Ocassionally when going through my stats, I find links from other blogs. I'll pop along and take a look and sometimes blogroll them (but more often not due to my general laziness for updating my blogroll). One such site that's been sending the odd visitor my way for some time is Sarcasmo's Corner.

It was when looking through my stats a couple of days ago that I was once again reminded to go and visit but what I found was a little unexpected this time. It seems Star had passed away rather suddenly a couple of weeks ago. Even though I didn't know her and only infrequently visited the website, it made me sad.

My sympathies go out to her family.

For the first time in 32 years I've not had roast turkey for Christmas dinner. I had a curry.

Merry Christmas one and all! :)

Lastdayatwork!Lastdayatwork!Lastdayatwork!Lastdayatwork!Lastdayatwork!

*Breathe*

Lastdayatwork!Lastdayatwork!Lastdayatwork!Lastdayatwork!Lastdayatwork!

Lots of cats on christmas hats.

Compare and contrast.

I'd also be curious to see if thisbackfires on the good intentioned maths teacher as it's amazing what a little national publicity will do for something. He also doesn't seem to have much to say about the two hentai mags or various seminaked women still listed there.

MAybe I could give this a try to get me through the Christmas period?

Bunni has mention it a few times recently but it seems that my reader stats are also plummeting faster than a concrete pigeon. My typical (unique) reader numbers used to be around 1000-1100 a month. I had the odd quiet month - especially if I was going through a lazy patch and posting was right down - but it was fairly constant usually. Last month I was down to 850 odd. This month looks set to be much lower than that.

It could be a festive season thing but I am starting to wonder if Google have recently changed their indexing algorithms. Looking back through my stats for the last year I also noticed that I'd typically get 350-400 unique search phrases bringing people here. It was 180 last month. It's less than 120 this.

Although I can't see why it would help, I may switch over to this new version of Blogger in a bit as it seems even more closely tied with Google. I see Kel and Bunni already have and Gerard did yesterday. Maybe it's a project for the xmas holidays...

Following on from yesterday...

Worlds top 5 dangerous roads.

10 Most dangerous toys. Watch the video for the Johny Reb cannon - tis great and I especially like the afterthought about girls at the end.

Maybe it's the start of a cold but I suspect the reason I feel like death this morning is more to do with the 4 hours sleep I've had and bottle or so of wine I drank last night. The remanants of the chinese meal isn't sitting so happily in my stomach either right now. Was a good laught though. Highlight for me was watching our waiter try and work out what 10% of our bill was in his head so he could take that off as we got a discount. Quite how 10% of £165.90 comes to £17.90 is beyond me!

Excuse me whilst I now try and decide if I want to fall asleep or be sick....

A few top tens for you.

Martial Arts moments

Fake movie trailers

Best and worst hardware (bit geeky those two).

I was tagged (apparently). So....

“THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the ‘6 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.”

1. I once thought I saw a UFO. It noticed me looking and sped off*

2. I have a bump on my head caused by running into Phillip Riggle in the playground about 25 years ago. People still comment on it occasionally.

3. When I was little I didn't use to like going to sleep until the number 8 was on my clock and I'd counted to eight, at which point I had to shut my eyes tight. If I opened them, I had to start again.

4. I played 'dodge the hammer' once when about three years old which involved throwing a hammer in the air and leaping out the way at the last minute. I was too slow on one occassion....

5. I used to be able to recite Pi to fifteen decimal places and tell you the exact speed of light as I thought it would help attract women.

6. It didn't.

I was going to put a saucy one in there last but too many work colleagues read this. ;)

Not sure I have many people I can tag in return. I'll pick Kel and anyone else reading that wants to take part - feel free.

*May or may not have been a UFO - I was very young at the time

The daily monster.

I can see myself spending some time trying to find interesting things here...

The seven garbage wonders of the world. Ahhh, we do such a great job of trashing this planet...

It's goodbye to the Chinese river dophin.

Planting forests may do more harm than good.

This one is for Miss C to prove that I wasn't making it up after we had a period of going "Yip Yip yip yip" a few weeks back.

Sesame street aliens.

Quick roundup.

- My mums house is still f**king freezing. Really must remember to take jumper next time.

- My Interwebs is fixed! Now I just have to fix my computer which is playing up....

- I have a new shower. Not sure if I mentioned that mine was playing up and I was spending most of the time cowering at the back of the shower to avoid the cold water. But I was. No longer however - warm water is brilliant!

- Train journeys are dull. Most interesting thing about mine was trying to decide if the smell of poo was coming from the annoying little dog/guinea pig thing with it's own seat in front of me, or the old man sat next to me....

Lots of babes with books - if you like that sort of thing...

(link via The Presurfer)

Firefly the MMO.

Shiny!

How to embarass the male population of a country - Condoms 'too big' for Indian men.

(the international standard length is 180mm in case you were curious)

And hour and a half to go on a Friday afternoon before I start a week off. Time is going slowly oddly enough. At least I have finished up everything I need to and finally get chance to post today (this morning being taken up by a meeting about 'The Vision' which I only really went to cos they said I had to plus there was free cake).

Still not sure about this whole 'new era' at work thing. As was pointed out by someone in my comments, I should stick around and see as everyone else is in the same boat. I guess now that I've looked at it, nothing much will change for me. I think I might start getting the things I want to make the job easier rather than being fobbed off as was the case in the past but content wise, I'll be doing exactly the same stuff.

Therin lies the problem maybe. Do I still want to do the same stuff? Maybe it really is time for a change.

Now all I have to do is think of something I actually want to do.....

In case you are wondering, my week away is not very exciting. Couple of days with the folks to make up for not going home at xmas. I was looking forward to Christmas on my own for a change but as I suspect my main form of entertainment - the internet - will still be broken by then, I'm feeling a little less excitied about the prospect of being in an empty flat with a mince pie for company. Hey ho-ho-ho.

Back in a week or so.

Start with this, then watch this and then have a play with this

Should keep you entertained for 10 minutes anyway.

Heh - CEO of Warner Music admits his kids have 'probably' downloaded music via P2P. Naughty, naughty.

Plane grounded when woman breaks wind and tries to burn away the smell. Could have been a plot to blow up the plane you know. With enough terrorists breaking enough wind in a small confined space like that....

We also have the case of this woman who had her 12 year old son arrested for sneaking into his grandparents house and opened his xmas presents. She be one harsh mum.

Scary Mary. Made me chortle (and hide behind the sofa for a bit).

Today saw the official release of the plans for the future of my department - it's merger and expansion over the coming months and then beyond. I was privy to a glimpse of this yesterday when I was taken to one side by the departmental head but today I could see 'The Vision' in all it's thirty one page glory. For the first time since I've been here - and probably much longer than that - the department has direction. A purpose. We won't simply be sat in the background providing a service, we will be carving a small empire in the University world for 'The Vision' is nothing less than bringing all electronic equipment and technical fields under our power. No computer or telephone, printer or PDA shall be used in our realm without our say so. No online activity undertaken without our grace.

But we shall be a benign ruler who wish all to be happy and 'Customer Satisfaction' shall be our new goal and purpose. For those who are willing and have the drive and motivation, this is an opportunity to attain power and glory. To ascend the ranks and change things.

For those that have the drive and motivation.....

Hmmmm, is that me?

Far from being the opportunity that most see, this shifting of the sands I find myself standing on could well be the thing that finally makes me leave....

Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of art. All I can say is euwwww.

One of the benefits to my internet being broken is that I have had more time to do other things, namely in this case a project I mentioned a while back. Nice to get a bit of practice with Flash again too. Anyway, most of you won't be interested but here is The Dangermouse File.

Little annoyed with someone? Why not damn them to hell.

Hehe - owned!

And no, I haven't been to her website....

It's good to have contacts in the right places. This weekend I went to see Leicester vs Sheffield Wednesdady at the Walkers Stadium with a ticket that cost me a fiver. The weather was a bit nippy and I had to be carefull who I cheered for - too loud for Leicester and I risked dissaproving glares from my avid Wednesday fan girlfriend or too loud for Wednesday and I risked being glared at by the 10,000 leicester fans we were sat with. Fun!

Sunday I was back at the Walkers for a rugby match. Normal ticket price of £30 - we get in for free! Again a bit cold and not that exciting but the streaker did make it worthwhile. Don't think he needed to worry too much about anyone seeing what he had on display in weather that cold....

I also bought the first new peice of furniture for my flat for 9 months (no, not a wadrobe - my clothes like living on the floor). It was only a small bookcase but it damn near killed me carrying it back from the shop. I have many bruises and aches today....

Apparently this airline has announced that they are going to start ofsetting the carbon emissions of their flights by donating to certain schemes - the cost of which will be included in the ticket price. Saves people having to go an do it themselves (should they be so inclined) and might prove an interesting selling point.

I'm slowly trying to ease myself back into this working/blogging thing after my few days off. Still not having the internet at home doesn't help with that but I'm not going to start a rant about how ******* useless the dozy ******* down at UK Online are for taking over a month to fix a simple fault on my ******* line!!!

*ahem*

Suffering from lack of sleep at the moment after staying up to almost midnight playing computer games before remembering I'd agreed to be in work for 7am today. Several groups of tossers who - for the second night running - decided it's a great idea to sing/argue/shout/cry loudly at 3am also didn't help and have left me somewhat bleary eyed and sporting a weeks worth of stubble. Not that the stubble is their fault, that was just me being too lazy to shave.

And I did have a nice - if somewhat drunken - birthday. Miss C actually had to fib and tell me that we'd finished all the wine in the house just to get me to go to bed.

I must have been drunk as I believed her.

Scientists levitate animals using sound. I just wonder why they decided a fish was a good animal to try?

If you don't want to try floating small animals, why not put your CD collection on a piece of paper.