http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog Because all the other domain names were taken Sat, 03 May 2008 01:04:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Dear Ken, I'm fucking proud you were the last politician of the Thatcher era to survive into our own I'm fucking proud you beat Mandelson to the NEC elections in 1997 I'm fucking proud you're the only Labour politician to feature on a Blur track I'm fucking proud you stood up to the a ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/05/03/dear-ken/ A press release rehashed as a news article on the BBC website today - "Lie detector software saves £500k" states: Lie detector software has saved a south London council almost £500,000 it was losing through benefit fraud. During a phone call Voice Risk Analysis (VRA) software analyses minute changes in the voices ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/04/21/guided-by-voices/ What's creepier in this TV Licensing advert - the authoritarian insistence of the message that we're all being watched for our own good, or its soft underbelly - the complete and unremitting faith in "the database", in yielding awe of its panopticon abilities? Addendum: And I say this as someone who ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/04/20/all-in-the-database/ You know, this is the first weekend in forever where I'm able to relax. I've been spending most of today catching up on some RSS feeds, resetting unread ones and starting afresh, and trying to get through an enormous pile of unread copies of Private Eye. None of this has ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/04/19/twitters-success-and-how-to-make-money-off-it-without-being-evil/ I love del.icio.us. I've been using it since, er, February 2005 and in that time I've built up (at latest count) 2,256 bookmarks. Only problem is that I tag a lot and have eclectic taste, so I have built up a stonking huge number of tags. So many so that ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/04/03/a-quick-delicious-lifehack/ Upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. Looks fine so far. Anything broken? Do tell. http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/03/31/upgraded-to-wp25/ I had seen these batshit-insane adverts for a couple of weeks already, but hadn't got a decent shot of them to provide. Now I've found that the Met Police have kindly provided copies on their own website all along. Have a butcher's below: If you take a photograph of something ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/03/05/suspicious-minds/ Step 1: Go ad hominem from the very start and label your opponents as being part of some mythical self-styled intellectual commentariat (while ignoring just how eminently qualified you are yourself to belong to that same cadre): It has become an intelligentsia default position, or IDP for short, that we in ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/02/26/how-to-write-a-david-aaronovitch-column/ Scientologists love to spam my real-world postbox, thanks to a previous resident of my flat being a fan and subscribing to their newsletters (wanker). Hence the above which appeared today in my mail. It disturbs me, mainly because it displays a worrying lack of knowledge of simple mechanics. The strapline beneath ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/02/22/magazine-related-moment-of-zen/ The whole Max Gogarty juggernaut rolls on, and it's mostly the Guardian and its stablemates doing the driving. There's this hand-wringing piece by Rafael Behr which compares it to the Cultural Revolution and fails to even consider the possibility the Guardian might have made a mistake, and a heavily biased ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/02/18/website-comments-are-broken-how-do-we-fix-them/ Has it been over a month since I last posted here? Shit, sorry. Anyway, today at work we were discussing the great Max Gogarty flamefest over at the Guardian (previously linklogged). In short, Max is an eminently hip and loathable character from Nathan Barley travel writer who will be blogging ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/02/15/well-connected-amateurs/ I know toff-bashing is a tad easy, but after watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's programme tonight someone needs to call him out on the ridiculous soapbox he has put himself upon. Hugh's Chicken Run (on Channel 4 tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday, God help us) is his attempt to educate Britain as the ... http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/2008/01/07/chicken-tonight/