Dan McNeil's Blog

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...

Today, we went to the Open Day at the NPL in Teddington.  The NPL is a big building full of physics.  Some chemistry, but mostly physics.  And it's proper physics.  Lots of it. It's hard to explain just how much fun it is wandering around the NPL.  It reminded me of one of the better BBC science documentaries.  You know the ones.  On BBC2 or BBC4 and presented by a scientist who loves their subject.  It was like one of those, but one that you could walk up to and touch and ask questions about. So much stuff I could talk about, so I'm just going to present my ten favourite things from the day... 1. A very echo-y room The reverb chamber is a small-ish room where things echo. A  lot.  there are no parallel surfaces and no right angles.  Standing waves can't easily get set up.  A single noise will reverberate around the room for 30 seconds with the door closed.  Having a conversation in that room involves a lot of whis...

It's been quite a few years for battering Christians.  Firstly, a Christian says that the floods were caused by the gays, and then UKIP start to mention Christianity in the same breath as some of their other rantings, and the two become linked together.  It's simply not fair. Christianity is not a political party.  It's not a political standpoint at all.  It's simply a name for the collection of groups of people who have certain faith.  To say that because one Christian says something, that's what "Christians" think is as fallacious as saying that you saw someone with red hair in a restaurant the other day picking the tomatoes out of their salad, and therefore all ginger people must hate tomatoes. I should declare an interest at this point.  I am not a Christian.  I'm not a Muslim either. Nor a Jew.  (Although with my Mother's mother being Jewish, I know some would argue the last point.)  But anyway, I am an atheist.  That means I d...

There are things which wind me up.  Plenty of things.  I do have a few blog posts brewing in my mind and I was concerned that if wrote a string of blog posts all of which consisted of me railing against a particular thing, then I may come across as grumpy.  So I'm going to get a few things off my chest and then move on.  Here are a few things which have the ability to disturb my calm. People who grunt in the gym It's good to breathe in and out at the right time during exercise.  Breathing out during the exertion is generally good technique.  But there's no need to grunt.  The only reason I can think of to grunt is if you want other people in the gym to look at you. People who have long conversations in shops There's a queue of people.  We will want to pay for our stuff and get on with our day.  I know it's nice to interact with the staff, but when they hand you the receipt that's your time over.  It's like when the Queen shakes...

I don't dislike flying.  I don't actively enjoy it.  I guess I just find it a bit boring and quite quickly descend into staring out of the window in the hope that something interesting happens.  Although about the greatest chance of seeing excitement out of the window is if an engine catches fire or something.  Which I don't really want to see. And so yesterday, I flew across the Atlantic. To here.  Vancouver. The journey over went quite quickly.  I actually got talking to my seat neighbours on the plane. Well talked at by one of them.  She was drinking a lot of Baileys.  She put it in her tea (yes tea, not coffee) and over the icecream they bring you in the middle of the flight. Over the years, I've morphed from one of those people who try to take everything onto the plane to avoid the baggage wait into someone who checks in as much as humanly possible.  I didn't even take a coat onto the plane.  Just a few books.  And a copy...

I was at a cashpoint at Canary Wharf today.  I went there specifically, because there's a cashpoint there where you can get USD and it's easier than bothering to leave time at Heathrow or faff around at the airport at the other end. I just wanted a bit of cash to get me from the airport to the hotel when I get to Seattle. Anyway, that's not the point.  The point is that the cashpoint was referring to itself as "I".  When did that start to happen?  "Please wait whilst I am counting your money".  It really said that on the screen. I mean it's one thing that people attribute human emotions and thoughts to animals, but a cashpoint?  It's bad enough that Innocent Smoothies say "I contain twenty bananas" or whatever but I can do without a cashpoint referring to itself in the first person. That's all.

It's been a while since I wrote in here.  It's simply that I've not really had anything that exciting happening.  I've been struck by coincidence recently.  Made it's the new series of Jonathan Creek has set my mind into "lateral thinking" mode. Quite often, I'll have a song come to mind which I don't have on my phone, and thanks to the wonder that is Amazon MP3 download, I can have it on my phone within seconds.  I do that with some utter crap - I admit it.  But only a week or two after I downloaded "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper" it was featured on the Graham Norton show on Radio 2 of a Saturday morning.  "That's weird" I thought to myself.  It's a great song - three minutes of space-themed innuendo set to a disco beat - but odd that I should download it on a whim only for it to feature on Radio 2 not long after. It's the same with crossword clues.  I do the Guardian crossword rather than The Times.  On...