Category archives: Uncategorized

Courtesy of the British Computer Society, I attended a free lecture by Ethical Roboticist Professor Alan Winfield earlier this week. Here a few thoughts I jotted down during his excellent talk. Winfield started out discussing a couple of recent cases where the beta-testing of driverless cars has ended in tragedy. In the first case, a […]

I went to Open Data Camp at the weekend. Like all good modern events in the techy/data space, it had a code of conduct. In the introductory session this was mentioned explicitly, but briefly. Be nice to each other. Try to be aware of how much you are talking, and help enable others to speak. […]

I have just got back from a very cool weekend in Herefordshire, at #emfcamp. For posterity, here are a few thoughts: The Good For those unfamiliar, Electromagnetic Field Camp is basically Glasto for nerds. Like-minded people hang out in tents and caravans for a long weekend in a field. There are stages where scheduled talks […]

The following contains spoilers for several episodes of Black Mirror. Proceed at your own risk! In 2011 the world was first introduced to Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker’s dark fantasy TV series. Each episode forces the audience to confront some troubling aspect of society, technology, or person-hood. Mostly a combination of all three. Each instalment has […]

9) The Lego Batman Film The first Lego Movie came out in 2014, and received generally positive reviews, even if yes, it was basically a vector for selling merchandise. One of the best things about it was Will Arnett’s Dark Knight skewering performance as the self-important brooding caped crusader, so we had high hopes for […]

6) The Story of the Weeping Camel. Bridget Jones frequently laments the existence of the ‘smug marrieds’ who dominate dinner party conversation with unsolicited tales of their holidays, home improvement plans, experience with mortgage brokers and so on. I like to think we were never that boorish (which means we almost certainly were) but I […]

5) Star Wars IV-VI In 2005 I started a 3 year part-time Master’s degree through the Open University. This ran over the calendar year, so my long break between years was from Christmas to the start of February. Just before I started the 3rd and final year, Terry whisked me off to New York for […]

3) My Little Eye In comparison to some of the more lurid torture-porn offerings from the past couple of decades, this low budget claustrophobic horror probably seems pretty tame. However to my rather cosseted sensibilities, watching it was a grim and distressing experience. It didn’t help that we thought we were actually going to see […]

One of my primary pleasures in life is making lists, so over the next five days,to celebrate our upcoming 10th wedding anniversary I decided to write about the 10 most significant films in mine and Terry’s relationship. 1) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone I can remember the very first conversation I had with Terry […]

So the whole blogging thing kind of dried up for me a couple of years back. It’s not that I don’t still feel ways about stuff, and I certainly haven’t lost my fondness for absurdly long, multi-claused run-on sentences that make readers think, ‘Christ, are you, like, allergic to full stops or something?” whilst gasping […]