As a follow-up to my earlier post, I thought I’d try and explain what I’m thinking in terms of personal search.
The idea is based on Paul Graham’s "A Plan for Spam" which uses Bayesian Logic on emails to determine which mails for you are spam, and which are not. The general principle is that if […]
Fascinating subject, search. How to make search engines that give people the information they need, whilst removing what they don’t need, and avoiding people "gaming" them to get their answers to the top.
The original approach to search was with keywords. Search engines would examine a site for keywords and those with the most keywords would […]
1. Better health. It’s been a funny year with 2 illnesses (of the tonsils and the eustation) making me miserable and at times, intolerable, so I hope it gets better.
2. More work on migrating my development skills towards Linux and Python.
3. Build and implement something that I codename Project Winterbourne, a web application that I’ve […]
An Englishman’s Castle asks for choice of someone for New Years honours.
I’m not sure that this isn’t more "Man of the Year" than a New Year’s honour, but I’ll shoot.
My choice is Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux. He’s South African, so qualifies. Not only because Ubuntu works great for me, but […]
"I have long admired Literary Review for creating this award - if only because it’s a much better guide to a good read than those purveyors of powerful sleeping drugs, the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Goncourt et al." Tim Willocks, Runner-up of the Bad Sex in Fiction award.
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Michael Henderson writes in The Telegraph
The English pub, one of our greatest gifts to civilisation, is in mortal danger. They are closing in the towns no less than rural areas, or being turned into featureless cash-cows that the Bedford pals would not have recognised. Even when they survive, their character is threatened by the rise […]
I read Boris Johnson’s piece on video games, and his theory that they are destroying levels of literature in young people. It’s nonsense, and Boris has no citations to any evidence that supports it. At least it’s Mostly Harmless compared to the "video games cause violence" statements thrown around by the likes of Hilary Clinton.
I’m […]
There’s been quite some discussion around the decision by Microsoft to send out some very nice top-of-the-range Acer Ferrari laptops preloaded with Windows Vista to a number of high ranking bloggers.
I’ve had a little think on the subject, and I’ve decided that it doesn’t do any favours to accept such gifts. Even as "review products". […]
First off, Happy Christmas to anyone reading this.
I drank 2 wines over Christmas..
‘98 Labégorce Margaux. In my opinion, at about it’s peak, so I’ll be drinking the other bottle fairly soon.
2005 Cape Mentelle Sauvignon/Semillon. A really good sauvignon. It was started by the Cloudy Bay people, and whilst not as classy, was very enjoyable.
I left […]
A comment that is worthy of mention from Tim Worstall’s Blog…
Those people who like maths and would like their children to have some exposure before adulthood should tune their TV’s to channel Five for the "Royal Institution Christmas Lectures" - primes are covered in the second episode. I believe the BBC are running repeats of […]
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