Today's a big day for me, as I just submitted my thesis. This is basically a big book about all the research I've been doing for the last four and a half years. It's called "Thermodynamics and the structure of life", and it's mostly about what life is and where it came from. Next I have to wait a few months for a couple of people to examine it - ( Read more... )

[Cross-posted from my Wordpress account, which I haven't really started using yet.]

I have now received answers from three of my parliamentary candidates to the questions I sent them last month.  I've actually had them for a while but was holding out for a response from the Labour candidate before posting this, but it looks like she's not going to ( Read more... )

Okay, I can't help it, I need to rant about last weekend's Doctor Who.

( Move along please, nothing to see here unless you're a bit of a geek and like Doctor Who but didn't like the last episode very much and want to read someone else's detailed explanation of why they didn't like it very much either )

Bit of a long shot, but does anyone out there know how to make a Blogger template? And maybe willing to do it for beer money? I want to start a proper blog but I'm frustrated by not being able to make it look the way I want and don't have the HTML chops to do it myself ( Read more... )

After being annoyed by Sainsbury's online shopping site once too often, I sent them this message via their online contact form:
Dear Sir/Madam ( Read more... )

sc140: a multi-artist album whose tracks are each created in 140 characters of code, including some by me. (follow link for embedded player)

Also, a reminder: if you're in Brighton this weekend, Saturday is the White Night festival, where there are an enormous number of free events happening all through the night. I'll be doing a live audio- ( Read more... )

Recently I've had a lot of thoughts about things I want politicians to say, but which they are not saying. It feels like right now we've got a choice between two ideologies - league tables and top-down micromanagement versus a religious faith in the power of the free market - both of which are stupid, false and dangerous. So I thought I'd compile ( Read more... )

I've decided to become the sort of person who writes letters to my MP. It can't hurt and might do a little bit of good. Here is my first, which I sent this morning via http://www.writetothem.com

Dear David Lepper ( Read more... )

...while I'm on the subject of inane drivel about my life, I got my nipples pierced yesterday. Hooray for nipples!

I had a nipple piercing once before, but I took it out when I grew up. I'm happy to find that I've now managed to un-grow-up enough to have it done again.

Following on from my recent post on i_am_the_atom(*) about the government trying to turn private security firms into a police force, I've just heard that they're also trying to turn the police force into a private security firm - by charging community events for the cost of policing. That's right, if you're thinking of putting on some kind of event for your ( Read more... )