In the past few weeks I have been reassured by the 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys. Reading accounts of the removal of his bladder stone in 1658 made me realise how lucky I was that anaesthetics have been discovered.
My stone, like Pepys’s, was a large one and I was not certain when I went into [...]
Wordblog has been neglected as I adjusted to the idea of retirement. It is not as if I wanted to give up work. But the human resources department (I think they feel that name gives them more importance than the old personnel) had other ideas.
The policy of the University of Westminster is not to employ [...]
The silly season has come early to media blogging this season. Jeff Jarvis started it with a picture of a Pukka Pies sign and one of those “aren’t foreigners funny comments”: “Puke a pie? no thanks.”
I suppose we should not expect him to know Britain’s rich heritage of of Indian words. Collins defines pukka as [...]
Wordblog takes takes on a different meaning for this post which is about “The Word”: I have been asked to lead a blogging workshop at a conference of Church of England communications people in October and need help. I hope a few priests who blog will come across this and share their experiences with me.
Nick [...]
I am giving a introductory talk on blogging at the Suffolk Mac Users Group in Ipswich next Wednesday (May 30) and I am getting a little nervous about how to engage an audience which will include people ranging from those who want to promote their businesses to those who want to keep in touch with [...]
Marcel Berlins argues in his Guardian column today with his usual power against the £15 surcharge on fines introduced on April 1 to help pay for better services to victims of crime.
My own experience makes me wonder whether the money already going to support victims could be better used. When my bicycle was stolen from [...]
Listening to the on-hold music at Onetel TalkTalk’s call centre for 45 minutes without any response left me ready to take the advice of the refrain which was along the lines of, “We have to get together because the revolution is coming.” After three days without broadband, it can’t come quickly enough.
Who is prepared [...]
It’s been a bad blog day — everything has seemed to turn to dust under my fingers on the keyboard, not turning out as I intended. To cap it all my wife decide to check my name on Google and typed in — accidently, she says — andrew rant-adamson. Damn Google, it asked [...]
In a world where so many people read and speak English, having little linguistic ability becomes embarrassing. Generally when someone links to Wordblog I take a look at their site and, if I like what I see, watch it and usually find something I want to link to in return. That just seems to be [...]
A decision to go broadband at the flat I use when working in London has curtailed my blogging this week. First, my ISP, OneTel, sent the wrong username and password. Of course, I thought, for a considerable time, I was doing something wrong.
Then I decided that as the other six Wi-Fi networks within range were [...]
