Very good stuff!

But there's more to this than meets the eye - the suee isn't a customer, rather a business which Google turned away.

We'll see if we can't use this in some future project...

Benefiting from branding. It'll be interesting to see this one develop!

Well I've not been using Flickr as much as I should have been, so I think it's time to get on with a mission.

Tomorrow I will take as many decent (or indecent - the good kind) photos with my mobile phone as I can.

Then I'll just stick them onto Flickr and see what happens. It will be like a day in the life of me!

If anyone want to see anything in particular, just email me.

I'm trying to get as much A2 media studies coursework done as possible so I can concentrate on some other topics next academic year.

Backing Up

One of the things I have decided to do with my coursrwork and research study is digitize ( and permannently store all alterations to) any document I write during this period.

Method? Not such a thought out one, as yet, but I'm working with it as I do it. At the moment, I create something in Word, save it at school, email it to Gmail, print it, make alterations/additions when I have the time to just look at it, update the document in Word at school, email it to Gmail, print a new, updated copy and destroy the old one.

My hope is that I'll be able to look back upon the many revisions each document just by typing in it's name in the Gmail searcher. Which might come in handy...

Blogger as a Useful Tool

Starting today, I'm going to be documenting my work on the coursework project using Blogger.

It's really only for private use, and you couldn't possibly use it to copy my work.

I'm noting down which document's I've worked on, which I'm working on (or think need working on), and milestones.

Good stuff, but needs more content. Don't even try to use it for an hour or so. Tis very slow.

...and I feel much better for it!

Say it like you spell it. This picture just about sums up the whole thing.

Side note: I prefer the term "townie" and would like to tell everyone that we've been using that in the Westcountry for ages, way before "chav" took off. I regularly visited my cousin and told him he was a total "townie". I expect I can still do so, as it doesn't really mean the same thing as "chav" to these sorts of people. Also, "townie" is in Google's archive of words, whereas "chav"... aint.

Bless 'em. Without them, our streets just wouldn't be as dangerous.

Last night I was mediating on the improvement on Buster Tests.

I had a brainwave. I'd seen the script.aculo.us demonstrations earlier, and was going to use them to integrate a new feature which wouldn't be so acceptable if they weren't dolled-up.

Take a look at my latest test, which features the unnamed feature. Kevin and I are working on a catchy name for it at the moment, and I'm sure I'll be asking as many people as I can tomorrow, in addition to you.

You'll see a little green tick next to the answer entry box, click it and see what happens.

What do you think? I know that this might make the tests useless for some people - but not those who wish to learn a subject. Not at all. Actually, this new feature makes Buster Tests ten times more useful to those who want to learn how to do calculations, quicktime.

When I'm studying how to do a calculation, I'm always looking in the back for an answer (that is, if I don't know it myself). Then, once I see what to do, I go ahead and do the question, even if I know the answer straight out.

This method of learning is one which really works - hands down. It's rehearsing for a test. There should never be an uncomfortable mental silence when you don't know how to answer a question (especially when revising). Seek out the answer, and it will be ingrained in your brain, with a permanent link between question and method.

Additionally, the feature allows the testee to check their answer there and then - another thing I do regularly. It allows for confidence to be built up in the particular topic, which is very helpful when it comes to the actual exams.

I've been playing around with Odeo over the last few days.

I'm a bit of a podcast enthusiast - I like them and think they're an excellent example of of media convergence and evolution caters superbly to the Internet generation.

I don't want to beat down Odeo, but they do have a long way to go before they can even consider making a public appearance. I really want Odeo to work and work well, but it doen't quite cut the mustard when it comes to being a "Web 2.0" Internet service.

Odeo has amazing potential, and some things on the Odeo site actually made me say "wow" (see the podcast previewer), but I get a far too chunky feeling from the whole thing and I'm certainly not going to be switching to it from iPodder (which, incidentally, has recently added a brilliant "force genre" feature in a new release).

Much fine-tuning must be done by the Odeo team, now, to get it's launch (which will no doubt be a spectacular ball of hype) right. Otherwise, Apple will stomp all over it.

Good luck, team Odeo.

I'll miss him - he was quite a funny person.

He's a nutcase now.

Microsoft does RSS in IE.

As I speak buster is tripping his tits off. It's not such a bad one this time, but you can tell he's seeing things unusually. His eyes are wondering all over the place, he's staring at the walls waaay too much, and when you approach him he moves like he's completely please with himself.

Hang on a mo, he's just backed himself into the corner again. Bad trip alert.

This toad was like a green ball which happened to have a few appendages.

You can search your Gmail with this great little plugin. Works marvelously, but I wonder how much space it uses up...

Glad I finally found something that would do this. I suggest you download this one - Firefox takes absolutely aaages to load up sometimes, and as computing leads towards Internet use, speedy start up times become essential. Update: it works brilliantly!

What's very useful about all this swish emailing of pages and searching of emails is the way it helps me to create an information buffer. Here's an example of how I use the 'buffer':

1. shopping for a wedding gift
2. make purchase without signing up for an account
3. a receipt is given, with important order numbers in case of mishaps
4. I copy and paste all of that text and put it into a note in Backpack
5. one week goes by, no clear mishaps, don't think I need information any more
6. Backpack emails the entire page to my Gmail account
7. now that information is easily searchable
8. I don't have to worry about not having the number to hand
9. I can delete the entry in Backpack, making room for more stuff.

Simple, easy, effective.

Take a look at my trip to school. Also, I told you it was dirty.

That's around £60 quid, with £40 toners. I'd buy it.

You might even say: "Love/Hate: LOVEFiLM".

Likes

1. Massive number of DVDs on offer.
2. Great website - amazing rating and queueing system that works blindingly well.
3. Lots of extra content for the film buff.
4. Well designed in general.
5. Lists of films you might like to watch, recommendations.
6. Quite good value, but...

Dislikes

1. Slow to dispatch new DVDs.
2. Don't always give you what's at the top of your list.
3. Won't send you out a package to return the DVDs if you binned your other one.
4. Website isn't actively sync'd with their database; only know if a DVD has been dispatched by the evening.
5. Just that feeling like their being too slow to dispatch the next one, and that they aren't considering that you'll want to have the DVDs over the weekend.

Recently I've noticed how good Gmail's spam filter has been working.

It has been working so well that, unusually, the amount of spam cached in my Spam tray is down to 1273, whereas it was at about 2000 a few months ago.

This could easily be just because they remove the spam messages sooner after their determined to be spam, but I like to think spammers are starting to not bother with GMail accounts, perhaps owing to a low click-through rate.

I've not seen spam in my sacred inbox for ages now, and I couldn't be happier because of it. Outlook was simply awful for spam, and that's why should I buy a Mac, I will not be using Mail. Even if Mail is supported by Spotlight, I when I used Google Desktop Search and Outlook I never, ever wanted any results from my email. Searching in Gmail is just fine for me.

If you're a millionaire, that is.

Over the last few days Buster, my beloved Border Terrier, has been acting a little odd. Only tonight have I realised why.

It turns out the Buster is one of the many dogs that are, and I am not kidding in any way, addicted to licking toads. No joke.

He's been doing it for ages, but I had never thought it would effect him.

It all started with finding the odd young toad, chasing it around the garden, building up the nerve to paw it and make it jump a bit more so the chase could go on.

As Buster grew used to the toads that appeared in the garden from time to time, he started to get a little closer. Close enough for a sniff or a quick touch on the mouth.

But lately he has been dropped into the dark world of toad abuse, licking them at any chance he can get. I didn't realise the toads were the problem, but over the last few days Buster has been acting REALLY weird. He's been very reclusive and shy.

The first night I noticed this was the night of what I like to call "The Big Trip". Buster had been "playing" with a frog in the garden, I wanted to go upstairs and so I had to drag him in away from the frog, He went mad, scratching at the door and moaning like crazy to be let back out so he could be reunited with his supplier.

That night, as I sat at the desk, Buster took a turn for the worse. At first I didn't understand why he was backing himself right into the corner of my room, hiding under my bed when I tried to get to him and shaking when I eventually got myself near enough to him to see how he was.

Buster was tripping his tits off.

And he knows it! For the last few days now he's been constantly scratching on the kitchen door, moaning to be let out. And what for? No the usual tiddles on the grass, oh no. As soon as I let him out he went straight for the places the toads are usually found, desperate for a fix.

When I was out mowing the grass today when I found the toad, less than half a metre away from one of it's usual hideouts. I think there's only one, and if there is you can the picture of it to the right.

Buster saw it and went absolutely frickin' mental, darting himself across the garden and desperately poking it's head at it. Of course I didn't know that toads could get dogs high at this point, but when Buster started to foam at the mouth, I knew something wasn't right.

Buster has now gone cold turkey after a family intervention.

He looks like he hates us all now, especially me for some reason (probably because he was tripping madly in my room and I was the one that got really close to him while he did it). We're all on Toad watch now, and I'll inform you all when the withdrawal symptoms end.

Related:

• Toads and dogs - some background
  
• Ausie dogs get high - just like my Buster!
  

Get a green box, put things in the green box, put the green box out.

...in about five years' time if all goes well!

I have been SO unusually tired this evening. I did loads of work on Buster Tests (3 new tests, a mass mail and lots of back end magic), but now I feel SO tired!

I was just walking Buster today, as usual, in the empty countryside.

A car pulled up about 30 metres away from Buster and I as we walked (well, I pulled he tugged) back home, which always scares me because I don't want to be kidnapped or anything like that.

A tall, middle aged man then got out of the car, and walked towards the boot. The car was facing away from me so it looked like he was walking towards me. My pulse shot up. He opens the boot. Again with the pulse (oh PLEASE let there be no weapons in there).

There were no weapons.

Out jumped two youngish Border Collies, who proceeded to run down a small off-lane.

Buster went mad, but I was overjoyed.

We walked past their house on the way back, and they were very angry with Buster (teeth out and dribbling all over while they barked).

His site must be from the time any information on the interweb was amazing.

Can you see any lovely changes in the way information is presented?

I recently realized how often I talk to Buster.

The blog is now "IE Happy." That is, it ain't "Firefox Beautiful."

I feel some marketing coming on...

It doesn't quite work from the off, and it isn't really very good, but this is how to get it working. Sort of.

1. Get Gmail, or any other email service which offers free automatic forwarding of emails. It's best if you can get the one you use to do this, but if not just sign up to a Gmail account.
2. Set Backpack to send the email reminders to the forwarding address.
3. Set that email account to forward incoming emails from Backpack to [your username]@orange.net
   If it isn't your usual email account, get it to forward them to you, too.
4. Set up your orange.net account to alert you by SMS if you get any emails in your Orange inbox.
5. When Backpack sends a reminder, you get it in your email account and on your phone!

Great! This does work, but...

1. It's slow - that text could take anywhere from ten minutes to 2 days.
2. It's incomplete - Orange only shows you the first 30 odd characters of the SUBJECT before cutting it off, because of all the other text in the message and the space limit.

I leave it on anyway, because these are reminders and it still is a very good reminder to receive it out of the blue, especially when you haven't acted on it when it arrived in your email inbox.

Now I warn you, this is the most distressing set of images I have seen in a long, long time. I'm really not joking.

It's nothing particularly distressing, like gore, violence or sex, but it is basically all of them converged.

The first thing you might ask is, is it real? Well I hope not, but... blimey!

Thanks, Popbitch.

God I hate debugging. It must be the very worst job in the IT world.

I especially hate debugging when the bug is nowhere to be seen. That's awful, that.

Wehey I love buying stuff!

Today I'll be making a trip to the bike shop to purchase a lovely £100 bicycle. That's a bit cheap I know, but I only want one which works.

I'm trading in the money I had saved up for driving lessons for this; I agree with bicycles more and want to loose that revision weight.

Update: Actually, hold those plans. I have a better idea...

Why hasn't this been featured in the news more?

Contains colourful nouns.

Oh, the brilliance of them! Sheer cleverness! (ID cards that is)

It's impossible to achieve perfect order. Total chaos is unacceptable.

You're left with a trade-off; and equilibrium which you determine.

I'm slowly becoming an order nut. The clean freak runs strong in this one, but I manage to suppress it enough. The previous article was an outlet of my cleanfreakedness, I believe. Where you can order something to reduce the stress of chaos, I don't see why you shouldn't. Computers are the ideal helpers for this, too.

Choose your feed title, show naming format, artists, genres and album text and stick with it!

For the sake of order in this new and frankly chaotic medium, it is essential that the producers of mainstream shows (I'm looking at you Fausto!) stick to what they have chosen to use for as long as they can.

Changing these details from show to show causes absolute chaos with iTunes and does my head in. As all of you podcasters are intelligent, understanding people who hope for podcasting to be big, I'd honestly take this advice and action it.

Want a perfect example of how podcasts should appear in iTunes? Take a look at Wanda Wisdom's past few 'casts:

• playlist/feed title: Luck Bitch Radio
• show nomenclature: Lucky Bitch Radio #[show no.]: [show title]
• artist: Wanda Wisdom
• album: Lucky Bitch Radio
• genre: Humour

That is the ideal way to label your ID3 tags and feed. Everything is correct, understandable and the genre is spot on. You can have "podcast" as a genre if you want, but I prefer "humour" as a genre; it communicates more. Users will know if a file is a podcast or not from simply looking at the other information, especially the title of the track if it is done correctly.

Even if you have guests on your show, like Wanda does, don't put them in your artist tag, because they didn't make the show. DO put them in the comments tag or notes tag, a field which is searchable but people do not sort the files by. It is additional information, not important information. The same goes for the URL of your site (she even does this!).

Clearly there isn't much to do and it's all quite simple. If you're having trouble remembering what convention you want to use, just write it down on a card and put it next to the monitor.

If you aren't happy with the conventions you have been using, think about it, change them and then stick with that. Think hard before changing them, however. Magde Weinstein has recently changed her feed title to Yeast Radio, which is a positive, clever move. I hope it stays that way. Fausto Fernos has been playing with his feed title a bit recently (perhaps not knowingly, though), which has messed up iTunes for me.

Remember that the title of your feed is the title of your show, and that the tagline does not belong here, and you certainly should avoid special charecters like ":" and "@". For example, Fausto's show's feed should be entitled "Feast of Fools" and not "Feast of Fools: a show about everything". Firstly "a show about everything" isn't even consistently used by Fausto as a tagline, so why keep it up in the feed title? Secondly, it gets in the way of the meaning of the title of the feed. Finally, the colon isn't even rendered by iPodder in the iTunes playlist title, and on the iPod it makes the title too long to fill the screen.

Simple, logical changes like this will help podcasting, and improve the experience of podcasting for the masses.

And I WILL be doing things like this with it.

People go nuts. I even missed Big Brother for it!

Yes or no? True or false? Guilty or a bit guilty?

You simply won't believe it.

Let's all get nude at the same time!

My go at some media production.

So now I am left with a lovely, long week off (possibly to make up for the half-term I missed out on).

What shall I do with my time? Well, this week's main targets are to... (and it will be interesting to see how this ordered list looks in the template)

1. apply, fully, for a provisional driving licence
2. organise a regular weekend job
3. work on exciting new Buster Tests features
4. write more Buster Tests tests
5. organise room to a state which allows total Chi flowage

...and I might also go and see Mister and Misses Smith in Bristol if I can bear the treacherous bus trip.

Do join me on The Record Card as I progress though the list in no particular order.

Eat sugar things before you go to bed. I did last night, and I had four mental, long dreams.

I'm talking about dreams where reality and fantasy blur, and you think you're awake.

You?

They went quite well! I'm surprised!

I'll have to retake the Physics practical and unit 1 exams (like most of the year above us do), but other than that I'm quite please with myself.

A game with cheeky snap!

Isn't everything...

Certainly an eye-opener. Disturbing.

Say it. If you're American, you've just mysteriously dropped an "e" off the end of the word.

I've just seen an IBM advert for Centrino, the "moBILE" technology. What I can't believe is that they let the American voice over stay when they ported it over here. Mobil is, I believe, a long gone petrol station. How on earth do you say that, then?

MoBI? Mob? Mo? Em?

Pah.

Three hours of media studies in the morning and one and a half hours of statistics at 1.30. I was dreading this, but it actually went really, really well.

In media studies I had to textually analyse five minutes of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (the bit where they're on a hill and Frodo uses the ring). I couldn't remember the man's name, so I refered to him as the 'man'.

The paper on New Media was all about, to my delight, iPods, Apple and loyal consumers who use the Internet to mess bout with their 'ods. Followed by a question asking about industry investment in new media technology, which I answered with the IDEAL example of Podcasting! It fitted the bill perfectly, I tell's ya, and I bet you no one else thought of that one!

Statistics went by very nicely. I was worried I couldn't do anything, but in actual fact I could do everything. Which is great.

My very final exam, physics, is tomorrow. Then the pub.

Beware!

Sam is one mental biátch. I know the kind well - sociopaths. Well, she sort of fits the profile. Keep her in just for the fun of it.

As for the looming eviction on Friday, it has to be said that Vanessa is the only contestant not giving us value for money. Vote her out. Now!

In less than a year. I thank you.

I love logos.

Does anyone know what this word means? Only 29 total mentions on the web, but I think I want to use it tomorrow...

Google have done it, and given me a very good point to make in my essay on Internet tomorrow. So do allow me to get into the mood...

Google is possible the newest media institution. Since 1997, Google has morphed into an Internet services powerhouse, with a very clear monopoly over it's competitors. It is now more valuable than the very largest of the media corporations, Time Warner Inc., with stocks worth $80Bn(£44Bn), meaning it's also doing better than all other media institutions, including Disney, Viacom and News Corp. Even more staggering is the employee count: Google's 2,200 compared with Time Warner's 84,000.

This truly staggering surge in wealth can be seen as a clear indicator that the Internet is now a very large part of daily life, and hence is the most important medium of our age.

...went well, for a three-hourer. Better than expected, actually. Won't be keeping it, though.

I rarely get this tired. Right now I'm so exhausted, mentally and physically, that I just can't go on with the revising. This little post, a quick look at the news and some posts to Flickr is all I can do.

Then I'm going to go to bed. I'm so tired (AND STILL HAVEN'T REVISED THE ALCOHOLS, ALDEHYDES AND KETONES YET!).

Whoo and yay for Bit Torrent + Six Feet Under!

Well, that was rather pleasant.

I felt I could answer every question they gave me, I'm confident I got a (very) good mark in C1, but not such a good mark in C2.

In C2 it got a bit chaotic. They seemed to be setting questions that were slightly past my knowledge of the subject, while the easy ones were on things I knew inside out. Which wasn't so good. So I had to take a bit of a stab at some, but ah well. I'm happy with the way it went.

It's three hours of chemistry tomorrow. I've done U1 and U2 thoroughly, but U3 hasn't even been touched. I had better get a move on, then... (I know exactly what to revise this time... all of it!)

So I've been trying out this new, linky/posty format over the last few days, and I'm pretty happy with it! It seems to look good on the Web and in Bloglines, although I've yet to see it in any other news reader.

I hope you all understand the importance of the "link" button to the left of the headline. Sometimes I'll just want to post a link and title it, in which case it's just "link" followed by the title, and other times I'll use the link field to link to something relevant or related. Think of it as a linky dip!

I would like to subscribe, but I don't think it's available over here.

If you are a lucky, lucky citizen of the US, go and check it out!

To be fair, what did my teacher expect, giving a subject like "Love and Vegetables" to a class of teenage boys? It's like giving matches, petrol and copies of the Daily Mail to left wing arsonists. #

I've been letting out many-a nervous deep breaths. My three hour maths exam on pure maths is tomorrow, and I'm not really liking that fact.

I've practiced quite a bit, however. Plenty of mock exams, practice questions and all the rest. The actual exam starts at 1.30pm, so I can fit loads more in the morning. I've also been revising Chemistry, because that's on Wednesday (another three hours), and I don't even remember a quarter of it!

The very worst thing that could happen in this coming exam is a question which is not asked mathematically. That is, a question about the optimum size of Zaqib's beer-belly holder, which would completely throw me off.

Oh well, not to worry. Lots of sleep for me tonight.

Here's a nice and quick guide on how get some hot and heavy P2P action rather securely.

1. Download Bit Torrent
2. Download Bit Tornado (stable is best)
3. Download Peer Guardian 2
4. Get a good firewall, like the free Zone Alarm
   
5. Install, reboot (install all Peer Guardian blocklists)
   
6. Always allow Peer Guardian 2 and your firewall to open up on startup
7. Allow Peer Guardian 2 to regularly update it's blocklists
8. Enable HTTP blocking and IP blocking in Peer Guardian
9. Connect to the internet
10. Visit TorrentSpy, or others to find and download torrents (that wouldn't lead to copyright theft, of course)
    
11. Once downloaded, disconnect, reconnect
12. Open torrent, allow Bit Tornado to download the special stuff
13. Don't surf the internet
    
14. For sincerety's sake, ensure you upload a reasonable about of the special stuff to other users, because that's how the whole thing works
15. Close Bit Tornado, disconnect, reconnect and surf like normal
16. Disable the HTTP blocking in Peer Guardian if sites don't appear (like Flickr)
    

Not that I watch birds or not'n, but that's quite cool.

At this rate I will be going to the Olympics 2012.

At the moment, I am very happy to say, Paris and London are the two top contenders for the "crown" of host nation; with odds of 4-1 and 11-4 respectively.

That's just fantastic, and means that there is a real chance that London will play host to the games. But even if they don't win it, it's most likely Paris will be the hosts in 2012, which is also fine by me. Going to Paris to see the games would be quite cheap, I imagine, and it's only across a small stream. Madrid, the fourth most likely to win, is also very near and inexpensive to fly to.

Just so you know, New York is third in the running, but I don't know. I wouldn't make that trip unless I was loaded.

You never know, I might still become a rowing champion. Trouble is, I haven't even been on a rowing machine, so I do doubt that one.

I have to take poor Buster to the vets today because he has something nasty on his back. I couldn't quite remember what the vet's phone number was, but I sort-of knew where they were.

Sticking "vets" into Google Local UK and adding on my postcode gave me some fantastic results (limited to those listed in the Yellow Pages, something Google should get working on as soon as possible).

But the best thing was how big G does directions. The clear blue line from Blagdon to the vets, in conjunction with a pretty agile map interface, means I know exactly how to get there. You wouldn't believe the way we went last time!

That's right, I'm having nightmares about these exams. Damn them! Recurring ones, too. They're horrible, and I wake up early feeling awful!

Must revise, got to revise, don't stop revising...

Not me, him. The nutcase.

Man takes to living off of Guinness, with only milk, water and a vitamin C tablet daily. Blimey.

Rolling on the floor, laughing.

Thy place is a pigstye

Is that cow shite in thy hair?

I'm starting to worry.

I tend to worry about quite a lot of things. Usually I keep those worries deep down and don't let on about them, but this worry is especially worrying.

I'm worrying that I'm not going to do so well in these exams. They're important. Just as important as the exams I'll have to take next year. I can't afford a mediocre mark here, because a good deal of my plans rest on my success.

It's a horrible thing, to have to prepare for failure. Of course, I really do hope I get the marks I need, and this is nothing but a worry, but I have a particularly grim feeling about this one.

Bizarrely enough, my self isn't doing anything to help. I'm getting bored with revising, I'm not thinking clearly or quickly enough, and I'm not working at the speed at which I should be. My answer? I hate to have to resort to drugs (not crack, for those who have just gasped), but sleeping tablets to help me into a pattern of early-rising will be purchased tomorrow. Let's hope that waking up early allows me more working time.

Has her own special online account. Deface her mug now, bless her.

...it would be nice if people in England would stop saying that at the end of every clause. It's Big Brother that really makes you notice it.

Yet another unfortunately sad last episode. First Nip/Tuck, then Star Wars and now this!

The new series of Six Feet Under starts soon. I'll be 'torrenting that, but I do hope they end it on a thoughtful note. Thoughtful for me, that is.

Here's hoping.

You can now see my latest 10 posts to the wonderful Flickr along the side of this site. Just click on them to enlarge. See all of my photos on the Flickr site.

There's some really great telly on tonight! Big Brother at 9.00pm, followed by the double bill finalé of Desperate Housewives. Now that's just fantastic. This is all on Channel 4, of course.

Apple sure does know how to sell it's stuff.

I really would like a nice, shiny iMac from them, but there's only one thing holding me back. Money.

They cost so much! I wouldn't be so upset about this if the hardware was actually under a year old. To top it all off, they slap on an extra £100-£200 on their prices over here, for no real reason.

Apple should be delighted about the exchange rate, not get even greedier and try to suck more money out of us!

So I'm not sure what to do now. I think I'll end up getting a new PC (custom built, of course), but I would like a Mac (any type) for when I go to university, because they're easier. I'm not sure. Oh well.

There's gonna be some changes around these here parts.

Or rather, there already has been. RSS, syndication and all that lot have made blogging quite a powerful medium. I'm only just starting to use RSS feeds, and I'm thinking that Bloglines is the best for me.

I have a laptop and a PC, and I interchange often, so it's nice to have data on the Internet, where both computers can get to it. Even school ones. That's why Gmail's so great - it's like a desktop application, but on the Internet.

Bloglines is an RSS reader on the Internet. You sign up, subscribe, it checks (quite a lot, I must say), and whenever a new article is posted, you get a little balloon pop up above the time on the start bar. That is, if you download a little program. Click on it, and you'll be taken to the Bloglines viewing page, where you can take a gander at all of the new posts that have been made. It's nothing new, but it can be useful, and it makes you feel like you're staying abreast of all the information you want to.

I'll be showing you all of the feeds I'm subscribed to along the sidebar of this blog, and I've decided to give you easy access to all of their feeds, so you don't have to play fetch. The nice thing here is that you can try them out, and subscribe/unsubscribe at your will.

The feed from this site also has my Flickr images embedded in it. I'm not sure how long this will last, because I'll probably want to post them here and talk about them, but I think it's a nice feature for now.

I'll also try to link to external sites within posts a bit more, so you know what I know, see what I see, and eat who I eat.

Of course, there's really only one person who will have read this article, but I'm doing it for the sake of completion. Or something.

Finally, some exciting new British talent that isn't a frog.

I'm listening to MIA's new album right now, and it's pretty good. If you like all of that "out there" music, fresh ideas and beats, this is certainly for you. Even if you aren't give it a quick listen on the iTunes.

It's really good. MIA's real name is Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, a wholly beautiful Sri Lankan name. She was born in Hounslow in London (there's more to it than that), and she's getting big in America. Which is brilliant. She's already had a very interesting life, so I wonder where it's going next...

Read more about MIA and her life on Wikipedia.

Update: The entire thing was really good! Well done M.I.A.! It's not entirely progressive stuff - it's just extremely fresh.