Ever wondered what it would be like to perform surgery on yourself? No? Why not? Well, anyway: here's a description of what it's like to have to give yourself an appendectomy. In the Antarctic. With next to no help.

Clay Shirky opens up a serious can of worms, noting that women do not push themselves forward in the way men do. Part of me wants to say "well, *duh*". Shirky suggests that if women behaved in a more self-aggrandising manner, they'd get more equal treatment. I'm just not sure that I want to encourage any more people to behave like some of the self-promoting male pricks I've met.

Tom Coates identifies some of the problems with what Shirky is suggesting – the problem isn't just that women don't push themselves forward, but often that the wrong people do, and what we should be focusing on is ensuring that everyone correctly advertises their own level of experience and ability – that those that *do* self-promote heavily while they can be useful, can just as often be a total pain.

Danah Boyd's repose to Shirky and Coates is excellent reading.

Trafalgar Square at noon on Saturday. Anyone interested?

I urgently need to borrow five or more children, ages 8-11.

Just in case anyone reading this has been dropped on their head recently, here's a campaign aiming to raise awareness of the quackery of homeopathy masquerading of "complementary" medicine. Of particular relevance is the "what's the harm?" link, because that'' explain *why* we need to make sure people understand that this crap is a scam to part the gullible from their money, just like Reiki and other similar kinds of bullshit. I all for holistic treatments, and accepting the western medical science does not yet have all the answers, but I also believe it's vital to know where the lines between "we don't know why it works", "we're not sure if it works" and "we *know* it doesn't work" are drawn.

I am not 100% convinced by this, just because of the simple practicalities – I do not want to be fixing my fairly hefty lenses to something the size of a compact – I suspect the balance and weight will be fucked, and shooting will feel awkward. But I admin, I'd like to be able to have a play with one of these for a bit, particularly when Nikon and Canon get in the game.

I don't think I'm <em>too</em> guilty of these. Generally, I've only done one or two of these things to a photo. Honest.

Wow. This is an excellent move. Certainly it's making me seriously consider voting for them.

You're bound to see/have seen this one all over the place today. Still worth logging, and very, very impressive of Google to do it. Will be interesting to see what the outcome shakes out to be, although I suspect I can guess… Also, obviously, this is a massively concerning thing that China is doing, and well, fingers crossed it'll stop with exposure, although again….

Yeah. And *this* is exactly why I stopped giving them any more data. Creepy as fuck.

Ever done any of these things in an internet argument? Yeah, well, me too. Let's just put it behind us, and try and be better people from now on, eh?

Apparently looking at lots of porn really *isn't* healthy for human relationships. Who knew?

I think I must find some people, and somehow stage this. It would be *amazing*.

12 people, stumping up less that 50 quid each could all get 40 copies of a 12 page full colour printed product that would be easily saleable for 1.50 plus P&P. That's a tabloid newspaper page to do with as you will, and ten quid in your pocket. Creative people out there: what would you fill your page with?

Thoughts like this are on my mind at the moment for a few reasons. I have three blogs and an LJ, and while each of them serve a distinct purpose, they really all are just personal things – there is no particular reason why anyone who doesn't know me would want to read them. Which is fine and dandy, and I find all of them useful and rewarding, or I wouldn't be keeping them, but I am wondering if there's a way I could restructure them to make them a bit more interesting to the casual visitor.

HTML 5 forms. Oh, this is going to make interface design much nicer. In about four of five years, anyway.

Thought it was worth pointing this one out, as there's bound to be another round of copyright extension lobbying fairly soon – when isn't there? Here's a list of what could have been public domain today, were it not for the 1976 extension. Can you find an argument for any of these works not being in the public domain now?

For all I make jokes about being a "good protestant boy", in the years since the Good Friday Agreement, I had more or less come to believe that a united Ireland was a good and desirable thing – the British have unquestionably fucked the place for centuries, and eventually the majority opinion in the North is going to be in favour of a united Ireland. That was until today, when I discovered that Ireland have enacted a law forbidding blasphemy. That's so fucking retrograde it's unreal, and genuinely makes me concerned about a united Ireland again. And if you need a demonstration of why it's stupid, well, take a look here.

Tomorrow, I delete my facebook account. Their privacy settings are too fucking awful for me – I siply don't trust them, and on that basis, it's time to go. I've already deleted all the data that they hold, bar the notes (and those only remain because there isn't a bulk delete option), but tomorrow, I kick off the death of my facebook account. It actually feels kinda weird to completely deactivate something like that, but there we go.

This will be irrelevant to everyone reading this, but I will probably need to refer to this at some point in the future. Sorry to have wasted everyone else's time.