je t'aime
Walking through Newcastle earlier this month I noticed this graffito. L'amour est partout où tu regardes.…
circling round
When I got a my first full-time job, at Birmingham University, it was the second time that I'd moved from northeast England to Birmingham, because I did my BSc at the same university.…
6 months of Instagram
I've now posted a photo to my Instagram every day for 6 months. I'm halfway through the first year, and a quarter of the way through my two-year part-time degree.…
kakistocracy
There's a train of thought, among those fed up with the government of the day or cynical about politics in general, that all politicians are crooks, and that only bad people could even want to be in politics. But I've known some very nice people who have been politicians, so I know this isn't true.…
online social networking in the 1980s
Last week the Ironic Sans blog published an article about joining an online social network in 1998 with the passing comment that “many consider [sixdegrees.com] the first online social network”. Also this week, while googling for something else, I…
Audio Technica SR5BT
I haven't written a product review for quite a while, so I thought I'd review the Audio Technica headphones I bought in October.…
the bloom of sodium lamps
Sodium lamps outside bloomed orange in the condensation-covered windows.…
Newcastle revisited
Returning to Newcastle 25 years after living here has been a disorientating experience. Walking down familiar streets, there are unfamiliar absences and presences, and, which is even odder, buildings that I can see are new, but I can't for the life of me remember what was there before.…
adventures in social media
Today I travelled to Newcastle to start on my MA in Creative Writing. I don't really remember what it felt like to come here 29 years ago, to start my PhD.…
eliminating LGBTphobia
Before assessing the benefits of eliminating homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, it’s important to understand that you can’t eliminate those without eliminating their causes. So what are the causes of LGBTphobia?…
the centres cannot hold
I was interested to read a news story the other day warning that town centres could become ghost towns because experts have been warning that this was going to happen since the mid 1980s.…
spaced out on synths
Any of my friends who have spent much time in either my dwelling or my car, have probably noticed that a lot of the music I like is low on singing and drums, and high in synthesizers, particularly those fuzzy old analogue synths.…