Wikipedia @ 25: Yousuf Karsh

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Wikipedia @ 25: Yousuf Karsh

Wikipedia is 25 years old this year, and in celebration of that I found my way via a Mercurial crater to the article about Yousuf Karsh, one of the most-important portrait photographers of the 20th century.

Wikipedia @ 25: Necker Island

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Wikipedia @ 25: Necker Island

Today, thanks to Wikipedia, I learned a lot about a miniscule Hawaiian island with an interesting cultural and archaeological history... after I found my way there from a random page about a hip hop album!

Wikipedia @ 25: Lake Baikal

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Wikipedia @ 25: Lake Baikal

Today's random Wikipedia article was about a kind of seal that lives only in Lake Baikal in Siberia, which turns out to be a really, really big lake. Like: it's got about a fifth of the world's fresh water in it; that's how big it is!

Wikipedia @ 25: Yo-Yo

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Wikipedia @ 25: Yo-Yo

This year is Wikipedia's 25th birthday, and as part of the celebrations I learned who Marcus Koh is... but that wasn't remotely as interesting as learning about the long history of the yo-yo!

Nostalgia, Music, and Computers

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Nostalgia, Music, and Computers

It turns out that I get nostalgic about technology in the same way as I get nostalgic about music. Here's some things that take me right back to being nine, eleven, thirteen and fifteen years old.

Actually, Yes! (that IS what my birth certificate says)

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Actually, Yes! (that IS what my birth certificate says)

There's a certain kind of person who, upon hearing my unusual name, immediately asks whether that's what's on my birth certificate (with an underlying implication that it's not my 'real' name, whatever that means, if it isn't). Well: as of this week, thanks to a quirk in Scottish law, the name I've used every day for almost two decades DOES appear my birth certificate. Fuck the haters.

The Beer Token

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The Beer Token

Thanks to the success of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, we can never forget quite how much beer you used to be able to get for a fiver (plus an exceptionally-generous tip). Nowadays, it'll get you one pint, if you're lucky... and that offers us an exciting opportunity...

Google Shared My Phone Number!

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Google Shared My Phone Number!

When people started calling my personal mobile number with questions about a voluntary organisation I'm involved with, I was confused: we weren't sharing that number. It turns out that Google had decided to take the number I used to verify my identity for Google Business some years prior and start putting it in Google Search results. WTF, Google?

Delivery Songs

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Delivery Songs

In the UK, ice cream vans are perhaps the only delivery service with their own jingle. Turkey and India are WAY ahead of us in this regard, and I've got a few ideas about how we fix that...