Just got a curious e-mail: have you read the book on casino royal you silly little man, you have no idea what you are talking about. I can only assume this is a reference to this blog entry from Nov 2006, which was all about how much I disliked Casino Royale the film. This is […]

I’ve been having a go at my bicycle, which has been merrily rusting away in the garage for the last 3 years. The chain had about seized up, and both tyres were flat – and both brake cables had a lovely orange tint. So several days of soaking in oil and working it in didn’t […]

I’ve been struck by a few quotes over the last few weeks, for different reasons – here are some. How the other half live: It’s hard to believe that goat’s cheese salad used to be considered an exotic dish […] better than those old winter standbys Gruyere and Fontaine. Waitrose Magazine On vocation: Do not […]

About to start my Harry Potter re-read, in preparation for book 7. There’s 122 days until it lands on my doorstep, and I have 2757 pages to read before then. That’s between 22 and 23 pages a day. Actually I’m wondering if I might have left it a bit late!

All the “10 ways to write a blog” articles tell you that if you want your blog to be read, you have to update it regularly, ideally everyday. I’ve never been that fussed about whether or not anyone reads this – it started off as an online notepad of stuff I wanted to record, and […]

Had lots of fun yesterday. It wasn’t the best of starts when my son bounded in at 6am and jumped onto the bed (grrrrr), but it did make us get on with the day. We packed the picnic, and then off to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The YSP was good. We choose a particularly bad […]

It’s my 33rd birthday tomorrow. Well, technically it’s the 33rd anniversary of my one and only birth day. I’ll just stop there. In my old workplace we would have called it james++. I’m excited about my birthday this year, for the first time in several years. I’m not a great party animal, but the last […]

I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I hadn’t realised that Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who. If we’re on the subject of embarrassing lack of knowledge, I also didn’t realise that 3G phones use GSM for voice – which destroys my main objection to getting one (i.e. that the coverage for normal phone use […]

On Wednesday, the snow arrived. About a foot came down overnight in Boston – other places got a lot more. This was enough to disrupt various airports, which meant the people who were supposed to arrive from Virginia that day couldn’t make it, so we all had the afternoon off. Having been a day late […]

One of my the people I was working alongside has all but emigrated to America, and now lives in California. He claims that there are basically two types of Restaurant in the US – really nice ones, with good service, decent food, edible portion sizes, but not necessarily too expensive… and complete dives that dump […]