1.5 kilos down this week. Hurry up, man! I wanted to be under 80 by now. (I'm 80.45, so very close really.)

Seriously though, meatcarcase, can't you find more fat to drop? Because let me tell you I don't need an atlas to find several handfuls, if you know what I mean.

Ha. Also, I am going to start eating greens and protein. I'm too desperate for them¹, and if you're careful you can do this and still stay in ketosis (aka mega weight-drop area, aka starvation). So says a friend of the family who has flirted with this diet several times. (I could draw sarcastic conclusions about its long-term efficacy in her case and her resulting qualification to give advice, but she successfully drops weight every time, and that's all I need to do. I don't do the yoyo thing too badly, not judging by holding steady for almost a year in this interval.)

Oh, and I finally have my prescription refilled as of this morning. Luckily my mother and I are on the same dosage of the same med, so there can be intercaninenecine pill-scrounging. The delay, as it turns out, is that they wanted to speak to me before refilling it, so I need to make an appt. Which means getting there and taking time off work, both of which cause me bearable anxiety.

I spent all weekend gaming round at my unbrother's house and I have surprisingly few regrets about that. Although I'm ready to make myself some art and code now. Speaking of Art with a capital A, aka Tet, I think his deadline on the art exchange is today, so I may or may not bother doing the quick sketch I'd planned. He's popular because he admins the server, so lots of ass-kissers will have given him pictures. ;)

More microformats today. I've finished converting a huge "useful contacts" table from bad HTML into better HTML plus lots of span class=vcards. My eyes are now crossing. And I've forgotten what I was actually supposed to be changing about it in the first place. Wahoo!

¹ At least, let's optimistically assume that the sustained intense urge to rip apart people/trees/Quorn roasts and gorge on their insides signifies a craving for protein and roughage. Let's have no more gentle games of rough-and-tumble with the cat only to pause and realise I'm chewing his scruff rather enthusiastically, or anything like th...
...not that I've ever done that, you realise. It was a random example, haha. Erm.
Plus, maybe I can finally stop dreaming about food. The whole "oh noes I broke my diet by accident" stress dream archetype was never cool or original, and it's looking pretttty hackneyed by now.

SPOILERS FOR: Christmas, Eragon/Eldest by Christopher Paolini, Resident Evil 4, The Sally Lockhart Mysteries by Philip Pullman.

1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters whose names begin with that letter and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.

Anke, possibly foolishly, gave me the letter S. However, because I'm not feeling contentious enough to follow either my obvious first impulse to mention Satan, or a fleeting idea of mentioning Susan Pevensie because frankly she has no character beyond an Enid Blyton caricature of The Worried One Who Tries To Be Grown Up, so we're safe on the atheist score.

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Up at 06:30 for Neopets giveaway, lulz. I got the spooky site theme for me and the brother-creatures. Seem to have got in before the massive site-laggage, too. *dances* Now I can go back to bed.

I think Piper has an injury to his white eye. There's lots of gunk underneath, which I keep cleaning away, even though there's no cut visible. There's also a little dirty patch on the edge of his white ear (same side), which I suspect is a small injury too. Piper is clearly a menace to society with his hard-drinking, roustabouting, bar-brawling ways.

Since I'm awake anyway, a poem. Amphibrachic tetrameter because I can.

Country Road Meeting

An Anglian roadway in whistling November.
No sign of the taxi; no signal, no money,
A cardie from Primark 'tween her and the weather,
Suspecting she'll come to regret the stilettos.
Some headlights: the taxi? She moves to the hedgerow
And hopes she'll be visible. Funny, no engine.

It comes round the corner; she shivers. What is it?
It looks like a calf but it's burly and shaggy
And looking at her with those luminous eyeballs!
Its claws make no clicking, no noise on the roadway;
No steam from its muzzle. It's not even breathing.
"If this is a pisstake," she mumbles, "it's working."

It passes her swiftly, the muscular creature,
So close she could touch it. You're kidding. She doesn't.
Intent on its business, it wholly ignores her.
A roar from behind makes her jump. A Fiesta
With spoiler and skirts and a strip light beneath it.
A hundred and fifty or more, never slowing,
It bombs down the roadway, so close it could touch her.

The dog—was it hit? Where's it gone? Shit, she's blinded.
She rubs at the afterglow, loses a contact.
The car's disappeared and, it seems, so's the creature.
No body. No impact. No blood. Must have dodged it.
Her sobs become mist as she turns and examines
The tracks of the tyres in the place she was walking.

A few minutes later, the cab driver finds her.

When Islam meets Bridget Jones

I draw your attention first to the caption with prominent disclaimer under the photo: "Would you read this book? (Picture posed by model)" My colleagues and I have never seen such a disclaimer on a BBC page before.

Full props to Mohammad from Sunderland in the comments. And Mark from London with his dental analogies.

DEEP MELODRAMATIC SIGH. Omg, the zippy sock creature offended me.

First 'creative' game? What about people who mod the heck out of Dungeon Keeper, Quake, Elder Scrolls et al? Kheh.

Will closet racism derail Obama?

That's the first encouraging news I've heard from America in a while; apparently 90% of registered voters seem to think the country is on the wrong track. I was open-mouthed at some of the filth the article quotes from people like Foxaganda News and Lamebaugh. WTF, America? How old are you all?

Whatever, art. (I'd eat that temple.)

Autumn from space!

Alternative interfaces. Apologies for patronising presenter yet AGAIN.

Police looking for new sniffydoggies.

Commercial sniffydoggies achieve worldwide success. Good doggies.

Kidnapped BABIES returned. Aww! Good babies!

16-year-old dog survives 200ft fall from cliff. Good dog.

Dog rescued following cliff fall. Good dog, good owners.

Dog receives suspended death sentence. Bad owner.

UKIP politician's greyhounds win prizes. Good dogs.

edit: GOOD DOG! (photo)

DragonForce concert was great. My feet hurt from all the bouncing up and down. Afterwards we were thirsty and found a shop that has not only lychee Rubicon (a range of exotic-fruit carbonated drinks, generally sold in Asian shops) (I'm British, so Asian = South Asian) but also cartons of lychee juice! It is my new favourite shop evar—and very close to my work.

So far I've been very lazy this weekend and am thoroughly enjoying the break from arts and other stuff.

After posting this I'll go to make smoothies (i.e. shove lots of marked-down fruit in a blender. YUM!) with the bros and play more Resident Evil 4.

I was complimented by so many people on Friday... lots of them liked my tie. I have eccentric rules, such as "if I wear the black shirt on a Friday I wear a tie with it" (my office's dress code is jeans and t-shirts, as a rule; I overdress because the novelty of fitting into reasonably-priced shirts is still a new one on me). Apparently the shiny light grey/silver tie is popular. My favourite is a shiny dark slightly-blueish-grey.

If it wasn't so very clichéd I'd go and paint myself as a metallic dark-grey-blue dragon* now for the lulz. Or a large shaggy grey dog. Or one turning into the other. Sexxxay!

Also complimented on my work, which was even better. I win at graphic design, proofreading and site-building and two people have asked why I'm not a CSD yet.

* Classic Western, four solid legs, canine teeth, four fingers and opposable thumbs, all claws but dews semi-retractable, hard scales, ridges and fins, no spikes, good solid tail rather than snake-whippy, no tail blade and good solid wings rather than tiny hangbutt membranes. Energising/inspirational breath gift, blue flame breath weapon. Probably shown hunting wild lychees, pwning cats and followed by cute animals.** Now you can all pretend I drew this already and save me the trouble. The dog is pretty much an Irish Wolfhound.

** edit: in dragon-geek-ese, since Vespy asks: DC2.Dw Gn L W T+ Phfwlt C"Dark metallic grey-blue" Sks B"Blue flame; breath gift: energise/inspire" A- Nu M—! O/ H+ $ F+f/v R—! J+++ I+ V—! Q- Tc++ E—!# but my description above's more accurate.

Dog choir auditions. YES.

Donegal pilgrimage/'retreat' thingy. Sounds harsh.

Dog swallows golf ball mid-flight. A golf ball is too small to make a safe doggy toy.

Pain experts to discuss treatment (not porn, sickos)

Exploring the virtual ant colony

Ancient tree helps birds survive by providing them with yummy wasps.

Terry Pratchett criticises drugs ruling edit: longer article

Speaking of Pratchett, recommendations for books to get boys reading. Altivo will be disappointed that they're all violent... well, Colour of Magic isn't too bad, since the main character spends his time, ahem, refusing to engage in violence.

Doll causes police alert

Carnival costumes go on display... more pics, plz!

Big Olympic piccies. This one's my favourite. There's also one of a fencer looking stupid, and other stuff.

'Bravest' students do not cheat.

I resent this. I'm a coward and I don't cheat. Unless I'm going to be threatened with violence if I don't cheat, I don't see what one has to do with the other. Behaving ethically is generally an unrisky form of 'heroism', not really deserving of being confused with physical bravery.

In pictures: Your lunchbreaks

Under half of all Scottish weddings in 2007 were religious. Yay!

Oh, while we're on the subject: Remove unfair benefits from married couples! Ban all religious venues from being given marriage permits! Votes for asexuals!!

The prison system WORKS, REALLY, for this guy. (No, really. It's obviously working very nicely indeed for him.)

Man in straw cottage installs electricity for the first time.

Ill English Bull Terrier abandoned in city street (the typist was obviously ill too; lots of typos in there at the mo). I'll give him a home! Send him down here!

Dying and euthanasia stuff. (The doctrine of double effect, incidentally, is bull. Yeah, I'm so good at this philosophy stuff. ;)

...

Almost as good as that model of children's bed called "Lolita".

Edinburgh Fringe show about Auschwitz sounds very unpleasant.

Musicals at the Fringe. Yay musicals! Yay Eurovision! Yay camp! ... *glances around* What?

'Kill signal crayfish on sight' appeal. They are considered as bad (in terms of being invasive species) as Japanese knotweed and grey squirrels.

Can't fight Darwin, people. If you don't like it, go reverse climate change. Not the crayfishes' fault they're better at exploiting your niche than you are.

Ancient Viking board game revived. Awesome.

Search and rescue dog saves missing motorcyclist... in Beddgelert.

(This is lightly ironic because Beddgelert is named in honour of humanity's unfairness to its canine partners.)

Canadians win piping championships in Scotland

...to be honest, I'm a bit sick of Superlambananas...

Well, that's an understatement. I was sick of them when they were Manchester cows, and before that when they were Brussels cows. Basically what I'm implying here for comedy value is that the lambs are ripped off from Cow Parade. And why not, indeed.

OMFD CLOUDED LEOPARD KITTENS

Anyone living in Kent, I hate you so much right now. ;)

This! This is either the weirdest and more expensive prank ever, or... or... something. Whatever it is, it's brilliant.

Meet the new Lara Croft. Why do you admire Lara? "She's confident, she's independent"...ly wealthy. Ahem. You've got to admire this girl's dedication, though, when you hear about all the research she's doing.

Ditto here, sort of... MEP helps to get 20 cows pregnant

I sort of wish I could do this. Not with farming, perhaps, because I have insurmountable issues with animals raised for food, but with a lot of industries. It'd be fun! I want to do work experience in a vet's surgery again. That was cool, because I'm fine with blood, but not so good at helping to move large anaesthatised dogs. I saw lots of spayings and one neutering. (Which took about 30 seconds, no lie; it was slice, whip-snip, whip-snip, stitch. So much easier than a spay. It could be that that's one of the reasons I'd probably have a male dog by choice. I'm not sure I'd like to send a young lady to have a stitch put through her cervix.)

Army horsie.

Happy (and very cute) birdie. Follow the related link if you like OWLS.

Man 'too slow' for new guide dog. Sounds unfair, yes, but remember that he has to be able to look after the dog.

Olympic pandas draw crowds. This is unfair. They've been flown in to be gawped at by a bunch of sports fans.

More postmen attacked by dogs. I... I'm torner than a postman's trouser leg on this issue. On the one hand, bad dogs shouldn't bite people. On the other hand, postmen are asking for it by coming onto people's turf and rattling their letterboxes, grrrr!

Just kidding, you realise. Posties are all right.

This, ugh. [Nazi warning] I can just about charitably think of it as a joke in bad taste, but...

Charlieboy sticks his oar in on GM again. He just doesn't understand why we all can't just dine on organic salmon.

Roman temple found under church

Meanwhile, new celebrity graffiti found on pub wall.

Asylum seekers on hunger strike. Who'd want to be locked up and sent back to Iraq?

[Cruelty to animals RAGE warning] Nasty fate befalls kidnapped rabbit

Grandmother warns off armed thief. If you're ever faced with an armed robber, don't attempt to emulate this, please.

Beach lifeguards help shark count

Freemasons charged with hogging too much power!

Clumsy and poorly co-ordinated children could be at higher risk of obesity in later life, a study says.

...screw you. But the link with sport is obvious and plausible. I loathed PE with a vengeance simply because it was so humiliating to be so bad at it.

Traditional UK names 'dying out'. I apologise to my proud country for not choosing Gertrude or Herbert or Norah or Walter. (I like the name Walter. I may name something Walter. And Irene, although I prefer the French pronunciation Irène. (ih-wrenn))

Jack and Thomas are still going strong, and although Olive is dying out, there are plenty of Olivias. Also a lot of Graces and Rubies. *facepaw* chavs...

Shops get fruit and veg sale help

If you got through all that, or skimmed it, here's a quiz about wacky inventions. Wonderful stuff.

Girls at a chess tournament. (vid from my work that I quite like)

Mmm, long-haired socialskillsless male geeks...

Wholly nifty, Batman! I've found what I consider to be one of the finest pieces of video game composition, certainly from the 16-bit days, hanging around online free to download.

Visit this page, the Aladdin Mega Drive (Genesis) soundtrack, and check out the track called Arab Rock 1.

With music that good, I can forgive the level itself for being flipping impossible. The whole soundtrack is pretty good, as you'd expect from a game that was licensed to use the music from the film. It had nice instrumental mixes of the songs, occasionally used in surprising places, and the original-for-the-game compositions stand up well on their own: try Camel Jazz, or Rug Ride for more excitement. I like Gloomy Tune because I'm a sucker for cave levels.

In other retro-gaming news, the Ecco the Dolphin Genesis soundtracks (I'm not familiar with the music from the other platforms) are solid. They can be found here. Very atmospheric watery music with a few pulse-racing tracks: for example, Tube of Medusa from Ecco 2 (Genesis) and Open Ocean from Ecco 1 (Genesis). Welcome To The Machine from Ecco 1 (Genesis) is beautiful and just a little disturbing, something that's played up nicely in this twisted remix by Trace Kyshad. Fish City from Ecco 2 (Genesis) is nice and kind of relaxing, at least if you don't know what's going on at this point in the game.

Cut for large-ish graphics. Snog, I am instructed to beg you not to let Sebastian see these.

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(not news) This is dreadful and you should beware before clicking it because it's fluffy and you might die.

France wants to get into space.

Dude comes back from space.

Digging up Roman bling.

Overrun by stoats and weasels!!!

Turtles released on beach (vid)

Violent games 'sold to children'

Clive Sinclair on flying cars, with embedded audio.

In "duh, just realised, have you?" news of the day, the US turns its back on big cars (vid) and the West is running out of gas (vid).

Right. Sing along, everyone! I declare this the new theme song of the end of the world.

Leisure manager peeked at woman. Yaknow, why does it make it worse that it was "for sexual gratification"? Damn right I find it creepier, but should the law?

(not news) Kitten vs pillow results in PWNAGE. (vid)

No to gays on mayo adverts!!1! Think of the sandwiches children!!!!!1111!!11122″1

My commentary is behind the cut.

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That day of days is here!

What am I on about? Why, Baby, of course.

Sci-fi workshop at my old uni! And damn, if I'd heard before now I would absolutely have gone.

Time for peace in the whaling world?

Meteorite could hold solar clues (contains video with patronising presenters and fantastic interviewee)

In Pictures: Spore at last! Eeee!

Are Britons miserable? We asked some moaning minnies website readers.

Traditional costumes of any sort are instant humour. These are Welsh outfits.

Birds damaged in oil spills get new pool

Idiot runs around after penguins.

How Ubisoft makes computer games (video). I have no idea why it shows the presenter and interviewee yapping instead of what's going on on the mocap person's screen. Perhaps he was surfing Wikipedia.

New research on octopus memory. If you remember nothing else, remember to swim slowly past eight arms that octopuses are wonderful.

Advert featuring a school uniform striptease ruled inappropriate. Good.

Dementia burden 'could break NHS'

Sing with me. Where can you get poisoned by insec-ti-cide?

Nurses to be rated on compassion. Oh yes, just what we need. More retarded targets. Goody gumdrops.

Sun-free garden for girl with xeroderma pigmentosum.

More on xeroderma pigmentosum. And more.

The Caribbean monk seal is extinct. WELL DONE, EVERYBODY!

Egyptian pharaoh's 'missing' pyramid found. Meanwhile, ancient typo discovered in Discovery's headline. (Or possibly that was AP's doing.)

How not to have an Olympic mascot nightmare: have a little dignity and don't make it hideous.

(I don't really see why every darn thing needs a brand/snappy name/mascot, but my antagonism towards advertising and marketing practices is well documented.)

Pets abandoned because owners' irresponsibility with their money extends to their dependents, to whom they have a legal duty of care but apparently nobody gives a stuff about that. Horrible people.

Alpacas killed in dog attack.

More mental maths in primary schools (video)

50th anniversary of first computer to play music. (audio) Sorry about the choice of tracks. *wince*

Cardboard bike unveiled (video). Again, apologies for horrible patronising presenter and vox pops.

Bee species outnumber mammals and birds combined. Boggling. Yay!

OK, let's see if I remember all of this!

I'm not cold any more. I'm too hot, but so is the weather, so I think that's cured. Actually, the tremor and everything has been behaving more or less; only one noticeable bad case of shakes and one of bad speech in the last week or so.

My unbrother's coming home from Ireland. When he does, I'm making him and my brother-by-blood-relation book a long weekend off and taking them to the zoo and a theme park. Of course, one of THEM will have to drive, but I'll be the organiser and possibly stump up a lot of the cash, so I get to call it my treat.

Guess which zoo? What if I tell you Chester Zoo has red pandas? Yeah. :D

Today on the tram I worked out a detail for Sankmarray (my current solo writing thing) that had been bothering me. It was a good figuring-out, in that my solution is weird and makes perfect sense to me and follows my unofficial inverted Occam's Razor variant: "when stuff's confusing you, throw in another alien and all will become clear".

Also, the little vignette I realised I would have to stick in between Sankmarray episodes 1 and 2 to make things make sense has sort of, um, become episode 2, bumping episode 2 back to episode 3. Which is... fine, actually. I don't want to get carried away with enthusiasm on this, but I'm finding I've got quite a lot to play with on this platform, and even starting to wonder if this will take me to book length. It'll be fun finding out. At some point I may bite the bullet and accept that I'm gonna be typecast as a wacky author... muh.

I passed 7.5mill on Neopets by sellsellselling DROO at 60.

Yesterday a kitten stretched out extremely lengthily on my bed (not shown; that's Slen's room in the pic), doing his damnedest to be as tall as me while helping me to read Matter, which I've almost finished. It's good, it's good, it's Iain M Banks's Culture and it's a long book.

My weight's on a downswing, which was occasioned by my studiously forgetting to eat for 55 hours and I paid the price for that by feeling extremely ill on the third morning but still, might as well enjoy the rewards of my stupidity.

I thought there was something else, actually... oh well. Update if I remember.

nclüdr is beautifully crafted. Of particular note is the CAPTCHA and its accessibility options. Truly an exemplar for the ages.

Their privacy policy looks moderately less scary than what I hear about Facebook, too.

Another random cool thing.

Black squirrel boom time

Free game hopes to save gorillas

Iran calls for ban on Barbie doll

Tiger and zebra among NI 'pets'

Get off your bum, you lazy noisemakers. This problem happened to me a few times when I used to do Sunday morning 6am shifts... usually I was watching out so they didn't get a chance to honk.

This looks awesome. And if it's Tony Head speaking, it'll sound awesome. If I could steal his speaking voice and Brendan Brown's singing voice, I would be a happy, happy individual. And sound very weird.

Flies get 'mind-control sex swap'

Hunger makes bats 'act strangely'

Tourism crash threatens big cats

Crew hopes to film ghost (Flash vid)

But first. *gripes*

This morning:
Spam in inbox: 69 (dudes)
Spam in spam filter: 3 (one of these being a mislabelled real email)

FAIL, MAILFOUNDRY. FAIL.

I really don't want to switch to Gmail, because I likes me some EU data protection laws... but the rubbishness of SquirrelMail as a primary email application, coupled with MailFoundry's non-filtering, is pushing me in that direction.

Killer dogs shot dead by marksmen—ON FATAL RAMPAGE! (sry, no video)

Should Microsoft buy Yahoo? (embedded Flash video)

I recommend you just kind of sit slack-jawed at the epic geekiness. Oh hi, I have a robot. And a 360. (Look at the state of his living room! \m/) And now we'll go off on an argument about Microsoft being evil.

So guys, is the secret geek plot to parody ourselves already underway? 'Cause I didn't get the Twitter.

Eeeeeheeheehee. Want.

Colossal squid comes out of ice—BURNING FOR REVENGE!

Allo Allo dubbed into German... 0,o

US prisoner sues over weight loss—this is hilarious and deeply disturbing. In short, the sort of thing I wish I could make up.

Humphrey Lyttelton has died. :(

London is versus the wider UK (vid, as above)

Kew to display botanical art (vid)

Awesome mandrake in there.

Underwater treadmill tested by doggies, boring journalist. (vid) (relevant sequence ends at 2:00)

Galaxies go wild—FOR YOUR PLEASURE. (vid)

Rapid rise in dumped pets. But, like, for really really good excuses?

The prizes are out for the Return of Sloth plot on Neopets, and the top prize is a robot paint brush. As I predicted—and awesome it is too! I can afford one. I've been itching for a Robot Kyrii for ages... although the Robot Gelert is also a thing of stainless awesomium. I am very tempted. Also, the Daily Dare month finished yesterday. We managed to finish it on all of our accounts, thanks largely to two late evenings at the very last minute by Slen. Thank the gods we can stop slashdotting that site between us now and get on with other things.

I wrote the lyrics for a song (or a large chunk of one) this evening. It is about a city-nymph. This counts towards my weekly poem target because I say so, and it'll help Slen, who needs both musicians and material for a music competition he plans to enter. The first prize is the chance to open the V Festival... they don't have a hope, but hell, it's something for the CV whatever happens.

Siblings are awesome. Oh, and I have verrrry tentative ideas stirring for Mews II. Don't breathe—you'll scare them off.

Saw the GP today, nagged him about a few things. Afterwards I was with my mother while she ran a few errands. We went into a pet superstore and, fellows, I think I must be getting hormonal in my old age because I came very close to breaking down and crying. Just from walking into the place. There was hardly any scent to the air that I could detect, but it was obviously enough for that subconscious part of me. I swear my chin dimpled and my eyes overcast. I went and browsed some of their books, which included a couple about golden retrievers and didn't help much.

It's a big shop with a miniature vet's surgery attached, and they allow pets in the store part too. I went over to the waiting area for the vet, where there was the most incredible long-haired dachshund PUPPY, black and brown and ears and oh my DOG you should have SEEN it and and and it came over and said hello and demanded strokies and its fur was so soft and and PUPPY. Walking away from that I nearly started crying again, and got damned close when I got back in the car.

She bought some cat food...