Er, apologies for the lack of, er, updates and things. I'm currently in San Diego, and will be moving on to New Zealand in fairly short order, so there's unlikely to be any updates for a while, although I'll try and do the occasional ah, blog-card when I can. Oh come on now, quit crying. I know it's going to be tough, but you can get through this. Be strong. I'll see you soon. ...

I'm not an artist. This is despite my best efforts. While I'm sure art is a skill you can improve, I'm equally sure that some people have little bits of their brain that contain artistic sense, and mine is missing. I've tried to draw, honestly, I have, I just can't. If I were to draw a picture of a person for you today it would ...

"God, look at that guy, what a poseur." "What guy?" "The dude with the ridiculous chops and the intensely greased Elvis hairdo." "Oh, with the enormous skull & crossbones earrings?" "Yeah, that's the one. What a dick. I hate people who purposefully create an over-stylized image to send out a specific message." "Doesn't everyone do that?" "No. I don't do that." "Of course you do!" "No I don ...

Okay: I seem to have found a question that AQA cannot answer. However while I'm sure that there is, in fact, an answer, I don't know what it is and I would really like to know. Follow my train of thinking here, people. It all started at a BBQ on Saturday, at which I was chatting to this South African about ah, Cape Town, and she showed me a rather awesome photo of lightning striking Cape Town, an ...

This is me holding my not one, not even two, but THREE copies of the new Nine Inch Nails single (The CD, the DVD, and the vinyl). As you can tell, I'm pretty happy about it. Okay, look: I can recognize the fact that I am not exactly the world's most objective observer when it comes to Les Nails. In fact: I think that's one of the great things about art- you're allowed to be unobjective. There i ...

This is Girlinky. Not only are they all very nice people, but they also kind of quite rock, and do a great live set. I'll be going to see them next Wednesday when they play live, and as it will be my last day in England for quite some time, you should come too as I'll probably getting really trashed and will be quite generous what with all the drink-buying and dancing and whatnot. ...

Yesterday was the first official London Skate of the new year, and while it did mean I had to miss out on a free gig by The Clientele, I knew I couldn't miss the inaugural skate of 2005. And it was a great night- good turnout, the weather never turned bad (as it was threatening to), and everyone was smiling and happy, all the way through town and up T.Court Road. I don't know if they planned it, ...

If you are in a plane crash, what is the probability that you will survive? That is to say: if you added up all the people who have ever been in a plane crash, what proportion of them would not have survived the crash? From: AQA [63336] If you are in a plane crash when the plane is at high altitude, survival probability is less than 1 in 100. At low altitude it is around 1 in 5. I was pondering ...

Sometimes your brain makes a snap judgement of a situation and spurs you into action without much time for analysis or forethought. All I saw was a woman, standing in the middle of the pavement on Bayswater Road, with her pants around her ankles. She was standing in a puddle that had clearly just emitted from her own self. My immediate thought was that she was pregnant, and that her water had bro ...

If you create a piece of art (whether it be an image, music or writing) and no-one else sees it, is it pointless? From: AQA [63336] Creating any form of art, even if no-one ever sees it, is not pointless as it allows you to express your own creativity and feelings. As I pointed out to the alert reader who submitted this question, doesn't express mean 'to communicate'? Hmm. ALSO! I've just se ...

[I swear I wrote this blog before reading Gordon's, but I suspect a lot of people will be making entries similar to this one today] A while ago, I signed up for the pro account of flickr, the fantastic photo-sharing program which I completely adore. A pro account isn't that different from the free account, it just gives you more uploading bandwidth. I don't really need a lot of uploading bandwidt ...

I've been having this recurring dream for the past three years or so. I've heard that, in broad strokes, it's not an entirely uncommon dream. While I haven't had this specific dream before, I've had dreams which are extremely similar. Okay, so I dream that I'm living back in Hamilton, in the house I lived in as a teenager. Uhm, and, somehow it's transpired that I've decided to go back to Universi ...

Is it me, or is there an extant market for a Dominatrix Yoga Instructor out there? Seriously. I mean, you've already got this incredibly fit woman telling you to get into and stay in various positions (the most common of which is Adho Mukha Svanasana- "face down dog"). If you get it wrong, she'll chasten you, and then come over and wrench you into the correct position, followed by: "That's good! ...

Many drunk people just waste their time completely, chewing the fat with their mates, playing pool, buggering about. Not I. I'm highly a productive drunkard: ...

Is there such thing as a "Common Law Marriage?" From: AQA [63336] There is such a thing as a Common Law Marriage. The term is used to describe both a lawful marriage and the domestic partnership of two individuals. Ah-ha! AQA bites the big one. This Q&A, sent in by an alert reader, highlights a common misconception regarding the "common law marriage myth", which apparently 61% of the British po ...

Now, this is true: I've always been told, since I was about five, that falling objects with the same surface area (that is to say, discounting the effects of wind resistance on said object) accelerate at the same speed, regardless of their weight. I even remember once getting a Trivial Pursuit question wrong, because I thought that, obviously a heavier object should fall faster than a lighter ob ...

before after hard to believe it's the same person, I know! many thanks to Aaron for the sweet cut. ...

I've been in denial ever since CDs came out. CD packages suck. They can unfold 15 times, but they're still shitty little pamphlets. It's not a sleeve, there's no real estate, and there's no room for art. It's in a shitty, plastic, exploding jewel box. They're shit. So let's treat it for what it is - it's just a means of getting electronic information. - Trent Reznor Everytime I read an inter ...

It's very, VERY rare that I see something on the web so funny that I have to actually cover my mouth and hold my nose to prevent myself from laughing out loud and having my colleagues realize I basically spend all day looking for funny shit on the web. All Star Wars computer geeks (ie- anyone reading this) must click here now and download this video. I almost crapped my daks. Ahem. I really ne ...

The music channel that's constantly on in my gym is, for my sins, 'MTV Hits', whose programme directors seem to have a direct link into my brain in order for them the choose those videos that are least appealing to me, personally. "Okay, so we've played the vacuous carbon-copy girl band, who's next?" "It seems he really hates soulless cloned boy bands, let's roll one of them up." "Great, can we ...

Er, this is my first meme, which was thrown at me by this nice fellow, so please go easy on me if I fail to demonstrate mad l33t meme skillz. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? Who started this meme, a High School teacher? Cause seriously, I used to get my students to answer this when I taught Farenheit 451. Harry Potter is almost universally the book most 15-year- ...

| had a dream when | was in norway. rob said it was interesting and that | should write it down. rob's often wrong on these things. blame him if you get bored so, | dreamt that saddam hussein, the butcher of baghdad, had escaped from american-occupied-iraq and was hiding out in some country (norway, | guess) in which | was, also, in. and somehow (the dream didn't really make it clear how) saddam ...

This was made using a neat little flash widget that I found via Boing Boing. I don't really look like this, but it's as close as I could get. It's a cute little program, check it out if you are bored at work. I really need a linklog.... ...

YOGA INSTRUCTOR: "Daniel, your spine is not flat against the wall, can you push it out a bit?" ME: "No, this is as far as it goes. I've always had a pretty sharply curved spine." YOGA INSTRUCTOR: "Wow, that's a really severe curve." ME: "Yeah, I think it's genetic, my dad and one of my brothers has the same thing." YOGA INSTRUCTOR: "That's okay, we can fix that." ME [joking]: "Cool, will that ...

Have you ever heard of a guy named Gustav Vigeland? Yeah, I'd never heard of him, either. This is a great shame, because he's one of the most interesting artists I've yet to encounter. Monet and Turner get mega-installations at the National gallery while this guy wallows in relative (I must stress that's it's only relative, presumably everyone in Norway knows of him) obscurity. ...

Writing about my trip to Oslo is somewhat hampered by the fact that I was perpetually either drunk; or recovering from being drunk, or, most frequently, in various degrees of overlap between these two states, neither of which are particularly inducive to good memory. I remember that the wind was cold, I remember that the beer was expensive, I remember that it was beautiful, I remember that I had a ...

As written in the style of Hunger, by Knut Hamsen. All of this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiania-that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him. ...

Right, I'm just popping off to Oslo for a bit, which means I have to break my 'blog every weekday' resolution that I've so far been doing fairly well at. But I'll be back next week with some hopefully amusing stories and photos. bing! ...

[ring ring] "Hi Katie, it's Dan." "Hi Dan, what's up?" "Uhm, I'm just filling in the ah, overtime spreadie, and it keeps coming back to me saying that I work half-an-hour overtime every day. Like, even when I work my minimum hours, it says I work half an hour overtime." "Well, what are your contracted hours?" "Nine to five-fifteen with a 45 minute break for lunch." "Hang on, I'll just... [s ...

The worst thing a sequel can do, in my opinion, is make the original film worse. If a sequel sucks, fine. They usually do. But if it retroactively goes back in time and skull-fucks the source material it derives from, then it really pisses me off. The worst (that is to say, most glaring) example I can think of this is Alien 3. Aliens is the greatest sci-fi actioner ever made. Like all great ac ...

Adrian, Craig & I (we're arranged alphabetically, AND by height). We're not quite as gay as we appear here. Okay, I can't really back that up. Wait: here's a picture of me and a bevy of beautiful women (all of whom slept with me shortly after this photo was taken*). That should do the trick. all photos courtesy of the sdc, there should be a full set up on there eventually * may contain untruths ...

I can't wait until I have my back surgery, and then my tummy tuck. I'm not fat by any means, but after 10 years, time can take it's toll, ya know? The back surgery is necessary, and of course the tummy thing is purely cosmetic. [backing slowly away from my computer] Can this be? Can I really know someone who is actually considering really truly having a 'tummy tuck'? And, on top of that, admit ...