Before the tiny one decided to embarrass himself on the Today Show, I actually wanted to see War of the Worlds; I was curious to see how H.G. Wells’ original story had been reinterpreted into a modern day setting. I’ve never been a TC fan (y’know, seeing as I’m not a woman), but I figured that I could overlook that small matter and make it through the film without grinding my teeth down into stumps.

However, after his ridiculous, uneducated comments about everything from the history of ‘psychiatry’, his glib dismissal of anti-depressants, through to his latest “we’re not alone” babbling, I have decided to avoid it, and anything involving the little shitkicker, like the plague - and apparently, I am far from the only one doing so.

So please, don’t go and see War of the Worlds. Do your bit in the fight against the ’short mouthy idiot’ menace.

Oh, and for the record, as an intelligent man I recognise the absurdity of any member of my gender thinking that they can pontificate on anything to do with Post-Partum Depression. It’s a pity that Tom isn’t quite so modest…

Source: BBC News, SciVisum Press Release

“One in 10 UK websites fail to work properly on the open source Firefox web browser, a study shows.”

That there are people in this day and age who still actually use IE is bad enough*, but to still be building sites that only function within that fetid pile of donkey-crap is worse. What’s really disheartening is that two of the sites listed by the BBC are run by the same government that wants to be thought of as the pioneers in getting the population online, and yet they can’t even hire competent webdesigners to make useable sites.

*Instead of getting all preachy about Firefox (which seems to really piss off staunch IE users), I’ll just direct you to the Browse Happy site and let you make your own minds up.

Those of you out there who have a fairly serious interest in the metaphysical whatnots of blogging might be interested in taking part in an online survey being conducted by the Media Laboratory at MIT. It’s all part of Cameron Marlow’s PhD project, so why not amble on by and give the bloke a helping hand, eh?

So I guess I’d better join the 82,018* other bloggers writing about the Michael Jackson ‘not-guilty’ verdict, hmm?

Well no, I won’t actually; I decided to wait until everyone else had offered their opinions before I toss my 2-cent hat into the basket of eggs. Besides which, all I can really say is that I’m tired. I’m tired of the antics of everybody involved in this deeply unfunny farce. I’m tired of seeing reams of unnecessary coverage in all forms of the media, with every pundit under the sun offering up their own horseshit opinions and analysis. I’m tired of seeing those zealous fans outside the courthouse, wasting their lives in support of someone who, leaving aside any alleged activity, IS JUST A FUCKING POP SINGER! Haven’t these people got something more constructive to do with their time?

I’m tired of all the “Jacko is a fucking sicko who should die” people as much as I’m tired of the “Michael has been proven innocent” people. We don’t know, and may never know conclusively one way or the other.

I’m mostly tired of Michael Jackson himself; at this point I no longer care whether he’s guilty or innocent, I just wish that he could find some way to retire from public life and get whatever help he needs to overcome the unimaginably weird effects his upbringing had on him.

Having said that though, Laura and I still found ourselves plonked down in front of the TV, complete with bowls of popcorn (I kid ye not, although it was just a coincidence), flipping between news channels awaiting announcement of the verdict. So while I criticise the media’s habit of bulldozing programming schedules in favour of repeating the same ten minutes of “breaking news” ad nauseum, I have to admit that I too can sometimes fall into it’s seductive, prurient clutches - and this sickens me a little.

Had to get this out of my system. Goodnight.

*number based on search results matching “Michael Jackson” on Technorati.

I’m really starting to love the BBC’s Backstage project; some of the prototypes that people are coming up with are really quite fantastic. Here’s a few of my favourites:

• Nick Crossland’s Missing Words
  Based on the “missing words” round from the BBC programme “Have I Got News For You”, it takes headlines from the news, blanks out a few words, then asks you to guess what those missing words might be… Hence the fairly self-explanatory title which has probably just rendered this explanation redundant. Sorry.
• Ben O’Neill’s Map of the News
  Duncan Barclay’s Local news by County
  Both of these tools combine Google Maps and the BBC’s news feeds to create (wait for it) news maps. There’s not much more to explain really.
• Rhys Jones’ Map of BBC London Jam Cams
  Another excellent little idea, which uses Gmaptrack to overlay the locations of the BBC’s traffic cameras in Central London. Clicking on one of the markers brings up the latest image from that particular location.
• Headshift.com’s Tagged BBC News
  This lets you tag news stories and view related articles that have been tagged similarly. I especially like the All Tags page, which attempts to fetch related links from Del.icio.us, Technorati, and Flickr. Unfortunately, the nature of tagging means that mischievous little scallywags can place misleading tags on articles, as seen in the Arse! category. I really hoped to see some arse when I clicked on that link; alas, I was duped.

Blogger Life Cycle, by Min Jung Kim.

Hmmm, I’d say that I was at about stage 9; just crazy enough to have actually met other bloggers, but not quite crazy enough to write abstract metaphysical entries about writing abstract metaphysical entries… yet. I also have to point out that I’ve never had a wishlist of any kind.. you know, not being a girl and all.

Anyhoo, here are my own commentaries on each step that I can say, with a fair amount of honesty and the occasional hint of geeky shame, definitely apply to me:

• 1. Start reading blogs.
  I never really read any blogs before I started writing in my own, I just didn’t care enough. It wasn’t until I started adding people to my livejournal list that I really bothered about what other (sometimes random) people had to say.
• 2. You start a blog.
  My first ‘proper’ (i.e. one that I actually wanted other people to read and give a crap about) blog was WeFallApart, and it didn’t become a proper ‘bloggy’ blog for about 4-5 months. I didn’t start writing about cheese sandwiches, but I wasn’t far off. In the name of branching out, I had a brief flirtation with Blogspot, but that quickly ended when I realised that Blogspot is a useless pile of donkey crap.
• 3. You become a stats whore.
  Sigh.. Yes, I’ve occasionally been a little obsessive about how many people read my stuff… Don’t pretend that you haven’t done this too, you damn dirty liars.
• 4. You become really personal on your site as the online and real-life worlds start confusing you.
  I wouldn’t call it being ‘confused’, but yeah, I’ve written some very personal things in my blogs - I don’t know many people that haven’t done this. Thank goodness for LJ’s filtering options is all I can say - they allowed me to pick and choose which people I wanted to be able to read these very personal words.

  Most people who do anything social on the internet (and yes, blogging is a form of social interaction) have ‘real life’ friends, and ‘online’ friends (and of course, some of our friends fall into both categories), and often times this brings about the unusual situation in which we will entrust our most intimate thoughts and feelings to a group of people that we may never meet, while at the same time going to great lengths to hide these emotions from the people around us in the physical world. I for one have done this on countless occasions.

• 5. You faux “retire” from blogging.
  Hmm, I was going to say that I’ve never done this, until I realised that up until recently I was only posting a couple of entries a month on livejournal… Then again, the only reason I was so lax with that blog is because I was concentrating my efforts on setting up this one… so *nyer*, or something…
• 6. You cave back into blogging in less than 72 hours.
  I didn’t ‘cave’, I just remembered that no matter how much tweaking you do with a blog’s layout, no matter how many fancy features you’ve painstakingly implemented, people won’t really give a crap unless you actually POST something every now and then…
• 7. You decide to “get serious” about blogging.
  My own evolution as a blogger goes something like this:

  Crappily designed personal webpage > Livejournal > First own-server blog software > Better own-server blog software

  So yeah, I’d say that by now I’m quite serious about this blogging malarky.

• 8. You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met.
  I’ve gone one better than this; I live with another blogger (and fellow photographer) who also happens to be my wonderful girlfriend - LauraLatham. (Take a bow honey )
• 9. You decide that you must meet other bloggers.
  Well yes, I’ve done this too, having met a few fellow LJers in my native Manchester - though really, I think that the events of #8 far supercede anything that could be written for #9.. Which kinda makes this step a tad redundant, doesn’t it?

What about you people? Where on the list would you place yourselves?

Read this thread in LiveJournal’s News - talk about your poster childs for enforced psychiatric medication.

Some people are born idiots.
Other people achieve idiocy (usually by watching too many Star Wars films).
…and some people just spend all day long inflicting their idiocy on random LJers that try to politely point out how redundant their questions are.