ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

If you’ve ever wanted proof of the innate duality of mind and body; that each of us are two intertwined things, body and soul, then you might be interested in this photo of my son, taken at Pizza Hut, by my camera which is obviously psychically aware. As you can see, part of him, his [...]

Read: Souls or Shutter Speeds »

Thanks to Chartroose for the meme, found over on Bloody Hell, It’s A Book Barrage. Standard pointless memyness. Do join in…
Have you ever…

Read: Have You Ever…? »

I came across a site the other day that allows you to apparently determine what rating your blog would have if it was a film. Obviously, it just scans through what it can find on your home page, rather than looking at the in-depth content, but apparently I qualify for parental guidance.
This rating was determined [...]

Read: Rate My Blog »

…online gaming, as it rather surprisingly turns out.
The British Red Cross have launched a website called Traces of Hope, which they say is the first “charity Alternate Reality Game”, in order to:
…raise awareness about victims of war, in which the object is to help a displaced Ugandan boy find his mother.BBC News: Internet Game for [...]

Read: War! What is it good for? »

There’s been a lot of stuff recently about so called ’suicide websites’. The premise is that…
people searching for information on suicide are more likely to find sites encouraging them than offering supportBBC News: Crackdown on ’suicide websites’
Hmm.. reminds me of that old Samaritans poster…
Depressed? At the end of your tether? Feel there is no way [...]

Read: Suicites »

After Newcastle got beat by Hull the other weekend, I got the bus home with my son, BTP. Nothing inherently unusual or problematic about that. Indeed, I sent my GLW a text from the bus, telling her that we were on our way home.
When I got home, I decided to send her another text, telling [...]

Read: The MPI »

I was just plodging about the internet the other day, thinking about how I enjoy writing and really ought to put a bit more effort into trying to write some fiction. Obviously, once I’ve done that, the harder part is persuading someone to give me money for it, but one thing at a time, yeah?
I [...]

Read: Creative writing (thanks to the BBC) »

Finally, a book meme that asks a little more than “list your 10 favourite books” or “here’s a big list of books, which ones have you read?”.
One of the things I do frequently is to browse the blogrolls of the bloggers on my blogroll. In this case, I wandered over to Stephen Lang’s site, [...]

Read: Book Meme With A Difference »

I have had enough of the Facebook application ‘Word Challenge’. I was playing it last thursday night until after one in the morning. I had started playing just after nine… and by quarter past one, having clocked up one million points — plus another fifty thousand or so — decided that after four hours of [...]

Read: I am retiring from being a cyborg »

Taking BTP to school last week for his first week at school was an emotional enough thing in itself. My little boy. Starting school. Stepping onto that production line…
But on thursday there were two specific moments, which tugged at my heartstrings in very different ways.
In his first week, he was just attending school in [...]

Read: One boy; one day; two emotions »