h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... is the title of a fab track by Bedouin Ascent which I'm currently listening to. It's one of the tracks I MP3'ed yesterday in a mass ripping frenzy, as part of an effort to have my favourite music available whether I'm at work or at home. The ripping method I use is to use a free and very clever CD-ROM driver for Windows called CDFS.VXD that lets you browse your audio CD-ROMs and pull off WAVs really fast, but the WAVs aren't glitch free, unfortunately. I'm currently aiming for ripping speed over quality, as I can always go and rip them again when I've got better kit.

The rip-trip happened last night after I got back from my cousin's Sheva Brochos dinner which was at my parents' house. (Sheva Brochos dinners happen for the week after a wedding, but most people don't do the full week, as each is a proper sit-down meal with loads of relatives and it's horribly exhausting) The cousin in question, who I noticed that I didn't name in my last journal entry, is called Aryeh. He's a year younger than me. The anti-race between us to be the last to get married has obviously ended. He can't resist sticking the "Please God by you"'s in whenever he can, though.

I'm currently throwing ideas around about user journals. I really like the weblog trend where you can just throw links, snippets and thoughts into a personal page through the day. (For good examples, see http://www.robotwisdom.com/ , http://ww.lemonyellow.com/ and http://www.scripting.com/ ) The h2g2 user journal is a way of doing that, but I think it's currently more suited to medium-to-long entries every day or so, rather than several short links thrown in during a single day. If you have any points to make about what you're doing or want to do with your journal, do tell me.

I'm just done with tomorrow's front page, which is a selection of happening forums. One of the things I've noticed while browsing around today is that the most active researchers tend to post much more in each other's home pages than in official Guide entries, which is pretty much what you'd expect. However, it does mean that tracking down, say, the 10 busiest official Guide entries is more problematic than I first thought. I should ask Jim for a new stat script.

Come Shake The Whole's birthday bash tomorrow... going to see if I can drag Tania Winston along (or rather, whether she can drag me, since she's got twice the party stamina I have. It's always the small ones.)

NTK's arrived! Hooray! Something to read on the tube home. ( http://www.ntk.net/ )

Media of the day: The Mondrian painting that inspired the title of the Bedouin Ascent track, and of this entry. He's one of my favourite artists.
http://www.moma.org/collection/paintsculpt/mondrian.broadway.html