I’m not sure that works…Points for effort though. Why am I in Toys ‘R Us? Well may you ask…

• Steve Jobs’ speech to graduating Stanford students - Interesting speech from somebody who has accomplished rather a lot
• BBC NEWS | Superjumbo spied from space - Look at the size of the thing!
• BBC NEWS | Humanist wedding is legal first - Looks like I’ll have to go to Edinburgh if I want to get married in a humanist-way…Fair few steps to go through before that, mind.
• BBC NEWS | Ketchup spat embarrasses law firm - Observe the Businesswank!
• Apple’s First Tablet PC - Well, not really. Somebody got OSX working on a tablet! Should OSX ever work fully on a PC, I’d be interested in trying it out.
• WordPress 1.6 Feature Updates - What’s next in the world of Wordpress? Here”re some hints…
• GRYNX

Heh. First actual attempt at finding somebody nearby who matches my dating profile:

We couldn’t find any matches for that search, but don’t let that stop you.

I wasn’t being terribly strict there, either. Shall have to go nationwide…Ooh, 3 in the whole country!

Ok, it’s the ‘atheist’ bit that does it. Remove that and the count rockets to 34, but nobody around here. This is entertaining

I’m not “subscribing” yet, but I’m just creating an account at Match.com UK. DatingDirect.co.uk is the biggest in the UK, but the website annoys me Match asked me for a username and password…and here’s my first problem. You see, my two normal usernames are ‘wandwaver’ - because I used to be a magician - and ‘kryptothesuperdog’ - after Superman’s dog. I signed up using the latter without really thinking. Now I’m wondering if that wasn’t terribly sensible. ‘Kryptothesuperdog’ on a dating website? Hmmm. Better than ‘wandwaver’, I suppose. Anyway, I’m not planning to put my profile ‘out there’ for the foreseeable future, I just want to see how the whole thing should work. I’m going through the questions atm…

Question: Do you want kids?
Answer: Possibly, but not quite yet.
Question: How many?

How tall do you want your match to be?
I don’t really care…Or do I? I’d go out with a very small person, wouldn’t I? Or would I? I’m sure I would. I don’t know!

Tell us some more about your ethnicity.
White…Male…That’s it, really.

Are you looking for certain body types?
No. I’m not. … . No. Well. It depends how you’re…No. Argh.

Is dancing a turn-on or a turn-off for you?
What type of dancing? I doubt you’re talking ballroom, but maybe you are. This is so difficult!

What’s your dating headline? For example: ‘Mum open to romance and dating’.

This could take a while…

Quote I just read on Ask Metafilter:

Sign language can be full of regional idioms

That’s so cool! I’d never considered the possibility that that would be true, but it’s really no different from spoken language now I think about it.

Can somebody explain BitTorrent to me? I could go look it up for myself, sure, but it’s easier just to complain here. I know basically how it works, but what’s with the queuing system? I’ve had two files sitting in Azureus for three hours now and they haven’t started downloading yet. I know they will do at some point. Is it something to do with how many files I have seeding?

On completing his physics degree. Four years of very hard work, and now it’s complete. Nice.

Time for DVDs, computer games and general relaxage, I think.

Mum said this morning that 1 in 5 people are registered in dating agencies. 1 in 5? Really? I’m wondering whether I should try something like that. Sometimes it seems like a good idea. I don’t come into contact with many women my own age, so it seems like a reasonable way of meeting people. On the other hand, it sometimes seems a little crass. The dating sites let you filter prospective partners, which would be an irresistible feature. For example, I don’t think I could go out with anybody who smoked. I know real life involves filtering people like that, but doing it in such an obvious fashion doesn’t feel quite right. Or maybe I’m being a dick, and if the other person doesn’t mind then what does it matter? Ho hum, just thinking out loud.

Speaking of relationships, does anybody else find Tom Cruise and Kate’s Holmes’ engagement rather odd? Not that I don’t wish them the best of luck, but it just seems…odd. This is the man who left Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz, for crying out loud
Speaking of hotness (damn my segues are good today), it’s very, very warm outside. Which is funky. Wore the wrong shirt for walkies, though. Phew.

• APOD: 2005 June 16 - APOD is 10 years old! I don’t actually remember it starting, but I have a memory of it hitting 2. Good grief. I’m old.
• EphPod - iPod for Windows (and Linux) :: HOME - possible iTunes replacement

Just back from dancing, where I was on my own this week. Thankfully there was a very nice lady to dance with so I didn’t feel too silly I always get nervous around women my own age who I don’t know, but I don’t think I made a fool of myself. We practiced the cha-cha, quickstep, jive and samba, all of which are coming along quite well. There’s a new move in the quickstep that requires a complete change of direction, which completely disrupts the normal anti-clockwise flow. People are all over the place, and avoiding crashes can be a challenge.

Tomorrow’s supposed to be a very pleasant day; maybe I’ll head out and take some photographs. I could stay inside and revise…nah.

We’re in desperate need of a new poll, but I’ve gone and broken the plugin, so that’ll have to wait until it gets fixed Sorry.

I just listened to the first five chapters of Earth Core, and it seems pretty good. It’s nicely written, at least so far, and has the potential to be quite exciting. I’m looking forward to the next chapters.

If anybody wants a fridge, a set of chests of drawers or Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, do head over to eBay…

Why can’t you buy Outlook online? It’s annoying. You’d think somebody somewhere would sell a downloadable version with reg-key via email, but apparently not. I really need a decent calendar program, and now that various services like Plaxo offer internet synchronization, there’s no reason not to go for the biggest and most compatible. I can’t be bothered with ordering physical products, though

This morning was something of a mad dash. I was woken at 0700, but unfortunately there was a freak temporal collapse in my bedroom, and in the space of a sleepy blink 40 minutes passed. I have to leave the house at around 0825, and I prefer to shower, dress and breakfast without having to rush. Too late for that, though. A quick shower and rice krispies later and it’s 0815. Bit of a rush, but I’ll try to calm down and get into an exam frame of mind on the way there. I put the tie on, then went to grab my plastic wallet containing the requisite stationery. Except it wasn’t on my desk. Or in my room. Or in the lounge. Or in the car. Oh, bollocks.

It’s now 0825, and I really should have left. I grab my graphics calculator, a pen, a set square and a pencil. I’m not sure whether my TI-86 is permitted, but I’ll have to take the risk. All this time my parents are rushing around looking as well. Jane arrives with Megan, but she hasn’t seen my stuff either. I’m rather cross at this point, mainly with myself for not sorting things out beforehand, and am pissing people off by being short with them. I finally decide there’s just no time, so yell goodbye and walk out the door. Literally at the last possible moment before I close the door, I hear Jane yelling ‘found it!’, and I head back inside to find her looking down the back of my table next to my desk. It wasn’t visible from the room, and I’ve no idea how Jane spotted it. I’d like to blame the dog, but this was entirely my fault. I even remember something falling off at the weekend that I promptly forgot about. So Jane grabs it to profuse thanks from me, and I run.

The road into Solihull is clear until I approach the 6th form college, when it abruptly stops. I stew for a while as the queue crawls past the college entrance, then it cleared. Heading up the hill and past the church seemed to take an age (in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t breaking the speed limit - I don’t do that, ever). I finally made it to Solihull School at 0846, and immediately realised that parking could be a problem. Five minutes makes all the difference when it’s a student car-park. Thankfully there was a space at the far end, and I quickly pulled in then jogged into the school. I joined the tail end of the students heading into the sports hall.

I made it, just barely. To be fair I could have arrived in the next seven or eight minutes without too much of a problem - other students did - but I doubt arriving late would have gone down well with the exams officer who has very kindly been sorting everything out for me. I sat at the desk and tried to get my head in order. Calm down, Andrew. Relax. Get into thinking mode. Use the techniques you’ve been learning at life coaching. Caaaalllmmm. After a few minutes, I was ready.

The exams actually went ok. I caught a break, I think, as there wasn’t any of the tough stuff. No inductance or complicated trigonometry-requiring movement of electrons within magnetic fields. I had trouble with one equation I couldn’t remember, and one particularly nasty question required E = hf, but the value of h wasn’t given in the booklet. Admittedly it’s a fundamental constant I should know, but I don’t see the point in not supplying it.

So I’m happy with how they went. I only have the one physics exam left now - Physics 6 a week next monday. It’s the remaining two maths exams next Monday and Friday, which hopefully won’t be too bad. I’m bloody well getting everything ready the night before from now on! The end’s in sight

• -36 error when syncing iPod in iTunes - Apple’s official help page for that bloody annoying -36 iTunes error
• 15 Megs of Fame | Artists and Fans unite! - More podsafe music
• Boing Boing: Hypnosis - Interesting endorsement of hypnotherapy
• Boing Boing: Still cracking Kryptos - I just like the title…
• Boing Boing: Taxidermy decanter - Don’t look, Lil.
• Desktop Sidebar - Forget all the other sidebars - this is the business
• fotochatter - Seems interesting, but I think I’m happy with flickr + wongablog. Not sure whether it works in the UK either.
• iPodlounge | The Complete Guide to iPod photo - Everything you need to know about photos on the iPod Photo
• Pod Safe Audio - Podsafe Music under the Creative Commons license for Podcasting - Could come in handy. Despite the complaints last time around, the wongaCast will return
• EarthCore: A Podcast Novel - A web-only novel only available via podcast - there’s no full text. I’ll listen to the first few chapters and see what it’s like…
• Stardock - ObjectDock - Program that looks like it could be a viable taskbar replacement…I’ll give it a try.

• The End of the World - foretold by Flash. Via Salmon of Doubt.
• 2008: Hillary for President - Amusing flash movie, but be warned that the song may stick in your head for evermore. Via Salmon of Doubt.
• Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall - Tablet PCs are sounding more and more attractive to me. I’ve never actually seen one, though - do they even sell them in the UK?
• M1400 Tablet PC - Speaking of which - this is something of a swanker.
• USB Key TV Card - A fully-functional TV card…in a usb key. Wooooooo, I want one.

Who else is running Skype? Anyone? I’ve just downloaded the newly out-of-beta 1.3 and it seems most swanky, but I have nobody to talk to…

I’ve also signed up for a Skype phone number. I don’t know why, but for