A friend recently pledged to post to her blog at least once a day. It’s quite a target; does that much really happen in our lives to post anything insightful that frequently?

In my case the answer is “no.” I’m not nearly interesting enough, but A is doing a fine job so far as long as you don’t mind that it’s an average rather than actually a daily occurrence! That’s not to say that nothing interesting ever happens to me. Take this, for example. It happened shortly after I moved to London.

I’m upstairs in bed. Just having a lazy Sunday morning, there’s no rush to get up but I do feel the need for some liquid refreshment. An English man and his tea. But, then again, just lying here is so very relaxing.

B points out that the tea isn’t just going to make itself. I note that this isn’t entirely true. According to quantum theory, it is possible for elementary particles to be at opposite ends of the universe from one moment to the next. One can, therefore, conclude that, while unlikely, it is within the realms of possibility that a mug of steaming, hot tea could materialise out of no-where onto my bed-side table.

I’m not sure how true it is, but I always assume that doctors must have no fun at parties. Every time they’re introduced to someone the response is bound to be, “Oh, I have this strange tingle on my elbow…?” or “I have this pain in all the diodes on my left side.” Even lacking the title, working in IT as I do, I get the same kind of thing. “My PC blue-screens when…” or “How do I do [something esoteric] in [some weird application I’ve never heard of]?” It’s the curse of knowing something about computers.

We had a power-cut last night. Pretty much the only electronic thing that worked in the flat was my iBook G3, a 2001-era 600Mhz model with a DVD-reader and no disc writing ability. After sending a few emails I closed the lid, putting it to sleep.

Ironically, this morning it was pretty much the only gadget in my flat that wasn’t working. I opened the lid and found the Spinning Beach-ball of Death. Perhaps because of its age this is not unusual. What was unusual was that after a few seconds it stopped spinning. On restarting rather than a nice, grey Apple logo I found a Finder icon and a question mark flashing on the screen. Not good.

Some people seem to think that I visit new places just so that I can increment my Country Count. I guess going to three countries in one weekend a couple of years ago doesn’t do much to dispel that accusation, but it’s not true. What can I say? I like to see new places.

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Having said that, hopefully I’ll hit my thirtieth country this year!

The movie starts at the end, with a death that the blurb proudly describes as “one of the most violent murders ever portrayed on celluloid” and then works backwards detailing the motivations for it and the complex relationships between the various characters.

Rather than just provide a link to the news that Nick Park’s “Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit” won an Oscar, I thought I’d also point you to an interview:

NETRIBUTION – OSCAR WINNER NICK PARK — Wallace, Gromit and Me

The care and attention that goes into these films is, no doubt, exactly why they’re as good as they are.

On the other hand I have no idea why “Crash” did so well. It wasn’t a bad movie by any means but I thought it lacked the cleverness and brilliance that characterised most reviews I saw of it.

As you may have seen, I was generally quite impressed with the photo books that the previous version of iPhoto was able to generate. I was therefore quite keen to try the new cards that you can buy using iPhoto 6, the version included with the recently released iLife ’06. (Am I the only person that thinks that “iLife” is a really naff name? First that, then “MacBook Pro” rather than “Powerbook.” What next?!)

You’ve already seen once my disdain for Christian extremists. This week I found one more reason when we went to see “La Marche de l’empereur (2005),” or “March of the Penguins” if you, like me, can only read English.

As you may be aware, the Christian Right have adopted this movie as an example of both monogamy and Intelligent Design. If you’ve seen the film you’ll realise that it’s neither.

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test