That Danny!

“One fewer person” or “one less person”? It’s one of those nagging questions you only come across rarely. I did, when I had to translate a line from Dutch for my previous article. It went: “Een cadeautje minder, een friend meer” or (literally) “one fewer/less present, one friend more”.
My head says “one fewer present” [...]

[Read more →]

Dam Square in Amsterdam was covered with 15,000 single shoes on Monday (17 November) as part of a campaign run by the Dutch chapter of charity War Child.
War Child is a network of independent organisations, working across the world to help children affected by war. The Dutch campaign is running with the slogan “one present [...]

[Read more →]

My partner, D., likes escaping to islands that I’ve never heard of, usually in the middle of nowhere. This is sometimes as simple as spinning Google Earth until a candidate presents itself – followed by the planning of a ‘random holiday’. Weird as this sounds, I must admit that after my initial doubts subside it [...]

[Read more →]

XIAHE - UPDATE NOTE - the latest update I got from travellers in Gansu province about access to Xiahe can be found here. It would also appear that the Chinese authorities have now blocked access to my blog.
Original posting - Tibetan Towns Closed to the Outside World - A Posting for Xiahe and Tongren:
What used [...]

[Read more →]

Following my piece about Google Chrome making password information visible to users (Oh Sh*t - Google Chrome Doesn’t Really do THAT?!) - I got several messages from people who were more worried about my observation that Firefox does the same.
The problem was that anyone using your PC could view a list of all usernames and [...]

[Read more →]

Table manners and etiquette - Rules for Children about how to behave around the formal table.

I came across this charming collection of rules and manners for children from the middle ages - this one is an edition from 1701, reproduced by the V&A in 1983. These sort of courtesy books were used by pages, as [...]

[Read more →]