Writing

Whilst I believe that the SIC’s recent decision to instigate charges for music instrument tuition in school’s needs to be reconsidered for a variety of reasons (a subject I shall return to another day), I have been heartened by how our young musicians have pulled together to exercise their democratic Continue Reading

Not so long ago, the worst invasion you could expect of your privacy was a mildly embarrassing photo appearing in the Shetland Times on your birthday, supplemented with a cheeky poem that rhymed “thirty” with “shirty”, “forty” with “dorty” or “nifty” with “fifty”. The mischievous yet well meaning friends and Continue Reading

Rage Against The Machine is Christmas Number One this year. How I relish writing that phrase. For those of you who haven’t heard about the biggest upset in the history of the UK music charts, the political heavy rock rap legends have beaten Joe McElderry, the X Factor winning, plebeian Continue Reading

This month, instead of writing my Shetland Life article as I should have been, I once again found myself rumbling around the Internet convincing myself that I was undertaking some sort of informal ‘research’. But while looking for info on Shetland’s CCTV obsession and related invasion of privacy issues (a Continue Reading

Who’d have thought a humble screensaver could save the planet, or discover intelligent life on other planets? That’s the objective of BOINC, an acronym of Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, a project that aims to unite the power of home computers around the world for the common good. The Continue Reading

As a young ‘un, I erroneously believed that one of my elderly relatives suffered from “Auld Timers Disease”; they were indeed old and I believed “Auld Timers” to be the official designation for the affliction more commonly referred to as “doiting”. When I disappointingly discovered the correct term was “Alzheimer’s” Continue Reading

Published in Shetland Life, August 2009 This month’s column is about news that will happen, rather than what is or was happening. A pre-emptive strike, if you will. In October 2008, Lord Carter, minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, embarked on a major research project dubbed Digital Britain. The government Continue Reading

My interest, nay passion for copyright is one of my guilty pleasures and was piqued after being ripped off by a record company as a teenage band member, which in turn compelled me to study Intellectual Property rights at university. Copyright is a slippery beast to define. Essentially, in the UK and most of Continue Reading

As I toyed with whether to write about blogs, podcasts or netiquette this month I noted that each subject is a portmanteau: a compound word combining two or more words and their meanings. “Blog” is a portmanteau of “web” and “log”, “podcast” is a portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcast” and Continue Reading

The British National Party. I hesitate before I go on as this particular manifestation of political ideology is not one that I, as a bleeding hearted liberal, subscribe to in any way (and the BNP seems an incongruous use of ‘party‘, a word with such exultant connotations). But the BNP Continue Reading