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January, 2007

  1. Tracking

    January 30, 2007 by dafyd

    I’ve just upgraded my version of Mint, which is a pretty funky web stats suite by Shaun Inman, to version 2. Basically, what Mint does is let me see details of who visits my site, when, where, how and why.

    So, for example, “hello” to the 300-odd people who have arrived here via Durham’s proxy servers, Pepys, Hamster and Squirrel (someone must have had fun naming those). And “hello” to the single person from Collingwood who managed to get here without using those proxies (presumably more by accident than design).

    Mint screenshot showing Durham proxies

    Or I could tell you that someone has just arrived at my site by searching Google for “how far is row z at edinburgh playhouse from the stage?” (woo, 7th result!). I don’t honestly know, but I’d guess (and it is only a guess) that it’s 25 rows back.

    And for the 179 people who have downloaded my English translation of Bahnwärter Thiel… good luck!

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  2. University Challenge, Part Deux

    January 29, 2007 by dafyd

    Tonight, 8pm, BBC2.

    In case you didn’t already know…

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  3. Exchange

    January 22, 2007 by dafyd

    Flashback to a month ago…

    When I was packing, ready to leave Alexandria, I knew I had too much luggage. It always happens. The fact that I couldn’t actually lift one of the bags suggested that it was far too heavy. But anyhoo… these Egyptians are lax about the rules, I’m sure they’ll let me get away with it.

    I got to the airport (such as it is), and it turns out the baggage allowance I had was one bag, weighing 23kg. I had two bags, one of which weighed 32kg. Oh well… I have to get it home somehow. Out comes the credit card.

    It took them a while to sort out the payment (the computer wasn’t working, or something), but by the time I’d got onto the plane I assumed everything was sorted and I was £100 lighter.

    This morning, five weeks later, I discovered on my credit card statement that British Airways hadn’t actually charged my card until last week, which meant that because the exchange rate had changed a fair bit (there were 10 Egyptian pounds to the sterling when I left, now there are 11), I’d been charged about £10 less than I was expecting. Which was nice.

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  4. Tom Hanks – 007?

    January 17, 2007 by dafyd

    This is genius…

    You need the free Macromedia Flash Player to watch this video. Download it here.

    If you’re reading this in a feedreader, you’ll have to click through to the actual post. Make sure you do, though – it’s worth it!

    Better than Timothy Dalton, at any rate.

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  5. Pigeons

    January 17, 2007 by dafyd

    I was standing in the bus station in Nottingham this afternoon, waiting for a bus home, when I noticed that the three pigeons on the ground in front of me were actually really fascinating.

    They were eating, as pigeons tend to do.

    The biggest, who for the purposes of this we shall call Moe, had found a bit of a hamburger bun, about an inch square, which was much too big for him to eat in one go. So he was pecking at it, grabbing hold of it and throwing it around with his beak to break bits off. Of course, every time he got hold of it and shook it about, it flew off over his head and hit him on the back. This surprise him and he waddled off in disgust.

    So in comes Curly, slightly smaller than Moe, who tried to eat the bread by tapping it with his beak, breaking bits off that way. He ended up pushing the bun around in circles, until eventually he pushed it into the littlest friend, Larry.

    Larry did as Moe did, throwing the bread around, but he knew exactly where it was going each time. I think he probably managed to eat the most.

    The strange thing is that they seemed to be taking turns eating the bread, about 30 seconds each, before passing it on to the next one. There was no squabbling, just polite snacking. They weren’t at all bothered by the buses passing by them, hopping onto the curb to get out of the way of those that came too close, until my bus, the one that would stop on top of them, appeared round the corner, at which point they flew off, well before the bus got anywhere near them…

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  6. Monkey’s Return

    January 15, 2007 by dafyd

    Rather excitingly, Monkey seems to be making a return to our television screens. You may remember him disappearing rather suddenly following the demise of ITV Digital…

    You need the free Macromedia Flash Player to watch this video. Download it here.

    If you’re reading this in a feedreader, you’ll have to click through to the actual post. Make sure you do, though – it’s worth it!

    I have about six half-written blog posts sitting around, waiting to be finished and published…

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  7. Somewhere Here

    January 7, 2007 by dafyd

    Let no one say that Royal Mail doesn’t go the extra mile…

    According to the Sun, “Steel worker Paul Bates, 48, had forgotten the name of the town workmate Peter O’Leary moved to from Neath, South Wales, three years ago. But he recalled Peter had pointed it out on a map. So he put a dot on a sketch of the South West Peninsula, wrote “somewhere here” and hoped for the best.”

    Envelope addressed to Somewhere Here

    Sayeth the Sun, “Amazingly the card arrived at Peter’s home in Bude, North Cornwall, nine days later – after his postie recognised the name in a local sorting office.”

    [The Sun, via CP]

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  8. More Amazon Recommends fun

    January 7, 2007 by dafyd

    Now, I’ve been buying things from Amazon pretty regularly for five years now (the first thing I bought from them, if I remember correctly, was a copy of Windows XP back in early 2002). So how is it, with a fairly comprehensive collection of my purchasing habits, that they can still get recommendations for me so spectacularly wrong?

    Let’s look at a “We recommend” email they sent me this morning…

    Amazon Recommends

    French, French, French, French… and Razorlight. Riiiight. The Mot à Mot book? I bought it from Amazon. They want me to buy another copy of something I already own. Grr.

    And Razorlight? Apparently, they recommend it because “you purchased or rated: Kensington PocketSaver – Security cable lock – black.” Right, thanks for that.

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  9. Scary Mary

    January 6, 2007 by dafyd

    It’s been around for a couple of months now, I know, but I’ve not…

    You need the free Macromedia Flash Player to watch this video. Download it here.

    If you’re reading this in a feedreader, you’ll have to click through to the actual post. Make sure you do, though – it’s worth it!

    It’s the line “Someone’s up your chimney / And it isn’t Santa Claus” that scares me, in the stage musical at least…!

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  10. Over-enthusiastic?

    January 5, 2007 by dafyd

    Umm… we don’t have any idea when it’s going to be published, and we don’t know it’s price, but the seventh and final Harry Potter novel already holds the top two spots on Amazon’s bestselling books chart…

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at Amazon.co.uk

    I’m still adamant the book will be released on July 7 this year – 7/7/7 – although that does come dangerously close to film 5, which is out the next week…

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