Last night

I dreamt that my wife had shaved the cat and that we also had as a pet a large raccoon capable of human speech.Note to self: consider putting cheap wine on banned substance list for now.

Madplanet

Hesitant as one is to blow one's own horn, one should note that one has established a new blog, somewhat in the vein of the now dormant dottocomu but both ruthless in its brevity and broader in its scope, at http://madpla.net. Your patronage is appreciated.

Adieu, white iPod

I have not seen anyone mention this yet, perhaps because of its sheer obviousness or the brain-addling effects of Jobs' charisma field, but as of yesterday the white iPod is no more. In future years, will we consider the visuals of the first few 'Pod generations (and indeed, any other product that borrows the white-and-metal design vocab) as looking "really early-21st-century"? So iconic were they, I think we just might.

Things that occur to one in the midst of a typhoon

We are currently getting our untold million asses kicked by a large typhoon that is throwing rain and wind around kung-fu stylee with great sturm und drang.

Wife: What do we do if some large, sharp piece of stuff comes flying over and embeds itself in the (new, thus far almost pristine) house?

Me: Find its owners and sue the hell out of them for leaving large, sharp things lying around all over the place, of course.

No, I am not American, but in such circumstances what can one be but litigious? After all, we're talking about the wanton leaving-lying-around of big, sharp things here. There is a social purpose to litigating against the leaving-lying-arounders of such stuff.

Quechupped

This is distinctly old news, but I received an invite from a former colleague at Engadget a couple of days ago asking me to join Quechup.com and, like so many other fools before me, I signed up and let them peruse my gmail address book for matches.

Where Quechup appears to have learned its lesson is that it has, by the look of it, stopped sending invites to every non-Quechup member in your webmail address book without warning, after giving you the opportunity to search said address book for people who might already be members--which was, to put it mildly, the moral equivalent of fucking a dog in public and holding out a hat to ask for contributions. They haven't responded to a feedback mail I sent asking for confirmation that they've done so, but given the colossal backlash around the web it's an obvious step for them to have taken.

If I should prove to be mistaken and you receive a message from my gmail account inviting you to Quechup, please can it.

Great example of how easy it is to start up a web service, and how easy it is to kill it at the outset by treating your users as if their personal information is worth shit. Good job!

The Chick Magnet

A 15-year-old model rated the Chick Magnet last night as being "amazing". I feel that this vindication of my decision to buy it marks the appropriate point at which to introduce it to this blog.

The Chick Magnet is ironically named, need it be said, for it is the lowliest of a certain German supercar maker's line and relatively compactly built, unlike its owner. It can, however, race heavy-footed taxis and slackly ridden motorbikes with considerable success, though how it will fare against Leo's Skyline and Teal'c's Lambo (all right, it's not even in the running against the latter, though it cost about a sixth of the price) are unknown quantities.

Again, photos to follow, maybe.

Map to paradise

A million miles away

We got back from the Maldives last night. After spending a large part of the afternoon before our departure in an Ayurvedic trance brought on by having about a litre and a half of fragrant oil dribbled over my head in a beachside hut, and following it with fourteen hours of stop-and-start travel peppered with Malaysia Airlines' inappropriately-timed meals and constant overstated jingles about their and their country's greatness, I still feel as if part of my brain is paddling its way slowly northeast, enjoying the sun.

Photos to follow.

Voltage

An electrical storm's been hovering over the house for most of the last two days. It booms and sparks for hours at a time, like an irritable child with a noisy toy.

I have just realised...

...what my response should be next time a taxi driver tells me "hey, your Japanese is pretty good":

"Thanks. Hey, you know the roads pretty well, too."

(I realise the asymmetry here, in that while there's no necessity for a non-Japanese to be good at the language [though there's a strong practical incentive] there is for a taxi-driver to have some geographical savvy [at least in theory])