Just phoned the school and they’re open from 0930 until 1600, so I’ll give it a little while for the queue to die down.

• BBC NEWS | Britpop - Where are they now? - Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Shed Seven…Wait, Shed Seven?!
• BBC NEWS | Can read, won’t read books - One in four UK adults haven’t read a book in the last 12 months. Sad
• Create your own ILM for (almost) nothing - Links to Free(ish) software for creating your movie
• Google’s Master Plan on Flickr - Be sure to check out the top left
• P-P-P-POWERBOOK! - Apparently quite old…but funny! Scamming the eBay scammers.
• The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory - " there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise."
• Star Links - Less fun than trying to link movie stars yourself, but great for checking
• Default Router Passwords - List of default passwords for network devices. Always change the default password!
• Shoot yourself to survive - 2nd person shooter - "In this take on the 2nd Person Perspective, you control yourself through the eyes of the bot, but you do not control the bot."
• (many of today’s links via digg.com)

• We bought some spray that claims to null Megan’s come-hither scent for a short while, so I’ve taken her on some brief walks. I’m avoiding the park and not letting her off the lead, but it’s better than nothing. I don’t get so antsy or feel guilty, Meg’s very happy with the whole arrangement, and other dogs look a little confused when they walk by.
• This annoys me. I’m sure they think they’re very clever, but have they actually read the book? No matter how authoritarian you think the state is becoming, it’s nothing like that bad. Stop being silly.
• I’m hungry. What’s wrong with me at the moment? Maybe I have a tapeworm. Wait, does that really happen?
• Double kudos to Anna Ford: firstly, for pointing out that Michael Buerk is a muppet, and secondly for not going with the obvious yet slightly tacky retort.
• New speed cameras are calculating average speed over long distances, like between motorway junctions. Fantastic! I await with interest the response from the speed-freaks concerned road users. What will their excuse legitimate concern be this time? Given that I know perhaps two people who agree with me that it’s not ok to break speed limits except in emergencies, this can only be a good thing.
• A documentary about the mating habits of emperor penguins has out-grossed Bowling for Columbine in the US and is on the way to becoming the most popular documentary ever. Not surprising - who doesn’t like penguins?

Results’ day tomorrow! Argh. I phoned the school earlier to find out what time I should turn up, but nobody answered. I think their exams office receives the results today so I guess they’re busy processing. I’ll probably head there some time between 1100 and 1200. These things are always something of an anti-climax once the adrenalin rush passes, so I’ll have to decide on something to do with the afternoon. Any ideas?

If I’m remembering correctly, this time four years ago I was getting ready to go to a party (the only time I’ve ever seen people dancing within metres of gravestones) which was good fun. The next day I went nuts. Like, mental. Everybody else was happy to open their results straight away, but I left it for ages and slowly sank into an absolutely foul mood. I convinced myself I’d done incredibly badly, snapped at everyone in sight and was no fun at all. Finally I opened the envelope, found 2 As, 2 Bs and 1 D (and a B in an AS) and wasn’t much happier. What a muppet. I don’t remember the rest of the day, but I doubt it was that great. I don’t know whether it was stress, or worry about what I was going to do next, or just your basic attention-seeking, but I cringe every time I remember it.

I’m not going to be like that this time (promise, Mum). Like I said before, I’m expecting (approx) a C and a D and hoping for a B and a C, but whatever happens it’s not the end of the world. I’ve figured out what I want to do - namely, writing - and it’s merely a matter of figuring out the best way to do it. So, w00t. Bring it on.

• Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See - (But Can Easily Fix When They Do). Some good points here.
• PooterGeek

Just spotted an interesting contrast…

BBC News and the Daily Mail both covered the same story. The article content of each is the same, but the BBC goes with “Confused lions ‘hunt’ small cars” while the Daily Mail has “Stupid lions attack smart cars”. No attacking was involved, incidentally.

Ok, all done. What do you think? I’ve implemented a proper tagging system so I can have fancy folksonomy diagrams, as well as tidied up a little. The blogmap is back, the header bar has changed and I removed extraneous information from the post headers too. Do let me know if you think it looks kak!

At the moment you can’t click on the goddamned links in the top right, in either Firefox or Opera. I have no idea why this is the case, but it’s infuriating!

I’ll be changing things behind the scenes this morning and it’s rather likely something will break. There’s one particular button I have to click that could screw everything up quite spectacularly, should I get the preparation wrong. I’ll post again when I think things are working. To tide you over, here’s a picture of a very cool parrot:

• BBC NEWS | Dolphin spectacle baffles experts - 2000 dolphins just off Wales.
• PDAHealthWare, Inc. - Get an SMS at your most fertile time! "May increase your ability to naturally select a boy or a girl" (bollocks it will).
• Subpixel trick covers up dead pixels - Cunning.
• The Budget Traveller’s Guide to Sleeping in Airports - It’s free! Via Lifehacker (I think).

Mondays are my Firefly night, so I’m normally up after everybody else has gone to bed. After tonight’s episode I was checking the back doors when I spotted the sky and stepped outside. It’s the clearest night I’ve seen in a while, and the stars are quite something. I ran upstairs and dug out my binoculars. We must still be passing through the dust of Swift-Turtle as I saw four shooting stars, which pretty much doubles the number I’ve witnessed! One was particularly bright and long-lasting, definitely the most impressive I’ve ever seen. I spotted two planets for sure - I’d guess Jupiter and Saturn but I’m a little rusty - and probably Mars given the reddish tint. There were a couple of ‘moving stars’ I couldn’t identify. I picked up one through the binoculars; it definitely wasn’t a plane and it moved a fair distance before disappearing. I guess it must have been a dust grain in the very upper reaches of the atmosphere, but it’s easy to see how people could come up with more elaborate explanations. After ten minutes or so I started picking up on every rustle in the garden and got nervous so came back inside. It’s beautiful out there.

Way back when I was 15, I spent summer PE lessons learning how to play cricket. Actually, that’s a complete lie. We were never taught any outdoor sports in PE, it was expected that we knew the rules and therefore how to respond when told to be ’scrum-half’ or whatever. I just made it up as I went along, most of the time. In this particular lesson there were 100 or so kids split up into three practice groups: one bowling, one batting, one throwing/catching. At one point, I looked up to see my friend Rachmaninov* throwing a cricket ball to somebody in my vicinity. After a moment I realised that it was in fact coming directly towards me.

I deftly twisted my body, stuck out a hand and caught the projectile.

All right, so I made that up. What I in fact did was run away. Like, directly away. Like, in a straight line from the ball. I then ducked, which had the remarkable effect of causing the ball to collide perfectly square-on with the back of my head. Next thing I know I’m on the ground (I like to think I was knocked out for a moment, but that’s just so I can say “I was knocked out for a moment” and get sympathy from women) and a crowd quickly gathered around me. I busied myself trying to figure out whether I could move my legs, see properly, feel my brains leaking out of my ears, that kind of thing. After a minute the teacher - Mr Sympathetic, I think his name was - arrived. He looked me over and said “get up, Westy.” I felt compelled to point out that people die from this kind of injury, but he frightened me, so I didn’t. I stood up, felt no ill effects whatsoever, and carried on playing.

Despite being entirely to blame for this incident, I like to bring it up occasionally to annoy Rachmaninov. I have a theory, however, that this ball homed in on the part of my brain devoted to understanding cricket, and broke it. For example, just now I witnessed the following:

1. Man 1 throws ball
2. Man 2 hits ball away with bat
3. Man 3, in a stunning flying leap, catches ball
4. Massive cheers, and everybody crowds around Man 1.

Man 1? What about Man 3? He did a massive flying leapy catchy thing! All Man 1 did was throw the ball in a straight line…how hard can that be? He does it all the damn time! Poor old Man 3 had about 3 nanoseconds to react to an 80mph ball heading towards him and still managed to grab the thing, yet Mr throwy-throwy got all the glory. Poor Man 3, I felt sorry for him.

I think I’m going to invent a new sport called Really Hard Sport, where they only have to do really difficult things. Like catching 100mph projectiles or skating up trees. We could then have another sport called Really Easy Stuff That Makes People Cheer, where you do things like throwing balls in straight lines, or kicking lozenges between incredibly wide and very tall posts with nobody in the way or even nearby. What do you think? Am I on to something?

*name changed to protect Ed.

Meg’s just started ovulating, so no walkies for her today. I figured something was up when dogs from all over the park were converging on us last week. Am currently trying to deal with a mad dog expecting a walk, and apparently this can last for three weeks. I think I’ll emigrate.

This evening I watched a film and didn’t want it to end. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t sit in movies wanting them to finish, but this time I actively wanted it to continue as I was enjoying it so much, which is rare for me.

I finally managed to see Madagascar this evening, after probably five attempts. Everybody else I know saw it a few weeks back while Lynsey and I were at Will Young, so it’s been up to me to arrange myself. I caught the 1730 screening at Cineworld and enjoyed it very much. It helped to have some knowledge of US tv and culture generally - confused lions saying “Regis? Kelly?” probably don’t mean much to most of the UK population - but I laughed out loud many times. Despite the 86 minute running time, though, I did want this particular film to end, as I suddenly got hungry. Like, really hungry. I’d had breakfast and lunch, but clearly enough of neither. Much as I enjoyed the film, I was glad when the final credits rolled as I could head downstairs into Ma Potters in Touchwood.

I had the platter (beef, pork, chicken, fries, onion rings, obligatory yet mostly pointless salad) followed by a slice of chocolate fudge cake with ice cream. Bear in mind it’s been known for people to grab me around the upper arm and tell me I need to eat more and I can’t be healthy. I don’t normally eat that much - today was clearly just a Hungry Day. Despite this anomaly, I spent much of the meal reflecting upon my remarkable ability to lose all cognitive function when confronted by a waitress with a beautiful smile, then left, rather stuffed yet happy.

So on the way home I stopped at Blockbuster and grabbed a DVD for the evening. Sure I’d just watched a film, but that’s the mood I was in. I got back, put the fire on (it’s cold in my house today), lay on the sofa and spent two hours or so completely engrossed in the movie. And I didn’t want it to finish. I don’t know whether it was entirely the film, or a combination of that and my state of mind, or what, but I was really hoping the credits weren’t going to roll (although clearly they would, for the story had ended.) The film? Hitch. I can’t say why, but it just clicked with me.

I have this thing I call my ‘pulsating vein’. I’ve spoken to a couple of other people who have the same thing. What happens is that I can feel a very localized area of my skin pulsing erratically. I get it in my eyelid quite often, and it feels very strange, and sometimes in my upper arm, where you can actually see something moving up and down. It can turn up at any time, sometimes visible, sometimes not, and normally lasts a few minutes. It’s nothing that I worry about, it’s just a thing that happens to me. So on Friday I’m sitting in my one-on-one guitar lesson and I suddenly realise that I can feel this sensation on one side of my nose, right at the end. I had no idea whether it was at all obvious or if only I could tell. I had this image of myself with a nose like a dog’s - continually moving around in random fashion. Half of me was terribly amused, and half of me was terrified I looked like a complete nutcase. It went away after five minutes or so, and my teacher didn’t say anything. Gotta wonder if he’s telling people about the crazy dog-boy, though…

I was in the shower on Thursday, washing the shampoo out of my hair, when I abruptly thought “I mustn’t move to the left, or I’ll walk into the bin.” Obviously, there wasn’t and never has been a bin in the shower. I guess it was a flashback to a dream I can’t remember.