Today your agent in the field has been playing golf with Charles and Blimp. Charles has constructed a nine-hole course in the grounds of the house. This is hole 5 I think.

If you get the ball in the hoop, it counts as getting it in the hole. This is …

I'm writing from somewhere in France. For obvious reasons my precise location cannot be disclosed. I'll file reports back to you at HQ for as long as I remain undiscovered. After that, the game is up.

Yesterday at the house, the pressure of the water supply lessened. I followed the …

Luminous by Greg Egan is a truly superb collection of sci-fi short stories. Egan confines himself to hard science, and doesn't shy away from giving technical details to his readers. Within that constraint of physics, he is a wellspring of ideas. As Janos said, other writers with such good ideas …

I've made a start with a Wiktionary entry for metaphrast.

Btw, just to let you know, I'm on holiday near Valence, France for about a week, leaving on Wednesday. Have you got any ideas for holiday reading?

I've [really]{style="font-style: italic;"} got to go and pack now...

One of my nephews is about 1 and a half years old. I commented to my brother that by the time the nephew is of driving age, most cars will be driven by robots. He strongly disagreed.

I now put this to everyone I meet:

[By 2023, more cars will …

An old boss of mine described me as donnish in an appraisal at work. I looked it up recently in Wiktionary to check the spelling. It wasn't there, so I've added it. The entry probably needs improving, so please do if you're so inclined.

Listening to Last Word I felt sad to hear Lyall Watson's name mentioned. He died on 25th June this year, aged 69. When I was a teenager in the 80s, LW meant a great deal to me. I read a few of his books at that time: Dreams of …

I've used GNU/Linux since (February?) 1999. I started with Slackware, and now I'm running Ubuntu. I think Linux is fantastic, but one thing always irritates me.

Whereas MS-Windows has a 'Program Files' directory with a sub-directory for each application, Ubuntu stores application files across the file-system according to type …

Last time it got to the end without me getting a chance to ask my question. This time at the Science Cafe, mine was the first question: 'What do you make of the Fermi Paradox?'. The speaker's answer was that there are other civilizations, but they're all too far away …

I'm trying to understand reversible computing. My friend Bill made the comment that it may well be of interest to academics, but it has no appreciable effect in the real world. So here's a rough calculation for the power an irreversible computer needs that's operating right at the Landauer limit …