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If you have any sort of interest in sex and data (and which of us doesn’t, really?), read this.
OkCupid is a dating site. It organises matches based around self-selecting data. So you’re given a bunch of questions to answer. What do I think of such-and-such? How important is the answer a potential partner gives to that question to whether I might date them? And so on and so forth. I know one couple […]
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Chewbacca. Riding a giant cute Squirrel. And chasing down Nazis.
I would be remiss if I did not point you immediately to the location of what is quite possibly the most awesome art commission ever. Srsly. Up there with the Sistine.
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Films I watch again and again
Tagged by Steve Turnbull, who recently made a list on his blog of films he keeps coming back to again and again. And tagged me to do the same. My list isn’t particularly deep, or clever, and isn’t even necessarily a list of films I consider great. The Third Man is missing, as are Aliens, […]
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The McGrath Point
Contains spoilers for the first few episodes of Lost and Firefly. Denis McGrath is off to Los Angeles. Possibly for good. And his blog, in its current format at least, is going into the long archive. So as we bid him farewell or au revoir, I want to share something that he brought to my […]
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A long-standing mystery, solved at last
Back in the day, there was a phenomenon known as “The Curse of the Odd-Numbered Star Trek Films”. It was first noticed in the eighties for films starring Jim Kirk and his buddies and labelled so, because fan-opinion (and I concur in this) is that the odd-numbered films were… well, let’s charitably say not as […]
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A short primer on the British Constitution as it pertains to the current situation
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the current hung parliament. Unfortunately there’s been a lot of misinformation, even from political commentators, about the Constitution of the UK, and how that should resolve. So here’s a quick guide to the situation. You vote for a Member of Parliament You don’t vote for a party. […]
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Letters From America: Dining by Candlelight
an occasional series of emails sent from los angeles in the pastoriginally posted 10 May 2004— I generally eat at table. Apparently that’s quite unusual these days. I was raised to have dinner with the family. We would sit down and eat together at the end of the day, and talk about things. My day […]
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Eastercon Panels
This year’s Eastercon is almost upon us. Hoorah! My panels this year are:Saturday 5pm “Tales From the White Hart” In homage to Arthur C Clarke’s short stories, panellists will be telling their own scientific tall tales. Although it’s in the programme as two hours long, I suspect it’s only going to last an hour, given […]
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It’s not a given…
So, there’s this TV show, right? About a character called Doctor Who. You can tell it’s about a character called “Doctor Who” because the show is called “Doctor Who” and in the credits for the first eighteen years or so, the character is called “Doctor Who”. (Or sometimes Dr. Who. But I think we can […]
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Letters From America: Typical
originally posted 6th May 2004— First, the good news: I’ve got a read. An agent has agreed to read my spec scripts. From a cold call. To say this is extremely lucky is to understate things by at least an order of magnitude. You don’t get reads from cold calls. You get reads from friends-of-friends, […]