Yesterday was the office Christmas party. A 1940s themed affair (though Jez and Nick missed by a few decades). I had fun but a sixth sense told me to head home fairly early (was the free booze about to run out?), but other people have tales to tell and hangovers to nurse.

Little did the revellers at The Pigalle Club realise that one of their number was a slumming aristrocrat:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
The Most Honourable Steve the Deipnosophist of Throcking by Hampton
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Yep, I had to look it up as well.

Had a fantastic long weekend, four days of relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

Thursday night, left work and headed down to Croydon where ate at Wagamama’s (the Salmon Ramen is very good) before going to see Mitchell and Webb at the Fairfield Halls. I think this is the third time I’ve been to that particular venue - the first was to see Victor Borge some twenty years ago, and the second was to see the Rocky Horror Show about eight years ago. Anyway, Mitchell and Webb were just as good live as on the telly - some familiar sketches (taken to new extremes in a few cases) and some I didn’t recognise from the TV series.

Friday, we went up to the British Museum to see The Past from Above exhibition. Really breath taking stuff that really brought home just how vast the extent of human history is. Most parts of the world have see who knows how many lifetimes lived, with not a single line in the history that most of us know.

Also at the BM, was a (relatively) recently reopened gallery dedicated to the Enlightenment and hence the birth of the museum itself. It does a very good job of emulating what the BM is like in our secret thoughts - all book lined walls and eclectic displays.

Saturday, pink_weasel went to play at the Tate whilst I stayed home and read comics. But I did find time to visit West Norwood’s first ever farmer’s market (it’s going to be a regular event every two weeks) where I picked up some cheese and some welsh dragon sausages (pork and leek and chili). In the evening I left a very knackered Lettice in bed and went to Giroscope’s birthday bash in fitzrovia - Duke of York, for beer Palms of Goa for curry; and finally The Fitzroy Tavern, for more beer.

Sunday was a quiet day at home - my dad brought the second of two leather chairs, Lettice poured dye all over a book (on purpose) and we started watching Doctor Who - The Invasion (with the missing episodes filled in by animation). Though not the best animation in the world it captured the likenesses of the main characters well and was, of course, cleaner and smoother than the surviving ’60s live action episodes.

Today, we lay around in bed and then went to Croydon again to see Casino Royale. Possible the best Bond film ever. Certainly the best since the ’60s. Having a actor who can actually act certainly helps. It will be interesting to see what they do next time, now that they’ve done the whole “how Bond becomes Bond” bit, will they find something suitably interesting for Craig to get his teeth into for the sequel?

Phew. Back to work tomorrow where with any luck I’ll be holding second interviews for my assistant. With luck we’ll be able to make someone an offer at the end of the week and have them start very early in the new year. Which will mean that I should be able to take more than two days off next time.

The reason I don’t post so much at the moment is partly that my brain is a bit frazzled at the moment and partly that when I write a long post (like version one of this one) it get’s eaten by the computer-interweb-monster.

Anyway, here’s some of what I wanted to tell you all.

Wordie “Like Flickr, but without the photos.” Silly but funny.

A Preacher TV series? OMG. How fucking cool would that be if they did it right?

Speaking of TV (oh I’m smooth I am). Is Robin Hood the gayest programme on the box at the moment? Can you point at any one of the regular characters and say “Yes, they’re 100% heterosexual”? Let’s look at them all:

• Robin - ran off to the Holy Land rather than marry Marion; homo-erotic wrestling match with Guy last week.
• Much - follows Robin around all the time making puppy dog eyes
• John - left his wife to live in the forest with a bunch of men
• Alan - did you see him trying on the women’s jewellery a couple of episodes back?
• Will - claims to love Djaq, who…
• Djaq - man’s name, men’s clothes, short hair
• Marion - creeps out of the house at night disguised as a man
• Guy - all that tight black leather and generally being the Sheriff’s bitch
• The Sheriff - has a gimp called Guy; seemed equally interested in the nun and the serving boy

So much denial. They must have cut down Sherwood Forest to make all those closets. Still good to see this getting airtime at 7pm on BBC1. And the only complaints are about the historical accuracy. That’s progress for you.

Built my first AJAX powered web thingy. It’s very Web 2.0 - even got popup message box things with semi-opaque backgrounds.

Back on Web 1.33333 I’ve updated the Dinosaurs in Miniature web pages. Added 10mm and 6mm listings and updated the existing lists.

Oh, and that fuckwit who thinks MI5 are stalking him through the telly has spammed radw, presumably thanks to some cross posted threads from a uk. group. Still it makes a change from the normal moronic trolling. Why do I still read? Must be some form of masochism.

Going to see Mitchell and Webb tomorrow. In Cryodon, but it’s okay - I’ve had my innoculations. That’s the start of a long weekend and we have big plans. Take in a film or two, do the Christmas shopping, visit the British Museum, giroscope’s birthday curry, clean the flat from top to bottom. Come Tuesday I’ll be glad to be back at work.

You all know which one.

At work until nine o’clock this evening. Doing something the hard way because the easy way would utilise a semi-transparent PNG and for various reasons the usual hacks to get them to (sort of) work in IE couldn’t be made to work. Gah.

So came home, ate fish and chips and watched the first two episodes of The Hand of Fear. Feeling a little better now. Shame that it’s now a bit late to start drinking beer.

As we’re all blogging for history, here’s a bit about my day.

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Alarm went off at 7:00. Lettice got up. I didn’t. Whoops. Staggered out of bed at 8:00 and between checking e-mail, showering, eating breakfast and faffing about managed to get into work around about 9:45. No meetings this morning so not a problem. Check work e-mail and calendar and tell the project manager that I love her because she’s worked out that in our incredibly tight schedule for the site (www.visitlondon.com) redesign I actually have no tasks allocated to me between the end of November and the sometim in February so I can take some holiday after all. But then I groan as I realise that Friday is booked up with meetings from 10-12 and then 12:30-16:00. Ouch.

Spent most of the day working on a project for our kids’ site (www.kidslovelondon.com). Nothing terribly exciting - a bit of CSS, bit of XSLT, bit of JavaScript (enforcing my own recently written coding standards to avoid document.write and use appendChild() etc.). Minor panic regarding the half term edition of the kids’ newsletter but it got sent out on time and everyone seems very happy with the new style.

Went to lunch with Lettice - she’s working at VL for a few weeks. And after that it was time for today’s round of meetings about the redesign project. Time and money versus ambition. Same as every project I’ve ever worked on. We actually have a very good team (and soon to be a much bigger team, an ad will be appear in this week’s New Media Age for six positions within the web team at VL) and doing most of the work in house will cut down on some of the headaches.

Ended up working until 18:30 which makes up for the late start, though a fair chunk of the last hour was spent playing Bang! Howdy (www.banghowdy.com) whilst waiting for other people to go through the designs of the Christmas pages with me. We need to have some pages up very soon in order to cover the switching on of the Christmas Lights.

London Bridge was busy and I just missed the 18:39. I bought this week’s New Scientist (suckered in by the ‘what would happen to Earth if humans vanished cover story) and this month’s .net (a couple of articles that I can quote mine for a brainstorm in one of Friday’s endless meetings). Ran into Séverine and we caught the 18:51 to Tulse Hill and then walked up to West Norwood together.

Home, sausages for dinner, then watched CSI: Miami with Lettice before sitting down to write this.

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So there you are, not my usual sort of post and probably not of any great historical interest.

For everyone who works for a living, via Gungnir on TMP:

Recently, a large corporation hired several cannibals to increase their diversity, “You are all part of our team now,” said the Human Resources rep during the welcoming briefing. “You get all the usual benefits and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat, but please don’t eat any employees.”

The cannibals promised they would not.

Four weeks later their boss remarked, “You’re all working very hard and I’m satisfied with your work. We have noticed a marked increase in the whole company’s performance. However, one of our secretaries has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to her?”

The cannibals all shook their heads, “No.”

After the boss had left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others, “Which one of you idiots ate the secretary?”

A hand rose hesitantly. “You fool!” the leader continued.

“For four weeks we’ve been eating managers and no one noticed anything. But NOOOooo, you had to go and eat someone who actually does something.”

Hello, pointless calendar inspired posting time…

1. A friend phoned up and asked of I knew of any late night scart lead emporiums. Clearly a gap in the market.

2. Horatio Caine in love is creepy. Very creepy.

3. Last night was the last ever meeting of the Idle Speculators investment club. We’ve voted to wind the club up due to lack of active participation. Still we outperformed a ftse tracker for six years so I’d call it a success.

4. Grrrr. Need to start the search for a web developer all over again.

5. I actually quite enjoyed Robin Hood. Though I found myself saying “oh dear” every few minutes (and really should have saved them all for the throwing the sword bit).

6. Same friend as in 1 was pleased with himself as a “non-trekkie” (sic) for working out what Torchwood on a side of a bus meant.

7. The Turing Test is a very, very good book.

8. YouTube getting bought by Google at long last answers this question. And means that I’ll have to stop referring to YouTube as the Underpants Gnomes of the web.

9. There must be at least ten mildly interesting things in my life over the last few days, right? Yes, this one is cheating.

10. Logging onto a forum, seeing that new user from yesterday with the suspect user name is online and has just added a link to a site selling drugs, sending him a PM saying “You do know that you’re 30 seconds away from being banned?”, ah, the simple pleasures.

Ahoy me hearties, pull up a seat, pour yerself a tot o’ rum and listen as yer captain tells ye what he has been about of late.

Last Thursday ’twas my birthday and me landlubbing brother sent me gifts (arrr, I know what ye be thinking, he not be wanting me to plunder his scurvy souled town, and I be thinking that ye ‘ave a point). He sent me the latest collection of shanties by a fine lusty lass and a tall tale of a comedian in the arms trade. I be liking both gifts, though I must confess the whole idea of selling arms perplexes me. Why sell them when ye can use them to plunder more booty instead?

Over the weekend, the ship needed some repairs - the mass of booty plundered was becoming too great and so with much ingenuity on the part of our swedish carpenters we now be having a fine set of bookshelves to be a berth to it all.

This week I pressgang’d me first mate into helping me plunder the vaults o’ London. Arrrrrr! I also be on the look out for a new hand and been holding interviews for a suitable seadog.

Avast, I must be to sea. Fair seas to ye all and see ye at the appointed hour next year. Harrrrrrr!

I turned down the opportunity to appear in this.

Linky link link if the video doesn’t play

First wedding anniversary today!

And to celebrate, we’re off to the pub to see littlebun. Which is rather appropriate as it was all her fault in the first place.

[Update] - the pub in question is The White Hart near Waterloo, good food and good beer. Come along if you like, we’re aiming to be there from 3pm.

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Quick mention for two sites we lanched this week: Future London and Open Rehearsal. More about the former tomorrow.