geekery - Archive Articles

Hovercraft on the Thames

If you are looking for the hovercraft seen on the Thames on 15th March 2011,

Weird online advertising

Online advertising can sometimes throw up oddities, especially when an advert appears next to a news article which is disparaging about the product – or similar such hilarity. With the rise of contextual advertising though, where the contents of the…

Bloggers Briefing with London Transport

On Tuesday, I was invited to join a bunch of other London based scribes to have a lunchtime round-table meeting over at Transport for London’s iconic HQ building office round the corner from their iconic HQ building to get some…

Why do companies take 5 days to reply to emails?

On a personal basis I can be slow to respond to private emails, mainly as my work emails get a high priority and there is an awful lot of them. I would expect any company which offered an email route…

Moving the blog to a new web host

I am moving the blog to a new web hosting firm this weekend, so there may be the odd glitch where posts seem to be available then vanish as “the internet” updates itself as to the new web server location.…

Blog design changes

If you use the RSS feed, this blog posting will probably be meaningless to you – but if you are reading this on the website itself, then you might have noticed that I have changed the aesthetics of the blog.…

I am in Germany – apparently

I’m in Germany this morning – or so claims The Internetâ„¢. As it happens, I am sitting inside my usual coffee shop in Canary Wharf and sitting at my usual table (after it was vacated by interlopers) – but the…

Early Experiments in Computer Animation

Last night I wandered over to the Tate Modern to watch a series of short videos on "Early Experiments in Computer Animation" - which rather appealed to my geek-side.

The science of beer – a lecture

One for your diaries. The great British pint – an integral part of our culture. As summer approaches and our thoughts turn to lazy Sundays in the beer garden what better way to spend an evening than learning about beer…

Lecture tonight

Off to do some brain exercising tonight – and will be attending a lecture at the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy on how nature affected how manmade materials and structures were designed. I like this sort of thing,…

Hacking the Oyster Card

It seems that the RFID chip used in London Underground’s Oyster Card – supplied by former Philips subsidiary, NXP Semiconductor – has been hacked by researchers at the University of Virginia. The researchers were testing the claims in a report…

Exhibition on Radio and Mobile Communications in London this weekend

The telecommunications mast at the corner of Swain’s Lane and Bisham Gardens is a familiar landmark in Highgate, and can be seen from across London. It has a a history of more than 70 years, playing innovative roles in early…

Internet cafes – the once and future king?

I remember nearly a decade ago when the garish orange colours of the EasyEverything internet cafes started appearing in London and was thinking about that this morning a bit. I was an early adopter of the internet and amongst us…

British Rail and the Flying Saucer

I was reading this week’s issue of The Economist and there was an article about commercial space flight, and how in the hype of the early NASA successes – companies were planning passenger flights into space. Naturally, the PanAm flight…

Gizmodo-gate

You may have been following the Gizmodo scandal over the past few days – where one of their staff was visiting the huge CES trade fair, and acquired a TV remote control which enables the user to switch off TV’s…

Hacking the Boeing 787 Dreamliner

It is rare that I have a genuinely laugh out loud (lol) moment, being more of a quiet snigger sort of guy – but this posting via my RSS feeds really did make me snort a bit, and in public.…

Humanity and the Geological Record

Some while ago I was half watching yet another documentary about the meteorite impact which caused significant problems for the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. One of the big scientific clues is the layer of iridium in the rocks,…

Watching Open Heart Surgery – Live

Last night, I had a very unusual and yet utterly fascinating experience - watching an open-heart surgery being carried out live.

The tale of London’s attempt to build an “Eiffel Tower”

One hundred years ago, a huge explosion was heard in Wembley, Nth London – by the site of the modern day soccer stadium. It wasn’t an accident though, but a the final death throws of an ill-fated attempt to give…

Twists in smoking history on trains

In the 1950’s it was (apparently) almost impossible to sit on a train in the UK without sitting next to someone puffing away on a cigarette (or pipe in first class), so it may come as some surprise to realize…

Anticipation

After months of work – the main work website is finally getting it’s relaunch this weekend. Ironically, apart from the cosmetic changes (which could have been done in a matter of weeks), most people wont see the effort. It is…

Moved server

I have moved this website to a new server hardware – may be problems for a few days while I tidy up the migration. For some reason, copying the blog software from one machine to another didn’t work at all…

Will posterity read your emails?

I read this morning on the BBC News website that some 5,000 letters and notes written by Charles Darwin are to be published online. As I also have a hobby researching history, I spend a lot of time reading other…

Amazon Launches “Contextual” Ad Platform

Just had an email from Amazon Associates – and they are launching a contextual ad program which could be rather interesting. The Amazon banner selection is usually quite good – but it always seems to lack a certain “something” –…