If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life.

›› Frank Chimero has some great advice

Mombassa looks like a lovely place far, far away…

An ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity— smartphones, laptops and digital cameras —are built from minerals that seem to be fueling mass slaughter and rape in Congo.

›› Nicholas Kristof for the New York Times

Just avoid holding it in that way.

›› Steve Jobs probably had no left-handed iPhone 4 testers

from: Australian Lottery On-Line <austalian@winners.co.uk>
reply-to: dp.claim@mail.mn
subject: YOU ARE LUCKY WINNER CONTACT YOUR AGENT URGENTLY
mailed-by: telecom-shop.ro

Dear Winner,

We are delighted to inform you of your prize which was released 2010,from the Australian International Lottery program,which is
fully based on an electronic selection of winners using their e-mail
addresses from some sites.Your email address was attached to Ticket
Number;4700172507056490102 and Serial Number 7741134002.This batch draws
the lucky numbers as follows 5-13-33-37-42 and Bonus Number 17,which
consequently won the lottery in the second category.

You hereby have been approved a lump sum pay of USD$1,000,000.00 (ONE
MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS ONLY) in cash credit file ref:ILP/HW47509/09
from the total cash prize shared amongst eight lucky winners in this
category.All participants were selected through a computer balloting
system drawn from Nine Hundred Thousand E-mail addresses from
Canada,Australia,United States,Asia,Europe,Middle East,Africa and Oceania
as part of our international promotion program which is conducted
annually.This Lottery was promoted and sponsored by a conglomerate of some
multinational companies as part of their social responsibility to the
citizens in the communities where they have an operational base.

Furthermore, your details (e-mail address) fall within our European
representative office in Amsterdam, Holland as indicated in your play
coupon and your prize of USD$1,000,000.00 will be released to you from
this regional office in NIGERIAN.We hope that with part of your prize,you
will participate in our end of year high stakes for US$1.5 Billion
international draw.To file for your claim,please contact our director of
finance.

Name: Dr.ABAUL PARK ABDEL
Email:dp.claim@mail.mn
Tel : +44-7024-052996

For verification purpose,Forward to him your claim details below;
(1) Your Residential address:........................
(2) Your Tel(Mobile):....................................
(3) Your Nationality/Country:.........................
{4} Your First Name and Last Name...............
{5} Your Occupation.....................................
{6} Your Age............{7} Sex........................
(8) Amount Won.............

Please quote your reference, batch and winning number which can be found
on the top left corner of this notification to help locate your file
easily.For security reasons,we advice all winners to keep this information
confidential from the public until your claim is processed and your prize
released to you.This is part of our security protocol to avoid double
claiming and unwarranted taking advantage of this program by
non-participants or unofficial personnel.Note:all winnings MUST be claimed
before the 25th June 2010 otherwise all funds will be returned as
Unclaimed and eventually donated to charity organizations.

Yours Faithfully,
Mrs.Kate Ross.
Coordinator,
Australian Lottery Inc.

In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

›› Bertrand Russell, way before proper research was done

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

›› Jules Henri Poincaré

Happy New Year! And let’s be happy our world hasn’t panned out like Arthur C Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two.

I’m fairly certain I recently passed a rather pathetic tipping point, and now own more unread books and unwatched DVDs than my remaining lifespan will be able to sustain… The bastard things are going to outlive me. It’s not fair. They can’t even breathe.

›› Charlie Brooker is a really funny guy

• had a few hundred lines of compliant CSS shot to pieces by IE6, which got me wading neck-deep into the muddy waters of the Underscore hack over a few late, late nights.
• was trying out this funny joke about how two antennas got married — apparently, the wedding was terrible but the reception was great!
• discovered that to get an RSS feed of your Amazon wishlist, you now have to authenticate your request with a secret key, find the wish list ID, request for an XML file, create and apply some XSLT, store some of this somewhere on the Amazon Cloud, blah, blah. All this acrobatics for an RSS feed of my effing wish list — how about just giving me a bloody RSS feed like everyone else, Amazon?
• broke up Isaac Asimov’s 1956 short story, The Last Question, into manageable 3 minute sections to read to my daughter before she sleeps.
• stumbled onto a bookmark for Nutrition.com.sg, a horrendously ugly but possibly useful site which lists nutritional content of local foods.
• have been playing a wee bit too much Nintendo in my browser than I should be.
• was wondering if the 4 day × 10 hour work week idea would make any sense/difference in some industries.
• thoroughly enjoyed the new Arctic Monkeys’ new album Humbug, although I am a little disturbed to realise that the first track might be about a guy singing about his penis.
• visited makephotoshopfaster.com which has precisely two tips to make your Photoshop go faster.
• installed The Onion Router for fun and now occasionally run a (non-exit) node.
• read a poignant essay from the Iraqi shoe thrower.
• was really excited about getting the first printed XKCD book, though I haven’t quite had the time to buy it yet. (Yes, that’s how crazy things have been the last week or so.)
• found a new way to reset my sleep pattern and it seems to be somewhat working.

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

›› Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., (1841 – 1935)

Super talk by Alain De Botton, though it seemed very short. His latest book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, suddenly looks pretty interesting to me…

Be like a duck, my mother used to tell me… Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.

›› Sage advice from Michael Caine