Tag: Opinion

Some orders of nobility are just much cooler than others, although England doesn't do cool very well.

Why do product manufacturers write instructions in a font only an eagle could read?

I take aim at pop-ups. The sort that ask you to subscribe to a newsletter or whatever. I think the web would be a better place without them.

Apple have made my early 2013 MacBook Pro obsolete, so I need to consider upgrading if I want to remain in the macOS ecosystem.

My iPad seems to drain some battery even when it is powered off overnight. I think this has something to do with iPadOS 13.5 or 13.5.1.

Confirmation bias is blight on human decision making. Are there ways we can avoid it?

The Premier League is considering restarting the season, I suspect mainly for financial reasons.

The support offered by big companies is often terrible and that's particularly true for big tech.

Why are we plagued by intrusive tracking and advertising without our informed consent?

A subjective comparison of Node.js Javascript versus PHP. It's horses for courses.

Will society learn lessons from this coronavirus pandemic? Will it reward the people we depend on in the long term?

What exercises can you perform on the Ironmaster IM2000? This article lists those exercises.

Why does the horizontal scroll bar on MS Code disappear when you hover over it?

How does the entire economy of a planet collapse? Surely these things are only relative.

Just some fairly pointless thoughts about the current coronavirus situation.

A summary of what we know about Apple AirTags, which is nothing, really, because it's all rumour and speculation.

ISPs often levy charges if you move away from them and want to keep using the email address you had with them.

Now that it has reached its tenth birthday, has the iPad been a success or a failure?

My thoughts on Sonos's announcement that they're dropping support for older kit.

At what age are we considered young, middle-aged or old? I've done a little research.

A rant at council planning departments and the lack of thought they show when approving planning applications.

Comments about how the UK rail network is so expensive these days. It seems to have lost the main reason it exists.

Just musing on the number of things in my living room that are currently plugged in.

Why do baby boomers get all the blame for climate change? All generations have played their own part in it.

Steve Hanke and Dick Henry suggest doing away with timezones. And they suggest reformatting the calendar whilst we're at it. Here's my take on that.

Apple manages to upset users of its Reminders app with a poorly planned release schedule, giving us iOS/iPadOS 13 a few weeks ahead of macOS Catalina.

Why haven't aliens visited us? This is the Fermi Paradox and I look at some of the reasons why this might be the case.

The thought process behind my decision to upgrade from my iPhone 6 to an iPhone 11.

The rules I'd like to see governing online advertising and privacy therein. Something like this will happen. Privacy breaches and onerous advertising will force it.

For no useful reason I wanted to see if I could connect Steve Harley to Camila Cabello. It turns out I could.

Why publishers, advertisers and advertising networks need to get together to ensure advertising is acceptable to users.

The government underestimates another project, this time it's HS2. Why do they always underestimate these things?

The linked article specifically talks about bipolar's depiction in 'Midsommar' but it's equally true of all mental health depictions in TV and film.

Is there a better way than those currently in common use to check if a website visitor is a robot?

I'm hearing lots about 5G these days, which is intensely frustrating as I get 0G most of the time.

There has been some legal tightening of privacy protections in the last few years with things like GDPR, but the privacy policies of many sites are still too impenetrable.

My ideas for reforming the insurance industry, which seems uniquely geared to simply taking premiums off us at the moment.

An advert draws the ire of the Advertising Standards Authority because someone jumps off a cliff and sprouts wings.

I changed my blog titles from title case to sentence case but I still don't know which I prefer.

The song No Goverment by Anti-Pasti, which I only remembered because someone ordered an antipasti pizza.

Chris Sievey was Frank Sidebottom and, sadly, more people remember him for that than his band, The Freshies.

A comparison on the Ironmaster IM2000, the Powertec Workbench LeverGym and the Body-Solid Series 7 Smith Master System.

My own view of the Brexit situation based on an (admitedly small) number of friends whose preferences I'm aware of.

What I would like to see in iOS 13 for the iPad. Mouse support, filesystem access and xCode, essentially.

Why do organisations use the phrase 'we can't comment on individual cases'? Is it really always for confidentiality?

I dislike flat-pack items, but what I really take issue with is when flat-pack items are, in my opinion, misleadingly advertised.

5 truly dreadful songs from the 60s and 70s, at least in my opinion. Presented here with YouTube clips to back up my arguments.

Just some musings on some of the pointless technology produced these days, which I inevitably end up buying

The High Street appears to be in trouble and Mike Ashley recently told MPs how to save it. But I'm not so sure we want to save it anyway.

My HomePod seems to have a mind of its own sometimes and I think about that in this article, which also serves as a very brief review of the device.

Why do people spend so long at cashpoints, standing in front of me, making me get wet in the rain?

Love Island, Strictly, X-Factor, Big Brother, Keeping Up with the Kardashians and similar. Why are we constantly plagued by this nonsense on television?

What expectations should you have when it comes to influencing a privately-owned website's content? None at all, I argue.

Brief reviews of five fiction books I've read in 2018. Authors are Karin Slaughter, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Matt Haig and Gail Honeyman.

An argument in favour of written articles for imparting instruction and information (help texts, how-to articles etc.) rather than videos or podcasts.

Why you should maintain control of your creative content on the internet via your own website and the blueprint provided by IndieWeb.

I used to want categories as well as tags for Bear Writer but after using it for a number of months I now see how tags alone works fine.

Depression is a horrible disease but one thing it took me over 20 years to figure out is that it's really, really important to find someone you trust to talk to about it.

A comparison between phone and email as communications protocols and some very personal conclusions about which I think is the better.

A quick look at Filemaker 17 and a couple of the new features I find most interesting, along with a couple of my criticisms in general.

Windows 10 updates are complete mess. There's no control over when they'll run and, when they do run, they often fail, leaving you with the 'solution' being that you must reinstall the OS.

The Washington Post seems to charge people extra if they want GDPR compliance. This is wrong but with a little more thought the Washington Post could probably correct that.

The big tech companies rarely have genuine email support, which I think discriminates against the hard of hearing. Not only that, email is the most efficient way to provide support in most cases.

After a short foray into Twitter, I produce my recommendations about how to survive social media. Avoid the politics, essentially.

What does is mean for leaseholders if a freehold becomes bona vacantia and reverts to the Crown? In this article I look at how that situation affects leaseholders and what they should do to mitigate it.

A rare diversion into politics for me about why it's all rather pointless when it comes to effecting real change.

A look at how social media has lessened the need for things like site identity and a home page. But is it wise to make social media your only 'home' on the internet?

Ten punk songs (with YouTube links), mainly from the late 70s and early 80s. Includes songs by Wire, X-Ray Spex, The Only Ones, Crass and others.

A look at the rights of owner-occupiers in an RTM management company, in particular how things might play out between the owner-occupiers and the landlords who share the same building.

How should we use categories and tags on a blog? I offer some suggestions in this article and I think categories should represent a different grouping of information to tags.

I received a brand new 12.9 inch iPad Pro and accessories. In this article I explain the unboxing process, my first impressions and some of the initial tasks I needed to do.

I have decided to switch from using a MacBook Pro to using an iPad Pro as my main computer. I'm planning to document my progress and this is the first article on the subject where I assess my requirements and make my purchase.

Why the drive to make us avoid processed foods is a conspiracy between the government and sprout cultivators.

My rant about how I hate tardiness, either when it's me who's late or when someone else is late for an appointment with me.

I think multi-factor authentication can often be less secure than single-factor authentication - i.e. a single password - and in this article I explain why.

One of the main problems with product reviews is the inherent subjectivity of them. In this article I look at how product reviews can be written to help overcome subjectivity.

Why do we have digital piracy? I suspect the main reason is down to the prices charged by the digital media companies themselves.

My thoughts about Apple computers five years after switching to the platform from Windows. Would I now switch back to Windows again?

Why I chose to use Jekyll, a static blog generation app, to power this site rather than something like Wordpress.

Let's rescue the exclamation mark from all the abuse and overuse it suffers today. 99% of all exclamation marks on the internet are unnecessary.

A description of my GTD process, which currently incorporates native MacOS apps along with OmniFocus and Ulysses. I still want to find a Holy Grail of GTD though.