Category: Misc
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Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD
The comic, 2000AD, was launched in 1977 when I was 7 years old. While I read a fair few comics when I was young, I can’t say that I was reading 2000AD from the very start. It was more about The Beano at that time, which I’d begin to buy with my pocket money on…
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Image Posting – A Bit More Optimised
Yesterday I mentioned that I was struggling with embedding properly responsive images that will go lovely and large if you have a nice big screen, but only download a small image if that’s all I need. Added to which, I use Flickr to host all my images for me. Thanks to Emily in the comments…
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Rail Fares: Who’d Benefit From Cutting Them?
Today, most of the country went back to work, or at least began to return judging by the generally quiet commute I had today. But a new year means new rail fares. Or more to the point increased rail fares. It’s always worth noting that it’s UK Government policy to reduce rail subsidies. Like most…
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A Final Farewell to Demon
My first use of the internet was when I started university in 1988. We were all allocated an email address, but it was mostly used for sending around messages between ourselves, and gaining access to the mainframes that we conducted most of our work on. At least until I discovered the joy of news groups…
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Bastille Day at the Tour Was Memorable This Year!
Today’s stage on Mont Ventoux was probably as insane a stage as we’ve ever seen. While the win was contested by a three man breakaway, the overall standings were being contested further down the mountain with the Yellow Jersey, Chris Froome with Richie Porte and Bauke Mollema. Suddenly there was a crash. The TV motorbike…
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The Secret Listeners of Trent Park
Last night I heard a man named Fritz Lustig speak. Fritz is 96. He came to Britain in 1939, as a refugee escaping Hitler’s Germany, where his family were classified as “non-Aryans” – an immigrant who was seeking asylum, if you like. At first, like most Germans in Britain, he was interned once war was…
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Predicting Every Fixture at Euro 2016
In a frankly bizarre move, the Vote Leave campaign has offered a £50m prize to anyone who can predict the result of every fixture at the upcoming Euro 2016 tournament. Now, I’m not quite sure what the purpose of this is in terms of politics, although the referendum takes place during the tournament. I’m told…
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Celebrity Deaths in 2016
No. I’m not about to pen a piece about sad the death of Prince. I couldn’t ever say I was a massive fan, although I’m enormously respectful of him and the range of his music. But in truth I never owned much of it. I think the album I must have listened most to of…
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Unseen Avatar
The news that James Cameron has at least four Avatar sequels reminds me that I initially went to see a preview of 15 minutes’ footage back in August 2009. The idea was to whet audiences’ appetites. This is what I said in 2009: …Somehow I wasn’t as completely bowled over as I’d perhaps liked to…
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Govia Thameslink Railways – Closing All Ticket Offices
I like to think I’m fairly on the ball. I pay attention to what’s happening, and that includes transport issues. So I was a bit surprised to learn only this morning that Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), the operator of my local trainline, is busy trying to close pretty much all the station ticket offices on…
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Shetland
In many respects, I chose the wrong time of year to visit the Shetland Islands. Going in November means that the sun rises at around 0800 and sets at about 1545. So not too many daylight hours to see the landscape. Then there’s the weather – if you’re going to remote northerly islands in November,…
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A Microadventure in the Fenlands
A Fenland Microadventure from Adam Bowie on Vimeo. I’ve been meaning to do one of these for ages. I can’t remember what path of serendipity sent me in the direction of Alastair Humphreys and his blog, but I’ve been reading it for quite a while now. He describes himself as an adventurer, author and motivational…