Society

Article — 10 August 2008 — 841 words

Spelling B******

This week a university lecturer, Ken Smith, suggested that spelling “mistakes” should be accepted as variants. This has upset Ideas of Civilisation and Colin Campbell among others. I side with Ken Smith on this occasion though. I hate spelling mistakes and love to point them out. Only yesterday I saw a greengrocers’ apostrophe and instinctively […]

Article — 17 July 2008 — 1,381 words

Why is technology news not news?

Current affairs — Media — Technology — Web

I’ve been wondering a bit about the way technology news is still ghettoised. I don’t mean news about the latest rubbish web 2.0 start-up with a ridiculous name. I mean quite important stuff. Security problems and the like. Take what happened last week. A patch to fix a major flaw in the DNS was released. […]

Article — 13 November 2007 — 298 words

Blocking Beacon

Current affairs — Personal — Technology

I am usually a defender of Facebook. But this time I think they have overstepped the line and have introduced a ‘feature’ that makes me personally uncomfortable. From The Facebook Blog: Just as Facebook shares your on-site interactions with your friends through News Feed, we now give you an option to let News Feed share […]

Article — 7 September 2007 — 2,187 words

20 reasons why I will put my blogs on my CV (and three reasons why I might not)

Business — Society — Technology

Yesterday I looked at the dilemma facing a blogging job hunter (ie. me). Should I put my blog on my CV? Rhys Wynne and Rich Minx think that blogging gives you lots of skills that employers find desirable. The Devil’s Kitchen has added his thoughts here and asks if there are any more skills that […]

Article — 22 August 2007 — 831 words

Facebook apps are revealing their potential

Society — Technology

My latest internet addiction is Scrabulous. Jeremy Bentham thought that humans wanted to maximise pleasure rather than pain. Goodness knows what he would have thought if he saw me inviting Facebook friends to play Scrabble against me. It has mostly been a demoralising affair. I hadn’t realised quite how rusty I was at Scrabble. I […]

Article — 11 January 2007 — 1,025 words

Joe Blogs knows nothing. So what?

Current affairs — Media — Technology

There was something interesting in that report about Scottish blogging on Radio Scotland from a couple of weeks ago that I never got around to writing about. Tim Montgomerie of 18 Doughty Street and Conservative Home was asked about a concern that some people might have about the blogosphere — that people who don’t actually […]

Article — 3 September 2006 — 366 words

Shouting ‘fire’ on a crowded train

Current affairs — Personal

I’ve just found out about something that’s almost as scary as numbers stations. Inspector Sands. I’ve seen more than one person on the internet calling themselves this, and I always thought it was the same person. I’m not so sure now! Inspector Sands is actually code for “get ready to run for your fucking life”. […]

Article — 26 July 2006 — 1,056 words

Blogging takes no time at all

Current affairs — Media — Technology

A lot of bloggers have had a lot to say about Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s little tirade against blogging. (You can’t read the article now because it is behind a subscription wall. Independent please note: this is why Guardian Unlimited and BBC News are the most popular news sites on the net and yours isn’t.) It is […]

Article — 17 March 2006 — 2,570 words

Warning: This is a navel-gazing post about blogging, and they are the worst

Culture — Society — Technology

First of all, I am so sorry sorry sorry for writing this post. I thought I had grown out of writing about blogging, but it’s just a bad habit; an itch you have to scratch. Clearly I have had a lot of thoughts about blogging since whenever the last time I wrote about it was. […]

Article — 2 January 2006 — 344 words

‘Outwith’ outwith the lexicon

Culture — Society

I find etymology quite interesting, so I’m looking forward to Balderdash & Piffle on BBC Two tonight. They have a list of words that the OED want to find more printed evidence of. Although I suppose the whole point of this list is that it is surprising, I still can’t believe how new a lot […]

Article — 4 November 2005 — 547 words

Now 1 in 5 youngsters blog

Media — Society — Technology

A month ago it was reported that one in three 14–21-year-olds in the UK have a blog (the survey actually revealed that one in three 14–21-year-olds with an internet connection at home have maintained some kind of website or blog). Now across the pond there is a report that says “One in Five Teens Have […]

Article — 12 September 2005 — 1,229 words

My thoughts on the Berliner

Current affairs — Media

Well then. I’ve not read any other blogs or anything about this, so I’ll probably end up updating this post with interesting quotes and links. First things first then — the front page (actually, the first thing is the barcode — the checkout guy spent ages looking for it!). I’m still not sure about the […]