View from the Potting Shed

Today was the first time, I’m ashamed to say, that I’d changed the strings on my Burns Brian May guitar. I’d got it into my head that the Grover Locking Machine Heads (tuning pegs, to you and me) would be difficult to operate.
Quite the opposite. They were a dream to use: […]

This last week I’ve filled in two job application forms, both for very different jobs at The University of St Andrews — one in Education Liason, the other in IT. Both posts caught my imagination and I’ve been quite excited filling in the application forms imagining how I might carry out those roles using […]

I can’t remember how I stumbled on this essay “How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary”, but it was probably via Digg.com.
I’ve not yet had the change to read it through fully, but I have printed it to PDF so that I can access it at a later date, and on […]

Now my Queen album MP3s are easier to find than when they were all in yellow folders.
Here’s something cool that I didn’t know until today — and me that knows everything! hehe : if you place an image file in a folder in Windows XP and rename the image file folder.jpg and then view […]

The Identifont website has come to the rescue this evening as I’ve been retyping a few of the documents I lost when I accidentally trashed my hard drive in September of last year.
The idea is simple. You answer a number of questions about the font you’re looking for based on what the various glyphs […]

Another photo of our Christmas decorations, this time our festive fireplace. Let’s just pray that it doesn’t go up in flames this year.
Not that it’s ever gone up in flames, but it’s a good thing to wish for, none-the-less.
You may notice that one of the ‘Christmas tree’ bulbs wound around the greenery is green (right-hand […]

A couple of days ago I blogged about this book: Rapid Math Tricks and Tips: 30 Days to Number Power by Edward H. Julius (Wiley, 1992) ISBN 0-471-57563-1. I’ve had quite a few people saying how fun that last tip was (multiplying by 99). Here’s my favourite trick of all in the first […]