http://www.bojates.com 'bo-ja-t-z int., n. 1. a friendly greeting. orig.: London circa 1980. Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:27:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As I was cycling home from work yesterday evening, I decided to stop off at Waitrose at the Barbican. As I pulled up at the bike racks outside the shop, I saw some kids hanging around eyeing up the bikes. I chose an area close to the shop entrance and ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2008/03/08/fear-and-confrontation Ben Goldacre has written a great piece for the Guardian about ID cards and why biometrics are not to be trusted. I have mixed feelings about Ben Goldacre - I think he is too quick to dismiss as quackery things that science can't explain, but he is truly excellent on ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/11/26/ben-goldacre-on-biometrics The weekend before last, Sarah and I went up to Glasgow with our taekwondo club to participate in a taekwondo tournament. It was amazing and a serious personal challenge. The lead up to the tournament all started a few months ago when a couple of people in our club suggested ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/11/11/happy-to-be-kicked-in-the-head I recently bought a Dahon Jack folding bike, and I'm cycling to work on it pretty much every day. I'm loving it and wondering why I didn't sort out my life to do this years ago! More on that in another post, but here let me just share some information ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/11/02/mudguards-fenders-for-a-dahon-jack Here's a report on the BBC website about a female tennis coach who sexually abused a girl in her charge. Why mention it here? Because the BBC has chosen not to headline the piece something like "lesbian child abuser", but instead "Tennis coach jailed for sex abuse" and I am ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/11/02/sexual-abuse-is-sexual-abuse-regardless-of-whos-abusing-who There's a nice piece by Zoe Williams in the Guardian today about the length of time it takes to accept new radio presenters (and overcome the hatred of the annoying trails they make). She makes the excellent point that most listeners have little awareness of stations other than the one ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/10/12/zoe-williams-on-accepting-new-radio-presenters Ever since we came back from Canada, I've had a craving for a good stack of American pancakes, eaten out, for breakfast one weekend morning. This simple craving turned into a bit of a quest when I realised it's not so easy to get pancakes around here. I posted a ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/09/01/finding-good-pancakes-in-se1 Thank you so much for this awesome gift for Sarah and my kitchen! Here are some pictures of it in place. I can't believe that Dad made this in 1957 - it looks just like something he could have made last week, which says something about when he learnt his ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/08/25/dear-grandma Every Tuesday I leave my office at 6.30 and walk down the road for 20 minutes to my taekwondo class at the Barbican. Of those walks for the past year, it has rained only once. And today. [update] I wrote too soon. By the time I left my office at ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/08/14/my-walk-to-taekwondo I went to Google with the intention of looking for I forget what, starting my search with 'ways to'. I got a bit freaked by Google's suggestions: I am encouraged that "ways to say I love you" comes above "ways to kill yourself". On the other hand, you'd sort of ... http://www.bojates.com/words/2007/07/06/google-suggest-scariness-ways-to