I've never seen a Stanley Kubrick film I didn't like, so when Matt suggested Barry Lyndon (which I'd never heard of) I tucked it away in my memory.

It was my birthday on Sunday, and I'd intended to visit the excellent On The Video Front, and leave with Dr Strangelove …

From the writing style I could have sworn that C. S. Friedman was male. It's possibly a tribute to a writer to be unable to discern their gender.

This Alien Shore had some really good ideas, that were followed up by solid writing. I particularly liked the extracts from writings …

Think about when you change your mind about something. Even taking into account that there is specific time at which certain neurons fire in your brain you still couldn't come up with a definitive (digital) split between the yes/no (on/off) choice. There is some point at which the …

I quite agree. Always the saver that gets penalised. Everything that the government has done so far will do nothing for the economy except encourage the banks to keep lending irresponsibly and people to keep spending recklessly.

You have too much time on your hands.

I've written to B&Q:

Looking at Thermawrap General Purpose Wrap on your website, it says: [Thermal resistance 1.455m²k/w in Wall Lining installation]{style="font-style: italic;"}. Since its thickness is quoted as 4mm, this would give a thermal conductivity of \~ 0.00275 W/mK. Expanded polystyrene has a …

I visited Matt in Oxford last weekend. The day before he said, 'Tony, some friends are going to the cinema in the afternoon, are you up for that?'. It turned out to be his 5 year old god son's birthday party! Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was actually very good. It's …

The Python 3 changes doc says:

objects of different incomparable types always compare unequal to each other.

I don't think this is the right way to go. If you try to compare incomparable types, a TypeError exception should be thrown. For example, at the moment if you write 9 == 'hello' …

Willem Buiter has it right again:

The government’s proposal for subsidising those who took out excessive mortgages in the past, is a text-book example of bad economics. It is unfair, distorts incentives and does nothing to stimulate the economy. Zero out of three is bad indeed.