East West Rail is a project to reinstate a cross country East-West route north of London running from Oxford to East Anglia via, of course, Sandy. There used to be a line running directly from Oxford to Cambridge, which crossed…
Arlesey: a strange place
Yesterday I went to Arlesey. For those who don’t know where it is, Arlesey is a town in Bedfordshire between Biggleswade and Hitchin on the East Coast Main Line, whose passengers often misconstrue its name in passing. It is also…
Plain Sandy
The Sunday Telegraph has said that Sandy is plain as plain can be, an old Bedfordshire village that acquired a station then sponged up overspilling Londoners into its large council estates and yellow brick streets. The Mayor of Sandy vigorously…
Google Scholar
The arrival of Google Scholar should set librarians off into another round of insecure criticism. Of course it’s not as good as what libraries can offer, but at least Google are trying to forge a way ahead. Libraries will be…
Roman date plugin for Blosxom
Aurlog now uses Roman-style dates for dating, at least for the time being. The dates are Gregorian dates expressed in Roman notation. It would be impossible to express true Roman dates as the Romans used a 10 day week, used…
The costa coffee
I have a theory that there is no caffeine in coffee sold by Costa coffee and other Starbucks clones. The trick is in making the ordering process so stressful that you’re already buzzing by the time you’ve left the queue,…
Cow games update
I have updated the list of cow games. New entries include Cyborg Hefers from Outer Space and Supercow. Any new discoveries gratefully received.
Really long Dewey numbers
When cataloguing a book today (Awakening lives : autobiographies of Jewish youth in Poland before the Holocaust / edited by Jeffrey Shandler) I noticed that the CIP gave the Dewey number as 920.00929950332880835. I remember some long ones from university…
Right Wing Stuff
I stumbled across RightWingStuff.com where you can buy t-shirts saying Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions -G.K. Chesterton and Peace through superior firepower on them. There is also a link to a site where you can buy…
One Railway
Nick Barlow reports how the new rail franchise for East Anglia decided to call itself One Railway, or rather ‘one’ with the single quotes and lower case o. This is all very well (it’s not: it’s just wrong) until you…