Installation Art Thursday

In honour of Installation Art Thursday (I'll go back to serious blogging sometime, I promise) this blog entry - well, everything below this paragraph - must be read in an unusual way. Alternate lines. And when you get to the bottom, go up one line and then it's alternate lines reading from bottom-to-top. So if there were only five lines altogether, you'd read lines 1, 3, 5, 4 and 2 in order for the post to make sense. Blank lines not included. And I didn't know how to separate out the paragraphs, so there's a blank line after the end of each paragraph that was in the original text (and before the end of each paragraph when you get to reading bottom-to-top). Have fun :)

So what is Installation Art anyway? According to this article,
more. We'll see :)
installation art "resists definition" because of the broadness of the
But occasionally for the novelty factor I wouldn't mind doing some
genre. But the basic idea is summed up by the idea that it "explores

some text paragraphs.
the notion that space and time are, in and of themselves, fodder
download a large file and listen to it than to read or scan through
for artistic consumption." Installation art is site-specific and, if I've
an audblog simply because there'll be far fewer people prepared to
interpreted this correctly, cannot exist outside of its display
quote...and I wouldn't like to put anything terribly important in
because the very surroundings contribute to it (and are sometimes
like lack of searchability within the entry, lack of being able to
an integral part of the piece).

towards solving that one for any listeners). And then there's things
Examples of installation art include Martin Creed's (Turner
the problem with hyperlinks (although I hope I went some way
Prize-winning) Lights Going On and Off in a Gallery, in which
And then there's all the problems inherent with audio blogs, mainly
the lights in the gallery were switched on and off every thirty

will not be pretty.
seconds, Richard Wilson's 20:50 where a lake of sump oil that
pauses, I won't have any idea of where I'm heading and the result
reflects the ceiling of the gallery is experienced by walking along
go along, and I freeze up. There's a lot of um-ing and ah-ing, messy
an enclosed jetty whose waist-high walls hold the oil up, Damien
ad lib, do a speech from bullet points or even just make it up as I
Hirst's In And Out Of Love, built in a two-storey building - on one
Public reading, not so much of a problem, but ask me to improvise,
floor was a climate-controlled habitat filled with live butterflies; on
equivalent to public speaking for me and I Can't Do public speaking.
the walls were large blank canvases. The other floor contained the
more audioblogs. I'm not sure, mainly because this is practically
same furniture, but here the butterflies were dead and affixed
And now, to answer Russ's question as to whether I'll be doing
to bright monochromatic canvases. It seems that you often have to

naturally.
move "through or around installations".

clever. However, any that you do see, I'll take full credit for,
Please bear in mind that all this is paraphrased and very possibly
amusing mixups from one line to the next, because I'm not that
misinterpreted seeing as I only heard of installation art this
And just to let you know, when I wrote this I wasn't aiming for any
morning. In any case, my interpretation of installation art has led to

Please don't ask of what. If I find out, I'll let you know :)
this rather unconventionally structured blog entry, during the

statement.
reading of which you will find yourselves constantly having to
you'd got up to before you lost your place. This piece of art is a
readjust, reassess the situation and re-examine just where the hell

Paperwork, gifts and bandwidth

Following up the job offer which I got through YinI, yesterday I received a whole pile of information which they send out once you've got a placement, informing me of a Business Awareness course I've been booked on (amongst others), as well as a note saying that I should have arranged a start-of-work date with my employers by now. I'm getting a bit worried, since I haven't actually received official confirmation from the company yet - it was a verbal acceptance over the phone to someone at YinI. Isn't ten days a bit long to still be waiting for confimation and job details?

And Smoke And Mirrors was duly delivered yesterday, so thanks Clair! I'm resisting the urge to start reading it straight away... trying not to be in the position of reading four books at once!

If there's anyone besides Clair who looks at people's wishlists, I really really want the new iPod, with an alarm clock, and Solitaire, and up to five times the hard disk capacity of my MP3 player...

And I'm rapidly running out of bandwidth - I've exceeded my limit with Portland two months in a row now, and I've received an (automated) threatening email informing me that I must purchase more bandwidth or my site may be removed from the system.

I checked it out though, and apparently they threaten you a few times before asking you to pay a large fine (more than the cost of buying extra bandwidth), and if you refuse to comply then they'll delete your site.

<fx: crosses fingers>

So, does anyone know of any cheap and fairly reliable hosts? Minimum of disk space needed - I don't think I'm quite up to 1MB yet - but I'd want at least 500MB bandwidth per month, to be on the safe side. Suggestions, please, on a postcard... or the comments box is fine, or my email...

Permanent home

I've done it, I've taken the plunge...

...bentbacktulips.co.uk has been ordered, along with a nice lot of hosting. I am a freebie cheapskate no longer! (Well, I still am at the moment, but not for long.) You're stuck with me for at least the next twelve months (and the domain name's mine for the next two years).

jumps up and down excitedly

I mentioned it here three or four months ago (but I don't think anyone was reading my blog at the time), and I mentioned it to Neil Gaiman at the weekend (he seemed to like it), so I'll give it another plug because I just love it so much - the coolest digital clock ever. [Requires Flash.]

Everyone else (UK at least) seems to be talking about the BBC's Test The Nation IQ test, but I'm not going to because last year the results seemed to be massively skewed in favour of older age groups and the average across the country seemed to be 106 or 107. I thought the average was defined as 100?

Anyway, instead of that I watched Channel 4's 100 Greatest Movie Stars and tried not to get annoyed with some of the choices and ranks by reminding myself that the poll was for "great movie stars", not "actors". Some of the rankings were truly bizarre - Marilyn Monroe only #39? Ewan McGregor #9? Of course, they can be explained by the fact that it was voted for by the general public, but with that being the case I'm surprised (but rather pleased) that Leonardo di Caprio only made it into the mid-90s, even though all the voting was done over the Gangs Of New York period.

But I was rather chuffed that three of my six favourite actors were in the top 4 - Kevin Spacey #4, Robert de Niro #2 and Al Pacino #1 :) As for the others, Jimmy Stewart got #12, Dustin Hoffman #25ish, and Edward Norton wasn't featured. Grr.

[Movie stars, not actors, movie stars not actors...]

Successful Installation!

MovableType has been successfully installed!

MT installed

Okay, the deal is that Movable Type has been installed[1] on the new site (I fell in love with MT after reading the first half of the user manual last night!) and now I'm in the middle of transferring all my files over, importing my Blogger archives and trying to get the templates working.

I'm approaching it from the wrong end; completely ignoring the default stylesheet and rewriting the index.html template to work with my existing stylesheet. The opposite of the CSS Zen Garden :)

Hopefully everything should be up and running by the time I go to bed - if not, then sometime tomorrow.

Settling in

I've finally got the front page looking like the old site (have you remembered to update your bookmarks/hyperlinks/favourites?), and I've taken this opportunity to host the blog in the root directory rather than in a subdirectory. I never used my front page anyway :)

At the moment archives aren't really there (ignore them for now) since they still have the default blank template and the permalinks I'm still thinking about. But, for some value of "working", it's working... you can read this, can't you?

And some of my other sections aren't up right now due to the last-minute realisation that there are some files that I apparently forgot about when I went through them all a couple of months ago to replace all the absolute (internal) URLs with relative ones. But everything's still up on cyoung85.port5.com if you really desperately need to know 42 ways to get electric power from hamsters, for example.

It's relatively up and running

It's relatively up and running now - I'm aiming to post any further entries to www.bentbacktulips.co.uk, so you should definitely all update your blogrolls, bookmarks, hyperlinks, favourites, etc.

I'm outta here.

Conspiring against me

I'm still trying to get everything working - Movable Type is a little bit daunting when you've come straight from Blogger :)

I was trying to change the archive paths for individual entries on Friday and wrote something stupid, which is why the permalinks didn't work until last night when I changed them to what they are now. Which I suppose means that until then they were temporalinks or something.

Now I have to do the comments template... all the different archive templates... the Blogger archives...

...and then the world! (It's on my To Do list.)

I spent most of yesterday trying to sort out a rather large problem, which started with me waking up to find an (automated) email in my inbox informing me that I should delete some files or request some more disk space since I had - since Wednesday, when I ordered my hosting - filled up 100% of my 150MB disk space.

Like hell I had, I thought, and went to my file manager to find that there was a number of files named core.##### (5 digit file extension). The one that caught my eye was 25,759,744 bytes in size.

The one that really caught my attention, however, was 125,659,800 bytes.

And this meant that I couldn't rebuild my files with MT because (I thought) there was no disk space left. I then found out that the files were being generated every time I tried to rebuild my files which, as someone cleverer than me found out last night, was due to my having tried to use an invalid attribute with an MT tag somewhere in the weblog config. It caused an infinite loop which filled up all of my disk space and then it terminated with the error. This is why I couldn't post anything yesterday or affect change with any of the templates.

By the way, at this point I'd like to publicly laud the efforts and praise the name of Jace, who is a support guy at Bloghosts. Everything I've asked or needed support for has been answered within an hour (except for once, but it was about 5am in his timezone then), and he's been tireless in sorting out my problems. If you want excellent user support, choose Bloghosts!

[Okay, plug over now.]

My aim is to have the templates done by tomorrow evening at the latest. We'll see.

Full history now in place

An hour and a half well spent importing my Blogger archives and then going through each and every entry - of which there are, I was annoyed to find, exactly 99 (I would have posted another one if I'd known!) - and adding titles to all of them so that my permalinks work properly.

I was not at all surprised to have found that I really Can't Do titles. I suck at them. Sorry. If you want interesting titles you'll have to go somewhere else instead.

Et voila

We now have, for your viewing pleasure, monthly archives, daily archives (although really there's not too many days when I blog more than one article) and individual archives, all with the bent back tulips look. And I tweaked my stylesheet slightly so that the date is slightly more prominent and separates out the days a bit more.

I should have done the comments template and archive index pages showing, eg., all the months you can look through, but today I got sucked back in to watching more Angel episodes from the boxset loaned to me by my friend. It's really exciting, I'm only a year behind the rest of the world! I'm four episodes away from the end of series 3, and it's rather intense at the moment. I'm still two years behind with Buffy; I'm aiming to be up to speed at least by the time it finishes!

Oh yes, and I've got these things coming up called A-levels... blogging may be light to variable in the upcoming weeks.

Look away now

...if bad maths jokes offend you:

I do apologise.

The sound of Britain Stopped

I videoed The Day Britain Stopped on Tuesday and saw it last night. If you haven't heard of it, it was a fictional drama set in the very near future. It detailed the events of December 19th 2003 when a series of everyday accidents, of the sort that often occur, combined with a national rail strike to cause a nationwide transport crisis where tens of thousands of people were stuck on motorways for hours at sub-zero temperatures. More flights were laid on because of the rail strike, the people at the air traffic control centre had to cope with bigger workloads (more planes) and work overtime since none of the relief could get in to work and consequently there was a large plane crash over Hounslow, killing all the passengers and crew.

It was filmed completely as a documentary and included interviews with family members of some of the victims, as well as a surprising amount of mock footage from other channels - there were news reports (with the regular newsreaders) from at least five different channels that I counted. They even had a clip of Tony Blair in the House of Commons with John Prescott in the background, reading out a statement about the situation.

The whole program was utterly convincing and many people have said that there was nothing in it that strained credibility at all. If you haven't seen it, you can watch it with RealPlayer via the BBC website. It's hugely compelling, and the naturalism of the actors involved helped make it the best program I've seen on TV all year.

[Note the "on TV". I finished watching series 3 of Angel this week (on VHS). Wow. On to BtVS S6.]

The only thing about The Day Britain Stopped that annoyed me was a tiny thing and down to me rather than the program - as part of their soundtrack they used some music from the American Beauty soundtrack. "Walk Home" and "Structure & Discipline" (as well as, I think, some other music by Thomas Newman. I didn't recognise it, but it sounded like his work. They didn't mention any of the music in the credits). I got the soundtrack last year and am very familiar with it by now, which is why the last time I saw American Beauty it always felt like the music was interrupting. Not because it was misplaced in the film, but just because I recognised the music immediately and unwittingly started listening to that instead of the dialogue.

With the few film scores that I have (The Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, Léon and American Beauty), I've found that this is now a problem when I try to watch the film in question. I can no longer let the music flow through me subconsciously and influence the atmosphere while I'm concentrating on the scene. Instead the score seems very prominent and I notice it the second it kicks in. It's rather annoying and detracts from my enjoyment of the film a little bit - this is why I have regretfully decided not to buy the LOTR soundtracks although I really want to, because I don't want to alter my experience of watching the movies.

One hundred

Remember the meme that went around last year, 100 things about 100 webloggers? Well, in my true fashion of leaping joyfully onto bandwagons after everyone's forgotten about them - although to be fair, I didn't start blogging until last December - I've done a list.

Now, just to keep the suspense up, and to ensure that I actually have things to blog about this week when I'm meant to be revising - first exam tomorrow morning - I'm going to post ten items per day until I've exhausted the whole list. This isn't to say that I definitely won't be blogging anything else over the next ten days - I mean, the second Matrix film is out on Friday! Expect the first group of ten tomorrow.

And after nine days of being at the new domain, I'm removing the URL change reminder and - pay attention ye people who still (not naming any names at all) haven't updated your links - I won't be pinging Weblogs.com or blo.gs with the old URL from now.

One...

1. I'm always late into any trend I participate in. Like this one.
2. When I put CDs or DVDs back into their case, I then rotate them so that the writing is the right way up before I close the case.
3. I am generally obsessive about things that I like - whether it's reading all of my blogroll daily, buying all the books an author has written, buying all the albums a music artist/group has released (and then downloading all the B-sides), catching every episode of any TV program I watch, etc.
4. I talk to myself a lot and daydream far too much, even in public places.
5. I am a list-maker. Lists of what to do, what books to get, what features to add or markup to change for bent back tulips, what to blog about, what films I have recorded but not yet watched, etc.
6. I believe 'geek' and 'nerd' are two separate things.
7. I am a bit of a feedback junkie - I check my referrals a few times each week, and my comments each day (more often than I blog).
8. It takes a lot to make me lose my temper - not many people have seen it happen.
9. I can't stand other people's misuse of language, such as using 'everyday' instead of 'every day', or saying 'consequently' when they mean 'subsequently'.
10. I have a long attention span, and a lot of patience.

Learning curve

Simon Willison's got around to starting his CSS tutorial, which is good news for people like me who picked up all their knowledge of CSS through looking at other people's stylesheets. I am resolved to read through each stage and keep up with it - generally when I try to go through tutorials I lose my motivation halfway through. Hopefully that fact that he's releasing it into the wild gradually rather than all at once will mean that I'll actually keep to this, and learn something about CSS!

100 Part Deux

[Part one is here]

11. I get intensely involved when I'm watching a good film.
12. I hate watching films with people who aren't paying full attention to it. This includes people talking in the cinema.
13. I will never be bored on my own.
14. I can't stop buying books or cheap videos when I go shopping.
15. I don't cry at traditional or generic 'soppy' films, but I am the only person I know of who has cried at The Godfather Part II.
16. When I sing along to music that I'm familiar with I sing in harmony with the main melody line. Often without noticing.
17. My life has a soundtrack due to the non-stop playing of music either on speakers or in my head. I can't stop it even when I'd like some silence.
18. When I'm not singing along to music I tend to be humming to music that's in my head. Other people get annoyed since I don't notice myself doing it.
19. I am a mild perfectionist and pedant.
20. And yes, I insist that the year 2000 was last century.

100 (the third)

21. I reread all books except for those I didn't like at all.
22. My favourite book, which I've read fifteen times, is Gone With The Wind. I can't stand the film.
23. I cannot read fanfiction (apart from Cassie Claire's Very Secret Diaries), although I've written a piece for an online competition.
24. I sometimes have a tendency to overanalyse things.
25. I can't touch type 'properly', but can type using all ten fingers at about 75wpm.
26. I like to think things through before stating my opinion.
27. My dream car is an old (but perfectly preserved) Jaguar E-type, with a CD player installed.
28. If you can't find at least one Beatles song you like, you're not listening hard enough.
29. I don't believe that astrology is in any way meaningful.
30. I'd rather be too cold than too hot.

Thwarted

Today was going to be a day free from revision so that I could fill my wallet with some money (for various reasons my wallet now contains a total of 12p), post something which I'd promised to post yesterday, do some shopping and then go out in the evening to see The Matrix Reloaded with a friend.

However, the car which I was planning to use went in yesterday for its MOT and, surprise surprise, needs some parts replacing. Incidentally, is there anyone (at least in the UK.. I don't know how the system works in other countries) who would send their car in to be serviced and expect to be told that nothing further needed doing to it? My parents - who own two cars between them - reckon that this has happened only once in the last ten years. It just seems to be the norm that any time the garage sees a car they will immediately find something wrong with it.

Anyway, they didn't have the part they wanted in stock and so we'll only have a car back tomorrow morning. So I'll have to wait another day to see TMR.

I'll have to make do with Aquarion's cool new design instead.

100 (Goes Forth?)

31. I have very sensitive tastebuds. Some people don't believe me when I tell them that orange Smarties are made with orange-flavoured chocolate. They are, though.
32. I don't have a favourite colour.
33. I hate not wearing a watch, because I need to be able to see what the time is. And it needs to be accurate.
34. Having said that, I barely ever look at my watch and will instead do a visual search for a nearby clock.
35. I can in no way be described as a morning person.
36. Since I was born at 6.44am this means that I almost never witness my birthmoment.
37. I tend to dwell on things.
38. I hate keeping other people's secrets. My own, I'm fine with.
39. I generally get ill only once a year. But it will put me out of action for a whole week when it happens.
40. The first time I saw The Matrix I was half-asleep and the film was halfway through before I realised that Keanu Reeves' character wasn't called Neil.

100 fit the fifth

41. I don't exaggerate about things.
42. I am an introvert.
43. I used to be shy but I've got over that. Now I'm just antisocial without the excuse :)
44. I hate shopping for shoes - not that I've done it more than twice in the last two years - because my feet are too narrow and shallow to fit most shoes. Slip on shoes like mules, or any shoes without straps just fall straight off again.
45. I can't roll my tongue despite the fact that the rest of my family can and it's hereditary (according to my third-year Biology textbook, anyway).
46. I'm also the only member of my family with only one middle name instead of two. I was incredibly offended when I realised this, aged six.
47. I get upset when other people are disappointed in me.
48. I hate editing things after I've written them, so I spend a long time composing my writing in the first place.
49. Galaxy is the best chocolate. No question.
50. I passed my driving test first time, four months after I started driving.

[Part six is here.]

Smashing records

The first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I ever saw was (tragically, I now realise - it really wasn't a good entry point to the series) Once More With Feeling, which my Buffy-obsessed friend made me watch with her the day after it first aired in the UK.

I didn't watch any more Buffy until about October when I caught some episodes from the middle of season two being repeated on the BBC. The Buffy bug caught me and I kept watching until the end of the season, much to the delight of my friend. I then borrowed the rest of the canon from her in boxsets and have been working my way through steadily and in order - in the last seven months I've seen eight and-a-bit series of Buffy and Angel.

Now, I thought that was relatively impressive. Turns out I'm a complete amateur - Aaron Swartz has watched every episode of both (plus Joss Whedon's Firefly) aired to date since the end of February. My record is smashed.

And now that I'm working my way through Buffy season six, what's the next episode coming up?

Once More With Feeling. I'll watch it tomorrow :)

Here, take my money!

MyCreditCardDetails.co.uk.

Why keep your credit card numbers to yourself, when you can let everyone see them? No other website will give you the chance to show everyone your credit card numbers (including your pin number) and to have a browse through other peoples. You may even see the details of someone you know.

Will my details be seen by everyone?
Absolutely! Your details can be seen as soon as you register, just click on 'browse others details'. Our server is also totally non-secure, so your details could even be seen during transit.

Why else should i give you my details?
You can become a member of the fastest growing communtiy of people who publish their credit card numbers on a website.

100 part six

51. I've lived in three countries - the UK, France for 10 months when I was five, and Singapore for 18 months between the ages of almost-seven and eight.
52. I've visited fourteen countries. Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, England, Wales, Scotland (okay, cheating a bit), France, Germany, Canada, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Italy.
53. At the age of ten I won 96 Creme Eggs from a national newspaper for writing in on a postcard and telling them how I ate mine.
54. At the age of eleven I won two four-day tickets to the British Grand Prix with pitlane passes from the same newspaper, worth £300 each. My brother and my dad went since they're the motorsport fans in our house.
55. The following year I won The Wizard of Oz on video from the same newspaper.
56. I didn't win anything for three years after that (and never again anything from that newspaper) until I won the Thief Of Time and The Fifth Elephant unabridged audiobooks on cassette, one of which was signed by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs.
57. Two weeks later I won the full range (26 at that time) of abridged Discworld audiobooks.
58. Six months after that I won a Dibbler's Pie and a signed Jay Hurst poster of a Discworld scene.
59. I haven't won anything since; I think these things come in threes.
60. Although fiercely scientific and logical I am also quite superstitious - I touch wood, cross my fingers, etc.

100 le sept

61. I am lefthanded, like everyone in my family apart from my dad.
62. I find I don't need other people's approval.
63. I can read perfectly well in the car without getting sick.
64. However, I do feel sick when I'm in the car as a passenger for more than an hour. Not when I'm driving, though.
65. Although I'm not one for extreme sports - or sports - I'd love to try hang-gliding.
66. I love gadgets.
67. I would love to live in New York sometime.
68. I would hate to live in New York, especially in the summer and winter.
69. I really want to visit New Zealand and Australia.
70. I hate crowds and I frequently get headaches when I'm around lots of people for a few hours or more.

100 the octepart

71. I should see more films at the cinema than I do (which really means I should be prepared to go on my own). I can only think of three brilliant films that I've seen at the cinema.
72. I like buying gifts and doing things for other people.
73. I am a bit of a control freak, although I seldom admit it.
74. Although my spelling is generally very good, I can't write my middle name without concentrating.
75. It's "Sarah". (I always try to put an 'h' before the 'r'. Absolutely no idea why.)
76. I despise 80s music. And hair. And fashion.
77. I think one of the biggest tragedies in the world is wasted potential.
78. I never have the television on unless I'm watching a specific program - no channel-hopping, no having it on in the background (a habit that I can't understand). And never in the mornings.
79. I rarely remember my dreams, but when I do they're exceptionally mundane.
80. I procrastinate a lot about things that need to be done. I stick them on a To Do list instead.

Read my mind

Ever feel that the effort of using your muscles to control your mouse is too much? Want to avoid the hassle of typing on your keyboard?

Your solution is here (or will be in two to five years) - researchers have developed a web browser that reads your brain waves to enable you to surf the web without lifting a finger.

The browser window is divided into an upper section that resembles a traditional browser and a lower control section. Common controls like "Home", "Refresh", "Print" and "Back" are grouped in the left-hand corner and provide feedback. When a user focuses his attention on a button, it becomes highlighted, and when the user successfully focuses on clicking the button, it emits a low tone.

I'm sure they've tested it, but I'm curious as to how well the software works in any situation apart from sitting in a locked basement with no other sounds or distractions around. It'd be pretty easy, I imagine, to accidentally print out the webpage you're looking at just because your attention drifted for a few seconds... other than that, though, it sounds great. I'd love to try one, even if just to see how easy or otherwise it is to control.

100: Nine

81. I hate it when you can tell someone is just waiting for you to stop talking so they can start.
82. My mood is hugely affected by how sunny it is, which sucks when you live in Britain.
83. I get irrationally scared - I should say terrified - by large insects and spiders. My pulse rate will go up to about 120 per minute if I'm surprised by one.
84. Not only can I not say the alphabet backwards, I have difficulty starting from anywhere but A.
85. I can't use bookmarks; I rely on remembering the page number.
86. I believe that details are important.
87. I'm so used to my mum and I eating Mars bars strangely - starting with the chocolate, then the caramel, then the 'nougat' - I will double-take if I see anyone eating one normally.
88. I've almost forgotten how to do handwritten, non-sideways smilies.
89. I hate not being able to do what I feel I ought to be able to do. However, I'm fine with failing at things that I know are beyond my abilities.
90. This is why I don't mind at all that I came second-to-last out of the whole school year (about 70 girls) in our three-mile cross country run. I couldn't see the point and started walking halfway through. I wasn't absolutely last because I was walking with another girl, we sprinted on the final straight for penultimate place and I beat her by half a second.

100: The final stage

91. I can't act; never did Speech & Drama or the like at school. It therefore takes an awful lot for me to notice a good acting performance - such as William H. Macy in Fargo, Al Pacino in The Godfather, Natalie Portman in Léon, Kevin Spacey in American Beauty or Edward Norton in Primal Fear.
92. My favourite actors are James Stewart, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Edward Norton, Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman. Notice any overlaps?
93. I have a good sense of direction; if I know vaguely where I'm going I can usually tell which road to take when I'm driving. Er. Without looking at the signposts, I mean.
94. I'm very good at putting things out of my mind when I don't want to think about them. This can backfire sometimes.
95. My books, CDs, etc. are not alphabetised and I cannot imagine who would do such a thing. Books and CDs organised by author and artist, fine, but for the rest I just recognise them by their colour.
96. I don't know what my blood type is.
97. I honestly don't see what the big deal is about New Year's Eve.
98. There are words that I cannot stand. 'Recalcitrant', 'minutiae' and 'infinitesimal' are all valid examples. I'm sure there are more, but I try to forget them.
99. I don't have any kind of fear about needles. I find that I'm able to relax enough that injections don't hurt - no one believed me when I told them that getting my ears pierced didn't hurt a bit.
100. My 'childhood movie' that I watched over and over again - assuming that "Rupert And The Frog Song" doesn't count as a movie - is "Labyrinth". I still love it. I only found out a couple of years ago what a cult following it has.

Numb

I've just come back from the dentist who has given me a new filling. Before he started, though, he managed to ask one of the most unnecessary questions I've ever heard: "Would you like me to numb it for you?"

Oh, no thanks, I'm just dying for you to drill into my tooth with no anaesthetic after I saw the dental torture scene from Marathon Man yesterday. (One of the only scenes in a film to actually make me cry out and look away from the screen.) Fire away.

So I currently can't talk properly and I'll have to wait another hour to eat lunch. And I keep trying to sing along with Winamp and stopping abruptly as I remember why I shouldn't be singing at the moment.