Dr Laura James's writings

We get our groceries from the internet. This is a magic system which means we in theory never need to visit a supermarket. Usually, we get our stuff from Ocado. It's great; bags of food arrive, and it's almost always exactly what we ordered. Sometimes, alas, like last week, there's something missing - in this case, frozen croissants. Argh! So yesterday I tried Waitrose Deliver instead. Like Ocado, groceries arrive on your doorstep; unlike Ocado, there were a few substitutions and again a missing item. But the delivery guy wasn't just a driver - he was a comedian! He had a bunch of items in his van which didn't belong in any of the orders he was delivering. Did we want 5 bags of rice? Had we ordered them? We had not. Nor had we requested two loaves of sliced wholemeal. Or the box of cocoa puffs (although perhaps I should have claimed them for M). We were thrilled to have the chance to opt in to random items. When we went through our order after he had left, we foun...

It's been a long time since I got a new phone. My Nokia N73 served me well, but it's been time for a proper smart phone (on an unlimited data contract rather than pay as you go) for some time. I thought about an iPhone, which would seem a logical choice given I have Macs everywhere; but Michael beat me to it, and I felt I should have something different, partly so that we'd be on different networks (increasing the chance of getting a signal in remote areas) and partly so we could compare and contrast two devices. So he's been on the iPhone 3G for a while, and I've been lagging behind with occasional use of the (actually quite usable) Opera browser on my N73 and of course a quality camera that takes good pictures (unlike the iPhone's). When the Android G1 came out, I was optimistic that this might be the smart phone I'd been waiting for, but I was hugely disappointed when I played with one in a T-mobile store. I like physical keyboards, but this one, althou...