Archive for March, 2008

WordPress 2.5

Monday, March 31, 2008 0:36 23 Comments

As the more astute amongst you may have noticed, I have upgraded my ‘blogging engine’ to WordPress 2.5. I’d been keen to upgrade for a number of reasons. Partly because I’m a techie, and being a techie I feel obliged to try and upgrade to the latest versions of stuff as soon as is practical [...]

This was posted under category: Blogging

Knock The F***er Down

Sunday, March 30, 2008 0:01 42 Comments

The multi-storey car park in Gateshead’s town centre is an ugly, rotting, concrete lump. Except for some reason Wikipedia describes it thus: Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park is an iconic concrete structure in Gateshead, north-east England. Designed by Owen Luder, it is a prime example of Brutalist architecture. The structure has a prominent role in [...]

This was posted under category: Local Interest

Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

Saturday, March 29, 2008 22:10 No Comments

Following on from his previous performance as The Sudocrem Kid, young SWP decides to continue in his forte of “performance art”: However, in a break from previous tradition, the felt pens weren’t used to produce what SWP no doubt thinks of as “an art installation” but is generally considered by his parents to me more [...]

This was posted under category: The Pickards

Recent Discoveries

Friday, March 28, 2008 0:34 4 Comments

Garfield Minus Garfield. Appropriate credit for the spot must be given to Thea, as this is simply genius. A journey into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman, the question is what Jon Arbuckle’s world is like if Garfield didn’t actually exist… Next we have Ewan McIntosh’s Edublogs. I came across Ewan at the [...]

This was posted under category: Blogging, Technology

Call Me A Cynic…

Thursday, March 27, 2008 22:36 3 Comments

but when you read this: Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has warned his opponents not to protest if they do not win elections on Saturday.BBC News Does this instead actually enter your head as: Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has warned his opponents that he has won the general election to be held on Saturday Or is [...]

This was posted under category: Politics

BigDog In The Uncanny Valley

Thursday, March 27, 2008 0:48 7 Comments

Came across a weird but rather interesting diagram on Phil Teare’s site the other day describing the Uncanny Valley. Phil is quite into robotics and stuff, so it was no surprise to discover that the Uncanny Valley: …is a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, [...]

This was posted under category: Oddities, Technology

Remind Me Again Why I Need A Man

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 0:38 39 Comments

No, this isn’t me “stepping out of the sideboard” (I’m heterosexual, and if you can’t handle that, well that’s your problem, not mine), it’s a book review of a piece of chick-lit fiction with that title. I’ve already posted this on my Facebook visual bookshelf thingummy which is quite a nice application, but I thought [...]

This was posted under category: Books, Reviews

The Perfect Child

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 0:06 7 Comments

As you can no doubt see for yourselves, now that I’ve come across some old photos and scanned them in, it’s difficult to improve on perfection. Me. And indeed as I child, I was perfect in absolutely every respect. From my incredible cuteness, to my impish cheekiness, to my allowing my parents a good nights [...]

This was posted under category: The Pickards

Dating The Turin Shroud

Monday, March 24, 2008 0:35 22 Comments

I remember the Turin shroud being radio carbon dated in the late 1980s and showing that it was a mediæval fake. Yet the controversy has refused to go away, and it now seems as though there was good reason for this. The two main strands of argument put forward against the results of radio-carbon dating [...]

This was posted under category: Faith & Forteana

Newcastle Will Stay Up. Probably.

Sunday, March 23, 2008 0:26 30 Comments

According to my Premiership Predictions (based partly on the assumption we’re not going to win anything away from home), we were going to be in a bit of a relegation battle. However, my calculations using the BBC’s Premiership Predictor, show that we’ll stay up, but it’ll be a close-run thing, and if we hadn’t won [...]

This was posted under category: Newcastle United