This is just a quick one: please register to vote, if you haven’t already. Go to About My Vote and you’ll get a link to the right place to register for your local area. I’ll be honest and say that I’m encouraging people to vote for the following reasons: Many young people have never registered… (read more)

(For those not used to this style of ‘bug report’, the following is written in the style of a technical problem report that might be submitted to an open issue-tracking system, typically used by software developers.) Summary: Britain’s parliamentary electoral system is broken Systems affected: British Democracy Severity: High Detail: In 2005, the Labour Party… (read more)

Last week after reading about the Digital Economy Bill and that it might be passed through Parliament without any further debate (in the so-called “wash-up” prior the forthcoming General Election), I wrote to my MP: What I’m Asking: Please help prevent the rushing through of the Digital Economy Bill! Background There are many things wrong… (read more)

After quite a long gap, I’m finally getting round to uploading some more of the old tracks. Here are two versions of a song written in 1994, called “Hey, I’m confused enough as it is”. There are lyrics, but not on this recording, you’ll probably be glad to hear. The first verse starts “It’s a… (read more)

Found an excellent little javascript utility for displaying chess games on the web: the moves from my games from the weekend, together with my comments as a result of post-match analysis, are available here: Kidlington Chess 2010 games And the final results table is here: Kidlington Chess 2010 U-145 – I’ve taken a local of… (read more)

The First Weekend In February is when chess fanatics from all over England gather for the Kidlington Chess Congress. Unlike last year I had had much more practice and felt more confident of doing well this time. Last year I played four games: I drew three and lost one. Not great, but OK for not… (read more)

Normally the two girls play lego on their own. Yesterday, I played lego with the oldest (aged eight) instead. This interesting adventure for her led to the discovery of what can only be described as Boy Lego, rather than Girl Lego. It all began sedately enough, each of us constructing a small house in the… (read more)

And here’s the next batch. For ages, ‘A case of mistaken reality’ was a song title waiting for some music: eventually, it turned into this epic instrumental. The second track here, ‘Hypnosis’, was one of the first where I made use of vocal samples to enhance the music. This was quite an interesting experience and,… (read more)

OK, here’s the second batch of music. The first track, ‘Master Plan’, was written fairly early on in 1994 and if I remember originally started out as a cover version of The Grid’s “Swamp Thing” (the bassline has some resemblence, even now). The second track is a demo from later on which sounds incredibly ’80s,… (read more)

In early 1994 I bought a Yamaha SY85 music workstation, with a bank loan taken out just a few months after I had got a Proper Job. I had always enjoyed writing music and now I had an opportunity to actually record some of it properly. The SY85 is a synth, a sequencer, a drum… (read more)