Author Archives: Leigh

Exciting article here: RICHARD DAWKINS IS RIGHT. His deicidal bestseller The God Delusion attacks the absurdities and cruelties, the contradictions and superstitions, the rip offs and fantasies of religion across the world and throughout history. I couldn’t agree more. It’s enough to make you wish Abraham hadn’t been in when God called round. The problem […]

A friend once said to me (we may have been drunk at the time), that he didn’t think he’d have figured out how to have sex if he hadn’t seen it somewhere else first. He didn’t elaborate on where this “somewhere else” was, which may have been for the best. Interestingly, though, it appears that […]

Some time ago on a ringing email list there was a discussion about recordings. People generally found that when they listened to a recording of themselves, it sounded far better than they anticipated. The converse was also true – that when actually ringing people tended to be far more critical of themselves than when listening. […]

This article’s quite good. It even has some numbers to back up my bland assertions. What do the terms ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ mean? Well, if you are the BBC, ‘left wing’ is a term used mainly in sport. Insofar as it is used in politics, it is used to describe the mainstream. ‘Right […]

Today’s discussion point is rape. I have to be careful here, because one wrong word or bungled phrase could land me in serious trouble with all sorts of angry women. God forbid I should end a sentence with a preposition. This article from the Beeb got me thinking, or (more specifically) this quote did: The […]

I’ve just thought of something, and unfortunately you’re all going to have to hear it as well. The average 17-year-old is actually 17-and-a-half. There you are, don’t say I never give you anything interesting.

Ed Bott has been discussing the trends on his site for browser usage. The last time I published these stats was on April 30, 2006. The share of visitors using Firefox or Mozilla has dipped roughly 1% since then, from 35.2% down to 34.18%. It’s still a bit higher than the August 2005 share of 33.2%, […]

For a while now I’ve been collecting links on Bloglines which I keep meaning to talk about. Unfortunately they’re all out of date now, but you can still hear about them anyway. Here’s an exciting one about the world of driving: (From the Pedant-General about this document) It is not speed that kills, it is inappropriate […]

The Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union are an irritating thorn in the side of moderate Christians throughout Cambridge. And I don’t think I’m being harsh, either. This week’s TCS contains an enormous feature on what CICCU think about sex. Sex outside marriage, contraception, and homosexuality feature strongly. It’s a hoot. Ideally I’d give you a link […]

Recent news tells us of how the balance of power has shifted in Washington with recent voting. The House of Representatives now has a Democrat majority, and the Senate has swung in their direction too UPDATE: There is now a Democrat majority in the Senate. Donald Rumsfeld has stepped down as Secretary of Defence. What I […]

Sometimes I think the Royal Mail ought to give up producing any seasonal stamps. They never seem to manage it without getting in trouble. Stamp rage strikes again The Royal Mail has a policy of alternating between religious and non-religious designs for its festive stamps. This year is a non-religious year, but that hasn’t stopped […]

Unfortunately, being behind on the modern-day business lingo (since when has “teaming” been a word?) I struggled slightly to keep up with the conference. It does seem to me, however, that Microsoft has teamed up with Novell to help with two areas: virtualisation interoperability Both of these issues have been a problem and I think […]

There’s rumours on the Internet – and we all know what they mean… Or do we? Have a look at Novell’s share price. Then have a look at some of the links on the right. Especially this one: Novell Shares Spike 20% As Wall St Journal Reports Microsoft To Start Reselling SUSE LINUX In a […]

Here’s the start of a BBC article about yesterday’s House of Commons debate: At-a-glance: Iraq inquiry debate Here are the key points from the House of Commons debate on the call for an inquiry into the Iraq war.   Adam Price The Plaid Cymru MP opened the debate by saying the Iraq war was a […]

The Full Feeds Petition seems to have reached stagnation. Please help the cause and go and sign it.

Over at Coding Horror, there’s a big post up about Captcha effectiveness. I seemed to have developed an interest in these – I’ve discussed the issue before here and here. A Captcha is a “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart” – one of those little images with mangled letters which […]

For some reason, I have become an early adopter. I’m currently using Windows Live Writer to create this post. It’s a simple way to write blog entries offline. It downloads your blog templates and current posts and therefore lets you preview exactly how it will look. All rather clever. It’s somewhat surprising, really, that I’m […]