Quote from an interview on BBC News 24 just now: “Jim, what can you tell us about this story.” “Well, not alot, there’s nothing on the BBC news website at the moment.” Surely no further comment is needed.

This has to be the news story of the day for me. I find it incredible to think there are still tribes out there that have had little or no contact with the outside world. Part of me still thinks this story is a hoax, but I really want to think it is true. News… Continue reading Uncontacted Tribes

Last weekend there was a widely reported outage on the YouTube video sharing website. It happened the same day that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Pakistan had been instructed to prevent their customers from accessing the site. So, why did this cause a problem for Internet users around the rest of the world? To start… Continue reading Google/YouTube

Yesterday I was starting to think that I’d made a mistake. Going to an exhibition in the Natural History Museum during half-term, was I mad? I made sure I got there shortly after the museum opened at 10am, and luckily, whilst the museum was busy, there was no queue to get in and few of… Continue reading A Day Off…

Today marked seven months and seven days since the little knock on my leg, and it was also the day I picked up my new bike. The weather wasn’t completely on my side, so I didn’t manage to get many miles under my belt, but it felt good to be back on a bike. It… Continue reading Lucky seven.

The plan for yesterday was quite simple. I’d head into town, have a quick browse in Motoden, then catch the tube up to Arnos Grove and hand over the readies for the Honda Deauville that has been advertised for the past couple of months. On the way to Motoden, I passed a Yamaha showroom that… Continue reading I done gone did it.

It has been seven months since my little accident. The fracture clinic has signed me off, the physiotherapist has signed me off. My new boots, trousers, jacket and helmet arrived a couple of days ago. That only leaves one thing — something to sit on. I’ve been doing a bit of shopping around, and the… Continue reading The time has come.

My blog entries are approximately as frequent as postings on Mil Millington’s “Things That My Girlfriend and I have Argued About” list. This is just a test of a small applet running on my desk which will make it even easier for me to avoid writing anything.

Today I had the latest of my visits to the Fracture Clinic, which have been happening every four weeks since I left hospital. The routine is fairly standard, I go in full of hope and optimism, convinced my leg is just about fixed, then come out a little later, disappointed to find it isn’t .… Continue reading Progress (finally).

England won at rugby (against the USA), football (against Israel) and cricket (against India) today.  All topped off with the Last Night of the Proms.  If I wasn’t Welsh, I’d be proud to be English!  Instead I’ll settle with being satisfied to be British.

It is Rugby World Cup time again, and whilst I’m all for more rugby union on the TV, I’ve got a couple of issues at the moment.  The first is that as any fule does kno, rugby must be on the BBC.  It just isn’t the same on the ITV, the commentators don’t have the… Continue reading Rugby World Cup

Speaking of the Rainforest World Music Festival, it looks like it kicked off yesterday with a group from Bario.

By chance, I listened to ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ on Radio 4 this morning. Purely coincidentally it had an item on the threat to the Penans of Sarawak from logging in Borneo (BBC have an MP3 of the show, but I don’t know how long it will be available, the item is 17 minutes into… Continue reading Penans

Of course I am going to ride a bike again. I am in no rush to repeat the experience of the last few weeks, and more importantly, I don’t want to put friends, family, and the emergency services through it again, but it isn’t that easy to stop riding a motorcycle. There is still so… Continue reading Who am I kidding?

One of the problems of spending alot of time at home with the TV on, is that you spend alot of time at home with the TV on. I still haven’t succumbed to mainstream daytime TV, but I do leave the TV on News24 in the background (the remote is broken, and it is an… Continue reading Reporting the news, or part of the news?

Saturday June 9th I picked up my brand new motorbike, a Suzuki DL650X.  I wanted to get the engine run in before a Scotland trip that was supposed to start two weeks later on the 23rd, so I put the first 150 miles on it that afternoon and took it out again on the Sunday. … Continue reading New bikes, and hospital.

Everybody knows the rule, time on the tube is your own private time. You don’t look at anybody else, and you certainly don’t talk to them. Well, I’ve had a glimpse into a different world over the past couple of days. Thursday evening I’m on the platform at Liverpool Street, waiting for a tube. There’s… Continue reading Nobody talks on the Underground.

I’m sitting here watching a broadcast of the concert I missed earlier. Not only the Scissor Sisters, but introduced by Kylie. Kylie. I could have been there. There’s no point in going any further, my command of the English language isn’t sufficient to prevent it dropping into obscenities.

One of the parts of my job is that about one week in every five I am on-call. This isn’t usually too onerous and more often than not it just means taking it easy and ensuring I’m near a computer and somewhere with mobile phone reception. If there are events that make it awkward to… Continue reading Is it worth it?