Christmas dinner in the Inkster household this year consisted of: Roast boneless rib of beef Pigs in blankets with thyme Roast potatoes with horseradish Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s roasted red onions Sophie Grigson’s roast celeriac with marsala Mrs Beeton’s Yorkshire puddings Baby carrots Mange tout Gravy Followed by Chocolate Yule Log.
It was 40 years ago today that Douglas Engelbart gave a demonstration that introduced the public to an impressive list of technologies which would in the following years become established in the mainstream. On the 9th of December, 1968, he demonstrated: a mouse; hypertext (i.e. text with links that can be followed — a precursor … Continued
In the news today: robbers dressed in drag steal €80 million worth of jewelry from a shop in Paris. As covered by: The Times Reuters etc… Also in the news today is that it's the 50th anniversary of two firsts The first STD call in the UK, dialled by the Queen; and The opening of … Continued
I meant to post this article a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve been very bad at updating my blog recently. The BBC is showing an adaptation of one of Henning Mankell’s Wallander novels tonight. Mankell is one of my favourite crime fiction writers, so here are a few random thoughts (no spoilers!): They’ve started … Continued
Wild Mushroom, Pancetta & Truffle Risotto Ingredients 200 g arborio rice (or other short grained, high starch rice) 850 mL ham stock (or chicken/vegetable stock) 150 mL white wine 250 g mixed mushrooms (such as button mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, porcini, etc) 50 g chopped pancetta (or unsmoked streaky bacon) 1 small onion, finely chopped 2 … Continued
BBC News has an article claiming that: The new projections suggestion that by 2050, minorities will account for 54% of the [US] population. Ummm… wouldn’t that be 100% then? Minorities set to be US majority
Charlie Brooker on creationism: Darwin’s theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it’s been under attack since day one. That’s just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God … Continued
Damon Albarn, Jamie Hewlett and the BBC have reworked 1970s TV classic Monkey for the Beijing Olympics. Awesome!
hCard is an HTML-based format for describing contacts (people, organisations, etc) on web pages. It allows you to mark up which elements represent their name, their address, their birthday and so forth. Here’s an example: Toby Inkster Birthday: 1980-06-01. While hCard offers many useful properties that can be used to describe contacts, some are considered … Continued
Today is May Day and also election day in London. Recent polls have shown alarmingly high support for Boris Johnson (or Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to use his full name — yes, really!). Much as I enjoy Johnson’s antics on Have I Got News For You, I ask how someone who could barely be … Continued
Lewes, East Sussex, 6 April 2008 Herstmonceux, East Sussex, 26 April 2008 Source Photos Here are the source photos in their full ten megapixel glory. Feel free to re-use them for non-commercial purposes, but please give me credit. Lewes castle — the castle keep in the snow Roof tops — the snow-covered roof tops of … Continued
OK, so Doctor Who has gone to Pompeii and saved Caecilius and his family. Now the entire Cambridge Latin Course will need to be rewitten!
It is nearly asparagus season in the UK (although you can buy imported asparagus all year round). Here’s a recipe I made up tonight… Ingredients 250 g saffron tagliatelle, or plain tagliatelle 10 asparagus spears ¼ fennel bulb, finely sliced 2 tbsp fennel pesto lemon-infused olive oil, or plain olive oil zest of 1 lemon, … Continued
Tonight I've released another alpha version of Cognition, my semantic web parser. Changelog includes: Microformats: Add option (disabled by default) to require <head profile> for microformat support. Microformat profiles are treated as opaque strings! Supports the following profiles: http://purl.org/uF/2008/03/ http://www.w3.org/2006/03/hcard or http://purl.org/uF/hCard/1.0/ http://dannyayers.com/microformats/hcalendar-profile or http://purl.org/uF/hCalendar/1.0/ http://purl.org/uF/hAtom/0.1/ http://purl.org/uF/rel-tag/1.0/ http://purl.org/uF/rel-license/1.0/ No profiles required for rel-enclosure, adr or … Continued
The Sydney Morning Herald has just (about 2 hours ago) reported that: This year, 26 cities joined Earth Hour as official partner cites, including — along with all of Australia's capitals — Atlanta, Bangkok, Chicago, Christchurch, Copenhagen, Dublin, Manila, Montreal, Odense, Ottawa, Phoenix, San Francisco, Tel Aviv and Toronto. In the US, the lights were … Continued
(MusicBrainz) OK, so Amazon kindly delivered my copy of Counting Crows‘ Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings this morning. I’ve made a point of not listening to any of the new songs that have been floating around the Internet, except Cowboys which Lisa sent to me ages ago. I waited until I finished work this afternoon … Continued
Police in Italy have issued footage of a man who is suspected of hypnotising supermarket checkout staff to hand over money from their cash registers. BBC News Sydney Morning Herald The Times
According to the venerable Bede, the term “Easter” comes from the Old English word for what we now call “April”. “Eostre-Monath” was “the month of Eostre”. Of course, back then months were calculated based on the lunar cycle, which is why Easter is calculated using a thoroughly pagan method: it’s the first weekend on or … Continued
66 … which makes me officially better than Rijk Which did I guess? I guessed: background, background-attachment, background-color, background-image, border, border-bottom, border-bottom-color, border-bottom-style, border-color, border-left, border-left-color, border-left-style, border-right, border-right-color, border-right-style, border-style, border-top, border-top-color, border-top-style, bottom, clear, color, content, float, font, font-family, font-size, font-style, font-variant, font-weight, height, left, letter-spacing, line-height, list-style, list-style-image, list-style-position, list-style-type, margin, margin-bottom, … Continued
One of my current interests is the semantic web — that is, the push to move from publishing text on the Web to publishing structured data, which can actually be understood by computers (in so far as a computer can truly “understand” anything). By publishing information so that computers can understand it, you make the … Continued
