Relax! The Guardian’s Best of British/London Blogs written by Londoners in London about London and Londoners’ concerns, illustrated with pictures of London (and the odd Guardian link) awards are now out. NB. If you don’t live in London, you probably haven’t won. (In case you’re wondering, BB wasn’t entered. After all, we don’t live in fucking London so there wasn’t much point.)

If you type the word “London” enough times, it starts to look really odd. If you think about London a lot, you start to feel really ill. If you read the Guardian, this is pretty much a permanent state of affairs. It’s odd that a paper that heavily indulges in liberal hand-wringing over the state of “the regions” should be one of the most London-centric. Especially when it was originally a northern paper.

Joyous celebrations all round the corridors of power, as evil fugitive and ZZ Top tribute band member Saddam Hussein is finally captured. Following medical examination and interrogation, Saddam is expected to be gift-wrapped and placed under George Bush’s christmas tree along with the US 2004 election result. The world can now rest safe from the terrible threat posed by this elusive villain who, even as he was lurking in his basement, was constructing a new “super missile” from empty baked bean tins that could have been launched within 45 minutes (or as soon as he could eat all the beans).

Meanwhile, Saddam’s chief accomplices remain at large. They are currently believed to be hiding out in secret bunkers underneath the White House.

“What about the weapons of mass destruction?”
“Shut up!”

BB blames the BBC for our drink problem. Every xmas, we look forward to nothing more than eating and drinking in front of the telly. Recently though, we’ve had to start drinking a hell of a lot more to make up for the crap we choose not to watch on TV. This year will evidently be no different (the odd Doctor-mentary aside), and therefore BB will be unconscious by 7pm on xmas eve (traditionally the time at which they used to show The Wizard of Oz annually, but we were unfortunately too young to drink back then). That way, we can avoid anything presented by Dermot O’Leary or Jimmy Carr (“Dermot says the show sounds too crap even for him? OK, try Jimmy!”).

Many Java vendors and developers seem slightly mystified as to why Java hasn’t taken over the software landscape as completely as was originally promised and expected. They just can’t understand why people are still writing and running various dialects of C and other platform-dependent languages - surely it’s supposed to be “Run Anywhere, All Java, All The Time”?

However, it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has actually had to use Java programs why they’re not as popular as they might otherwise be.

…and a tale.

If you set up Orca according to my original procedure and downloaded the orca_collect script, please fetch the updated script, which contains an important fix to prevent rsync copying all your data files on every run. Mea culpa for your lost CPU cycles.

It came from behind the fence post.

Well, it fell…where I dropped it on the paving slab. An immensely simple idea that unfortunately still needs a little post-processing work.

This shot is technically poor but (I think) aesthetically appealing, thanks to the always rewarding combination of a normal lens and XP2.

(Cader or Cadair? My old OS tourist map says the latter but everything else I’ve seen recently, including the NT signs, prefers the former.)

The summit was, as usual, covered in cloud and blowing a gale but on the way down the sun started to poke through across the landscape, highlighting a few features like the valley containing Talyllyn below.