Bit quite here the noo. Any particular reason?

Right, probably safe to come back in, then, and make again my suggestion for a new game that was lost the other day. Is anyone on for a round of Collective Consciousness Hangman, in which one person sets a conventional hangman problem, but only other players are allowed to reveal the letters or add lines to the scaffold.

Other players take guesses in turn as to which letters are in the word. The players who arbitrate over what letters are in the word are not allowed to confer. The shape of the word can only emerge through tacit mutual consent - via, in other words, the collective consciousness. Ask Kevan to explain more about this.

[rab] Nice place you have here. I'm sad I haven't really had time to visit before, but I'm sure I shall be back.

• Spine not a single colour - resolved by choosing the 'dominant' colour.
• Shiny colours/trims - like gold and silver. Basically ignored, unless the entire spine was so made at which point I think I assumed the nearest matt alternative (like yellow for gold, or gray for silver).
• Colours not existing - like brown. See above. Pretend it's dark red.

As for brown not existing - do you mean that just for light or for pigment? Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer also not exist?

[flerdle] I suppose. I still think there is a difference between subtractive colours (ie pigment) and additive colours (ie light) in this regard, though I would also readily concede that brown is almost as much an absence of any other describable colour as black - which is perhaps why you don't see bluish browns, because brown is essentially black with less blue in it.

Consider - when you mix paint to make brown, you start with yellow then add a bit of red and a small amount of blue. Another option is to just mix red and green, but I've also made brown by starting with red and adding black. There has to be some blue in there to take the colour away from being orange, but not enough to make the blue distinct: the blue in brown is like salt in vegetables.

I should perhaps clarify that I am not actually all that attached to the colour brown, and only own one pair of brown shoes.

Interestingly enough, in my first year of uni I was accidently on two electral rolls, as my hall of residence automatically put everyone on. It was a general election so it is illeagal to vote twice (I was lead to believe, i'm not an expert). I phoned up the relevant person at the city council to tell her that I wasn't allowed to vote. Her advice to me was just not to turn up, which i protested about as I didn't want to be part of the apethetic 70% of the population who don't vote. My local council now at home has had the sense to only grant me votes for local elections as you are allowed to vote in two places at once for local matters, but it took them 5 years to realise this.

• By not voting, you are leaving it up to me to choose your government. You might be OK with that, we might have similar views. How about we allow the electors in Burnley to choose your government? Still OK with that?
• You are. like it or not, a member of society. Membership of society comes with a few responsibilities, including contributing to the common good, and participating in governing that society? Don't feel like participating? Fine, give up your vote, stop paying your taxes, but don't expect to be able to use any of the things your taxes pay for. Like water.
• Related to the first point, but: the fewer people who vote, the less representative the government is. Political parties know well that they need only target a few thousand electors in a handful of streets to change the outcome of an election. The rest of us, because so many people 'can't see the point' are a self-selecting sample, something which no research company would accept - you think the make up of the current parliament reflects the political opinion of the whole country? Want to do something about it?
• It does make a difference. Or, it would, if everyone voted. It's ludicrous to complain that 'my vote doesn't count' - in a properly representative vote, every vote 'counts' Think we don't have a properly representative vote? Well, there's one way of going about changing that - you could try voting for it
• (to address rab's point) Local councils have a surprisingly large amount of influence on your daily life - particularly if you're a council tax payer, or you're involved in education. Or like having streetlights. Or have an opinion on enormous building developments in inappropriate places. Or are fond of local amenities, like having your rubbish taken away every week. In fact, the fact that you cannot answer your own questions suggests to me that your local candidates have failed to make the effort to inform you, an increasingly common situation these days. For myself, being recently new to the area, I read all the election addresses (OK, both of them) and made my mind up based on what they promised. National politics and my own political leanings didn't really enter into it - especially since I only had two candidates to choose from
• One final rant. Rather than having a 'Not voting for anyone, you're all bloody useless' option, which is, to be frank, a bit of a cop out, why not get involved? See if you can't actually engage the candidates in some political debate? Perhaps even stand yourself? The only reason that politics is so dull is because we - the people who it is for - allow it to be.

Anyway, hacked again last night. *sigh*. This time it wasn't serious, and didn't affect MC at all. But it's making me wonder if I shouldn't find a host with tighter security.

In related news, I was told that a top that I would usually consider too small for me makes me look slimmer. By that argument, do trousers that are too long for me make me look taller?

That's better.

[MF] Is that a new Boardo variant you're playing there?

Time for dinner - tempted by pizza and DVD, really.

Yours sincerely, The Editor.

That's the way I made some of my AI papers more relevant to me, anyway. At the time it was examples from roleplaying, but the point is the same.

Meanwhile, I think you should be asking Herr Wagner about the whereabouts of the ring.

The secret of well-scansioned verse is this:
To hear each line like music in the ear
And yet to also hear it as 'twere prose.
The metre's like a shoe of certain form:
It yields not to a wrongly shapèd foot
But presses it into its tum-ti-tums.
The foot that fits the metre well, is thus
Enhanced by rhythm's clockwork-like progression.
But if the foot bears no resemblance to
The stressed and unstressed points along the line
Then like to bunioned club it will appear
When forced into a shoe however pretty.
The metre is the bezel, sense the stone
That fitted well together make a jewel
The versifier's craft combining them
Into a whole that's greater than its parts.

[BB⁴] Yes I forgot about the 'editorial slant'. It's worth watching a few of the live bits then the highlight show to find out hgow the editorialising works. The Sunday night show is particularly good for this, as they will always show an edited version of Saturday night's live task. Plus you get the pop-pscychology from Manchester Uni's most famous member of staff (and thus, I s'pose, strictly speaking one of my colleagues) which is C4's risible attempt to make the show 'respectable' rather than just admit it's just pandering to the homo sapiens' instinctive desire to peer over the garden fence (or, in times of yore, drill a hole into the next cave).

Having said that there was a piece on the radio the other day about these shows, and there was a remark which struck me - the reporter suggested that these programmes are social experiments masquerading as mass entertainment, whereas the thing that for me distinguishes British efforts in this arena is that they are exactly the opposite: there is always some affectation of worthiness, such as the Big Brother psychologist.

Of course, later tha same day I heard the chairman of the FCC ask rhetorically (and apparently without irony) if there was any other broadcast system in the world that the listener would choose to replace the US one with.

If they are browser popups, then there is always ad-aware to stop spawning advertising windows and spyware. Simply inhibiting all popups can be inconvenient.

[Bob,gil] I switched off all Java and JavaScript on my browser ages ago and it's never inconvenienced me even slightly.

No, sir. I wouldn't do that, sir.

In the meantime, it all seems a lot speedier than I'd expected, so hurrah. Glad to help, and it saves me writing a server of my own.

[All] You might be touched to learn that the Manchester Evening News is running a special David Beckham Memorial Issue.

I ask because I'm a) drunk, and b) not aware of any glitches. Tell me, I'm your friendly neighbourhood BOFH.

The best thing as far as I'm concerned is that the sysadmin is someone who understands what this space is for. That's priceless. (But for everything else there's MasterCard).

I couldn't help myself, it was Franics my 12 year old son's fault, as I was passing his bedroom he called out "Aunt Petunia's had a howler!", so this evening instead of doing the ironing I've been engrossed in HP and the Order of the Phoenix, page 100 so many suprises I'm gripped already (by a childrens book?).

However - and this may well be an entirely different issue - I am firmly of the belief that a University is not a training camp: if companies want their intake to have specific skills then they should stump up the cash and train them themselves rather than let the burden fall on the taxpayer. Furthermore, a University education should be largely academic: that's rather the point. This, however, has the consequence that it's not suitable for a majority of the populace and, crucially, I feel there is no shame in such institutions being 'elitist' in the sense that they select only people for whom such an education is beneficial. The main problem faced in the UK today though, as far as I can see, is that institutions with a more vocational approach to higher education have been crowbarred into an existing structure designed to do something different, and anything that isn't a 'degree' is considered a second-class qualification. Not easy to see how one can change the general public's attitude to non-degree qualifications. Anyway, that's roughly what I wanted to say though I'm not sure it makes sense.

This seems particularly bizarre, though, when you realise that even having a degree is irrelevant if you have more than about three years of industrial experience. That hasn't stopped hiring decisions made by my boss from being blocked because the higher management felt that the degree was from a school which "wasn't good enough". Ludicrous.

[Thos] Fancy an apple? Or a tangerine (and you could carelessly throw the skin away with that too!)?

My apologies. One of my mates has been foisting it upon me at every opportunity for days, and I can't help enjoying it, and nor could I keep it to myself any longer.

A woman wakes up with a terrible hangover and finds herself sharing her bed with an elephant. "God I must have been tight last night!" she exclaims. "Yes," says the elephant, "at least the first couple of times."

Luckily I can't be bothered to type out the hamster joke.

...he didn't hear the steamroller.

I said to the newsagent, "I'd like to read a magazine on the supernatural, please."
Newsagent: Fortean Times?
Me: No, just once.

[Lib] That one just sticks in my mind.

A man goes into a pet shop and buys a hamster -- but by the time he gets home, it's dead. Outraged, he returns to the shop.

"You're quite right," says the shopkeeper, "that's completely unacceptable. I'll be happy to give you a new one but we're out of stock until Monday. Come back then." The man looks so thoroughly downhearted that the shopkeeper decides to do him a favour. "Look, I know it sounds strange but here's a trick to cheer yourself up. Take your late hamster home, put him in the blender, then take the resulting puree and spread it on your garden."

"Do what?" says the horrified customer.

"Puree the hamster, spread it on your garden. Honestly. Next morning you won't believe your eyes: the whole garden will be a carpet of flowers as far as the eye can see, so beautiful that you'll feel much better."

The man is doubtful, but he goes home and does what the shopkeeper said. Lo and behold, next morning his garden is blooming with daffodils as far as the eye can see, and all day he has a spring in his step!

Come Monday, he's back to the shop to pick up his new pet and he says to the proprietor "You know, I had my doubts about what you said, but it worked, it was amazing! Daffodils as far as the eye could see!"

"Daffodils?" comes the reply. "Daffodils? You usually get tulips from hamster jam!"

The Isle of Wight ferry

(cows/Cowes, you see)

Down the M4.

Spencer v. Alex; Adele v. Jade
**Cameron v. Jon & Fed
***Justine, Sissy & Gos this week
****Alison; Adele v. Jade; Anouska
*****Everyone except Kate
******Negligible

[snorgle] Celebdaq - I appear to be right behind you, lord knows how, because I am still in the dark about how the 'timing' works, ie. retrospective? For instance, as the share price is falling rapidly, would it be wise to sell Henman shares?

Even a single lack of response from the server would be of interest to me - I want to try and determine if it's the DSL or the wireless that's at fault, although I'm currently pointing several accusatory fingers at the wireless equipment, it seeming less reliable than the 'not very reliable' it once aspired to. The lack of complaints here and at MCiOS are good signs, I hope.

On another note, BBC story about the delayed eviction. I dislike BB - and the whole 'reality TV' genre it spawned - intensely but, worryingly, often find it's the most watchable thing on either Sky Digital or terrestrial from late evening through the wee hours.

[Bad jokes] I know we'd managed to escape the bad jokes (and I'll try to get it right this time) but I heard this one yesterday and am still chuckling....

Q: Why is the devil not allowed into the Post Office?

A: Beacuse he takes many forms.

[Lib] I wouldn't worry - one of the pieces of information recorded in the server logs is the user agent being used to browse a particular page, and that will be where rab got his info. The only other identifying information is your IP address, and for a WAP device that's far more likely to be the address of a gateway machine somewhere rather than something which would identify your phone.

Mind you, if you want me to spy on you, just leave you mobile number and I'll see what I can do :)

Vote either Steph or Cameroon but keep in Lisa, her disruption to the house has got to continue.

[rab] Could you put a link to the Lock Cup pages on here so it's easier to get there from here?

Meanwhile, has anyone ever been anything other than 'cordially' invited to something?

[Watty] On account of the above I've ended up spending a shedload of money and am not sure if I'll be able to make the prom after all. I'll email you when I've reached a decision. Hope this doesn't blow things out of the water.

In a fit of madness, I have decided to 'field a second XI' in the financial shenannigans that is Celebdaq. If convenient, please arrange for DORIS_NEWBOLD (User ID: 3376674) to be inserted forcibly into the league. Let's face it - she can't do much worse than UNCLE_KORKY...

• Steff is most easily dispensed with, both in terms of this discussion and the competition. She's very pleasant is Steff, but wet as a fish and unlikely to appear on the front cover of FHM so won't attract the lad vote like Kee-at did last year.
• Scott, on paper, is similar. Although my ability to judge the attractiveness of other men is legendarily bad, I can't believe he's that much of a pin-up. He seems to be the housemate's favourite: I believe he was up for eviction only once, and right at the start. Nearly all the evictees have remarked that he's like a 'best mate' in the house. However this kind of thing rarely goes down well with the viewing public (Dean? Liz?). Except the dull one did win BB1 so I guess there's some possibility he might make it.
• Ray has probably the strongest personality, but is therefore likely to be the kind of person you either love or hate. This lack of all-round appeal may count against him, and is mostly down to his fiery temperament. On the other hand, I would guess he'll get the chick vote on account of being Irish, tall, probably the best looking one of the lot and because he's a bit of a lad.
• Cameron has, without a doubt, played the best game in the house and on these grounds deserves to win. Although clearly unpopular with the housemates (he's been up for nomination almost every week) and sections of the public (who either get offended by him being a Christian, or being a Christian and not "behaving like one") he's survived the public vote several times so it would seem like the public don't dislike him. I would quite like to see a bible-reading, near-teetotaller to win BB since it's almost the complete opposite of the kind of person you'd expect to win. On the other hand, people who've survived many public votes in the past (Paul, Jade) didn't go on to win, so the form's not good.

I too have sunk loads into Nush, Cameron, Ray and Scott, and aim to sell high fairly soon. Nice to see my investment in Arnie from a few weeks ago is now reaping dividends.

Anyone seen Inkspot lately?

Hope that keeps you going for a while.

[CdM] I got the fifth, but am not sure it's entirely sound unless someone can explain it to me. I haven't got 1,6 or 7 yet.

[cryptic game] There hasn't been one since I've been around (but know that's really not that long), not sure how it would work, or if I'd be any good at it, but Bring It On!!!!

WHY WHY OH WHY!!!

[Dunx re "Griddle"] I've got an idea too, "Collective Consciousness Cryptics" where we all post a word at a time, make up a cryptic clue and then solve it, before fitting it into the grid. Won't that be great?!

Paying guest loses a fringe (6)
Vermin back in best Armenian families (4)
Mates in turmoil giving off vapour (5)
Tune on the radio ? (3)
WHERE THE EXECUTIONER'S AXE FALLS ? (5,7)
Food comes back as American time period (7)
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas - grew up in Colorado ! (7)
Darn fire is rubbish - more heat than light ! (5-3)

On the other hand the Arkansas clue breaks at least two rules. Firstly the definition is not "Little Rock, Arkansas grew up" but simply "Little Rock grew up". And then, if we're being pedantic (which we are), it really ought to be "Little Rock grown up". The second rule is that the definition should never come in the middle of the clue, always at the start or the end.

Everyone has their own stance on what is acceptable and what is not. I consider myself a moderate compared to Ximineans like Don Manley (whose Crossword Manual is well worth a read). However, you might consider me onerously fascist for these opinions.

I expect now for you to reveal that it was taken from a Times puzzle...

With regards the capital one : The executioner's chopping board was known as the block capital (admittedly perhaps only poetically) as it was the block on which capital punishment was "executed".

And I never attach my box naked to the net.

• Double definition (a second definition for the same word - though with a different meaning)
• Anagram
• Embedded (the word is in there, usually split between two or more words, but running consecutively)
• Reverse embedded (as above but running backwards)
• Homophones (... sounds like ...)
• Exclusion (removal of specified letters or words)
• Concatenation (joining words together)
• Inclusion (one word placed inside another)
• Puns (word play that suggests the answer)
• Representation (Roman numerals, chemical symbols etc)
• Any combination of the above

[all] Ummm, little miss untechnological strikes again. How do I do hyperlinks?

Meanwhile, the cryptics. I can recommend two books. One is 'Cryptic Crosswords and How to Solve Them' (published I think by Chambers - you can search Amazon for example). The other is Don Manley's Crossword Manual, linked to above. The former is better for jumping in. Basically it lists the devices, and then gives some graded puzzles, with the amount of help diminishing as the book progresses. My main gripe is that the authors do like (a) to show off how clever they are; and (b) literary allusions rather than give you practical advice to clue-solving. Manley's book is much more thorough, but as he treats things more from a historical perspective, you'll find yourself dealing with Victorian mindbenders before getting into the cryptics proper. However, this book does offer an insight into the mind of a setter, which is invaluable.

One thing I dislike is microclassification of clues. Since pretty much every clue involves a combination of devices the only classification is:

• Single definition: usually cryptic, or relying on a pun.
• Double definition: what it says on the tin. One definition might be more cryptic than the other.
• Definition + device: where the device is basically a set of instructions that tell you how to make the desired word.

And, irritatingly, no... <hide>Nothing to do with depression - this may be a clue too far, but it's not "bust 'down reason'", but rather "'bust down' reason"</hide>
HTH. (But not really.) :oP

[X-philes] "Flying heart doctors" A-O-I-I (This is a real one that I can't get.)

[Boolbar, MF] It's not that I particularly dislike those ideas, it's just words like "imposter" trigger an "Oh no, not again already"-style response. I actually like the sound of the authors game - with a different moniker I might have realised the potential sooner. The reason for the banned list is that I find that such games, due in part to the huge numbers of times they've been played before, tend to be somewhat lacking in quality.

And while I've got my bad-tempered unchivalrous patronising primary-school teacher imposter hat on - could I urge people to think carefully about (a) the sense and (b) comic potential of their limerick lines. I've seen a number of great set-up lines from all players, only to be let down in a number of cases by not-so-great punchlines. I appreciate that I might be responsible for some of these and have already slapped myself on the wrist.

Aren't the clouds particularly fluffy for the time of year?

The clouds out of my window are lacking in fluffiness being more of a fuzzy amoeba-like greyness.

Meanwhile, Blob, my first thought was brainwash but I can't get that to fit, and in the light of Martha's comment which appeared while writing this, I suspect I'm completely on the wrong track.

[Raak, re Indie] I had a go at this too, and solved four clues. My Dad does the Indie on a daily basis, and I can't remember which setters he claims to be easier than the others. I think they range from somewhere just above the Everyman to somewhere just below Arucaria. But I might be wrong.

[Game names] Any of those would do. Someone care to cut the ribbon, or do I have to do it?

Update update The requested simulpost-during-preview warning has been added. But not, I'm afraid, on this website. It's on the 'working copy' which, for good measure, has been converted to use an exciting new cauliflower to drive the HTML sprocket. What this means in practice is that you'll notice no changes in the forseeable future, but I might one day get round to writing alternative interfaces (eg WAP). Job etc.

Meanwhile I'd like to point out, though I will suspect none will care, that the 'Extended overhaul' of the DJ Shadow track 'Organ Donor' (on the Preemptive Strike compilation) is a triumph.

On wednesday, newly qualified Dr Lib and hundreds of her Doctor friends are being let out onto the British public at large, allegedly to make them better. It is your duty to do us all a favour and avoid getting admitted to hospital (preferably for ever! but if you must get ill then at least wait a week or two so the new baby doctors will have had chance to work out whats going on). I thank you all for reading this announcement and wish you all the best of health.