In the 1950s, Stanley Miller did some experiments which aimed to simulate atmospheric conditions on a lifeless primordial Earth. His theory was that organic compounds could come from inorganic processes, and he was mostly right. His experiments with boiling water, gases and electricity (simulating lightning) created amino acids which are commonly found in proteins. Miller [...]

Seen on Slashdot, talking about the credit crunch: “People are not buying bullshit anymore. Not because they don’t believe the bullshit; they never did. They are not buying it because they can not sell it on to someone else.”

It seems like only yesterday that I introduced Nathan. He’s now at nursery school, talking in reasonably coherent sentences in French and he understands most of what I say to him in English. The party will be this weekend, but he did get some presents today. From now on, instead of counting in months (up [...]

I was listening to the Stack Overflow podcast the other day in the car on the way back from work. They were talking about their new site which proposes a question / answer model for programmer’s questions. The site covers not just the questions and answers themselves, but builds a model upon which the community [...]

I have just updated to the latest version of WordPress which is the software that runs this blog. If anything is strange, let me know.