Author Archives: Simon

Blue Badges

Continuing my tradition of absolutely not seeing what was coming — I remember thinking that the word “blog” would never catch on and that nobody would put up with seeing ads in their Instagram feed — I am baffled to … Continue reading

Posted in Internet

Salt & Fat’s Butter Tomato Sauce

The day ten years ago this recipe for tomato-butter sauce was posted on Salt & Fat was the day I started to cook. Until then I had prepared plenty of food and certainly thought that I had been cooking, but … Continue reading

Posted in Food

Missing Japanese Input Sources

I came across a weird bug that prevented me from being able to type in Japanese. After a few hours of fiddling I worked out how to fix it. Continue reading

Posted in Technology Tagged

Not Quite My Own C64

My first computer was a Commodore 64. Way before I had my own though, I had access to one at the local public computer lab—aka, K-Mart. The local library had a few C64 magazines full of BASIC programs ready to … Continue reading

Posted in Life Tagged

Exhalation

Ted Chiang’s Exhalation is one of my favourite short stories. Its centrepiece is a meticulous description of the protagonist’s self-dissection of his own brain. It’s a mechanical being (although the word mechanical seems too crude) so rather than blood and … Continue reading

Posted in Culture Tagged