An open letter to Roy Wood

Dear Mr Wood - For your information, in all known dialects of English, the phrase 'snowman' refers to a figure of a man which is made from snow (something like a statue, sculpture or perhaps golem), rather than a man who delivers snow. I understand there is room for confusion here, when considering examples such … Continue reading An open letter to Roy Wood

Artificial John B Impersonator

The text below is the output of my phone's AI autocomplete app (SwiftKey), based on its knowledge of the things I say and do. My only interaction was to choose between the three suggestions it offered. I have been made to the park. I am not going anywhere, and I will not receive the item … Continue reading Artificial John B Impersonator

Fans of Sharpeners will like this

All the content from the long-defunct Sharpener group blog (formerly at thesharpener.net, before pirates stole the domain name) is now available at sharpener.johnband.org. The formatting's basic, and categories have been lost; this may improve in future. That was the easy-ish task, building a new WordPress 3.3.1 site based on a fairly arbitrary selection of obsolete … Continue reading Fans of Sharpeners will like this

That worked remarkably well, all things considered

If you're seeing this, then my server migration was absolutely gangbusters-awesome, God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world. The Sharpener and SBBS projects may be slightly more challenging, but they are on the way. If you don't know what the last sentence means, then I salute your wisdom in spending the mid-to-late … Continue reading That worked remarkably well, all things considered

Blogging is dead and no-one cares?

My riot policing piece yesterday attracted 600 unique visitors in 24 hours. That isn't exactly Perez Hilton, but is about six times my current normal run rate (I think the biggest this blog has ever been is about 1000 daily visitors, for some of the global financial crisis articles). The fact that the piece had … Continue reading Blogging is dead and no-one cares?

Have Google ever met any foreigners?

The World's Unsurprisingly Fastest-Growing Networking Platform, Google+, is getting stick from various corners for its naming policy. This formally restricts you to "Use your full first and last name in a single language". The idea behind it is sensible. G+ aims to be a combination of a professional network like LinkedIn, and a personal network … Continue reading Have Google ever met any foreigners?

Baffling or flattering?

As if to add ammo to the fervent Marxists who've been criticising me for my slavish adherence to neoliberal economics lately [*], I'm going to admit that I'm a fan of The Economist on Facebook. Not because it's my favourite paper - I subscribe to the New Yorker, Private Eye and Crikey, and would subscribe … Continue reading Baffling or flattering?

Cruel and unusual pun-ishment

Bad puns, old Internet memes, very out-of-date 'cute animal news' stories, and aviation references, all in one photograph. I'm spoiling you all, just like being left in the sun for a week spoils cream. Yes, she really is at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. Incidentally, this post was based on a tweet by @anattendantlord, which was itself … Continue reading Cruel and unusual pun-ishment