Simon Roberts

The DJ Alan “Fluff” Freeman has died at the age of 79. Alan was known and loved by many for his BBC Radio 1 show “Pick of the Pops” which was broadcast from the launch of Radio 1 in 1967 until 1972. Alan relaunched the show with an oldies chart format in 1989. His catchphrases [...]

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One of the things that I enjoy about fatherhood is sharing bedtime stories with my son. When he was younger I made the stories up. They were filled with dinosaurs, hobbits, elves and wizards. I spun tales which mixed the universes of J.R.R. Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey with a little smattering of Jurassic Park for [...]

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The
Dysfunctional Scrum exercise normally goes down very well as part of
agile training. It’s great fun but, more importantly, lets participants
experience the World’s worst Daily Scrum. The exercise can lead to a
useful discussion on how to deal with common Scrum smells.
Read more here.

Technorati Tags:
agile, scrum

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I'm back in the UK for a couple of days and on turning on my DAB radio this evening, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that BBC Radio 3 is being broadcast at 192 kbps again. A few months ago, the BBC dropped Radio 3 to 160 kbps to make room for a 24/7 looping [...]

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buntklicker.de: “Die Berliner sind mal wieder von der schnellen Truppe: Berlin ist das erste Bundesland, in dem ab heute der Ladenschluß an Werktagen vollständig aufgehoben ist.”

Great to see Berlin leading on opening up the archaic German shop opening laws. Hopefully the next step will be movement on Sunday opening.

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BBC News: “Vehicles causing the most pollution in central London are to face huge increases in the congestion charge, mayor Ken Livingstone has announced.
The daily charge for vehicles in carbon emissions band G – which includes 4×4s – is to rise from £8 to £25 from 2009.
In 2008, the charge will be removed for cars [...]

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Drop Scones

Originally uploaded by sjroberts.

As children we looked forward to autumn and winter Sunday teatimes. There would often be something special and sometimes that would be drop scones.
Here's a simple recipe:
Ingredients (serves 2-3):

150g of self-raising flour or plain flour with a little baking powder
25g of caster sugar
25ml [...]

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Whenever I see “tonite” it grates. For me it's the visual equivalent of hearing chalk scraping on a blackboard.
Until recently I thought that “tonite” was an acceptable albeit annoying American spelling of “tonight”. In fact it isn't. Even though “tonite” seems to be in fairly common usage amongst Americans, it is incorrect.

Technorati Tags:
spelling, tonite, tonight

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Dave Winer: “Doc's here, we're watching CNN before going out to breakfast. We're playing a neat game called Spot the Republican. When we see a Republican on CNN, I decide what form of punishment we're going to give them. Usually it's the death penalty of some form. Hanging, firing squad, dismemberment. “
I remember a similar [...]

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