Over a year ago now, I was in a band that got together for a gig in Paris which was a line-up of colleagues from work. I have been thinking about our vocalist recently, since she’s from Tunisia and has been very active on social networks following the revolution and helping people connect as regular […]

I surf around quite a lot of blogs, thanks mainly to blog exchanges like Expose Your Blog which are like StumbleUpon but based only on blogs, and have the added bonus of gaining you reciprocal traffic. I used to surf on other exchanges too, but they are all losing traffic and are poorly maintained. Expose […]

I’ve seen this doing the rounds : “The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.” In fact the list is from The Guardian (with thanks to research from Pro-Science). Most people would be expected to have read more than 6 because it’s a list of popular books… […]

A Christmas break is great, but it’s soon over and after wishing you all a Happy New Year, it’s back to the grind of the routine. The roads were OK for the first Monday of the year, but the queues came back quickly and the routine soon pulled me in, not unlike gravity when you […]

Nice quiet day today, getting ready for a meal tonight since the French celebrate much more on the evening of Christmas Eve than on Christmas Day itself. Some older children open their presents just after midnight in some families, while the younger ones still wait for Santa to deliver overnight. Traditional meals often include salmon, […]

There’s been a lot of cold weather and frost so far this December, and a fair bit of snow. I’ve never seen quite so much fall in one morning as I did today though. I reckon we’ve had 10-15cm (4-6″) of snow in a few hours. Last night there was already a bit. It took […]

A colleague at work created a mood board with his daughter last year, a visual Christmas list for Father Christmas if you like. I decided to give it a go with Nathan this year, and here is the result, created with Picasa. You might have to click it to see it at a reasonable size. […]

Playing a musical instrument well requires a lot of practice. Motivating yourself is difficult with no goal. When you have other people to play with, and a good vibe between the musicians, and an occasional audience to share the music with, then you might find yourself with good reasons to find that drive. Getting good […]