Posts from 2018

22 Nov 2018

More TV tunnels

Thanks to a recent generous gift - I am the owner of an Oculus Go VR headset - and thanks to a recommendation from a friend, I’ve been thinking about TV tunnels again. I was already following Matt Parker, standup mathematician, but when I heard that Matt was publishing videos about the spherical Droste effect, well, I couldn’t resist. These two videos are great fun: definitely best viewed in VR.

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22 Nov 2018

GoggleGoggleGoggleBox

I think I got/stole this idea listening to the Adam Buxton podcast a while back. It sort of nearly happened in real life, but not quite. Background: Gogglebox, like battered Mars bars, is one of those things that when you first hear of it - if you’re me, anyway - you dismiss. Watching people watching TV? Why would that be any good? If you haven’t watched it, give it a go.

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28 Oct 2018

Am I on time?

Is there something which will tell me - while I’m riding a bike - whether I’m on time for a train? Even if I could find the right app, fiddling with a smartphone isn’t an option: it’s already cold enough in Cambridge that I’m wearing gloves on my pedal-based commute. My Garmin Edge GPS offers “ETA”, can be operated with gloves on, can follow a track and offers “training mode”, all of which seems promising.

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22 May 2018

I remain a Northerner...

…sort of. Not so long ago I realised that I might not be a northerner any more (statistically speaking). I have a bit of an accent, I have my dinner at lunchtime and my tea at suppertime, so this came as a bit of a wake-up call! I’ve lived in Cambridge since undergraduate days: it’s the place I’ve spent most time living, and round about now I’m passing the point at which it’s been my home for 50% of my life (so far!

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01 Apr 2018

How to lock a VW without setting the alarm

We are not the first to experience a problem with the boot sensor on our Volkswagen (the internet suggests). So I am posting this in the hope that it helps someone else in the future. Here is how to lock a modern VW without switching on/activating the “anti-theft alarm” (see near the end for step-by-step instructions). We used to own a Golf, and its alarm started going off because it “thought” its boot - or trunk, if you prefer - was opened.

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31 Mar 2018

Secret Garden next left

Thanks no doubt to its high quality writing, my humble blog is followed by up to at least 1 million readers. This is in some senses a sponsored post, because (full disclosure) a kind and generous benefactor has sent me an item to review. The item in question comprises 1,200g of dried fruit, butter, eggs, nuts, sugar and sherry, at least some of which is a concealed citrus fruit. True Mozz food then.

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16 Feb 2018

Blue-toothed yellowbike

Australian bird names (the English names, anyway) are often enjoyably “say what you see”. A long time ago Sarah and I spent an unforgettable time in Oz, up close and personal with a lot of wildlife. We imagined the early colonists, privileged first Westerners (or Easterners, depending how you measure it) seeing species for the first time and being the ones to pick names for the new things. It’s feeding on honey?

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18 Jan 2018

The Wind in the Willows

Honoured to be invited for lunch in Trinity Hall today. I got to see the Trinity Hall Prime in the SCR and met some friends for a catch up. On the way over Garret Hostel Bridge the evidence of last night’s storm was viscerally obvious. With reference to the title of this blog post (I’m no dendrologist)… this is (was!) a willow tree, right? [Full size image]

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