Last-minute panic

I didn't say it was a good excuse!

Note also my use of the phrase 'free internet time' - this does not translate as 'free time to go on the internet', but rather: 'free time on the internet after I've done everything I normally do - check email, the Discworld message boards I frequent, alt.fan.pratchett, all the blogs I read...'. This results in me spending quite a lot of time not doing homework, particularly in the case of my physics coursework which I word-processed - I spent an astounding amount of time yesterday discovering new weblogs, fiddling around on the internet, not doing much. And if I'd started doing something substantial on the net, such as (to take a purely random example) writing another blog update, I'd have felt guilty for not doing physics. Strange how flexible my conscience seems to be :)

However, I've succumbed now, I still haven't finished my physics, and I really should have allowed at least three days to complete it, rather than just two. I must sort out my time organisation skills, they seem to be somewhat lacking in...existence.

Anyway, now onto the main news of the day, which is the same as the main news of the day for most people in the south-east of England - snow![1]. Yesterday when I woke up there was a light dusting of snow over the ground, today it snowed all day, non-stop - we're up to about 1-2 inches of snow at the moment. Everything looks really beautiful - from inside the house, obviously :). I would take a picture with my dad's digital camera and post it up here, but he's in Houston at the moment and he took it with him. Grr.

Updates - my comments system is now working, apparently, on all computers but mine. Everyone else can see the 'Comment on this' link, but I can't, on Opera or using IE6. Hopefully I'll be able to see the link from school tomorrow. I can't think what it is on my system that's vanishing the link for me - I definitely have JavaScript enabled, so it's not that.

Christmas is... well, I was going to say that Christmas is now well and truly over, but now with all the snow everywhere it really doesn't feel like it. It gives me an excuse to keep playing Christmas songs, anyway! Just the one, actually - Coldplay's cover of Merry Little Christmas[2] which I only discovered about ten days or so ago (thanks Jeremy!). And now there's about 325 days until I can play it again. :(

That's all for now - there may be more later when I'm trying to avoid my physics again.

Snow in moonlight

And growing at the front of the house I found a red rose, covered in snow. And now I really wish I had that digital camera handy!

I now have a links page that works, which means that more than half of the links on my front page actually lead somewhere now! And just a note, which coincides with Burningbird's article on abolishing blogrolls. The links on my page represent websites that I regularly visit, daily in many cases. Each and every link is a personal recommendation from me to you, dear reader.

Just thought I'd clarify that. Speaking of which...

Radio 4 are broadcasting play adaptations of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, which I recommend with a passion. Don't be put off by the fact that the books are stacked in the 8-12yr section of WHSmith, they're superb. I haven't actually listened to the radio plays yet, but I assume they're very good as well. They're being broadcast on three consecutive Saturdays, starting 4th January 2003, so I've missed the first one. You can still listen to it live on the website though, but only if you have the evil RealPlayer. Looks like I'm going to have to install it...

In amongst all the internet surfing I was doing today I found William Gibson's newly-established blog - yes, that William Gibson. I was just scanning through it and on his front page is a little snippet of a review for his (yet to be released) latest book, Pattern Recognition. The review was by Neil Gaiman, which struck me as a little bizarre purely because: (1) I'd never heard of William Gibson before today, (2) I'd never read any of Neil Gaiman's novels before yesterday, when I started reading American Gods, (3) it's only in the last month that I discovered Neil Gaiman's journal, which I now read regularly, and (4) I found William Gibson's site completely randomly, and only worked out that he was an author judging by the information on his weblog. Then a couple of hours later I picked up American Gods and noticed on the front cover a little snippet of a review by William Gibson...

I like these little coincidences :). And as a result of this, Neuromancer is now on my Amazon wishlist. Oh, go on. Buy me something. Like the iPod, or the £350 Macromedia Dreamweaver?