Robert Hampton

Well, what a crazy day today was. Went to London for work-related stuff, and spent just two hours there before getting on the train back to Liverpool. Are you allowed to do that? Even if it is strictly work-related, aren’t you supposed to at least buy a postcard, or get a photo taken with Big Ben in the background?

The internet is awash with “Which … are you?” personality tests. It seems you can’t surf onto anyone’s blog without happening across a link to Which Red Dwarf Character are You? or the like.

Not to be outdone, I’ve come up with one of my own. Using all my brain cells and my cleverness-muscle, I’ve devised a stunningly accurate test which will astound you with the home truths it reveals. So click through and take the Which “Which … are you?” quiz are you? quiz.

Oh dear. I flicked to the BBCi backstage view towards the end of the voting and saw the Jemini team looking very depressed.

Still, there’s always Austria:-

“The difference between animals such as apes and primates

Is no bigger than between noodles and pasta”

We should have entered a song like that.

"Dude, you look so cool! You’re all brainy and mushy and stuff! Do me a favor and help me go scare some old people, ok?"

— PixelPals

Now I’m off to watch the Eurovision Song Contest

Vanilla Coke is nice to drink.

Gemini is a very nice e-mail client.

One of my old primary school teachers hated the word “nice”. Any pupil unfortunate enough to use that word in an English essay would be dragged up in front of the class and ritually humiliated until he came up with at least three appropriate synonyms that he should have used instead.

What an awful cow she was.

Sorry, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say.

Tell me
Why’d you have to go and make me so constipated?
‘Cause right now I’d do anything to just get my bowels evacuated
In the bathroom… I sit and I wait and I strain
And I sweat and I clench and I feel the pain
Oh, should I take laxatives or have my colon irrigated?
No no no

Weird Al is just so completely brilliant.

I haven’t done any programming for a while, and I’d forgotten how much fun it can be. Tonight I started playing around with some of the new features in RISC OS 4.36 and got completely engrossed looking up APIs, debugging code and trying to remember which parameter goes where in the OS_ReadModeVariable SWI.

Next thing I knew, I’d written a screensaver and three and a half hours had passed.

I had my Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD on in the background too.

Yep, I’m a complete geek.

Good Have I Got News for You tonight — I always like it when Ian Hislop demolishes one of the other panelist’s deeply held convictions.

I really must start buying Private Eye.

Seb’s rejigged his web site. Yes, I know, he does that every week. This time, though, it really is different. Go and have a look, it’s ever so good.

I’ve also done some tweaking to my blog, fiddling with Movable Type templates and such. If anything’s broken, let me know, m’kay?

Will the Minister explain how it is that an inedible tinned food that lasted for ever and was supplied to those on active service can become an unsolicited e-mail?

— The House of Lords debates spam

Cheers to whoever posted this at Slashdot.

North West Tonight invited viewers to e-mail their comments on the subject of streaking.

First e-mail in was from a Mrs Beaver.

Someone, somewhere, is taking the piss.

From The Register comes this story:

Recent research by Pew put the number of blog readers as opposed to writers, as “statistically insignificant”

Wow, really? I’d never have guessed that, what with the endless stream of “Comments (0)” I’ve got on this site.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today I tried to introduce my little sister (aged 15) to Homestar Runner.

Her reaction on seeing the opening animation (“Everybody! Everybody!”) was, “this is a bit like Junior Senior”.

Gah.

Girls.

I’m glad I don’t have to deal with them on a regular basis.

About six months too late, I’ve added a Liverpool 2008 icon to the site (you’ll see it at the bottom of every page).

I urge everyone in Liverpool to get behind the Capital of Culture bid. It’s not just blind advocacy talking when I say Liverpool deserves it the most.

American politics isn’t normally something that interests me, but this caught my eye, largely because it’s someone having fun with domain names.

Look at this site and this site. Now tell me — which is the real Joseph Liebermann for President website?

It’s actually obvious at a second glance, but it’s already caught out at least one web site (check out the links to the side of the article).