Archive for December, 2006

 

The end

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

I’ve just moved all my important emails from my LSE email address to a new account, set up a forward and an put the out-of-office message on. A lot of fond memories. Thanks to all.
xD.

 

The Seventh Seal

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

I’ve just watched Ingmar Bergman’s classic film, The Seventh Seal. I went though a period a little while ago of buying DVDs on Amazon’s second hand shops, so they were cheap and allowed me to feel good about myself by having that sort of film collection.Anyway, the film. First off, it’s beautifully filmed. Some of […]

 

Dragonfruit

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

I went to Mattmas the other week and there was an exotic cake from Patisserie Valerie with all manner of unusual fruits on that I’d never even heard of. One, which appeared to be a white kiwi, was in fact a dragonfruit or pitaya (or so Kheng told us). There was another variation, deep red […]

 

The joys of Mozilla

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

I recently ran LavaSoft’s AdAware - an excellent, free app that removes various forms of spyware and assorted malware - and discovered a worryingly large amount of spyware, particularly data miners, on my machine that had arrived in the form of cookies.
Mozilla allow you to approve cookies, either permanently or for a session, for […]

 

Time to burn some books

Sunday, December 17th, 2006

Matt Sinclair asks for book recommendations for his Christmas holiday travelling. I’ve given some suggestions here.
I happened to come across the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s list of Fifty Best and Fifty Worst Books. Now, I don’t know what this organisation is or what it does, but its library appears only to have 49 books as it […]

 

Bela Lugosi’s Dead

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

One of my favourite songs has come up on the iPod – Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus. It was the first song they released and is a classic. The bossa nova version by Nouvelle Vague is also recommended. It’s worth finding a copy. Anyway, here are the lyrics:
White on white translucent black capesBack on the […]

 

Bob Piper to stop blogging

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006

After the furore over the blacked-up David Cameron picture, Bob Piper is stopping blogging. As Guido puts it, he’s not racist but he was badly wrong on this one. It would appear that the barrage of criticism, some beyond the pale, that he and, it would appear, his family have received have led him to […]

 

Pub Quiz Triumph

Monday, December 11th, 2006

Every Monday during the university term at ULU, I play for a team called the Kim Jong-il Appreciation Society in the pub quiz league. Said team has won the league for this term, the prizes being cocktails top trumps, playing cards, a keyring, a hangover eyemask and a hipflask, all branded with Jack Daniel’s (except […]

 

A gem from the archives

Monday, December 11th, 2006

Dennis Skinner is pro-choice. He is sufficiently pro-choice (and, I suspect, keen to expose some of Parliament’s more arcane procedures as such) to organise a three-hour filibuster using the issuance of a writ of election, amongst other tricks, to prevent restrictions on abortion. It should be noted that this was constitutional trickery to prevent constitutional […]

 

Death of Pinochet 3/3

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

In response to Iain Dale.
Not sure I have an awful lot more to say. Brutal Dictator. Supported us during the Falklands War. UK House arrest was a disgrace. Not shedding a tear. End of story.
Oh, he supported us in the Falklands War? That’s OK, then. After all, he was our military dictator. Galtieri wasn’t, so […]