Friends, leaning against a car chatting. This was in Trinidad, Cuba in 2004. Taken on my Canon EOS300D with 18-55mm lens. Come back next week and vote for me, I’m entry 432.
Please vote for my entry in last weeks “Four” competition! I’m entry 494 (–> Stephen <–).
What right-wingers see when they read The New York Times.
If you’re in the UK, you can just buy a copy of the Daily Mail.
I found this interesting article that “demolishe[s] the myth that faith strengthens society.”
While we’re frequently told that religion provides a moral basis for a civillised society, the study found “that secular societies have lower rates of violence and teenage pregnancy than societies where many people profess belief in God.”
How can that be?
“Consciously or subconsciously, those who are “born again” or “chosen” have diminished respect for others who do not share their sect or their faith. Convinced that only the Bible offers “truth”, they lose their intellectual curiosity and their ability to reason. Their priority becomes not the world they live in but themselves.”
If you’ve been to ZX81 before you can’t fail to notice that we’ve had the second major redesign in our history. This time we’ve moved over to using WordPress, the unfortunate consequence of which is that some of the old links might have stopped working. I’ve tried hard to maintain things, but there may be some problems. Let me know if you find them!
[ Edit: Some people are using my pictures on their web pages, in most cases this is both uncredited and without permission. This is an infringement of my copyright. As you might imagine, I have made no attempt to maintain links for these people. For a short time this may also inconvenience people coming from Google Images. ]
Most people that know me are aware that I tend to favour the Macintosh over Microsoft Windows. One of the problems with maintaining such a position is that people are always saying how much more expensive Apple products are. While I realise that a single example is not likely to change that, maybe people should look at this Windows XP Media Center PC before throwing stones. A snip at £5,980,000.00.
If anyone wants to buy me a Mac Pro and a 30″ monitor with their change I won’t argue.
The company where I (currently) work is always trying to get people to transfer over to the New York office. There are a number of personal reasons why I didn’t want to do that, however the main reason was always that it — basically — just didn’t appeal. It really didn’t seem to be very much different from London, where I currently live, but, well, more. So when I visited New York in April I was not expecting to like it very much.
This year has seen a lot of changes for me already and another one is in the process of happening right now. A few weeks ago I resigned from my job and in a few more weeks I will be starting a new one.
I don’t change jobs every year like some people I know, in fact this is the first time for exactly five years. There are a lot of parallels too. I resigned from SAIC on the 14th July 2001 and started at Anvil on the Tuesday after the August bank holiday. Similarly, I handed in my notice on the 14th July 2006 and will start at Aleri on the day after the bank holiday. They are also both small software companies that specialise in products for investment banks. I will even have pretty much the same job title.
It’s easy to get the wrong impression of Vietnam. Switch on the TV and you find films showing vast areas of land being napalmed. Switch on the radio and you hear Paul Hardcastle. Even in books you see self-immolating monks.
But the place is not all about the Vietnam War (or the American war as they call it). In fact there was little sign of it in the parts that I saw. Insead you see a beautiful, enthusiastic country that’s full of contradictions. You see successful small businesses, you learn that health-care and education is paid-for yet you know the government is officially Communist.
What does a two year old mince pie and an ewok have in common? The answer, it turns out, is “wedding cake.”
Huh?
Let me explain.
Wedding cakes have a bit of a history for us. Americans tend not to be very keen on the traditional British fruit cake, which was a bit of a problem since I got married to a Californian in New York! Even the hotel concierge could only track down a fruit flan which is not what I’d call traditional. In the end we had to make do with less conventional but still delicious “normal” deserts.
Okay, so I’ve not watched it for a few years now, but it’s still sad to learn that the BBC have just recorded the last ever “Top of the Pops.”