As usual the web is lit up like an indignant christmas tree with discussions about the latest developments in what is usually (and somewhat laughably) called the console war. The big news is Nintendo’s unhinged decision to call their new great gaming hope The Nintendo Wii. The Wii! Pronounced ‘wee’! Oh, the hilarity! This made [...]

Working in IT is only marginally less stressful than working at CTU, a recent poll suggests. Well colour me surprised – bet if you did a similar poll of carribean beach-bar barmen they’d be moaning about the hazards of falling coconuts, and you’d probably find toy testers losing sleep over the incorrect rendering of Barbie’s [...]

This morning I was sitting on the bus, listening to <nme mode>Wildhearts’ frontman Ginger’s confessional rock opus Valor Del Corazon</nme mode> (because nothing says ‘commute’ like a double album about your wife leaving you on account of your heroin habit), thinking about the differences between CDs and mp3s. And how heroin habits are a bit [...]

Hello Earth! When people come to me seeking a deeper understanding of what a web developer does, I usually mumble something about back ends and databases and how it’s much more interesting to do than talk about. Well today I feel like being more forthcoming, so here’s a post about the joys of web dev. [...]

Lately I’ve been spreading myself all over the internet, in the same way as Jonathan Ross is spread across the TV and radio – admittedly without the wit, fame or eyeball-worrying collection of clothes. As I’ve said in previous entries, I’m a big fan of sites like 43things and last.fm, which are busy either recording [...]

When people watch me browsing they think I’m weird – even when I’m not on hatsofmeat.com – because my name is Chris and I am a selecting-things-on-the-screen addict. When I’m reading something on the web I compulsively select and deselect text with the mouse. I’ll click and drag to highlight from the bottom of a [...]

Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the [...]

News reaches me (hot from today’s Metro, courtesy of Mr Bowers) here at UKFast Blog Central that The Queen has received more than 20,000 birthday cards this year – and 17,000 emails. Looks like this new technology has finally filtered through to even the most established parts of The Establishment. But of course, it’s not [...]

Aside from the fact that we have Big Brother, deadlines, diets and one hundred different ways to get in touch with people electronically in order to tell them what a crazy fool they were last night, the one thing that distinguishes us modern folks from our ancestors is noise. We’re surrounded by it from the [...]

Disclaimer: I know what ‘beta’ means! Up until a few days ago I was using the new Windows Live Mail beta, instead of my usual Hotmail account. Now I’m back to good old Hotmail. Why? Mainly because the new system doesn’t work in Firefox. In my tricked-out browser of choice the whole Live Mail system [...]