Tim Dobson

My famous ancestor: Max Plowman

9 November 2012

My great grandfather, Max Plowman was an interesting chap. I mean, you know someone is vaguely notable when they've been dead for over 70 years now and yet *still* has his own wikipedia page. Max was born in London in 1883 and left school at 16 to work (for ten years) in his Father's brick […]

20/20 Hindsight :: Writing Style

8 November 2012

One of the great things about getting older, is that you have 20/20 hindsight vision of times in your past. You can look back and see how things played themselves together. Back in 2005, I sent emails with things like this appended: P.S. Anyway for those of you who care I dont spell check my […]

How I sneaked into the tech industry without a degree and got my first job.

7 November 2012

When I started writing this blog post, back in 2008, I'd just got my first real job, quite an achievement by any standards, and wanted to share my experience, but I could never quite capture what I wanted to say. Those who knew me well at the time, will remember I had been actively looking […]

Swedish Language? Difficult to learn?

6 November 2012

I've studied French and Russian at school, and for about a year, last year, took Swedish language evening classes. People always would drop the question "Is it difficult?". This is a horrible question to attempt to answer – usually, the language isn't really what the answer will relate to, rather the learner's ability and how […]

How to script the recording of your favourite online radio show

5 November 2012

I had a problem: I wanted to record my friend's online radio show – it happened at a time when I wasn't around to listen, but I was actually, genuinely interested in listening, and the station didn't have any kind of podcast, or "listen again" system. Linux/Ubuntu actually has a pretty nice gui called Streamtuner […]

Sustainable power solutions for consumer electronics, for areas where power is sparse?

4 November 2012

I've just been to northern sweden backpacking, and as part of my kit, I took 9 batteries for my Canon DSLR. That might sound excessive, though considering I was going for 12 days, my camera was the only source of "entertainment" I was taking, and I was planning on shooting lots of video – not […]

Copyright Maths – How do you analyse the numbers?

3 November 2012

As Dan Bull once pointed out: People born in the late 80s have now lived more of their lives in the 21st century than the 20th century. A new generation has arrived for whom sharing information online is as easy and reflexive as breathing. As child of the internet age, reaching for my calculator is […]

Death: a free trial, but no one cancels.

2 November 2012

Warning: Brutally frank words. If you've recently suffered from tragic loss, you may prefer to read something else. I consider myself very lucky; I think that's largely because I'm young, and because I'm alive. Those two things are a pretty winning combination in themselves – generally people who are alive, have some time to enjoy […]

Does anyone know what Xxx's mean at the end of messages?

1 November 2012

As the modern, connected world is largely a world of written language, communicating via the medium of text is pervasive and widely used, like never before in history. This has meant that, for many people language and the etiquette surrounding parts of it, has radically transformed. Take Smileys. Smileys are well documented, and actually relatively explicit in […]

Oh no-NanoWriMo

31 October 2012

According to Wikipedia: NaNoWriMo is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and 30. A number of people I know have done this in previous years my friend Dan Lynch even wrote a song about it: (I may have once mercilessly reworded/hacked […]

Just Dance

31 October 2012

Whilst New York City takes a beating from a big storm, let's watch something more uplifting: Girl Walk // All Day The spontaneity and happiness of the movement and disregard for the onlookers or location for me made it quite special. The camera work also has a nice rough and ready style to it as […]

Sun tan: A realisation

28 October 2012

A while ago, I had a list of things that significantly and indisputably imcreased the risk of cancer: The list went: Smoking (and I don't smoke) Sun Tanning Now I'm all for taking risks, especially if when the risks are fun – you'll be the first to see me lining up to do dangerous but […]