Dear Technology World - Please Stop Trying To Give Me An Erection


Having sex is pretty good fun, isn't it? I enjoy it. I dare say you enjoy it. But, tell me, is it really appropriate for me to associate your products with having an erect penis? You see, being a heterosexual male, I'm biologically predisposed to be sexually stimulated by images and videos of women in […]

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Burning All My Books


A tiny micro sd card.

My shelves are empty. The half-dozen Billy Bookcases I bought from Ikea are now little more than scrap. I have burned my books. A bonfire of ideas and ideals. My bookshelves used to burst at the seams. Every individual shelf bowed violently from the over-stuffed mass of paperbacks squeezed onto it. Shakespeare rubbed up with […]

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Final Day In India - Food


Stock photo of Indian spices.

It was a stroke of marketing genius to declare that the national dish of Britain was Chicken Tikka Masala. A dish almost totally devoid of Indian origin - but exotic enough to make us seem comfortable with multiculturalism. I like a good curry. Damn. Even the word curry is a generic Britishism designed to cover […]

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Fourth Day In India - Colours


Stock photo of an Indian woman covered in various colours for Holi.

India is an explosion of colour. The food, the clothes, the temples. They all pulse like a rainbow. But not me. I'm white. Very white. More than that - I feel white and foreign. I feel out of place. The people I meet are friendly - but it's clear I don't really understand the culture, […]

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India Day Three - Money


Stock photo of colourful Indian Rupee notes.

There's a whole science dedicated to the universality of human expressions. Across vast continents and endless oceans, humans make the same face whether in a state of grief, joy, or disgust. More or less. The face of the Indian street vendor clearly said "Oh, FFS!" I had made the universal tourist mistake of paying for […]

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Do Adverts Really Use 75% Of Your Phone's Battery?


Graph showing power use of a 3G Internet connection.

No. (N.B. I work for a mobile advertiser - but this is my personal blog. This post isn't written on their behalf. Naturally I'm biased.) (N.B. I'm in India and jetlagged to hell - this may not make any sense!) Wild headlines abound - but very few people seem to have read the original Microsoft […]

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Day 2 in India - Bangalore Is Las Vegas


Stock photo of an Indian merchant selling drinks.

The heat. That all oppressive heat. Not that you'd ever notice it; you move from air-conditioned hotel, to air-conditioned taxi, to air-conditioned office. Yes, cars everywhere. A fifteen minute walk quickly turns into a twenty minute taxi ride. No one walks here - the streets are too crowded for that. Our hotel is hollowed out […]

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First Day In India


Stock photo of some traffic lights in India.

Today was my first day in India. Bangalore, to be precise. The city is hot, noisy, full of dangerous drivers, cows on the road, and a disturbingly potholed pavement. I entered a modern looking mall. Partly out of tourist curiosity, mostly for the air conditioning! I saw something which shocked me. As I was coming […]

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Y-Cam Knight SD - Review & Linux Guide


This is a review of the Y-Cam Knight SD. I previously reviewed the Y-Cam S in 2009. I got this camera for a 30% discount thanks to Y-Cam's social media team. Adjust your bias filters accordingly. Unboxing Linux Set Up To set the camera up, you need to use its internal webserver. So, how can […]

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More Real QR Statistics


Wandering through London today, I noticed that Southbank London has put QR codes on its posters. I've mentioned before the dangers of using Bit.ly as a QR code generator - as it allows us to peek at the codes' performance statistics. Here are the codes on the posters - click for bigger. As all the […]

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