkers that a trip to the pub was an obligatory part of an after-work sports [...]

Despite passing my viva a year ago this week, I still hadn’t actually had my PhD conferred by the University and reached the promised land of graduation. So, it was very exciting to return to Cambridge last weekend to take my Doctorate. Sadly, as with every trip it seems impossible to catch up with everyone, [...]

When the video recorder failed to record the soundtrack to last week’s Doctor Who it was the excuseomen I needed to splash out on a digital video recorder.
Single tuner models are now under a £100, but I think the ability to watch and record different programmes is pretty much essential for a TV recorder, so [...]

You know you haven’t had enough sleep when you get to work and press the wrong button on the coffee machine.
Happily I’ve discovered that the newsagent closest to work sells flapjacks just like the ones available in the WGB café. Not quite as tasty, but cheaper!

Tim Bray has an insightful article on how a user in charge of their own computing environment should go about ensuring the safety of their data. (“Data” sounds very stuffy, but how would you feel if the friend who fixes your computer turned round and told you all your photos and music were gone forever? [...]

Have you ever found a solution to a tricky problem just through talking to someone else about it? The people at 43 Folders suggest you miss out the middle-person and just talk to yourself…

While researching some links for my previous post I came across this Wikipedia entry about an abandoned tube station. I always thought disused Underground stations were a movie “myth”, but it turns out there are quite a few of them! [Wikipedia]

All the travelling I did last year gave me a new determination to explore more of my own country, and especially London as when you live in a place it is very easy to dismiss tourists and completely miss the reasons they have come to visit! Some fun things I have done recently:

Premiership football at [...]

There is hopefully a special part of hell reserved for those that inflict stupidly bad design decisions upon us. Take, for example, the decision by the makers of the machines that allow one to top up their oyster card to require the process to be terminated by the user presenting their card to the machine [...]

The January Sales are a wonderful thing: yesterday I picked up a Ferguson R116D DAB digital radio for half price at Dixons.
I’ve been considering a digital radio for a some time. Some people claim the quality is lower than FM and punters would be better off listening via the Internet, or using a [...]

I love holidays. Today I finally found sometime to cook up a new way of putting a fun quote after my name in all of my emails. This regular feature of my electronic correspondence sadly disappeared when I upgraded to a new version of OS X; the new version of Apple Mail no longer seems [...]

Our flaming Christmas pudding proved a good opportunity to play with my new camera — I’ve finally gone digital!