bes-t.co.uk

I think the email weirdness has now been resolved, so ones sent to the usual address should now reach me. Now, if only I can work out the website mysteries.....

As you may be aware, I collect Discworld stamps. I also subscribe to the Journal, and today received issue 7a, with a Little Brown Envelope. In the LBE was a Purple Triangle (a rare beast, as there are only ever going to be 500). I'm now terribly pleased with myself, as I never managed to get one of the first generation of triangles. If this is all gibberish, but you want to know a bit more, venture over to the Discworld stamps website.

Just as a temporary measure, while I fiddle around with some things, you can email me at a different address: sleepy.myf @ googlemail.com

I've sorted out my entry for the Extreme Puzzling competition. You can find it here.

I'm back from my holiday to Turkey. The balloon flight was great! Photos are now up on Flickr, and can be viewed from my "Photos" page.

I submitted one of my photos from Birdworld to the BBC website, and they've put it in their "Your perspective on the world: 30 Sept-6 Oct" section (it's picture 10, in case you're wondering). Yay!

Mind Candy have set up another competition. Now I just need to think of something to submit. Now, where did  leave my thinking cap?....

I've added a section for postcards of the village. I've been trying to take pictures from the same spot to compare. I was collecting the cards anyway, and got the the photo idea from the Old Ramsgate (then and now) site, which I discovered whilst reading up on bits of Kent, where I was born.

Over the last week or so, I've been fiddling about moving stuff over onto a new CMS that will help me keep the site all nice and tidy, and will make it much easier to update and alter. Most things are basically the same, but they might be in different places, or be presented differently. It's all a bit new at the moment, so some bits might not work properly yet!

I've been sorting out flights for another trip to Turkey. There will be another venture to the fairy chimneys of Cappadoccia, this time with me driving a rented car rather than having a driver and guide, and quite possibly a dawn hot air balloon ride too.

A couple more bits have been added to the "Gadgets" page - stuff about the iPod dock I bought recently, and a bit about the next daft thing I've got my eyes on (a Ducti wallet, and maybe bag as well). I am the geeky-wierd-stuff-marketers dream, I really am.

If you ever want to buy me stuff and don't know what to get me, you can find my Amazon Wish List here.

I've added a few more bits to the "Games" page.

Head First apparently got a bit of a write up in the local paper last week. And a couple of people (not me!) are probably going to be doing a radio interview on BBC Berkshire soon, which will hopefully get some more people interested. All good stuff, really! I've been adding some more bits to the website, and I think it looks pretty good really. It's got a new domain as well, which is www.head-first.tk

I've discovered a website that has been put together by my old form tutor from secondary school. He's unearthed photos of some of the trips and things, dating back to the early 90s. There seems to be an unnerving number of pictures of me in there. If you fancy a giggle at the dreadful hairstyles and fashion, this is where to find it. I really had no idea we were so small back then.

Head First launched last week, with a successful party. The website is working properly, and there is now a photo gallery as well.

I've been fiddling around with some website stuff over the last couple of days. As well as getting WordPress up and running for the Head First blog, I've been having a go with Mediawiki and a few content management systems. It's all very experimental at the moment, so I'm calling the areas "labs" - all that's missing is the bubbling test tubes!

Head First (the mental health service user involvement project in Wokingham) officially launches on Friday 18th. I put together the first issue of the newsletter, so it's just about ready for printing, and I've set up a blog as a temporary website where we can post articles and stuff. If you want to have a look, it's here.

Some clever person somehow worked out that the picture (below) of the Japanese fellow was taken in Kaysersberg, Alsace. We still need to find the man though.

There's another Perplex City live event on today - this time in San Fransisco. There's online participation for people who can't get there, starting at 7p.m.

There are now two sites looking for our Oriental friend:

Perplex City really likes setting challenges for us: one of the puzzle cards has just a photo of a man, and Japanese text which apparently translates into "find me". The only other thing we've got to go on is that his name is Satoshi. That's it. Somebody has set up a website, billion2one, to try and find this chap. Have a look, see if you can help, and get everyone you know to have a look too.

I've added another section: "Music". There's not a huge amount of stuff there at the moment, but like everything else, I'll add things when I feel like it.

I got an article in the "View From Earth" section of the Perplex City Sentinel (if you don't know what I'm on about, have a look at the "Games" page. You can read the article, and have a look at the really dodgy picture of me here. I think their artist must have been having an off day - most of the other people have had much nicer pictures with their articles. I get 10 bonus points for getting it published, so that's good.

More fiddling. Not a great deal done, but I've added some links and stuff to the "Games" page. I've been solving more of the Perplex City puzzle cards, so I'm far too busy to muck around with this site at the moment!

I've been tinkering with a few bits, including adding bits to the "Games" page and a Last.FM "Most recently listened to" chart to the "Websites & Software" page. And, because I can (and it brightens the place up a bit), here's a "Top artists" one as well:

I've been playing around adding photos to Flickr. Read a bit more on the "Photos" page.

And, if you haven't noticed, I decided to rename this little box of waffle. It's no longer called "News" - that was just boring and sensible (and most of what gets put here is hardly newsworthy). It will henceforth been known as "What I've Been Up To".

I never told you about the results of the video competition: I didn't win. I wasn't a runner up, and I wasn't an honourable mention. I did get some random cool Perplex City goodies in the post, which I wasn't expecting. I got a bag, T-shirt (a couple of sizes too small, but never mind), and some puzzle cards (all of which I've already solved). So, yeah. It was interesting, and fun to do, and now it's stuck on YouTube for posterity!

If you want to see the winning entries, you can find them over here.

Ooops. Once again, I have been neglecting the site. I think I might try to do some spring cleaning on this site over the next few days.

The fight for viewing figures is over - the competition is closed. Winners, runners-up and whatever will be announced on Tuesday.

I've discovered a couple of reviews of my short film dotted around. I hope people don't mind me putting them here.

The info I submitted with my video says "Made without any apparent talent or skill, this is the first film-type thing ever made by myf. Do you find stickmen endearing? Want to watch a film without getting sidetracked by hidden puzzles? Fancy getting the Whipsmart music stuck in your head? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this could well be the film for you!"

The first review comes from an anonymous blog created solely to critique the videos: "The blurb says "Made without any apparent talent or skill, this is the first film-type thing ever made by myf." It's better than that, with a nice quest theme and some good music, but it doesn't have any extra gimmick to set it apart."

The second comes from ARGN, the alternate reality gaming network, where it's listed in "the rest of the best"! Not in the top 3, but considering there are now 35 videos (5 of which are one series, it has to be said), to be picked out and mentioned makes me happy: "While it promotes the game, rather than the city, still a nice piece of work."

I've also received some good comments via email and forum postings. Yay!

I've finished my entry for the Perplex City video competition. You can watch on the "Games" page. Please have a look at it - the winner will be decided by the number of views each entry has!

I've added pictures of most of the things mentioned on the "Gadgets" page. Now you can see what I'm rambling on about.

Actually, I think I'll put more pictures of things all over the site. The "Books" page for one needs a bit of livening up.

I'm also thinking about creating a page about films and TV programmes I like.

I have now taken some photos of my favourite new toy, the Nabaztag. You can find them on the "Photos" page.

I finally gave in. I ordered myself a Nabaztag, and it arrived yesterday.

He's very cute! I changed his ears from the boring white that comes as standard, so he has pretty silvery ears now. He sits near my bed, with his lights flashing (he's telling me things but I haven't quite got the hang of rabbit-code yet), and every so often he tells me the time or reads the news or just makes odd noises. Hopefully I'll get round to taking a photo of him soon. When I do, I'll post it somewhere on here.

I've made a rough photo album. I need to add captions to the pictures, otherwise most of them won't make any sense to anyone! But if you want to have a nose around, you can find the album here:

I'm venturing into the world of animation-type things, thanks to Perplex City. They're running a video competition, details of which can be found here:


I'm also working on putting various photos I've taken into some kind of album, which I'll then upload somewhere on this site. Unless I get bored of the idea, in which case I won't upload anything anywhere.

I've added a tiny bit to the "Books" page.

I've added stuff to the "Games" and "Groups" pages.

I'm experimenting with creating a wiki for CATS members. Most of the information is taken from the official site, but I'm putting it in a tidier (and friendlier) format. You can find it here:

CATSMembers wiki

I've made a start on getting the Wedding pages sorted out. At the moment, I think the main page is up, with thumbnails, but the links to some of the larger pictures haven't been fixed yet.

I should be able to spend a bit of time over the weekend getting it all working properly.

OK, I've ignored the site for a bit.

Get your computer to do something useful until I think of more things to put on here.

Click on this lovely little piccy:


download the program, run it, and take part in a ground-breaking effort to crack the code. You'll also be putting hundreds, if not thousands, of people out of their misery if your machine cracks it!
It's all to do with Perplex City, but you don't have to be a player to help - visit the Games page for more information.

I've finally got round to doing the Games page. I think the only page that doesn't work now is the Wedding one.

And I think I've sorted out my Iceland photos, so they should all be up again.

Added a few extra bits to existing pages. Nothing much, just a few links and things.

Still pottering along.

And I've found a new gadget to lust over. I'll have to save my pennies until I can afford one. For more info, visit the Gadgets page (where else??).

In news of a non-website nature, I'm going to see The Rocky Horror Show in a couple of weeks time. Hooray!

I've done some work on the Groups page now as well.

I've decided to do a page about the books I like. Unsurprisingly, you can get to it by clicking on the tab labelled Books. I got fed up with doing the Travel bit, so I haven't finished that section yet. I'll probably do the Games one next.

I'm still redoing pages and uploading them. I working on the Travel section at the moment. The text is there, but I need to upload the photos from Iceland.

I'm making progress. I've pretty much done the Gadgets page, and a lot of the Websites & Software page, although I suspect that one will keep changing as my interests and obsessions change.

I've redesigned my homepage. I didn't like the old one.