kierenmccarthy.co.uk

So I’ve finally updated the software that this blog uses – Wordpress – from 2.0.1 to 2.8.4 – which will mean nothing to most of you but cause others to wonder what the hell I’ve been up to.
I’ve also tidied up the page and fix a range of bugs so the site is clean and [...]

I’m writing this in that neverworld of an airport waiting for a slightly delayed plane.
And, of course, as it always is, that airport is Heathrow. I hate Heathrow. I’ve always hated Heathrow. Even as a kid, I remember the sensation of life ebbing away from you as you sit in uncomfortable chairs next to grumpy [...]

I’m quite excited about the fact that Amazon has brought out a new ebook reader that it calls the Kindle. I haven’t seen one in the real world but I am assuming with the effort they’ve put behind it that the screen technology is what it claims to be – easy to read without straining [...]

This morning I received an email from downloadinrainbows@waste.uk.com providing a link to a 48.3MB zipped file. Three minutes later I was listening to Radiohead’s new album In Rainbows. I am listening to it now as I write this.
What is particularly interesting about this is that Radiohead was entirely in charge of the whole transaction. They [...]

For those interested in Internet things – and in this case the sexy side of the Internet, Facebook and all that stuff – there is an interesting conference due to start in two hours in Ottawa, Canada.
I know because I’m here and I’m on of two official bloggers. See can see the full agenda here, [...]

I finally joined Facebook last week. It was when the fifth person from a different sphere of friends send me an invite that I realised it had hit that point where I was most likely missing out on something. So I signed up.
And Facebook is nice. I now have 26 friends and they can [...]

This has to be good – I note that Amazon.com is now selling my book – Sex.com.
Unfortunately there is still a four to six-week delivery date on it, which leads me to conclude that my publishers have yet to strike a deal with a US publisher. I also note on a quick perusal of the [...]

Three weeks ago, I added a translation module to this blog as an experiment with automated translation software.
The technology worked although thanks to some readers of different nationalities, it quickly became clear that the translations were not great – and in some cases barely comprehensible. Part of the reason is that I write in a [...]

The next real big step for the Internet in revolutionising this planet is, I am convinced, mass accurate translation so that the language barriers that have divided and enclosed the world ever since we as a species first started talking, will be if not exactly cast away, certain diminished.
And so I have installed a translation [...]

The user-generated content finder Digg may well have just dug its own grave with a defiant message to Hollywood lawyers, posted by its founder on the site’s blog yesterday.

There is another very short crack out there for the High Definition DVD standard – much shorter that the infamous DeCSS crack released in 1999 – and [...]