Ship in a Bottle

I don't post much of my fiction on here - and I don't write fan fiction, generally speaking - but the Doctor Who storyline below is actually from a dream I had.

It's not the most original of storylines, but it amused me to dream an episode of Doctor Who, and I thought I'd write it up when I woke up, before I forgot it all.

How to Write a Good Dissertation

We're coming up to Christmas, so there must be thousands of students out there starting to panic about their dissertations - first of all, don't panic.

If your course is anything like my university degree was, you'll already have done a literature review, before finalising your choice of dissertation topic.

If so, there's a decent chance that you've got a copy of a past study that is similar, at least in some ways, to the one you're working on now.

Read on for the best, most logical approach to writing a dissertation that I've been able to come up with - and which helped me to produce a report my lecturers encouraged me to have published.

White Lies (Don't Do It)

Da-na na-na na-na na-na base! Da-na na-na na-na true base!

Advertising copywriters, why must you lie? The product made it through all the planning stages, prototyping and production; surely it's got enough selling points that you don't need to lie about it?

In fact, it's not just lies. It's all of the nonsense we get bombarded with that's then explained away in the smallprint. If your ad needs smallprint, you hired the wrong copywriter, I'd say.

RIP Google Reader

It is with considerable regret that I announce the sad passing of Google Reader.

When I logged on this morning, Google Reader appeared pale, with its features much more poorly defined than was the case yesterday.

As I tried to discover what had happened, I also learned that Google Reader has become much less communicative - it is no longer allowing content to be viewed on sharing pages, or via RSS feeds.