What the hell happened to 2005? I mean, one minute it's there and the next it's gone. You turn your back for a few minutes...

Okay, technically I turned my back for 12 months but still.

It's been a funny year. I started it in a very melancholy mood and things didn't change much. Maybe thats why the time seems to have passed so quickly. All the things I should have done - such as a new job and loads more travelling - never happened. I just didn't have the energy to make them happen. And don't even mention my New Years resolutions - not only did I not manage most of them but I think I actually ended up doing the opposite on some (like get fit).

I find that now the year is drawing to a close and I look back, it was a year of new experiences. I know a little more about myself - and about life - than I did at the start. Some of those lessons were painfull ones, some were wonderfull. I lost people, I found people.

What does that mean for next year? No bloody New Years resolutions I can tell you that. A promise to myself maybe that I intend not to break. Maybe two promises.... 2006 itself may hold some promise - moving into my own flat could be the start of things. Going to have to wait and see though I think.

As for tonight, I'll be spending it with Miss C. No thinking about the events of this year or planning the events of next - just enjoying the moment. So whatever you get up to tonight, have fun one and all. And get drunk - it's not a proper start to the year unless you have a hangover!

Happy New Year from Mr BlogMonkey!!

I know it's the festive period and everything should be light and jovial but you may want to read this.

Yeah I know, very negative post that last one. Still, it was the most dreary Christmas I think I've ever had. Christmas is supposed to be fun and I just don't remember once having any. So cold too - and I mean inside. My mum doesn't believe in central heating - her house has only one small gas fire and if the temperature is set to more than 'vaguely warm' she starts really moaning about how she can't understand how people can "stand such heat".

And don't even get me started, my journey back taking 10 hours on the train (the last five, standing up)!!

Least I got fed well. That of course includes the obligatory peice of Christmas cake that my mum sends me back with every year. It shall sit in my cupboard for 3-4 weeks, I'll nibble the icing on top and then I'll finally bin it. As usual.

Anyone want it?

I wake up early Christmas morning full of the sort of excitement I've not felt since I was a little kid. Next to me in bed, the woman I love. I kiss her gently, partly to show how I feel and partly to wake her up. She stirs and with a mischevious grin on my face I jump out of bed and run off to fetch her present. I watch as she opens it - smiling. She finds mine - it's just what I wanted.

I go to make her breakfast in bed and after we relax for a while. Eventually we get up to start on Christmas lunch - a quick and easy (but very tasty) roast. The washing up is left for another day and we head outside to walk off some of the food and wine. We get back in time for the visit of a couple of sets of friends. More wine is drunk. They leave early evening and we settle down in front of the open fire with yet another bottle of wine and a DVD - cosy, warm and content for the rest of the day...

Thats what Christmas should be like but my Christmas was absolutely nothing like that.

I wake up to the clatter of pans as my mum checks the turkey that she put on to cook the night before. We (my mum, older brother and stepdad) head to the front room (which is icy cold) and I open the one present I got - a box of Cadbury Heroes. I then sit huddled around my cuppa and watch the others open their presents. When they are finaly done opening all their gifts, I help peel/chop the vegetables for lunch. There is little left to be done in preparing the meal after that but my mum still manages to find something for the next two hours. I settle down with a book.

The food is eaten and then we go for a walk. I'm bloody freezing by the time we get back. I spend the rest of the day reading in a corner and drinking. My stepdad falls asleep in front of the TV and my mum finds things to moan about. I'm in bed by 10pm - because of the cold, alcohol or boredom I'm not entirely sure?

Seriously, I think I'll skip Christmas with the family next year. Spending it on my own seems preferable. I'm not sure when it happened but Christmas has lost all it's magic for me now.

Must go - expecting three ghostly visitors and a boy with a gammy leg shortly....

In case I don't get chance (or I'm too drunk) to write again later, I shall bid you all farewell. I finish work today and I'm off home (hmmm, not been my home for a long time technically yet I still call it that - odd) for a few days tomorrow - back to the land where there is no t'interwebnet. I'll be back on the 28th.

So, I hope you all have very Merry Christmas!! I'll see you before the New Year.

Was stonehenge really rebuilt in the last 100 years? With other stories such as this one about a large fleet of UFO's over the M25 recently, I'm inclined to doubt the story a little. Wikipedia would also suggest that the rebuilding was just restoration for damage caused by visitors.

Take a look at the Reuters pictures of the year.

This animation and (annoyingly catchy) song is about a Hippo. That has noodles on his back. Oddly enough it's called Hippo Noodles.

Get in the Christmas spirit with Carol of the Chins (via The Presurfer).

Quite glad that I don't drive now.

*Insert generic 'Big Brother is watching' comments here*

"I'm not Catholic, but I gave up picking my belly button for lint."

Ok, so it has nothing to do with Christmas but I still found it amusing...

So BlogMonkeys search for a new tree to set up home in may well finally be over. I went to see a place last night and it's pretty much what I'm looking for. Fairly new, well decorated, nicely spacious, good fixtures (although I was slightly curious as to why the showerhead was dangling in the sink) and has the added bonus of only being 10 minutes walk from work. Result!

It also has a video intercom system. Not sure why that is important but I'm a man - we like gadgets.

As everywhere is closing over Christmas and I'm also off home tomorrow, I'll get in touch with them first thing in in the New Year and (hopefully) get myself sorted. Little excited. No room for a cat tho.

Something I have noticed during my flat hunting this last couple of months (aside from my inabillity to concentrate and actually mentally note details like how many windows there are or how big a room is when being shown around) is how rubbish agency websites are. Most include pictures of the property - good for getting an idea before you go to see the place and for reminding yourself what it was like after you have been - but these pictures are worse than useless in most cases! They are about the size of a postage stamp and have the quality set so low that you may as well be looking at them uderwater. I checked the properites of some and found they were 3KB in size or less! Most html pages are bigger than that.

So if anyone that works for a property agency happens to be reading this, please don't be so damn stingy with your bandwidth. I know pages should be optimized but c'mon! I pay about £50 a year for my hosting here and I get 100GB of bandwidth a month. Do you know how many fair size/quality images that would cover.

Read all about the coloured bubbles (or Zubbles) that will soon be in the shops, how they were invented and the man that spent years trying to do it.

*Groan* - two more days of work and there is nothing at all to do. And I really do mean nothing. Yes - even less than I normally have if you can believe that. I got in this morning and even the helpdesk email account was even empty - well, except for that one from a sexy 18 year old girl from Lithuania that apparently saw my picture online and wants to get to know me better. I think I may be in there! Isn't the interwebnet wonderfull! *

On the plus side I can entertain myself tomorrow as I've entered a tagteam Jenga tournament here at work. Not wanting to blow my own trumpet but I am pretty brilliant at Jenga. Unfortunately I'm also usually hammered when I play. I could well turn out to be a cack-handed moron when sober.

I also went to look at another couple of flats yesterday. Quality places as they are totally new (the one I like isn't even finished yet). Only downside was it was long and thin. Then again, considering I've spent a large portion of the last 9 months living in my bedroom whilst playing computer games (and my bedroom isn't that large), do I really need a huge place. Size isn't everything they say....

Currently listening to the Dido - White Flag.

* Note to Miss C - events portrayed may not be entirely true

Thought my blogroll was looking a little sparse so I've added a few new ones for your perusing pleasure. This time, they all come with an arty theme. Reminds me of the work of a talented young lady I know.

Wish I could draw - could get round to finally updating me old monkey logo up there ^ *points up*

Anyway, check out Steve Mack’s Spot Illustration, The Sketch Club,
The Sketch Club East and Wynlen Illustration.

Jolly good - carry on.

Forty drunken Santa's go on a rampage. Apparently this is all part of the Santarchy movement.

"No force on earth can stop 100 Santas!"

I have a confession to make. I'm afraid that I've been keeping a secret from you. Brace yourself. You see for the last five months or so, I have been seeing someone. Yes, you heard right - BlogMonkey has a girlfriend. With the odds on that happening, I wish I'd placed a bet on Elvis being found alive and leading the worlds army into war against a hoard of invading tartan aliens now.

"How could you not tell us?" I hear you cry.

Well, a lot of you (my readers) know me in real life and already knew. Being in a relationship is also a rather strange situation for me to find myself in - it doesn't happen often - and I guess I was getting used to it. Lastly, I'm sure many a blogger would agree that writing about other people is often a good way of getting in trouble if those people then find your blog and read what you've written (even if all nice). For instance she doesn't come here often (twice in total - something about the place being full of rubbish most of the time) but the first post she ever happened to read was this mini rant about my ex. Oops. Odds on her next visit is today.

So anyway, as some of you may have guessed the person in question is the Miss C I went on holiday with a couple of weeks ago. Suffice to say she is lovely and I muchly enjoy spending time with her. She's also a fair bit younger than me (not that it matters). The first time she told her parents about me, they asked how old I was.

"He's 31" she says "but don't worry, he's very immature for his age."

I think that's a compliment - right?

About eighteen months ago I lent a few CD's to a friend. I've been without them ever since. Yesterday I received the replacement I'd bought on Ebay for one of those albums. Beth Orton - Stolen Car is still such a fantastic song.

Cuteness by the bucketload, and then some - Cute Overload.

I quite like this Flash popup book based on the old classic It's a Wonderful Life. Be sure to find all the interactive things in the pictures....

If you like tall buildings then check out the SkyscraperPage.com. Interesting even if you are not a huge fan of large erections....
*ahem*

(link via White Noise)

Come the new year I shall (hopefully) undertake a little web project here at BlogMonkey. It might be the most worthwhile things I've done here so far and I shall need all of your help. Don't worry, it won't take much effort on your part.

Watch this space.

Right now however I face an important decision. I didn't have breakfast when I got up at 6am and now I'm getting a little hungry. Question is, what to eat? On hand I have a large box of Cadbury Heroes or some cold pizza I had left over from last night that I brought to work. Hmmm....

So I FINALLY had a good poker night and came away with a respectable (respectable as there were only three of us playing) £8 profit. Ooooh, what shall I splash out on first with my winnings?

It was a good night and I've not laughed so much in ages. When out of 20 bottles of beer I had, Mr J picked the one that tasted of smoked ham (imagine taking some smoked ham, liquidizing it and then distilling pure essence of ham and putting it in a pint glass) I laughed so much I cried. When shortly after - during a particularly tense hand - my other mate uttered the classic line "We need a camera under the table to see what you guys have got!" I thought I was going to need an oxygen mask....

Big brother is watching what books you get from the library...

This is quite a good idea although you do have to wonder how much money and energy will be saved installing these things?

Weird, but that works for me first thing on a Monday morning - We Are Aiko

This animation on the other hand is just plain cool! It's a music video for the song 'You Make Me Feel' by Mike Milosh and the video changes based on the time and weather of the person viewing it. I'm going to give it another go in a few hours to see how different it looks...

Couple of people were talking about this on Saturday night - Simon Sez Santa. I really must be slacking on my surfing the internet for junk when other people are aware of this stuff before me!

Take a look at the 10 worst Christmas gifts of 2005. We have a Secret Santa thing that runs here at work (you know, where names are drawn out of a hat and you have to annonymously give a present to someone else) and they keep all the presents in a big box until the last day of work. For the last couple of years I've been soooo tempted to sneak up and add a couple of 'extra' little presents to the box to cause some mischief. These presents would be perfect
*drifts off into evil thoughts of colleague opening present in front of everyone else to find book on erectile dysfunction...*

I'm also 12.26% slutty.

All these links via The Presurfer)

Sorry for the lack of weird t'interwebnet rubbish posts recently but I've still been fiddling with my access logs. Gets kinda addictive seeing where people come from, how they got here and such like. Finally settled on using AWStats. It's a little more complicated than the others (and needs Perl to run) but does offer what seems the most accurate details and a plethora of other useful (or not so useful) info through things like pluggins that tell you which country a visitor is from (strangely, after the US and UK I get most visitors from the Netherlands). Prepare to be dazzled by crap stats next month!

I've also been a bit distracted with trying to find Christmas presents. Being a man I have (of course) left it to the last minute to look but in my defence, I don't have many to get. I gave up buying presents a few years back after it became apparent that

a) I had no idea what to get most people and bought them rubbish
b) They had no idea what to get me and bought me rubbish in return.

To me it seemed a bit stupid wasting money getting and receiving gifts that people didn't want so I called a stop to it. I'll admit that it makes Christmas morning a bit odd when everyone else is opening pressents and I'm just sat there with a cup of tea and some toast but still....

My mum always still gets me a little something (no matter how many times I tell her not to) and so I return the favour. This year it is especially important because - as some of you may remember - my nan died back in the summer. This will be the first time in about 45 years that she won't be coming down to spend Christmas afternoon at my mums house. It's going to hit my mum very hard so I need to be there and need to cheer her up (or get her drunk - that might work too).

Strangely it was my nan's death that has given me the idea for my mums present this year. During the clearout that always happens after a death, bags of old family photos came to light. These were passed to my mum and when I was home for the funeral, she gave me a few of the best. I scanned them in, touched up them up, fixed the ruined bits and then had them reprinted for her.

There were a lot of memories in those pictures. A lot of those memories were lost when my nan died and even more will be lost when my mum eventually joins her, leaving nothing but a few photos of strangers. So I've decided to buy my mum a scrapbook in which to store those memories and pass onto the next generation of our family.

Well, it seems like a good idea to me anyway.

One of the problems in having an online presence is that sometimes people will stumble upon you that you'd rather didn't. It's easy to leave tracks behind that can lead folks to you.

One such footprint in the sand was an old Geocities page I had a long time back - my very first foray onto the internet in fact. I still have a copy backed up locally to remind myself of how far I've come since then (and have a quick chortle at). It was a true first timers site with a horrible background, many animated gif's, a jokes page and a whole section dedicated to my favourite cartoons (the cartoon cupboard I called it). It was crap.

With the miracle of having remembered my password after who knows how many years, that page was erased a short while ago. Luckily not before my old friend Kel found me through it tho I believe?

Another such smoking gun was my old Blogspot site. When I moved to my new domain, I left a forwarding message to this place but stupidly forgot to remove the archives. Even now, one or two people still end up coming here from that there every month after searches take them there first.

Until tonight that is. I finally decided to do something about it and managed to delete the old blog entirely. I am annonymous once again! Well, more or less...

My new stats tools are already proving there worth. Fishing around them yeilded this nice site which has now been blogrolled.

Quick update for those wondering how my search for a new home is going. Well, I got back from holiday to find a friend had emailed suggesting I could move into her house (she is abroad). After an hour or so of thinking about it, it seemed perfect. Slightly more expensive than what I'd been looking at but so much less hassle then going through an agency. I even started thinking about getting a cat.

Problem was when she didn't hear straight back from me she offered it to someone else and after a week of waiting for him to go have a look, she tells me he wants to move in.

No easy time for me. And no cat.

So as I'm now sick of looking and fairly fed up in general, I'm probably just going to take the last place I looked at. It wasn't great but I really cant be bothered anymore. Besides, I lived in a real dive of a flat once before, this place can't be any worse....

I am planning on revamping this site at some point (honest) and as a slight precursor, I have spent the morning fiddling with some new software packages that will allow me to get much more meaningfull stats from my access logs. Whose coming, from where, why and what colour underwear they have on. Ok, maybe no that last one althought that would be cool.

Stupidly I realised I could have done this ages ago I just never thought to check. Oh well.

Anyway, expect possibly monthly updates. For now I leave you with the interesting stats that last month I had 2545 page views, my most popular day is Wednesday and the most common search term (48 different people) is this one.

*Update* - for those interested in what I'm using to analayze my logfile, I'm trying Relax, Analog and Report Magic.

Yesterday was my works Christmas meal. Personally I'm not that bothered about them as it involves 20 people trying to decide where they want to go, what they want to eat and how much they are willing to pay. Far too much hassle. That was why last year my section formed a breakaway group and we just went for a pub meal, drank lots and played some pool and darts.

It was a laugh. As it should be.

This year I was planning on having a pub crawl. But events conspired against me and before I knew it a large pub meal for about 18 people was organised. Me being me I decided to be the odd man out and not have food. Instead I turned up for a couple of drinks and then went on my own pub crawl. I managed four pubs before it was time to go back to work.

I was a little drunk.

I didn't get much work done yesterday afternoon either....

Have you ever seen the film Sliding Doors? I'm not sure I've ever sat down and watched it properly - more likely half seen it as I flicked chanels. I know the story though.

It shows how one womans life changes because of one simple event. It follows the parallel but diverging paths of her life from that point on - one path leading her to find happiness and the other misery.

I've been thinking about that a lot recently, about how a certain event in my life may have altered it's course forever. It's a futile exercise to try and imagine what things might have been like - to enter the world of 'what if'. I do it anyway sometimes as I'm sure most people do.

But you have to wonder what else might change. At the end of the film, the path that led her to happiness also leads to her death. Her other life - although full of sadness - carries on, presumably with the chance of finding a different happiness further along the road. And like the film I also can't help but wonder what other consequences might have occured if events had been different. If my happiness would have been fleeting. If the other player in the story would have been worse off. I suspect they might.

But then at the end of the day, it's only 'what if' anyway...

Does anyone else have one of those moments in their life?

I'm so bored that I just tried to eat an entire bag of marshmallows. I feel quite sick and a little hyperactive now...

My blogroll has been updated. Couple of dead links pruned and a new link added.

That is all. Go about your business.

Being the vain little BlogMonkey that I am, I was having a quick search on Google this morning to see if my dominance of the search result is being challenged.

Back when my old blog (the remanants of which still lurk on the shifting interwebnet sea but I'm not telling where) got a new name and it's own domain, I was about the only BlogMonkey around. There were a few sites that had long since fallen into a disued state or which were just placeholders but I quickly outshone those.

As the blogging community has grown, new blogmonkeys have begun to emerge. This was one of the first I noticed and just recently another young lady came to my attention after she got a mention in a national newspaper.

Today I notice I have a new challenger to my throne - a german monkey whose jumped straight in at number two on a Google search.

I feel the redesign of my site needs to be done soon to cement my position. I have some ideas but need to work on it. It's about time really too as I had to renew my domain registration the other day - where did that last 2 years go??

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, this isn't me.

Ever wanted to know why dogs sometimes scoot around on their arse? Well, find out here.

Stewardess uniform collection.

Been a while since I've posted any gadgets so take a look at 'THE must have kitchen innovation' - the butterwizard.

I've ordered seven.

I really did like Pisa. There may not be that much to see but after the crowded streets and bustle of Florence the quiet came as a nice change. Even the area around the tower was not that busy. Of course the glorious sunny day we had may have had something to do with it too....

It's less than an hour to Pisa from Florence by train and our hotel was pretty easy to find (plus I have a good sense of direction). It also had the benefit of being about 200 yards from the tower itself.



It's amazing how many tourists do the whole 'look, I'm trying to hold the tower up' picture thing. You know, like this one. Worse are the people that do a group effort shot. And I was amazed at the people who really put a lot of effort into getting the perfect shot and had their model stand there for minutes at a time, moving their hands millimeter by millimeter to get it 'just right'.

The tower was pretty impressive tho and really does lean. Although I guess I was expecting that. We decided not to go up but instead found ourselves a nice spot next to the catherdral wall and sat down to enjoy the really rather beautiful day. A man with a guitar started playing what sounded like some italian folk songs (tho changed to what sounded more like blues numbers about working on the railroad). He wasn't busking, just enjoying the sunny day and before long had half a dozen fans sat around him enjoying it right along with him.

Sat there in the sun with Miss C, surrounded by some amazing architecture with gentle music playing in the background had to be the best part of the holiday for me truth be told.

The rest of the day (suming up quickly) consisted of ice cream, a nice meal in a well hidden little restaurant, drinking in a bar and seeing the tower at night. And thus ended my little holiday.

After a breakfast that consisted of a vast array of choices (should I have cereal, a chocolate croissant or some meat and cheese first?) and a quick confirmation of the plan of action we formulated the night before, we headed out.

Something I'd noticed almost as soon as we'd got off the bus the day before was a large number of fiberglass cows that seemed to be dotted around. The more we explored, the more we found - all with different colours and patterns. After a quick translation by Miss C it turned out that it was some sort of celebration of the cow. We didn't delve an deeper than that, it seemed more than enough information. I thought the cow we found with hands sticking out all over it's body was the weirdest we were likely to find. Until we found the one below.



A cow covered with breats. Italians can be odd....

Our first stop was the Bargello Museum. The place was huge and everytime we moved to what we thought was the last room we found aother packed full of something else interesting. We stayed there a good couple of hours but in the end there are only so many china plates or ornate statues you can look at. It was then onto the Piazza de Signoria and the Ponte Vecchio before stopping for a lovely lunch. Although the Uffzi Gallery was on our 'to do' list, we were just too tired and cultured out so headed back to the hotel for a rest.



After a rest we headed out to find a proper bar (most places in Florence are more like coffee shops that serve alchol and cakes - not a bad thing of course). We stumbled upon an 'American' bar and started the evening with cocktails. A little arm twisting was then needed for me to convince Miss C that Lobs should be our choice of restaurant that night. Whilst more expensive it had many different choices from all the others we had seen and I like trying new dishes when away). The meal was fantastic although I would have to say that the service was a little slow. On the plus side we got some free wine and starter!

The evening finished up in a more traditional (and well hidden down a tiny side street) italian bar called The Mayday Club for more cocktails. We were the only people in there to start with but others soon followed. The cocktails were great and the barman a very cheery fellow.

By this point I was rather squiffy and Miss C had to direct me back to the hotel...

With no sign of movement from the garage or insurance company regarging Miss C's car, we hop on a train Sunday morning an head for Liverpool - not a great journey as being a Sunday the train services are few and far between and seem to stop at every little town and village on the way. Four hours on a slow train is not fun.

We arrive and check into the luxury of our Travelodge accommodation and after a quick freshen up, meet up with an old university friend of mine. Curiously enough considering this was a holiday to Italy, the only time we ate pizza the entire trip was in an Ask in Liverpool....

Florence

Up early (5am - urghhh) the next morning and a taxi ride to the airport. Our driver (a young guy who appears to already have 3 kids judging by the pictures on his dashboard) makes many attempts at conversation. I wasn't too keen on this as

a) It was very early and I was half asleep
b) I couldn't understand half of what he said because of the scouse accent.

We pass a small newsagents on the way with a large 4x4 lodged halfway inside the shop. Ramraiders. "Welcome to Liverpool" says our driver.

The flight to Pisa is uneventfull. The airport seems a little disorganised as we wander round the runway looking for the entrance to the airport building. Checking the times for buses and rains, we decide that the bus is the better option as it leaves sooner. Bad choice. Let me just say that if you ever go to Pisa, do not use Terravision. For some reason, one person stands there with a clipboard taking the names of every person trying to get on and writing something on their bus tickets, slowing the whole boarding process considerably. With no real organisation, people throw their bags in the storage area below the bus and then try and fight their way to the front of the crowd in order to get on. With no obvious sign that it even is the right bus, we missed the first one but were better prepare to elbow our way to the front when the next one arrived. It didn't feel like a good start to our holiday.

We get to Florence and with only a little effort find our hotel. I let Miss C check us in as she speak Italian really well whilst I struggle with saying more than 'thank you' in most cases. I let her do the talking for most of the holiday - I probably looked like the timid husband as she ordered every meal and drink over the next few days.

We head out and towards the Duomo. It's an impressive sight.



After a look around inside and out, we take to wandering the streets in the rain. Florence seems a lovely place although a little crowded with the small pavements and hoardes of tourists. I prefered Venice. We get a little lost but it doesn't matter. We finally reach the hotel and relax for a bit before taking the easy option of dinner in a restaurant just down the road from the hotel.

Got so sidetracked with my packing and organising on Suday that I forgot to write my last post mentioning that I was off on holiday for a few days. Not that you didn't know that anyway, but still.

And as you can see I am back. First installement of my hoiday tales tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Short film about a kick-ass monk on a gore filled rampage with thumping thrash metal soundtrack. What more could you want for a Friday morning? Huh? Huh?

If you go down to the woods today be afraid, be very afraid. Going to be watching them much more closely in the future, they can stay away from my nuts!

So with only a few days to go I'm trying to get organized for my trip to Pisa and Florence. I spent this morning checking the hotel details (I got some great bargains from here), printing off maps so we can find the hotels from the train stations, getting the train times from the aeroporto etc.. Not that I'd call myself that organized as I haven't sorted out any travel money yet and haven't thought about what we actually want to do when we get there. Maybe a guide book would be a good idea. Or I'm open to suggestions from you, my well travel readers.

Unfortunately there is one more obstacle to overcome. On Monday morning Miss C had a teensy-weensy little car accident. As such, the car was taken off to the garage this morning to be looked at and fixed. I doubt it will be done by Sunday. This means we now have no way of getting to the airport for our flight at 7:20am. Which means sorting out trains and a hotel for the night before. Unless she gets a courtesy car. Which isn't too likely I'm thinking.

Bugger.

The blogsphere is a remarkable place. A community where strange and wonderfull things can happen. People you've not seen for many years will stumble across you. People you've never met will get in touch with you to find out if you are okay when they hear about the terrorist attacks in London. You meet lovely people in far away places you have never been to and become friends. It was through this last person that I heard another story.

A man with a blog (I won't link to it - it isn't there anymore) is contacted by someone who reads his posts. She starts her own blog (again, it no longer exists) and they become friends. Time passes and they become more than that, they fall in love. Everything is perfect and he leaves his whole life behind to go and live in Mexico - to be with her.

Except the life he leaves behind includes a wife and children. She comes home one day and finds only a note telling her he has gone.

How cowardly can you be!?

The little blogging community rallies to her side, offering what support they can. It won't really help ease her pain but they try anyway. It's lovely to see.

And the other two players in this story? As I said, as the community turned on them they erased their virtual lives. Except of course it's much harder to erase these things than you think and anyone that knows how can find what you try to hide if they really want to...