Am currently reading On Beulah Height, by Reginald Hill. Not very far into it, but the change of pace is startling after Destination: MORGUE!, I have to admit. There is a distinct paucity of Hill info on the web, just…

Here, as promised earlier, is a slightly edited version of my Palimpsest post about James Ellroy: Frankly, James Ellroy is God. He is without doubt the world’s best living crime author, and I’d wager that he’d the best crime writer…

The SCO website was cracked this afternoon, with this amusing effort: Very good!

My sister has just bought a laptop and she wants to go on Broadband with it. She asked for a bit of advice, and I might just have gone over the top a bit on the security issue… I’d seriously…

The Daily M*il is currently running a promotion to boost sales and thereby increase the net amount of bile and hatred in the world. They are giving £10,000 to each of 50 charities nominated by readers. 25 of these will…

The Elmcroft Associates website is now online and working! Hoo-ray!

I am currently reading the latest from my all-time favourite author, James Ellroy. It’s a collection of essays and autobiographical pieces, as well as three novellas. It is (obviously) brilliant. I am currently putting together a fairloy lengthy Palimpsest post…

I had a look round the Kingo branch of ‘The Works’ (which the carrier bag claims has the website www.theworks.gb.com) today. They seem to stock mainly remaindered stuff, but I got an Ian Rankine three novel omnibus for £4.99 and…

The report I wrote about the Norfolk Scrutiny Conference last week can be found on the Centre for Public Scrutiny website here. Next stop for it will be the Local Government Chronicle and the Scrutiny Champions’ Bullettin. How exciting!

Read these yonks ago, but never got round to posting anything on them… A Brief History of the Future – John Naughton This is an excellent study of the origins of the internet, by academic and journalist John Naughton, whose…

Great article in PC Plus this month about Google’s plans to take over the world, kinda. There has been much speculation across the net about the fact that Google have headhunted a couple of Microsoft staff, been very cozy with…

Just come across Bloglines for the first time. It’s basically an RSS feed reader, but which operates within a browser window, so you can pick stuff up from anywhere. This article from the Guardian’s Online section might help explain more…

Ohmygod. Another 4 years of George W. Bush as the most powerful man in the world. Well, the second maybe, after Bill Gates. Anyway. Even as a conservative (small ‘c’! small ‘c’!) kind of guy, Bush fills me with loathing.…

I have always been a fan of Google – and that’s not just the websearch. I use their email system, their mailing list groups, and of course Blogger, which is now owned by Google. I’d never given much thought to…