Anybody who is not already aware of the power of information review -read about it here

The government has finally got with the times and has set up a competition to find the most useful mash-ups of the information it stores. I know the guy who kicked this off, and he is a massive open source freak but more to the point, this is the biggest opportunity we've ever had to influence the way the government uses information.

There are no personal data available, but they are offering gigabytes of info to play with. So get on down to showusabetterway and get involved.

Please, please do repost this if you have friends that I don't who might want to get involved. They've got £20,000 to play with and I for one would like to see it spent on something useful.

It's been a while, stuff has happened, etc etc.
I've been living on facebook mostly, and haven't been paying proper attention to y'all.
Just a quick update:
My dad's gon into remission, Yay! No more chemo and unamusing side effects for he, and a good few years on the prognosis now.
stsqaud (for it is he) has been offered a shiny job in Cambridge, so I will have lived in Mancs for less than three months before we move again. All of this is pretty much par for the course, except that we are both apparently completely gone on each other and he's now getting proposal advice from unhelpful friends.
My job is fun and may become permanent.
Many lovely friends have been putting me up in London.
I have been accused of instilling unhelpful aphoria in people I speak with at the office.

This one from a lovely poem we found today.

I miss you
Like a bad archer.

So the rules are -
"I verb object
Like single object comparison" The verb needs to have a deliberate double meaning, with the second meaning (for the comparison) as the less obvious one)

Harder than it looks. My best so far is

I start standing
Like Lewis Hamilton (an F1 racing driver)

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Chemical Beats, Chemical Brothers

I gave my notice to my landlady today. I'm moving to Manchester on the first weekend of October! As of then, look for me at my new Stretford address!

Okay people. Hypothetically, just hypothetically mind, what would you think if I were to agree to move in with stsquad until his house is ready to sell?

Actually, boring it wasn't, though repetitive it was.
This reporter and her trusty movie partner stsquad Went to see The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday. Cinema was packed, and it is possible that some of the after effects stemmed from the fact that we had to sit quite near to the screen to sit together.

Conversation after went something like this:
"how was it for you?"
"I have a headache, please don't ask me questions"
"Oh good, I thought it was just me"

Essentially, the plot was just as acceptable as the other two, with the bonus of practically no new characters. The filming, however, was LAZY.
Arial shot of city, closeups on landmarks. Name of city (and country, for Americans). Shaky-cam thorough the streets at ground level, Matt Damon's face spliced in with shaky, zoomy shots of the landscape (that's the bit that made us poorly). Running, a quick detente, and then he kills/chooses not to kill someone and we repeat the whole thing. I counted at least six cities. Sigh.

Tags: moviefilms
Current Mood: geeky

For the last few weeks, my family have been enjoying something of a reunion, as not one but both of my siblings returned to the UK at the same time. This hasn't happened for a good eight years at least.

My brother was replete with new wife and two sons (3 and 1 year old), who were left with my enthusiastic mother and sister while they went on a European honeymoon. I have to say team Moth and Aunty looked considerably more dishevelled by the end of the two weeks, but still very happy. I helped out when I could, but owing to the fact that i'm a soft touch, I mostly stayed away for my health, as the boys currently identify me with "aeroplane", "fall down", "monster chase" and other games which are high energy and wreck the back and knees of any sensible adult.

They all came down to London for a goodbye picnic this weekend, and for once the weather held out. It's good to see almost all of your family in one place, and for once we had some quiet time. Unfortunately, not much in the way of conversation can be had when there are two toddlers demanding attention, but it won't happen again for a long time, so we made the most.

I also spent some lovely time with kangeiko and athena25 who are great, and saw the new Harry Plotter, so noone can say I'm not "down" with the kids (for "kids", read "MPs")

Realise my dignity chip has finally short circuited altogether - I really miss stsquad

Tags: alex, family
Current Location: The grindstone
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Helicopters

This one for athena25, and ( because airports are boring )

Canada is fun so far!
Details can be found on stsquad's page, accesible through my friends page. kethera's wedding was amazing. I passed on love and good wishes from all who wanted to be there but couldn't make it, and there was much waterworks on all sides. Her husband is just perfect, and has my official stamp of approval (FACT), as do family from both sides and the many new friends we made. Apparently I have forever endeared myself to the best man for threatening to cut his balls off if he touched a can of cider (part of Jordan's wedding present) within the first three sentences of our meeting (malinari86 and others may recall this to be typical friendly banter on my part).

Driving on the right is both fun and profitable, cruise control on the automatic beast of a hire car ensures that I can consistently drive at 10kph over the limit. The parks and scenery in general really are on another level of beauty from what I've experienced before. However, tales of -40 centigrade have left me HORRIBLY unprepared for the sticky humidity. It's around 90-100% in the areas we've visited so far, and 25-30 celsius. All of the lakes and waterlands, combined with the above mentioned weather make perfect breeding ground for man's ultimate enemy. Seriously, the only hope for us is to nuke the Algonquin provincial park from orbit. Now! Do not delay!

As a little aside, in Huntsville last night, stsquad displayed a rare moment of unadulterated romanticism and sillyness, when we stopped off on our walk out of town in a thunderstorm at 10pm to buy ice cream, which we ate whilst holding hands.

Also, since i'm online and geeking out, Audacity (audio editor) is BRILLIANT! Not only is it open source and free, but it works across Windows, Mac and Linux etc, writing not only MP3 and Wav but also Ogg Vorbis, so it should satisfy stsquad's restrictions on software I can put on my computer. A minidisc, 3.5mm jack and a microphone give just HOURS of fun. Can't wait to get good at modulation!

Current Music: Morphine - Like Swimming