Booker 2005 Controversy pt. 2

‘Indiscreet’ Sutherland’s Booker role appals advisers Members of the hallowed Man Booker advisory committee, the body responsible for appointing the prize’s judges, are spitting blood at the appointment of John Sutherland to chair the award panel this year, claiming not…

Andrea Levy

John Self loved Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island. So I was interested in this profile of her, published on The Guardian Books Website: After years as a marginal voice, Andrea Levy is starting to get her share of the glittering…

John Irving

John Irving, who wrote A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is looking like it is going to be my next read, gets a brilliant write-up from the incomparable John Self here. If I like APfOM, it looks like I’ll have…

Top ‘eCouncils’

From The Guardian‘s Online supplement: Top eCouncils Oldham Borough Council’s website is the best-performing local government site, according to automated testing by SiteMorse. The result is an average of tests based on the Web Accessibility Initiative, including responsiveness, error-free operation,…

New Look

You may or may not have noticed a new look for the site. The standard one that comes with WordPress is hardly inspiring, so a quick search of the WP Forums came up with Alex King‘s site. On this page…

Reality Reading update

A Prayer for Owen Meany 58% [ 7 ] The Great Gatsby 41% [ 5 ] Alma Cogan 0% [ 0 ] Status Anxiety 0% [ 0 ] The Unfortunates 0% [ 0 ] Total Votes : 12 It’s looking…

Booker 2005 Controversy – Already

Interesting article on the Guardian Books site about comments made by John Sutherland, the Chairman of the 2005 Man Booker Prize Panel: The newly announced chairman of the 2005 Man Booker prize has admitted that the judges are unlikely to…

Boris Blog

The journalist and occasional Tory politician Boris Johnson yesterday posted the following on his blog: January 19, 2005 Calling /attention all bloggers It’s quarter to four and I’ve got to write a column. which shall I do? Any ideas 1.…

Reality Reading

How’s this for a stupid idea: I’m going to run a poll among Palimpsesters to decide what to read next. I’ll give a shortlist of 5 books, and whichever garners the most votes I read after the Greene. Which books…

Sick Puppy – Carl Hiaasen

Sick Puppy was a good read. Funny and violent, it brought me much enjoyment. Trouble is, I can’t think of much else to say about it. On my Palimplist I gave it 4 out of 5 stars, but I think…

Quixotic

I bought the new Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote. It’s a beautifully bound hardback, and will be a pleasure to read, when I get round to it…

MS Word – the perils thereof

F**king Word!! There are some things Word is good at. There are some that it is completely crap at. One of those is the classic mistake of using it as a DTP package. The thing just doesn’t work! I’ve been…

Don Quixote

This month saw the 400th anniversary of the publication of the first of part of Don Quixote. I’ve never come close to reading it, but it sounds like one of those books which deserves to be read. As it is…

Nation States

I’ve been playing Nation States for a month or so now. My nation, Wavuncular, is now classified as a ‘Father Knows Best State’, apparently. I’m not sure how this happened. The People’s Republic of Wavuncular is a very large, safe…

Feedreader pt. 2

Feedreader worked perfectly last night, but when I booted up this morning to check my feeds, it hung twice. Annoyed, I uninstalled it. I then tried the commercial alternative, FeedDemon from Bradsoft. I have a 20 day trial before coughing…

Feedreader

Feedreader is an offline RSS feed reader (duh…) which means you can log on, spend a couple of minutes downloading messages and then read them at your leisure. It’s free! Excellent!

Future Blogging

I’m really getting into the whole blogging thing now. Part of this has been my use of Bloglines and the increased number of blogs I’m reading. As I am more exposed to new blogs and new ways of using them,…

Forest’s chances

Not a great weekend for Forest. A 2-1 home defeat against Millwall leaves us further in the mire. The usual cliche about a new manager bringing with him a few points clearly isn’t a truism as well. I was disappointed…

This blog – what’s it for?

A good question. I’m liking this so much I think I’m going to make this my main blog. The WikiBlog can remain just that – blogging the updates and new pages on the website. Here is where I will do…