I have come to believe one of the obstacles to my regularly writing something for the site is the presence of titles. A title begs for something of substance to be written underneath it.

Offhand, pithy notes about some small, but interesting, event seem of not enough substance; a single paragraph below a title is lacking the impact the title demands. But I often want to write these small notes. For example, to briefly note the Amazon MP3 store has opened in the UK. I feel it deserves more than just a tweet, but don’t have some deep insight to merit a whole title.

The only magazine I subscribe to is the Economist’s Intelligent Life, its so-called lifestyle quarterly.

Intelligent Life’s stories and articles are about the most interesting, wonderful and, in some cases it has to be said, just-a-bit weird things. Some of my favourites have been an interview with Philip Pullman, an article about the strange world of Japanese robot culture and how many button holes a decent suit will possess. I will never forget the article about the difficult subject of how much inheritance you should leave your child. Around a million: enough that they will never go hungry, but too little for them to loose their drive.

This is a post about how I fixed a broken 4OD service after upgrading from VMWare Fusion 1 to 2. I’m not sure if it was the VMWare upgrade, or just some other variable in the 4OD service changing at the same time as I chose to upgrade. Regardless, videos would play, but the video would be completely garbled. This was rather distressing as Rose and I often enjoy an episode of Black Books and the like.

People speak of Darwinism as removing the “meaning of life”. I contend this is wrong by presenting an alternate meaning of life which is entirely compatible with Darwinian thinking. I also put forward a somewhat satirical ‘proof’ for my thesis, for those who believe God exists.

The first argument to discuss, however, is why people are of the opinion that Darwinism takes away the possibility of a meaning of life in the first place. This view rests on the fact evolution by natural selection is a thoughtless, algorithmic process with no aims or desires, either for itself or its products such as humans. The reasoning supporting this view is essentially that, as we are produced by a thoughtless process, so our existence is just as meaningless.

A couple of weeks ago Rose and I did some gardening. Well, Rose gardened whilst I sat out in the sunshine and took a photo every now and then. We bought some plants from a garden centre, a couple of which are below.

One of my favourites was a chilli plant; it’s so curious looking and wonderfully colourful. Here it is, attempting to hide behind some lavender: