Bringing new meaning to the term slacker.

04:19 am

my hard drive hosting all my mail etc has died. So don't expect much out of me in the next day or two. if you need me to see anything, text me.

04:22 am - MUGSS' Bugsy Malone

MUGSS Bugsy malone is this week. Despite replacing the directors last week, the show is absolutely fantastic and is working so well.

The Eeyores on stage last night were a particularly nice touch.

More when I'm less busy... .

10:48 pm

this is great

11:34 pm - Witchcraft

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-witchcraft_b_53865.html

12:47 pm - mySociety away weekend

Many of the people behind www.mysociety.org went to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere for the weekend to talk, think and see what happens: a massive amount of ideas and a sudden urge to wii.

I can now see why everyone I know who has a wii is raving about them. Hopefully mine will arrive tomorrow, although that will be just in time for Charlotte to go to Prague for a few days. Although I can hopefully play a bit so it doesn't hurt quite so much...

The weekend away was fun - very little immediate to show for it other than the UKCOD site launched (www.ukcod.org.uk), but stuff should start to appear online in the next few days and then magic might happen...

12:45 pm - Tea games

This tea game from tea.co.uk passed on by babbage which I'd not seen before. You probably need a mouse rather than a trackpad for some of the games though.

If you've visited tea.co.uk before, you might want to take another look as they've added lots of things

11:11 pm - Average speeds

since 6pm yesterday until 6pm tomorrow, I have an average speed of 16mph.

Which is a little insane.

09:55 am - More religion.

The last part of the Sam Harris / Andrew Sullivan conversation posted below: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/214/story214461.html (the yellow block is new)

This may also be interesting: http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-dna-of-religious-faith/

09:29 pm - This is a test

through the jabber interface to LJ

05:21 pm - More religious discussion

Lots of nuanced conversation: http://richarddawkins.net/article,536,God-Is-Not-a-Moderate,Sam-Harris-and-Andrew-Sullivan-Beliefnetcom

06:38 pm - Religion - A petitions response.

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page11053.asp

smirk.

12:00 am - mySociety in parliament

For those there this evening thinking that it was brutal, mysociety were giving evidence in parliament this morning:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Player/?Meeting=6902

"Ian" questioning is http://www.writetothem.com/about-ilg and Tom runs www.mysociety.org and the site...

(disclosure: I run directionlessgov and found the goat example). Although I've only listened to the first 30 minutes so far.

10:44 pm - Smirk

New from despair.com: <a href="http://www.despair.com/consistency.html">Consistency</a> and <a href="http://www.despair.com/customercare.html">Care</a>.

12:00 pm - Chris Lightfoot - 1978 - 2007

I first met Chris Lightfoot in a pub in London, and he was talking about various theyworkforyou.com ideas, and how the Cambridge City Council hadn't put the taxi fares up enough. In his head, these were highly connected topics that he took the time to join up for me (he paused for a while and had a different conversation with Francis for a few seconds to let me try and catch up and understand what the hell he was talking about before going ahead again). I can't remember what I worked on coming back on the train from London that night 2 and a bit years ago, but it was made significantly better by his input.

Brilliant, insightful and quite wierd until you realised that it's not, he was just so far ahead of where your brain is, that you can't even imagine the connections he skipped as trivial.

Someone who wanted to make the world a better place through working on real data and real services.

Be it parliament through theyworkforyou.com, downingstreetsays.com, directionlessgov.com, writetothem.com, hearfromyourmp.com, hassleme, pledgebank.com or petitions.pm.gov.uk, and many, many more all of those have his fingerprints all over them, and there are many other projects besides. What petitions has weathered in the weeks following his death (petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax) is a testament to his design, planning, skill, and deep understanding of the entire software stack which makes services like that work.

He left us the Sunday before the show getin. Even a week later, having done relatively little mysociety work over the last week (as I write this), his loss is huge, and will continue to be felt by the whole community for a long time.

RIP Chris, we miss you in ways we can't even know yet, and there are oh so many that we already do.

Quoting from the mysociety note about him: "He wandered into differing disciplines, made a mark, and wandered on again like a giant that had no idea he'd just trodden on a village."

10:04 pm - More Dawkins related stuff

12:41 pm - Show week

So that's done.

Having slept solidly for about 10 hours, and slightly feeling recovered from the lurgy which had me mostly dead after the getout yesterday, I'm not entirely sure what to do today.

Pottering round doing bits of the website update in preperation for freshers' week and summer work. It feels wierd there not being any MUGSS.

PS - Has anyone heard from Si today? I hear he was quite unwell after I left.

03:34 pm - religion

I wonder if "End" should be "Profit!"

02:42 am - Disturbing

http://eclectech.blogspot.com/2007/02/valentines-day-treat-for-you-all.html although not as bad as the petting zoo...

12:17 am - Start The Week

The topic of Radio 4's "Start The Week" today (Monday) was "Theatre, corruption and people of a certain age."

so appropriate.

01:41 am - Sleep

i should go to sleep.