thursday 28 december

back. sort of.
Okay, okay.

I have been away a long time. For this I apologise. Our home network is still completely and utterly pants, and I don't know about you, but not being able to use my computer for net access and having to make do with my mum and dad's just feels... well, weird. My brother has been able to update just fine because, for some reason, the LAN works fine on his computer and not mine. Compaq are suitably befuddled, and it doesn't help that their wireless people are all in Ireland where (apparently), they have far too many fire drills to be able to answer their phones properly. Don't ask.

Things to look forward to when I get back to Cambridge and am able to do some serious uploading: the Gallery continues to grow rather like the universe did in the first few tenths of a second of its existence. Now totalling around seven hundred odd images, it should come online sometime in January. Of course, that's discounting the fact that I'll probable take about four hundred new ones over the next few days... (Meanwhile, I direct you to Adrian's snow pictures while mine languish.

new years
...Is being spent this year at Edinburgh. Cambridge RAG has managed to get tickets to the street party, and we were all set to go off on a road trip today (at least I was going to drive to Doncaster with Paul, then we'd pick up Helen and John, then head up to Edinburgh). At least, we were going to, until snow fell out of the sky. Five hour road trip has now turned into rather-expensive-train trip, and we all know what the trains are like. I might not be back for some time...

sunday 17 december

service interruptions
I haven't been able to update in ages not least because our home wireless LAN has decided to not work at all, and I'm not feeling that up on trailing cables all over the place. This is not fun at all, and I'm having to resort to checking email via ssh/telnet of all things, which is not how things should be. Meanwhile, dissertation work goes on, essays are starting to be written and a new, revamped gallery should be coming online in January (around January 7th, hopefully) with oodles of photographs (500-plus, at last count). I'm updating ec over telnet on a 33.6 modem connection after having been spoiled by my uni connection. Not a happy bunny at all.

thursday

summer
I've got access to the server sorted out, so the episode of Summer in London that was due on Monday is online.

today
... I will mostly be doing this.

wednesday 29 nov 2000

ohmygod i'm 21
I turned 21 today. Apologies for server being deaded. More later. I have serious work (last essay and supervision of term) and partying (yay) to do.

Cheers to Dave and Lydia for getting me a crossbow...

friday

notice
Things are coming to a head near the end of term, so I may be away a little.

rowing
Yesterday, I was mostly doing this, and getting wet and cold lots.

thursday

gang aft agley
Sometimes, things just don't work out...

turkey day
Happy Thanksgiving!

tuesday

thank you
My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all. [And] even if I could it'd all be grey--but your picture on my wall, it reminds me that it's not so bad. It's not so bad.

google searching
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,200. Surely not?

cold feet
Absolutely love it. ITVs best drama at the moment (and that's no mean feat) has entered its third season and is this time adorned with a rather flashy [as in macromedia] site. Classier than friends and wonderfully British, Cold Feet looks like it should be on BBC2 it's that good. The Independent interviews James Nesbitt, one of the stars:

"Cold Feet, the hugely successful ITV series in which he plays the fecklessly laddish but "Oirishly" charming Adam Williams. Recently rechristened Gold Feet after tabloid reports of the high salaries of its stars (£20,000 per episode, according to The Sun), Cold Feet has made Nesbitt into one of the hottest properties of the moment."

science
Picks from this week's New Scientist: Sony develops walking robot. This week's edition comes out tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Scientific American covers the psychology of lying children. Trends in the data show that "children seemed more likely to tell pro-social lies to their peers, but selfish or self-enhancing lies to their mothers. This difference also turned up in a study of college-age students."

media
The weakest link: Anne Robinson gets asked "do weak people deserve to live?" in the Independent.

medical ethics
This week, I have mostly been reading the Court of Appeal case Re: A (more commonly known as Jodi and Mary's appeal case). In-depth commentary coming soon.

webcasts
My Dad webcasted a lecture last night. Streaming quality was surprisingly good...

monday

extracts from a fictional subterannean life
As usual, the time's not right for 'fancy a shag?' which for some reason worked for Phil at one of the clubs we were at in Cambridge. The precise moment that we found out that his 'fancy a shag?' line had worked was in the morning over breakfast when the girl he pulled was the one who came out of the shower after having been in it for about forty five minutes. With Phil.

billy elliot
Reviewed here.

summer in london
It's Monday, so you lucky kids get a new installment of Summer in London.

sunday

blogtrumps
More cards to play with! Any more suggestions?

friday

blogtrumps
Collect the set! Who's next for playing-card treatment?

rah!
Meg and I had an IM conversation that ostensibly started talking about Paypal/Wishlists, but for some reason degenerated into a Rah! contest.

guns
The only reason why Charlton Heston feels safer getting off a plane in Los Angeles than walking the streets of London is probably because he'd be set upon by hoardes of gunless protesters if he were hanging around London.

"Possession of a gun does not make a man a criminal or more likely to commit a crime," he argued.

Well, possession of a gun makes a man more likely to shoot. Doesn't it? I'd have to submit that it's pretty hard to fire a gun if you don't have one.

Regardless, Charlton, sticks and stones may somewhat annoy us and convince us of your rather arrogant nature, and I know that you can't really use isolated statistics, but please take a look at this, and ask yourself exactly why you need a well-armed militia these days? Is it to wipe yourselves out?

thursday

content! get your sticky content!
Well, at least I hope it's sticky. Summer in London is a diary of the six weeks I spent working in London over the summer (hence the snappy and descriptive title), with new entires being added each Monday... (though, just to confuse you, the first entry went live today).

visualisation
Holy Crap.

election shmelection
Salon covers South Park covering the US election:

A segment on the animated series scheduled to air Wednesday night on Comedy Central features a deadlocked election for kindergarten class president that has the tykes in an uproar. The results are disputed because of hard-to-read ballots.

the power of teevee
Don't snigger at ER Bioethics, it's actually very good. The University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics has managed to link an interesting and increasingly relevant subject to a TV show that many people watch and understand. Score for educational--entertainment crossovers.

"Each week a different student in our Master's program in bioethics (with help from appropriate faculty) writes a short essay on one of the most significant bioethical issues in that episode. After reviewing the episode on Thursday night, the student reworks the essay for inclusion on this site. A new essay will appear each Friday. Discussion of the episode and of the essay on this site is encouraged."

The most recent episode, In the Best Interests of the Child reads more like a Family Law question that the Law Faculty would set here: just add an "advise the Doctor" sentence on to the end and proceed to tear your hair out...

everything changes but chew
A few cosmetic navigation changes, and the start of shifting meeja content from the old server, to new.

webcam
After being off for an inordinate amount of time, the webcam is now on...

wednesday

experimental non-narcolepsy
Narcolepsy is a cool word. Narcoleptics tend to have a permanent and overwhelming feeling of sleepiness and fatigue. I do not have that. I am simply young and a student. As an experiment, however, to stop myself from falling asleep during tomorrow's lectures, I think I'll do something rather radical.

I think I'll go to bed early tonight.

ass. gear. now.
The next two and a half weeks will be devoted tomaking sure my ass is in gear.

music
The end of the "T" section of my mp3 collection is receiving copious attention: the Toploader album, followed by oodles of Travis, and then shedloads of U2. Perfect. Marred, unfortunately by the presence of "Toybox - Best Friend", "Touch & Go - Would you?" and "TQ - Westside". But hey -- what're editing tools for in playlists?

books
Tom has made me buy the dice man.

evil fun
Hmmm. Evil Photoshop Fun. More later, when I have a) time and b) inspiration.

conferences
Was in London yesterday at a conference. More later.

fictional excerpts from a subterranean life #3
Dinner parties are what students seem to be having nowadays, or at least it's what the middle class students at the redbrick universities seem to be doing. After having a fair bit of coverage in the press when the broadsheets found out that middle class students were inviting each other round for immaculately prepared dinners and cracking open bottles of wine by the caseload, they went for the jugular. Spoilt students, it was proclaimed, were getting ahead of themselves in a nasty case of pretentiousness and throwing dinner parties that were so passé and boring to the Notting Hill crowd. We threw quite a few last term in our house because we rapidly worked out that it was much cheaper than going out. We got to cook our own food, which is always a bonus because college cooked meals tend to be fit only for Nazi war criminals on death row. The seven or so odd quid that we individually threw in to the pot was more than enough for a few bottles of cheap wine and excellent, home made food. Of course students like throwing dinner parties-they combine spending an incredibly small amount of money with an incredibly large amount of drink to produce an even larger amount of morning-after-the-night-before breakfast gossip. Practically heaven. The only reason why the columnists were rubbishing us was because we were having far much more fun than they were and had turned a shade jealous. In any twenty year old's opinion, anyone over thirty who has a family and children has forgotten that dinner parties should involve as much alcohol as humanly possible.

friday

blogtrumps
Collect the set!

rah!
Meg and I had an IM conversation that ostensibly started talking about Paypal/Wishlists, but for some reason degenerated into a Rah! contest.

thursday

content! get your sticky content!
Well, at least I hope it's sticky. Summer in London is a diary of the six weeks I spent working in London over the summer (hence the snappy and descriptive title), with new entires being added each Monday... (though, just to confuse you, the first entry went live today).

visualisation
Holy Crap.

election shmelection
Salon covers South Park covering the US election:

A segment on the animated series scheduled to air Wednesday night on Comedy Central features a deadlocked election for kindergarten class president that has the tykes in an uproar. The results are disputed because of hard-to-read ballots.

the power of teevee
Don't snigger at ER Bioethics, it's actually very good. The University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics has managed to link an interesting and increasingly relevant subject to a TV show that many people watch and understand. Score for educational--entertainment crossovers.

"Each week a different student in our Master's program in bioethics (with help from appropriate faculty) writes a short essay on one of the most significant bioethical issues in that episode. After reviewing the episode on Thursday night, the student reworks the essay for inclusion on this site. A new essay will appear each Friday. Discussion of the episode and of the essay on this site is encouraged."

The most recent episode, In the Best Interests of the Child reads more like a Family Law question that the Law Faculty would set here: just add an "advise the Doctor" sentence on to the end and proceed to tear your hair out...

everything changes but chew
A few cosmetic navigation changes, and the start of shifting meeja content from the old server, to new.

webcam
After being off for an inordinate amount of time, the webcam is now on...

wednesday

experimental non-narcolepsy
Narcolepsy is a cool word. Narcoleptics tend to have a permanent and overwhelming feeling of sleepiness and fatigue. I do not have that. I am simply young and a student. As an experiment, however, to stop myself from falling asleep during tomorrow's lectures, I think I'll do something rather radical.

I think I'll go to bed early tonight.

ass. gear. now.
The next two and a half weeks will be devoted tomaking sure my ass is in gear.

music
The end of the "T" section of my mp3 collection is receiving copious attention: the Toploader album, followed by oodles of Travis, and then shedloads of U2. Perfect. Marred, unfortunately by the presence of "Toybox - Best Friend", "Touch & Go - Would you?" and "TQ - Westside". But hey -- what're editing tools for in playlists?

books
Tom has made me buy the dice man.

evil fun
Hmmm. Evil Photoshop Fun. More later, when I have a) time and b) inspiration.

conferences
Was in London yesterday at a conference. More later.

fictional excerpts from a subterranean life #3
Dinner parties are what students seem to be having nowadays, or at least it's what the middle class students at the redbrick universities seem to be doing. After having a fair bit of coverage in the press when the broadsheets found out that middle class students were inviting each other round for immaculately prepared dinners and cracking open bottles of wine by the caseload, they went for the jugular. Spoilt students, it was proclaimed, were getting ahead of themselves in a nasty case of pretentiousness and throwing dinner parties that were so passé and boring to the Notting Hill crowd. We threw quite a few last term in our house because we rapidly worked out that it was much cheaper than going out. We got to cook our own food, which is always a bonus because college cooked meals tend to be fit only for Nazi war criminals on death row. The seven or so odd quid that we individually threw in to the pot was more than enough for a few bottles of cheap wine and excellent, home made food. Of course students like throwing dinner parties-they combine spending an incredibly small amount of money with an incredibly large amount of drink to produce an even larger amount of morning-after-the-night-before breakfast gossip. Practically heaven. The only reason why the columnists were rubbishing us was because we were having far much more fun than they were and had turned a shade jealous. In any twenty year old's opinion, anyone over thirty who has a family and children has forgotten that dinner parties should involve as much alcohol as humanly possible.

monday

fables
A young mouse, the smallest of her family, decided to leave the mouse-hole one day in search of riches in the wider world. She had heard that there were mice out there having all the fun, mice with cheese lining their mouse-holes, mice who had an uncanny ability (and incredibly dexterity) to pick apart mousetraps.

This young mouse was jealous, which was why she was going outside. The other mice had heard about this young mouse, and weren't keen on her muscling in on their territory. Of course, the young mouse knew about this, and had taken precautions. She had packed a loaded Walther PPK in her rucksack, just in case the other mice turned out to be not as friendly as she imagined they might be.

As it happened, she bumped into one of the other mice on the second corner she turned round. They both looked rather surprised, until the other mouse glanced at the bulge in the young mouse's rucksack, whipped out a hammer and bludgeoned the young mouse to death on the spot. And the amoral of the story? Mice might appear to carry loaded weapons, but excessive force is never out of the question.

Chipshops Fables

firearms
Interesting link courtesy of the pathology department's area at Cambridge University Medical School:

"No matter which side you take on the sale and use of firearms in this country, the fact remains that you will encounter the results of firearms injuries. This tutorial is designed to give you a working knowledge of the types of firearms, the types of ammunition used, the nature of injuries that can be produced in the body, and the investigative techniques employed by the forensic pathologist in assessing firearms injuries."

on law and clued-up-governmenet
The Lord Chancellor's Department (easier to think of it as the Ministry of Justice) has released its consultation paper on Developing Common Standards Metadata Scheme for Websites in the Legal and Advice Sectors. They conclude that a metadata scheme based on Dublin Core be defined.

on the law of trusts (extracted notes)
If at the time when the trust comes into effect there is any possibility that it is capable of continuing for longer than the appropriate perpetuity period, then the trust will be void. The testator may specify a perpetuity period lasting of one or more nominated lives in being plus 21 years or of any fixed period of years up to 21 years. The nominated lives in question can be those of persons related in some way to the trust or its purposes, or the testator can use a "royal lives clause" specifying the perpetuity clause by reference to the lives of the Royal Family, e.g. "ending at the expiration of 21 years from the death of the last survivor of all the lineal descendants of his late Majesty King George VI who shall be living at the time".

on beginnings (extracted)
I don't know where to start, because I don't know where I am, and I think that at least knowing your own position before you go blundering off into the darkness is a great idea. You don't get lost as much that way and there's less likelihood that you'll bang your shin on a bit of furniture and we all know how much that hurts. Where I will start, then, is here: I'm confused. Apparently, this is the perennial state of most twenty year olds in this country, most of whom spend their time wandering around in what appears to anyone older than them as a more or less permanent daze. About half the time the confusion is self inflicted in a rather nice way more or less every time we go out to the pub. The other half is taken up with generally being rather surprised at the way things are going, and doing a startling good impression of a rabbit stuck on a motorway at rush hour.

sunday

linkylinkylinkylinkylinky-luuurve
Thanks go out to herebox and milov.nl for saying nice things about ec (apparently ec is a great blog).

coffee charts
Starbucks Caramel Macchiato has ousted the Caffe Mocha as drink of the moment.

on dancing
We get it almost every night
When that old moon gets so big and bright
It's a supernatural delight
Everybody was dancin' in the moonlight
[more]

excerpts from a subterannean fictional life #2
My first alarm goes off at seven o'clock in the morning, intended to prime me for the onslaught of the others and on a good day might just raise me from my slumber. The second joins the first at three minutes past, while the third kicks two minutes afterwards and is cunningly placed on the other side of my bedroom. It's a tactic that many of my friends invented early in our first year at uni and you'd think it'd work-having to trudge over to the other side of a bedroom in the freezing cold should be enough to wake anyone up, but we all seem to have misunderstood exactly how a student's brain works. What normally happens is that the alarm goes off, you wake up, trudge over to the other side of the room with your eyes closed, hit the alarm with something heavy until it stops making noises at you, and then go back to bed. This is the reason why the third alarm on the other side of my room isn't the last resort and explains why at eight minutes past seven on weekdays, Zoë Ball and the Radio One breakfast crew aurally invade my personal space at a volume of about twenty seven on my hi-fi.

plasticbag
Bloody hell. You go out for a night, and people go away and redesign... A nine-five from the extenuating circumstances judge...

saturday

state patrol - uk blogmeet photos
Meg called it VodkaJelly. I call it State Patrol. See, the idea is to put the photos up on a Saturday night when no one will see them for ages, thus ensuring I don't get beaten to death with a long heavy stick. Talk about surreptitious.

As always, info on forthcoming meets is put out on the ukbloggers mailing list, and on meets.gblogs.org.uk.

(and finally)
Heart-rending story of goodwill.

linkylove
cortex has gone and has become brainsluice. And yet Dave is still known as DaveoCortex? Am confused. But on the other hand, am incredibly grateful for this:

In other news, the brain theme continues with brainfudge / blogfudge. Loobylu, looks absolutely gorgeous and completely reinvigorates my beleif that every so often you can stumble across something that isn't complete crap at all...

party
A friend's 21st last night at a restaurant--gorgeous food, wonderful starter, main course was to die for and a positively lethal chocolate cake to finish, oodles of wine and, for some reason, people having Baileys and coffee at about midnight in the bar. Probably all pretending to be grown up, but loving all of it.

The best bit was the music: she came over just before the party as I promised to make her two compilation CDs that we could play as background music at the restaurant. We ploughed through about 2,600 MP3s, and I've got to admit that she had wonderful taste:

CD1
Alanis Morisette - Thank U All 4 One - I Swear All Saints - Pure Shores Andy Williams - Can't Take My Eyes Off You Bare Naked Ladies - All Been Done Christina Aguilera - Come on over Coldplay - - Trouble Counting Crows - Mr Jones Dire Straits - Romeo And Juliet Divinyls - I Touch Myself Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight Elvis Costello - She Genesis - Against all odds Gigolo Aunts - Where I find my Heaven

CD2
Green Day - Good Riddance Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - Stay Paula Cole - I Don't Want To Wait Police - Roxanne Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under the Bridge REM - Losing My Religion The Corrs - Breathless The Police - Every Breath You Take TLC - Unpretty Toploader - Dancing in the Moonlight Toploader - Just hold on U2 - Beautiful Day Jewel - Down so long

How did we know the music was great? The manager of the restaurant asked us if I could do them a copy of the CDRs we made for the night, and a few too many people sidled up to me at some point to ask if I could do them a copy as well...

on uk blogs (one in a probably rather large series)
I don't know... this seems just a bit excessive to me...

on the us elections (pithy)
I'm torn. I find not voting indefensible. I'm liberal. I will defend to my death whatever you want to say (provided it doesn't incite hate, or any of the other popular provisos). I feel every person should be able to express their political views. I believe government should be accessible to all. Yet I find it verging on the offensive that someone like this actually has a chance at some form of political office, not because of his inclination, but because surely out of the American gene pool, there's someone better suited?

And no, the US is not undergoing a constitutional crisis. It's simply taking some time for people to wake up to the fact that people have diverse views on broad, important subjects. And if I were to climb up to my moral highground, if Bush gets elected, you honestly got what you deserved. America, you could have done so, so, so much better.

There. Now I've said it, will the flames be coming in?

on diaries (this, too, is rather long)
extracts from a subterranean fictional life
I'm a bit hypocritical on the stance of diaries. Half the time, it's my unshaken belief that no one should ever be allowed to keep a diary. Children who are encouraged to keep diaries while extremely young and impressionable should be ushered into care by perpetually smiling foster parents while their natural parents are rounded up, given a stern talking to, and then eventually shot while cowering for their lives.

Diaries are a bad thing. Evil. On a scale of evilness ranging from the M25 during a rush hour in which everyone is trying to escape London to vending machines that spill hot coffee that tastes like shit all over your trousers, diaries go off the scale for one simple, easy to follow reason. Anything good that happens to you, and I mean really terribly ecstatically good, will be unforgettable. You'll be giddy for at least two days before you start the comedown from your euphoric high, you'll go through the stage where your friends avoid you because quite frankly that permanent fixed grin on your face has started to unnerve them to the point of reaching for the phone and asking directory enquiries for the nearest sanatorium, and you'll probably also go through the stage of telling everyone you know how wonderful you feel and that you've never felt so alive. So believe me, you'll be able to remember the good times.

What you don't need, and I suspect what no one in their right mind would ever need, is a full written record of every shit thing that's happened to you in your life. You'll remember those as well, and I can bet a quite astonishingly large amount of money that you won't want to and will experiment with strange new world of alcohol poisoning in an effort to be able to say with honesty that you don't know what your name is the following morning. Look what happened to Bridget Jones. Now there's a tragic case of death by pathetic journal writing. Granted she's not dead, for the main reason that she's a creation of Helen Fielding and that always makes people incredibly hard to kill off in a convincing manner, but don't you just wish that she'd stop whining and grow up. Yes, I can hear the irony. Thank you.

friday

on essays (this is rather long)
Note to any interested parties (parents, supervisors, tutors, prospective employers): this is a work of fiction...

Coffee is a lifesaver at uni, or more to the point, any kind of stimulant is a lifesaver. Copious amounts of caffeine are just perfect for those frequent late night essay crises that always seem to attack in bunches of three. It's not even as if you're waiting for one to come along at all, and most sane people that I know possibly loathe essay crises. When an essay crisis does strike, though, you seem to be just about recovering the following morning after realising that sunrise does look particularly nice, you'd just rather not experience it after having pulling an all nighter, and then what happens? You've got another one just hiding round the corner. You're probably sitting in the bar after dinner, drinking away as much money as you can possibly spare (and very probably drinking your overdraft as well), when one insufferable smug git wanders over and casually mentions that they've finished the essay that's in for, oh, about fourteen hours' time. A number of thoughts invariably go racing through your head, along the lines of:

a) essay?

b) what essay?

c) I'm sure we don't have an essay to do,

until finally you calm down enough to be able to think coherently and prioritise the reading that you can do, the reading you can't do, and the reading that you're as likely to do as people stopping writing about the college slapper in the toilets. You ask, what's the essay question, quite nonchalantly in the hope that it's going to be something that's easy or something that you've covered, but when you find that you recognise about two words out of the title, you head over to the bar, buy six cans of Red Bull doing considerable harm to your bank balance, hold your head in your hands and lock yourself in your room.

About thirteen hours and a half hours later, you emerge from your room, having tried desperately to read textbooks that mean nothing to you and might as well be written in Swahili, having rung at least six different other friends on your course, all of whom are out since they've viciously denied the existence of the essay and have gone out to a club and having tried to ring the other person on your course that you're friends with for the sole reason that when you haven't turned up to lectures, he writes good notes and he's desperate for friends. You try to read your lecture notes, but for some reason they don't make sense, probably because you fell asleep in that dead zone half an hour through the lecture and your pen skidded across the page crossing out everything that preceded the line you were on.

You've even desperately checked the web and done a quick search on vague words from the title, but as always all that seems to come back at you are links to porn and mp3 sites. You wrestle with your word processor for at least five hours, and you spend one of those trying to get rid of that damn paperclip that's busy flitting over your screen making stupid suggestions. You drink four of your six cans of Red Bull consecutively, which means that you have to spend two hours on a comedown because you've been bouncing off the walls. But you finish it, and all that you have to do now is get on your bike, and drop the damn thing off. You also have no coffee left.

threats (2) ...
I feel a sudden compulsion to link.

threats...
I'm in the process of scanning in my batch of photos from vodkajelly night. Last minute attempts to avert embarrassment by shoving lots of money my way should be directed this way...

faith...
Cheesy, yes, but stuff like this makes it all better (or at least some of it): Kristallnacht marked by huge anti-Nazi march (Indy).

wanker of the week...
... so it's been a great week for people to be slinging insults left, right and centre, but what really took the biscuit was the wonderful neighbours that live upstairs...

In other words, thanks to whoever who left chocolate sellotaped to my door and to whoever who borrowed my sellotape and returned it to me, pinned to my door... Thankyou ;)

But big, big, big thanks to the upstairs wankers, who stole the chocolate at 2:35 in the morning and when I asked them to give "my fucking chocolate back", insisted they didn't have it... until it fell out of one of their 's hand because he was a) a wanker; and b) the wrong side of too pissed... ... and then sellotaped the entirety of our staircase, before asking me why the fuck they'd been covered in sellotape when walking back up to their rooms.

But most of all, thanks for the wonderful notes that they pushed through my letterbox. I'm glad that Cambridge is still encouraging the development of its students' literary talents:

one...
"Hom. Hommer no hommer hommer no hommer. Cunt."

two...
"Hom, hommer, chocolate hommer."

three...
"To Hom, why do you play abba so loud."

four...
"To hommer hommer chocolate hom chocolate hommer HommER chocy HommER"

five...
"To Hom, Why do you play abba so fucking loud. your a hommer."

monday

this is important!
Please, please, please sign up to the ukbloggers mailing list if you're a uk blogger interested in meeting up with other uk bloggers: invites to meets have historically gone out to the whole list. I set up the damn thing in the first place for the very first uk blog meet (and, not as some people might have thought funny, purely for the ensuing north-south flamewar that resulted)... We (to the extent that there's a "we" at all) aren't being secretive or cliquey at all...

eva pascoe at the indy
Eva Pascoe at the indy demonstrates phenomenal lack-of-clueness, or failing that, willful desire to mislead the public when she talks about free net access. Most inflamatory paragraph?

So where is the call for a free internet coming from? My guess is well-meaning people who clearly do not understand the distinction between a free browser and a free internet. A browser is essentially a piece of software that, once written, doesn't need ongoing maintenance or other forms of support that may cost the providing company money. So there are sound arguments as to why browsers should be free. The same argument has been applied to music: if something can be distributed electronically then it should be free, because there are no ongoing costs for the support of music once it sits on someone's harddrive.

bbc news online misses onion photo opportunity
Given BBC News Online's current fetish for irreverent images and captions (see the penguins), it's mildly disappointing that the "Westlife gun for Spice Girls" story didn't feature the following graphic:

... because otherwise how would we tell BBC News Online from The Onion, The Day Today or Brass Eye?

party
We had one. Rather disturbingly, there was drink left at the end:

Aside from that bizarre occurrence, it was all pretty fun, a nice post-fireworks party, lots of people, three big rooms, lots of cool music and, um, singing. Chipmunk stylee. No, I'm not going to explain. Ever.

stuff waiting in blogger
Sony do some seriously cool stuff. Check out eMarker.com.

blogger / danhon.com is broken
We apologise for the difficulties and assure you that tea and biscuits will be handed out in good time. This flight has been delayed, but as soon as we have taken delivery of lemon-soaked napkins, the flight will depart. Thankyou for your patience. In the meantime, please amuse yourself with our on-board entertainment (archived material):

Excuses that you probably would not want to use to explain being late for work...

So. I did (as in set) a music quiz, and it was fun. Yea, it was good, verily they drank (merrily), and so on... On the other hand, I think I need to have a stiff talking to with my subconcious when the nineties round that I set came up with the following if you strung the song title answers together in the order that they were played:

"Stay... Bitch... Stay, I missed you... Smack my bitch up... Stupid Girl... Boom! Shake the room! All that she wants... Back for good... All I wanna do... Drinking in LA..."

For reference, Shakespeare's Sister, Meredith Brooks, Lisa Loeb and the Nine Stories, the Prodigy, Garbage, Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Ace of Base, Take That, Sheryl Crow and Bran Van 3000. I'd hate to think what a psychoanalyst would have made of that... Anyways: bed. Off to London tomorrow to meet my friends the gbloggers...

I hope to god that Blogger starts working. Hmmm. I capitalised "Blogger" but not "god". I suppose that probably says something about me.