Well I have been fiddling with my camera and it's different modes, here is my latest attempt at something pretty. Bear in mind I am an engineer at heart, all this arty stuff doesn't come naturally to me!

( pretty things cut incase your internet is slow and you don't really care :) )

Well, I went a bit crazy and brought myself a spiffy new camera, a Cannon EOS 5D Mk II if that means anything to you. It’s all a bit bewildering at the momant, but here is a selection of my very first efforts (click on ‘em to get a better view).

If you are at all interested, I am going to attempt to start a blog to chart my progress into the murky, ( Read more... )

I thought I'd be a bit topical, with the budget yesterday and all and share this oldie but goldie that has been floating around the interwebs forever for those who haven't seen it before ( Read more... )

You have just proved to me that your democracy actually works. It’s inspiring stuff. There really is hope for you all yet. I never thought I’d say it, but I am jealous. I’d swap him for Gordon Brown any day.

I’ll have a drink on you, Barack and the USA - you’ve done well tonight.

At my firm I develop software that buys and sells millions of dollars worth of assets every day. We are a small team, 17 of us in all, with a large pot of other people’s money and all the technology you could throw a stick at. Our strategies are all systematic - so we spend our days thinking of cunning new algorithms to better model markets, then ( Read more... )

 ..is actually a remarkably fascinating place.

So I took LJ’s advice, and for the last two months I have been working for a hedge fund. We’ve got the best part of “half a yard” (That’s $500,000,000 to the uninitiated) of other people’s money and every day we gamble it for them on buying things like currency forwards, government bonds, oil ( Read more... )

If you believe that the government should not interfere with what people do in the privacy of their own home while having minimal impact upon society ( Read more... )

Sometimes I find something on the internet that makes me just sigh with relief as I realise that (contrary to what I would deduce if I lived on livejournal alone) people all over the world are still beautifully and glibly offending each other for no reason other than the shear pleasure of it.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/tor/649999147.html

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These words aren't mine, but they are important enough I think to repeat them here. If you are as pissed of as I am please consider writing to your MP.


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The entire notion of human ‘rights’ is one which puzzles me somewhat.

The idea that my existence is in some way unique and protected from the day I emerge from the womb as a tangle of flesh and bones smacks of a flawed, almost religious dogma. To this day I am not sure what I have done to earn the right to breathe, let alone assume a nationality or ( Read more... )