Archive for December, 2007


Dump the detox

December 31st, 2007 by Roger Darlington

Two of my interests are regulation (I’m a member of the Ofcom Consumer Panel) and blogging (I run two blogs – this one and a professional blog). But regulators and blogs are two words that rarely go together, since regulators are so incredibly cautious about how they communicate with consumers. An exception is the Food […]

Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)


Over 500 film reviews

December 31st, 2007 by Roger Darlington

I’ve used some of the quiet time over the Christmas/New Year period to reoganise the film reviews on my web site. There are now well over 500. You can check them out here.

Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (1)


Is the Net heading for its 9/11?

December 30th, 2007 by Roger Darlington

The Storm botnet, or Storm worm botnet, is a massive network of computers linked by the Storm worm Trojan horse in a botnet, a group of “zombie” computers controlled remotely. It is estimated to run on anything between 1M and 50M computers and those who’ve put it together clearly have nefarious purposes in mind. You […]

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How to be happy

December 29th, 2007 by Roger Darlington

The most popular page in my web site collection of life skills advice on 24 matters is that on “How To Be Happy”. In an article in today’s “Guardian”, Harvard’s ‘professor of happiness’ offers his advice which can be summarized as: Give yourself the permission to be human Simplify your life Exercise regularly Focus on […]

Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)


The horror of political assassinations

December 28th, 2007 by Roger Darlington

I find it difficult to think of blogging about anything today other than the death of Benazir Bhutto. Yesterday we were driving up to Leicester to spend the day with a gathering of all the immediate members of my family. On the car radio, we were told that a bomb had gone off at a […]

Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)


Wii-ing at Christmas

December 25th, 2007 by Roger Darlington

Having spent the morning running [see photo here], Vee’s nephew David and his wife Sharon joined the rest of Vee’s immediate family to spend Christmas Day with us. They brought along David’s Christmas present to Sharon: a Nintendo Wii game console. Now I’m not into gaming and certainly first person shooter games and fantasy games […]

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Hurricane at Christmas

December 25th, 2007 by Roger Darlington

A few days ago, I blogged about how my biography of the World War Two night intruder ace who was my wife’s father keeps coming back into our lives. The Czech Karel Kuttelwascher flew a particular Hawker Hurricane IIC which he called “Night Reaper”. Today, to our astonishment, Vee and I received a Christmas present […]

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Merry Christmas to you all

December 25th, 2007 by Roger Darlington

Clyde McPhatter & The Drfiters say (sing) it much better than me here.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)


Reaching round the world

December 24th, 2007 by Roger Darlington

I know that my web site and blogs are visited by up to 5,000 people a day because my traffic statistics tell me exactly what’s happening day by day. But it’s wonderful when I hear from a visitor I don’t know and find that some of the material has proved helpful in some way. Today […]

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Remembering Uzbekistan

December 24th, 2007 by Roger Darlington

I haven’t had occasion to think about Uzbekistan for a while, but this morning two matters brought the country to mind. First, we had a Christmas card from one of the members of the small group with which we toured Uzbekistan last year. You can read my account of that trip here. Second, I read […]

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