Welcome

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Here I go again. Once more, I'm going to try to sustain a blog... Let's see how it goes...

Popular posts from this blog

If you want to realise the true insignificance of yourself in the Universe, then look up

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I looked at the sky this evening. It's amazing. At the moment, I'm not in London - which is where I usually find myself - and so the sky is not quite so obscured with yellow light. I'm not in the middle of the countryside here - it's in a fairly urban area. And yet, as a plane leaving Liverpool Airport was flying overhead, the trail of the plane was just at the right place in the sky to reflect the moonlight, giving a single white line across the dark blue sky. To the other side of the moon, the clouds had formed a lovely pattern which, again, was reflecting the moonlight back at me giving a wispy form across the other side of the sky. Turning around, I could see stars which in London are hidden behind a fog of ambient light leaking from the sprawling conurbation polluting the beauty of the Universe and hiding it behind a fog of our creation. I guess my reading material recently has what inspired me to look upwards and see what's up there in the sky - I've b...
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Ramblings

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A while ago, I wrote about cashpoints with personality .  It gets worse.  There was a recent update to GMail on Andoid which now displays a cheery message with a picture of a smiling sun when your inbox is empty. I realise that I'm in somewhat of a minority because I operate at Inbox Zero, but  that doesn't mean that those of us with a mail management system which moves things out of the inbox need to be greeted by a Tellytubbies-style smiling face in return. Is this inevitably what happens as technology becomes more mainstream.  Where there used to be useful messages there are now platitudes and phrases so dumbed-down that pretty much all of the meaning has gone from them? I don't like the idea of a future where the ideal is a robot who trundles up to your side and says "hello, how may I help you?".  It feels like shooting in the wrong direction for us to strive to make our machines as human as possible.  I don't believe in a dystopian future in whic...
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A book I didn’t like

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I read a lot of books.  Not as many as I’d like to – but that’s mostly because of my high ambition level when it comes to reading lots of books rather than a lack of reading. Sometimes I read books which teach me things, and sometimes I read books which make me think.  But sometimes I just like to read a good story.  No messages, no agenda, just a good story. One of my favourite books is “Haunted” by James Herbert.  It doesn’t pretend to preach any message, nor to stimulate any intellectual debate.  It’s just a great ghost story. However, I’ve found other James Herbert’s books disappointing.  The sequel to “Haunted” – which is so forgettable that I’ve forgotten its name – was terrible.  As was “The Secret of Crickley Hall” which I just finished reading. I’ve literally taken this book around the world with me.  I’ve carted it in my suitcase to provide reading on a long-haul flight home many times, and never started reading it.  Until t...
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