• New Star Trek series confirms there is no God in the Trek universe

    After the nonsense of the “wormhole Gods” in DS9 I’m glad to read that there is no God in the new Star Trek series. It’s no surprise that Star Trek TNG was a God-free zone, given creator Gene Roddenberry was an ardent atheist. Some of his thoughts on religion were worthy of so-called “New Atheists”: […]

  • Fight Dementia

    On Saturday I’ll be going for a walk, and I need your help. With me will be – at least – sixteen members of my family, all doing the Alzheimer’s memory walk in remembrance of my Dad. Amazingly we’ve already beaten our target of raising £500 for the Alzheimer’s Society. The charity helps people with […]

  • Review: Rennie Mackintosh Hotel, Glasgow

    The good: Staff were friendly, the bed was comfortable and my room was reasonably well lit. All the usual refreshments were in the room, too. The not-so-good; The floors throughout were wonky and creaky, coupled with a low ceiling made it feel a bit like a fairground crazy house. There is no lift, and access to […]

  • My Travel To-Do List

    Having never been much of a traveller, getting a job that means at least two trips per year has led to a big change in my attitude about travelling. In fact, the day I joined the company I was in Lisbon meeting my new team mates! Since then I’ve been to Park City, New Orleans, […]

  • I voted.

    There not being a Something New candidate for Lichfield (maybe next time) I voted for; Proper funding of the NHS, An end to pay freezes for nurses and doctors and other public sector staff who make our country function, The school that my son will attend in September to have more money, not fewer teachers, […]

  • Thoughts on “equal” taxation, LTV, deficits and stable economies

    Today I replied to a friend on Facebook who takes issue with Labour’s proposals to increase income tax, and he mentioned a few points which I wanted to take the time to respond to with more independent voices on those topics. I thought it worth sharing: I won’t try to change your mind, only plead with you to […]

  • The Internet’s Own Boy

    Aaron Swartz was a phenomenal person. Watching The Internet’s Own Boy recently reminded me of that fact. The film is, to me, a fantastic reminder that the internet needs to remain open, that access to public information should always be free and open. Some of my early activism was based on this. I was once involved in […]

  • Huel

    Last year I started using Huel. I prefer to eat my own food, I avoid ready meals (although, I have to make exceptions for pie and pizza!) but I find cooking to be incredibly boring. I just have better things to do with my life (like binge-watch Star Trek)! Trying to get a balanced diet also isn’t that easy […]

  • 13th

    Shortly after the US Presidential Election and Trump’s victory there, I watched 13th – a documentary about the US Justice system. The film explores the history of incarceration in the US and suggests mass incarceration grew out of slavery and became a huge business profiting from the system’s inherent racism and the slave labour of prisoners. It’s definitely […]

  • Late escape your WordPress plugins!

    A little while ago a colleague shared this interesting article from RIPS on the state of WordPress security. It focused on an automated analysis of 44,705 plugins from the WordPress.org plugin directory (almost all of them). They found that 68.4% of those plugins contained cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. That’s a huge number, and a huge number of vulnerable […]