Strangely Perfect

Even though the whole thing is going to be a hugely expensive treat, suitable only for those people with big pockets, the successful test flight of Scaled Composites‘ WhiteKnightTwo aircraft is a fantastic thing.  It’s truly one of the most beautiful flying machines I’ve ever seen and is much more impressive in video than in [...]

The Intense Debate Install Story Along with some theme and plugins changes I’ve recently done, I’ve also had a play with Intense Debate (ID), a system complete with WordPress plugin for managing comments. Phase One Last week using my old theme I couldn’t get anywhere with the comment import. It kept crashing out at 9% [...]

Two items in the news concurrently today, and when I saw them, for each one the phrase that popped into my head was; Well that’s the Pot calling the Kettle Black! Firstly: The Pope warns of the Misuse of Religion Here, the pope has made a speech in an Amman mosque, and yes, it’s all [...]

Alistair Cooke, the journalist, writer and broadcaster, lived from 1908 to 2004.  For most of his life he lived in New York, and witnessed the great depression (and booms), almost countless changes in government and the causes and aftermath of WW2.  He was personal friends with many of the great and good of the century, [...]

Extra information about the final years of Crawling Chaos when visiting the White Elephant in Ashington last weekend

Jillian has left on her first expedition of the year. This time it’s to Austria where she will be teaching English. Funnily enough, she went into various local bookshops to get a Rough Guide and a phrase book for the country – but there weren’t any. However, there were plenty for Australia, including a phrase [...]

Jillian is having far too many adventures for her own good. I’ll be getting her off the airplane soon enough though, so coming back to Britain will be a bit of a chilling shock for her (she hasn’t got a coat!). I’ll catch up with things in more detail, I think, as it’s probable that [...]

This piece, contains an astonishing account in some detail of a near disaster from the three aircrew’s standpoint. If you have the slightest trace of empathy or imagination, this account will have you riveted to the screen, marvelling at the cool-headedness of the three guys as they struggle to learn to fly an air airplane [...]