We just spent a very pleasant holiday in Tuscany, Italy. We stayed in a farmhouse in the hills on the edge of Chianti, and then in Florence. It seems a very modern place - motorways and factories - and also a very ancient place. The countryside in… more »

I bought this book after recommendations on the net. I've just spent a holiday in Tuscany and wanted to read about Italy while I was there. I'm not entirely sure if it was a good idea to read this at the time! The book is a fascinating read, and… more »

Another interesting programmer! He's invented BitTorrent (http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/) - which is a kind of P2P file sharing network for distributing very large files. Similar to work I did for a company called PushTV - except that was a cen… more »

I bought this book attracted by the subtitle "Inside the Secret War against Al Qaeda". Unfortunately it turned out to be a very long, and sometimes turgid confessional of the author's time in Afghanistan as an army interrogator. I ended up speed-re… more »