I have reached the nerdcore

At long last, I have had a visitor from CERN, in Switzerland. Why is that important? For so many reasons. CERN is where Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web (on a NeXT machine, and now he's a Mac user, as NeXT became Mac OS), in response to his inability to access a computer locked in a colleague's office. It's where the Large Hadron Collider is. All sorts of very cool science is conducted there.

I am going to assume that Berners-Lee himself is now a reader of Plashing Vole.

What was he looking for? I must admit that he wasn't seeking political or cultural enlightenment. He googled 'Floyd Swayze death'.

PS. A quick tip to new students. Don't book a holiday for the very first two weeks of your university career.

Never mind Swayze: Keith Floyd's dead

Every time I see a celebrity chef on TV, I mourn the absence of Keith Floyd from our screens, and now his comeback is indefinitely postponed due to death. He was a drunken, rude, bossy curmudgeon, on-screen and off. He didn't care about anything other than food and drink, and particularly rejected the tired old conventions of TV cuisine. He had a massive ego and a love of violently arguing with pretty much anyone involved in his career, but none of this matters, because his show consisted of demonstrating that fine food involves love, fun, wine, decent ingredients and passion.