Cheers for the good wishes, folks - pictures are up on my Facebook!

[Uncle Korky] Congratulations and felicitations to all. I haven't gone a-facebooking as a picture does not always tell a thousand words. The question, therefore, is, "is he smart?"

Where there's muck, there's hope. Let's have a go. [UK] Congratulations to you on the arrival of Maxwell. A silver hammer is in the post.

A jolly good idea and I like the game name too. Let lightning strike while the iron's hot.

Raak, I loved your "bank" saw. It's (not) funny because it's true.

OK, it's been silent for a week... someone say something!

something

Not that I'm proposing any changes, but I wonder if games would become more or less active if they weren't stamped with the date and time of the last move. Less active is my guess.

[Dujon] Can't vouch for smart, yet, but I'd like to think there's potential! [Kim] Ta muchly!

Bright and cold here (can also be said for me as well as the weather) and today I am going to take to the road. Enough of nerves, I've just got to drive. But after 25 years of driving on the other side of the road, and the other side of the car, it's all a bit weird.

Hi pen, hold your breath and prepare for a few rapped knuckles on you left hand! You'll get used to it quicker than you think. Just watch out for those nasty entry/exit points that the Clogs like so much, you find yourself merging with traffic entering the motorway as you are trying to leave. Very unnerving the first time.

The bit that un-nerves me is the crossroads with no marked priority here in the village - like a US 4-way stop. I struggle to use those to turn left across oncoming traffic and end up lurching about.

Changing the subject just a little, I've got a job interview tomorrow for a tech writer role. And they've given me a little test document to polish. It contains a clever twist on bad documentation technique I've not seen before: 'Note how Figure 1 does not show the following....'

I just love that. Specially creating a diagram that doesn't show the thing you want to highlight. Hats off to 'em. I'm just hoping this document was intentionally altered to make a harder test. But in these cases there's always the risk that a legitimate document really was genuinely that badly-written. Still, if so, at least I'll have plenty of rewriting work to do.

This page was NOT intentionally left blank, comes to mind :o).

[Software] TPILB has a very good pedigree. It was used extensively in the 1970s when replacement pages for technical manuals had only half the content of the original, resulting in one blank side right where everyone had hitherto been used to finding text. It was a way of avoiding the (then) expensive customer service calls about non-existent missing text that went nowhere. It also meant that the original contents page would still work, mostly, as the page numbering wasn't screwed up by the change. The only alternative would be to reprint the entire chapter from the change onward which would likely prove to be prohibitively expensive. These days, one often sees such material reproduced either electronically, which makes no sense, or on single-sided copies of the original material, which makes sense but is still odd when you come across it.

[SM] I know, I'm an engineer and at one point in my distant past was responsible for the printing and distribution of technical manual updates (on a subcontract). It still bemuses the uninitiated though.

Ah! Reminds me when I was a technical author myself. I can still take a 20-year-old New World gas cooker to pieces... Just don't ask me to put it together again when I've drawn the pictures.

[Software] Sorry for lecturing the knowledgable.

I think it's spring.

[penelope] Are you loving Holland? Are the tulips growing yet? Have you been overrun by clog-wearing mice?

[SM] Starting to withstand/endure/cope with Holland rather than like it or love it. Still not quite sure what I'm doing here... The tulips are just poking their leaves through in the garden (we're further south than the main tulip-growing areas - there are mostly pear and apple orchards and celeriac fields here), and there are precious few mice, or even rabbits. Apparently the water table is too high for them to dig warrens. But there are lots of hares, herons, some large bird of prey that I have yet to identify, kingfishers (ijsvogels - I've also realised I have a whole new vocabulary of wildlife to learn) and the most interefered-with trees I have ever seen in my life. There is not one tree here that has been allowed to grow accoring to its natural form. Every single tree has been either trimmed, clipped, pollarded, coppiced, brashed or felled. Tree-fiddling is the national obsession.

You'll grow to love the place, pen. The south is a bit severe, the Dutch reclaimed most of the land so they do what they like with it. I lived in Nord Holland which is a bit less over-cultivated and the trees are allowed to do tree things, to a degree anyway. I lived in a town called Huizen, my garden used to back on the Ijsselmeer but it is now about 1km away!

[Softers] I take it all back. The invitation to an interview for a promising job which was issued and then witdrawn has been issued again. I'm hopeful once more. More on this later...

[Software] Those Dutch hey? Having given up their world exploits they are now about to invade the Channel by stealth. I shall now make a concerted effort to monitor the Indian and Pacific Oceans; the thought of the whole of Huizen sneaking across to reclaim Van Deimen's Land has my kernees kernocking.

[Dujon] We in Britain have a cunning plan to foil the Dutch takeover by stealth of the North Sea. As they gradually move out to rebuild the land bridge we are simultaneously moving the coast of East Anglia inland. By the time the Dutch catch us up we’ll all be in Dublin.

[penelope] I expect Software is right and that once the fast-relocation shellshock has worn off, the ground turns colours other than brown and you have gainful employment you will wonder why you didn't move years ago.

(INJ) Coastal erosion will see to that anyway, so they say.

[ImNotJohn] This plan will play merry hell with the old Risk and Diplomacy games. I expect after-market stickers will be available for pre-game coastline reconfiguration.

I had an interview yesterday, and did a looong written test today, by email. Now I'm anxiously waiting to hear if I've got a fantastic three-day a week, English speaking/writing job at the university that pays as much as my five-day-a-week not-for-profit job did back in Blighty...

Mmmm. Part-time.

I can see you getting used to the lifestyle in Clogland, pen.

Mmmmm....five-day-a-week.

Housework, looking after the windy miller (who does 5 x 12 hour days and all day Saturday at the mill), and some freelance work... Pah!

(pen) 60 hours a week sounds like trubble at mill.

[Rosie] Sounds like a part-time job to me :( *(moan, moan, bleat, whinge etc etc etc ad nauseam until someone points out I chose to do this for a living, and that I get to live in a pub)*

[Phil] Presumably you also have the option to hire someone so that you work fewer hours, but with obvious consequences for your finances.

Welcome to London Heathrow, The World's Most Miserable Airport. I've just been biometrised and hassled at security despite the fact I've been in secure areas for the last twelve hours.

[rab] Yes I could pay someone to some some of the stuff I do. But they wouldn't do it as well as I do. If they did, I wouldn't able to afford them. Also, I enjoy 95% of what I do - especially the quality control :-)

[Phil] I hear you. The windy miller is the same - he takes huge pride in the work that he does (construction project management - and this one is a HUGE project) but being on site to make sure things happen on schedule takes its toll and he's usually too exhausted to do anything on Sunday - which is the only day we have at home together. So much for moving here to spend more time together. Part of my 'job' at the moment is taking care of him, as much as he'll let me. *sigh*

[CdM] Was what? ;o)

(pen) Cogitavit ergo erat. I dunno.

[pen] Congratulations!

Well done.

Called "News has come to Harvard": we make up new elements for the periodic table and provide hilarious, surreal or topical explanations of their nature and purpose. Eg:

Excusium: constituent element in whitewash. Frequently used by politicians.

Any support?

Is that Job of Old Testament fame?

[Kim] I see! Good title, tidy idea. One on board =)

[Tuj] Thanks. Any against? Where should I slot it?

(Kim) Go ahead.

Thanks. No slots currently available here or anywhere else. Has "Bent Saws" reached its proverbial, do you think?

Hello there. I'm going to be taking the site down for a short while for an upgrade.

Let's see if that has worked? It seems I've even stopped the galloping slashes this time!

Just saw the Elements game. There is a site that I had bookmarked and only deleted on Friday which is very enjoyable. Apparently now been published as a book - http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm - Molecules with Silly Names. Some of them were featured on QI a few years ago.

aaaa525zzz

Shh! It's fallen asleep.

suck all the channel on tv sucks badly

Parse the preceding sentence, thoughtfully provided by someone.

Actually, I think the real problem with TV is that most of the channels suck quite well.

Suck all. The channel on TV sucks badly.
It's the voice from the future. When interactive TV is the norm a lonely politician's husband has to get a 'helping hand' when the signal gets a bit fuzzy.

Suck! All the channel on TV sucks. Badly.

There's usually suck all on TV worth watching anyway.

Speaking of which, ten days without a move suggests that UK GAZETEER FILM CLUB might have outlived its span. Does anyone have a suggestion for another one?

Six word stories?

"Six word stories?" Simons suggested. Silence.

(No, really, I'd be up for that.)

I was about to suggest that

How does it go?

You tell a story in six

Damn! Bad planning on my part

With a short preface (say "Story One", and so on) this could be hatched inside the Eight Moves Game, giving it a kick up the jacksy also.

I love the idea of 'Precisely Eight Words' being bent to stories. I may try that, even if it's not an official diversion... Also, I had an idea the other day for a one-line-at-a-time Gilbert & Sullivan play. Ambitious, but not impossible. Thought I'd run it up the flagpole of the collective.

Hello there. The good news is that the company that provides the disk space and bandwidth this site needs to function is upgrading the capacity of both of them this afternoon, at no charge. The bad news is that this necessitates a change of IP address (the server will be moving from Edinburgh to London).

What this means in practice is that after 4pm BST today, some of you will see the old version, and some of you the new. You'll be able to tell the difference, because you won't be able to post to the old one. It typically takes about 24hours, maybe longer, for the process to complete. Restarting your browser/computer/modem may (or may not) help - it depends on where the old IP addresses are being cached.

Don't be perturbed if the site fails to load for a bit.