Jonny Nexus

Category: Life

  • The Oxfam Second-Hand Bookshop Dilemma Solved

    I have a dilemma when it comes to second-hand bookshops. It’s daft, illogical, and perhaps even eco-unfriendly I know, but I worry that by buying a second-hand book I’m letting down its author, who will receive no payment from me for reading his or her work. Don’t get me wrong: I think second-hand bookshops are…

  • An Open Apology To The Train Gods

    Dear Sir or Madam, I apologise for the vagueness with which I’m addressing you; mythological literature is somewhat lacking in detail when it comes to determining just who is responsible for train-based transportation. Regardless, it is now clear to me beyond all reasonable doubt that you exist. A few weeks ago I informed a colleague…

  • Why I Think “Free” News Could Be A Dangerous Thing

    It’s just been announced that the London Evening Standard is to become a free paper (at present it’s 50p) and will most likely merge with it’s already free London Lite sibling. Now I have a number of issues about this, not least of which is that I like the Evening Standard and generally buy it…

  • Strictly Week One: Thoughts and Musings

    Last night, my other half and I finally got round to watching last Saturday’s Strictly Come Dancing (what the rest of the world calls “Dancing with the Stars”) on catchup. It eventually came down to a dance off between former tennis player Martina Hingis and former policeman and now TV presenter Rav Wilding, with the…

  • On The Simularity Between Signing Queues and Bus Queues

    One of the many misconceptions that people of other nationalities have of English people – Americans chief among them I’m afraid – is that we’re all so reserved and private that we’d rather die than exchange words with a stranger. Like most such stereotypes this is, of course, rubbish. It’s people like me from the…

  • The Old New Labour Playbook

    I’m not a fan of Margaret Thatcher by any means. Hell, while back in the 1980s my teen-aged self might not have considered her to be the Antichrist, I probably would have figured her as the Antichrist’s John the Baptist. Now, whilst still disagreeing (sometimes quite violently) with the probably the majority of what she…

  • On The Difference Between Conjuring And Lying

    On Wednesday evening Derren Brown did a show where he apparently predicted the results of the national lottery. Yesterday evening, he promised to reveal how he did it. Now it was always going to be a trick, and those people who are apparently now upset that it wasn’t done by some kind of mystical means…

  • Beating the Truth Out Of Users

    In my time as a programmer, I’ve spent quite a lot of time on the phone talking to users who are attempting to report some kind of problem. It can sometimes be very frustrating. People say that programmers can be poor communicators, and that is often true; but the same accusation can equally be made…

  • A Vet’s Guide To Treating Dinosaurs

    A friend of mine, Andrew Knight, is a vet with a sideline in writing, and a few days ago he sent me a link to one of his latest articles, written after a visit to the Natural History Museum had started him thinking about the injuries dinosaurs could suffer and how one might treat them.…

  • WordPress iPhone App Is Illiterate

    Bugger. Have realised that the WordPress iPhone app strips apostephes out of entered text, even when you go back and re-edit the post to put them back in. Insane. And annoying. I apologise for the illiteracy of the previous post.