plasticbag.org

You dirty so-and-so. You love it don’t you… I know you do. Watching. Not typing. Oh no. Just watching what other people have typed. Mmmmm. Oh yes. That’s the stuff… Watching people on kanoodle type in ‘teen boy decorating’. Oh yes. Or leering at the WWF Backlash requests at Yahoo! Buzz. Stop stop! It’s too much. No more. Don’t stop! Tell me Jeeves, are they still looking for the popular bridal website ‘Martha Stewart Weddings’? And Metaspy – expose yourself to me! Show me people searching for diseases of the middle ages? Or Hank Azaria? And don’t … ever … stop … showing … me search.com requests for Country French, Hot Rods and Custom Muscle Cars! Eurgh. And I’m spent…

It’s weird being inside the BBC when something like this happens.

In a frustrating hour at work in which I couldn’t really do what I needed to do because I hadn’t got the application that I asked for many many weeks ago, I decided to upgrade to Movable Type 2.0. And it didn’t take long to install. And it was of superb and elegant quality…

Diary of the Plague Years, Day Five: After much careful analysis I can only note that the mysterious semi-liquid is gradually thickening as the days pass, congealing and becoming more solid. And as it does so, my consumption of cold-cure medicines and tissues appears to be declining in parallel. If this can be said to be ‘improvement’ then I must consider myself ‘improved’.

Reasons not to read any Blake’s Seven books (as written by members of the original cast – no matter how cool they might have been): Barbelith.

It used to be the staple of weblogging content – the announcement that someone (a friend / a company) has redesigned their site. Then everyone used to run over and point and critique the site in question and have a little think about whether or not it worked or not as a design and maybe make a few pointers. People don’t do that so much any more. I wonder why. Announcement: Barty Trabaca has redesigned!

VITAL: Read the responses to A small note from a patriot.

K10k is back and it’s as futuretech and tiny-fonted as ever. Watch as it makes your connection shudder with tiny pixel-goodness. Shiver as your browser struggles to render it. Be awed at its ridiculously high quality. Miss the tiny animated buttons that span round. Be generally very impressed by it, but not that surprised by it. Our rating: Fucking impressive, but not dramatically different.

Today I have a stinking cold. I had it yesterday as well. Last night I felt like someone had drained my soul out of my feet. I had nightmares all night as well. But I can’t remember any of them. Here are some salient facts you might like to know about colds:

– Every year Americans suffer 1 billion colds.
– Exposure to cold weather does not cause the common cold.
– But cold-causing viruses often survive better in low humidity conditions – for example in the colder months.
– Using aspirin to treat a cold may make you more infectious as you increase the concentration of the virus in your sneezes.
– There is no definitive evidence that vitamin C eases or prevents colds.
– Some people say that Zinc Acetate Lozenges are a clinically proven cold cure. I suspect this may be bullshit.
– If you take normal decongestants and the like you’re less likely to splurt out viruses out your nose. You may spread less colds this way.
– Drinking milk does not increase green nasal cold goo.
– Taking Echincea apparently costs a lot and doesn’t do much if anything.

I forget where I found out most of those things. I should probably conclude with a US-style disclaimer: “Warning: May be Bullshit! If you die it’s not my fault!”

One of the things that I talked about in my interview for the role of community producer at the BBC – a job that I didn’t get, by the way – was about how the BBC was perfectly placed to be the people who made Microsoft’s passport program obselete. I mean, they’re not beholden to any corporate interests, they wouldn’t be able to sell your details to marketers and they have have the infrastructure and world-wide reknown to get away with it. But I wish they’d get a move on.