Lazy Robot

One of the things a fan of music must do is put themselves through the annual trial of trying to figure out which of the albums they bought/borrowed/stole this year are the best. It took me until about March last year. This year I have been a little more proactive and have produced a list already. I bought 55 albums this year. I also acquired a further 58 through freebies, promos, borrowings and artists giving me stuff. That's a lot of stuff to choose from. I was considering limiting my self only to stuff released this year, but decided that some things were too good to leave off despite them being discovered by me this year, although released some time in the past. This didn't end up making the job any easier. Anyway, after much deliberating, thinking, changing of minds and giving up in disgust, I have produced a list of 10 albums split evenly across "metal" and "non-metal", as well as a handful of "honourable mentions." So, without further a...

A bit of a change of pace on the blog. I've not posted anything remotely nerdy for ages, so here is a post containing four very nerdy things: functional programming, Haskell, Scala and Twitter interview questions. The Twitter interview in question was not mine, but instead was one posted about by Michael Kozakov on his blog post " I Failed a Twitter Interview ." So, interview questions, eh? This Michael fella thinks he failed the interview by getting the question wrong, but you and I know that's not how it works. The interviewer is more interested in finding out how you go about solving problems than whether you get this particular problem right. After all, unless they have some nasty leaky roof scenario, I can't imagine there being a particular pressing need for Twitter to need their interview candidates to get this one spot on. That all being said, I don't much care about the problem solving technique. I care about figuring it out and making a really exp...

It's Autumn! Autumn is awesome. Autumn is the season of dark mornings, dark evenings, dark ... daytimes. Dark, generally. And damp. And generally ick. I love it. It's my favourite season. Not least because taking pictures of the lovely golden autumn light is an absolute delight and being out in the cold, fresh air actually makes me feel alert and awake, unlike the muggy, heavy sluggishness that comes with a hot summer. The best thing about everything being dark, and damp, and ick, is that mushrooms grow. I've had a long-standing love of photographing mushrooms and other fungi, and this year is no exception. The first of many is right here: Lovely. Here are a few more, just for good measure.

Bank holiday Monday saw us walking around the Shropshire Union Canal. Well, a very small portion of it near the Grindley Brook Staircase Lock, anyway. One of the bridges on that stretch of the canal (bridge 27, if you hadn't guessed, which is actually more of a tunnel) has an unusual architecture in that the brickwork is built into a spiral along the length of the tunnel rather than a more traditional cylinder. The effect of the light hitting the bricks gives the whole thing a wormhole-like appearance, like a swirling vortex to another realm. All very Whovian. Looking under the bridge The effect of the swirling brickwork inside

A study of patterns and interesting things in nature around Stainborough, near Barnsley. All pictures taken in monochrome rather than converting. See the full gallery .

Favours , a photo by craigand on Flickr. 005/365 A nice little selection of wedding favours

Balls , a photo by craigand on Flickr. 004/365 A selection of watery balls used in a table centre at a wedding. They are very brittle and explode easily, but are also bouncy. Weird. They are all transparent. The varying shades and colours are purely from reflected background detail.