Blog Archives

Why this site might go down any moment!

Posted on by 8,147 views

Hi folks. It’s a long story, but to cut it short, several domains that have always been used exclusively by me are now under the control of a former colleague Continue reading

Category: Work, River Valley

We should applaud higher profits, not lower profits

Posted on by 6,891 views

[I was just about to post this, but a similar post was just published by Mike Taylor. I have not ready that carefully yet, but I will publish this quick before I am tempted to change it. šŸ˜‰ ]

In recent years there has been a lot of criticism of the large profits made by publishers. Much of the criticism comes from Open Access “activists” (in the best sense of the word). Continue reading

Category: Work, Business, Publishing

Journal of Brief Ideas

Posted on by 2,927 views

I came across this site via a twitter feed. It's simple. You need to log in with ORCID, so there is no ambiguity about who you are, and you can then publish an idea in less than 200 words, and tag it so that it is searchable in future. The "publication" is assigned a DOI straight away. It is extremely minimalist and has very few features as it stands, but I can't help thinking this is the way science should be reported. Advantages I see:

Continue reading

Category: Life, Publishing

The curse of the computer mouse

Posted on by 43,810 views

I am old enough to remember the first modern personal computers, in particular theĀ Apple LisaĀ (precursor to the Macintosh), which was the first to have a “mouse”. This was a magical device and I remember lining up at computer shows to play with it.Ā It is hard to imagine now, but previous to that, even with the Apple personal computers, like theĀ Apple II, the only method of interaction was the keyboard. So we had to press specific keys to open a file, edit it, save it, etc. Continue reading

Category: Life, Computers

Lucky to be alive?

Posted on by 32,375 views

I am thankful to a reptile for motivating me to post on my blog after a long timeā€¦

When I visit India, I am normally in working on our campus, and staying overnight too. But during a two day general strike when the office would close and no cars could drive, I escaped to a hotel by the beach. Continue reading

Category: Life, India

David beats Goliath

Posted on by 18,347 views
west

There are a lot of companies in the USA who will always resist any form of “single payer” healthcare system. Healthcare is big business in America. Most of the money is earned legally (though much unethically) but a huge amount is gained by cooking the books using Medicaid beneficiaries. Continue reading

Category: Health, Justice, USA

Ironic unsolicited mail from Indian supplier

Posted on by 48,968 views

Got an unsolicited mail from this gentleman (you need to be a member of LinkedIn to see it), who expressed sympathy for the legal notice served upon me recently, then suggested a venture tie-up with my company. When I enquired why his affiliation is given as “Confidential at Confidential”, he said: Continue reading

Category: India, indian suppliers

A legal notice against me from an Indian advocate

Posted on by 30,354 views

My exchanges with Indian suppliers is landing me in deep water! Some time ago I had some email exchanges with Mr P. Shivalkar, who runs Johannes Press. I noticed the testimonials looked a bit strange. They were rather generic in nature, not referring to publishing at all, and the names and affiliations did not appear on Google searches. Continue reading

Category: India | Tags: ,

How (and why) I closed down a spammer’s web site

Posted on by 28,986 views

I was going to leave this to rest quietly, but the people involved (Mr Nataraj Sasid and Mr Vimal Raj) have accused me publicly (on LinkedIn)Ā of hacking into their site. Not wanting to wash my dirty clothes in public, I decided to write a post here in case people are interested in the details. Continue reading

Category: Life, Justice, India | Tags:

Life is better when you are an optimistā€¦

Posted on by 18,395 views
Bottle

I started my business in the UK, some 20 years back. By 1996 we had around 15 people (in Devon). This is when I started hearing the first murmurs about clients sending work to India. The word “oursourcing” had not come into usage. It was very early days. I took the decision (possibly the most important decision in my life) to get on a plane and see what is going on there, as it would certainly affect us. Continue reading