I earn my living—the food I eat, the apartment I sleep in, the books I read, etc. — by pushing plastic buttons all day long.

I don’t know Amit Gupta personally - I just randomly started following his updates on twitter - so it feels a bit strange to first-name him in this post. What’s the etiquette on that?

Speaking of twitter, you can find me here and I’m always keen to find new people to follow / be followed by as I think the real appeal of apps like these is the community aspect.

We’re currently living in Missoula, a mid-sized city in the state of Montana
- here’s a particularly nice photo from Flickr of the city and it’s impressive scenic surroundings:

Now that we’re settled, I intend to get back to blogging - so if anyone’s still reading, I’ll be back real soon.

The programmes that surround them might habitually rely on cliffhangers to maintain attention, but advert breaks are not normally known for their sense of jeopardy. That could all change tonight when Channel 4 and Honda stage the first ever live advert on British television, featuring a team of skydivers leaping out of a plane over Madrid.

During the first ad break of the reality show Come Dine With Me at 8.10pm, the 19 skydivers will have three minutes and 20 seconds to spell out the word Honda, inspired by the car manufacturer’s new advertising strapline: “Difficult is worth doing”.

I can’t say it’s enough to make me watch Come Dine With Me, but I may try to time it right to switch over…

(via the guardian)

UPDATE: Well that was pretty cool, some funny moments and overall a pretty impressive feat. Apparently it’ll be available to watch online soon at honda.co.uk but at the time of writing, it’s not up yet.

Needless to say, I’ve become hooked on it and the last couple of episodes have been especially good. It’s immense popularity has ensured it’s going to continue for at least another series and to that end, they are now recruiting for applicants who’d like to have a chance to hear those magical words “you’re fired”.

Feel like you’ve got what it takes? Check out the online application.

Well now that’s just good news.

Weezer - Pork & Beans

I really love songs that have a lot going on towards the end - especially if there are contrasting vocal lines playing over each other. I feel like it gets me every time, always a winner - yet the only other example I can think of while here at work away from my ipod is Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute without the e (cut from the team)” which is the only one of their tracks I like, but I really like it. Thursday do it a fair bit too on Full Collapse, I really like that album too.

But enough chatter, here’s the video:

1. You accidentally swallow about eight spiders a year in your sleep

Why it’s not true:
Spiders have a natural instinct to stay alive and crawling into the heavy-breathing hot, wet mouths of animals goes strongly against this.

Who started it:
Back in 1993 a columnist for PC Professional named Lisa Holst decided to prove that you could make up anything on the internet and people would believe it.

She did this by making up a set of facts that were utterly ridiculous, the spider myth among them (which itself was taken from a collection of insect folklore that dates back to the 1950s, and emailing her findings around the world.

I find this very comforting, as I heard that one a while ago and it kinda freaked me out.

The client—the marketing side of a product development group—had a budget of $60,000 to spend. So they spent it, even though the R&D side of the product development group had not been able to deliver the product.

It’s a theme that comes to mind pretty often - whether it’s in the case of the M4 Motorway (runs past Reading on it’s way from London to South Wales) which always seems to have some sort of roadworks going on to erect another set of new informational signs (that usually inform you that there is a delay due to roadworks… endless loop, that) or the fact that new buildings were constantly appearing all over campus at Loughborough while I was there because - and this is just conjecture that was commonly believed around the place - the huge revenue from the sports side of things couldn’t solely be put back in to the sports concerns.

Seems like there are a hundred million places excess money could be going that would make massive differences to people’s lives. But then things just don’t work that way, do they?

An ambiguous animation painted on public walls. Made in Buenos Aires and in baden (fantoche).

I had to share… that’s just amazing, I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to complete.