I’m not in Indonesia at the moment, but my thoughts are with those tens of thousands of people in Aceh and the rest of Sumatra island, coping with the aftereffects of the tsunami. For those of you wishing to make contributions to the relief effort, one organisation is worth considering: Radio 68H, a network of … Read more
At my Mum’s house, and my childhood home, we have this quirk in the kitchen where the dish washer door comes down and pretty much blocks the kitchen entrance. To a designer, or someone carrying a heavy tray past, this might seem like a flaw. I’ve realised it’s not, and that designers, if they’re not … Read more
Just a note to WSJ.com subscribers who have been asking why some of the recent columns haven’t showed up on my corner of WSJ.com: The problem is now fixed, and you can see them here: My piece on VoIP from December 10 My piece on the Phisher King from December 17 Apologies for the delay. There won’t … Read more
Fans of Loose Wire may possibly recall a column I did a year or so ago, when I tried to match quaint English placenames with computer matters, assigning the names to things that didn’t yet have them. Here are a few: chettle (collective n) The debris, such as crumbs, dead insects and lint, that gets … Read more
By Jeremy Wagstaff from the 1 May 2003 edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review, (c) 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. It’s unsurprising, given the kind of people who design and play with computers, but I’ve always felt there to be a chronic shortage of terms to describe what we actually do with our … Read more