Link: http://kanyelicio.us/

Twitter is a font of all things erm... actually I'm not sure what, but I came across this little snippet a little earlier. It seems an ideal way to a little attention for yourself by riding on the back of Kanye West's little outburst at the MTV Awards. Let me first say that I have absolutely no interest in Mr West, his music or his life - frankly I couldn't give a stuff, but if he's good for another couple of seconds in the piggy bank towards my 15 minutes of fame, then he's fine by me. But moving on...

What I found at Twitter was a number of posts for a site called http://kanyelicio.us/. By a clever little snippet of electrickery and jiggery pokery, you can get Kanye to dish the dirt on your site. Here's what it does to Izdihar - Kanye West disses Izdihar.com

OK, so it's a cheap gimmick, but do you think I care? You're here reading aren't you? :>>

I have the singular duty and delight to report that you have just served me the most disgusting in-flight meal it has ever been my displeasure to partake of. Even at the best of times, airline meals are unlikely to be the stuff that Michelin stars are made of, but today saw you plumb new depths in culinary faux pas. It was with sinking feeling that AM and I were offered the expansive range of options today consisting as they did of lamb 'nondescript', or the vegetarian option, a mushroom 'bland'. AM doesn't go in much for anything involving fungi and would have rejected the 'bland' even if prepared and served by the Roux Brothers themselves. I, whilst not averse to mushrooms, didn't much fancy the meat free choice either, so the pair of us plumped for the lamb. We should have considered ourselves forewarned by the brown foil covering of the container in which the main course was concealed. Peeling the foil back revealed what I could only describe as a pair of glistening turdlets rating a Type 4 designation on the Bristol Stool Scale. As a flicker of barely warmed steam rose from them, it was clear that the accompaniment did little to disavow us of that initial allusion, the only possible improvement could have been a few squares of toilet tissue resting neatly atop the pile. I must confess dear reader, that through a feat of cast iron stomachry, I did in fact manage to consume one of the offending logs and am able to report that it tasted no better than it looked. Salvation came only from the rubbery orange thing masquerading as cheese. I was remiss in one of my earlier reports (New note book, new trip, new destination), that I did not mention that I & G served us with the finest piece of Brie I've ever eaten - you may take it as read that any comparison of this with today's rubber triangle would have as much meaning as comparing the ordnance carrying capability of a B52 with a SPAD. That aside, it was at least of the right side of palatability, as was the toffee and something else cheesecake. I'll not mention the tea, save to say that any hope of rescuing the dire state of the meal 'experience' took a nose dive as I first had to 'milk' the sachet in true rustic style, then retrieve the sugar packet from the lukewarm liquid. The only thing approaching a nirvana like plain, was when our serving person came to collect the mortal remains. I can only hope that there is some form of crematorium up front, where BMI can finally do the decent thing for it. Never before can any sheep have laid down its life so hopelessly in vain as was the case today. The votes from the English judges? 'Nil point' is surely too good for this one.

Risto Linturi, research fellow of the Helsinki Telephone Corporation, quoted in Wired magazine, describes the extraordinary behaviour kids in the streets of Helsinki, all carrying cellphones with messaging capabilities. They are not exchanging important business information, they’re just chattering, staying in touch. "We are herd animals," he says. "These kids are connected to their herd – they always know where it’s moving." Pervasive wireless communication, he believes will "bring us back to behaviour patterns that were natural to us and destroy behaviour patterns that were brought about by the limitations of technology."

We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing.

How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet - douglasadams.com

I read the quote above, from the inimitable Mr Adams, a few days back and was struck by the apparent simplicity of the idea it expressed. As I sit here in a darkened room flicking repeatedly back and forth between blog pages, forums, flickr, Twitter, Facebook and others, I am busy recreating connections somehow lost in the real world. Moving back and forth between Saudi and the UK, I now carry my social world with me, never again do I truly need to be apart from my 'friends'. No surprise then that the absence of some or other contact from the virtual world, leads to a sense of 'missing' them and wondering what they are up to. I feel more detached if I don't have internet access than I do when I'm away from friends and family.

I've no idea whether this has any basis in fact but, it seems to me, that those parts of the world that are the least likely to have an internet connection, are the most likely to live in villages, and vice versa. They strive to join the 'haves', whilst we strive to recreate a pastiche of the community we left, only constructed of bits and bytes. I'm sure the social anthropologists will have field day with this sort of stuff in years to come. In the meantime, I will keep trying to keep up with what's going on within my own personal mouse-driven sphere of interest for another evening.

I just read through the article linked below with some degree of bemusement at things happening across at flickr. Whilst I have no particular axe to grind with them, this does seem rather odd behaviour on the part of their customer service people. I'll be watching with interest.

Flickr User Shepherd Johnson Says Yahoo Security Officer and Former FBI Agent John Zent Threatens to Call Police on Him After Flickr Nuked His Account

AM and I went to a Chinese restaurant this evening in Windemere. In and of itself, there's nothing too special about that, though it was a nice meal. At the end with coffee, we got a fortune cookie each. In mine was a message that said "You will be the parent of a famous child" - OK, at 47, I suspect this one may have been a little overdue, but what the heck. AM got a fortune cookie containing precisely nothing. This fits in nicely with her personal view of life. Coincidence? I think not...

We're off to Limoges, AM and I, aboard a Ryanair special. Not that there's anything special about it, bedecked as it is in navy blue and a slightly jarring shade of daffodil yellow. Since boarding, we've been assaulted by repeated inducements to part with our cash. At the moment it's charity scratch cards, earlier is was smoke free nicotine sticks for those who cannot last the hour and a quarter flight time, then it was the food and drinks trolley. Can't wait for the roll-out of the minor cosmetic surgery and liposuction cart.

We passed through Speke a while ago, or "John Lennon" airport as its tired and slightly foreboding travel hub is now named. It's not a place I choose to travel from willingly and my only previous encounter with it saw the side window of every other car put through on the row in which I was parked - fortunately, mine escaped attention. With that in mind, the trip today was by taxi.

Today's reading is courtesy of Philip K. Dick and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". The crew here are almost certainly made up of escaped 'Andys'. Roy Baty at the controls up front and rolling out nicotine sticks was Flis herself, minus the flick-flaks - a bit tight in a 737-800 for those, she looks plastic enough though. Wonder if the other passengers are real? Time to die...

Down below I can see France passing us by. AM is dozing gently, head propped on her right hand and leaning against the pillar next to the window. It look OK there weather-wise. Couldn't possibly be much worse than the North-West has been over the last week. Rain pelted by wind into a splattery wet mush of torrential downpour. AM looks contented at the moment, though she's not really settled herself to this trip. Can't see too much going awry with it.

They're calling for landing prep now, so I'll not be able to write too much more, as they'll want the table stowing away. As I look out of the window, we tilt away starboard and the aircraft slowly sinks, wing first, into the clouds. Behind us, one of the babies on board is having a right good squawk - no doubt having its ears pummelled by the change in air pressure. As we drop through the cloud, the cabin is buffeted by the outside air and another child joins in the chorus. Table now away, writing is now rather more awkward. Not long to go though.

Below the cloud base, things settle a touch, but not the child. To our right there's a pretty little lake bathed in late summer sunshine, cottages and houses clinging to its banks. Roy Baty has just called the rest of the 'Andys' to strap in. Hope I & G are waiting for us. 500ft to go, looks like a model village down there. Then we hit tarmac. Is Limoges the world's most quaint airport? All it needs is Windy Miller and an Oliver Postgate voice over and it would surely be complete. Have they heard of mowers here? More notes from a small world...

The note on the back reads "An early photograph with the receding hair line just beginning to set in. Also the tendency of hanging round in parks clearly showing". Probably shot around 1964-5