No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet.

Instead I have been healing my wrist (which still makes a funny clicking noise, but is at least less painful), finishing up my move to my new place (the final bit of carpet gets laid today – and so I should be ‘finished’ moving in), working on various secret little projects of mine, and most importantly reading the comments people have left on the last post.

A few things I’d like to say,

• Yes it was a nasty job, but within 24 hours it had passed from my mind (as a lot of things do).  Therefore there is no psychological trauma involved.
• Thanks to everyone who wrote nice things, it’s appreciated – but please do remember that any number of you could do my job just as well as I can.  I’m nothing special, I just happen to be the bloke who writes about it.
• There are a lot of tragedies in the world, but I can’t fix them, I can only do what I do.  Everyone else should do what they can do to make the world a little better, whether that is volunteering for stuff, or just making a little donation to charity.  Those of us who can access the internet are a privileged minority, and should use this privilege to do nice things for other people.

The plan had been for me to go to the Great British Beer Festival, and try and do a ‘proper’ report on it.  Unfortunately I woke up that morning with what can only be described as a hangover…

I realised that if I went to the festival my hangover would be so galactically huge that it would actually have to travel back in time in order to fit in the whole range of agony due to me.

So I decided not to go.¹

I’ve also been a bit incommunicado because (once more) my system picked up a shedload of spyware/malware/etc…  So I’ve spent the last few days alternately swearing at, and then cleaning up my computer.

Can someone set me up with an interview with the person who wrote the Aurora software?  I’d really like to get their side of the story

(And get them alone in a room, so I can punch them in the throat…repeatedly).

I’ve also been playing around with Podcast software, and in an effort to make sure that I keep my promises and actually start podcasting – I’m going to announce that the first podcast will be released early next week.²

For those that are interested, the video of my talk³ is up here, just pick a mirror and download the “Blogs and Social Networks” video (warning large download). You may also need a special codec, which you can get from here^4.

The “UK EFF” Pledgebank still needs a few more people to sign up.  Seriously, if you think you can spare £5 a month in order to stop us sliding down the same silly slope that is American technological law then sign on up.  Digital rights, digital freedoms, call it what you will, but if you want to be allowed to continue to tape programmes off the television, listen to podcasts, and fiddle around with things that you own, then it is in your own best interest to have someone fighting to keep those rights.

I’m back at work on Wednesday (two night shifts), so with a bit of luck there will be some entertaining things for you to read in the near future.  Until then, I’ll leave you with a post I call “Multiple Trauma And Floppy Children”⁵

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^1.Which probably causes some astounding paradox that will rent open the space-time continuum or something, who knows…

^2.I’ve said it, I’ll have to do it now, rather than stand around in smoky bars just claiming that I’m going to do one.

^3.A video which isn’t half as embarrassing as I thought it might be.

^4.I take no responsibility if this codec contains loads of spyware.

^5.Which of course you will have read first, what with blog posts being in reverse chronological order.