Nick Gibbins

Unshared interests meme

A nifty meme suggested by : I keep a vague eye on the user info of most people on my friends list, and am always intrigued by the unshared ones. So I’d like to know a little more about the unshared interests you list.

WWW2003 Redux

I spent last week in Budapest at the Twelfh Intenational World Wide Web Conference (I was presenting a paper on the Friday), so spent less time looking at LJ than usual. Some general observations on Hungary Hungary is the land of pork. Everything has pork in it. I lost track of the number of different ways we were served pork, particularly of the forcemeat or cured variety. This is not to say that it was bad, just that it is a little surprising to find a small blob of sausagemeat in the middle of the (sweet) pastry that you’re having… Read More »WWW2003 Redux

Another book list meme

This time the SF&F list that’s doing the rounds. Unsurprisingly, I score rather better on this, and better at SF than at fantasy.

Big Read top 100 meme

Watched the BBC’s Big Read with at the weekend (in addition to the Cup Final). Not read as many of the top 100 as I would like, but then I’ve also not read some of the embarrassing dross. Jeffrey Archer, anyone?

Stupid, stupid cat creature

We have a cat. She is not the brightest of creatures, but we love her anyway. Even though she has urinated on our bed twice, even though she runs from the very sight of me. However, she cannot handle the catflap. Not the hole that the flap fits into, but the flap itself. So far, this has been rectified by the use of a pair of clothespegs to prop open the catflap so the poor widdleums creature won’t have to use her delicate wittle head to lift the flap (this from the creature that used regularly to fling herself at… Read More »Stupid, stupid cat creature

Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election

And a third post for today (these things are like buses – wait for hours, and then several turn up at once), this time on a documentary that and I saw last night. Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election (IMDb entry) is a documentary on the irregularities in Florida that won Bush the presidency. It’s an excellent documentary that does a good job of highlighting the partisan nature of the US election system, and that left me feeling quite outraged. You can buy a copy for the measly sum of $30, which would be money well spent in my opinion. The… Read More »Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election

A Letter from Baghdad, part two

For those who haven’t seen, Salam Pax is alive and well and writing his blog again. Good to see a local viewpoint on the rebuilding of Iraq, although it is more than a little strange to see him describing aspects of the situation in Baghdad as Gibsonesque (see excerpt below) at the same time that Gibson is linking to Salam Pax’s blog from his own blog. The streets markets look like something out of a William Gibson novel. Heaps of cheap RAM (stolen of course) is being sold beside broken monitors beside falafel stands and weapons are all available. Fights… Read More »A Letter from Baghdad, part two

Utilitarian barbarians at the gates

According to today’s Guardian, Charles Clarke, the education secretary, has attacked the principle of public funding for “ornamental” HE disciplines such as medieval studies (having already said much the same about classics) on the grounds “that universities exist to enable the British economy and society to deal with the challenges posed by the increasingly rapid process of global change”. So farewell to learning for learning’s sake, hello to more vocational courses (and dare I say it, Mickey Mouse degrees, as Margaret Hodge would term them). (the Times Higher broke the story, while Tristram Hunt has a good comment piece in… Read More »Utilitarian barbarians at the gates