A conversation with a colleague of mine this morning reminded me how small the world really is. Her friend's theory is that it contains merely 1500 people, who we meet over and over again, and I have a feeling that might be right. Let me explain...
The latest, and by no means the strangest, example of all of this is a project student I'm supervising, Matt. Matt has a boyfriend, Drew. Drew is a psychologist, postgrad. Jen is working with some psychologists on packaging design. Who's she working with? Yup, you guessed it, Drew.
This is only the latest in a long line of strangeness. Take, for instance, the house I moved into a few years ago. It was Becky's place. I'd never met Becky before, I just responded to a house-mate needed notice and went round. Turns out Becky is a Bible Studies student who's on a course with a friend of Jen's. But that's minor in terms of the coincidences that were to come. Another girl, Claire, also lived in the house. Her boyfriend, Mike, had been living, amongst other people, with a guy called Jim ever since they'd come to uni and become friends. Jim, it turns out, was the same Jim I was quite good friends with when I did my undergradute. Oh, but if you think that's the weirdest, there's stranger to come. After moving out of Becky's place, I started a postgradute MSc in nanotechnolgy. I met a guy by the name of Rob, and, albeit only until he went certifiably mad, we were mates. So, I got chatting to Rob one day, and he asked whereabouts in Sheffield I'd lived. Well, it turns out he knew the area where I'd lived when I was living with Becky. Knew the house, even. In fact, it turns out that he knew Becky even better than I did... The world is too small.
My relationships are a minefield, too. Met a girl, Helen, at a university end-of-year thing. We had a very brief fling, and I didn't call her back. My mistake. Turns out that her brother, John, had been living with my brother in a shared house for a number of years, and they were still good friends. It's not far off a bizarre form of incest.
Of course, it would be lax of me to ignore the strangeness that was discovering, upon reaching university for the first time, that one of the guys who lived three doors down from me was friends at school with one of my dad's cousin's daughters, a girl by the name of Holly. This, of course, was a realisation facilitated by the fact that one of my dad's other cousins, this guy's brother, is moderately famous for presenting horse racing programs.
All this is a little strange, don't you think? All the people in the world to meet, and yet we only ever meet friends, siblings and (ex)lovers of people we already know. There's some kind of conspiracy here, and I'm determined to get to the root of it. Ok, not actually determined, more interested. Well, let's be honest here, not entirely interested. It's just weird, 'k?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Consensus grows on climate change
Yay! Another report! What would we do without all these valuable reports to tell us that chucking loads of pollution into the air has a negative effect?! Still no mention of when international governments are going to do anything real about it though...

A warning was issued, though, such that those who followed the progress of the camera of goodness were not taken with laziness, and that warning said: while there be camera equipment, not all that has gone has been return-ed to us, and so we are still unwhole, and still need completion. Patience, it is said, is a virtue of those who follow the path of "insurance claims".

So the new camera came, and the people saw that it was good, and that the pictues it provided were worthy, and there was much rejoicing, for it was said that the promise of the "Insurance Replacement Specialists" was good and wholesome. Never again would there be need for the "cameraphone" with its impure ways and devious misconceptions. All hail the new camera, for it is good and pure, and will save us all from eternal graininess.

25 years of my life and still
I'm trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this
Brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
So I cry somethimes when I'm lying in bed
To get it all out what's in my head
Then I start feeling a little peculiar
So I wake in the morning and I step
Outside I take deep breath
I get real high
Then I scream from the top of my lungs
What's goin' on
And I say hey...
And I say hey what's goin' on
And I say hey...
I said hey what's goin' on
And I try, oh my God do I try
I try all the time
In this institution
And I pray, oh my God do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
So I cry sometimes when I'm lying in my bed
To get it all out what's in my head
Then I start feeling a little peculiar
So I wake in the morning and I step outside
I take a deep breaththen I get real high
Then I scream from the top of my lungs
What's goin' on
And I say hey...
And I say hey what's goin' on
And I say hey...
I said hey what's goin' on
And I say hey...
And I say hey what's goin' on
And I say hey...
I said hey what's goin' on
25 years of my life and still
I'm trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination

BBC NEWS | World | Bloggers: an army of irregulars
Yay!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Privacy fears hit Google search:
"Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers,' said EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston."
Ok, so you might have to read the whole story to understand what I'm on about here, but surely the point is that Google are the most trustworthy of the search companies, since they are the only ones fighting the US government about handing over their search logs. I'd be more worried if Yahoo or AOL had something similar, as they seem to have rushed as quickly as they could to hand over their information in court, panting and wagging their tails as they did so, waiting for the pat on the head they'll never get.
Oh, and this is only a problem if you're using the tool to search over multiple computers, and have that option switched on. Don't know about you, but I have one computer at home, and one at work. Don't need to be searching both at the same time, escpecially if it's a very important document, such as "tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files". All those types of documents are in specific folders with really obvious names, not just scattered around in a huge My Documents file scanning 40Gb and with no folder system. To be honest, if you're stupid enough to not know what you're doing when you install these programs, perhaps you shouldn't be doing everything on the computer. I wouldn't feel safe if I wasn't aware of exactly what information is leaving my desktop.
I don't want to seem nasty to people who genuinely get caught out by this kind of thing, but the internet is a harsh, unpleasant place, the realities of which need to be brought home to people. Google are, as far as it's possible to tell, acting honourably, and honestly. The Electronic Frontier Foundation need to find a real cause to champion, rather than acting like a tabloid newspaper. Grow up, kids, and start fighting for something real.

Yahoo: "Once more Siemens vision'd himself towards Isarel Sterkstroom, and then Haw-Haw Langley sped forward, and with all the bowstring of his long plesaunte smashed his heavy rescheduling sled into the face of the dog."
Now, normally I wouldn't bother to read the random blogs that pop up from time to time which are clearly automatically generated and in no way connected to reality, or the language they purport to be written in, but the paragraph above actually makes sense! Not realistically, of course, but structure of the words is correct, if not their placement or meaning. And it made me laugh.

The Palm
This is very cool, basically. I had written a bit of an essay about "Wonders of the World, blah blah blah", but really is was very dull and rather flowery, so I canned that entry and wrote this instead. This one is quite clearly better, because it isn't filled with my boring shit. Yay...
In other news, the bastards still haven't sent me my new camera, and we're off to London Zoo to see the penguins and lions (not in the same enclosure, thankfully) next weekend. I am not happy, but also unempowered, since the only contact I have with these people is over the phone and all I can say is "I really would rather have it as soon as possible please", whilst meaning "give me my camera, whores of Satan!". I wish I wasn't so British about things like this, but then moaning at them only makes you look American, so I'll give that a miss.
Killer boredom and apathy is on me today. I ought to be doing the thing with the model that makes it work. Debugging, I think they call it. But of course I don't actually care all that much, and since I have made progress is some form or other this week, my work ethic is drained. Need sleep. Desperately need exercise. Need to stop living in one room, it's driving me mad...

4Car Feature - Tunnel Run - from Channel 4
I'm furious! These guys have been out there, done this, and none of them have been arrested. None of them have had their cars impounded by the police, and crushed. Imagine a group of car modifiers doing the same thing. Middle Britain would be up in arms! This is hypocrisy of the highest order. I cannot believe that just because the cars involved are more expensive, it's considered ok. Surely it's worse that every car that went was a powerful, expensive sportscar, capable of great speed. Sure, there was a speed camera there for part of it, but I bet there weren't speed checks all the way round, and I can absolutely guarantee you there was some law breaking going on. I am enraged by the double standards the police employ in these situations. I've experienced first hand the kind of prejudice that modifiers have to experience on a daily basis, even those who love their cars so much they wouldn't dream of doing anything dangerous in them. The police won't even agree to properly organised events in many areas, and yet these middle aged petrolheads can get away with it right in the centre of the capital. This is fucked up, people. No wonder the youth of this country feels disenfranchised.