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The Videogame Straitjacket
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2–3 minutes·
1 comment on The Videogame StraitjacketLike many others, when I was kid, two of the games I had the most fun with were Lego and Meccano. It would be trite to go into the reasons why, and it’s enough to say that construction kits like these offer kids a unique place to use their imagination to build anything they want,…
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All Souls: The toughest test you’ll ever take
If you’ve ever visited Oxford, chances are that you’ll spend some time in Radcliffe Square, admiring the University Library and the round Radcliffe Camera building. Along the east side of the the square is a long wall with a black metal gate set into it; people often poke their heads in to see an immaculate…
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Blind Light
Imagine walking in a mist so thick that you can’t see further than an outstretched arm. That’s what it was like to be inside Anthony Gormley’s Blind Light exhibit in the South Bank Centre. It’s a very odd experience. There are 24 other people walking around inside the exhibit, which is about 10 meters squared,…
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The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate
One of my favourite authors is Ted Chiang. I’m not entirely sure what Ted does with his time, since over the course of seventeen years, he’s written fewer than a dozen short stories, the sum of which would easily fit into a typical novel. Of course, this has nothing to do with the quality of…
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After Our Time
After listening to an edition of In Our Time about the Jacobite Rebellion, I found myself writing yet another post on this weblog inspired by that wonderful Radio 4 programme. As I was finishing it, I thought that with all the posts I was making relating to In Our Time, I should really make a…
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The Strength of Weak Ties
Anyone who’s read about social networks and the ‘tipping point’ will know how important the connections between people are. It’s not enough to look at just the number and the individuals in the connections though – you have to look at their strength. While reading an article (I forget which) about social networks, I spotted…
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Food Miles
Sometimes, when I come across a particularly interesting article, I try to find the research paper that it’s based on. I don’t always read the entire paper (in fact, I normally skip over huge chunks) but it’s always instructive to see the results and analysis as the original author wrote them; it’s not rare for…
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Homemade scales
Last month, I mentioned that I was selling a lot of stuff using eBay – mostly games, but also DVDs, books, phones, etc. By using the Royal Mail’s online postage printer, I was able to avoid visiting the Post Office. The only problem is that I don’t have my own scales. For most items, you…
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BBC iPlayer: well over a day late and a dollar short
As has been widely noted, the BBC’s iPlayer application, which lets people watch the last seven days of TV over the internet, didn’t actually launch on 27th July. It’s still currently in beta, and if you apply to test it, it’ll take a couple of days to receive your login details. This is not particularly…
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UK people ‘hate BBC’
When I saw a headline on BBC News entitled UK Asians ‘do not feel British’ I was pretty shocked – did a majority of UK Asians really not feel British? If so, this was cause for alarm. On reading the article though, things were much calmer: Over a third of British Asians do not feel…
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