Ian Robinson’s Soapbox

Don’t pass this on.

One of my reflex actions in the morning is to turn the radio from BBC Radio 4 over to Classic FM as soon as I hear The Today Programme presenters start to say “it’s 13 minutes to 8, and time for Thought for the day”. I don’t need to listen to 2 minutes of puerile [...]

I was changing log file settings earlier and managed to completely break this site. Obviously it’s back now This post is just to really see if I can post new entries to the reconfigured installation of WordPress.

What do you do when an octopus gets way too inquisitive about your submersible? Why turn on your thrusters of course and scare it away. Technique outlined in this video just in case you ever find yourself in this situation!

I was planning on getting my 1993 Guild BHM Signature Pro guitar rewired and having new pickups fitted as it was very noisy when you turned the volume or tone controls. So as insurance, in case it went pear-shaped, I picked up one of the current Korean made Brian May guitars (formally marketed by Burns). [...]

I’m crap at directions. Even in a place as small as Northern Ireland! So I decided to get some electronic help and, after some research and a recommendation from a few VMware employees I was out and about with last week, bought a TomTom GO 700. I went for the 700 as it was the [...]

Jenny Wilson did a version of List of Demands by Saul Wilson with Robyn Carlsson. You can watch it on Google video here. Good stuff.

The first single, Silent Shout, of their forthcoming album can be previewed online at the Rabid Records MP3 site. That uses an interesting method to stop people copying the tracks. It plays them in about 30 second segments that fade out at the end. Nice idea. You can also buy Jenny Wilson’s album from that [...]

Lots of people are raving about the José Gonzàles song that is featured in the Sony Bravia advertisement that’s on TV and in cinemas. The song in question is called Heartbeats. His version is good, I bought it myself from iTMS. But lets not forget the original version by the inestimable Swedish duo, The Knife. [...]

How many times have you been in a presentation where the slides were simply read to you? Death by PowerPoint anyone? The Presentation Zen web site is a really good resource for avoiding this in your own presentations. I had a presentation to do today on the implementation of some already installed server management tools. [...]

This, as the title suggests, is a parody of The Matrix Trilogy by Adam Roberts who also wrote The Soddit. If you have seen the films, and you are not too precious about them, then you’ll probably enjoy this. It’s not as good as The Soddit, and you have to have seen the films I [...]

Blast from the past. Queen’s A Day at the Races was the first album I bought on my own, with my own pocket money. I’d been given A Night at the Opera for Christmas in 1975, along with most of the rest of the UK! I can still remember going into Belfast on the bus [...]

Well, not really. But the image composited from different wavelengths captured by several space telescopes certainly looks like one. See image and story at New Scientist. Nice.

Mark Morford ponders this question.

The Edge website asks many scientists and philosophers a question for the new year and publishes their responses. In 2005 the question was What do you believe is true even though you can’t prove it?. This generated a lot of interesting responses and arguments The 2006 question is What is your dangerous idea? Responses are [...]