Monthly archive: January 2007

A soft sheer gauzy fabric. Something delicate, light, or flimsy. A fine film of cobwebs often seen floating in the air or caught on bushes or grass.

Read more about gossamer at Answers.com

On Monday I went for a run with three colleagues at lunchtime.

They were going to run for four miles and back, but said that I could take a shortcut back around the three-mile mark if I needed it.

It turned out I did need it, so I asked, out of breath, how to get back to the office. It sounded easy: right at the next roundabout, then right again at some point, they said, pointing in the general direction of our office building.

Twenty minutes later, after turning right at what I thought was the first roundabout (but I later checked was just crossroads), I found myself running nowhere near my desk. All I had was my work pass – no mobile, no travel pass, no money – and my notorious lack of sense of direction.

I stopped, caught my breath, asked for directions a few times until I found my way back in time for a meeting I feared I was going to miss.

They are going again today but I am not sure I can take all that excitement.

(n.) A traveling mender of metal household utensils. (Chiefly British) a member of any of various traditionally itinerant groups of people.

Read more about tinker at Answers.com

Since last Tuesday morning, every message I send myself (from my Yahoo! Mail account to the same account) goes straight into the spam folder. Does anybody know why that is? Has Yahoo! changed some settings?

I can send myself messages from work, or from my other email accounts, but anything from my Yahoo! Mail address is treated like the lowest scamming scum.

Am I being stupid and it is something very obvious that I am failing to see? This is important to me, because I often send myself messages as reminders to do something. A set of rules then places them in folders and I process them following the GTD approach (which, for those who know me well, could be short for 'Gay Tea Dance' but instead stands for David Allen's Getting Things Done, the one solution that stopped email bottlenecks and almost rids me of painful procrastination.

I have selected my messages and clicked on 'This is not spam', and created a filter that moves mail from myself into the Inbox, but apart from it not being an ideal solution, it also does not seem to work.

So should I finally switch to Gmail? I am using it as a separate account and I am already very tempted but I am not prepared to trust all my mail into the hands of a service which, no matter how good it is, is after all still in Beta and suffers from major cock-ups like losing the entire contents of some users' mailboxes.

Any of various swimming and diving birds of the family Podicipedidae, having a pointed bill and lobed, fleshy membranes along each toe.

Read more about grebe at Answers.com

Apple is demanding that people remove links to the Windows mobile iPhone interface simulation wallpaper that were plastered everywhere in the last couple of days. Cease and desist letters from lawyers and all. Damn serious.

I happened to bookmark that very same link in del.icio.us, and you might still be able to see it in the column on the right hand side if it has not been pushed down yet by more recent links.

Now, do not get me wrong. I work in software development myself, and I can therefore appreciate that people sweated blood to develop icons and interfaces and products. I also understand that revenues of gazillions of dollars depend on this.

But come on – a link. Is a link going to damage you, huge corporation?

Is it not perhaps providing you with free advertising?

Or could it possibly be because look, I can customise my smartphone that runs Windows Mobile to make it look like an iPhone – but people with iPhones will be able to do bugger all with their sexy handsets because Apple decided they should be so closed that users cannot even change the battery themselves but have to send them back for them to be serviced?

Many people will benefit from the tightness of the iPhone and embrace the proposed user experience, making it another Apple success story. I probably will not, but cannot wait for the effect on other companies who will hopefully try and come out with handsets with similar specs.

• Apple legal throw their weight around
  (with link to full text of email from Apple)
• Enough already with the iPhone hand wringing!
  (or, how all this criticism thrown at Apple is getting out of hand and not entirely justified).
• The Ultimate iPhone Frequently Asked Questions
• Ultimate iPhone FAQs list, part 2

Lying; untruthful: a mendacious child. False; untrue.

Read more about mendacious at Answers.com

Smalltown Boy is a song that always gets me, and I don't even particularly like it.

I don't even consider it as incredibly fitting to describe my past. Alright, I might have been 'always a lonely boy', and I had more than my fair share of being 'pushed around and kicked around', but who isn't?

And I always took great care hiding the fact that I was gay, so I can't really say I was 'the one that they'd talk about around town'.

Besides, 'mother [did] understand why [I] had to leave'.

Lately, however, I have not been able to listen to the song without my eyes welling up with tears. Hell, even now that I'm writing about it, I feel some sort of ocular wetness.

And there's one occasion that is guaranteed to make me howl, so much so that people have been known to come up to me and comment on the fact that I must relate to the song a lot. That's the when the D.E. Experience performs it at the RVT, and I look around me at so many faces completely entranced in the story that the song tells, and I realise that many of us are small town boys, drawn to the big city in search of like-minded souls, some respect and personal development without having to pretend to be different.

That is what moves me immensely and on occasions some tears have been shed and probably shared, which makes us less alone at the end of the day.

• Watch the video for Smalltown Boy on YouTube
• Smalltown Boy lyrics
• Bronski Beat on Wikipedia

Diagnostic or distinctive. A mark, such as the cedilla of façade or the acute accent of resumé, added to a letter to indicate a special phonetic value or distinguish words that are otherwise graphically identical.

Read more about diacritic at Answers.com

1. A new Icelandic vodka is on the market. Reyka Vodka is made by Scotch whisky maker William Grant & Sons: they built a distillery in Iceland to use lava-filtered pure water (i.e. ordinary water in Iceland) and geothermal energy (i.e. ordinary energy in Iceland) to produce it. Must taste soon to check if the flavour is as clever as the marketing spiel. (Via a shop window in Soho and an ad in Metro.co.uk)
2. Sabbath elevators stop automatically on every floor, to allow for the Jewish law for abstaining from using electricity on Shabbat. (Via Joe. My. God.)
3. An Elvis taxon, in alpha taxonomy, is what appears to be the rediscovery of a vanished animal, but which really is the discovery of a look-alike, not unlike the many sightings of Elvis Presley after his death, and his many impersonators (Via kottke)
4. Harry Potter and the Decline of the High Elves is an acclaimed Harry Potter fan fiction in Spanish that landed its author a three-book contract with Random House. (Via BBC News)
5. I Knit has opened a store near our flat in Vauxhall and is holding knitting classes. A few friends and neighbours are planning to provide a small gay contingent to go and learn. I can already knit but I might go for the goss. (Via friend's email, subject line: 'S'nowt so butch as admitting to knitting')
6. Max Raabe's Palast Orchester, specialised in authentic 20s and 30s music, might be better known internationally for their take on pop music. There are a couple of gems on the Moderne Hits album, namely Oops!… I Did it Again and Sex Bomb (Via a colleague's iPod)
7. The iPhone is just a phone. A p-h-o-n-e. And even I, a sucker for eye-catching design that covers up some glorified nothingness, can see that clearly. Ok, the iPhone looks great and, knowing Apple, there is great innovation in the interface and user experience, but… a closed system? Locked on a carrier? No Outlook sync? 600USD? Wait until June? I'd say my current Windows Mobile smartphone, pimped up recently with a 2GB memory card, outspecs it already. (Via pretty much everyone this week)

Relating to a threshold.

Read more about liminal at Answers.com

Yesterday at work I had to illustrate new features of our main product to a team of about ten people.

It had been some time since the last time I treaded the board(room)s, but past professional experience and tips and tricks I picked up in my previous life as a (not very often) jobbing actor in Paris meant that I quickly found my feet and sailed away.

It went well. However, there are a few things I was unaware of or I had forgotten, and that I would like to share with you here.

1. Do not guzzle one litre of Pepsi Max in the 60 minutes prior to being locked in a room for two hours with a bunch of people listening to you: No matter how parched you feel, caffeine + liquid = thank heavens for that unscheduled break halfway through.
2. Do bring a bottle of water though, for you are likely to be speaking for most of the two hours. The trick is to reach for the bottle confidently as a notorious heckler asks you a question, then take a swig as you try and come up with something plausible to say. Take another swig when you realise that your mind has gone blank. Then pretend to have swallowed some water the wrong way and cough repeatedly. By this stage people might have forgotten that an answer was asked in the first place.
3. It does not matter if you really like the shirt you are wearing. The last thing you want to worry about when your team lead ask you a tricky question is whether your top tugs a little too snugly across your post-Christmas belly as you sit down. It's work. It's the UK. You are not supposed to take pleasure wearing clothes you like.
4. Do not let the fact that your team's tech lead's eyes have been firmly shut for the past ten minutes dishearten you. He might simply have had a late night yesterday. Nothing to do with the unexciting subject matter you might be delivering a bit on the monotonous side.
5. Do not point at features on your laptop's display with your finger. Either wiggle the pointer around them or stand up and point at the image displayed by the projector you have connected to it. I figured that one out straight away, and yet I kept doing it wrong, thereby not exactly radiating the sharp, confident and professional persona I had planned to impersonate.

A small door or gate, especially one built into or near a larger one. A small window or opening, often fitted with glass or a grating.

Read more about wicket at Answers.com

Travbuddy is a website where you can check off a list of the countries that you have travelled to and automatically generate a world map colouring in the places that you have visited.

I had used some other map before, but this one is better because you can select which individual North American states you've been too instead of colouring the whole of the US just because you've been to NYC.

You can also copy the code and paste it into your blog or myspace page – but it did not fit into my template, and I like things just so, so I used a screen grab. You can click on the picture I posted here to see larger versions.

• Make your own map at Travbuddy.com
• See larger versions of the map of countries I have visited
• View my previous map from January 2004

An inhabitant; a resident. One that frequents a particular place.

Read more about denizen at Answers.com

When somebody tags you with a meme, and it's the first time anyone does that to you, the least you can do is fall out to bed at 3am to oblige.

So, after a gentle nudge by Mike at Troubled Diva, here we go.

Seven successes in 2006.

1. Becoming a consultant for my current employer, a large media organisation I had been admiring for as long as I can remember and harbouring a not-very-secret ambition to work for them one day. The day I landed the contract was the proudest I'd ever felt since finding out I'd got a first in my degree, and that was a very long time ago.
2. Moving into a beautiful flat, conveniently placed in the heart of Gay Vauxhall (and then stopping going out almost completely, go figure). More of a success for Dr B. who bought the flat, to be entirely accurate. Still, it was a long ordeal that I followed closely, from the day he put his old flat on the market (early September 2005) to the day we moved in (5 May 2006). I also played a major role decluttering the old flat to make it more appealing to potential buyers, and in keeping it tidy and clean every single day because the estate agents could bring people round any time.
3. Going to my first Eurovision Song Contest live experience (Athens, May, miles away from the action, up, up in the last rows with a partial view of the stage) and seeing Madonna live for the first time (Confessions tour, July, Cardiff, about 15 metres away from her skilfully concealed wrinkles). I'd wanted to do both for so many years that I was worried my very high expectations were going to leave me slightly disappointed. I needn't have feared: Madonna was worth every one of the many, many, many pounds I spent on her gig ticket, and living the ESC experience is just as magic as I thought it was going to be. Goosebumps just thinking about it now.
4. Becoming a full-time employee after years of consultancies and freelance assignments (with the above employer, in a much-sought after new role I had been after for a while – life could not be better). Sadly, I now earn less than I used to, but my pension fund is starting to smile again, and I no longer shiver at the thought of even a simple three-day flu that in the past would have meant a 14% cut in my monthly salary.
5. Meeting my brother. Twice. More of a 'being in same room for five minutes with estranged sibling', for the first time in over fifteen years. He still gives me the creeps and has the power to paralyse me with fear, but this time I resisted the urge to hide until he went away, and that is a success, albeit a bitter-sweet one. It comes with the realisation that today I am safe in a new life 700 miles away from him. It's a long and complex story that spans over thirty years and that I feel I am not prepared to go into here.
6. Making big improvements at striking a healthier balance between an unbridled emotional side and a stifled rational instinct, and feeling all the better for it. I took great leaps in this respect in 2006, with the expected occasional highs and lows, and I can see the results almost daily in my reaction to what surrounds me.
7. Turning going to the gym into a habit I enjoy rather than a chore I have to do. Some time during the course of 2006 I realised that it is fun, and the feeling of well-being after a workout is now what I am after, rather than a perfect body or lifting heavier weights than you. And that changed everything. The proof is in how regularly I attended the gym this year (a steady average of three times a week) as opposed to the extremes of the previous years (twice a day every day for a few weeks, then nothing at all for up to a month).

Five things you didn't know about me (and that you will soon know if you care to keep reading)

1. I like to put things in boxes, and stick label on them. There is a bookcase behind my desk with twelve identical plain cardboard boxes, each with a post-it note on it describing what is inside. There are another eight smaller plain cardboard boxes on the shelves in front of me, again with post-it notes. Sometimes, if the contents fall into more than one category, these boxes may contain even more boxes. Of course, that does not stop me from hoarding things and jamming them into the first container I happen to find. But putting a lid on it and sticking a label that says 'Junk – to sort' restores balance in the universe.
2. I ate 946 small snack-size apples during 2006. I can tell you that because I have been regularly keeping a food diary for a couple of years now. It's not something I particularly enjoy doing, but it's the only way I know to have some sort of consciousness of what I eat, and that helps me maintain a healthy weight.
3. Some years ago I had a major virtual crush on an blogger I have never met. I read his every word religiously, sent him a book off his wishlist on his birthday, and thought of him holding me in his geeky arms as I fell asleep most nights. Thinking of it all now, I can very well see how some individuals with less than sturdy personalities could slide into stalking. All I ever did was save some of the photos of himself he posted on his blog – which I still have on my hard drive by the way. I'm smiling as I write this, I suppose it's because I'm looking at my web-adolescent self.
4. I roll my deodorant stick fifteen times under each armpit. Always. I have no idea why or how or when I started this, but any other way would feel wrong. I have absolutely no other quirky behaviours like flicking the light switch on and off a certain number of times, or checking and checking and then checking again if I've perhaps, maybe, just in case, you never know, left the gas on (also because we have ceramic plates). But deodorant, it's rolling it fifteen times that gives you all-day protection. Everybody knows that.
5. I am much happier walking faster for longer than slower for a shorter time. If the direct path between A and B is jammed with people, I'll always go via C. So every morning when I change trains at Oxford Circus on one of the most crowded intersections (Victoria line to Central line) I follow the exit signs instead, go up one level, then turn around, go back down one level through virtually deserted corridors at peak time and pop onto the platform at the emptier end. Same thing on the way home from work. You can always spot me on the train as the only passenger in a good mood. Next time, come and say hello.

Now, I know it is customary to and pass the meme on to other people to keep it going, but would it be really horrible if I dropped the ball now?

Alright then. Chig, DG, Jonathan. Please try do not hate me too much.

• Mike's post on Troubled Diva that started all this
• Mike's reminder that he has tagged me with the meme

Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Often used in the plural.

Read more about fungible at Answers.com

I missed the live fireworks this year but from YouTube videos they look like the very impressive London Eye-focused display they had last year, and which I had the privilege to admire from a rooftop in Vauxhall.

That's all very nice. But… one-point-three million pounds?

In other – possibly related – news, as of January 1st I now have to pay Transport for London 89.10 pounds every month just for the privilege to cross Central London and go to work.

• London 2007 New Year fireworks on YouTube
• How London's display dazzled the world – Times Online
• Transport fare rises 'too high' – BBC News

To lessen the force or intensity of; moderate. To take away; subtract.

Read more about bate at Answers.com

I am definitely a lurker. I read and use and breathe the web, but before posting a comment anywhere or actively taking part in an online discussion, I absolutely need to make sure that I have something to say, and that my contribution adds value, and that nobody else has already made the same point.

Needless to say, most times there is no need for me to leave a trace.

A couple of years ago Veerle Pieters wrote a post encouraging people to leave a comment saying just who they are, where they live, what they do. She did it again last year and today, and Roger Johansson at 456 Berea Street followed suit.

I left a quick comment on both sites, mainly because I've been reading them for some time now and I thought it was a good time to let them know it.

I would really love it if you, gentle reader, could take one minute of your time to do that for me.

You know how I go on and on about how I only have two readers, who I meet on a regular basis? Well, I've always believed it was an exaggeration, but I'd hate for that to be true, so let me know you're there. Just knock.

• Veerle's Blog | No more lurking! It’s De-Lurking time again :)
• De-lurk and tell me what you want to read about | 456 Berea Street

I noticed in the gay press how many venues for us gentlemen who can name (and surname) all five Girls Aloud are closed or running deprived of normal residencies during the first couple of weeks in January.

Some even venture into launching some sort of supermarket-style promotion like Crash next Saturday 13:

• five pound entry before midnight with a leaflet/ad;
• open bar for the first hour;
• free entry at Ultra (after hours at Area next door) on Sunday morning

Some of my friends are detoxing in January. But they do keep one or two wildcards they can play if something this extraordinary happened to come up.

• Crash 13 January (DiscoDamaged)

Given over to dissipation; dissolute. Recklessly wasteful; wildly extravagant.

Read more about profligate at Answers.com

I came back from my last trip to Italy with a few videotapes that I'd kept at the family house. They had been sent to me by some good friends when I was living in France, so that I would not lose touch with the political climate at the time.

They thought the best way was for me to catch up was to watch social and political TV satire and this is why I now have eighteen hours' worth of Pippo Chennedy Show, La posta del cuore and L'ottavo nano. Sabina Guzzanti, who featured prominently in these shows, was later sued by Berlusconi for 'lies and insinuations' and her show pulled.

I spent part of the weekend transferring these shows on DVD and I am wondering: is it legal to do so? The quality is of course pretty bad, but does that matter? Isn't the fact of copying/duplicating comparable to intellectual theft?

Funny how VHS created a stir when it first came out, and they tried to ban it because of copyright infringements. Now it's obsolete, but file sharers are prosecuted.

Will we one day in ten years' time be laughing at the poor quality of today's DVDs, unable to give up the buzz of HD?

• L'ottavo nano (in Italian)
• Pippo Chennedy Show on wikipedia (in Italian)
• Sabina Guzzanti on wikipedia (in English)

Of, relating to, or designating a disease having no known cause.

Read more about idiopathic at Answers.com

Today we removed the gingerbread cookies from the Christmas tree (and resisted the tempation to eat them, but only because they had been hanging for three weeks on a tree that had been sprayed with insect killer).

We then took down the cards we had hung on the walls, and the fairy lights around a friend's artwork (a huge revolver printed on anguished words – yes, peace and joy to the world).

I neatly packed away all the baubles into our Christmas box, saved a few cards I want to keep and put the others in my backpack to take them to one of those recycling points where they make trees grow out of them. Or something like that.

Dr B. and I looked at each other as if to say, there you go, another Christmas is gone, it was a good one. Another eleven and a half months until we can celebrate again.

I looked at the depressing trail of pine needles all the way to the recycling bins three floors down. I am glad we had a real tree, we now have the room in the new flat, and Dr B. had never had one before.

But I do hope that next Christmas the fake one that hides under our bed for the rest of the year will enjoy its fifteen minutes of glory.

A set of 24 or sometimes 25 sheets of paper of the same size and stock; one twentieth of a ream. A collection of leaves of parchment or paper, folded one within the other, in a manuscript or book.

Read more about quire at Answers.com

An abnormal new growth of tissue in animals or plants; a tumor.

Read more about neoplasm at Answers.com

Saw Kylie at Wembley last night.

She is the most adorable pint-sized princess around.

I did not think she could hold notes so well. Digital trickery, skillful camouflage with the backing singers, or simply better vocals?

A little bit cheesy – not that we don't like cheesy – when she commented on some serious competition she had in the audience near the stage and asked three tiny little girls with feather head-dresses and bunny ears to come up on stage with her and impro to I Can't Get You Out Of My Head. They can't have been older than four. Their mummies must have been proud.

And what a finale (Jonathan has the details): I am sure that home-grown sci-fi fan Dr B. had goosebumps all over.

To prevent or forbid authoritatively: blackball, negative, turn down, veto. Idioms: turn thumbs down on. See accept/reject. To be unwilling to accept, consider, or receive. To decline.

Read more about nix at Answers.com

Repeated involuntary defecation somewhere other than a toilet by a child age four or older that continues for at least one month.

Read more about encopresis at Answers.com