Lovely little funky Christmas tune by Laura Vane and the Vipertones:

He was a very good bullshitter, by which he meant a very bad one.

The Dogs of Riga I know I haven’t been blogging for a while, but I just do not have the time, so I will keep it short. People pay money for this? It’s not that Henning Mankell’s police procedural The Dogs of Riga is badly written, indeed for most of the time, and especially the … Read More

They say that where Firefox really shines is its ability to extend its functionality through plug-ins. It is not why I use that web browser the most. Below are the plug-ins I use: – British English Dictionary, Woordenboek Nederlands. Because if left to my own devices, I would call the first plug-in “Brittish English Dictionary.” … Read More

I just downloaded the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica from the internet video recorder, and something I noticed while spot checking the files was that they changed the text overlay of the trailer. In the previous seasons you would get a quick recap of the back story, A-Team style, so that even if you weren’t … Read More

Cory Doctorow in his review of Free, Chris Anderson’s latest book: Information that can be freely reproduced at no marginal cost may not want, need or benefit from markets as a way of organising them. Considering that markets organise themselves by exchanging information about costs and goods/services, and that there is a price attached in … Read More

A law should be passed that prohibits people from entering Dutch cities through their main railway stations, because more often than not your first impression will be of a barren wasteland where horrid things go to die. (Which, by the way, really fantastic! if you are into that sort of thing.) This, for instance, is … Read More

NIDF Canon EOS 1000D workshop product When I bought my Canon EOS 1000D camera earlier this year I got a coupon that allowed me to participate in a photography workshop (EOS is their range of so-called Single Lens Reflexes, the D stands for digital, and the large number signifies the entry level model). For 25 … Read More

A 20 kilometre hike today from Naarden, a town known better for the way it looks from the air than from the ground, to Muiden, where count Floris V had a castle built, only to see it used as a prison for himself by his enemies. The finish line was in Weesp, an unassuming town … Read More

Life Ascending, The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution product What little I remember about the organization of life from my few high school biology classes in the early 1980s is that the realm of the living was divided into animals and plants. The world of biology has not, it seems from this book, stood still … Read More