I've been snowboarding again today. The last time this year probably. But I made quite a bit of progress so I can quite easily see myself surfin the precipitation once again some time.. I went with the crazy Finn in my class, Tapsa. He's nuts. I feel quite surrounded by people who are slightly but very visibly eccentric. Maybe its a Norway thing. There was a guy snowboarding in a suit. He wasn't eccentric, he was just cool of course, but I guess my point is its comforting to feel relatively normal among your friends. There are times when stuff happens here that is so unexplainable and apparently irrational that it makes me for a rare moment take a little pride and appreciation in my English upbringing. Its not that I'm ashamed of little britain, (this is an issue I perhaps have tried and failed to explain to some of you guys before), I'm beginning to refer to my attitude to britain as a country as 'indifferent', but I'm surprised and happy when occurences might suddenly make me think of british attitudes as pretty 'well formed' for want of a better phrase. This is a strange monologue. Anyway, there's a lot of mileage in the opinion that going away makes one, whether one likes it or not, more patriotic and less liberal rather than the expected vice versa. If patriotism is eked out of me, there must be something in that opinion.

Time for a picture.

Turning the Tide is a blog dedicated to publishing various ramblings of Noam Chomsky. Cool. Be warned: Some of the 149 commenters on this site are complete nutters.

I should say I found it because it is top of blogdex's list today. Blogdex is a MIT Media Lab thesis gone haywire: It picks what thousands of blogs in its database have recently linked to thus determining what are the most 'talked about' ideas in the blogging community right now. Its mostly full of news stories unsurprisingly, but a few of the links make pretty interesting reflections. Awful topic for a Phd though...

Checkee the new Customisation interface <--. Of course, theSound wouldn't be theSound without bugs: If you check 'links open windows' then the commenting ceases to work. ah well. It does remember your settings though thanks to the veiled blessing of cookies. Feedback welcomed, especially on the fonts.

Thanks anyway to Elvis Costello. I mean Eric Costello...

Things to do:

Look out for one of these doin the rounds.

Check out some Baghdad blogging.

Try putting some ham, a pineapple ring and some cheese on a slice of bread and toasting it in the oven. Cheap and cheerful.

Get your teeth into 'to kill a mocking bird', Harper Lee, for clear, sensitive, daily moral living. that isn't annoying.

Look after those you love and look out for them. Look once and then look again harder. Use the phone. Tell me to ring back and I will.

Never take advice from me.

Play, sing, hit something, nothing feels better.

Listen to Mark and Lard in the afternoon on Radio 1 before its too late.

When your son tells you how to set the video to record from satellite, write it down.

Ever wondered how to juggle 100 balls? This Java applet could help...

A new little animation I made for NYK..

teeheehee..

its the 'tache that really gets me..

For some real blogging rather than this morning's sorry excuse from me, check out eyes of a blue dog.

OK, a few points to note:

Firstly, Up until yesterday I was loathing the existence of email for its general information overloading properties, even if said information is very welcome and useful, it is frustrating to require so much time to respond to it all adequately. Thiunnking about it this qualmstill exists for me buti it was offset severely this morning by the quality of received emails. It probably says more about my misuse of the information superhighway that I respond to these on a blog, rather than replying immediately to them but this is a working day ticking away right now... (weak justification for blogging...).

First up, another beautifully crafted email from my friend Matt in the US. No points for guessing he was an English major...

>So I was complaining about something to someone the other day (I forget to whom about what but that's immaterial) and they said something that I thought was absolutely brilliant. "Matt," they said, "instead of just complaining about this why don't you do something about it."
So I did.
What follows is a list of things (in no particular order) that annoy me. Admittedly, this probably wasn't what the person meant when they said I should I should do something but it's a start. So without further ado...

-Non-alcoholic beer
-Decaffienated coffee
- The Family Circus
-Genocide
-People who say "unique" when they mean"unusual"
-Computer-based GRE's
-My mom's cat
-Republicans (there are a few exceptions to this one, such as John McCain and Bob Dole, but they are few and far between)
-Wearing wrinkled clothes
-Ironing
-Driving at sunrise or sunset when the sun is low on the horizon and it's blinding you
-Chris Kattan
-Shopping for a toothbrush (seriously, what the fuck? there's toothbrushes with straight bristles, criss-crossed bristles, a mix of straight and criss-crossed bristles, hard bristles, soft bristles, medium bristles, large heads, small heads, flexible necks, straight necks. Toothbrushes that are guaranteed to reduce plaque, prevent gum disease, clean between the teeth, help you lose weight. Then there's electric toothbrushes. Do you get the one that uses batteries or the one with a base that plugs into an outlet and charges the toothbrush? Do you get the one with the round head that moves in a circular motion or the square head that moves back and forth? I can't wait until I get dental insurance again and the dentist just gives me a new one every six months.)
-Being nearly 23 and still unable to grow a proper beard
-Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh (I know I already covered these guys under Republicans but they're so annoying they deserve a separate mention)
-Being poor
-Having a job
-The radio stations in my area (there's like 4 classic rock stations, 4 hip-hop stations, and 4 top 40 stations so if you want to listen to something other than Nickleback, Ja Rule, or Rush you're shit outta luck. If it wasn't for NPR I'd go crazy.)
-Pop-up ads

Well that's about all I can think of right now so I guess I'll wrap it up. Bye for now.

-Matty

He sent this email to nigh on 50 people so I have no qualms about reprinting it for public consumption..

Other highlights from my inbox were a long and highly amusing and homesick inducing email from the sister, more longlost emails from lonlost american aquaintances, A topsy turvy email from Jo in Australia - despite her being there for ovre 6 months I have only just come to the realisation that physically she is actually upside down. For yours my subconcsious discounted this as a joke, a young wives tale if you will, but She is Actually Upside Down. (capitals signify the gravity of this point - hohoho).

Also a cryptic email from Glasgow announcing "Fw: Opening hours and power shutdown". Power shutdown? Just what is going on at home? If its not mass staff walkouts its the uitility companies withdrawing the library's supply. Completely!?! I'm pretty sure this never happened last year.. Some dispatches from the frontline of the Glasgow disputes would be greatly appreciated in comments..

Lastly, which should have been firstly, I have to register my disgust at the happenings in Madrid on Thursday. I would have blogged or at least emailed my counterparts in Spain were I not so sickened and world weary. I am currently trying to block out thoughts that this heralds the continuation of a complete nonexistence of morality and rebirth of cruelty in our modern world. A feeling I haven't sensed so intensely since Iraq last year.

As acts like these proliferate there is less and less I feel there is to say.

I don't know why but for some reason recently pictures speak much louder than words...

I can't say I'm normally a great fan of churches architecture wise - unless they're cathedrals - but this one we saw in Kristiansund was darn cool.

Didn't look that much from the outside, just a crazy whitewashed 70s radical kinda building,

but inside was a triumph of light, minimalism, calm and awe...

Its enough to make you want to go regularly, unlike some other churches i can think of..

PS. I now, like Gilly, have a sitemeter (that number under the credits on the left) that tells us all pretty useless information so why don't you provide more interesting info about your whereabouts using theMap on the left there...

theSound is truly up to date again. Honest. There's still a lot of crap on there in fact which if you're clever you may just stumble across. Goodness knows what I'll do when I lose my entitlement to megabytes and megabytes of university hosting. God forbid I may have to start paying *gasps*.

Anyhoo, I promised some updates from eel and Kath's visit and didn't really elaborate. It was great, fun was had, lots of money spent, one memorable boat trip taken and many memorable things uttered. MOSTLY though I'll probably just remember this:

a very big spanner.

Hardware store for very big people in very small Kristiansund

The Guardian have started a digital edition! isn't that cool? How can I read their site every day yet I've only just noticed this month old news? stoopid eyes..

This is a killer app for flash. Very politically aware too.

this is what the key next to return looks like on keyboards here. Cool eh?

Neel and Kath were here and now they are on their way home...

A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller.
He can see from her nameplate that her name is Patricia Whack.
"Miss Whack, I'd like to get a $30,000 loan to take a holiday."

Patty looks at the frog in disbelief and
asks his name.

The frog says his name is Kermit Jagger,
his dad is Mick Jagger, and that it's okay, he knows the bank
manager.

Patty explains that he will need to secure the loan with some
collateral.

The frog says, "Sure. I have
this," and produces a tiny porcelain
elephant. It's about an inch tall,
bright pink, and perfectly
formed.

Very confused, Patty explains that
she'll have to consult with
the bank manager and disappears into a back
office.

She finds the manager and tells him,
"There's a frog called
Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you
and wants to borrow
$30,000, and he wants to use this as collateral." She
holds up the tiny pink elephant. "I mean, what in the world is
this?"







The bank manager looks back at her and
says...
"It's a knickknack, Patty Whack.
Give the frog a loan. His old
man's a Rolling Stone."
(You're singing it, aren't you)



Legal Disclaimer
--------------------------
I am not responsible for any loss of friends resulting from the use of this, er, joke. Any complaints should be directed exclusively towards Mark Corrigan, Linlithgow, Scotland, who incidentally is studying law and thus should really be aware of the fine line this story treads between humour and human rights infringement...

Another lovelily designed website from a graphic designer. This one knows a bit aboot Trondheim too. Sorry, slipped into Canadian there..

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy...! Wanna go halvers Neel or Gaz?