I went to see a band at The Jolly Miller the other night. The band were E-Men City, and I needed to go and see them — their drummer used to be a colleague of mine, and I’d been saying for a long while that I’d go and see them as soon as they were [...]

If they have managed to pull that one off without people finding out about it, I am impressed. But I’ll have to wait for next week to see… (Anyone with ‘insider’ knowledge is welcome to contact me. Go on, pretend you really know – I’ll publish the wackiest ideas after next week’s episode… however, I [...]

What could it possibly mean when a pub advertises its wares with the slogan “Ask Al”? Could it be that Al is one of the regulars, who has an encylopedic knowledge second-to-none and serves as the Oracle of the Station Hotel? Is it that Geordie legend Alan Shearer is doing a talk-in, and you will [...]

…or so the infamous man in the pub told me. Now I remember Davros, creator of the Daleks, as seen in Genesis of the Daleks and suchlike, and I remember Stavros, Harry Enfield’s Arsenal-supporting Greek Kebab shop owner, but I hadn’t realised he had previously been in Doctor Who. I can just see it now: [...]

After attending the PSF Event ‘The Future of Local Authority Websites and How They Are Measured’ I had some degree of confidence that SOCITM were listening to what the audience had to say, and that the Better Connected report in subsequent years would improve. This was in now small measure due to Richard Steel’s attitude, [...]

I’ve seen a poster at York Railway station a few times now. It basically just says: So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.King James Bible, Romans 14:12 Irrespective of whether you’re religious or not, the idea of being able to justify yourself and your existence crops up more and [...]

Have you ever had one of those conversations where someone mentions some sort of film reference, and you stare at them blankly? No? Well maybe you’re a film buff then. I’m not. Nor am I a literature buff. I like to read fiction and I like to watch films because I want to be entertained. [...]

The notion of Wikipedia as a source of authenticated information is one which has taken a hit from time to time, as people sometimes find that various pages can be defaced, edited, or otherwise changed without the facts being verified. Over the last few days, I’ve been reading a lot about Marouane Chamakh, the 24-year [...]

Does anyone know of a WordPress plugin (or can anyone come up with one?) that will take any trackbacks/pingbacks which have been approved by Akismet and stick them in a moderation queue? The biggest problem with pingbacks is the number of splogs which make some passing reference to a post and get themselves a link [...]

Found on a website when trying to read the latest gossip about Newcastle United: DA.EmptyDataReader.GetOrdinal(String name) in D:\XXXXXXX\Public Site\XXXXXXX\DA\EmptyDataReader.cs:92Data.TextResources.LoadCache(Int64 cultureId) in D:\XXXXXXX\Public Site\XXXXXXX\Data\TextResources.cs:50 …althought I’ve removed the references to the site itself, obviously. Showing this sort of information is not a good idea. Can I just point out that if you are writing a .NET [...]