Category Archives: Miscellany

Holidays are hard

It’s taken me more work and caused me more stress to (not even manage to) book a holiday this summer than it took me to map out the initial parameters of my novel. Argh.

If anyone wants to *give* me a villa in Greece for the summer it’d be appreciated…

What the hell, I’m on a roll…

Meme, via Tom and Ben. Things that happened on my birthday, Oct 3rd, according to Wikipedia…

Events
2333 BC – Establishment of the Kingdom of [[Korea]] (in the name of [[Joseon]]).
1952 – United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon.
2004 – ABC dramedy/Soap opera, [[Desperate Housewives]] premiers.

Births
1969 – [[Gwen Stefani]], American singer (No Doubt)
1976 – [[Seann William Scott]], American actor

Death
2005 – [[Ronnie Barker]], English comic actor

Digesting Neil Gaiman

This is just weird. Via Neil Gaiman’s blog, which I’ve been reading in an effort to more adequately engage with the blogosphere (and because Neil is a hero of mine, and I’ve been reading my way through all his fiction) – some guy set up, as an April Fool’s gag, a blog of a man who was going to “digest the compleat works of Neil Gaiman.” By “compleat” he means everything Neil’s ever written, and by “digest” he means pass through his alimentary canal.

It seems that a fair number of people believed that this slightly depressed, lonely individual was real and genuinely working his way through Gaiman’s back catalogue, which is odd in itself. What’s perhaps slightly more odd, if that’s possible, is that the selection of posts I read were actually really compelling – and, oddly, Gaiman-esque (like honey and spiders) – as if the imagined digestion of Neil’s writing translated itself into the posts. Which probably makes sense, as the blog’s writer was probably a fan.

I’ve never been that big a fan of paper. But the idea of shredded Coraline as breakfast cereal has a certain… well, not quite poetry, but there’s something there.

Logitech Premium USB Headset 350

Ok, so I’ve got hold of a new USB headset for Skype purposes after accidentally eating my old one*.

I’ve never before understood why there’s such disparity in price for USB headsets, which I always thought should be commoditised. But my new shiny Logitech headset is a thing of awesome power and functionality. No outside noise, no fuzz, noise cancelling and crystal clear sound quality. Well worth the £40 or so pricetag.

Now if I can just stop accidentally hitting the mute button mid conversation…

* strictly speaking, it just broke… but where’s the fun in that?

Slice of life

I was at the bus stop the other night, on the way back from work when a group of three people, who can only adequately described by the tag ‘youths’ walked up to the stand chatting in a unique brand of lingo. Now I’m somone who’s always enjoyed picking up on a few words and overusing them for comedy values, but these guys were ridiculous.

“Posse!”
“Posse posse posse!”
“Posse posse?”
“Posse posse posse posse.”

And so on.

Did I sound like that much of a fool when I was adding -tastic and -mongous to the end of words all the time? I hope not.

Lactose-free dreams

Last night, so weird, that I feel I have to blog about them.

(1) I was about to go on holiday to New York, which was about 20 minutes away somehow. I was struggling to manage handover notes and for some reason had to brief Simon Cowell on the campaign plan we’d work him into for one of our clients — although the “Router-Factor” really doesn’t have the same ring to it.

(2) New York was a 20 minute walk across an Ocean (in my dream, “Atlantis”), via a raising bridge (qua Tower Bridge), and I was walking up the incline with my friends. It was too steep!

(3) I also took a train to get from work to the start of the bridge, from which beautiful views of a teeny-tiny and barely recognisable New York were visible, which gave me bad vertigo (a flying train – Astrotrain?) and noted that a very normal, very unlikely friend from work had 8 piercings and silver rings in his face.

Who needs cheesey pizzas or hallucinogenic drugs? Just eat a bowl of crunchy nut clusters with Tesco soy milk and you’re away, evidently….