Monthly Archives: October 2003

Once again my travel plans are fated to take an unexpected twist. Flying to the Balkans via Vienna today, I got to the airport on time, boarded plane, pulled out Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver and continued from where I’d got to … Continue reading →

If the SDLP strategy is as described here, it is an extraordinary combination of complacency and bad mathematics. If SF are good at one thing, it is minimising the difference in votes between candidates to get as many as possible … Continue reading →

Election predictions from the Sunday Business Post: Mostly I agree that they have their eye on the ball but with a couple of puzzling exceptions: Who is the independent Unionist they think can win in Upper Bann? Why on earth … Continue reading →

The bloke who chose Monty Python as his specialised subject won on Mastermind. Both teams on University Challenge were useless. (and incidentally Kanaal Twee have shifted Buffy to Sundays without telling me.)

The highlight of the Bratislava conference for me: I had the opportunity to rant on one of the panels about the international community’s failure to address the Azerbaijan election riging. After I’d spoken, a wee man got up in the … Continue reading →

Trying to prepare my website for the coming Northern Ireland elections, I’ve set up a draft entry form at http://explorers.whyte.com/2003predform.htm – and can’t make the damn thing work in Explorer. Opera and Netscape seem to be OK. Is it just … Continue reading →

A somewhat grim night of upset stomach – I think caused by some dodgy food rather than excessive alcohol consumption. Bratislava is not the most exciting of capital cities but it does bring my personal tally of countries I have … Continue reading →

Can you believe I just spent half an hour driving around the car parks of Brussels airport looking for somewhere to leave the car??? Of course I was late anyway due to horrendous traffic – Rue Belliard appeared to be … Continue reading →

What Irrational Number Are You? You are √2 You are in good company, many other square roots are also irrational numbers. Just by being a square root you have been branded a radical. You are considered very attractive, especially by … Continue reading →

We had a pleasant 24 hours in Ghent yesterday, a belated 10th wedding anniversary. The two things everyone must do in Ghent are first, see the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, and second, go on a boat trip.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to post about this, but I’m sufficiently shocked to do so. I was in Washington for most of last week. Most of the areas I cover for my work have a certain degree … Continue reading →

I’ve learnt a lot about Azerbaijan in the last couple of days.

The Observer joins in the game played by the BBC and the Norwegian Book Clubs to name its 100 greatest books – with an explanation. 1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes 2. Pilgrim’s Progress John Bunyan 3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel … Continue reading →

I hate verbatim transcripts.

…trying to make progress on editing our first ever report on Georgia. It’s a good report, the only problem is that the original author isn’t a native English speaker and barely a sentence is getting by unedited. Out of 36 … Continue reading →

I found yesterday’s news from the Netherlands rather alarming. Apart from the fact that Mabel is a personal friend of mine and it’s always very unpleasant when people you know get dragged through the media this way, it’s enough to … Continue reading →

An extraordinary evening in New York on Thursday night, at a fund-raising dinner for work, with entertainment including Emmy Lou Harris singing “Imagine” accompanied by Philip Glass on the piano. I stayed overnight with my cousin in Brooklyn – the … Continue reading →

Off to America for a week tomorrow. Hope the weather is better there…

Keith has put two more of my reviews up at infinity plus: Stephen Baxter’s Riding the Rock and Simon Forward’s Doctor Who novella, Shell Shock. Rather pleasing.

Moderately pleased with my new front page. OK, so it would barely get you a pass grade in basic webmastering these days, but it looks a lot better than it used to. Also I added comments to the Norwegian and … Continue reading →

Anne and I were married on 2 October 1993 at Clare College chapel in Cambridge. It’s been a fantastic ten years. Probably nobody reading this has even met her, but you would all like her if you did.

I discovered that a political rival from my student days is now the Tory candidate for Hammersmith and Fulham, Conservative target seat #26, and sent him a short “hello” message. He replied that I was the only person he’d ever … Continue reading →

Over the last few months I’ve been following a very interesting court case in Florida, where a lawyer claiming to represent various (anonymous) email marketing organisations launched a case earlier this year against a number of anti-spam activists. His case … Continue reading →