Phoned Mum for an update this evening and was pleasantly surprised to be told that Dad was out of hospital and resting at home. Proceeded to chat with dad for a while and he seemed in generally good spirits ( Read more... )

Had a phone call at 7:50 this morning from Mum. "Your Father's having a heart attack, the doctor is here and we're waiting for an ambulance." After an exchange of phone numbers to make sure that mum could contact me with further updates she went off to call someone else ( Read more... )

Yesterday was my last day at OUP ( Read more... )

It's been rather quiet around here of late. In an attempt to recover past glories there may appear some brief accounts of my recent holiday in the USA.

As a taster of the adventures which were enjoyed on those fair shores, I present a photo of a rather aptly named company in the town where my sister lives.


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A friend who is referred to as "The Hatted One" (not to be confused with bellinghman or Terry Prattchet has just had her second book published ( Read more... )

Spent the past week on a DR exercise with work ( Read more... )

I spent last night being a steward at Luminox, a combination of music festival, fire art, commissioned sculpture and general coolness taking place in the middle of Oxford over the course of three nights.

The fire art was courtesy of a french collective called Carabosse, who provided a range of impressive metal and flame structures including a ( Read more... )

Today I joined several hundred other people in singing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus as part of a project called Oxford Sings, under the supervision of Ivor Setterfield.Spent the morning in a workshop to brush up on the basics of he piece. Some present had never seen the piece before and there was a good atmosphere of learning and fun about the place ( Read more... )

Last weekend I went to see Spamalot in London.

Those familiar with Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the rest of the Pythons' work will find much enjoyment in the 2 hours of the show (plus interval). Others may have to look beyond the taunting French Soldiers and renditions of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" (yes I know it's from The ( Read more... )

BBC News 24 uses an automatic system for it's subtitles presumably based on speach recognition. This works reasonably well for most of their reports but just occaisionally it goes wrong ( Read more... )