This will be quick because there is a queue behind me in the net cafe and also I have no idea where the apostrophe is found on this crazy keyboard.
Happy New Year to all – thanks for all the calls… I was not able to answer all of them as I have spent much of today sliding down various perilous inclines. But thankyou thankyou thankyou.
Oh, no exclamation mark either.
Happy trails (exclamation mark)

FROHE WEIHNACHTEN!

At this juncture I'm counting on that being an accurate translation of “Merry Christmas” – Google Language Tools doesn't often lark about with that kind of thing, so I'm reasonably certain they haven't given me the phrase for “I can tell you're into amateur animal husbandry”. To tell you the truth the only chance I had to use the phrase I couldn't remember the German, and presumably if I had then I should have also known the German for “Aaaaaaargh! Get out of the way!” (The circumstances being …

This blog written on my phone and absolutely not on Richie's laptop, because he doesn't hold with all that sort of thing.
Here we are in sunny Austria – snow in every direction and us with the distinct will to slide down it. We think we've been followed by a church bell from Cologne which seems intent on ringing loudly about every 12 minutes, as well as a small angry dog who doesn't like me and the memory of a cranky German man who shouted “SHATTAP!” at Mark the other …

Yes well as you'd expect my blogging performance of late has been nothing short of woeful – this has been the most spartan year yet, and I put it down to a combination of old fashioned laziness and having loads of other things I'm supposed to be doing. It's not that I don't intend to blog – good lord, you should see it! I've got posts queued up as far as the eye can see to put the finishing touches on. By which I mean, insert the …

Grr. This sucks. Led Zeppelin are playing at the O2 Dome Centre Tent Thing, and I'm not going.
As a form of protest for having not been awarded a ticket in the ballot, I've not listened to a Led Zeppelin song since 11 o'clock this morning.

For reasons which I'm not 100% clear on, the other day I found myself wondering what the dumbest thing I've ever done was. There's definitely got to be SOMETHING which stands out head & shoulders above all the other fairly routine silly things, but my subconscious is obviously trying to shield me from the indignity of remembering because I can't really think of anything.

I suspect it's “option paralysis”, and not knowing where to start – there's some obvious ones that leap to mind, such as the time I fell …

From BoingBoing.

Although come on… the Christmas Octopus? Everybody knows it doesn't exist. That's just a story told to kids so they don't learn the truth, about the Christmas Snail and the Easter Moose.

Hmm, seems there's some things I need to know about this Google Maps malarkey before I embrace it as a full feature of my website. Please, if you happen to know anything about the minutiae of this, pipe up!
To add a point to a google map you need to feed it latitude and longitude coordinates, and in order to get those you need to geocode the location you're looking for. The trouble, as I saw it, was that all of the examples I looked at were for UK …

The mood here at Humpy Towers has been very much one of celebration of late, for 2.5 reasons:

1) Last Thursday I had my “interview” with the Home Office to extend my UK visa, and as Paul correctly forecasted it was tedious but straightforward. After arriving at 9:40 for a 10:40 appointment, “organisational difficulties” meant that I didn't get to have my interview (held through 2 inches of bulletproof glass – I gather that these things don't *always* go well…) until 11:30. The interview (if you can call it …

It's good to see that shite service knows no class boundaries around here – you try to get on with life without causing too much of a fuss, but things just keep happening which cause you to scratch your head and say “What? WHY?!”.

Part I – the paupers: Steve from work & I happened by a local hostelry the other night for some post-work cleansing ales, as we'd both worked til about 8:30 and decided it was the right time for beer. We went to the Bag O' …