Sunday 30 June 2013

10 nerd jokes (part 1)

Binary code ... or is it?
Last week I rounded off my post '10 things in life worth knowing' with a daft nerd joke regarding binary code.

I have to admit that I've got a bit of a soft spot for nerd jokes, so this week I thought I would round up a few of my favourite nerd jokes and puzzles in a post creatively entitled '10 nerd jokes'.

Also, just to clarify, this time I'm talking in decimal rather than binary code, so this time there are actually ten rather than two. Non-nerds are therefore advised to stop reading now.

Some of these are quite old so apologies if anyone's heard most of them before, but anyway here are a few of my favourite nerd jokes, featuring maths, hadrons, and pizza.

1) There are 10 kinds of people in this world...
Those who know binary code and those who don't.


2) Two scientists walk into a bar. The first scientist says, "I'll have some H2O."  The second scientist says, "I'll have some H2O too." Then he died.

Monday 24 June 2013

10 things in life worth knowing

The importance of knowledge.


Floppybobble Lane, just off Spludgington Avenue.
A few years ago, I once read a magazine article which discussed the importance of knowledge. It argued that some knowledge is more important than others obviously, for example, the knowledge of how to stay healthy and prevent diseases is more important than the knowledge of what happened in Coronation Street last night. However, the article highlighted that even some trivial knowledge can sometimes prove useful.

The claims of this magazine article were on my mind one day as I was walking to my mate's house, and so as I was walking along I decided to look out for the street signs I passed and made a mental note of the street names, thus increasing my knowledge of the local area.


Sunday 9 June 2013

Weird facebook likes (part 1)

A selection of inappropriate facebook likes...


Thumbs up for weird facebook likes.
One of the things I find strange about facebook is the way that people will sometimes post a status update which is clearly bad news, and yet loads of their alleged friends will 'like' the post. Sometimes I can't help thinking, 'Eh? Why are you liking that? That's obviously bad news.'

I'm talking about statuses along the lines of, 'Just got sacked from my job.' ...6 people like this. That sort of thing. That one was just a made-up example but there are plenty of real facebook statuses which are clearly bad news and yet people still seem to click the 'like' button for some reason.

I've rounded up a few examples to highlight what I'm referring to, and to start things off here's a very straight forward example which perfectly illustrates how the 'like' button often gets misused.

Sunday 2 June 2013

Book reviews (part 3)

I haven't managed to read as many books as I'd have liked in recent months, as I've been working on proof-reading and formatting my own soon to be published book, but I have managed to read a few. Here are a handful of reviews of some of the most recent books which I've read.

The Hoax by Clifford Irving


The Hoax by Clifford Irving - 4.6 / 5.0


The Hoax tells the true story of Clifford Irving, a writer who infamously faked the authorised biography of Howard Hughes, an eccentric and reclusive American billionaire. The art of deception is a theme which features in many of my own stories, and it’s a concept which greatly appeals to me as the basis for a story, so as you’d expect I thoroughly enjoyed The Hoax.

Admittedly, the book starts quite slowly as Clifford describes the research which he and his assistant, Richard Suskind, carried out in preparation for writing the biography, but once the story gets into its stride and unforeseen developments in their plan start to occur, The Hoax then really starts to come alive.