Category: Uncategorised

  • Shlaine and Caine Haine’s parents’ pain

    From today’s Guardian: the parents of a 14-year-old girl have been jailed because of her truancy. Newport magistrates in south Wales heard that Christopher and Deborah Haine had shown a “complete disregard” as to whether their 14-year-old daughter Shlaine went to school. …The couple, both 41, from Newport, were first prosecuted in 2002 for failing…

  • The curious incident of the dog in the daytime

    We were heading home from a shopping trip yesterday afternoon, and we spotted a lost dog wandering around a busy roundabout and doing its best to get itself killed. Being cheery dog-owning types of course we stopped, got it away from the roundabout and tied it to a railing so we could read its nametag…

  • Important advice to anyone planning to drive in Scotland…

    …and in particular, to anyone who’s going to be driving in the rural, no-overtaking-places-at-all bits at a time when I’m trying to get home. You’re allowed to drive at 60mph on roads where the speed limit is 60mph. Yes! Really!

  • Going away for a bit

    Back next week. Have fun.

  • “Why doesn’t heaven have a stripper factory and a beer volcano?”

    Flying Spaghetti Monster hate mail, criticism and silliness. [Via Fark]

  • Scotland’s self-employed cry hot, salty tears

    According to the Evening Times: FURIOUS tax staff in Glasgow and East Kilbride today joined a 24-hour national strike in protest against new working practices. And they warned that unless an agreement was reached with management they would escalate the dispute. O noes the taxman is on strike!!!!!11111 etc.

  • A nifty wee Mac app

    [photopress:doodim_sc.gif,full,pp_image] Doodim is a freeware program that does a simple but handy thing: it dims everything but the currently selected window, making it easier to focus on what you’re doing. Only problem I’ve encountered so far is that it doesn’t seem to work with a second display. [Via Digg]

  • MySpace phenomenon, my arse

    Many, many years ago – in the mid 90s – I was in a band with a chap called Mark. Mark knew a girl called Tippi – they were from the same bit of Scotland – and she annoyed him immensely: she was one of those “I want to be famous at all costs” types,…

  • Oi! Crichton! Noooo!

    I’m posting this mainly to annoy Stephen: a climate scientist says Michael Crichton has misused his research. Our results have been misused as “evidence” against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel “State of Fear” and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.” Search my name on the Web,…

  • The Internet is broken, so let’s talk about Disco Dog

    Why does the Internet always break when you’re on deadline? I don’t know whether it’s my ISP, the US power outages or evil space gremlins, but I’m getting nowt when I try various big-name sites – mainly .coms (including Google) but also .co.uks. Given that I can’t actually get any work done just now, I…