Life, the universe and everything. Politics, geekery and adapting to life in Yorkshire. With occasional outbursts of intelligence.
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Right then. First of all, I've been playing around with Facebook, and am actually fairly impressed. It's sort of taken the basic idea of MySpace, and done it properly. I'm especially impressed by the photo sharing and hosting options, integrates incredibly well into your profile, and you can note friends are in pictures, and it shows up in their profile. Rather nice actually. Plus, it gives you things to do while there, and the events feed is very impressive - I've imported my journal as a series of notes from the RSS feed, that was cool. Anyway, as I've not really uploaded them properly before, I've made an album of photos from the the days out last year that I actually took my camera for. It includes raksaksa's barbeque in Dawlish(with, weirdly, many pics of big_blue_bear cooking, and also the trip jantshira, faeriecween and I took up to Dartmoor near the end of the summer.

On the tangential subject of RSS feed, doctorvee/dr_vee_feed has, in another case of being in my head, written an interesting take on the problems with RSS and other feeds:

I have had an up and down relationship with RSS. When I first started using it I thought it was a great way to just surf the web more quickly. No more visiting blogs to find that they hadn’t updated. No more visiting news sites to find that there is no news.

The problem is, once you have subscribed to more than a few dozen RSS feeds, it simply doesn’t work like that.

I (still) prefer LJ for feeds, if I miss stuff because I'm away, I don't feel like I've a massive backlog, and can just look at a much more filtered view, without having to mark all unread. I keep thinking of experimenting with some proper feedreading software, but I do everything else via web based services these days, seems a bit of a backwards step TBH.

And via the lovely SB, a possibly daft but worth signing anyway petition to recognise the contribution of 2000AD:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to award knighthoods to John Wagner, Pat Mills and Alan Grant, in recognition of the 30th anniversary of the great British comic, 2000AD

Go sign. Now.

Last up, jonnynexus has an idea for a more inclusive version of Talk Like a Pirate day:

13 November: International Swear Like a Fucking Trooper Day!

How cool would that be? Anyone want to knock up a logo?

Sounds like it might be a plan...

I get an email.

Attention Citizen!

You have been snitched by a fellow Mega-Citizen. For details of your crime, go to: http://www.2000ad.org/judgepal/?Index=2560&Code=1172237577

Armed Judges are on their way to your location. Make no attempt to run - you have been warned!

The Justice Department is watching you!

Hmm, thinks I, it's been ages since 2000AD sent me anything.

The Mega-City Times:

Mega-City One -- The disgraced Judge Mat Bowles was today sentenced to 20 years on the penal colony of Titan after what arresting officer Judge Dredd described as "a career in corruption."

An experienced member of Justice Department, whose several textbooks on Applied Violence at the Academy of Law were considered required reading for cadets, it is thought Bowles has been taking bribes from the major crime syndicates for much of his fifteen-year career.

You can report fellow citizens yourself if'n you want. As for my snoop? I suspect the involvement of miss_s_b...

Just got back from lunch, so before the lunchbreak ends and I get back to paid work, a brief one. For those in the UK, buy this weeks 2000AD (Prog 2007, the winter special). For those not? Order it somehow.

This especially applies to those like tyrell who don't take their paganism too seriously. Because this weeks Kipling is absolutely brilliant. Anything else would a) take time and b) be a spoiler, so just go buy the damned thing.

Right, went out last night in London (as nadriel had a former appointment with his Warcrack addiction), to see a recording of the Now Show. Met up unexpectedly with scorpionchild and also with bopeepsheep, who, by random chance, is a maintainer of a community I joined yesterday morning. So, I wrote up the report not here, but at yeoldelj, The Now Showwe. Looks like an amusing project, go join...

Tonight, synth_culture and we're meeting various people in the pub at Euston Station (called, The Winchester/The Head of Steam The Doric Arch apparently, but incase it's changed again it's the one that enters onto the bus station) from about 8.30pm.

Tomorrow, still planning on going to Oxford to that Dreddcon thing. juggzy, you still interested? No idea whereabout you're based, but I'd be looking at taking the 11.21 from Paddington it looks like. In the evening, with luck, meeting up with jantshira to catch up, haven't seen her since the summer.

Mat is happy. Mat has had a good, relaxing week in which he's acheived very little. Life is OK. Oh yeah. Buy a Euromillions ticket tonight. jiggery_pokery has done the maths, because of the rollover and guaranteed payout, the maths, for once, is in the favour of the punter.

Right then.  First off, on Friday morning I'm travelling to Luton to fly to Muenster for the weekend.  KoHIT beckons.  Monday, I fly back, and go to nadriel's place for the rest of the week (again).  So that's a week in South London, but with a guy that's working full time.  Ergo, I want a) stuff to do in the daytime and b) stuff to do when he's busy gaming and stuff.  So...

London Calling

( Anyone about in London next week? )

Icons, LJ and games designers

( Livejournal: the small world ) 

Neverwhere

It's a free download at his site, Postmortem Studios. In fact, it's got a lot of background stuff as well, so non-gamers like faeriecween and jantshira may be interested regardless as, y'know, it's Neverwhere. 

New Friends

( Must. Stop. Adding. People... )

Dreddcon: 6.5% proof!

( Anyone fancy some Oxford silliness? )

So, I've got a week and a bit off work, I'm off to see nearly_everyone in Germany, then spending a week bumming around London and LJ has provided me much amusement thus far last few days. Also, strictlytrue also went to Ottery, and has pictures. LJ's cool, most of the time. It's just a damn shame that it's dying.

Oh yeah, the beau_bo_d_or_fd feed has started working again after the LJ crash, Rumsfeld has resigned and the Dems have retaken Congress.  I'm off to try and work out what the swing was...

Have I done a Gratuitous Icon Post before? Doubt it, my l337 skillz don't really actually stretch to good icons. But I can crop and do borders though. Anyway...

tyrell linked to the IMDB page for Hogfather. Sky One, Xmas day. Guess I'd better visit my parents at Christmas then. He also linked to the filmmakers gallery of promo shots. Oh yeah baby. I mean, I know that fancying the actress playing Susan is sorta, y'know, predictable? But, well, d'you blame me? Anyone know if Michelle Dockery can actually act? The rest of the cast is good (David Jason as Albert? Cool!), and Death looks very cool.

Oh, I'm about 2/3rds of the way through Wintersmith. Wee Free Men was good but didn't grab, Hat Full of Sky was better, and Wintersmith is very good. I guess the whole written for the audience thing kicks in a little with the first one? Anyway, how does it go? Oh yeah. Nae King, nae Quinn, nae Laird, nae master...

Also? nmg gives us Mark Harrison's The Travellers, and for those of you who like their browsing uninterrupted by crappy pop ups that kill options like bookmarking, this link is the start of the actual strip. Why do webdesigners still think that forcing new windows to read their content is in any way a good idea?

The only comic I buy regularly these days is 2000ad. It's British, it's normally well written, it's grown up with its reader base ( ... ), and it's an anthology.

The advantage of an anthology comic is that there's always something you like( ... ), there's always something I like, even if it's just one little story in an issue full of dross. With the current arcs, I'm a bit meh ( about most of them ). But Malone? Who cares? It's the denouement today, the final installment, it's even on the cover. Meh, says I, but buys it anyway.

Y'see, Malone is the story of an amnesiac drifter ( ... ) So far, so dull. Last week, at the end, a character shows up at the door who knows who he really is. The art is pretty poor, but it was a character that looked vaguely familiar. Meh, says I, I still care not, it's a crap strip, move on.

This week? I read it through, again, as I always do on Wednesday lunchtime. The guy introduces himself as ( Spoiler ). My memory refuses to tell me who that is. I turn the page, still not caring. I turn the page to the next panel, he's going to say who Malone is, I'm hoping it might pique my interest. Speech bubble. "Your name is ( Spoiler - it's a big one )". Interest piqued. More than piqued.

Oh boy did that get my attention

It's no longer a Malone story. It's no longer a story abot an obscure backwater colony world. It's about ( Spoiler ). It's about ( Spoiler ). It's about what happened. It's cool. Crappy story about a character I didn't care about? It was until today.

The art's still crap though( ... )