Really thoughtful article here from the BBCs Stephen Sackur on his return to the UK after 15 years of foreign jaunts. Until I was 18 years old, I had never met a black man or woman. Nor, knowingly at least,…

Watched Shaun of the Dead last night, an Amazon Rental DVD. The only one of the three that arrived on Friday without a crack in it. Still, it was an excellent, funny film and I recommend it. I emailed Amazon…

A friend mentioned today that she had visited The Bowes Museum in County Durham. Quickly googled it, and what an impressive building it is: The reason this cropped up? The Raphael painting The Madonna of the Pinks is currently on…

Just bought a few tracks on ITunes: Razorlight’s brilliant new single Somewhere Else A few tracks by mid ’90s brit poppers Shed Seven: On Standby, Chasing Rainbows and Where Have you Been Tonight? The Boo Radley’s great Wake Up Boo!…

It looks like the Gbrowser is in development after all, just as many people thought. From Micro Persuasion: …now comes word from MarketingVOX that bloggers have spotted the browser in their server logs.

How good does this look exactly? From The Guardian: The problem with popular culture is its popularity: if lots of people like something, it is by no means a guarantee that it is going to be any good. And the…

Thoughtful piece here by Vic Gundotra about Microsoft ( he work for them). It’s currently in vogue to discuss the “End of Microsoft”. A stock price that has remained flat for some time, recent high-profile departures, repeated slips in schedule…

Just bought 3 books for the price of 2 from Waterstones, my first book purchases for some time. Here’s what I got, along with a relevant review from The Guardian. Small Island – Andrea Levy Andrea Levy’s narrative switches between…

I joined the new (to the UK) Amazon DVD rental scheme this week. Here’s how it works: Amazon take £10 a month from my debit card each month. In exchange, they send me 6 DVDs a month, I can have…

Jason Kottke provides a very thorough roundup of the various views being put forth here. For background, here is the BBC online article: Adobe buys Macromedia for $3.4bn Shares in Macromedia have risen 10% on news its US rival Adobe…

John Naughton writes excellently every week for the Observer newspaper. Here is his article from last weekend, which focussed on a Tory party candidate’s use of Photoshop on a campaign photo. He explains issues and techniques in a very clear…

There are quite a few blogs popping up about the UK election on May 5. Many of them are used by news organisations to present more informal content. Here are a couple of links to the ones I look at.…

From The Guardian: A council has come up with a new way of disposing of abandoned cars – selling them on the internet. Westminster city council has auctioned a Range Rover on the UK online marketplace, eBay, with the vehicle…

Fascinating article in Saturday’s Guardian about the poet E.E. Cummings: EE Cummings became one of America’s most popular poets. But as a struggling young writer and artist, he was supported by a wealthy friend and soon found himself drawn to…

Palimpsest is the (mainly) books discussion site I founded with my friend Al Kitching a couple of years ago. Essentially a phpBB forum, it now has around 30 regular members and over 15,000 posts. We don’t delete any, the forum…

For those who visit the site rather than subscribing, you will notice a change in style. This is down to the upgrade to WordPress 1.5 which I have finally got round to putting into place. Will have a look at…

Just in case, er, someone, is interested, I was reading Aubade by Philip Larkin for the nth time last night, just before I went to bed. Here it is. I don’t think this will land me in any trouble, copyright…

Steven Streight asks What is the Killer App for Blogs? I wonder: has the killer app for blogs been realized yet? What implementation of blogging holds the greatest promise for the future? I really don’t think the perfect and ideal…

Interesting article on the BBC News site about blogging: Weblogs started off as a personal outpouring, a kind of digital diary. If you work on the basis that a problem shared is a problem halved, you can share with millions…