Shantini suggested that we see Inception, and I agreed enthusiastically.

Early on in the film, a character asked, 'why do you need an architect?', I laughed when they replied, 'they're the closest thing to creators of worlds in people's minds'. So not computer game designers then? Of course, an architect …

As you know, I'm growing ivy on the walls of my house to keep it cool in summer and warm in winter. Last year I posted a series of photos of the ivy I'm growing. Here's how the ivy looks like now:

Pamela Flitton is doing the best. The only …

Lexical scoping can only apply within a single source file. What you do about importing other files is a separate question. I think the Java importing solution is a practical one, but I'm open to suggestions!

If you didn't scope this at a module level (or provide some way of renaming variables on import) then either code reuse becomes very hit and miss, or people will be reduced to mangling variable names (e.g. inserting a java style package as a prefix for all).

Don't deny …

Looking at Python's global keyword led me to think how I'd like scoping to work. Some languages have lexical scoping, some dynamic scoping and some a mixture of two. I think scoping should be entirely lexical. My language (let's call it Klop) is dynamically typed, and variables are declared the …

I finally upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 yesterday.

This was the first time I'd upgraded an existing installation, usually I wipe the disk and install afresh. The only problem I encountered after the upgrade was that the volume control was missing from the Gnome panel, but that was easily solved …

The doorbell sounded yesterday. My housemate answered and shouted up that it was for me. At the door was a man who stated, 'I'm from the local electricity company SSE, and I've come to do a rate check' (or words to that effect).

In the UK the electricity industry is …

First of all I'll reveal my ignorance. Having read the book and enjoyed it greatly, I still have no clue why Zoe Heller's book is called The Believers. It probably means that there's a whole sublime level that I've missed.

I've read Notes On A Scandal, and Everything You Know …

I never knew Stephen Donaldson wrote sci-fi. I'd read the Thomas Covenant trilogy and found it intense and somewhat harrowing to read. A friend of Janos' found it difficult to complete, it was so emotionally demanding. Donaldson tends to write about characters undergoing unrelenting mental stress, and Real Story is …

In 1971, the year I was born, my dad designed a roundabout in Marple, his first piece of road design when he started a new job. You can see it's a bit of an odd shape. Yesterday, as I was helping him set up his broadband, my dad told me …