You may have noticed that, after my “twelve days of Christmas” blogging break I returned with a run of very short posts. This is the fruit of a project I have had in mind for a long time but needed … Continue reading →

In broad terms, Web 1.0 was read only, Web 2.0 was read/write and Web 3.0 is about reading, writing and understanding. This afternoon I attended a fascinating seminar at the Oxford e-Research Centre looking at “A Framework for Science Web … Continue reading →

Since I started using Linux, almost a decade ago now, I have pronounced it “Lie-nux”. Knowing it was named after the originator, Linus Torvaalds, and know how I pronounce the name Linus, it seemed straight forward. However, it seems that … Continue reading →

I got the computers that had been ordered for me in my new job on Wednesday but there was a minor hitch because their MAC addresses (unique identifiers for their networking hardware) needed to be registered on the network to … Continue reading →

I upgraded the Linux portion of my laptop yesterday from Ubuntu 6.06 to Ubuntu 8.04. Aficionados of this popular distro may be questioning why I didn’t choose 8.10, the current release which came out at the end of last week? … Continue reading →

I read an interesting article today called The Programming Aphorisms of Strunk and White. The premise was that Strunk and White’s 1935 writing manual, The Elements of Style, contains a wealth of of advice that programmers as well as writers … Continue reading →

So, the vaunted Mac can’t manage to resize a desktop image to fit? Frustrating but I can work around that. I decided to create a directory containing a selection of suitable images, as I have grown rather attached to the … Continue reading →

Until recently I was using Desklickr to draw my desktop wallpaper from images on my Flickr account to the screen of my Mac. However, I was getting frustrated by two things. Firstly, it sometimes failed to establish a connection even … Continue reading →

I now own two USB memory sticks. One is a shiny metallic LG stick with 512MB capacity and the other (purchased after the cap got lost from the first) is a tiny 2GB “Slider” stick from Advent. The latter is, … Continue reading →

I subscribe to a number of internet forums, including some where I have been given moderator rights and thus the duty to stay on top of things so I can offer help and head off inappropriate postings. How do I … Continue reading →