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Entertaining facts about Telewest: So I’m moving out of my flat in just a couple of days and I’d like to get cable television in the place I am moving to. However I don’t know the postcode of the new place, so I can’t easily type it into the little box on their website that tells you if you can get service. That’s why I decide to type in my current postcode, which is W9 1LE (try it for yourself – this game is quite entertaining). When you type in the postcode the site politely informs you that they don’t handle that postcode, but that ntl do. They even helpfully provide a link through to the page in question where you can type in your postcode again. Except of course NTL deny covering that area too. And they helpfully decide to redirect you… back to Telewest again. The irony has taken my neck in its teeth and is beginning to playfully shake…

B3ta set the challenge. And I rose to it:

Toy of the morning is labs.google.com, which is where the arch search engine appears to test out all kinds of natty little gizmos that it hasn’t fully developed yet. My favourite toy is Google Sets – where you type in a few words and it tries to guess other things that belong in that set. For Example: You type in ‘Tony Blair’ and ‘George Bush’ and you get back Yasser Arafat, Russell Crow and Tiger Woods. That would be the set of ‘publicity hungry people’ then…

I may have a flat. This is tremendous news. It’s a little place in Maida Vale for one person. It’s got a little sitting room. It’s got a little bathroom. It’s got a little kitchen. It’s got quite a big bathroom. I’m just waiting for my references to go through, and if they do go through then I can move in next Saturday.

A cheer for the Rebels? A hiss for the Empire? Perhaps no more. Perhaps no longer.

Ten things you could do at 1am to stop you being bored (dedicated to James Cronin):

1. Play the 100 greatest online games!
2. Shave your head!
3. Comfort nervous young gay webloggers!
4. Check all your arguments for logical fallacies!
5. Listen to mobsters!
6. Print out and distribute guides to the perfect handjob!
7. Build your very own pixel town!
8. Download some dumb mp3s!
9. Read random emerging tech notes!
10. Go to fucking bed already!

An endless amount of work awaits me in Marylebone, but I can’t go in until I’ve heard about whether man and wife flat-stealers have declared their endless love for my little flat around the corner. If they’ve bailed then it’s all mine. Mine, I tells ya. Otherwise…. So all the work in the world will have to wait just a few more minutes. Maybe half an hour or so. And in the meantime I’ll stay here and play with my OSX mini-app of the day: World Clock Deluxe

So I decide to put an offer on a flat and everything seems to be fine, and then the woman rings up and says that she got it wrong and the place had an offer put on it yesterday afternoon and that they might go for it instead and it’s very frustrating and at times like this I think mind may well snap.

I’m up, showered and on the net by eight am. I was awake before seven. And I don’t have to be at work before one. Why am I up? Because I’m nervous. Why am I nervous? Because I’m going to have to commit to a flat. Why does that worry me? Because I haven’t finalised a job yet. Why have I not finalised the job yet? Because I’m being pulled in two directions at once, and each day the pull from one direction or the other seems to increase or slacken off.

Today on Barbelith, Fortunate Son: In 1999, James Hatfield’s book, Fortunate Son was published and almost immediately taken off the shelves amid revelations that its author had once been imprisoned for attempting to hire a hit-man. The book, amongst other things, alleges that George Bush Senior arranged to have his son’s conviction for cocaine possession expunged from the records. In May 2001, a month after Fortunate Son was republished, Hatfield’s body was found in a hotel room. What is the story behind the story of Fortunate Son? Gavin MacDonald investigates.