Category Archives: History

Witchfinders Direct

From CBBC. Given the dearth of decent original material on “adult” TV, perhaps we should all start working shift and stay at home during the day.

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Secret Billionaire: The Chuck Feeney Story

If you get a spare hour in front of a computer between now and May 26, this RTE documentary about Chuck Feeney is well worth watching. I rarely last more than 5 minutes watching video on a monitor, but this … Continue reading

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Stylophone

I’m so old…

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Colossus Is Back Baby!

No, I haven’t put all that weight back on again. This is the Colossus that cracked German ciphers during WWII, rebuilt over an incredible 14 years in Bletchley Park. Valves an’ all! I’m going to London in February to buy … Continue reading

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Jakob Nielsen’s Dishonesty

I’ve always disliked Nielsen’s holie-than-thou attitude and painful-to-look-at website, so I’m only too delighted to highlight his admission that in 1997 he suppressed research that demonstrated that users respond to dialog-box style ads on websites. Now hold your horses before … Continue reading

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Did you know?

That the phrase “By Hook or by Crook” originated when William the Conqueror swore that he would take Waterford by Hook Head to the east of the harbour, or Crook head to the west. I didn’t (until a few weeks … Continue reading

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World’s Smallest Park

Click the image for a Wikipedia explanation. I love the idea of the minature ferris wheel being delivered by a regular-sized crane! From Google Earth Community, via Digg.

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IBM 704

Shorpy: This network of black magnetic beads, smaller than a postage stamp, is one of a number of input-output “memory” units in the new “704″ electronic calculator built by International Business Machines. This particular “memory” unit of the 704 instantaneously … Continue reading

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Creation Museum’s ‘Adam’ runs porn site

You couldn’t make it up. WTOL-TV Toledo: The man picked by the Creation Museum to play Adam leads quite a different life outside the Garden of Eden. Records show that Eric Linden owns a pornographic web site called “Bedroom Acrobat.”

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Useless Info #1: Tesco’s Name

I’m renowned for my vast stocks of useless information, so thus begins the first in a series of useless fact posts. Probably the last too, given my proclivity for “first in a series” posts. Maybe this could be the first … Continue reading

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