Prompted by Adrian’s promise of a prize if anyone could produce a hard house track with his vocals mixed into it, I spent this lunchtime tweaking knobs and pressing buttons in Orion Pro to produce this (128kbps, 2.11MB MP3 – also at 56kbps, 945KB and 224kbps, 3.69MB). Turn it up loud, and that.

In the supermarket, I saw one of my old lecturers from University. I hid, so he didn’t notice me.

Driving home, I glanced to the left just in time to see a middle-aged man in an expensive looking suit walk face-first into a lamp post and fall over backwards.

I went round the corner, and came face-to-face with a girl driving exactly the same car as myself – same make, model, colour, everything. We looked up, and our gazes met – for a split second, there was a tiny connection between the two of us. We acknowledged each other with a knowing smile – and then, just as suddenly, the connection was broken, and we drove on.

Against my better judgement, I went to a party organised by He Who Shall Henceforth Be Called Super Ade. I met lots of lovely people, lots of whom had blogs, and, embarassingly enough, none of whose names I can remember – so I’m hoping someone else will be posting captioned photographs before I get mine developed (film; old-skool, yo) and I have to embarassingly concede that I’m not actually sure who most of the people in the pictures are (alternatively, if I met you yesterday, you could leave a comment describing yourself, and I can put names and blogs to hazy recollections of faces, which would probably help matters).

I believe the appropriate phrase is “Bollocks to this, I’m off to London.”

The other day, driving to work, I overtook a Mazda MX-5. Going up a hill. On a motorway. In my Renault 5. (incidentally, if you don’t immediately see what’s so wrong with this picture, you might as well stop reading now).

Now, I’m not advocating the kind of behaviour typical of the owners of most sports cars – tailgating, weaving in and out of lanes on motorways, going double the speed limit, just because they can – and, okay, I tend to rag my little car quite hard – but there is something fundamentally wrong about someone driving a Porsche 911 or BMW M3 so slowly that I get annoyed if I’m stuck behind them.

The problem round here is, as with so many things, the Cheshire Set. These cars aren’t being driven by your normal sports car owner, oh no – they’re being driven by bleached-blonde, fake-tanned forty-something women who are married to millionaires, living in mansions in Wilmslow and Alderly Edge. And they use them to go shopping and do the school run. They keep them on a gravel drive in front of their country houses most of the time, and would never, ever consider taking them on a racing circuit. And they probably chose the model they own because it came in a colour they liked. It’s absolutely criminal.

Maybe they could do a trade in scheme: they could have my Renault 5, get to their destination in exactly the same amount of time and have stacks more boot space for their Waitrose ready meals, and I can have their sports cars, and drive them like they’re meant to be driven for a change. I’d even pay the petrol costs. You can’t say fairer than that, now, can you?

Via lyle comes this personality test. It’s spookily accurate:

You are an SECF–Sober Emotional Constructive Follower. This makes you a hippie. You are passionate about your causes and steadfast in your commitments. Once you’ve made up your mind, no one can convince you otherwise. Your politics are left-leaning, and your lifestyle choices decidedly temperate and chaste.

You do tremendous work when focused, but usually you operate somewhat distracted. You blow hot and cold, and while you normally endeavor on the side of goodness and truth, you have a massive mean streak which is not to be taken lightly. You don’t get mad, you get even.

Please don’t get even with this web site.

(and I can well see Lyle as the evil genius, too 🙂

No real skill involved, but this is fun, slightly hypnotic and guaranteed to waste far more time than you have available. It reminds me slightly of some of the cellular automata stuff that Acorn User used to print in their *INFO section back in the day (Conways Life, Demons, that sort of thing). High score in our office is 2,238. What’s yours?

This could turn out to be the concert of the year. Shame there’s precisely zero chance of me being there.

Yesterday. At home, off work, spinny head Labyrinthitis style nastiness. Phone beeps:

From: Topper
Lori left your Bond DVD on your car earlier today, apparently.

A quick check confirms that this is, bewilderingly, the case.

To: Topper
*looks out of the window* – So she did. Tell her letterboxes were invented for a reason.

Another beep:

From: Topper
Apparently your letterbox was too small. It didn’t occur to her that your car was there because you were at home.

Hurrah! On Tuesday, I posted about the fact that Nayfnu had invented a new word, and on that day began an experiment. Today, I am pleased to announce the experiment is over and is a pleasing success (for me, anyway). Not four days ago, the word Looncake returned one result on Google (it seems that Nayf didn’t actually invent it, after all). And now, a mere four days later, it returns two And neither of them are Nayfnu’s site (which also featured the word on the same day). I therefore conclude that Google loves me more than Nayfnu. Yay me!