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Becoming a grandparent for the first time is a very special experience. Suddenly a new family member appears, in our case Lowe Mulvaney in July 2015, but without the same familial responsibilities that came with the job when her dad was born.

My wife has a very simple view of navigation. She does not rely much on maps, since she cannot read them and more importantly if we are going south rather than north the whole thing is upside down to her.

According to Elsevier’s Dictionary of the Printing and Allied Industries, the fore-edge of a book is the blank space occupied by the outer margin of a page, opposite the folds in the section and I suppose you might think it’s not much use or interest to most people.

On the 22nd October 2000, I made a significant alteration to the way I ran my business life. It is the last written entry in my Filofax diary, because on Monday 23rd January 2000, I started up my Palm Pilot and never made another written note in the Filofax. It was a scary day – I had run my whole life through my Filofax for many years.

In the centre of the city in which I live, Nottingham in the UK, there is a rather elegant Georgian portico incongruously sandwiched between a shop selling newspapers and a clothes shop. There is no clue to what’s behind the door, but there is a small sign above it showing it to be Bromley House, built in 1752.

We have seen a number of successful US imports into Europe over the years – Halloween, School Proms, Thanksgiving and Disneyland amongst them, but one of the more recent imports, Black Friday has got off to a stuttering start.

I was rather shocked when I saw my first industrial robot. The year was about 1989 and I was in the factory of Mitsubishi Paper Mills in Kyoto, Japan. At the end of the production line for SilverMaster^® paper-base plates, rolls of plate material were being picked up by a large robotic arm and placed carefully into a cardboard carton.

In a move that could have serious repercussions for digital advertising and perhaps a positive effect on direct mail, one of Europe’s largest Internet service providers and mobile operators, EE has announced plans to investigate the introduction of software that will enable its customers to block advertising content that they consider inappropriate or unwanted.