Well, how marvellously modern this is. Here I sit, tapping away at my tolerably tiny laptop in a coffee shop in Covent Garden. I've even connected to the internet, spurning the pay-as-you go offering of Cafe Nero in favour of the free connection of the hotel next door. Wonder if they make any money on wireless browsing in here...

Something that I could be even more flash about is the fact that I'm using a Tablet PC. These have attracted much derision as another doomed Microsoft initiative (such as, say Smart Displays) and I have been a mite sceptical myself. Now that I'm using it, however, I am a changed man: it's great. You can drag it round just like a normal laptop, but whenever you want to do the hasty-scribble notepad thing, just flip the screen round and start writing. It's just as easy as taking regular notes, with the advantage that I'm exponentially more likely to actually convert them into usable stuff - I keep all my old notebooks, but only once in a blue moon can I ever be bothered to go through them and find the line of illegible scrawl that holds the relevant bit of info. Here I can just rely on the (admittedly not-perfect) recognition to convert it all, and then I've got my choice of desktop search tool to go through it without having to rely on my increasingly poor memory.

Plus, even this fairly anonymous example impresses the hell out of people. If I had the oh-so-gorgeous HP I'd be surrounded by drooling women, depend upon it. Or prematurely greying hitmen - and let's face it, wouldn't that be just as good? I mean, who wouldn't want to have one as a favour-granting friend...

Anyway, so far so great. The only problem is that I'm only here because I'm two hours early for a meeting that I endured much stress to make it here on time for. On arrival I was rebuffed by a bunch of people in their late thirties boasting haircuts designed for the early twenties, and almost gatecrashed a fundraser for Comic Relief. I then reaffirmed that my mobile phone is indeed absolute shit, only to have it's status retrospectively elevated by the fact that nearly all the phone boxes in Covent Garden don't acually have phones in - and the one that did, had shit in it as well. Which I trod in. I wonder if I sit here long enough, I'll get a few sympathetic squirts of air freshner - of course, there's no grass for about five miles in any direction to wipe it on. Oh cruel, capricious fate.

I choose you, Marie Curie!

"Pokemon is a main switch in the molecular network that leads toward cancer," Dr. Pandolfi added. "If we could turn Pokemon off, it may block this oncogenic circuitry and stall the malignant process."

I can't help but feel that the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are cruising for a drastic reduction in research funding quite soon. What's next? Renaming MS to DS?

I [heart] the internet

Jon [DIY Performance Exhausts] says:
http://funpic.hu/swf/numanuma.html
botherer says:
See, now *this* makes me squeamish.
Jon [DIY Performance Exhausts] says:
I wish he was *my* friend.
botherer says:
Maybe if you email him he will be. I'd imagine he's not picky.

I'm going to blatantly harvest the traffic that John has sent my way and elaborate: he really does have that effect on computers. I've never seen a BIOS suddenly, spontaneously, decide to reset its boot priority. And I resorted to unplugging the internal speaker after it suddenly jettisoned all the standard warning beeps in favour of a prolonged digital farting noise that I've still yet to fathom.

Parents: KEEP THIS MAN AWAY FROM YOUR CHILDREN'S COMPUTERS.

The extended rant that I subjected to innocents like Tim, John, Neil and Alan has been professionally presented right here. Which is actually sort of bitterly ironic, but still.

This article: Crap. I need to think more about it, but I have formed unpleasant and derogatory opinions on those involved as a prelimary action.
This article: Very interesting. I've only got one paragraph into it, though, and it's told me to go to sleep. So I shall.

I've not heard of this, but it looks very cool: Sin City. I think it might be based on a comic or something.

Charybdis - Oooh, Trillian 3.0 says:
Somewhere, on this shining blue and green marble we call Earth, someone has sat down and decided to create Christmas With The Kranks ham?

The Onion AV Club have done good.

Ooh.

Oh. Great.

Let the truth be known:

25 Years of Christmas No. 1's

1979 Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd
1980 Just Like Starting Over - John Lennon
1981 Don't You Want Me - Human League
1982 Save Your Love For Me - Rene and Renata
1983 Only You - The Flying Pickets
1984 Do They Know It's Christmas - Band Aid
1985 Saving All My Love For You - Witney Houston
1986 Caravan of Love - The Housemartins
1987 Always On My Mind - The Pet Shop Boys
1988 Mistletoe and Wine - Cliff Richard
1989 Do They Know It's Christmas - Band Aid II
1990 Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice
1991 Bohemian Rhapsody / Last Days Of Our Lives - Queen
1992 I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston
1993 Mr Blobby - Mr Blobby
1994 Stay Another Day - East 17
1995 Earth Song - Michael Jackson
1996 2 become 1 - The Spice Girls
1997 Too Much - The Spice Girls
1998 Goodbye - The Spice Girls
1999 Seasons In the Sun / I have a Dream - Westlife
2000 Can We Fix It? - Bob The Builder
2001 Somethin' Stupid - Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman
2002 Sound Of The Undergroud - Girls Aloud
2003 Mad World - Michael Andrews / Gary Jules

Three fucking Spice girls songs IN A ROW. And to I think I thought the inevitable death of popular culture was a recent fact.

Unlerelated note: There's nothing like typing out every year of your life to make you realise that you are too damn old gah death is upon me.

Blimey. Penny Arcarde managed to do two decent strips in a row. Back on form now, though.

The Internet Is Great

Skullcrusher Mountain [Feat. Mp3 download]

Welcome to my secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain
I hope that you've enjoyed your stay so far
I see you've met my assistant Scarface
His appearance is quite disturbing
But I assure you he's harmless enough
He's a sweetheart, calls me master
And he has a way of finding pretty things and bringing them to me

I'm so into you
But I'm way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You'd see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn't kill you yet

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don't like it
What's with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don't like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

I'm so into you
But I'm way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You'd see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn't kill you yet

Picture the two of us alone inside my golden submarine
While up above the waves my doomsday squad ignites the atmosphere
And all the fools who live their foolish lives may find it quite explosive
But it won't mean half as much to me if I don't have you here

You know it isn't easy living here on Skullcrusher Mountain
Maybe you could cut me just a little slack
Would it kill you to be civil?
I've been patient, I've been gracious
And this mountain is covered with wolves
Hear them howling, my hungry children
Maybe you should stay and have another drink and think about me and you

I'm so into you
But I'm way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You'd see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn't kill you yet
I shouldn't kill you yet
I shouldn't kill you yet

What worries me is that this is going to sit on my hard drive until I attempt to be all modern and use my PC for a jukebox. Then it'll come on during a party and people will think I am very strange indeed.

Learning Can Be Fun

Sing-a-long-a Science. Top pick: Nucleus I Like The Best. The seque from moody acoustic to chemistry rap is really quite something.

Five Sporting Events I Have Witnessed Live

1. International Rugby League
2. Second-division football
3. Monster truck racing
4. County Fencing
5. County Remote-control car racing

Could it be that time again? Why yes, I think so. Put your hands together and your jaw agape for despair-inducing forum post of the week!

"if they are lieng, and I dont want this to sound gayu for all you queer faggots, but if they are lieng im finding them and cutting there god damn sac off"

Thankyou, Nova-Inside.com! I dare not click on the link and see what this incisive intellect mustered for his other 289 posts, but I'm sure you'll make them public in time.

Happy Whatever

Okay, I can understand how it's possible to dedicate an entire shop to birthdays. They're hard to avoid, often expensive, and regularly addressed in the sort of last-minute rush - at least, they are when I'm responding to them. I can't understand, however, how it's possible that it's possible to fill said shop with shitty, shitty cards and a load of emotionally void, officially-licensed crap barely fit for giving to a disliked co-worker. I can't think of anything more likely to detract from your anniversary enjoyment than the knowledge that your pastel-shade, mawkish card and "comedy" T-shirt clad toy monkey came from such a barren place.

My quest having lead me to the exponentially superior but still disappointing shelves of WH Smith hy are there no funny cards any more? The On-The-Ceiling stuff was funny when it first came out which was oh, five years ago. Now it's tired and old and everybody's seen it, a status that its callow pretenders - poorly-Photoshopped animal photos and unfunny digs at knitwear catalogues - achieved almost immediately. I'm sick and tired of those bloody penguins, too. Can't the designers just admit that once everybody's seen your witticism it's time to get a new one, or are they forbidden by the goons of the Hallmark Cartel?

Science: great. As are the New Scientist headline-writers. I'm increasingly fascinated by what a ridiculous animal the platypus is; Gril contends that it's proof of the existence of God, which has a certain Pratchett-esque appeal...

Tech knowledge: Low, red

I suppose this shouldn't come as any surprise at all, but dear God, the Sims 2 community offers some of the most idiotic technical support information known to humanity. Consider this:

"I see alot of people having issues w gameplay etc. I had the same issues such as VERY slow, choppy, and just poor performance in general. As of last night the game runs perfectly and Id like to share the steps I took to achieve this and hope it helps a few people... The 1st thing I did was went out and bought a ATI AGP Radeon 9200 Video Card... Next I bought a AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU. That made a VERY Nice improvement, however I found out my motherboard was clocked at 100Mhz NOT 133Mhz. I set the jumper to 133Mhz and WOW!!! Now my PC133 RAM is clocked properley, and with this new Athlon Chip this game is AWESOME!!"

So you bought a new video card and a new processor, and it magically improved performance! Please stop affecting any level of tech-support knowledge now, please.

See? See?!