On this very blog, five years ago, I wrote an article Manhattan 25 Years Ago. Today, it’s now thirty years on since John Lennon was assassinated in New York. On French radio this morning on my way to work the station dedicated the day to Lennon. Aside from a few errors by some of the […]

Michael Jackson suffered a heart attack last night (European time), and could not be resuscitated. Wacko Jacko he may have been, but it’s the end of an era. Love or hate him or his music, he’s the biggest selling album artist of all time. His music, his pop videos and his dancing have influenced pop […]

by Fred Dawson Tomorrow may be the last day you can shop at Woolworths, a high street chain that has existed for nearly 100 years in Britain. It caused quite a stir at the time of the launch, with a clever marketing tactic – everything was sixpence. It opened in the UK in Liverpool in […]

I’ve been influenced by a number of piano players. My paternal grandfather and my father both played a lot when I was a child – my father still does. A few of the schoolteachers I admired played a mean piano. Billy Joel, Elton John and Stevie Wonder are musicians I appreciate who sing and accompany […]

Nobody is going to buy a video recorder based on the VHS format this Christmas. Everything will be MiniDV (camcorders), DVD and hard drive based. In the US, the VHS format was recently declared dead. That’s perhaps a bit premature, it’s rather more of a retirement. VHS tapes will still be active for some years […]

It’s our “wooden” or “silverware” anniversary today. It feels like it was just yesterday. Yasmina will get her flowers later in the morning (I hope she won’t read this first). Soon after the wedding I put up our wedding site which is still available. If you’re interested in what it takes for an Englishman resident […]

In 1993, a young first year undergraduate student walked down the corridor of the French department into a small room with a single computer terminal. It was a UNIX terminal linked to the campus network, and a login prompt blinked on the screen. Next to it, a note saying “login with guest as a username […]

Or getting a WiFi connection. When I was still at junior school at less than 10 years old, we got our first home computer. It was a ZX81. With 1Kb of RAM, adverts at the time of initial launch in 1981 said it could run a nuclear power station. Since installing a WiFi card in […]