If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!A long, long day today. I was still in the office at half eight tonight, battling the server alongside Kathryn as it resolutely refused to save the pages we were working on. Two crashes and two reboots later we […]

I find it extraordinary that everyone is getting so excited about the Eurostar finally making it to 186mph in the UK today. We’ve waited for it long enough, and it’s been doing that on French tracks for ages. Every news bulletin is talking of it ’smashing’ the previous UK record, without pointing out that the […]

I first used the net at university, and back then there was no such thing as Internet Explorer. You still had to pay for Netscape Navigator, but that really didn’t matter as connections were so slow that they made graphical pages practically useless. Instead we used Lynx, the text-based browser, often running on Vax terminals […]

Summer is a lull time for IT journalism. Issues get a little bit shorter because there are less new products out there, and manufacturers stop taking you away on exotic trips to show you something they could just as easily have brought into your office.
It’s a period of calm and contemplation in the run up […]

Oh, I do so like testing printers. It means I get to print out lots and lots of photos using someone else’s ink. Now my desk is covered in little slips of curled paper from where they wrapped themselves around the roller. They are drying over night ready for carting home tomorrow.
Lunch at Carlton was […]

Not my birthday barbeque - Andrew’s annual family gathering under blue skies in the garden. We were so lucky with the weather. Last night it lashed down, but by the time I arrived at lunchtime, bearing a box of freshly baked coconut haystacks, the grass was dry enough to be walked on in just socks.
Arrived […]

Yesterday was payday, which makes everyone happy, so we booked ourselves into Carlton for lunch on Monday. They are very smiley and friendly in there every afternoon, and chat to us as they make our tea, so asked if we’d like them to get in any special food for us, and whether we’d like to […]

So after two nights of taking half doses of the brown manure-stinking gloop, it seems to be working. Perhaps I’m tempting fate there, but it’s sent me off to sleep, just as it promises. There have been no nasty side effects like there was the first time, so that’s a bonus.
What it does do, though, […]

It’s interesting to see what people think you might look like if they read your stuff in a magazine but don’t take a look at your picture. This guy mailed me today:
Hello there Mr. Nik Rawlinson,
My name is __________, I am an 18 year old male and I was very interested in an article of […]

Right, so the sleeping mix I thought would be a harmless clear liquid turned out to have the consistency of water, the colour of treacle and the smell of… manure, I guess would be closest. Fortunately it didn’t taste of anything.
You mix it up in a little bit of water, knock it back then thirty […]