I present to you the top 10 ITV shows of all time:

1. Coronation Street
2. Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway
3. A Touch of Frost
4. Inspector Morse
5. Emmerdale
6. I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here
7. The Bill
8. The Muppet Show
9. Pop Idol
10. Spitting Image

As voted for by zoo monkeys the UK public.

eBay just announced that they’ve bought Skype for $2.6billion. Interesting. I can’t immediately see the potential here; what will eBay do with a voice communications program, I wonder? All I can think is that perhaps eBay are working towards a software program to help people trade online? Selling through eBay, support phone lines via Skype? Guessing games are fun However, if you mix the names up you get SkyBay, which sounds like a great name for a flying car. I hope they’re making a flying car.

I’m going to pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Guardian as it’s just been re-launched in a new size, with full colour throughout. The Editor’s blog has been updating all day, and it’s fascinating to see how these things work. I’m wary when the news media starts talking about itself, but I think the staff of the Guardian can be forgiven for being quite excited - it’s the biggest change the paper’s had in fifty years, after all.

Industry introspection is interesting to me. I sometimes think that if I see another blog devoted to blogging I’ll go nuts; it can be hard to find the best content blogs for all the people talking about how great it is. That’s partly why I think podcasting is more than just a fad - you’ve got industry leader Adam Curry podcasting about podcasting, while everybody else produces actual content.

Damn, I have a feeling the above would sound much better were I not so tired. But I’d probably just forget and write about monkeys if I left it until tomorrow.

Night!

Just heading back from the party and decided to go via my flat…Really hope it isn’t still for sale! Maybe the sign stays up until completion or something.

Am currently at a party and feeling very civilised, if young. Surrounded by babies and newlyweds - don’t have much in common! Bit of a gooseberry I think.

Lemmings in DHTML. Wow. Via Jackie Danicki.

Via Pharyngula:

It is an age-old battle whose time has come. “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” will gather together all the experts (or at least those who will talk to them), travel to the places that matter in the debate (basic cable budget permitting) and ultimately settle the controversy once and for all. “Evolution Schmevolution: A Daily Show Special Report” will premiere on Monday, September 12 and air nightly at 11:00 p.m. through September 15.

For one full week, “The Daily Show” goes in-depth, around, through and quite possibly under, one of the hottest hot-button issues facing our nation: evolution. It’s the accepted theory on the origin of life by an overwhelming majority of the world’s biologists, but maybe they’re all wrong. What’s so great about the scientific method anyway?

I watch Daily Show clips as soon as I can get my hands on them, and as well as being very funny indeed the political commentary is among the sharpest around. Jon Stewart has always seemed on the ball, and I hope he gives the creationists the roasting they deserve. I’m looking forward to seeing it!

Incidentally, The Daily Show will soon be available in the UK on C4’s new channel, More4. Fantastic!

Oh, gross.

What is believed to be Britain’s first cinema advertisement for Christianity, starring a model, a footballer and a mountaineer, will be shown on 2,000 Odeon, UCI, Cineworld and Showcase screens over the next fortnight. The 60-second advertisement, which two and a half million people are expected to see, is part of a

Shopping this afternoon was fairly productive. We walked around most of the retail park and found both a bed and a sofa in the anticlimactically-named ‘World of Leather’. I need to double-check the measurements of the rooms to be sure they’ll both fit, but barring any major memory lapses on my part I should be able to put the orders in early next week. The bed’s available within 1-2 weeks so will be around as soon as I move in, but the sofa is only promised before the end of November, so I’ll have to make do with a deckchair or something while waiting. I’m not sure why sofas take so long - are they made specially? Oh, I also need to decide on colour schemes. Heh. My design skills normally work around the principle of ‘try combinations until it looks good’ (that’s how I designed the website layout), so I’ll have to use my imagination and Just Hope
The flat’s kitchen is fitted apart from the dishwasher, for which there’s a space. I don’t really need a dishwasher, but it’d look silly to leave a big hole…I wonder whether you can get slimline washing machines that would fit in the gap? We looked around Comet to get prices on dishwashers / washing machines / vacuum cleaners / microwaves, and once I got home I looked them up online. Turns out the prices are pretty much the same - what’s with that? I expected that, like most electrical goods, I’d be able to find significant savings. Weird.

The major things left to decide upon are the wardrobes and a desk. The latter is tricky, as few places have the kind of corner unit I’m after. I’d like to be facing into the corner so I can rest my right arm on the desk, but be able to extend the desk’s length in each direction. This is nearly there, providing the keyboard tray is easily removable (I hate keyboard trays) and, thinking about it, I’d want to ditch the monitor stand too. I’m not sure about wardrobes yet - maybe a trip to Ikea is called for. I’m hoping to be able to afford a large set of bookshelves, although they’ll likely get full up within weeks.

Sorry, my blog appears to be morphing into UK Style. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Coincidentally, my sister and her boyfriend have just bought a house together; Mum and Dad can hardly move without being asked for advice or help from one of us kids!

Am on my own this evening and there’s little on tv, so I think this calls for some gaming.

Just watching the lottery (shut up) and the following question was asked:

A claymore was what type of weapon? Mace, sword or dagger?

I didn’t know, but was leaning towards the mace. The man immediately said:

Mace? Hmmm, the police have just started using that, so that’s not right.

I was confused. Really? The police are using a…Oh, I get it.

It’s a sword, incidentally. This post was edited for clarity after I re-read it.

Not that I need one, but I want it. Just looking for desks, beds, wardrobes, sofas…

If you’re a Firefox fan, I recommend you pick up the new beta. Having used it for ten minutes it seems far less clunky than before, which is definitely a good thing imho.

Another interesting Ask Metafilter question: What do you wish you’d known when you were 18? Via Lifehacker.

iTunes 5 came out earlier this week, and one of the new features is the ability to manipulate podcasts in playlists. Last night I set up a ‘Fav Podcasts’ list, which contains any podcasts I’ve marked as ‘favourite’ that haven’t been played yet. My favourites are currently The Dawn and Drew Show, Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, The Word Nerds, Skepticality, This Week in Science and Podquiz. I listened to Dawn and Drew while walking to the park this morning, and as it finished I checked what else was new. There was one from the Skepticality podcast called ‘The Message’, with no title other than that. Swoopy’s voice came on, and it was immediately obvious that something was wrong. She was in tears, and in very short recording said that her co-presenter Derek was in a critical condition in hospital, after collapsing with an AVM, which is a bleed to his brain. He’s somebody I’ve listened to a fair bit over the past few months, and this was a shock to hear. I hope he pulls through.

From the Logitech website:

This is the latest software release for most tethered cameras and the QuickCam Cordless camera

Tethered! I have an image of webcams trying to escape, Patrick McGoohan like, and Logitech being forced to tether them to the USB port. Hmm, I wonder if the slight current in the USB cable acts as some kind of depressant, supressing the inherent rev0lutionary tendencies…This could be a scandal. There’ll be protesters wittering on about lens rights, looking bedraggled and digging out old webcams from landfills.