The Curious Engineer

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The Reinvigorated Programmer

reprog.wordpress.com

Everything except sauropod vertebrae

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’10’15’20’25
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878 from 27 Feb 2010 to 16 Oct 2026
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monthly (21 in the last year)
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2026 21

  1. What I’ve been reading lately, part 62
  2. Any persons caught on Cc TV the police will be informed
  3. Twelve ways to become wealthy
  4. The evolution of Hound Dog
  5. What I’ve been reading lately, part 61
  6. Liverpool Football Club is over for me
  7. All the other ways the Folarin Balogun affair could have gone
  8. What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?
  9. Doctor Who series 13, part 6: The Vanquishers
  10. Generative AI: huge success or massive failure?
  11. What I’ve been reading lately, part 60
  12. Doctor Who series 13, part 5: Survivors of the Flux
  13. A funny thing happened on the way to blogging about Flux
  14. Deny all cookies
  15. Doctor Who series 13, part 4: Village of the Angels
  16. Doctor Who series 13, part 3: Once, Upon Time
  17. Doctor Who series 13, part 2: War of the Sontarans
  18. Mike’s attempt to re-engage with Doctor Who, part 1: The Halloween Apocalypse
  19. What I’ve been listening to in 2025
  20. The death of software engineering
  21. What I’ve been reading lately, part 59

2025 22

  1. Chicken bhuna, and chicken and mushroom balti
  2. What I’ve been reading lately, part 58
  3. The Clarke-Hanlon dictum
  4. “If you do X, you need to do Y” is not helping
  5. “AI” is a tragedy of the commons
  6. What I’ve been reading lately, part 57
  7. “No cookbook methods”
  8. Failure-oriented programming
  9. What I’ve been reading lately, part 56
  10. In praise of rubber ducking
  11. Two ways that Robocop (1987) is disturbing
  12. What I’ve been reading lately, part 55
  13. What I’ve been listening to in 2024
  14. Four films (Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Yesterday, Robocop and Godzilla Minus One)
  15. Idiomatic programming
  16. Stop changing things
  17. What I’ve been reading lately, part 54
  18. Six things I know about sauropods
  19. “A good API is not just easy to use but also hard to misuse”
  20. Six things I know about Doctor Who
  21. Six things I know about …
  22. The New Testament in a year: one chapter a day, with slack

2024 23

  1. Playing electric guitar, then and now
  2. Pizza quesadillas
  3. What I’ve been reading lately, part 53
  4. Leaving Twitter completely — and an archive of my tweets
  5. Some more TV shows I’ve given up on
  6. Spinach quesadillas
  7. C. S. Lewis on the 2024 American election
  8. What I’ve been reading lately, part 52
  9. Desert island albums #5: Pink Floyd — Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
  10. A beautiful and catastrophic AI failure
  11. Free markets
  12. Some of my best work
  13. The disturbing experience of Go Set A Watchman
  14. What I’ve been reading lately, part 51
  15. Categorical logging
  16. What I’ve been reading lately, part 50
  17. Children of Men (2006) — and — what is a great film?
  18. Every dependency is a vulnerability
  19. What I’ve been listening to in 2023
  20. The getting-punched-in-the-face theory of efficient markets
  21. Jalapeño-pickled coleslaw
  22. C. S. Lewis on social media
  23. How much does good pizza cost in 2024?

2023 18

  1. Semantic Versioning is a terrible mistake
  2. A slightly more successful experiment: Greek Salad pizza, take 2
  3. A failed experiment: Greek Salad pizza
  4. What is the downside to Universal Basic Income (UBI)?
  5. The Prestige Trap
  6. I aten’t dead
  7. What I’ve been reading lately, part 49
  8. Supporting the Blue Team
  9. Ratatouille (the dish, not the film)
  10. Nine films in nine days
  11. LLMs and the Three Laws of Robotics
  12. What I’ve been reading lately, part 48
  13. What I’ve been listening to in 2022
  14. What I’ve been reading lately, part 47
  15. I made a pizza
  16. I played Dungeons and Dragons with ChatGPT
  17. DALL-E’s weird problem with text
  18. I made some curries

2022 24

  1. Proposal: a controlled vocabulary for attitudes towards pull-requests, forks and bug-reports
  2. The challenge facing artificial meat manufacturers
  3. How to play Blackjack
  4. What I’ve been reading lately, part 46
  5. Plein Air Pittville Park painting challenge
  6. What I’ve been reading lately, part 45
  7. Sushi in Hamburg
  8. What I’ve been reading lately, part 44
  9. What I’ve been reading lately, part 43
  10. What I’ve been reading lately, part 42
  11. Watercolour painting: Nature in Art
  12. Mitcheldean Festival 2022: the Taylor Family set
  13. Fine dining at Purslane, Cheltenham
  14. Government consultation on Imperial measurements
  15. How much does good pizza cost?
  16. Four pizzas (and a crust cross-section)
  17. If you can have pulled pork, why not pulled chicken?
  18. The utter blistering incompetence of Now TV Broadband
  19. Nachos
  20. Risotto à la Jon
  21. What I’ve been listening to in 2021
  22. Spoileriffic thoughts on Wandavision
  23. Let’s be clear. To be honest. Putting it simply
  24. From the depths of time: a 30-year-old bug with a funny explanation

2021 26

  1. Tartes au citron et limon (second try)
  2. Tarte au citron (lemon tart)
  3. The Empty Nest: album and launch
  4. They didn’t think it through #3: Stargazer
  5. A rainbow surrounding our home
  6. Testing with Jest: how to mock an import used by the module you’re testing
  7. I AM A SITH
  8. A conservatory on the cheap
  9. An accidentally sensational pizza
  10. What I’ve been reading lately, part 41
  11. Hands up who enjoys feeling old!
  12. Metal Jester: the full story
  13. What I’ve been listening to in 2020
  14. How much do different kinds of cups of tea cost?
  15. The Spandau Ballet joke
  16. How much does a cup of tea cost?
  17. What I’ve been reading lately, part 40
  18. Pulled pork
  19. Three recent meals
  20. “A little sound common sense often goes further with an audience of American working-men than much high-flown argument”
  21. We’re getting bored of all the corruption
  22. Hulks (five different ones). Part 5: the MCU
  23. Paint the whole world with a rainbow
  24. “Lockdowns don’t work!”
  25. I miss my Commodore 64
  26. I suppose I ought to watch the Doctor Who new year special

2020 36

  1. Turns out that Brexit means Brexit. Who knew?
  2. Thorns in the Straw
  3. What I’ve been reading lately, part 39
  4. Films I’ve watched recently
  5. Pink Floyd in my home town
  6. Things I’ve given up on watching recently
  7. Why football is important
  8. Moussaka
  9. What I’ve been reading lately, part 38
  10. Home-made beefburgers
  11. I’m getting better at this pizza thing
  12. ScottKit in the wild!
  13. Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the statues?!
  14. What I’ve been reading lately, part 37
  15. Gavin Burrows on William Hartnell’s Doctor Who
  16. Making pizza from scratch
  17. What I’ve been reading lately, part 36
  18. What to do with leftover rice
  19. Another curry
  20. What I’ve been reading lately, part 35
  21. The Timeless Children is 90% satisfying
  22. Ascension of the Cybermen: racking up the tension
  23. Lend your Internet connection to your neighbours
  24. The Haunting of Villa Diodati doesn’t really get going
  25. Can You Hear Me? is the episode Praxeus wanted to be
  26. Making sushi for my son’s birthday
  27. Could Praxeus have been saved?
  28. Keep Calm but Don’t Carry On
  29. The fundamental problem of politics
  30. Fugitive of the Judoon: that’s how it’s done!
  31. What I’ve been reading lately, part 34
  32. Mike quite enjoys Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror
  33. Mike catches up with Orphan 55, for some reason
  34. Mike’s very slightly less belated thoughts on Spyfall, part 2
  35. Mike’s bang-up-to-date thoughts on Spyfall, part 1
  36. What I’ve been listening to in 2019

2019 41

  1. More thoughts on The Rise of Skywalker
  2. A few thoughts on The Rise of Skywalker
  3. What now?
  4. C. S. Lewis on the 2019 general election
  5. Richard Shindell’s song The Next Best Western
  6. How to vote in the forthcoming election
  7. What I’ve been reading lately, part 33
  8. My MP seems to be running ELIZA code from the 1960s
  9. Dear Mark Harper: scrutinise the deal
  10. Chili con carne
  11. Dear Mark Harper …
  12. Updating the “About” page
  13. What I’ve been reading lately, part 32
  14. Head in the Clouds
  15. Writing to my MP about no-deal Brexit and suspending Parliament
  16. What Skyrim taught me about wealth
  17. What I’ve been reading lately, part 31
  18. Revisiting my issues with git, nine years on
  19. Hulks (five different ones). Part 4: the 2008 proto-MCU movie
  20. Major releases are disasters, and should be avoided whenever possible
  21. How strange the change from major to minor … in Beatles songs
  22. Hulks (five different ones). Part 3: the 2003 Ang Lee movie
  23. Labour must dump Jeremy Corbyn or lose all their Remainers
  24. Hulks (five different ones). Part 2: the TV series
  25. What I’ve been reading lately, part 30
  26. Hulks (five different ones). Part 1: the original comics
  27. The two big things we learned from the European election
  28. Who should you vote for in the European elections?
  29. What I’ve been reading lately, part 29
  30. What I’ve been reading lately, part 28
  31. A letter to my Labour council candidates on why I can’t vote for them
  32. Ian Malcolm and Dar Williams on modern art
  33. What I’ve been reading lately, part 27
  34. Church governance and cultural mismatch
  35. Doctor Who: Series 1, revisited
  36. Here’s what post-truth politics looks like
  37. What I’ve been listening to in 2018
  38. Etch-a-Sketch ruined castle
  39. Asking Mark Harper to back the Wilson/Kyle proposal
  40. “Why’s it taking so long? We should just leave!”
  41. The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos: too late, had your chance, muffed it

2018 36

  1. A Thursday in December
  2. It Takes You Away: interesting, and that’s worth something
  3. Lego-ish Blockade Runner and Nebulon B Frigate
  4. Six pies, and more lessons learned
  5. My MP wrote to me about Brexit: here’s my reply
  6. A response from my MP on Brexit
  7. Third try: writing to my MP about Brexit
  8. The Witchfinders: a collision of irrelevances
  9. Follow-up letter to my MP repeating my request that he back a #PeoplesVote
  10. Kerblam!: yes, but what does it all mean?
  11. Demons of the Punjab: close, but no sonic screwdriver
  12. The Tsuranga Conundrum: as you were
  13. Letter to my MP asking him to back a #PeoplesVote
  14. Arachnids in the UK: treading water
  15. Rosa: now we’re getting somewhere!
  16. The Ghost Monument: brief thoughts
  17. The Woman who Fell to Earth: some unwelcome opinions
  18. Just a little late-night snack
  19. Taking down trees in our garden
  20. There’s ignorance; and then there’s wilful ignorance
  21. A short and simple question for Brexiters
  22. What I’ve been reading lately, part 26
  23. A treble clef in the wisteria
  24. In one month, I’ve lost 6.4 kg (14.1 lb, 1 stone)
  25. Clematis growing on wooden pallets
  26. East meets West! It’s the English breakfast sushi roll
  27. Four films: Out of Sight, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Abigail’s Party, Three Days of the Condor
  28. Metal Jester at the Marquee in 1991
  29. Genesis: a tragedy in 15 acts. Part 2: the Collins years
  30. Passing laws and adding BIB-1 diagnostics
  31. Genesis: a tragedy in 15 acts. Part 1: the Gabriel years
  32. Bolognese sauce, done right
  33. What I’ve been reading lately, part 25
  34. Chicken Dhansak
  35. What I’ve been listening to in 2017
  36. Paul Simon: One Trick Pony (1980)

2017 92

  1. Don’t neglect the thing that’s most important to you
  2. STAR WNRS. Yes, Star Wnrs
  3. Who is Snoke? Don’t care, doesn’t matter
  4. The Last Jedi: uncomfortable thoughts
  5. TV shows that I’ve given up on
  6. Boilerplate for ScottKit games: standard actions
  7. Europhobia
  8. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (2016), Season 1
  9. Darkness and light in ScottKit
  10. PutFixedDueDateScheduleStorageFixedDueDateSchedulesByFixedDueDateScheduleIdResponse
  11. Occurrences (or daemons) in ScottKit
  12. Actions in ScottKit
  13. Rooms and items in ScottKit
  14. Building adventure games with ScottKit
  15. Scottkit is born! Only seven and a half years late!
  16. React error-message of the day
  17. They didn’t think it through #2: Jailbreak
  18. IFComp 2017 — The Interactive Fiction Competition
  19. What I’ve been reading lately, part 24
  20. What’s wrong with my printer? (HP CP1515n)
  21. Playing Spellbreaker (1985)
  22. Playing Sorcerer (1984)
  23. Finishing Enchanter (1983)
  24. Playing Enchanter (1983)
  25. Revisiting Flood Control Dam #3
  26. What I’ve been reading lately, part 23
  27. Apple: breaking things for no reason
  28. Consider a spherical, frictionless car of mass 1 …
  29. Judge Dredd (1995) vs. Dredd (2012)
  30. Facebook’s and eBay’s monopolies are very different from, and scarier than, Google’s. But what about Amazon?
  31. C. S. Lewis on neoliberalism in 2017
  32. Would Leave-voters accept this compromise on freedom of movement?
  33. Six films: Casablanca, Thor, Blade Runner, La La Land, Der Untergang, Psycho
  34. Have you voted yet? Vote!
  35. The top ten searches that bring people to this site
  36. The only thing I have to say about Thursday’s election
  37. “What should I prioritise that ahead of?”
  38. Three short videos
  39. Watch Rick and Morty
  40. Artwork from 1980
  41. How much do I really remember?
  42. Interesting people disagreeing about inequality
  43. What I’ve been reading lately, part 22
  44. The Good Life (1975-1978)
  45. Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection
  46. An in-depth critical analysis of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
  47. Watchmen (2009 movie), ultimate cut
  48. Rebooting Linux with every new kernel
  49. Post-politics life, day 1: status update
  50. Politics: the end
  51. Dear Lord, no!
  52. What I’ve been reading lately, part 21
  53. The Brexit deal that Theresa May already has
  54. The Brexit deal that Theresa May should be aiming for
  55. The sad tale of Uriah Kemp
  56. Butterflies (1978-1983)
  57. Quick thoughts on the future, if any, of the United Kingdom
  58. Sixty-one words on the Article 50 triggering
  59. All you need to know about version numbers in one page
  60. What drives political decisions in the UK?
  61. Whitesnake: a tragedy in about 12 acts
  62. Fraudulent health-care advertising: Bluecrest
  63. What I’ve been reading lately, part 20
  64. My birthday
  65. Omakase sushi — a new experience
  66. Please consider writing to your MP about child refugees
  67. A few thoughts on bringing up children with inquiring minds
  68. What I’ve been reading lately, part 19
  69. A quick question on the “What I’ve been reading lately” posts
  70. Why Trump matters to me: I love America
  71. Expertise vs. visibility of expertise
  72. The utter capitulation of Corbyn’s Labour
  73. Well done, everyone: we’ve reached ten thousand comments!
  74. I liked democracy. Let’s bring it back.
  75. Happy Accidents (2000)
  76. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011 Movie)
  77. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (TV Series)
  78. A careful and objective investigation into whether Trump is literally a psychopath
  79. Just to be clear: this is not a left/right, Democrat/Republican issue
  80. I just joined the Liberal Democrats
  81. Spot the difference: Neville Chamberlain/Theresa May edition
  82. Why is Jeremy Corbyn doing this?
  83. Good news on Trump: the American press is not taking this lying down
  84. The Trump administration: much, much worse than we thought
  85. Normalising anger and violence as part of the political discourse
  86. Why is Theresa May doing this?
  87. What I’ve been reading lately, part 18
  88. Very basic politics #5: why the rich tend to get richer
  89. Stranger Things: well worth watching
  90. What I’ve been listening to in 2016
  91. My new-year’s resolution: write a bad song every week
  92. Happy Days: I finished season 2, and I’m about done

2016 82

  1. What I’ve been reading lately, part 17
  2. Live video of Dancing Through the Storm by Crooked End at the Mitcheldean Festival
  3. Slightly bigger lunch today
  4. “As though God were a god”
  5. The abject and persistent incompetence of PlusNet
  6. Time for lunch!
  7. What I’ve been reading lately, part 16
  8. Why do I bother writing to my MP?
  9. On “On “On Monday I placed two apples””
  10. ** Reminder ** Biometrics Registration
  11. What Trump did right
  12. They walk among us
  13. What I’ve been reading lately, part 15
  14. How do people manage JavaScripts projects that contain multiple NPM packages?
  15. American presidents through the ages
  16. Trump and Hillary, they’re as bad as each other
  17. Brief thoughts on Doctor Strange
  18. A happy story about good service
  19. Live listening to Highway 61 Revisited
  20. What I’ve been reading lately, part 14
  21. My experiment as a Daily Mail commenter
  22. Introducing Thief Cops!
  23. Paul Simon: Still Crazy After All These Years (1975)
  24. Bob Dylan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
  25. Two messages to Theresa May
  26. What is the Conservative Party actually for?
  27. The concept of “victim blaming” is not helping
  28. What I’ve been listening to in 2015
  29. What I’ve been reading lately, part 13
  30. What is real?
  31. What I’ve been reading lately, part 12
  32. On using nuclear deterrents
  33. #harkive 2016 liveblog
  34. I’m giving up politics
  35. Next Saturday: our prog-rock band at the Mitcheldean Festival
  36. What I’ve been reading lately, part 11
  37. Vile Potatoes
  38. The first of two reasons I am very sad about the Brexit vote: direct consequences
  39. I do not accept the Brexit referendum result
  40. What happens now we’ve decided to Brexit?
  41. My last word on the European referendum
  42. Addressing the real “Project Fear”: eight things that terrify the Leavers, but shouldn’t
  43. Why am I on the same side as Cameron and Osborne?
  44. Let’s Take Back Control! We Want Our Country Back!
  45. Beer tragedy update: good news, bad news
  46. What I’ve been reading lately, part 10
  47. Chicken sort-of-korma
  48. Rebottling over-carbonated beer: a tragedy with a happy ending
  49. These are a few of my favourite novels
  50. The EU’s proposed “link tax”: a modest proposal
  51. A short, practical, quiz: figure out where you stand on copyright
  52. All the cool kids are using JSON instead of XML
  53. Goodbye to (nearly) all my 1980s computer games
  54. Does anyone want my old Commodore 64 Infocom games?
  55. Throwing out the sushi magazines (it’s not what it sounds like)
  56. A response from Joining Up Your Information; and my reply
  57. Turn your old electronics boxes inside out
  58. Throwing out more stuff — a continuing saga
  59. My reservation about Joining Up Your Information
  60. WHY did I have all this stuff?
  61. Finally dumping the obsolete technology
  62. Literature sequels #2: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, part 3
  63. Clearing out some junk: computing paraphernalia of yesteryear
  64. Literature sequels #1: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
  65. Another rip-off merchant: Chaucer Direct
  66. Birthday sushi
  67. A short open letter to Stephen Crabb, the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
  68. A job well done: our eldest turned 18 today
  69. Desert island albums #4: The Beatles — Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
  70. Brief thoughts on the budget
  71. A cake that didn’t quite work
  72. What is a good decision?
  73. Oh, and the chocolate-marmalade cake!
  74. Those pies in cross-section
  75. Last night’s baking
  76. What is a government actually for?
  77. The worst decision in the design of the Internet
  78. Today’s savoury pies
  79. Mid-morning snack
  80. Two savoury pies, done right
  81. Get your “Kylo Stabbed First” T-shirts!
  82. A Bad Day for the Enemy, by Daniel Taylor

2015 79

  1. Four different miniature pies
  2. Savoury tartlets — four different kinds
  3. The Force Awakens was awesome and I loved it
  4. Ladies and gentlemen, our glorious NHS
  5. Understanding Tony Blair, as explained by Tony Blair
  6. What I did on my holidays
  7. Desert island albums #3: Blue Öyster Cult — Fire of Unknown Origin (1981)
  8. Why I’m jealous of my eldest son
  9. Osborne’s spending review
  10. My, and my wife’s, submissions on the NHS Agenda
  11. My comments on the Government’s call for evidence on Freedom Of Information
  12. A coding confession
  13. How to measure the strength of the economy, redux
  14. Application to coach the England rugby team
  15. Marquise au Chocolat
  16. Is the stock market zero-sum?
  17. How to drive away a repeat customer, in four identical steps
  18. When is competition beneficial?
  19. Dependency injection demystified
  20. Letter to my MP: Please vote AGAINST Osborne’s cuts to working tax credits
  21. How much are e-books worth compared with physical books?
  22. What I’ve been reading lately, part 9
  23. Austerity for the rich
  24. Sag gosht (lamb and spinach curry)
  25. The inauspicious beginning of my musical career
  26. Dawkins’ new “atheist bus” doesn’t go down as well as the original
  27. My comments on the Government’s BBC consultation
  28. Very basic politics #4: how do we measure the strength of the economy?
  29. Sit the heck down, and watch the darned rugby!
  30. The TO-DON’T list
  31. Tim Farron, Lib Dems and the Political Centre Ground
  32. Oh, Doctor! How are you going to get out of this one? (The Magician’s Apprentice)
  33. Where does the political centre lie?
  34. What does Jeremy Corbyn’s win mean for UK politics?
  35. Toilets. Newnham 2. Light vehicles only
  36. How Europcar stole £22.08 from me (and why you shouldn’t rent from them)
  37. What I’ve been reading lately, part 8
  38. Why does my knee hurt? Someone must know
  39. Crossfire, More Like a Teacake Vicar and Mike & Andy (1988)
  40. Anne Heap of Frogs (1987-1988)
  41. What the 2015 budget means for me, and why it’s vile
  42. Which Joni Mitchell album do JoniMitchell.com members think is best?
  43. What I’ve been reading lately, part 7
  44. What I’ve been reading lately, part 6
  45. Joni Mitchell: subverting expectation line by line, word by word and phoneme by phoneme
  46. What I’ve been reading lately, part 5
  47. e-Book piracy: a moral dilemma
  48. Recordings from the Mitcheldean pre-Festival concert
  49. The Mitcheldean pre-Festival concert
  50. Coming up: Mitcheldean pre-Festival concert on Saturday 30 May
  51. Paul Actual McCartney
  52. Election results #5: why UKIP won 12% of the vote but only one seat
  53. Election results #4: why were the Liberal Democrats wiped out?
  54. Election results #3: why did Labour lose?
  55. Election results #2: why did the SNP take nearly every seat in Scotland?
  56. Election results #1: why did the Conservatives win?
  57. A meta-comment on voting in the election
  58. Announcement regarding changes to church policy
  59. A final thought on the election
  60. Very basic politics #3: where has all the money gone?
  61. So how was the Cinderford Music Festival?
  62. I’m playing a half-hour set at the Cinderford Music Festival tomorrow at 1:30pm
  63. Very basic politics #2: what is government spending for?
  64. Very basic politics #1: three ways to deal with the deficit
  65. My quest to become overweight
  66. Liberal Democrat manifesto on policing and security service powers
  67. What I’ve been reading lately, part 4
  68. A busy few days
  69. Great service is not dead
  70. Old music was better
  71. Help me understand poetry
  72. I’m going to see Paul McCartney!
  73. What I’ve been reading lately, part 3
  74. What I’ve been listening to in 2014
  75. I’m leaving on a jet plane
  76. What I’ve been reading lately, part 2
  77. Happy Days: mid-season-2 report
  78. It’s impossible to melt a Cadbury Flake
  79. Sunday in the Park with George

2014 73

  1. How to write a song (as told by someone who’s never written a song)
  2. What I’ve been listening to in 2013
  3. What I’ve been reading lately, part 1
  4. Happy Days: not what I expected
  5. John Lewis: incompetent, unresponsive and dishonest
  6. Catastrophic failure by John Lewis
  7. Specific is universal
  8. What I’ve been listening to in 2009
  9. Pedro Lopes’s 1990s heavy metal timeline
  10. SPOILERS! In which I whine about Doctor Who again
  11. Dream Theater, Under a Glass Moon (July 1992) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 22
  12. Upgrading my Lego Star Destroyer
  13. Metallica, Enter Sandman (July 1991) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 21
  14. Motörhead, Ace of Spades (October 1980) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 20
  15. Ozzy Ozbourne, Crazy Train (September 1980) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 19
  16. Whitesnake, Fool for Your Loving (May 1980) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 18
  17. Judas Priest, Breaking the Law (April 1980) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 17
  18. Iron Maiden, Phantom of the Opera (April 1980) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 16
  19. Scorpions, I Can’t Get Enough (February 1979) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 15
  20. But Mike, what do you think of the new Doctor Who?
  21. How to run 5 km (aging, overweight people edition)
  22. Rainbow, Stargazer (May 1976) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 14
  23. AC/DC, It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll) (December 1975) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 13
  24. Rush, Anthem (February 1975) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 12
  25. Blue Öyster Cult, Workshop of the Telescopes (January 1972) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 11
  26. Black Sabbath addendum — Heavy Metal timeline, part 10a
  27. Black Sabbath, Paranoid (August 1970) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 10
  28. Deep Purple, Child in Time (June 1970) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 9
  29. MC5, Kick Out the Jams (February 1969) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 8
  30. Led Zeppelin, Dazed and Confused (January 1969) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 7
  31. The Beatles, Helter Skelter (November 1968) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 6
  32. Steppenwolf, Born to be Wild (June 1968) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 5
  33. Cream, Sunshine of your Love (November 1967) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 4
  34. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Purple Haze (March 1967) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 3
  35. The Who, My Generation (November 1965) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 2
  36. The Kinks, You Really Got Me (August 1964) — Heavy Metal timeline, part 1
  37. A Heavy Metal timeline: introduction
  38. Consider driving a hire-car home from the airport
  39. Dear git: STOP CHANGING DEFAULT BEHAVIOUR!
  40. Good customer service from Tesco
  41. Six days to go till the new Doctor!
  42. “Meanwhile, McCarthy heads for Berlin …”
  43. “The Show” (Vineyard Community Church, Bermondsey, 21 July 1991)
  44. How unutterably rude Skype has become
  45. My solo set at the Mitcheldean Festival
  46. Replacement plate for Daewoo microwave
  47. Final programme for the Mitcheldean Folk Festival
  48. Desert island albums #2: Rainbow — Rising (1976)
  49. Oh, England.
  50. Separated at birth? Richard Owen and William Hartnell
  51. Also coming up (and more exciting): band set at the Mitcheldean Folk Festival
  52. Coming up: solo set at the Mitcheldean Folk Festival
  53. To Kill A Mockingbird is a fine example of how copyright is failing us all
  54. Cinderford Music Festival fundraising gig
  55. Some insurers just can’t take a hint
  56. Desert island albums #1: Joni Mitchell — Hejira (1976)
  57. New free software for drawing diagrams of vertebral columns
  58. C++: the good parts
  59. JavaScript hashes that inherit from a parent
  60. Seriously: shop around for your car insurance
  61. The Once and Future King on compromise and disillusionment in middle age
  62. When good standards go bad
  63. Jerry Springer: The Opera: the review
  64. Who is this for?
  65. My response to the Privacy and Security inquiry
  66. Go home, JavaScript, you are drunk
  67. Welcome to Britain, where you’re legally innocent until suspected
  68. Paul Simon: There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973)
  69. Snowden-haters are on the wrong side of history
  70. The paperback of The Eleventh Doctor has arrived!
  71. The Eleventh Doctor is now available in paperback
  72. I’m looking for jacket quotes for the paperback edition of my Doctor Who book
  73. My book is out! The Eleventh Doctor: a critical ramble through Matt Smith’s tenure in Doctor Who

2013 56

  1. Two film reviews: The Desolation of Smaug and The Desolation of Smaug
  2. We’re selling our model railway
  3. Spotify’s recommendation engine could use some work
  4. Another Doctor Who book that you should read
  5. How can I make chapter links in my Kindle book?
  6. Guinnevere, at Goodrich Village Hall
  7. I’m looking for Beta-testers for my Doctor Who book
  8. What I’ve been listening to in 2012
  9. Artwork for The Eleventh Doctor book
  10. … Or maybe they’re doing web-site registration completely right
  11. Get your absurdly cheap Joni Mitchell box-sets
  12. How I nearly became Everton manager (1998)
  13. Getting website registration completely wrong
  14. Saying goodbye to the first two charity spammers
  15. Announcing my book about The Eleventh Doctor
  16. On singing songs live for the first time
  17. If The White Album hadn’t been a double
  18. Dear charities: stop spamming me
  19. TalkTalk want £10 for a 13-month-old bill
  20. Shift-Ctrl-V: paste without formatting
  21. Saying goodbye to Twitter
  22. Singing and playing guitar again
  23. What is the opposite of “man”
  24. Turn up the volume!
  25. Misunderstanding natural monopoly
  26. What should I be using for email?
  27. Breakfast
  28. James Bond movies, part 6: Pierce Brosnan
  29. Answering 25 tough interview questions, part 5
  30. Answering 25 tough interview questions, part 4
  31. Answering 25 tough interview questions, part 3
  32. My new favourite Unicode characters
  33. Answering 25 tough interview questions, part 2
  34. Answering 25 tough interview questions, part 1
  35. A quick thought on The Name of the Doctor
  36. Oops, I did it again
  37. This is why I’m fat
  38. Dear America: you are insane
  39. The reason Doctor Who is the best thing on TV
  40. The Rings of Akhaten (Doctor Who series 7, episode 7)
  41. Things that Americans find incomprehensible about the UK
  42. Things that Brits find incomprehensible about the USA
  43. The Bells of Saint John (Doctor Who series 7, episode 6)
  44. My new bat-plan
  45. A brief comment on Margaret Thatcher
  46. They didn’t think it through #1: Stormbringer
  47. Mike’s bang-up-to-date review of The Snowmen
  48. An abstract noun for 2013
  49. Login to My Account to view your bill
  50. Pear cider
  51. On Stewart Lee and the art of stand-up comedy
  52. The four funniest words in the English language …
  53. G. K. Chesterton on Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films
  54. A movie-piracy moral dilemma
  55. A short post on Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings movie
  56. Centric Events are repeat spammers

2012 68

  1. Where the Council of Elrond went wrong
  2. I wish Jackson hadn’t ruined Galadriel’s speech
  3. No, Peter Jackson is not doing a George Lucas
  4. Why armed guards in schools are a bad idea
  5. Some thoughts on The Hobbit, part 1: An Unexpected Journey
  6. Pulled back into PlusNet after all
  7. Trying to escape from PlusNet
  8. All eight Harry Potter films reviewed in 300 words
  9. Inclusive and Exclusive OR in informal speech
  10. First Direct: excellent bank but iniquitous cashpoint charge
  11. James Bond movies, part 5: Timothy Dalton
  12. My review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  13. James Bond movies, part 4: Sean Connery returns again
  14. James Bond movies, part 3: Roger Moore
  15. James Bond movies, part 2: George Lazenby, and Connery returns
  16. James Bond movies, part 1: Sean Connery
  17. Dear Vodafone, are you lying thieving cheats, or just incompetent?
  18. Dear Network Solutions, are you lying thieving cheats, or just incompetent?
  19. Classic rock for Fundamentalists: the whole story
  20. The freedom to post pictures of burning poppies
  21. Classic rock for Fundamentalists, 7: Joni Mitchell
  22. Classic rock for Fundamentalists, 6: Phil Collins
  23. Classic rock for Fundamentalists, 5: Judas Priest
  24. Classic rock for Fundamentalists, 4: AC/DC
  25. Classic rock for Fundamentalists, 3: Chris Rea
  26. Classic rock for Fundamentalists, 2: Black Sabbath
  27. Classic rock for Fundamentalists, 1: Meat Loaf
  28. On the iPad’s charging cable
  29. My dog’s got no nose: The Whole Story
  30. The future of librarianship
  31. Shepherd’s pie symbolises everything I loathe about English food
  32. Stupidest fact about XML
  33. Free Speech in the UK
  34. Why Plusnet is not my favourite ISP
  35. Paul Simon: Paul Simon (1972)
  36. Scumbag Network Solutions
  37. Doctor Who, series 7 — all five episodes reviewed
  38. How I came to buy the DVD of series 2 of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle
  39. Dear dessert-marketing corporations: please do not attempt philosophy
  40. I despair of English football
  41. Captcha gone crazy
  42. Help the USA into the 21st century (even if you’re not American)
  43. Mike’s bang-up-to-date review of The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
  44. Has Apple gone too far with its iBrick?
  45. Mushroom soup
  46. Foolproof super-simple but awesome recipe: mushroom pasta
  47. Can birds fly into a headwind that is faster than their own maximum speed?
  48. Who needs access? You need access!
  49. My dinner tonight
  50. The scandal of academic publishing
  51. Pointless restrictions
  52. Most hostile search page ever?
  53. Then and now: watercolour and photo
  54. My plan for 2012: do things that children do
  55. Oppose SOPA, PIPA and the RWA
  56. How to get into space cheaply
  57. Top albums of 2011: the final results
  58. Top albums of 2011, #1: Spring Hill (2011), Chloe and Silas
  59. Top albums of 2011, #2: Days of Open Hand (1990), Suzanne Vega
  60. Top albums of 2011, #3: The Incident (2009), Porcupine Tree
  61. Top albums of 2011, #4: So Beautiful or So What (2011), Paul Simon
  62. Top albums of 2011, #5: Liege and Lief (1969), Fairport Convention
  63. Top albums of 2011, #6: The End of History (2006), Fionn Regan
  64. Top albums of 2011, #7: Help! (1965), The Beatles
  65. Top albums of 2011, #8: Blue Divide (1994), Richard Shindell
  66. Top albums of 2011, #9: CSN (1977), Crosby, Stills and Nash
  67. Top albums of 2011, #10: Hejira (1976), Joni Mitchell
  68. What I’ve been listening to in 2011

2011 82

  1. The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe: first thoughts
  2. What I did on my holidays
  3. Ignoring things
  4. EasyJet have stolen my money
  5. More from C. S. Lewis on lowbrow and highbrow art
  6. C. S. Lewis on the lowbrow/highbrow distinction
  7. G. K. Chesterton on enjoying lowbrow art
  8. Linear Narrative
  9. Buffy, season 6
  10. Face it, Google: Everyone hates the new Google Reader
  11. Decomposing an image to CMYK in Gimp
  12. Make an omelette
  13. The new new frontier
  14. “You can do anything if you believe in yourself”
  15. More thoughts on The Wedding of River Song
  16. The Wedding of River Song (Doctor Who series 6, episode 13)
  17. What do we know about the Lake Silencio incident?
  18. A quick apology …
  19. Closing Time (Doctor Who series 6, episode 12)
  20. The God Complex (Doctor Who series 6, episode 11)
  21. The Girl Who Waited (Doctor Who series 6, episode 10)
  22. Night Terrors (Doctor Who series 6, episode 9)
  23. Well, that about wraps it up for copyright
  24. Whose account? TalkTalk gets confused
  25. Let’s Kill Hitler (Doctor Who series 6, episode 8)
  26. Folk music: Chloe and Silas hit it out of the park
  27. Oh, Lord Vader!
  28. One million hits
  29. Building a model railway, part 2: track and hills
  30. British folk music update
  31. Building a model railway, part 1: planning the layout
  32. Building a model railway, part 0: our old railway
  33. A Good Man Goes to War (Doctor Who series 6, episode 7)
  34. A quest fulfilled
  35. C. S. Lewis on intelligence in Christianity
  36. More wisdom from Matt
  37. Growing in wisdom through being dumb
  38. Children of Earth: the final verdict, part 2: how Torchwood stopped sucking
  39. Children of Earth: the final verdict, part 1: why Torchwood sucks
  40. On trying to read Pawn of Prophecy
  41. Credit where it’s due: Children of Earth
  42. How tired is too tired?
  43. Web-sites! Do NOT pre-populate URL fields with “http://”
  44. Memory expansions then and now
  45. Modern British folk singers
  46. On trying to read Dune
  47. How much I hate Torchwood
  48. It’s gone quiet around here
  49. I made some sushi –and– I have the Doctor Who Shakes
  50. The Almost People, redux: let’s see if we can sort this out
  51. The Almost People (Doctor Who series 6, episode 6)
  52. Dumbed down
  53. The Rebel Flesh (Doctor Who series 6, episode 5)
  54. How to get things done: don’t open your post
  55. The Doctor’s Wife (Doctor Who series 6, episode 4)
  56. The Curse of the Black Spot (Doctor Who series 6, episode 3)
  57. The British public has spoken!
  58. Stop voting for lizards; start voting for people.
  59. British readers: vote on AV tomorrow!
  60. Step up to the plate, Mister President
  61. Whither publishers?, part 2
  62. Day of the Moon (Doctor Who series 6, episode 2)
  63. Voting reform in the UK
  64. A spoileriffic Doctor Who question
  65. The Impossible Astronaut (Doctor Who series 6, episode 1)
  66. Mike’s bang-up-to-date review of A Christmas Carol
  67. The music industry finds another way to shoot itself in the foot
  68. Semantic mapping is hard
  69. Programming Books, part 5: Programming Pearls
  70. Farmers, miners and investors
  71. Crunchiegate: the bitter end
  72. I just named a new dinosaur!
  73. Whither publishers?
  74. Crunchiegate: the cover-up continues!
  75. Everyone wins!
  76. Crunchiegate: full investigation started!
  77. Reclaiming 75p for a receipt-less Crunchie
  78. What is there to drink that tastes as good as beer and wine?
  79. Tagore Smith on functional programming
  80. What I’ve been listening to in 2010
  81. On arbitrariness
  82. Luke Skywalker: A New Hope

2010 99

  1. Mike’s bang-up-to-date review of Revenge of the Sith
  2. Names or numbers: pick one
  3. How many devices do you need?
  4. Dammit, Amazon.com, will you please let me use my store credit?
  5. If I buy a US Kindle from amazon.com, will it work in the UK?
  6. How to set a price. Or: cost, value, and price
  7. Now that’s what I call service!
  8. Acaren and the Evil Wizards, by Matthew Taylor
  9. Let’s do everything!
  10. How to render a press release tolerable
  11. Steve Jobs “never had any designs. He has not designed a single project”
  12. Bibliographic data, part 3: Has anyone, anywhere, ever read the whole of the RDA specification?
  13. Bibliographic data, part 2: Dublin Core’s dirty little secret
  14. Bibliographic data, part 1: MARC and its vile progeny
  15. Insult to Injury
  16. Five and a half months late
  17. The stupidest thing in the world
  18. Sidebar rescue!
  19. Another really, really stupid thing
  20. The second stupidest thing in the world
  21. The third stupidest thing in the world
  22. The Big Bang (11th Doctor, episode 13)
  23. Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet — I’ve been busy dissecting an ostrich skull
  24. The Pandorica Opens (11th Doctor, episode 12)
  25. Perl’s *DBM_File packages: what the heck are you people thinking?
  26. What’s in the box?
  27. How correct is correct enough?
  28. The Lodger (11th Doctor, episode 11)
  29. Vincent and the Doctor (11th Doctor, episode 10)
  30. Buffy, Season 2, Episode 1 (When She Was Bad)
  31. The Madness of Russell T. Davies, part 2: just not bothering
  32. We can’t afford to write safe software
  33. Cold Blood (11th Doctor, episode 9)
  34. A hard-to-find bug, and equivalent APIs in low- and high-level languages
  35. The Hungry Earth (11th Doctor, episode 8)
  36. The long-overdue serious attempt at The Silmarillion, part 3: that was awesome!
  37. How slow are functional implementations of quicksort?
  38. Amy’s Choice (11th Doctor, episode 7)
  39. What does it take to test a sorting routine?
  40. Another challenge: can you write a correct selection sort?
  41. The single dumbest message ever emitted by a computer … it’s back!
  42. Buffy: The movie, last hour, 29 minutes and four seconds
  43. Buffy: The movie, first four minutes and twelve seconds
  44. Buffy: Season 1, revisited
  45. You could have invented git (and maybe you already have!)
  46. Still hatin’ on git: now with added Actual Reasons!
  47. Git is a Harrier Jump Jet. And not in a good way
  48. The Vampires of Venice (11th Doctor, episode 6)
  49. The long-overdue serious attempt at The Silmarillion, part 2: the Kinslaying
  50. The long-overdue serious attempt at The Silmarillion, part 1: what it isn’t and what it is
  51. Introducing z2uddi, the Z39.50-to-UDDI gateway
  52. Flesh and Stone (11th Doctor, episode 5)
  53. Writing correct code, part 3: preconditions and postconditions (binary search part 4c)
  54. Writing correct code, part 2: bound functions (binary search part 4b)
  55. What free music-studio software should I use?
  56. Writing correct code, part 1: invariants (binary search part 4a)
  57. The Time of Angels (11th Doctor, episode 4)
  58. Testing is not a substitute for thinking (binary search part 3)
  59. Common bugs and why exercises matter (binary search part 2)
  60. Are you one of the 10% of programmers who can write a binary search?
  61. Oh, and by the way …
  62. Victory of the Daleks (11th Doctor, episode 3)
  63. The Madness of Russell T. Davies, part 1: criticism
  64. The long-overdue serious attempt at Lisp, part 2: is Lisp just too hard?
  65. Frameworks and leaky abstractions
  66. The Beast Below (11th Doctor, episode 2)
  67. Slicing your 2D class/function matrix vertically or horizontally
  68. The radius of comprehension — in PragPub
  69. Programming Books, part 4: The C Programming Language
  70. Ages of Doctor Who actors on their debuts
  71. The eleventh Doctor: first impressions
  72. The collapse of complex computer programs
  73. Early experiments with JRuby
  74. Today is Document Freedom Day!
  75. A brief, yet helpful, lesson on elementary resource-locking strategy
  76. What is “simplicity” in programming?, redux
  77. What is “simplicity” in programming?
  78. Train Wreck: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
  79. The long-overdue serious attempt at Lisp, part 1: which Lisp?
  80. The hacker, the architect and the superhero: three completely different ways to be an excellent programmer
  81. So what actually is my favourite programming language?
  82. Why Java Is Not My Favourite Programming Language
  83. Why Ruby Is Not My Favourite Programming Language
  84. Why C Is Not My Favourite Programming Language
  85. Why JavaScript is not my favourite programming language
  86. Why Perl is not my favourite programming language
  87. Why C++ is not my favourite programming language
  88. Programming Books, part 3: Programming the Commodore 64
  89. The difference between imperative and functional programming
  90. Where Dijkstra went wrong: the value of BASIC as a first programming language
  91. My early experiences with Commodore computers
  92. Programming Books, part 2: The Elements of Programming Style
  93. Some sushi I made the other day
  94. Whatever happened to programming, redux: it may not be as bad as all that
  95. Whatever happened to programming?
  96. Learning a language vs. learning a culture
  97. Programming Books, part 1: Coders at Work
  98. Closures, finally explained!
  99. I know this blog doesn’t exactly make sense …