I used to love Drawsomething until the day the Zynga logo appeared on the splash screen, and it was promptly uninstalled. i really feel sorry for the OMGPOP people - it was a fun game.

I grew up in Gloucester and between 2001 and 2007 worked in Chelt, taking the 94 past Benhall every day. It was rather sad seeing the old building disappear and the main building come down, just rather crappy-looking flats go up in their place...at least they kept the trees by the roundabout.

In 1991 I went for a job interview at Oakley. It was like getting into Colditz: had to bring my birth certificate, was asked a load of questions before being escorted to three different checkpoints before getting into the building where the interview was taking place. It was all one-storey stuff, but I was told later that there was alot more stuff underground. I rather liked the austerity-era decor and all the ancient fixtures and fittings.

And thank you for mentioning Wadworths 6X, has to be THE best beer in the world!

The Hole in the Ground

There's a wonderful film available on one of the excellent BFI COI collections called "The Hole in The Ground", made in 1962, and I believe it was filed at Kelvedon Hatch. It's available on YouTube as well, but broken up into 6 10-minute pieces. Well worth a watch (sorry if it has been mentioned already, but my lunch hour is precious!)

I'd love to visit a place like this, but I doubt it would fly with the missus, who is the driver in the household!

What's the point?

About 98% of Instagram pics now are bloody self-portraits.

+1 for Xubuntu

My wife's lappy had Win7 on it, what a mess - flaky wireless, kept freezing, wouldn't sleep properly, so in utter frustration I put xubutu on it last week. I was expecting a torrent of "what's this? I don't understand it" but she's absolutely loving her 'new' laptop. it does what she wants - web browsing with Chromium, dropbox, Libreooffice - and that is great to see. she hasn't even booted into the Windows partition I created, just in case!

Virtualisation on OS X

I like the *buntus, and use Xubuntu 10.04 in Parallels on OS X. For some reason (drivers) Parallels won't let you use a screen size larger than 800x600 with the 13.04 release, and nobody can seem to get a decent answer form Parallels that I can see. I'm moving to VirtualBox instead, Parallels charging for something that won't even work properly is a scam, frankly. Xubuntu looks nice, but I'm keen to try Lubuntu.

Apps

Android on Notebooks? There aren't enough android apps optimised for tablets, let alone laptop/notebooks. Are these things going to run scaled-up phone apps??

Too cool for glasses

You see so many ads for laser eye surgery and contact lenses, it is obvious that the majority of people wouldn't be seen dead with some fugly specs on their face. So now we're supposed to believe that these same too-cool-for-glasses people will shell out for these?

I also agree with those posters who can see uses for those with (slight) visual impairments, but for most they already wear glasses, so this would not be an option. Perhaps in the future there'll be an add-on for your existing pair of specs, though I doubt my horrible bottle-bottomed behemoths would get a look in.

<blink>CALL NOW!</blink> - what will ambulancechasersdirect do now?

A Facebook OS? They can't even do a version of their terrible app for Android tablets.

8 cores?

No doubt that's the international version - the North American one will have a Z80, if you're lucky!

Data caps

After using 4G LTE here in Northern California for about 6 months, my advice: don't bother! AT&T were 'kind' enough to up my data allowance from 200MB to 300MB, but even then, with only moderate usage, I've burned through that in about 3 weeks, and for that I pay the equivalent of about 60 quid a month (that is, data, 400 minutes of calls and 200 texts...how generous!)

I really wish we had European style mobile phone pricing over here, but with the current AT&T/Verizon virtual duopoly it'll never happen.

Repeat?

Don't you mean "another chance to see..."?

Radio 4 TV

No! It's annoying enough on Radio 5 Live when they keep referring to the visual feed, let's not go down that road on good old Radio 4. It's bad enough when they put all the presenters' photos on the website, totally smashing my image I had of them.

Like The Burkiss Way said: "Adapted for radio by poking your eyes out!" :)

If that trick with the penny is anything to go by, at least all the copper parts would be nice and shiny!

funnily enough, here in the States Cilit Bang! is called Kaboom! - same bottle, different name.

Lotus 1-2-3 seemed to be the Rolls-Royce of spreadsheets for a time. In the late 80s were trained on SuperCalc 3, which you could get some good use out of. One of the wags in our class used Norton and changed all references on the floppy from SuperCalc to SuperCrap...the teacher wasn't best pleased!

iPlayer America

"What? You mean the BBC make other programs besides Top Gear?"

Another one here who caught Thunderbirds in the 80s, usually a Sunday lunchtime on ITV. It was the modernist total faith in technology and its consequent fatal flaws that always intrigued me - monorails that couldn't stop, people getting trapped in hermetically sealed underground car parks, that sort of thing. How much less exciting the plots would have been if there had been adequate health and safety legislation in 2065!

I always admired Gerry Anderson's faith in his projects, but somehow felt a little sorry for the way fashions in kids' telly had moved on and left Gerry behind. Not to detract from his many achievements though - his work will most definitely live on for many years to come!

Not just the UK

I've been unemployed in the UK and here in California. Here they have a similar website (caljobs) that you have to sign up for and visit every week, though you enter your job search history on the paper forms they send you int he post (no having to drag yourself down to the JobCentre every fortnight to sign on!) At least the California site is run by the state, not contracted out to Monster, purveyor of fake job ads.

The last time i was unemployed in the UK was 2001, and I was given a slip to fill out for my new claim interview where I had to put down the details of two jobs i had applied for. I duly complied, but the young lady doing the interview looked surprised when i handed it to her, saying "oh, people don't usually bother to fill that out". One of the jobs i had applied for, listed as just "Administrative Assistant" turned out to be for a claims adviser at the jobCentre!

Here they're alot more strict about not complying with regulations about recording your work history. i put down that i had done some voluntary work, and had a phone call from the Unemployment office warning me that if i volunteered for more than so many hours a week, my benefits would end.

I'm now gainfully employed, but no thanks to Caljobs...got my current job after doing voluntary work.

It was so much better when you had jobs in the paper and sent letters and forms, at least you had a folder full of proof to take with you when you signed on! :)

Great tablet...

Just need some more tablet-optimized apps on Google Play

Tablet reading apps

I have a Kindle 3 and a nexus 10. i tend to use the Kindle for general reading, and any reading on the Nexus is textbooks or illustrated books. A genuine question, though: which apps do you used in android to read ebooks, especially ePubs? the ones I've looked at are pretty ropey, or are linked to online booksellers.

Incidentally, will El Reg be publishing a review of the Nexus 10? I'd be interested in their take on it.

Just share the version saved to your photo gallery, then. Simples!

Used to like instagram for the first 5 minutes before you had to trawl through thousands of 'selfies' and advertising pics to see any genuinely creative or thought-provoking pics. The last straw was when i recently posted a pic and instantly got 6 likes, all from 'users' with stuff to sell or promote.

Facebook and instagram - great ideas, but now teetering giants.

Very interesting article, even if i struggled to understand most of it.

I love my Pi and have been enjoying learning new stuff like using ssh, and reacquainting myself with the command line and programming, but get very frustrated at my lack of ability in learning Python. I was a keen hobbyist programmer back in the 80s and 90s, using BASIC, Pascal and some C++, and looking back at some of the surviving scripts I'm amazed at some of the stuff I did. I'm finding that python tutorials are either "print "Hello World!" at the interpreter prompt", or a full-blown in-depth essay where it's assumed you know what stuff like libraries and classes are. I wish there was something for us ex-hobbyist programmers to get us up to date...or they put GOTO into Python! :)

Please keep the articles coming...immersion is one way to learn!

I'm sure you meant gigahertz...at 5Mhz the radio hams would start moaning!

If someone starts following me, and they either have no pics or dodgy profile text, I'll block them and report as spam immediately. Why would anyone in their right mind want to follow someone on a picture-sharing social network who has no pictures to share??

People have been talking about 'peak Apple' lately, I think it's also time for 'peak Instagram'!

YOLO

I'm currently in Yolo County, California - gives the name a whole new meaning!

Awful!

Used ExpatShield for about 5 minutes before having to restore Windows to a previous restore point - the software just took over my machine. Went with a paid-for VPN and have had absolutely no problems watching iPlayer and ITV player here in the US. You really do get what you pay for!

4G Data caps

I'm on AT&T 4G LTE in the States and the data cap is a paltry 300Mb a month, and that's up from 200Mb on 3G! And that comes with all of 200 texts and 450 voice minutes, all for the equivalent of about 55 quid a month! I really think you have a better deal in the UK, but not much better!

Missed it!

Here in downtown Sacramento, it was supposed to fly over at about 9.30am. We all stood outside waiting, heard a rumble, didn't see anything. Someone got on their phone and told us we'd missed it, so we all trooped back into the office, only to catch a glimpse of the shuttle when we went to close the blinds! damn! Then all the smug bastards at the top of the tall buildings started sending their mobile phone pics to us!