A Confederacy of Dunces is an absolute joy. I had an enormous, goofy grin on my face the entire time. This is the funniest book I've read since The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life- it may, in fact, be the funniest book I've ever read. I kept turning to whoever was around me at the time (even strangers on the bus, like) and saying: "Oh, oh, this is a good bit, you've gotta hear this!" and ...

So I was heading off to Croatia and I realized that I knew next to nothing about the war there. I knew it had something to do with Serbia and Bosnia or Bosno-Serbi-Cromagnon or something, but really didn't have the foggiest idea what it was all about, how it started, how it ended, who was doing what to whom, and that I should really get my head `round it while I was there (so forgive me if you alr ...

"So far, so average." says the narrator about two-thirds into The Player of Games, my first foray into the highly recommended world of Iain M. Banks. "Yup." I internally nodded to myself. Maybe it was my own fault for reading outlandish sci-fi right on the heels of the immacuately-constructed worlds of Infinite Jest and Post Captain. Maybe nothing could live up to those two giants of awesomeness. ...

Me and my friend Jayne are working (I write `em, she draws `em) on a comic strip, the first of which is done. As the strips are too large to be posted in the 700px of joy that is da`blog, I'll be placing them in a separate page of their own (which I'll ah, make...very soon!), and letting you know here when new ones come to light. Enjoy. ...

Croatia was fantastic, as you'd expect. Lots of beach, lots of reading, lots of drinking, lots of eating. Too much eating, in fact. I've stuck a few hundred photos here, should you care to peruse them. We also took a few videos (thanks, Adrian!), mainly of me jumping off of cliffs. They can be found: Here (horizontal for small cliffs) and Here (vertical for HUUUUGE cliffs) and for even mo ...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Tree Pivo Molim Vas. ------ Emailed on the move from Dan's mobile ...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Rob takes a wee float off the coast of Hvar, the Croatian Island we are currently exploring by boat. Our boat is cool. ------ Emailed on the move from Dan's mobile ...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } I've just had a great idea for the caption of this photo! ------ Emailed on the move from Dan's mobile ...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } For my next trick, I shall turn wine into vomit. ------ Emailed on the move from Dan's mobile ...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Today there was a mighty thunderstorm. Today we ate a lot of bread and drank a lot of beer. Today we saw some cool cats. Today we went up a very tall tower and got Vertigo...twice! Today rocked. - ...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Moments before my doom. ------ Emailed on the move from Dan's mobile ...

Right, well, I'm off to Croatia for a bit, so the site will be quiet for a while. It is my intention to look at no castles, no sites of historical interest, no beautiful Croatian women. I am simply going to lie on the beach and do nothing but read and sleep and swim and leap off cliffs and nap. I will return with lots of book reviews and no exciting stories about castles, sites of historical inter ...

How much do I love the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien? If you're not familiar with them, the film Master & Commander was based on book ten (The Far Side of the World) of a twenty-book cycle that follows the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey, a brutish by good hearted sailor in the royal navy, and his friend Stephen Maturin, who is variously a surgeon for Jack's vessels and a spy for Bri ...

Infinite Jest is huge. That's the first thing you need to know. If you are the sort of person who goes to sleep with a book balanced on their chest and wakes up when it falls on their nose, Infinite Jest will fall over and give you a black eye. That's how big she is. We're talking War & Peace, here. To give you an idea of how big this book is, there's upwards of 300 footnotes, most of which ar ...

From: Sarah To: Dan hey dan i need some help. the run that me and jayne are doing is less than two weeks away and we're still only halfway to our target of raising 500 pounds, which frankly isn't that much and i'm a bit surprised we haven't managed to get there yet. so i've slightly changed my strategy - i'm now sending out emails to everyone i know asking them to log on and donate one pound, ...

"Ah, how come whenever I want to print an A5 document with the colour printer, it comes out as A4?" "Uhm, I dunno, did you tell the printer to take paper from drawer three? "No." "Oh, okay, give that a try." "Do I have to do anything else? I mean, do I have to shrink it down or anything?" "Wait...have you actually specified that you want to print in A5?" "No. Do I have to do that?" "Are you ...

So, last week, my entire flat was stricken with a similar sort of of stomach-bug-like virus. At roughly the middle of the week, each of us dropped to the ground in varying degrees of severity, the symptoms mainly involving massive fluid loss from either end of the body. It's a good thing we have three toilets, let me tell you. As we all lay about the lounge, stricken, we attempted to parse togeth ...

I'm not a morning person, by anyone's definition. If you were to only ever encounter me in the morning, you'd be convinced I was the meanest, surliest, grumpiest, quietest person you'd ever met (when I'm actually the nicest, happiest, loudest person you've ever met). I don't say a lot in the mornings. I don't even really think a lot in the mornings other than how badly I want to go back to bed. ...

Please tell me what ingredients you need to make chesse fondue. From: AQA [63336] Cheese fondue is usually Gruyere and Emmenthal cheese melted with the flavourings (wine is popular) you prefer. Then served by dipping bread into it. Nothing like the standing-at-Sainsbury's-forgotten-how-to-make-the-dish-you-promised-to-make-AQA-emergency-text. ...

I guess I just kind of assume all my friends are rational and intelligent and lovely people- it took the wind right out of me to discover that one had kind of slipped under the net: "...I also went to Auschwitz, that was, just...so incredible, you've got to go there." - Uhm, yeah, I will, I mean, it's not on 'my list' or anything, but, yeah, sure, I'll probably check it out at one point or ano ...