Before I get into what I will loosely refer to as the “meat“, I’d like to start with a small disclaimer. There is a slight risk that this post could, to the untrained eye, make me look like a grumpy, ungrateful, tight-fisted, old curmudgeon. If you start to think that as you read, you’ve got the wrong man. That’s my Dad you’re...

There is a lot to be said for simplicity in a film. Sure, a complex, surprising plot is always the most rewarding in a film but sometimes a straightforward good versus bad punch up is just what you’re after. And if that is what you’re after then 13 Assassins may well be for you. This also helps if you’re not a fan of reading subtitles because you...

Well, here we are at the end of 2011. As I’ve done for the last couple of years ( 2010, 2009 ) time to spend a fun evening trawling through the year’s photos picking out a few faves. Noticeably fewer photos this year, methinks it has been a busy one. Fewer photos does, however, make it easier to pick a few faces, every cloud… With thanks to all the...

As my avid reader will know, I give away my photos for free use as stock on Morguefile. Not been my most prolific year for new images but I was just flicking through them and was looking to see what had been the most popular by downloads in the year. It’s usually quite revealing. My favourites are rarely popular, the most useful ones are ( as I reflected in...

On 1st January 2010 I uploaded my first image to BlipFoto. And now, as I head towards my second full year I started to think about what compelled me to make sure, on pain of death, that I always manage to take one photo a day. If you’re not familiar with the site, it has a very simple purpose, it allows you to record one photo a day. That’s it. Like all...

Description The result of a five-year airborne odyssey across five continents and sixty countries, The Earth From the Air is the bestselling book of aerial photography ever published. This vibrant new edition of the internationally acclaimed original features an updated design and nearly sixty stunning new photographs. All-new captions and the addition of...

They often say that the pen is mightier than the sword and, yet, there is very little jail time associated with carrying a biro in your pocket. Recently I was wondering if the same can be said to be true of that which is written online. In the past I’ve written about scale free networks in relation to the Internet and you can see how anything written by a big...

I was idly tootling around Wikipedia tonight. I started reading about a person and then clicked on a link about another person in the article and so on until I was nowhere near where I started. It’s amazing where you can end up. Just don’t click on Kevin Bacon. If you do that’s game over and you can never play again. And starting on Kevin Bacon is...

I have a weird conundrum when I fly. I love planes and flying but, having done it so much, familiarly and boredom bring a weird kind of tension. Usually, as I am on approach to Edinburgh airport, I gaze fixedly out the windows for landmarks and make sure we’re heading for some appropriate strip of of tarmac. Not so last Thursday night. As we were turning over...

As we look back in history we interpret the scratches and debris left on the earth to determine as much as we can about their lives, loves and labours. This reveals much about the ingenuity of the people who, before the industrial revolution, devised a myriad of ways to survive in a far harsher world. Most of these skills are already lost to most of us, cosseted as...