That's A Big Ask

You look away for a second and the lead is up to...


...1,757? Declaration imminent, I'd say :)

Feed Me

Right, listen up you lot.

For those of you getting busy with the RSS reader-type things, I am intending to move the feed for this site to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForkHandles

Please forcibly redirect your 2.0 sprocket here via the overhead cam flange and hopefully the 'excitement' will continue unabated. If not, drop me a line/comment and I'll hit it with a spanner. And at some as yet indeterminate point the old Atom.xml thing will cease to be. Message ends. Over and out. Chocks away.

Overheard #18, y'all, etc

This just in from our ever-vigilant, State-side roving reporter, Victoria Q. Sponge:

"I am NOT doing that again. One, it's gross and two, my legs are killing me."

Facebook 'Em, Danno

Er, your world might be coming to an end, people:

Lawsuit Seeks to Shut Down Facebook

Although I imagine they just want a rather big slice of how ever many billions Yahoo/Google/M$/AOL are offering this week :)

Not To Be Sniffed At

I am speechless:
I also liked the strap-line:

It's like having a dog's nose in your hand.

Remind me how that is a desirable thing again?

Stick Of Rhubarb

I wonder if this would get as (or perhaps more) annoying than Clippy:

Desktop Boycott

"The Desktop Boycott sits on your computer and alerts you to events with up-to-the-minute coverage of all the action, news, discussion forum and more."

And in the words of Desktop Boycott himself:

I’ll alert you when wickets fall, batsmen reach milestones, or players leave the field. I won’t be pulling any punches either, so I’ll also let you know when the ball was in the “corridor of uncertainty”, if my “mother could have caught it”, and when a good player could have “hit it with a stick of rhubarb”. You can guarantee that I’ll tell it straight, with “no flannel”, as we say in Yorkshire.

Oh. God. No.

Run? What...now?

This tickled me, from the BBC over-by-over; anyone who followed Test cricket in the early-80s will know exactly what he is on about:

1845: India 123-3
He's only scored four runs in the last ten overs; it's like watching a caned Chris Tavare.

Waitiiiiiing...................................................................................no.

Overheard #17

Friday. A City hostelry in EC2. Roughly around lunchtime (somewhere between 11 and 3)

"Yes - and I've never ridden a dog, either."

FACT.

(S)top Posting

Hear, hear: Daring Fireball: On Top

"Does it take more time to edit the portions of quoted text included in your reply? Yes. So does spell-checking and proofreading. It also takes time to shower and brush your teeth each day."

How Long Is A BigString?

For those "OK, that's done. And click [Send]. Wait. No. Not to him/her. No. Really? Aaaargh" moments, there is now:


"Users can recall e-mails from a recipient's inbox, cause a message to self-destruct after a certain number of reads or after a set period of time. BigString converts the e-mail to what is basically a simple Web page (an HTML document) and stores it on their server. When you change or delete the documents or attachments, you are not actually breaking into the recipient's inbox, but changing the virtual string that goes from BigString's server to that inbox."

Interesting idea. Wonder what the FSA would have to say about it?

Where Do You Want To Go Today?

xkcd hits the nail on the head again:

Quite.

Stay Out Of The Sun

Great mirth around some of the Arsenal blogs today as it turns out The Sun exclusive on Boca Juniors' highly-rated striker Rodrigo Palacio moving to Arsenal was entirely made up to show how easy it would be to wind up the papers. That said, he was genuinely going to move to Barcelona this summer for £15m before they went and signed Thierry - wouldn't the irony be delicious if Arsene Wenger subsequently tempted him over to fill TH14's shirt...

Meet And Two Pints

I went to my first ever Lewisham Bloggers Meetup last Friday night, handily enough held at our excellent local, The Honor Oak.

I had no idea what to expect; the internet all-too-easily removes any kind of geographical points of reference, What could we possibly all have in common other than sticking our random and seemingly unrelated thoughts up online once a day/week/roughly-whenever-the-hell-they-feel-like-it? It stemmed from the London Bloggers idea which I joined a while back, soon after which a couple of people made contact via the comments on fork handles...

...fast forward to Friday night at The Honor Oak, everyone was very welcoming, absolutely engrossing and a great pity I couldn't stay for longer than a couple of beers. Still, if they'll have me back, I'd very much like to continue some of the conversations I had with Andrew, Henry, Neil and Robert (who was responsible for organising the evening -> *applause*) and also meet those who I missed when they arrived later on!

Yep, count me in for the next one. Now, what on earth was that thing about underground waterways??

Beef? Stu.

I cannot claim to be right all the time, but Broad named in England Test squad gave me a somewhat polite 'glow' today.

Show us what you can do, young Stuart (what with Harmison almost certainly out for the series...)

Jig-A-Jig Aaargh

This seems a bit unnecessary. It's all I can do to leave the house wearing clothes, let alone do a jigsaw at silly-o'clock am.

Puzzle Alarm Clock (via Uncrate)

One For The Rails?

The ever-reliable Going Underground comes up trumps again with this Tube map 'mashup' on LastRounds.

LastRounds Tube Map
It tells you the times of the first/last Underground service from each station, as well as the staggering distance from the local hostelries. So you can order that final pint of Stocks Old Horizontal, safe in the knowledge that you can still catch the last tube home. Genius (and minicab drivers are going to hate it :)

Gotta Havva Makka Pakka

It was only a matter of time. Andy? Rowan?

The 'In The Night Garden' Collection

(On pre-order for end-July at the BBC Shop and Amazon.)

Within Tent To Kill

Too good not to share. Brooker goes to Glasto:

Oh good, it's raining again

(Yes, yes, I know it was published two weeks ago. So sue me for being in a dial-up wasteland in SE6 eating cold beans. Off packing cases. With chopsticks :)

Get In(ternet)

Oh how these words filled me with joy as they 'pinged' into my Inbox at 9:02am this morning.

From: adslservice@demon.net
Subject: Your Demon Broadband Order: Service Activation
Dear Mr Lightly,
Thank you for your order for Demon Broadband services.We are happy to inform you that BT have confirmed your new broadband service is now live. You will now be able to connect to your service using the login details provided in your welcome pack.

And exhale.

Office Face

I cut myself shaving yesterday.

(Normally, I imagine that would be up there with "What I had for lunch..." and "So I joined Facebook..." as the first line of a blog post guaranteed to make even the most turgid of readers run a country mile. But please bear with me.)

As it happens, it was quite a nasty nick; over an inch in length, tapered from top to bottom and prominently displayed to the left of my philtrum (you can look it up). It looked as if I had either:

a) had some sort of late-night kebab-shop battle over the last chicken shish;
b) got into an argument with a (slightly half-hearted) Chelsea Headhunter;
c) tried to shift a lengthily-clawed, somewhat-annoyed cat from the sofa; or
d) cut myself shaving.

And do you know what? Not one person at work commented on it in the entire day. Not a single analyst at the 7am morning meeting. Nobody in sales or trading when I was sorting out their conferencing. Nothing from I.T. when I was testing my new PC upstairs. Not even the lugubrious PL and CJ at lunchtime in the Rack & Tenter. None of the normally chatty backoffice team when we were discussing the crazy world of client codes. Not Dei. Not Alex. Nobody.

Now these are people who can generally be relied upon to pounce on the slightest change in haircut and render the owner speechless with a tirade of lighthearted abuse. Similarly, the introduction of a 'jazzy' shirt into the work wardrobe will often be met with wide-eyed mirth and the general donning of sunglasses. I can only assume that they think I live such an exciting life that random facial injuries are deemed to be par for the course.

Almost certainly, though, they didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I am clearly an utter buffoon who can't even be trusted to scrape the dead hair off his chin without carving himself to ribbons :)

Overheard #16 (back on track now)

Straight from the badlands of Hertford:

"Fetch the aardvark!"

Turning It To, Er, Cheese

Best anagram in the world ever?

Monty Panesar = Tony Parmesan

That's grate.

Proof Of Yoof

Go! Team! Album! Out! Soon! But! Here! Is! A! Taster!



Do! You! Yahoo! etc!

Overheard #14 (yes, I missed one)

Another from our spies in the field (surely "on the train" - Transport Ed.) and a beauty:

"It's £160 a week. And they wear helmets."

Pass-berry Beret

Arsenal appear to have signed The Artist Formerly Known As Prince:

Actually, he's a Croatian-Brazilian by the name of Eduardo da Silva who was the record goalscorer for Dinamo Zagreb last season with 34 goals.

As I said, "Trust Arsene".

Thoughts On A Broad

So England won the first ODI against the West Indies yesterday, quite comfortably in the end (by 79 runs) after some excellent bowling by my top tip for 2007, Stuart Broad:


Despite the English batsmen having their by-now-traditional late-innings slump and losing the last 6 wickets for 48 runs in a below-par total of 225, Broad came on and took 3-20 in 9 overs, backed up with some decent stuff from Anderson (no, really; 2-23 off 8) and the Windies were all out for 146 in just 39.5 overs. Let's keep it up for the rest of the summer, Colly...