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Someone just sent me a copy of my old QSL card – from 1983.  It’s really nice to have an image of it as it was drawn by my older brother – who’s no longer with us now G4SFI's QSL card from 1983 Me – in the shack! This was also in around 1983 – thus the rather trendy shirt!  The computer is a Tatung Einstein – which I had a little to do with (as did the ‘silent key’, Roy Clarke, G8AYD) Read Full Story

Seen The Social Network (sure you have).  Remember that scene where Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) smashes Mark Zuckerberg’s (Jesse Eisenberg) MacBook Pro?  Fake machine – right (like in Ikea)? Well, I was watching the bonus DVD yesterday and was amazed to see that the laptop was most likely real (the machines display blue screens (lol); as you can see in the shot above – the content is digitally inserted during post-production?).  Now note that the director was David ( n > 2 x takes... Read Full Story

Up until now I’ve been running Vista Ultimate, and despite the ‘Windows vista sucks’ reports you must have heard, I must say that in all the time I’ve been running it (pre-release and until just now), I’ve never had a single reason to complain – not a single glitch or blue-screen; just good performance.  Actually, I think the ‘Vista’s awful’ mantra is a bit on urban myth – people hear it from someone whose opinion they *think* they should listen to and blindly repeat it ad nauseam; for no... Read Full Story

I’ve been pondering editors lately, and how crude they still are.  For example, that all the web authoring tools that I know of/use essentially require you to textually specify your css styles.  Why can’t you, say, colour the color[sic] of some style in, um, the colour you’d like? E.g.,  h1 { color ; } instead of using #f5a323 or whatever? And I’m sure there’s lively debate on this somewhere – why use different syntax in css files and html files? Or, if you really have to, why not have... Read Full Story

It really pisses me off if I order a greasy sandwich that includes a fried egg, only to find that when it comes the yolk is a solid congealed yellow lump! I had one of these today, and being pissed-off with the I’m British so I’ll just say ‘everything’s lovely thanks’, I said something, and sent it back. Interestingly, the guy that owns the café told me that unless someone says otherwise, this is how their eggs come!  So, if I go back there again, I know that I need to ask for my egg to... Read Full Story

My son was asking me about the traffic light sequence – he’d never before noticed that they went red, red+amber, green, amber, red – but now he had, he came up with a very interesting question: do they go red+amber on their way to going green – as opposed to just showing amber – so that you know which way they’re going? As the conversation continued it seemed to us that by replacing red+amber with just red going to amber that we might save quite a lot of money – by not having two lamps on... Read Full Story

I first bought WinZip – oooooh – a few years ago (Winzip 9; copyright ’til 2004). Anyway, they’ve nagged me enough now, and made it seem worthwhile to upgrade – so I did (£12 for the Full Monty). I have no idea whether it’ll be worthwhile (v9 worked ok for me), but I thought WTF; surely it’ll bring benefits!  Ok, so I’m gullible – but after a while at least! Still, they wore me down – so fair enough! Read Full Story

Pulling into St. Hilda’s; off of The Plain last week … Here’s map of my route… The Crucial bit is where I’m leaving the The Plain, passing the Iffley Road, but then heading into Cowley Place. Now, I was always taught to indicate *only* when you were adjacent to the previous turning – which in my case, was Iffley Road. Whilst I realise that the distance between those two roads is ‘slight’, it’s  A) better to obey the highway code in case of an accident, and  B) if I were to have... Read Full Story

Cabling: Looking around the snug streets where we live now, I can’t help but notice the decidedly non-snug state of the cabling in the area – whether it belongs to a satellite dish, a telephone, the internet, or a tv aerial.  Ok, so it’s perhaps a bit odd that I notice things like this (is it?), so I’ll explain why I do. Many years ago when I was an apprentice working for BT (it was called ‘Post Office Telephones’ back then) one of the things we had drummed into us was how to clip a... Read Full Story

I love the way the web allows you to arrive at a page, and then [sans the 'Back Button'] find yourself wondering how on Earth you got here! I had a moment like that just now, and arrived at a YouTube video of Derek Jacobi playing Alan Turing in a BBC drama called ‘Breaking the Code’ – here’s the link . I well remember seeing this when it first came out in 1996. It was great, won prizes, and was nominated for two BAFTAs – according to Wikipedia that is, and I found myself wondering why I... Read Full Story