viDayorama

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And you thought I'd simply been wasting my life away during my prolonged Dayorama absence. From the creator of Dayoramoblog, the almost-live Dayorama audio extravaganza, I give you: viDayorama,

This roughly translates as "Ollie has a new video camera and has come up with a nice, gimmicky name under which to start filming stuff".

You can watch the first viDayorama, very much a testbed for future episodes, here:

Now, if you watched that, rest assured that you got off lightly. There was plenty more slow-motion dog footage where that came from.

The camera, for those who worry about such things, is a Sony SR190E. It fits neatly around your palm, records direct to a 40 gigabyte hard drive (so you simply copy your files across to your PC when you're ready), and yes, has a super-slow-motion facility.

This I only discovered while walking the dog around a nature reserve, which would explain for the dog why he suddenly received so much attention, at close quarters, with a camera crammed in his face.

So far I can find very little fault with the camera. It is incredibly light, intuitive, produces gorgeous colours and the sound is not as bad as it could be - and will only get better once the added audio kit I have ordered arrives.

My only gripe would be that it sometimes takes a little too long to auto-focus - oh and it took forever to find a decent video editing package for Mpeg-2 files, which the camera (like many others) produces.

Windows Movie Maker does not want to know, but in the end I discovered Mpeg Video Wizard. I have just put the first viDayorama together using the free 30-day trial, and it was as easy as using some of the BBC standard issue stuff at work - every tool I needed was there and it was easy to work out how to do everything. I really recommend it, even if it's going to cost me around £40 to purchase once the trial expires.

So, where next for viDayorama? I think you could well expect something from the MPH motor show in London this weekend, and from the Spaced event at the BFI on 10 November. But if you have suggestions for interesting events around London or the Home Counties, drop me a line and I'll see if I can mobilise...

And Take Your Diagrams With You

Admin

Alright look: I hate bloggers who post about the search terms used to reach their website just as much as the next person. So much so that I've refrained from doing so for a good few years now, but allow me this one.

Someone, not even half an hour ago, arrived at Dayorama using the term:

"the biggest list of the bestest ways for me and my sexy sarah to be naughty together lots, with diagrams"

What?

Google has 83 results for this - none of which appear to at all match, with us coming in sixth. The post it links to is one about umpiring from a few months ago, one that certainly doesn't contain any diagrams of anything naughty. Like, for example, treading on the protected area of the wicket during your bowling action.

Good luck to Sarah and her beau in finding their misplaced diagrams. Sounds as though they'll misplace their diaphragms, the rate they're going.

The Question On All Of Our Minds

Admin

When. Is. OJ. Going. To. Post. ?

Still Not A Zeitgeist

Admin

So here we go again, with one great statistical binge to see in the New Year. The one for 2005 is here, should you want to compare notes. Please heed my usual warning that if you're a normal human being with no great statistical bent, now is the time to move on.

As ever we'll start with the number of posts in 2006. Here's some background:

• 2005: 800 posts
• 2004: 365 posts
• 2003: 68 posts
• 2002: 61 posts

In 2006 we posted 816 articles (including this one), a slender increase on 2005.

2006 was, of course, the year in which we welcomed a fourth contributor to the ranks. Here's how our individual posting totals increased over the year:

It must be confessed that two contributors' lines on the chart appear to be levelling out, but having been bolstered by David's addition, progress continues. This next chart shows our monthly contributions in more detail (each bar is in the colour of the contributor, i.e. green for Ollie, blue for OJ, purple for Amy, yellow for David).

This highlights the fact that we hear from OJ, and increasingly Amy, all too rarely. But we can't harass these busy folk and I'm promised a post from Amy involving the sipping of champagne from the roof of an opera house shortly. The girl knows how to live (she's in India as I write).

In fact from the last few months, it looks as though David is the new Amy! Amy is the new OJ, and OJ is the New Coke (hung around for a while having been produced in the mid-80s, but now defunct).

My 66 posts in January this year is a new record for a single month (the previous being the 51 I managed in July 2005), as is the 127 posts we managed in total that month (beating 96 in July 2005). In both 2005 and 2006 November has been a noticeably quiet month. In fact, let's take a look at our monthly posting records for 05 and 06, plotted against each other:

Our pacey January 2006 start is clear, but then there's a marked dip below 2005 levels of posting. This is probably good news, in as much as my promise this time last year was to deliver 'quality, not quantity'. While we've posted 16 more times this year than last, if you take January out of the equation, it's a far more sober rate of posting. It's up to you to decide if we're getting any better!

I posted 525 times in 2006, not including this post. That's exactly double my total at the start of the year (we do like a good stat like that). Amy contributed 190 posts, OJ exactly 50, and David also exactly 50. So I'm on 1051 in total, Amy's on 650, OJ's on 359 and David's on those same 50 posts.

Leaving the writers behind, let's take a quick look at the readers. We switched to a new stats system for the beginning of April - here's the figures for unique users from April to December:

It's trickier with the new stats package to say which our most popular posts were to a precise degree, but there are three spikes on that graph for which I can account.

The first, in mid-June, is Amy's post on a survey revealing the poshest surnames; the second, in early November, is David's tribute to Paul Walters (the largest number of unique users we've ever had in a day), and the third, in early December, is me talking about dividing by zero (the largest number of page impressions in a day).

Our average since these new records began is 184 unique users per day, but that's been going up recently - for November and December the average is 257. But, for all that fluctuation, it's the static figure for "returning visitors", forever stuck around the 25-to-30 mark, that I want to shift upwards. So my New Year's resolution for Dayorama is to get more of you coming back here, more often. Now I just need to work out how. Thanks for reading!

365 Dayorama: 2006, Part Three

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Finally, it's the last section of our look back at this year on Dayorama: September to December...

SEPTEMBER

Ollie's in St John's, Newfoundland. "It's a proper Atlantic fishing town ... this is the first thing the entire Atlantic Ocean bumps into."

"Let's get this Boeing going" - the wit of WestJet air crew on Ollie's flight back from Newfoundland.

Steve Irwin dies. "Little Bindi, now Steve's legacy rather than sidekick to a proud dad," says Ollie. "It's a really sad day." For Amy, it's her first day at work. "I'm pleased the first day is over and done with: all the niggling little worries gone."

Ollie's contemplating buying a Dodge Caliber. "I want a chunky car in which I feel safe, and the Caliber definitely delivers."

Ollie gets the chance to wield a BBC Bus on an unsuspecting public at the Newbury Show. Dayorama readers may have been wise, at this point, to start brushing up on their bus knowledge.

Lo and behold, David arrives as Dayorama's fourth contributor - the first addition to the writing staff for two years. "I've been almost literally glued to Dayorama," he says. "Thank you for offering up that warm bosom."

Richard Hammond is seriously injured in a jet-powered car accident. "I wonder if it hit a caravan," says Ollie.

The air ambulance which rescued Richard Hammond is receiving tens of thousands of pounds in donations. "Someone gave the amount they spend on hamster food... God knows what their hamster's going to eat now," says Dayorama reader Amy J.

Dayorama's t-shirt section launches with a Richard "We Want Our Hamster Back" Hammond special.

David returns from the world's largest bus show. "It's always great to get together with people who do what you do, and when the result happens to be a spectacle like 700 buses stretched out across an airfield, you start to feel you may be vaguely normal after all."

David is life at BBC local radio's Frank Gillard Awards. "The chef was perhaps a little too selective with his 'selection of vegetables'," says the food critic himself.

David is back from the awards ceremony, having "managed to survive a chance encounter with Mark Byford at the urinals".

OCTOBER

Dayorama's readers are introduced to Cyril, the asthmatic cat.

OJ's at the Conservative Party conference. It is a fair to say some people are having trouble getting in. "I met people who had been waiting two days ... if ever you were to get a bunch of people who were happy to queue in a nice orderly fashion, and suffer in silence, it would be at a Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth."

David posts a scan of the log book for the Routemaster he co-owns. Under "report defect details here", it reads: "No destination blind at back, horn does not work, dents everywhere, not roadworthy, but who gives a @??#."

Days after Cyril's appearance, Basil - David's new cat - has an introduction of sorts, although we can only see his paws poking out from beneath a bed. "Here, we have either an introverted cat," says David, "or one very switched on kitty, who's realised that after months on the street, home comforts will be forthcoming without the need for personal appearances."

It's announced that Will, a friend of both OJ and Ollie at school, has died aged 22. His profile on social networking site Facebook, however, lives on. "There," says Ollie, "Will is immortalised - his favourite books, his favourite movies, a photo, messages from friends."

Ollie picks up his new car, and within ten miles it's on fire. Or is it? Listen to the full drama here.

Ollie's in Newcastle on a three-day training course, during which he'll be sent out to film somewhere. "I'm told possible locations include a cake shop, a dry cleaners and a factory, none of which exactly inspire me."

Amy's new laptop is dead within eight hours of arriving in her possession. "Why did I get a Toshiba?"

David survives his debut in stand-up comedy. "With the intimate little audience around the stage, it proved to be a reasonable hit." Meanwhile Ollie strikes up conversation with a drunk trout farmer in Newcastle. "Not only is my man flying to Exeter on trout business, he is also - and I hope your reaction to this is the same as mine - flying there to visit his birth mother for the very first time."

A seven-hour wait for a ticket puts Ollie off the Tate Modern's slide exhibit. "It feels like not over-much actual artistic effort went in. The slides are bare, grey structures with no life to them."

Meanwhile, David remembers the life of Radio 2 producer Paul Walters. "A great man who's inspired me enormously over the years."

Ollie cries at an hour-long Royle Family special. "Jim, utterly overcome by grief and trying with all his convulsive might to fight away floods of uncontrollable tears, stands over the bed. Those are some of the most powerful seconds of television I have ever seen, and at that point I started crying too."

NOVEMBER

Ollie spends his birthday reporting on a reserve match between Reading and Arsenal, at the Madejski Stadium. Amy J's there too, acting as "a second pair of hands and legs which can nip down to the concourse, buy hot dogs and chicken balti pies, and rush back".

The saga of David's grow-your-own bus begins.

David loses his cat temporarily, and very nearly coaxes an entirely different cat into his car before discovering the original sat on the kitchen side. "I didn't recognise him in daylight," says David of his somewhat reticent pet.

Amy's back from New York. The highlight? "A few too many gins."

David's grow-your-own bus has grown its own. "The past 72 hours have been a joy," enthuses the owner of a miniscule, moist double-decker.

Meanwhile Amy's getting a cleaner. "I won't be like my mother," she promises. "She always used to clean before the cleaner came."

David, refusing to be separated from buses, embarks on 23 days of study for the Certificate of Professional Competence in National Passenger Transport, no less.

All four Dayorama writers end up in the same place - Amy's flat.

Ollie's commentary at a Maidenhead FA Cup match comes crashing down around him. "My co-commentator tells me it's the worst broadcasting disaster he's had in six years at the station."

Christmas presents are already turning up at the radio station. A delighted David: "Hand delivered, the sender in question had issued such firm instructions to "pass this on to Mr Sheppard", that security guards had assumed I was expecting it. I wasn't!"

DECEMBER

Ollie and David have an encounter with a porter at OJ's new flat. "Our blushes were spared when the porter revealed himself to be just as amused by us as we had been by him."

On the BBC website, Ollie publishes an article about dividing by zero. Mathematicians do not take kindly. "I think it's brilliant that one of our most successful articles in ages has been all about maths. Perhaps we shouldn't despair for civilization just yet."

7 December is revealed as Dayorama's best day since records began, with 569 page impressions and nearly 500 visitors.

Meanwhile David completes his CPC exams - and won't hear back until the beginning of February.

Another extraordinary parcel for David - this one containing >a href="http://www.dayorama.com/archives/002147.html">a manual on cars and trains written by a seven-year-old David Sheppard.

All four Dayorama authors are back together again, this time for a Christmas party aboard David's bus. "The Routemaster has, of course, been preserved and indeed restored to the highest standard," says Ollie, "the addition of a buffet being particularly ingenious and welcome."

With bad weather outside and a show to present at 6am, David sleeps overnight in Studio 1.

Ollie declares the Doctor Who special to be the best part of Christmas. "It's difficult for anything to look out of place when a group of robots dressed as Santa, using brass instruments as weapons, all have their heads blown apart by a particularly vicious sound system at a wedding reception."

That's it! But plenty more to come, of course, in 2007 and beyond.

365 Dayorama: 2006, Part Two

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Continuing our look back on Dayorama in 2006. Today: May to August...

MAY

The hosepipe ban may be driving residents of Kent to the edge. Amy: "I was driving in Kent the other weekend and saw a man washing his wall. Not a special wall, just any old wall. I nearly got out of the car and read him the riot act."

Ollie is on a platform at Bolton station with boxer Amir Khan - it's a press junket to do with rail safety, but the real star is a man named Paul. "Paul lost his arm when he was 12 after being hit by a train. He's lucky to even be alive but when you've seen him detach his fake arm, it brings home the reality of what happens."

Ollie's in Manchester covering the local elections. "I'm sat in what is fast becoming the War Room for the media, a large pillared atrium with a vast plasma television next to a series of white boards on which all the results will be gathered."

It's 3:45am on election night and the BBC suffers a power cut. "Good job I did all my lurking behind the BBC presenter whilst he's on air at Manchester before their power went down..."

Amy is worried when she forgets her mobile but, on returning to it, is disappointed to find just one voicemail message: "From Ricki the car mechanic, telling Kevin that his welding had been done but he couldn't collect his car until he had paid for the work."

Ollie, meanwhile, is trapped at a party for people who like radio jingles. "We had to guess the station from the very first moments of its launch date broadcast, with the station identity bleeped out. If you're born a considerable number of years after Radios 2, 1, Aire and Piccadilly launched, then obviously this is going to be a tricky round to negotiate."

Amy says now is the time to pull out of Iraq. "I'd like to know what our mandate for staying in Iraq is. What are we achieving? I'm not saying I disagree with why we are there... I just don't know why we are, and I doubt I'm alone."

Ollie interviews football manager Bryan Robson (then at West Brom). Things do not go entirely to plan. "I tried to find a hole in the ground to jump into."

Amy goes to her first ever football match. "Footballers' Wives is probably the closest I've got, and somehow I don't think that counts."

Ollie has his interview at the BBC, but falls in love with the building, not the job. "The entrance is round the back, where 'the back' is defined as a driveway extending through an acre or two of lawns, flower beds and trees, punctuated by two football pitches."

Ollie gets the job. "It's great to have the chance to get to grips with a BBC site and see what I can contribute. And of course I'm delighted to be working in the environment I so fell in love with at interview last week." Amy is quick off the mark. "I'm assuming, as the only salaried member amongst us, lunch is on you today?"

Dayorama's Big Brother 7 coverage begins (having ignored the previous six). "I'll fight with every fibre of my being to avoid being sucked in by this," says Ollie.

Capping a relatively good week by anyone's standards, Ollie passes his driving test. Trying to decide why he failed the first time, the intriguing theory of Dorothy is discussed.

It's the Eurovision Song Contest, and Ollie's backing Finnish band Lordi - "ever so slightly different to your average folk entry". They go on to win.

Ollie's promise to avoid Big Brother falls at the first hurdle. "Aside from the fact I'm watching a young man in a silly hat and an orange shirt cry openly over possibly the single most trivial issue in the history of mankind, it's actually been almost worth - wait, no, no it hasn't. It's pap of the most unbelievable variety."

Ollie spends his first day at the BBC imploring the good folk of Berkshire to send in more photos of squirrels. "To paraphrase Bob Geldof, just give us the f#@!ing squirrels!"

OJ's been spending more than a week furiously typing his thesis. "Immediately after rewriting the conclusion at 5pm today, I threw my cricket gear on and rushed to take my place in Lincoln's 2 XI. Today, I took my first ever wicket as a bowler." Progress has clearly been excellent.

JUNE

OJ's cricketing success has had an impact on old sporting rival Ollie. "Last night I was wracked in my sleep by dreams of OJ playing for England. Having to endure him soaring through the air by the boundary, plucking the ball from thin air to dismiss one of the Australian opening pair (my subconscious clearly doesn't rate Sri Lanka highly enough for inclusion), was neither expected nor welcome."

A survey ranks the poshest surnames. Amy is not thrilled. "[According to the report] I 'share a staircase', Wooding lives in 'semi-rural seclusion' and Williams is an 'Upland Hill farmer'. Clearly I am common as muck!"

Amy says she's addicted to OJ. But it's okay - she means orange juice. "I can't get enough of the liquid."

Ollie draws the USA in the newsroom World Cup sweepstakes. "Could be worse. My esteemed colleague Linda drew Angola." Ollie launches DayoRimet, Dayorama's very own World Cup coverage.

Much is being made of the heat the England football team are having to cope with in sunny Germany. "Of course the many fans England took to Germany will be able to vouch for the intense heat and sticky conditions," says Ollie. "It's just a shame none of them were oscillating, or they'd have been more use."

Amy pronounces herself "seriously distressed" by a horrendous World Cup revelation: "There is no Neighbours for the duration of the World Cup."

We do love a good laugh at a headline. Ollie: "BBC News Online headline: 'Search widening for girl in car'. You'd think there's only so many places she could be. Have they tried the boot?"

OJ sits his final Oxford exam to finish his course. "After a week without alcohol, I'm off to get even more drunk!" Meanwhile Amy leaves her exam 20 minutes early - "I had done all I could".

Top of the Pops has been axed. "Travesty!" cries Amy. "A whole generation of children will grow up without it!" Ollie is not convinced. "Sod Top of the Pops. The BBC are now going to be able to drop the ailing behemoth and focus on nimble, fleet-of-foot broadcasts."

Amy's priorities for the rest of the year: "The working world looms ... but so does finding some sexy young man to go out with."

Hitler Cats is discovered. "I don't think I've stopped laughing since this time last night," says Ollie, "much of it Hitler Cat-related."

It's Wimbledon. Amy tries to sound hopeful for Tim Henman's chances, but gives himself away. "We may as well support him with full-force today, as we may never get another chance this tournament!" Henman is duly massacred by Roger Federer.

Big Brother is introducing five new contestants. "Prepare yourself for possibly the most hilarious claim to fame ever," says Ollie. "The first new contestant, John or Jonathan or something like that, once danced on stage with Five Star! He's got my support already. My hero."

JULY

England go out of the World Cup. Ollie: "That's that until Steve McClaren gets a shot at a trophy in a couple of years' time. We tried pretty damn hard, you know." Amy paid tribute to the World Cup itself. "In general we are a thoroughly apathetic family, and suddenly the World Cup spirit had captivated us."

Ollie spends the day playing American Football. "It is a bad idea to spike one's hair up before playing American Football since the helmet destroys it and then the hairspray mixes with the sweat and stings the eyes."

Ollie, preparing to run the Sport Relief mile, launches his fundraising campaign. "Newsnight editor Peter Barron has stopped by in the last week or so and, Pete, you must have some loose change kicking around."

It's the World Cup Final. Rather prophetically, Ollie writes, "Zidane's off" - referring to it being his last international match. He's later red carded for that head-butt-of-sorts.

Nikki is evicted from Big Brother. "Spoilt, ignorant, self-absorbed brat. Why it took this long to get her out of the house is beyond me," says Ollie.

Ollie runs his Sport Relief mile. "I ran half the length of my Sport Relief mile before slowing down, which admittedly is still relatively pathetic but at least I did it. No marathons for me, I suspect."

Ollie's on the BBC's UpFront training course. "Certain people who sold this to me as the best event since the dawn of time may have been a tad misleading."

Amy earns a distinction for her LPC course. "I admit to being rather proud of myself."

As if champagne from her law firm wasn't enough, Amy decides to celebrate her distinction further - by taking up piano lessons again. "I suddenly decided that perhaps I could have a lesson a week for the next six weeks and thus polish my skills somewhat." Meanwhile her name appears on page 65 of The Times, in Court Circular.

Ollie persuades a 15-piece band from New Zealand to play live on air for him at WOMAD. It later transpires they thought they were on Radio 3.

AUGUST

Amy's cat is winning itself precious little acclaim while she house-sits. "The cat keeps bringing in birds and dissecting them in the kitchen, amidst a pile of feathers. Lovely."

Two days ago, Amy said it was hard to keep the house clean while house-sitting for her mother. Unluckily, her mother has read about it. "That does not mean it is messy, I was simply noting the difference," Amy pleads.

OJ says the nature of his job explains his prolonged absence. "I'll try posting more, I really will, but given that the copy I turn out at work is decidedly less interesting and less public than Ollie's, expect few work related anecdotes. Especially involving small furry animals." Amy professes to fall off her chair at the sight of a post from OJ. Ollie observes that OJ has contributed two of the last 200 posts.

Ollie meets a UFO expert. It's a bit of an unsettling experience. "I noticed that his hall mirror had wires attached to it, which I found a somewhat unlikely set-up."

Ollie live-blogs the final night of Big Brother 7. "Did you know that this series of Big Brother started before I started my job? It lasted for six more days than my professional career to date. There's a thought."

Fresh from being berated for not keeping the house tidy, Amy discovers she can use Dayorama to her advantage - by mentioning things she needs. Having aired a desire for Sat Nav, she is presented with a brand new TomTom 710. "Totally unexpected. And lovely. Thank you. However, thanks also to Dayorama."

It's Dayorama's fourth birthday. "On the very first day of Dayorama's existence, I made a post noting that the word Dayorama had no results on Google," says a nostalgic Ollie. "It now has 57,000." Somewhat disconcertingly, that number is now down to 29,800!

Amy goes for an al fresco lunch, British style. "We did remark at this stage how British we were being - what other nationality would sit under a bandstand having a picnic in the rain?"

It's Reading Festival, and Ollie's there. "I did enjoy Guillemots on the Radio 1 stage earlier, and it's a privilege to see good bands like that up close from the press pit."

OJ celebrates the August bank holiday. "Having been at school or university for every other occasion, I finally get to have a statutory day off from work. This is quite the moment; I've been waiting some time for it, and after four weeks of getting back into early mornings and the like, it is great to have an extra lie in."

The madmen are out in force on the final day of Reading Festival. "I pan the camera round very quickly," says Ollie, describing a piece of filming. "It falls to rest with a bright, alert hippie squarely in the middle of the shot, who shouts: 'Think PENIS!'."

Ollie's off to Canada. "If you'll excuse me I have to go to the toilet, then go to Toronto ... I've been trying not to indulge in the macabre but if those happen to be my very last printed words - ignore these - make sure they get published somewhere, they're not bad."

Meanwhile the Today programme is visiting OJ in Devon. "Having a live linkup between Devon, London, and variously Turkey, America, and Toronto, is very cool."

Amy declares herself "no longer a student" as Barclays upgrade her account.

Ollie is thrilled to find black squirrels in Canada. "They're like stealth squirrels! They drop from black helicopters and then frolic stealthily before disappearing into the aether."

Coming up before the end of 2006, our final part, looking back on the last four months of the year.

365 Dayorama: 2006, Part One

Admin

I present to you a look back at Dayorama in 2006, in three parts. Here, January to April:

JANUARY

Ollie began the year with our 2005 review: 800 posts that year, with the most popular post outlining the lyrics to Kaiser Chiefs' "Oh My God". Amy toasted a year of "interesting and correctly spelt and punctuated posts".

OJ set up a backup version of Dayorama as we'd somehow managed to break the normal one.

Dayorama's back, with a brand new version of Movable Type (the software powering this blog).

Amy started another set of exams, but this time minus the subfusc and carnation which would have accompanied an Oxford examination. "The first exam was quite crap actually".

Ollie's sister Alice starts her 11-plus exam tuition. Tis the season for exams, clearly. Celebrity Big Brother starts. "One of them isn't actually a celebrity, although I defy you to pick the right one," says Ollie.

Charles Kennedy steps down as Lib Dem leader. Amy feels "sorry" for her namesake.

The three Dayorama protagonists meet for a meal in Oxford. "I won the award for most crimson person," says OJ, "Amy was laughed at by the waiter, [and] Ollie came off rather lightly, drastic haircut aside."

The Observer's weblog quotes Amy's praise for its new look as "good enough" for its "modest appetite".

Ollie spends the evening at a demonstration showing wedding rings made from human bone."One half of the volunteer couple has a glass jaw, and is thereby exempt."

The Thames Whale is strutting its stuff in the middle of London. "I can't take much more of this bloody whale," says Ollie, who is engaged in an interesting debate about a man who may, or may not, have lied about his part in a daring rescue.

Amy mourns the Thames Whale. "I was convinced it looked like a dolphin." OJ mourns the end of The West Wing. "So marks a momentous change in my TV watching, last seen with the end of Buffy."

Research suggests this will be the most depressing day of 2006. Amy's day has "not been too bad at all". Ollie's, by contrast, involves theft, a sore throat, and four different deadlines. "It's been a god-awful day."

Thames Whale memorabilia is turning up on eBay. "In the New Labour spirit of burying bad news sufficiently far beneath a large whale, I've booked my driving theory test for 28 March, 2pm," says Ollie.

The whale just won't go away. "It was in the water, right?" Asks Amy. "And it died of dehydration?"

Amy's back from seeing The Producers. "It is a wonderfully funny, laugh-a-minute production. That is, if you think jokes about sex, Hitler and gays are funny. I recommend it."

OJ sets up a group dedicated to the memory of Caecilius, a character in a series of Latin textbooks used by both OJ and Ollie. "Caecilius had the minor misfortune of living in Pompeii around about the time of that rather large eruption," says Ollie, "but in the months running up to it we grew to know and love his whole family. Most of whom were then wiped out."

Amy makes the minor mistake of believing the Planetarium, of Madame Tussaud's fame, holds fish.

FEBRUARY

OJ, with reference to Ollie having conducted interviews under the guise of working for the BBC during his postgrad, discusses a looming BBC staff walkout. "If you pretend to work at the BBC, must you also pretend to strike?"

Ollie takes charge of a team of would-be journalists to create a news website during his postgrad. If only he knew.

Amy is upset that modern phones don't allow suitably dramatic movements. "If you want to slam the phone down (as you would be able to do on an old style phone), you can't. Instead, you have to gently place the phone back and wait for the stupid little beep."

The sink in OJ's room floods a basement below and knocks out a college fuse box. "They quickly identified the problem being the sink. 'Bit of a piss pot, isn't it?' said the plumber."

OJ's birthday party sounds like the place to be. "We had a very good soundtrack, mainly consisting of old school jazz, and modern day Dartmoor folk."

A smoking ban in England is confirmed. "A victory for common sense," says Ollie. "I'm absolutely thrilled."

Amy says she's not going near any bird sanctuaries while the bird flu scare is ongoing - particularly as an earlier experience at one such venue left deep-rooted scars. "I will never work with children or animals and it has put me off bird farms for life."

OJ's attempts to hold an impromptu Olympics using predicted snow in Oxford are thwarted. "In a remarkable turn of events, it was actually quite mild overnight."

The Drivetime slot on Radio 2 is vacated, and OJ predicts either Stuart Maconie, Richard Allinson, or Noel Edmonds will step in.

"Apparently Chris Evans is a hot tip," adds OJ, sounding a little miffed at having not thought of that himself. "Hmm."

MARCH

Ollie accidentally kills a mouse while trying to humanely remove it from the house. "I must have crushed the little blighter to death when I plonked the cup down on him the second time." Meanwhile Chris Evans is confirmed. OJ's reaction? "Hmm."

In cricket Alastair Cook scores a debut century for England, marking the first time somebody younger than Ollie has done so. "This puts my 54 for Taunton School 2nd XI against Queen's College 2nd XI in June 2002 into some perspective."

Surprising news indeed from Ollie: "The man who produced my band's demo CD plays guitar on a psychedelic rock single named 'Cow' for which Channel 4 newsreader Jon Snow provides vocals."

The end of Ollie's time as web editor for his postgrad. "That means creating a news/features website, perhaps a bit like the BBC's "Where I Live" pages ... Today was one long, torrential downpour of work from the moment I got in."

The April edition of The Field magazine fools Amy a few days early. "I was halfway through when I came across an article on treacle mining ... So, I begin discussing this. Much to everyone else's laughter."

Ollie passes his driving theory test. "As OJ put it, I am theoretically a safe driver." The practical test is booked for 21 April.

APRIL

It's April Fools' Day. Amy goes for a slapstick approach. "I was at Holborn tube station. For some unknown reason - and no, I wasn't drunk - I slipped on the metal/concrete stairs, fell on my backside, lurched forward and then proceeded to roll down the remaining stairs (about fifteen of them) in spectacular fashion. I now have several bruises on my legs and a relatively painful right buttock."

OJ admits "very little is happening" in Oxford, so he's gone and bought a copy of that fine Michael Bolton power ballad, "How Can We Be Lovers If We Can't Be Friends?" Says OJ: "But how can we make love if we can't make amends? That's a pretty fundamental question."

A horse named Sir OJ is running in the weekend's Grand National. "I couldn't not bet on him," says the real OJ. "I've backed a fiver on Sir OJ to win at 55-1."

Sir OJ falls at Fence 22. "I won't be buying the drinks then," says OJ. Meanwhile Amy is behind the wheel of a new Renault Clio. "When you pull the visor down a light comes on," says a technology-struck Amy, "just in case it is a bit dark to apply that mascara properly at traffic lights." She insists she's joking.

OJ's final term at Oxford begins. "In the next ten weeks, I will have handed in two extended essays, researched, written and submitted a thesis, and revised and sat an exam. Good."

Ollie fails his driving test. "I'm not bitter. I'm really not. Probably one of the least dangerous fails in the history of driving."

Ollie's band play what looks to be their final gig. "A lovely ending to a band that, let's be honest, didn't set the world on fire but at least put in some good, honest effort and had fun along the way."

Ollie is accused of having "a good netball throw" by a wheelchair basketball player while on work experience in Manchester. "Any man knows that's fighting talk."

Forget netball, OJ's playing lacrosse. "An excellent sport, which combines the speed of football with the skills of hockey, and comes fully recommended by me."

More to come before we reach 2007 in parts two and three!

18 For 2007

Admin

Fuelled by Christmas over-indulgence and with good festive telly to watch while I work, I've been spending some time poking around Dayorama's various nooks and crannies, doing a little housekeeping before the New Year.

First in line were the banners - the images which rotate at the top of the page. There were previously 50, ranging from a BBC local radio balloon (despised by David, who has an irrational fear of such things... balloons, I mean), through to a duck having a heated discussion with OJ near Christchurch Meadow in Oxford.

Having been last updated in July, I felt it was probably time for a change. So I've done away with all 50 and introduced 18 new ones.

I think some are better than others and hopefully you'll find some new favourites too, if you keep track of such things (and if you do, they're numbered sequentially to include the first 50, so the new ones are 51 through to 68). I'll be adding to them whenever I can, plus you might well find new submissions from our other authors soon.

The old banners are preserved on our server, if you know where to look (it's not tricky to work out!), and I'm sure they'll reappear as part of some glitzy Dayorama tenth anniversary celebration in the dim and distant future.

Still to come as we prepare to welcome the year 2007: a look back at what we've written about this year, and the annual post-we-don't-call-a-zeitgeist, including the usual stock-take to find out who's been posting and when...

569: The Record

Admin

I should get out more, really. I've spent the last hour or so watching the Dayorama stats twitch erratically towards a new record for hits in one day.

The previous best was 567 on 3 November this year but earlier today, with Buzzfeed sending hundreds of people to Dayorama, it became clear that 7 December 2006 would be a challenger.

I've been keeping tabs throughout the rest of the day. And would you believe it - it took until 23:57:47 for the 568th hit, from an Australian making his second visit of the day, to break the record. The day closed on the new all-time high of 569 hits.

My divide-by-zero efforts may hold the record for hits, but David's tribute to Paul Walters retains the unique users accolade by a single individual. 485 different people visited Dayorama on 3 November, 484 on 7 December. It's amazing how incredibly close the two days have been, given they're a good couple of hundred users higher than any normal day. Onward and upward - full Dayorama zeitgeist to follow later this month.

(For the uninitiated, "hits" means the number of Dayorama pages loaded in any one day. So if one person visits five different Dayorama pages, that's five hits. "Unique users" refers to the number of different people visiting. So if one person visits five different Dayorama pages, that's still only one unique user.)

We Want Our Hammond (On Our) Back

Admin

Last post for the time being on Richard Hammond, I promise.

Now, have you checked out our Blogroll page recently? No, didn't think so. Why would you? It's tucked away up there and frankly it serves no useful purpose.

So I've replaced it with our very own Dayorama T-Shirt Shop.

I'm sure you know how much I value my comedy t-shirts, so now I've set about creating a little shop showcasing my very own designs at superbly reasonable prices. (Believe me, £15 might seem a lot but you try importing them from the USA and see how much you're paying.)

Due to sheer level of demand - otherwise known as Amy J nagging me incessantly - the shop debuts with a simple, understated Richard Hammond t-shirt:

Click the image above or click the 'Shirts' tab at the top - which replaces the 'Blogroll' tab, and the old Blogroll page - to find out more and order your very own!

Suggestions for future designs are welcome - send them to ollie dot williams at gmail dot com. A simple Dayorama shirt is in the works, and possibly another Richard Hammond one since we all love him so much.

PS: I should point out that while most of the cost of each shirt goes to the printers and not to me, the small commission left over will go directly to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance appeal I mentioned earlier.

This Man (And His Bus)

Admin

From Ollie:

Introducing David Sheppard. David's one of my colleagues at work and is just one of those interesting people. He co-owns a bus with several Radio 2 luminaries (you'd know their names), presents a show on BBC local radio in which he regularly holds on-air conversations with an abrupt cat named Tiddles, and lovingly tends to a fetching blue version of those new-style VW Beetles. Give him a warm welcome.

Yesterday you were given due warning of 'something highly unusual and dramatic' about to happen to Dayorama. That'll be me, then.

I can't promise to live up to any of those introductions, but I can say it's a very great honour to be welcomed to the bosom of Dayorama. I've been almost literally glued to it since Ollie first introduced me earlier this year, and I'm delighted the bond has been made official. So, to Ollie, OJ and Amy, thank you for offering up that warm bosom.

'One of those interesting people', then. Well, intriguing, I'll grant you...

The bus is something that intrigues almost everybody who's never owned a bus. Frankly, once you've been whisked along the Embankment on a cold December night, peeping out from between your hat and scarf on the platform of your very own Routemaster, you'll start to wonder how such people can exist. With 72 friends aboard (plus standing room for their guests), the reassuring growl of a Cummins diesel engine, and a night under the Christmas lights of the world's finest City ahead of you, why have you never thought of buying one before? Book your seat now.

The rest I'll accidentally reveal as I try to settle in to Dayorama's spacious back room, sidle on up to you at the bar, and knock over a few life stories. Judging by the indecent amount I've managed to glean about Amy and OJ from their posts, you'll soon have my onion peeled.

As our parents taught us to say after a visit to a friend's house, "thanks for having me".

Fame Comes To Those Who Wait

Admin

A bit of "admin". The below have requested a photo on this site, so there they are. Fame Comes To Those Who Wait

And another avid Dayorama reader deserves to be quoted:

"Using your tongue is a bit like playing 'pin the tail on the donkey': you just stick it anywhere and hope for the best".

Four

Admin

Dayorama is four years old today. If you're reading this on the day itself, you can use the 'On This Day' panel to the right hand side to read posts from our birthday in previous years.

On the very first day of Dayorama's existence, I made a post noting that the word Dayorama had no results on Google. It now has 57,000.

We may not be responsible for all of those - after all, some American children cannot spell 'diorama' - but I imagine we've contributed a fair number. Well done team! And thanks, of course, for reading.

Be Up Front With Us

Admin

This is a sneaky post from the very heart of UpFront, the BBC's induction scheme for new employees. I and 77 other new or fairly-new BBC folk have been ensconced in matters of BBC values, audiences, editorial policy and more all morning and into this afternoon.

I will not lie, I do feel that certain people who sold this to me as the best event since the dawn of time may have been a tad misleading. It's useful and good fun in many respects but has yet to escape the bounds of "induction course" to become something more. Tomorrow's allegedly the "action" day though, having a proper go at the exciting stuff (i.e. television cameras and such like), so let us not judge anything just yet.

In any case, more UpFront stories later, including the small world we live in, the small hotel I live in, and the case of the elevator and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

This post is primarily to draw to your attention the RETURN OF COMMENTS! You are now, hopefully, able to click "Comments" below and a page will load allowing you to view comments already posted, and write your own. This is how things used to happen before it all crashed and burned in April. Now things should be back to normal and may even show one or two improvements as I mess around some more in the days that follow.

If you happen to read this and have a moment to spare, do feel free to leave a comment to test the system out. You could even be really clever and sign up for a TypeKey account (link provided on the comments page) to see how that works - technically, if you sign up first, your comment will be approved straight away when you write it. Otherwise we have to go in and do it manually so it won't show up the instant you click 'send'.

That's all for now, hopefully more later today.

Return Of The Eye Thing

Admin , Thinking Space

So it's goodbye to the DayoRimet World Cup graphics, and welcome back to the revolving Dayorama banner. There are now fifty, each also now numbered and named, so you can while away your days hitting refresh and completing your set. Try memorising the whole lot off by heart... what's in banner number 28?

My little (half) brother Harry continues to impress me. He's now a fiery four-year-old who barks instructions at me like he's my mother. "Ollie! Tidy this room! Are these your shoes? Where did you get them?" I'll say this for him, he's inquisitive.

I had a great exchange with him earlier today. I've got an iPod Nano sat on my bookshelf. He came in and as per usual started picking stuff up, demanding to know where it came from and can he have it.

Harry: (picking up iPod) What's this?
Ollie: It's called an 'iPod'. It plays music. You can put your music into it and then listen to it wherever you go.
Harry: An 'iPod'? Why did they call it that?
Ollie: Well... (how do you explain the i- prefix, Apple and corporate branding to a four year old?)
Harry: But why? It's got nothing to do with my eyes!
Ollie: Ah, see, no. You say it the same but "eyepod" would be spelt differently to "iPod". See, peas come in pods too. The idea is...
Harry: (with no time for that explanation) But why not call it eye computer? Or eye box? Or eye thing?

iThing. If it doesn't already exist it will do.

Harry also kept me entertained with my pocket London A-Z. He picked it up and demanded to know what the words on each page began with. So he would cram an index page containing hundreds of London streets into my face and demand to know what they all began with or, worse, present me with one of the map pages and demand to know what all those words began with.

He progressed from this to trying to work out the alphabet using the index at the back of the book. He was particularly keen to know what "muh" (i.e. M) looked like. I pointed it out to him. He then shut the book, scampered off and came back a few minutes later. I challenged him to go back to the index and find "muh" again. He found the index alright but when he presented his answer, his finger was pointing squarely at W.

Ollie: No, you're close but not right. That's a double-yoo. It's like an M except it's upside down.
Harry: (turns book upside down) Muh!

He may not know what an M looks like, but my word he's good at quick-thinking, logical solutions to problems. Negotiation is also a forte of his. He wanted to play on my PS2 football game. First he asked if there were two controllers then, on being told there weren't, opened his pitch:

Harry: Can I have two goes?
Ollie: What happened to one go?
Harry: Alright, one go.
Ollie: In a minute.
Harry: Five goes?

Tragedy!

Admin

We didn't post yesterday. My world is falling apart. There are elephants in my head (Parents, don't read this bit: 21/2 pints, 3 g+t and 2 glasses of red isn't a good combination!). And my God-Mother is arriving shortly and I must clean my flat... At least I'm back early-ish. Oh and I turned my fridge up (or I suppose down) yesterday and there are icy bits in my yoghurt. Ooops.

Cool For Cats

Admin

There's likely to be a lack of DayoRimet update tonight since tonight is party night. Instead I give you 'Hitler Cats', a selection of photos of cats which bear a resemblance to Hitler. Laugh, we nearly died.

The Power Of A Woman

Admin

Thank you Ollie for doing the world cup stuff... even if it isn't " ain't [your] responsibility to come up with something".

I had a weekend in the sun and I'm a little pink. I've avoided watching the football, but have followed it. I think it is highly amusing that our only score so far comes from an own goal. Long may we stay in this competition.

Gin and diet coke is an interesting combination.

Best Of The RSSt

Admin

A brand new feature for Dayorama this fine Saturday morning - you can now have a look at some of the best articles I've recently read, without having to plod through me harping on about them first.

On the right hand menu bar, below our prospects, you'll now find 'Recommended Reading'. This is a list of the most recent articles I've marked with a 'star' in Google Reader, the RSS reader I use. I'll be sure in future to mark the items I think are worth reading with a star, and they'll turn up on the right hand menu bar automatically. You can click the links to read the original articles, or follow a separate link to the home page of the website the article came from.

You can also subscribe to the recommended reading list as an RSS feed yourself, so you can read all the good stuff I find without even visiting the site.

If you're not sure what RSS is yet, it's worth finding out. The BBC has a good guide to it here.

30 Boxes Of Tricks

Admin

Two new features are now live on Dayorama!

It's been a long time since I've been able to say that. The site design you're seeing now came into being around June last year, and after that I've only really changed the images that rotate at the top of each page, with maybe the occasional RSS icon change or something.

But today, two brand new pieces of kit: first up, we've got a blogroll.

It's been a long time coming, but there's now a 'Blogroll' option on the menu beneath the Dayorama logo (it's replaced the old 'Gallery' option, which I never, ahem, got round to properly sorting out). If you click that you'll go to a page where we've each supplied a selection of our favourite links, and I'm sure we'll come up with more as we go along.

Second, on the right of the home page you can now find 'Dayorama Prospects', a list of events coming up in our lives that we're likely to mention on here. For example, at the moment you can see there's an auction in Northampton on Friday, along with some other stuff. The idea is you can see what's coming up and then come back later on to find out what we had to say. We might drop some major news, political and sporting events in there as well, as reminders for both you and us, and as a hint we'll be covering them here. If you click any of the entries you'll be taken to a full list of what's coming up.

That second gadget's provided for free by 30boxes.com, an ingenious online calendar application. You can sign up for one yourself if you want. The idea is you've got one big box in which to enter all your events - just type the date, what's going on, any times involved and anything else you want, and it'll work out what the hell you mean. It's not perfect at getting it right yet, but it's doing pretty well.

What really impressed me, though, was the fact that I could build one of those boxes into my Google toolbar. The little Google search box above my main browser screen can now transform, with one click, into a 30Boxes entry form, so I can quickly write calendar entries into it and then hit return - hey presto, it's on our calendar. That's extremely powerful functionality. 30Boxes therefore comes highly recommended from me!

Solar Flare

Admin

We at Dayorama can't believe the rate at which you, the world, are coming here to read about Sol Campbell and his sexuality.

In fact, you almost broke our website. We've had so much traffic coming to the site to read the Sol articles (especially this one) that our bandwidth limit, which very basically is the number of people who can visit our site before our website hosts get annoyed, has been shot to smithereens. I personally am delighted by this, even if we have to pay more!

On this subject, shoutout to Rachel, who professes herself 'addicted' to Dayorama. 'I was reading about some guy's birthday and I don't even know who he is!' Yes, my dear, that's the power of the internet. You, too, can stare at a man you've never met before with his trousers round his ankles, from the comfort of your own home.

Meanwhile, OJ's arguing in our comments that the calls for less press intrusion that surface every time someone like Mark Oaten is 'outed' must mean that respect for privacy will increase. This, alas, is bollocks. Papers like the News of the World won't give a monkeys about calls for less press intrusion, they'll just try to outdo themselves, you watch. That kind of journalism - and I'm not knocking it, either - is here to stay.

OJ says it's a shame that people who want to work in politics might have to act as paragons of virtue from an early age to avoid embarrassment further down the line in their chosen career. Personally I'd rather the politicians in charge of our lives were angelic individuals with a squeaky clean past: it'd make me a whole lot more inclined to take their word for things and accept their authority, and it'd leave them more time to get on with governing if they spend less time frantically cramming skeletons into closets. I also think prospective politicians would do very well to watch their activities at university and conduct themselves with caution, and that it doesn't necessarily mean they'll turn into political automatons - avoiding drugs, not doing insanely stupid things while drunk and refraining from taking part in leg-comparison contests is not always the hallmark of a dullard. And if, in OJ's words, those party antics represent a 'typical university experience', thank the lord mine was atypical! My legs are nothing to look at, trust me.

Returning to Rachel, she adds 'the politics on Dayorama is boring though'. Can't please all the people all the time, eh. After all, not many people are likely to come to Dayorama looking for both gay people in football kitand politicians... unless they're Lib Dems of course. Wahey! So many Lib Dem jokes. I'm sorry, I'll stop soon I promise.

In other news: spoke to Mark Field MP and Paul Flynn MP, both of whom are really nice in their own ways. Interviewed Mr Field for my UK energy review piece, he was very quietly spoken and then told me of his libertarian stance on the smoking ban, which placed him entirely at odds with Mr Flynn, who gave the whole LCC crew a little talk inside Parliament itself, and expressed his deeply held belief that smoking in public should be banned. And it looks as though that has come to pass. Hurrah! Possibly another MP on the horizon tomorrow, along with two scientists at Imperial College who are taking delivery of dust particles nicked from a comet by the Stardust probe. You remember the one - it plonked back down to earth in the US desert last month, having committed GBH on a comet two years ago. I'll be finding out what exactly the London team are doing with their dust.

PS On a final quick note, I was unreliably informed tonight that I actually already know someone who used to go out with Mr Campbell. Could be an outright lie, could be an intriguing truth...

Under Observation

Admin

Christ, it's always depressing when a national newspaper needs Dayorama to soothe its fragile ego in the wake of a relaunch. Yes, The Observer Blog's Rafael Behr has picked up on Amy's praise for the new look yesterday, which he says was 'good enough for the modest appetite of the Observer Blog'. Amy will be pleased. Although if you look at the rest of the post and the comments, there's room for healthy debate on the issue.

Apostrophe Catastrophe

Admin

An apostrophe from word: ‘

An apostrophe typed directly: '

Will Amy be forced to use a dictionary to spell check?

We Now Return You To Your Regular Schedule

Admin

Please?

Do Not Adjust Your Sets

Admin

We're going to try to upgrade the website to a new version of Movable Type. And we're hopefully going to avoid breaking anything in the process. But if we do, you know where to find us.

I'm Going To Cry

Admin

Whilst we did use Dayorama Backup - aka Flamingorama due to the pinkness of the website design - on 2nd January, there were no direct entries made on this site. And after all I have done to keep these two men posting daily! I'm going to cry!

Blogger. Bugger.

Admin

[Originally posted to our backup blog after we broke this one...]

Hello there. If you've made it to this site, then I'm rather impressed. This is the the brand new backup site for Dayorama. If you're having to read posts on this site, then it means that one of us has somehow screwed the main Dayorama site up. Or the hosting service is broken. In this case, it was my fault; somehow, during a fairly routine attempt to backup the site, I managed to break something that means the database is now unrecognisible. I don't know why. But - we do have men working on it to get the problem fixed. Until that time (and I have no idea how long it will take - the problem we have is quite common, but I've yet to hear from our hosts, and despite apparently having 365 day tech support, today is a bank holiday) please enjoy our posts on this backup site.

P.S.: Sorry again!

Dayorama In Review: 2005

Admin

Right then, so here's the deal for 2005. All the stats, facts and figures that no one but Amy, OJ and myself cares about.

Starting with the number of posts. There have now been 1,294 posts to Dayorama. At the start of the year, there had been 494. That means a nice round figure of 800 posts for the year, this being the first full year in which we've functioned. For reference, there had been 365 posts in 2004, 68 in 2003 and 61 in 2002. So 2005 has been a bumper year with an average of just over two posts a day.

On to the charts. Here's the all time posting record since we started in 2002:

That reinforces the point that 2005 has been Dayorama's first full year as a full-time weblog - we didn't skip a day throughout the whole year. Here's the breakdown for the year itself, starting on the running totals as they were at the end of 2004:

That shows the ebb and flow of posting - most notably the increase in my own posting frequency since May - but it doesn't tell the whole story. This is a bit more helpful:

So you can see my quiet start in the first four months was dwarfed by my posting record over the summer. I certainly wasn't top of the consistency charts. Amy only dropped below 20 posts in one month (19 in March), whilst I did so five times, OJ in all but two months (20 in April, 21 in October). But to compensate for that I made 101 posts in June and July, compared to Amy's 58 and OJ's 28. July was in fact our best month with 96 posts between us, as this chart shows:

The first quarter of the year was very quiet, as, for some reason, was November (extended birthday hangover?). But over the exam period and its immediate aftermath our procrastination reached record levels.

On to our individual posting records, a hotly contested area given Amy's recent declaration of a 'posting war'. When Amy joined Dayorama in spring 2004, I had made 66 posts and OJ 63, so you can take those two figures to be the head starts we had over her. By the end of 2004 Amy had 145 posts to her name, just three behind OJ's 148 and 56 behind my 201. By 22 January 2005 - the same day my dog Toby moved to my Dad's house, although I suspect that didn't have much influence - Amy had surpassed OJ. On 9 May 2005 she had 244 posts to my 243 and 'took the lead', albeit just for the one day. By the time of our last update, 25 September 2005, I had 428 posts, 51 ahead of Amy's 377 with OJ trailing on 265.

Mmm. My goodness, that's some good New Year's pavlova. Where was I? Ah yes, right, so down to the real business. Where do we stand now? Well, at the chiming of Big Ben to herald 2006, I had 525 posts. Amy had 460. That places me 65 posts ahead. Amy has therefore gained one post on me since she joined Dayorama, a slight improvement for me on last year and a drastic one since May, given that Amy briefly led the chart. For OJ it's a different story. He has 309 posts, 151 behind Amy and a full 215 behind me. It would take him all his posts from 9 September 2004 until the end of 2005 again, without me adding anything new, for him to catch up.

The totals for the year are as follows: me 324, Amy 315 (a close run thing) and OJ 161 (less so).

On to the posts themselves and our five most popular posts of 2005 according to the number of hits they received. This is a category potentially affected by hits from comment spammers (automated hits to our site to add 'junk mail' comments, of which we get a lot), but since I can't separate spam hits from normal hits I've had to assume that the spambots affect each post in a roughly similar fashion. So, here are the top five most-accessed posts of 2005, in reverse order:

5. Kaiser Chiefs: 'Oh My God' Lyrics - Ollie, 8 Nov 04, 717 hits

4. Google Doesn't Realise I'm Talking Rubbish - Ollie, 11 Sep 03, 730 hits

3. A Rare Occurrence - Ollie, 29 Jul 03, 975 hits

2. Su Doku - Amy, 1 Dec 04, 1,048 hits

1. Network Wail - Ollie, 12 Sep 03, 1,821 hits

Of course, none of those were actually posted in 2005. Of those posted in the year just gone, the top three in reverse order were:

3. Damn, They've Twigged - Ollie, 6 Jun 05, 101 hits (23rd overall)

2. Library Working - OJ, 25 Jan 05, 316 hits (8th overall)

1. Everything Sounded Better In The 60s - Ollie, 29 May 05, 685 hits (6th overall)

Very finally, a New Year's resolution. Posting to this weblog shouldn't be about volume and post counts, even though I personally think they're fun to do from time to time. It's about making it interesting for you lot to read. I've been trying to work on that recently and my personal resolution is to carry that on into 2006 and make it worth your while. Thanks for reading!

No, I'm Not Calling It A Zeitgeist

Admin

Ugly word. Do bear in mind that the 'Admin' category usually hosts information of more interest to the three of us than anyone else, so don't be surprised if you're bored by what's below.

The end of 2005 is almost upon us, and tomorrow - New Year's Day, as if you need telling - I'll unleash a little recap of the Dayorama year just gone.

This will include posting statistics. Amy reckons there's been a 'posting war' going on, and whilst I wouldn't necessarily say that it started intentionally, I have been happy to up the ante and try to find lots of interesting things to say each day.

This has escalated to the extent that there were nine posts yesterday, equalling a record set on 3 June this year. Technically I alone made 15 posts on 3 November 2004, but since that was our special coverage of the US Election it was one-off and doesn't count.

So, tomorrow you'll get to see how we've been posting since the last update, which was in September. At that point I had made 428 posts, Amy 377 and OJ 265 since Dayorama began (remembering, of course, that OJ and I had a substantial head start but that equally we don't blog each individual snowflake separately). I therefore had a lead of 51 posts (163 over OJ, who trailed Amy by 112), though I do feel the need to point out that a return to quality over quantity is probably a worthy New Year's resolution for the entire Dayorama clan.

Finally, I do hope you've enjoyed the new look to the site since around June this year. There'll be one or two small changes for 2006, but nothing earth-shattering - you may not even notice. And remember, if you can't stomach the layout, you can always grab the RSS feed from the top of the home page below the Dayorama logo, and read us at your leisure on your desktop.

Probably Not In The Spirit

Admin

You may recall that a short while ago Amy got herself mentioned by name over at the Bloggers' Blog, thus trumping me (I'd only had a link to an article of mine on there beforehand).

Well we're even. Clearly the people there are very sharp because yesterday's Santa Express post has found its way on there, with my name attached. Alas, the bit they've quoted includes a joke in ever so slightly bad festive taste: Santa refusing to miss a single child, 'just like Herod'. I probably don't seem overly Christian to the good readers of Bloggers' Blog now.

Still, those folks clearly read this thing and know we're having a bit of a turf battle over this. It's 1-1 on namechecks now, excluding OJ, whose New Year's resolution appears to be to only post on the first and third Thursdays of months beginning with H.

Not that I have a clue who reads the Bloggers' Blog. But it mentions us. So I heartily recommend it.

Queen Of The Amazons

Admin

Jesus Christ. We're developing quite a special relationship with Bloggers Blog: Blogging The Blogosphere. A few days ago I mentioned my Flintstones pun in relation to Hurricane Wilma had appeared over there. Well Amy's trumped me. She's been namechecked! Click here then scroll down to observe the following:

Amy at Dayorama explains what getting Amazoned is: "There's a rule to Christmas shopping. Don't order something over Amazon from a computer where someone else's account is automatically logged on. If you do, then when you order something the other person receives the confirmation email. When this happens, the person reads the email then finds out what one of her Christmas presents is!"

A Bedrock Of Blogging

Admin

Following the previous late-night bitching session about other weblogs, in which I said Dayorama was purely a personal site for keeping friends up to date and mouthing off, I shall now embark on my customary "Ooh look! Someone's linking to us!" session.

Back when Hurricane Wilma was causing trouble across the pond, I mentioned it briefly in a bit of a news-in-brief post. We all know I love a good pun, and the attraction of Wilma's name proved too strong to resist: the post was entitled 'Fred Had Better Watch Out'.

Well, it turns out I got a little online recognition for plodding into the inevitable Flintstones punnage. I've found this page, which documents blogging about Wilma. To quote from near the bottom of the article:

Yabba Dabba Do: There are some expected Flintstones jokes and references in the blogosphere as well: here, here, here, here, here and here.

My Dayorama post is the second 'here' - the others listed went for variant on "Wiiiillllmmaa!" or, imaginatively, "Yabba Dabba Do You Have An Umbrella?" as their titles. I'm in the company of legends.

Dayolection: One Year On

Admin

Check out our "on this day"... it's a year since the lime doritos!!

Happy Birthday To Posting!

Admin

The three line (metaphorical) whip on OJ and Ollie to keep posting has worked: we've had at least one post per day for a whole year!! It was rather hard at the beginning to keep going and this ultimately resulted in several posts at about 11pm saying nothing more than one line, "just to ensure we had a post". However, the more we have all got used to it, the easier it has become. I know I automatically check now to make sure that someone has posted, and I'm sure the other two do too. We had one close shave though when neither OJ or I had the URL for posting, and Ollie had no internet connection... but we still managed to post, so all was ok. I think this marathon run has also enhanced Dayorama: at least regular readers (all six or so of them) know that there will be a new instalment of dross to read each day ("dross" being one of the many compliments we have received this year...!) Anyway, that's about it really. Happy Posting Birthday to us!

Equivalent Trade

Admin

We've plugged Google and its associated products to high heaven on here, so it's only fair that Google gives us something back. In the lower right hand corner of many Dayorama pages, you'll notice a small series of adverts powered by Google. You will be delighted to know that since we introduced them, they have earned us on average...

Wait for it...

Four cents per day! Which means a total of just over five dollars at the time of writing. If I'm honest, this is actually more than I thought we would have earnt, and will provide for a Diet Coke each in celebration at the end of the year. So thanks, Google!

Of course, if you see an advert for a product that particularly takes your fancy, do feel free to click on it, since that is what the ads are there for, and you will be helping us out. My mum's birthday presents came from a site I found from an ad on Dayorama!

You Have Been Watching...

Admin

On 22 August 2002, Dayorama went live for the first time. On 7 October 2002 it snuck off into the darkness again. On 29 July 2003, after a period of very occasional posting, it came back. On 20 September 2003, it snuck off again. On 1 April 2004 it came back, and this time we had a woman involved to make sure something actually got done. You may note that it has yet to sneak off since.

And now, for the first time, I present a chart of posts per day including all three authors since the very first post:

In case you can't make out the tiny legend, I'm the murky green, Amy is the deep indigo and OJ is the light blue. Or put another way, I'm top, Amy's second and OJ is trailing some way off in the distance.

Since Amy joined Dayorama, I have been the leading contributor on every single day except 9 May 2005, when Amy had 244 posts to my 243. By the next day I'd levelled it up at 245 each, and by the following day I was two ahead - I'm now fifty or so posts ahead, whilst Amy is in turn over a hundred posts ahead of OJ (despite OJ having over eighteen months' head start!).

But of course it's quality, not quantity that counts here, which is why OJ should be doubly ashamed.

(I can say these things whilst he's on holiday.)

Other post-related facts:

- The largest single number of posts on one day is 17, on 3 November 2004, the night of (and day after) the US Election. We stayed up almost all night to write about it as it happened.

- Myself and OJ have both gone almost a month at a time without posting, even whilst others were. I made no posts between 16 August 2004 and 16 September 2004 (OJ and Amy made 20 between them in the mean time) and OJ contributed nothing between 7 May 2004 and 5 June 2004, during which time Amy and I racked up 18 posts. Amy's longest run without a post is eight days, from 3 May 2004 to 10 May 2004.

- If Amy had made two more posts in 2005, she would have contributed exactly twice as often as OJ for the year so far.

- OJ's biggest posting days have been 5 August 2003 and 9 November 2004 (five posts on each day). Excluding US election night (15 posts), I have reached five posts in a day on three occasions: 22 August 2002, 2 November 2004 and 25 June 2005. Amy has never posted five times or more in a day, but did post four times on 3 June 2005.

- Since Amy joined on 1 April 2004, there have been 85 days on which none of us have posted, although it hasn't happened since 24 October 2004.

- I was bored in the car earlier.

Blog Search

Admin

Google has launched its own Blog Search service, indexing any weblog it can find, ever. Happily this includes us:

I come in at number seven in a search for "Ollie" (by relevance, not date), OJ is in at number three. Amy, alas, doesn't make the top one hundred. Google can expect a letter of complaint.

A SchamaLlama Never Forgets

Admin

I was just following the link Ollie has posted below and thought, "this is the type of silly idea we would come up with". And then I remembered DayoSchamaLlama. Classic. I had totally forgotten about it, so have amused myself for a few minutes looking at the search strings. What an absolutely silly idea it was.

On This Day

Admin

Look, we have managed to have an entry for 28th August 2002, 2003, 2004 and now 2005.

Wrong Again

Admin

Once again I have been proved spectacularly in the wrong by OJ (it's usually Ollie, this makes a change). The post I referred to as the 1000th post, wasn't in fact the 1000th post. Instead it was the 1045th. This is something to do with Ollie deleting some posts, and also adding others from the original website. Thus, our entry system records my post as number 1000, when in fact it should read 1045. Apparently, this will probably please Chris (Ollie's Dad) who would have hated the thought of the 1000th post being a tribute to an ex-Labour politician, with the title derived from a quote by an ex-Labour leader. Instead, the true 1000th post was written by Ollie (jammy whatsit: I've been waiting to do the 1000th post for days), entitled Gyppo Chairman Ate My Webpage. That's a suitably right-wing title.

Category: Transport

Admin

I think we need a new category: what with our numerous bus and train sagas, and strong opinons on modes of travel in general, we definitely need a "transport" option.

Spam Success

Admin

Dayorama was spammed by approx 120 fake comments today. But can you tell? No. Because I have deleted them all with ease, before they even reached the public site. Fantastic.

Customer Service

Admin

I know I should really get out more, but browsing through our site stats once again, there's a few people coming here looking for information about The Customers and their new single, 'Fifty Eight'.

In order to help them in their quest for knowledge, and in no way a dirty self-aggrandising plug for stuff I've written, I'm happy to provide a link to my interview with them.

Sixth Seed

Admin

We're currently result number six on Google for the term 'Andy Murray'. Do I take it not many people really call him that then? In any case I apologise to serious tennis fans who will have ended up here thanks to my ramblings during his match against Nalbandian.

Whilst I'm on the topic of search results, a lot of people seem to end up here after having searched for 'Su Doku'. Amy and OJ are far more the Su Doku experts than I, but surely nothing can beat Sky's latest offering, Su Doku Live?

It's hosted by Carol Vorderman - assuming she's in a fit state to present it following the death of Richard Whiteley - and you can apply to be a member of the audience or even a team member here.

Audiorama

Admin

Since we launched our new site design, my main aim has been to get more photos and audio onto the site, so that there's something here other than just us three rambling on.

I'm still working on getting the gallery up and running to display all the photos that have been uploaded to Dayorama, but the audio side of things seems to have gone really well, looking at the statistics.

According to our site stats, no fewer than twenty-three people have accessed my hour-long Early Show mp3 file. Hot on its heels, however, is the audio clip of our friend Anthony describing his mother and aunt as 'totty', which has racked up twenty-two hits! It was the most popular of the audio clips from the day Amy finished her exams.

All who downloaded and dutifully suffered the Early Show mp3 will be thrilled to know that I'm heading back to the Oxide studio later on to see if I can mine the archive for a few more of my shows. One or two more might surface on here, but I'll be taking requests if you're that keen (today's finale was just me playing tracks by some of my longstanding favourite artists, so if you like Genesis, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel and Sarah McLachlan, it'll be your kind of thing). I'll also be taking requests not to post them to Dayorama...

A New Dawn

Admin

Right, we've upgraded to 3.17, despite what it may say on the sidebar. It was a relatively painless transition, but now come the real challenges. The big question is: can we get comments working before I fall asleep tonight? Can Ollie work out what the hell dynamic pages are, and how to move his new stylesheet to them? Stay tuned... and feel free to comment to below, if it works.

Upgrades

Admin

One of the things I'll be working on in my next couple of weeks of freedom is how to get an Amex BA Miles Credit Card with a student income, so that I can start to rack up (although at a very slow rate, I should imagine) BA miles that will allow me to make numerous trips to America for 'research'. There's nothing like being able to upgrade your seat if you can. Alas, this is not a post about the joys of business class. It is a post to say that this evening, Ollie and I will be attempting to move Dayorama from Movable Type 2.64 to 3.17, which will bring with it a sleuth of new features, most importantly including comment registration, meaning that our comments can be switched back on. It should also allow Ollie the chance to finalise his template redesign - the present draft looks really great, but we don't know what 3.17 is going to do to it. Still, this will give him a very pleasant evening and weekend working on fixing whatever this upgrade breaks. Excellent. Until the move is made, however, there shall be no more posts in order to ensure that we lose nothing in the transition. See you on the flipside...

A Little Treat

Admin

Dayorama: The Wonder Years.

Well alright, Dayorama: The Wonder Months. The initial period from August 2002 to March 2003 (with a three month break between November and February even then!) which marked the brief lifespan of the first, and award-winning, incarnation of this weblog.

I am thrilled to present to you the original posts from Dayorama v1.0 in their entirety, starting with my very opening post - now all available on this very website.

These posts date back to a time before either of us had even arrived at university: it was the heady period in between school and university where we really had nothing better to do than write a current affairs weblog.

The contents are sometimes very questionable, sometimes a bit ignorant of facts (especially with hindsight and the benefit of a university education), sometimes entirely irrelevant. Very occasionally, we manage to be interesting. I do wonder how the hell we got recognition from the Guardian, but the posts where we admit that a renewed burst of posting is all down to being shortlisted are proof it really did happen.

In the end, it's no surprise we ended up consumed by university so much that the weblog peters out almost from the moment we arrived there. But this archive is very much worth having all the same, and like a museum curator full of paternal love and affection for a new exhibit, I'm delighted to have our old posts back in our archive.

By Accident Or Design

Admin

You may notice that Dayorama looks a little different. This is a result of essential engineering work, and of me forgetting to rename one file which accidentally replaced another file and erased our old CSS (CSS files being the files that control the appearance of text, backgrounds etc).

This may also give away our intention to replace this design with a new one in the near future. There, now you have a reason to keep checking back.

Commentry

Admin

Ok, so this closing of the comments? It's really boring, and takes quite a long time. I've managed just over 100..., so just under 600 to go... I came across another amusing comment string: "jock itch". Heh.

A Comment on Comments

Admin

Of course, I should point out that I only know how to close comments on future posts. As well as deleting all the old spam comments, Amy can now also go through every post and close comments on them, because I can't see an easier way to do it. Of course, if you still wish to comment on something you've read on here, then do feel free to email us - our contact details are found in the right sidebar. And of course, this also means that spelling mistakes will go uncorrected...

Comment by Amy: Yep, I'm going to plough through and close the comments on all the old posts. This beast will be beaten.

Comments Are No Longer

Admin

OK, so last week Ollie procrastinated by posting like beast and creating his wonderful graph. This week, I have been deleting all the random comments from the website. We began the week with 672 posts and over 8000 comments. This is an average of about 12 comments per post. In reality, most of our older posts have had between 20-50 stray comments, and one had 249. I’m not sure quite what the comments are telling us… offers for male m****bation, fleshlights (I believe OJ clicked on this at some stage; the mind boggles), p***s enlargement (Ollie’s “Not as Boring as Chiken” post had 21 such comments), s*x toys, weight loss, weight loss for stupid people (?), anxiety pills, enhancement pills, online casinos, and so the list continues. However, slowly but surely I have deleted them and we now have about 2000 remaining. Its been quite satisfying actually; in a spare five minutes you can delete a couple of hundred comments. It all adds up by the end of the day. It can be a little demoralising though when you clear a post, and five minutes later there has been another random spam comment added. Later today, OJ is going to delete the comments function from the website. This will only be temporary, and sometime when finals are all over we shall hopefully upgrade the website platform and we will be able to filter spam much more effectively.

In reality, I couldn’t have chosen a better day to remove this facility; can you imagine how many comments Ollie’s last post would have attracted? Perhaps it is time to add Chris’ (Ollie’s Dad) remarks about the event: [paraphrased] you’re rather like Manchester City FC; you make mistakes when it’s most critical. Luckily for Ollie, and Man City, he has loyal supporters, and somehow always manages to land on his feet.

Procrastinate? This Is Hard Graphed

Admin

I have been accused of using Dayorama to procrastinate in the days leading up to the start of exams (apparently, according to the cynics in question, I have recently been posting a lot more frequently than usual).

Well, I can assure you, what you have seen until this point has not been procrastination. This is procrastination:

As you can see, it shows the cumulative post totals of the three of us for the year thus far. I was originally going to do this as a posts-per-day bar chart with little spikes to indicate unusual activity, but after playing around with the graphics it became obvious that the trends were easier to spot this way.

I fear the graph may prove incriminating evidence for recent procrastination. In fact, my little bursts of activity are surprisingly clear - one in mid-to-late February, one at the beginning of April (followed by an extensive period of flat-lining; clearly, I got tired) and one just now .

OJ is similarly incapable of sustaining posting activity for any length of time, although he's managed a few more than me. He had a very good March and April, but February and May have been dead losses as far as he's concerned.

Amy, of course, is far and away the winner. She and OJ both got off to a good start whilst I was stuck on three posts for what seems like an eternity, and where OJ slackened off the pace, she kept going. There are only two minor plateaus blotting her copybook - one in early February and one in mid-April. Amusingly, just as Amy ground to her February halt, OJ jolted briefly into life to keep the daily post count ticking up, then equally as quickly sank back into oblivion. Luckily, I then emerged from my own posting coma into one of my active periods as the other two hibernated. What a team, eh.

6mths

Admin

Oh, and this website has had at least one posting every day, for the past 6 months.

Happy New Year!

Admin

And all that.

What a deer llama

Admin

Following on from OJ's post in November, viewable here, the hunter who shot a llama when he mistook it for a deer has been charged with trespassing and a misdemeanor count of mistreatment of animals. Apparently, the trespassing charge carries a fine of up to $1,000 and the other count carries a fine of up to $10,000 and a nine-month jail term. Rather harsh if you ask me, but clearly it is a lesson to all hunters that they should have a better ideer of what they are shooting before they fire.

Dayoschamafestivellama

Admin

Apparently even llamas have fun at Christmas.

How to know you're listening to a llama

Admin

Everything you ever needed to know about Llamas in a simple "question and answer" format is found here. The site has also been commended as a "notable llama site" by the "Llama Life II" magazine. I suggest visiting the "what kind of sounds do they make?" section of the Q&A page. Hilarious. Llamas can orgle, hum and snort apparently... go hear!

How to search for llamas and schamas

Admin

Now we have the proper results. (see below: searching for llamas and schamas)

Searching for llamas and schamas

Admin

Microsoft have launched their new MSN search engine. It’s only a prototype, (beta trial stage) at the moment but it’s expected that the finished version will be ready by the end of 2004. I thought compare its current searching powers against google with “llama” and “simon+schama”. Maybe I’ll repeat the exercise when the full engine is launched. The results were as follows:

Google:
Llama: 4,320,000 in 0.26 seconds
Simon+Schama: 55,900 in 0.40 seconds

MSN:
Llama: 2,829,889 in 0.14 seconds
Simon+Schama: 23,321 in 0.26 seconds

It seems that google is currently getting more results, but in approximately double the time. However, what is 0.1 of a second anyway. On the other hand, would we really care about that 2,829, 890 result for llama that the MSN search didn’t pick up? The choice is yours. Overall though, I thought the search was very user friendly. I think I’ll stick to google though as the pictures they do at Halloween/feast days/in the festive season, always make me smile.

Llamarama

Admin

In the interest of the commercial potential of llamas, I believe this website should be visited. They offer some great links under the "Friends of Nosey" section.

Dayoramics: First Results Up

Admin

The first Dayoramics results are now online, for the week 31st October 2004 - 7th November 2004. The poll for 8th November 2004 - 14th November 2004 is now active in the same place as the old one used to reside, and will change late Wednesday/early Thursday of each week. Thanks to those who voted. Try to encourage other people to vote! Remember, some people aren't lucky enough to have the democratic right to rate the week; it is your duty to your nation and to those poor unfortunates to exercise your rating ability. Feel free, also, to leave comments both on the poll itself and on any Dayoramics post.

In other news, MovableType considers capital letters to come before lower case letters when alphabetising things. For example, Dayoramics appears below DayoSchamaLlama in the Categories list by virtue of a capital S trumping a lower case 'r'. TV, similarly, appears above 'Tech'. However, this only happens on our internal editing menu, and seems to be corrected for the Categories list in the lower right-hand corner of the website itself.

Llama Update

Admin

Shocking news in Minnesota, as a rogue llama was mistaken for a deer and injured (presumed dead).

Rating

Admin

Well, what he said really. With the developments from the train crash (worrying because that's the line we take home) now fleshed out, last week was, all in all, highly eventful. I'll admit to being the one who voted 10 on the online poll, but I've been persuaded by Mr. Williams' case. Still, with the battle for Fallujah ongoing, this week is looking high as well.

Ollie's Dayoramic: 31/10/04 - 07/11/04

Admin

Time for my first Dayoramics round-up. First off, remember that as Chief of Dayoramics, my opinion is as usual more important than anything the other two might try to tell you, so each week this is the post to be reading in order to influence your later voting. And on that note, may I remind you to vote in the top right hand corner of the Dayoramics page. You need to rate the week (Monday to Sunday) on a scale of 1 (boring) to 10 (earth-shattering), and you've got til Wednesday night to do it. Marks, set, go.

Right then. Well, it's been a hell of a big week to kick off Dayoramics. Had Dayoramics been in existence in September 2001, the week 10th Sept - 16th Sept would have qualified for a 10, so we can safely rule out almost any other week ever for a 10 rating. Though the events of this week were very important, they do not qualify as having, according to our strict definition of a 10 rating, 'changed the world forever'.

So we're probably looking at a 9, which is 'major global impact'. The US election certainly qualifies here, since a second four-year term for President Bush will to a large extent dictate the pace and direction of global politics for the time being. The fortunes of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, even potentially Israel, Palestine and beyond, all lie in that man's capable hands (the hands are probably far more capable than the brain). The effect on US domestic policy doesn't qualify for a 9 since it isn't particularly global, but still has a number of global ramifications and must be taken into consideration - changes within the US can be expected to impact upon events elsewhere.

At home, the Berkshire train crash fits somewhere between a 6 and a 7 (qualifying under 6, 'relatively large-scale disaster', and 7, 'extended coverage/newsflash territory'). The deployment of Black Watch troops into Camp Dogwood is a dodgy 7 ('majority of the public will possess some kind of opinion' but it's more a part of the greater Iraq news sphere than an individual event, so perhaps it should be happy with a 6). The declaring of a state of emergency in Iraq perhaps brings overall events in Iraq for the week to a high 7, i.e. escalated activity. Yasser Arafat's apparently imminent demise, seemingly so certain that the Israelis are waiting patiently with a JCB and a hole in the turf, may have far-reaching consequences for the Middle East, but then may not. One columnist observed that Arafat was effectively dead anyway given the permanent Israeli guard outside his house and Ariel Sharon's pursuit of a withdrawal from Gaza regardless of anyone else's opinion. We'll stick with a 7 for that too.

In summary then, it's very much a week of escalated activity; when the Arafat story is dropped into "Other News" you know that the media are spoilt for choice for headlines. Without the US election, we'd still be well into 7 territory, maybe even an 8 on the basis of the cumulative effect of all the 7s. With the election, we're definitely looking at a big, fat:

Words! What Are They Good For?

Admin , Thinking Space

In case anyone is wondering, the numbers (and now small bar chart) that have sprung up next to our names in the contact list refer to our ongoing attempts at Scrabble.

I narrowly won the first encounter as I think OJ has related elsewhere; tonight, he got his revenge with a convincing victory in a high-scoring encounter, closing out the game with 33-point behemoth 'zone' (with the Z on a triple letter score). This match-up also illustrated the ease with which I succumb to pressure, turning as I did into a slightly incoherent, abusive pile of verbal compost in the face of endless rounds of seven consonants and no vowels. When Amy placed 'quin' down without entirely satisfying our house rule that you can't place a word unless you can define one meaning of it - which reduces the number of hopeful punts on outside chances, such as 'hau' (a form of Hawaiian shrub) - I almost declared World War Three. I also converted to Hinduism midway through the game on the basis that God was clearly not interested in my plight. I am placing my faith in the logical assertion that gods with more limbs will be able to shuffle the tile bag more sensibly.

To conclude, we will be keeping a running total of our cumulative scores in the Contact column, and may even keep the natty little bar chart thing I've put there. And I promise not to mention chess unless I start to lose by an unassailable margin.

BBC Responds To Dayorama Surge

Admin

You have to hand it to the BBC, they don't know when they're beaten. Despite our unrivalled election coverage, the launch of DayoSchamaLlama and the brand new Dayoramics mini-site, the Beeb's techies have trawled out a new addition to the armoury, the audio slideshow. And a damn fine piece of kit it is, too (maybe it's been used before but it's the first time I've seen it).

Well, never fear, because I'm still not busy and/or motivated enough to begin work any time soon, and I still have a Dayorama trick or two up my sleeve - starting with a new and quite different regular feature lined up to kick off tomorrow afternoon.

Dayoramics: Welcome

Admin

Welcome to Dayoramics. After an hour or two of playing with various templates behind the scenes here at Dayorama, this post will hopefully be simulcast on both Dayorama and the brand new Dayoramics site, which for now resides here, but might get its own domain name soon.

Dayoramics is intended to return Dayorama to its initial purpose - the rating of days on a scale according to how they will be remembered in history. Initially, we gave each day a rating somewhere between 0 (so uneventful that frankly it wasn't worth getting up) and 12 (will be forever remembered in history). It was a format that got us recognition from the Guardian.

Dayoramics launches with a purpose similar to that, except where once we struggled with the labour-intensive mission of rating each day, now the plan becomes to rate the entire week (where weeks run from Monday to Sunday, and don't let anyone tell you any different). Posts on Dayorama which refer to our rating of the week, and how certain news events may change it, will be filed under "Dayoramics" and will simultaneously appear on the Dayoramics homepage (God knows what will happen to archiving those posts on the Dayoramics site, I've not got to that yet). So at the end of each week, we, or at least I, will provide an opinion and a rating for how that week will go down in history. The scale this time is 1 (uneventful) to 10 (will shape history).

Not only that, but Dayoramics is interactive. From Thursday of week A until Wednesday of week B, we'll run a poll in the top right-hand corner of Dayoramics allowing our visitors to rate the week themselves. The offset time scale (week runs Monday-Sunday, poll runs Thursday-Wednesday) allows visitors to rate the week up to three days after it concludes, and prevents visitors from rating a week when we've only had one or two days of it. I will ensure that an archive of results is kept updated.

In summary, do come on over to Dayoramics and cast your expert eye over each week - you will of course be able to leave comments on each of our Dayoramics posts.

Correction

Admin

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It has come to our attention that over the past weeks, and in particular the past few days, some of our readers may have been led to believe that we are a serious weblog, dealing with topical issues, politics, cultural debate and aspects of our own lives which may have wider moral or social implications. The impression may have been given that humour is occasionally deployed as a secondary tool, particularly during the relaying of anecdotes.

We, the Dayorama staff, are outraged by, and hotly refute, these suggestions. At no stage have we shown, or sought to show, any competence, insight, initiative, wit, sobriety, sincerity or indeed any capability at all. We treat this as a matter of the utmost importance, since we have a comprehensive, strict and unbending set of standards to miss. Our 'content' should be at all times inept, obscure, bluff, diatribe, baloney, codswallop or at worst irrelevant. If you have happened across an article of interest in the past weeks, we can only apologise.

We have issued a separate, official denial that we ever do anything worthwhile, and have no further comment at this time.

Posts

Admin

As Ollie pointed out, yesterday all three of us posted within one hour. Actually, it was within 23 minutes of each other. The current site has been “active” for seven months – lets forget about the six month gap in the middle. With 177 posts in approx 210 days, that really isn’t bad going. However, there are periods where nothing is posted and then, like yesterday, we make up for it with a posting spurt. Not forgetting the comments – some of which (spam aside) can be like mini-posts. Ollie’s comment yesterday (above) is a prime example of this. What I’d like to know is why we do or we don’t post. Nobody posted last week however I refuse to accept the fact that anyone was away from their laptop for long. OJ was at home, and has perfectly good broadband. Ollie is never far from a laptop whether at home, in the upper-lower-right rad cam, on a train or in the windowless hotel room in Poland. Granted, I was away last week but I still used an old, wanky wank laptop with slower than slow dial-up. [Note: Yes, this laptop even makes OJ’s “turn me on, count to ten and I’ll have shut down for you” laptop look like the latest gadget to come out of the Gates emporium] So, why didn’t we post. Were we so busy doing such really interesting things that no one even posted about them on their return and instead found time to talk about the delights of lawnmowering. [Btw: Buckingham Palace lawns are mowed four times – each direction – on every cut. If you want to be like the Queen Ollie, go out and enjoy the grass (as in stuff that grows on a lawn, not the other kind) three more times. I learnt that fact on Gardner’s World whilst with OJ. Thrilling stuff hey?] I am going to make some assumptions here so yes, I will probably make an ass out of myself – now there’s no need to quote that silly rhyme at me OJ :p

OJ – he posts to enlighten us on his wide website reading skills. He picks obscure quotes and links out of nowhere and pops them on our site. I never understand half of the stuff – mostly because they are American-related – but at least he adds to the posts tally. He posts less frequently than Ollie or myself but when he does they can be particularly long – Six degrees - and resemble the horrors of that unforgettable Princeton-experience email. However they can often be rather short and generally ingratiate OJ – see Sub Editor Paradise (this didn’t work btw because I got 27 spam comments last week). And what was that Ode to Cement? However, still a delightful approach to the site; certainly more intellectual than any of the ramblings I make and they always make me smile and think of OJ – even if I then groan.

Ollie and Amy. I will lump both of us together because I think there are similarities in our posting. ** awaits the comments ** Okay, so Ollie can spell and use grammar correctly, but we often post for the same reason. If we are angry or annoyed at something emotionally we post – Amy’s Larkin, Alcohol or Happy Medium. We also both comment about music or films – remember the Harry Potter or The Day After Tomorrow (grrrr - those bloody wolves!) Our posts are usually of more respectable length and unlike OJ we both post to procrastinate. I run out of fingers if I count the number of times last year that Ollie and I were in the middle of writing an essay and at the same time writing a post. Communication via MSN is frequent on these occasions as well. [Note: If Ollie says ‘Away’ it means he is busy but wants to be disturbed. He isn’t actually Away. If he is away then he puts ‘be right back’. If he is ‘busy’ then I still disturb him anyway. OJ is always ‘Away’ which is really unhelpful especially as sometimes he can be away for a whole weekend ooops forgetting to turn of his laptop when his MSN name read “off to Washington DC”] So maybe we just post when we are bored or have plenty of things to do… but there sits Dayorama as such a tempting alternative to work.

From the posts you can glean quite a lot about our individual characters – my posts are certainly badly punctuated and more feminine – and also our interests, hobbies etc. It will be amusing to look back on them in a few years as they do provide a good insight into what we were doing for a few months of University – Maltesars and free puddings anyone? For that reason I think we should aim to keep it going through finals. So there.

Sub Editor Paradise

Admin

So, I think I wasn't the only one that was getting bored and annoyed with all the spam comments that we were having, and that kept on flooding my inbox. Finding myself with a nice day off, and some spare time outside dispensing medical advice, I finally got around to downloading and installing MT-Blacklist (harder than it sounds - I had to dig out how to access the hosting server and other such wonderful things that haven't been touched in a year). Damn, but it's good. I have now deleted all the spam comments, about 200 in all. That's really surprising, because someone is targeting us when really we are just a tiny website with a readership of 3. Anyway, now that the blacklist is up and running, hopefully things should be a little more pleasant from now on...

Vanitony

Admin

Sorry to go into a little kind of posting overdrive. However, might I ask who it could have been that searched this website recently, at length, for 'Anthony', according to the site stats?...

Found Him!

Admin

With reference to my "Wally" post below...

Wally

Admin

It is my pleasure to exclusively reveal that someone, somewhere, is planning a sequel to a popular children's book where readers are invited to search for a small image of OJ in a sea of similarly coloured, closely arranged characters.

How do I know this? It has come to my attention that the company involved are checking to see if anyone is already using the title for the forthcoming book, thus infringing on their trademark. This can be the only explanation for the arrival of one visitor to Dayorama using the search phrase "Where's OJ Now?".

Dayorama Zeitgeist

Admin

If Google can have one, so can we.

You may recall that last year, I revealed how some people had arrived here in search of some odd things. Well, that pattern has continued. For whilst we may have been away for half a year, Dayorama has not been left entirely unattended and we've been averaging a steady number of hits every day.

There are some acceptable reasons for having wound up here. "Princeton pictures" features heavily in the queries of people who arrived here, which is sensible enough given OJ's post of the same name. Similarly, one person got here searching for 'amusing place names in Britain'. The subject matter we discuss is clearly of some relevance, with visitors coming in search of information on such matters as:
Usherettes
Alan Davies in QI
George Shrink
Sexy Dismissed
Exeter St Thomas train station
"Explain the ending of Meet Joe Black"
Shih-tzu hairstyles
Nash Bridges
Eating Clubs
etc

All well and good. As are searches for "Dayorama" and "discussion of the day", which are both quite apt.

However, beyond these fairly reasonable requests lurk some quite sinister and disturbing reasons for being here. The person who came here having searched for "stacking pigs" is risking an RSPCA investigation. The one who was looking for "frilly knickers" may have more luck now that Amy is here, and may be the same person who was looking for a "channel five weather babe". We continue, to my utter bemusement, to be a resource for people searching for childminders.

This pales in comparison to one person who I would dearly love to find. This individual, at some stage in March, found themselves on our site having searched for "defuse bombs liquid nitrogen". Now, heaven knows what kind of situation they were in when they made that search. If we were their last hope as they stood over a ginormous liquid nitrogen bomb, wondering whether to cut the blue wire or the red wire, then I fear we have just lost a reader.

Returning to my original mention of Google, we also appear to be turning into a gathering place for those who despise the search engine the earth has embraced as its very own. At least five or six people turn up each month having search for "Google is rubbish" (probably using Google. Oh, the irony). In my original zeitgeist in September, I asked people to leave comments, and leave comments they did. I shall ignore the one from "Jordan" putting my writing style to the sword, and focus on Ashleigh and Mr Boyce, who both used their comments to complain about Google. Mr Boyce then went off to do something else highly unorthodox, but the less said about that, the better.

Finally, I was shocked and offended to find that someone suspects me of a drug addiction of unprecedented scale. There can be no other explanation for someone arriving here having searched for the "world's highest Ollie"...

Following That Brief Interlude

Admin

So, the Labour government has found a new way of taking the politics to the people. In order to familiarise us with its MPs, it embroils a different one in a cock-up, scandal or enquiry each week.

This week it is the turn of Beverley Hughes, who having 'misled' the public (along with the rest of the government going by its manifesto, *cough*topupfees*cough*) was forced to step down. She therefore joins the ranks of politicians whose names we would rarely if ever have heard had they been remotely competent (or, occasionally, had they not been made into scapegoats by Blair or Brown): Stephen Byers and Peter Mandelson (twice, because he obviously didn't get enough exposure the first time) are the only ones which spring immediately to mind, but I'm sure I'll think of more. Lord Falconer, for a start, who as chief Millennium Dope oversaw the textbook execution of a white elephant. Oh and the muppet whose name escapes me who felt it appropriate to "bury bad news" on 11th September 2001. Clare Short, Kate Hoey (where the hell is she these days?), Tony Banks (ditto, maybe it's a Minister for Sport thing), Robin Cook of course, Keith (possibly Kenneth, I forget) Vaz, and I bet there's more I've forgotten. Feel free to add to the list.

Anyway, having been absent for roughly half the time you'd expect to be on an NHS waiting list, I feel the need to begin this 'second wave' with a controversial topic. I was talking to a friend last night who stated his ambition to move to America, because Britain was becoming a third-rate country.

What's wrong with it? I asked.

"The people, the fact they don't appreciate everything, how everyone is always so bloody miserable, the weather, old people, immigration, some of our retarded laws, just for starters. I just don't like this country... and if that's not adequate for you, then I prefer America." Quoth he.

Well, where to start. As I immediately pointed out, it is hardly fair to say that no one appreciates anything in the middle of a speech defending a lack of appreciation for the entire nation.

I would also prefer our weather, which at its worst extremes results in either hosepipe bans or localised flooding, to the potential risk of tornadoes, hurricanes and any other natural disaster you care to name across the pond.

Old people are, sadly, becoming a fact of life everywhere (soon there will only be two workers for every pensioner apparently, and we're heading for a massive pensions crisis, joy).

Immigration is equally a problem in America, except that instead of Uzbeki refugees clinging to the undercarriage of a Eurostar, you get South Americans rowing their cars across the Caribbean. And as for retarded laws. Well. I think I'll keep our laws over theirs, thanks.

I was then accused of being pro-British rather than anti-American. Being pro-British is, apparently, now a crime. Under the basis that our almost free medical care is improving less quickly than some would like, our education system hasn't quite had the necessary shake-up yet (though we've just seen the new plans), and a few invading foreigners are keeping Daily Mail sub-editors fed and watered, it has become taboo to like the poor bloody country.

I mean, let's forget that we all have power, something America comprehensively arsed up a few months back (and no amount of watching If... documentaries on it will affect my judgement til something happens here). Let's forget that at the moment, as a nation, we're excelling in all manner of fields. Let's forget that when Coalition forces invaded Iraq, the Americans were the ones accidentally inciting the natives to violence every other day whilst the British were handing out sweets and getting along just fine in Basra. Let's forget that with civil partnerships we're a good few light years ahead of America in terms of progression towards an egalitarian society (although credit to the Oregon county that banned all forms of marriage, heterosexual or otherwise, til it could decide what the resolution should be, in the interests of equality).

As far as I am aware (and I could be wrong, correct me if so), the American rail network consists of a few spindly lines stretched out from one continent to another and is nothing like as complex as ours. I travel by train almost every week and I've not been on one delayed by more than ten minutes for a long, long time. Our network is very intricate, squeezed into narrow chunks of land with no room for expansion or new lines, and is under ever-increasing pressure. I think it's doing a fine job. (As an aside, I also really like the Virgin Voyager trains with the plug socket for laptops, and it's a shame Great Western's new trains didn't include that functionality).

Oh lordy, I'm being overwhelmed by news now. On the Great Western topic, today marks the beginning of the new Great Western Link franchise (previously Thames Trains), which means I now get to use the same company all the way from Oxford to Taunton. With a bit of luck this may mean a discount of sorts, and I also happen to like Great Western so I'm happy about this (I have a very fierce sense of brand loyalty).

Right, I'd better go before I warble on about anything else. I hope to pay more regular visits in future.

Come in Number 29, Your Time is Up

Admin

Yes, I know that's more a public boat lake type title, but I couldn't think of a particularly elegant pun on the flying pigs (although I'm not sure that's much better).

I've been meaning to blog for a while. About ten days, in fact. Sorry for the delay. I know all two of you have been waiting with baited breath for stuff that I've already told you over MSN. As it is, however, you may have to wait another day for substantial posting. I have a dinner with a group of friends tonight, but due to some hurricane or something, things are being cancelled, moved and re-planned. So basically the rest of my evening has been taken. Tomorrow looks a bit better, although if we follow the worst of the reports, I will have been flooded on my fourth floor room, despite Princeton being well in-land, and New Jersey not even in the path of Isabel. I mean, the National Hurricane Centre at the NOAA has moved it down to a category 2 on the scale of 5, and it has yet to make land fall. I now hand over to resident expert Ollie, who has been a fan of the NOAA site for about five years now...

Otherwise - Princeton? It's a wonderful place. I'm having a great time. And more on that in less time than since the last time I posted (if that makes sense).

Google Doesn't Realise I'm Talking Rubbish

Admin

Just a quick apology to everyone who comes on this site looking for information and instead finds usually me, or occasionally OJ, talking absolute bollocks.

Looking through our website stats, already this month we're getting a lot of people coming by looking for info on the Lilt adverts (my fault), the Pringles adverts (my fault) and The Age Of Innocence (my fault). We've also had a couple of somewhat more bizarre requests. Stand up, please, the person who arrived here having typed 'childminder registered slough maidenhead burnham' into Google? And the person who got here by searching for 'ink drawings of j lo's name'? Google somehow decided that both of them would find what they needed in our August archive. Only one of the search terms that got people here is remotely relevant, and that is 'Oxbridge Comments', which accounted for two hits. You'll be wanting OxBlog, guys.

By the way, if you've come here searching for something that has got nothing to do with this site (and very little has anything to do with this site), you can still leave a comment, just so we know you came here. In fact if you got here completely at random, I'd love a little comment just to let us know what brought you here. And if you actually find what you are looking for here, I want a medal, let alone a comment.

Summary

Admin

OJ is leaving for a while, and probably won't be posting for a few days, in a shock move which sent stock markets across the world into a flurry of activity late Tuesday. When he gets to America he says he may well post daily, a suggestion that will be news to the scores of pigs circling Heathrow waiting for a clear runway.

OJ wants to be in American Pie, preferably as Stifler, and was sad enough to watch, or at least refer to, 90210. He 'likes a challenge, but likes the security of home', yet did not opt to turn his house into a secret haven for Middle Eastern terrorists, which would have been a challenge. Admittedly his home may, however, have lost its 'security' aspect. OJ is a big jessie who couldn't eat when he left home for the first time.

He cannot spell 'treize', the French for thirteen, or 'prepared', or 'curiosity', all in the same paragraph, but the latter two may have been typos. He was 'pumped', then 'the vac came', and now he is 'not pumped', leading me to conclude that he is getting sucked by a vac. Whatever turns you on.

You no longer need to read the two posts that follow.

Return Of The King

Admin

Yep, I'm sure it's going to be a great film.

In other news, I have returned, now with wireless broadband internet access (more on that later). Apologies for my extended absence. I'm currently doing an impersonation of a drifter, moving from house to house. in the space of a month, I've gone from my old home, to staying at a friend's for a fortnight, to the new home. Moving house, it has to be said, is not a fun process. Being a perfectionist with regards as to how things look makes things even harder. Still, the number of boxes stacked in each room appears to have been reduced since I've been here.

Currently, the biggest upside for me has to be the successful installation of broaband. This is remarkable, not only for its ease of use (we phoned up and hey presto, 10 days later, it was ready to go), but also for the fact that I'm actually in a more remote area down here in Devon than I was back in Somerset. Go figure. BT's commercial-led roll out process has a lot to answer for. As well as getting broadband, my Dad and I set up a wireless network (g, naturally) in the house, which is helped no end by the fact that a bungalow is very small. It was a cinch to do - up and running in 30 minutes, which includes installation of a router, wireless access point and wireless card. Netgear, I salute you! It would have been even faster had I not been so reluctant to realise I had made a mistake on the login value.

So, I've down here in Devon for about 10 days now. I head off to Princeton on Wednesday. Thoughts on that are coming up. Although I've visited Devon, and Dartmoor, a number of times, living here is a wonderful thing. The Moor is beautiful, and driving down for the first time on a sunny afternoon over the top (and through, naturally, a place called Princetown), was stupendous. The air is fresher, the peeople friendlier and Plymouth is an excellent "big" town (given that I'm comparing it to Oxford and Bristol). I'm also impressed with West Devon Borough Council - they've made efforts in all the places that you can see, such as road signs, public gardens etc. It makes a change from Taunton Deane or even, *shudder* Sedgemoor.

My job of a month was very successful and a pleasant place to work. Although I'm bound by various confidentiality clauses (which I signed, not only because I had to to work, but because it also sounds cool to say that on a blog that only your friend and co-founder, and girlfriend read), I can certainly say that I understand why tele-marketing is such a valuable business.

Having gained broadband for all of a glorious...27 hours now, I'm going to have to give it up for a couple of days as the laptop goes in the bag, and I fly over. Setting it up when I get to my dorm will naturally be a priority, and certainly blogging will become more frequent - perhaps *gasp* daily! So please do keep on checking back.

Where The Hell Is Everyone?

Admin

Where's OJ? We've not had any snarky little posts with links to the BBC in ages.

Where's Amy? I've not been bitched at from afar for aeons.

Where's everyone else? Is there anyone else actually visiting this site on a regular, or even semi-regular basis? If so, don't tell me you actually came here on the back of a recommendation from OJ? Or did you just happen by during your search for info on the Lilt Ladies adverts, simply because I mentioned them once? Sorry about that, there's nothing more to see here on that topic.

Where's Wally?

Where's the love?

Where's better? America or England?

Where's the last ten minutes gone?

Moving House

Admin

Well, my family are moving house this week. I, however, have to work for another forthnight 2 hours away from our new house. Thus I'm staying at friends, and although my evil laptop will be with me, posting will now involve using the laptop keyboard, which means more typos. Many more, I suspect. And probably fewer posts.

And All Shall Be Revealed

Admin

It is entirely in keeping with this site that I should reveal its purpose a day later than I originally intended. It is even more in keeping that I allowed myself some room for manouevre in recognition that I would probably be late. At least it doesn't look orange anymore.

Dayorama, then. The very first site, now sadly not on the net, was formed nearly exactly a year ago, a joint venture between myself and Ollie. By joint, I mean that Ollie provided everything but half of the idea. Firstly, I think that some background knowledge would probably help to explain Dayorama, and no doubt some of the more obscure references on it. Ollie and I first met aged 7 (well, he was 6) at what was then Taunton Junior Boys School, and would later become Taunton Prep School. A firm friendship was quickly formed based on identical initials (OW) and a love for video games (one day, we might see fit to describe how to play two-player Road Rash on the MegaDrive properly). Remarkably, the friendship, despite various efforts by such things as Manchester City, Rugby, and lockers of death, managed to survive all the way through the Senior School, and now at Oxford. We long ago came to the conclusion that when writing and punditing, we do our best when working off each other. Then, in the summer in between A-Levels and University, we had an idea.

To see the original, ground-breaking MSN conversation that lead to Dayorama, then we can exclusively provide it to you, here. The first site, however, had an abundance of white, and was soon upgraded to Dayorama v2 - the Magenta and Cyan years. The site proved remarkably successful in its brief life, winning recognition from The Guardian, amongst others (and by others, we probably actually mean mothers). The concept behind the site was to rate the day in a historical perspective on a scale of 0 to 12. It is probably the one original idea that either of us have ever had. Whilst the concept was excellent, and worked well during the freedom of the long summer after School (in between stints at the cake factory of death, for me), upon our arrival at Oxford, we were quickly swamped by, as Ollie put it, "work, women, fast cars... okay, okay, work." Posting to Dayorama stopped, despite the various attempts by each of us to create a personal blog.

Then came the (fateful?) summer of '03, and we decided to start it up again, with less emphasis on the 'daily' posting. Due to my badgering, we agreed to move from Blogger to MovableType, and get our own domain. Not surprisingly, this cost money - not a huge amount if it all goes wrong again, but enough to hopefully act as an incentive to post. And lo, D3 - Dayorama the Domain (or should that be Dayorama da Domain) was born.

Still, it needs a purpose. Random news topics will certainly feature highly. But for me personally, I hope to use Dayorama to keep my friends up to date and post some thoughts on my next big adventure. In May I was selected for an undergraduate exchange scheme that means that instead of returning to Oxford for Michaelmas in October, I will actually be spending a term (or the fall semester) as an undergraduate at Princeton. Which is an awfully long way from Taunton. Although it is above all else an academic exchange - since I will be graded whilst over there and have to produce two papers that will count to my Finals when I return - it is also as much a cultural and social exchange. I see it as a test of the Anglosphere. How close are we British to the Americans really? For those concerned at Oxford, are tutorials a better system than precepts and class lectures? I don't know - but I'm going to find out. And I'll be posting the answers as I go right here.

Aestime Diem

Admin

You will - well, you should - see a new logo on the site home page, which I have just added. For what I suspect is the very small group of visitors who also frequent the Penny Arcade website, I now feel like Gabe to OJ's Tycho. To the rest of you, this means nothing. Yet there is a warm glow of satisfaction inside me and for once it wasn't triggered by a Diet Coke.

Anyway, I'm only really posting this message so that there's a new comments thread for visitors (read: Amy) to comment on the logo (read: tear my ego particle from particle). Beelzebubbette, do thy worst.

It's Toying With Me

Admin

According to Ollie, MT is "toying with [me] like a rattle snake with the mindset of Graham Norton would toy with a small, highly edible puppy with the mindset of Charlotte Church." Unsurprisingly, "it's not the sort of toying I like to see."

So the colours have changed a bit more, and we're both more satisfied. Coming soon - a logo! However, there are continuing problems with the dotted border on the side - if you have any ideas how to make it completely consistent, then any offers of help are greatly appreciated. I'm off to bed now, but tomorrow, in between counting Lego, the purpose for Dayorama (may) be revealed!

Screwing Around

Admin

OK, OK, I'm sorry for the orange and brown. I'm trying to get the site to look visually pleasing, but since I didn't do the last one, I'm not doing that great a job. The upside is that at least we have the purple and blue back, and still avoid looking like a second-rate West Ham fan site.

If you want to take a look at the old site, then it's here. It also has some explanation as to what the hell this thing is anyway, although an updated version will soon be coming here, as the purpose has been modified somewhat. Now that we have working permalinks, though, I can post it on the blog itself, rather than having the hassle of an extra page to update.

A Rare Occurrence

Admin

Yes, it's that rare beast, a website not designed by me yet involving me. Of course, this has its disadvantages - OJ maintains this slightly unsettling affinity for the spartan black and white look, a notion of which I shall have to disabuse him, and I haven't the slightest idea how this Movable Type thing works. I say bring back Blogger. At least they created their own word for their software instead of just spelling 'Moveable' wrong.

Anyhow, seeing as OJ would appear to have collapsed, exhausted, after a second test post, I am proud to have issued the first proper Dayorama (version 3) post. I am off to work out how to take over this website and bring back my beloved purples and blues, bye for now.

T2

Admin

That's test 2, of course, since I deleted the first one.

The End?

Admin

Seriously unfunny post edited, and password changed to stop a bored student being even more sily than usual. Wayne's World was so 1990's, dude. You now find me irregularly at Dayorama Redux, and Ollie even less regularly at Vegetable Extracts.

Darkness Falls

Admin

Nice site, OJ.

(Except it only loads a blank file directory when you click the link. Amateurs.)

I will watch this 'different direction' of the concept with great interest. I shall also make constant note of my name prominently displayed next to the copyright logo down there. It would be such a shame to have to sue.

On a far more sombre and important note, I want to express my sympathies to anyone in Iraq right now. I have been watching, listening and reading any coverage I can get of the war, as it is basically the first conflict which has grabbed my attention. Watching footage of Baghdad as darkness falls is chilling. I, personally, believe the war is necessary to remove what can only be described as an evil dictator. But that does not stop me feeling quite sick as the air raid sirens bellow out over the homes of innocent families to signal the imminent arrival of coalition bombs. I only hope the conflict is over as soon as possible and with as little bloodshed as possible, and may all those trapped - with a dictator oppressing them on one side, and liberators bombing them on the other - emerge safe and well into a liberated nation.

Back Home

Admin

So I'm back home after my second term at Oxford. As I had feared, it proved nearly impossible to maintain Dayorama as it was, which is a shame. However, I'd still like to have some sort of web presence, and I now feel that maybe I could take the concept a little further and in a different direction. I also have a need for a more permanent web site, due to a couple of forthcoming opportunities. Currently, my plan is to keep it on my Oxford space (here), although it is possible that I might get my own domain name in the future.

Thus if you're missing your daily(!) hit of snark (yes, that means you, the one at the back there) then keep checking http://users.ox.ac.uk/~linc1417 for some (exciting) developments.

Also, it's about time Ollie responded. As I'm sure he'd be willing to share (or not, as may be the case), his girlfriend has been over here for the last fortnight or so. Snark has never been so good.

Nice neck, Ol.

Pretty Weak Stuff

Admin

Whilst your writing style is fluid and lucid (obviously English is your first language), can we have an argument next time?

Rating - 0 : Pretty Weak Stuff (TM)

Older. Wiser?

Admin

It's been a while.

Last time I posted on this, the most picturesque and pristine of web sites, I was a naive youngster on his way to university for the first time. Sadly things (work, women, fast cars... okay, okay, work) caught up with me and a few months later, I have re-emerged for a rare glimpse of the sunshine that is (or was) Dayorama.

Sadly, I suspect that Dayorama will no longer function in the ways it used to in the glorious bygone era, where humorous posts and topical discussions formed haunting serenades beneath the balcony of infinite wisdom. Some of us (us being two people, some not being me) have this constant yearning to move on, up sticks, carry their little wagon train of puns and panache far off into their own little sunset, and therefore it seems unlikely that my cyan-daubed counterpart will ever grace us again with his dismissive, omnipresent '3' and his little world where American politics seems relevant.

I, however, am made of sterner stuff (read: I spent ages designing this site and it's staying, dammit!), and shall continue to post here from this moment forth in some form or other. Dayorama shall not decline (any further) and fall (any further) like the Roman Empire, even having lost its own Constantinople (someone from the east - Grimsby, conquered by a foreign power - his ex-girlfriend).

Now, onto far more important matters. Firstly the new-look BBC News/Sport websites. Well, after much mmm-ing and ahh-ing, I reckon I like them. At first, I was put off by the smaller headlines, lack of descriptions, smaller images etc, but it is steadily growing on me. I still don't particularly like where 'Other Top Stories' has gone to (I keep overlooking it out there on the right), and the 'Also In The News' appears to be nothing more than a small cesspit of tabloid filth for the lesser surfer, but overall I feel it is an improvement. In particular, the lighter colour scheme is attractive, especially on the BBC Sport site where it has replaced the old 'dirty cream' coloured background, and though I do mourn the loss of the red rollover link colour (now a lighter bluey-grey), it is a small price to pay. There are one or two other problems I might mention - it now seems impossible to get to all the back editions of the BBC's finest piece of online writing, Ivan Noble's Tumour Diary, and I'm not entirely comfortable with the navigation on the BBC Sport site, but I'm sure these are just a combination of teething problems and my own predisposition to what I was used to, so I'll let them pass. In conclusion, a good effort.

Oh, and one more thing - I'm in Clinton Cards today (well not now, I was in Clinton Cards today) and the girl behind the counter, each time she's finished serving one person, asks the next in line, 'Can I help you?' Well DUH! I'm sorry, I realise that this is not exactly a phenomenon restricted to the Oxford branch of Clinton Cards and that worse things have happened, but why does she think all those people are queuing up? To admire the cash register? In the hope that a conga might spontaneously develop? In the belief that those in front will provide useful human shields in case of Iraqi attack? Of COURSE you can help us, woman! Firstly, take our cash because we want to pay for our goods, and secondly, phone up whoever writes the Clinton Cards staff training manual and tell them to get... a... bleeding... life! Thank you. (For another example of similarly brainless behaviour, follow this link to Penny Arcade.)

Tory Quotas, Now There's A Plan

Admin

A quick quickie.

The French oil tanker has disappeared off the news cycle with the Yemenese(?) authorities investigating the attack whilst the French cry terrorism; Theresa May would appear to fancy quotas to ensure the survival of the conservatives; another shooting victim in Maryland; and a student is suing OCR for £100,000 over his A-level results.

Rating - 3

I'm now heading off to uni; Ollie's already there, so I doubt there will be any posts over the next week. Besides, Ollie can't get on the network until I bring him a network adapter :o)

Birmingham, Home Of Cinema

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First earthquakes, now meteors – presenting the Midlands; Britain’s very own Hollywood.

Just a quickie today, since packing is too upon me (I’m more organized than Ollie, so I start a day earlier). World news leads with the alleged ramming of a French oil tanker off Yemen; terrorism currently can’t be ruled out. In the UK, Duncan Smith is attempting to survive against further attacks on his leadership – first David Mellor and now Ken Clarke. At least they can always squash him if things don’t work out at the conference. Finally, vindication. A piece in today’s Sunday Times (not linked to because of a 5 minute registration that is needed and I don’t have time for right now) confirms that Euan Blair is one of the students affected by the A-level remarking; specifically his French mark, where his overall grade was a C, not the B he needed. The article does make clear that he was not appealing against the grade, so it seems he’s going to stay at Bristol. But, continuing on from yesterday, what of the political knock on that would occur were his grades to go up? No doubt it will be embarrassing, but it seems as though Mr Blair has already smoothed out the path – one source (that I have forgotten) claims that his speech whilst on an out and about in Blackpool concerning the remark was the first time in 3 years that he has directly said “I’m sorry.”

Rating – 2.75; details still coming in on the oil tanker, no doubt there will be plenty of conspiracies to report on tomorrow.

The Grand Departure

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As you can imagine, I am a little short of time on this, the eve of my grand departure to university... I still have to pack! Therefore, in order of importance: Smoker wins $18bn damages (as if they aren't going to get that reduced);Pravda a little concerned at Latvian elections; and... frankly, not much else. A worthy 2.

Last Orders

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I’m not happy. They’ve stopped showing Law and Order to find a place for a repeat of the pilot episode of The Shield. Law and Order is infinitely superior. Hmph. They’re obviously Republicans; hence I respond with “Social Insecurity” – a link shamelessly taken from OxBlog.

Iraq has started a whirlwind diplomatic tour of the Middle East in the next round of Iraqi ping pong; Lord Archer is facing trouble over his Prison Diaries (exclusively serialised in – where else – the Daily Mail, despite their absolute hatred of the man) and Iain Duncan Smith is being knocked about from all sides prior to the Tory conference next week. In other words, little happened today.

Bristol University has told its students not to talk about Euan Blair, who has just started his Ancient History course. This follows Oxford telling students not to talk about Chelsea Clinton; Harvard about Natalie Portman, St Andrew’s about Prince William etc. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what would happen if you did. Whilst Bristol says it “could lead to the termination of a student’s course” I think that this would be nothing compared to the notoriety that would be achieved from grassing on Euan. Alas, I fear not everyone holds such a code of honour, and the prospect of money would easily sway them – but then if we’re willing (or indeed wanting) to read about it, does this not reflect badly on us as whole? I’m particularly curios about this warning as a few of my friends have just started their courses at Bristol, and mentioning no names, one (Fraser) is quite the expert of spreading gossip – that is usually made up. I look forward to hearing about Euan’s imaginary exploits.

Of course, Euan going to university offers other interesting questions. I’ve already covered the possibility that he may be one of the students who have lost their place at their first choice university (Trinity College, Oxford in his case) through the A-level debacle. But more questions have appeared. Will the burden of tuition fees and rent be overbearing to his parents? After all, it was Tony Blair who introduced them. I suspect not- with a combined income of around £500,000 not only are the Blairs easily over the upper threshold of the means tested allowance (something around £30,000) but as was reported by various dairies in the broadsheets, Euan earned some extra cash by working at Hackett over the summer. I somehow doubt that Euan is will be allowed to end up in the average student debt of around £10,000 (according to the NUS), but at the same time, would the knowledge that this is happening to many of his peers bring some form of reassessment on higher education funding from the Labour Party – or at the least Mr Blair himself? After all, Will Straw, president of OUSU and son of the Foreign Secretary, is vehemently against tuition fees, and the multitude of protests and commentary over the last four years since their introduction suggest that at least there is something not quite perfect with the plan. And yet at the same time we’re told that British universities face crucial funding crises in the next decade. As I said – interesting questions.

Rating – 2.5

The Cricket Match To End All Cricket Matches

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OJ has covered Richard Reid very well in his column for the day, so I shall put that issue to one side and head off across the globe to Kashmir, which whilst thought to harbour Al Qaeda terrorists, may not do so much longer as both India and Pakistan are testing missiles that are presumably intended for use in the region.

As the Pakistani Information Minister (admittedly, not the most reliable source in the world) said, "India is trying to go into an arms race". He neglected to mention that Pakistan was definitely up for one of them, and that the two sides considered it the cricket match to end all cricket matches. Seriously, though, I find it very concerning that whilst everyone talks about Iraq in hushed whispers - with prophecies of doom (not least from myself) and talk of nuclear war, chemical weapons, biological weapons, you name it, it'll drop on you - we simultaneously ignore the startlingly advanced situation that has emerged between these two nations. A retired Pakistani general talked of the 'tit-for-tat' warfare being undertaken on both sides, and warned, quite rightly, that if it escalates then it can only end in all-out war.

Closer to home, the offices of Sinn Fein were raided today in the closing stages of an operation to investigate the activities of the party, which is, of course, headed by former terrorists in Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. "The arrest of the unnamed man was said to have huge implications for the peace process," said the Belfast Telegraph. We will have to wait and see, but I, personally, think this might provoke a sectarian reaction in the coming weeks.

Finally, a little sporting news, and the man with the best name in tennis has defeated Lleyton Hewitt. Dahlia Lithwick has nothing on Paradorn Srichaphan. Today receives a 4 from myself, for the combined effect of the stories covering Richard Reid, the missile testing and more trouble in Northern Ireland.

All A Bit Easy

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Papa Smurf?

So Richard Reid pleaded guilty to all the charges against him. That was a bit easy, wasn’t it? But in truth it was probably the best outcome, for all concerned. Reid has the possibility of getting out of jail in his lifetime, whilst the US government is not faced with another messy court case trying to prove links between Reid and al-Q’aeda. Certainly, this is the case with Zacarias Moussaoui, believed to be the 20th hijacker from September 11th. Dahlia Lithwick (a curiously compelling name) has been keeping tabs on the case in her excellent dispatches in the Jurisprudence column on Slate – dispatches filed as the case goes on, hence the old link. Of course, the feds’ case is not helped by accidently giving him access to classified files relating to national security. Apparently, it took days to search his cell. What, is he incarcerated at the Hilton? Or did they not have a secure file tagging system in place?

Whilst we’re on the issue, whatever happened to the prisoners at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay? Are they still there?

Tomlinson has narrowed down the exact units that are to be remarked as the A-level fiasco approaches the one month mark. All three of my (and Ollie’s as well) history modules are listed, and since I’m still challenging my coursework mark, I await the outcome with interest. Over 91000 (!) candidates are affected, even after the investigation has been scaled back. The deadline is in 11 days. I’ll keep you up to date with progress at my end of the action.

Official TGIF Link of the Week (a new addition wherein I add another stupid link because, um, it’s Friday): Trainee dishwasher pleads guilty to $80 million identity fraud.

Rating – 3.5; the Reid case seems to have made at least some attempt of closure within the wider problems of prosecuting terrorism; but at the same time he is a peripheral figure to al-Qaeda, which is why the rating is not substantially higher than the past few days.

He Really Is, You Know

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And to think, I was all ready to lead with the joke. Instead, I present the damning evidence that Prince Charles is Henry Raddick!

I was actually quite a fan of Napster. It allowed me to pick up the odd song that was impossible to find (Afternoon Delight by the Starland Vocal Band, anyone?) and a few real treats, such as an acoustic version of 3am that I have never found anywhere else. But most of all, I used it to test new songs before I went and bought the album. Of course, not everyone else did. Part of the appeal of Napster was its ease of use and – until the time when it was all but dead – the lack of viruses and fake files. Using it felt like some kind of privilege. Now of course, KaZaA, Hotline and the rest are used unabashedly for downloading illegal content (songs, games, software and anything else that, er, floats your boat), an attitude that was in the minority on Napster. File-sharing is now an ugly business where even the software disrupts your computer – the spyware and adware on KaZaA necessitates two versions, the full and ‘Lite’. To be honest, I’m not sure where Digital Download Week is going to take the movement; I sincerely doubt that it will be in the right direction. They started off badly, by unwittingly disabling under 18’s from accessing the content (and where would their biggest demographic be?), and then by underestimating demand.

This is another bugbear of mine. In recent weeks, Nectar – a large multi-branded reward card for our non-British reader(s) – underestimated the demand for online registration after they offered a 100 point bonus for those doing so (equivalent to £50 spent in Sainsbury’s) and previously the Public Records Office were so unprepared for the demand for an online version of the 1901 census, that it took them eight months to sort it out. Honestly. It’s not as if the internet is a new concept, and despite pathetically low levels of broadbrand penetration in the UK (a future rant), I believe that nearly all people have access to the internet; even if not at home. Isn’t it about time this was recognised? There is nothing more frustrating than something being promised and not delivered – BT are you listening?

In other news – Bill Clinton was all over the British front pages, more Iraqi ping pong and Peter Gabriel is having teething problems with his latest tour. Serves him right for having such long introductions that I have to check if I have the speakers on mute or not.

Rating – 3

Caught Napping

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Some people might think the news that scientists have found the world's funniest joke is of great importance. However, whilst I thought it a reasonable joke, Jeremy Paxman sounded unimpressed in his Newsnight newsletter. If you don't currently receive this email from Paxman and co at Newsnight, I recommend you do - click here to sign up. If only for the superior quality jokes Paxman comes up with.

Some readers (assuming we actually have any) may know that I am a Peter Gabriel fan, and a company he founded - OD2 - is in the middle of offering Digital Download Day (which is actually a whole week). This venture, exclusively for British and Irish visitors, is an attempt to strike back against the Napster phenomenon (to which I was always firmly opposed) by offering a whole week of 'free' music downloads from a selection of over 100,000 tracks. In actuality, 500 download 'credits' costs you £5, but that seems a fair enough price to pay. Peter Gabriel, who led the way last month by making the entire contents of his new album available for download, is at the forefront of the music industry once again (and the album's good, too).

In other news, Hurricane Lili took a savage swipe at the Gulf Coast though not as bad as was first feared. There was a gulf dividing opinion in the UN security committee over the issue of weapons inspections in the other Gulf. Oh, and I scored 4 on the BBC's quiz over this week's news, which was a little disappointing, though it is one more than I give today - a standard 3.

The Nuclear Ping Pong Ball Of Doom

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Spit or Swallow? My parents always told me it was rude to do so in public.

The possibly nuclear ping pong ball of doom – also known as ‘the Iraq issue’ – took another step in another direction as Bush today possibly might have maybe got Congress to support him in a war against Iraq. At the same time, the US wants to stop UN weapons inspectors going back into Iraq, because they don’t have a tough enough mandate. To me, there seems to be something wrong here. Iraq has called America’s bluff on the use of the UN, and has legitimately won this round. No doubt, were they to go back into Iraq they would find little or no evidence of the CBN weapons that keep getting mentioned. Even with a tougher remit, I doubt they would find the evidence they’re looking for. At the same time, I find Bush’s willingness to take back all the moves he had made towards multilateral action involving the UN just because it doesn’t suit the US a petty and pathetic move. Unfortunately I also think they didn’t have much of a choice. I don’t think I’m the only one not happy with these actions. Colin Powell’s briefing that caught the end of Newsnight yesterday showed a man who seemed to be ill at ease toeing the party line.

Mike Tomlinson finally came out with the list of subjects and exam boards that needed regrading. Of course, he can’t say which modules need to be remarked. That just wouldn’t do, especially with this year’s application deadlines fast approaching. Indeed, the final day for regarding is October 15, the same day for the Oxbridge, vets and medics deadline with UCAS. Genius! No one can put an exact figure on the number that need regarding, but we’re definitely talking in the tens of thousands. Certainly my subject came up on the list – OCR History – so we’ll see where this now takes us.

Finally, Bill Clinton has still got it. Boy, to have that charisma. I await the snark from Ollie...

Rating – 3. Mainly to keep the average, but also because little happened today.

Come On In, The Water's Lovely

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One of them changes his name to Haddock (see OJ, yesterday), another goes swimming off Blackpool in October. And they're still going to win the next election by a mile. *Sigh*.

Today's events at the Labour Party Conference were largely dominated by Bill Clinton, who spoke well, but sadly occasionally on topics of which he has very little knowledge. Quite why Bill found it necessary to sledge the Tories, despite - as Andrew Marr said - not knowing much about British politics even with the 'best will in the world', is uncertain. Blair, no doubt, definitely considered him the best Will in the world, as he held the entire conference in his grasp, and Blair himself got a surprise standing ovation even introducing him. But still, one nagging doubt remains. I can't see Blair going to America and poking fun at the Republicans. He simply doesn't know enough about the American political scene. I'm not being pro-Conservative here (honestly), as frankly they need to be taken to the cleaners by someone - just not an ex-American President.

One of Clinton's main themes was urging the Western World to 'call Saddam's bluff', and George W Bush received a boost this afternoon after a congressional resolution was passed allowing him to use 'appropriate' force in any conflict with Iraq. The resolution still has to see the light of day in the Senate, but is a step forward for Bush.

Well, in all fairness nothing of great world interest has happened today in my humble opinion. I shall dip as far down as a 2 - Labour Party conferences just don't do it for me.

Look, No Hands

Admin

First of all, as aforementioned, this post will be for Tuesday as I was away all day yesterday and could not get one in on time (for a change).

So yes, we are back! I was at least concentrating on Dayorama during my little jaunt up North, and I listened with great interest to Tony Blair's speech on the radio. Not only did I think his speech was superbly polished, carefully thought through and well tailored to his audience (and I'm Conservative if anything), but listening on the radio removes the hand movements which so distracted OJ (see right for his opinion and relevant links). Now, to be perfectly honest, I think Tony Blair is a very good Prime Minister. He gives off the right aura - I know how stupid that probably sounds, but he does! My father, who is highly Conservative but often prefers to keep it quiet for fear of public ridicule, points out that Blair only looks so good because he has gone so conservative (with a small c) that the Conservatives are now lost. As someone just this minute said on the television at the Labour Conference, 'Labour have gone further down the Tory road than the Tories would ever have dared'. Exactly.

My problem is that the Conservatives are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to hit back at Labour. True, we have their conference next week, but I'm still annoyed that the Opposition is virtually invisible (again, my father and I debated this at length during yesterday's car journey, which is a good thing, because I sound completely irrational usually until he argues back and I get to think again. Now I just sound fairly irrational.) Duncan Smith is widely recognised as being unrecognisable, and I have not a clue what the Conservative policy on say, Education, is, despite the recent A level furore. My father (in his usual wisdom) argues that this is because Labour would simply steal any good pieces of Tory policy in time for the next election if they released it now, leaving the Tories absolutely stuffed, but I would at least like to see the Tories shout Labour down over it and give us a few broad brushstrokes of what they would do. Who is the Conservative education spokesman? Anyone?

As it happens, I don't think Estelle Morris deserves the blame she is getting from some quarters (OJ) for the results fiasco. I think the right person got the bullet, and that chopping and changing Education Minister every few seconds can only hinder, rather than help, the situation. I have no idea how to resolve the situation, however.

Finally, on the way back last night, Radio 4 reported that Iraq had agreed to let weapons inspectors back. I was reading a copy of John Colville's Downing Street Diaries (he was a personal secretary to Chamberlain and Churchill during WWII) that I found in a second-hand bookshop in Didsbury at the time, and this passage, from his entry for New Year's Eve 1939, seems particularly relevant:
'Everybody is talking gaily about a changing world, a new social order, a complete revolution of national and international ideals; but do they realise what effect all this, if it comes to pass, will have upon them personally? It is easy to sit in the warmth, beautifully dressed, after an enormous meal, and talk academically about the inevitability of change... but it may be less easy to accommodate oneself to the grimness of reality.'
My thoughts exactly. Take care, Bush, Blair and co. Take great care. Today receives a 3 (I have succumbed to temptation - and OJ - and dropped the decimal points I used to use for simplicity's sake).

International Man Of Fish

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Austin Haddock – international man of fish.

We’re back and more purple than ever! It’s a new month, and so after a 3 week or so sabbatical (it’s the new age economy you see, we’ve been doing the blitz of investment banks and what’s that you say? Cocktails and a sauna in a Devon hotel? Piffle!) I’m rating the day!

Top of the news would be Blair’s speech at the Labour conference in Blackpool. To be honest, there was little surprise in what he said – PFI, Saddam, Euro etc. – but more in how he said it. Over the last few months, it seems that Blair has got his oratorical kick back. I have always rated him as a speaker; whilst he’s far from the best (I always enjoyed listening to Hague more, for instance) he is a lot better than Straw, Morris or Prescott. The most irritating feature of Blair’s speeches is invariably his hand movements. Not that he doesn’t do them, which would be a sin, rather that he only has two or three repetitive motions. Rory Bremner has got his impression down so well that I now cannot watch Blair without thinking he’s Bremner. That said, what with making the case for fighting Saddam, attempting (if not succeeding) to bring his party and the unions into line over funding for public services and now today’s speech, he seems to have been reinvigorated. I only hope that Duncan Smith can rise to the challenge in the next few weeks and start to prove himself as a capable leader of the Tories – I’m wavering at the moment.

Today was also meant to be the day that the Tomlinson report confirmed which modules, subjects and boards were going to be remarked, due to the A-level cock up that has arisen over the last three weeks. I’ll make it quite clear now that I have a vested interest here, as I am one of those affected by whatever has transpired, although thankfully it did not matter in the greater scheme of things. Unfortunately, I do have friends who were. I’m perfectly happy to let Tomlinson take the extra day just to be sure – no doubt I would have done – but I’m not happy that Estelle Morris seems to have retained her position at the expense of the head of the QCA, Sir William Stubbs. In fact, every time I hear Ms Morris’ whiny, nasal voice explaining what has happened, I wish that the real truth – whatever that is – will eventually triumph and indict her. I’m also angry that David Blunkett, who was the Education Secretary who introduced “Curriculum 2000” has not featured at all in the witch-hunt, because he has an awful lot to answer for as well. Finally of interest concerning both this and the point above is Blair’s sympathy towards the students affected by the fiasco. Now, if you can, you will remember that his son, Euan missed his conditional place at Trinity College, Oxford by only a grade (and subsequently took up his insurance place at Bristol). It is rare that someone who gets an Oxford place doesn’t eventually get the grades; this year there’s far more students who have missed their place at university by a grade than usual, and Blair is sympathetic to their plight. Anyone want to take bets that Euan was one of those affected? Now, that would be interesting…

Rating – 3. Not particularly interesting in the big wide world.

A False Dawn

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Well, I had promised faithfully to restart my ratings tomorrow (Tuesday). However, I'm actually going to be away all day and into the early hours of Wednesday. So therefore, I will do a post for Tuesday, but in a remarkably similar scenario, I'll be posting it late. The best laid plans of mice and men...

Award! No Weblog, But Still, Award And All That

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"It's been a long time... getting from there to here."

Ah yes, my favourite words from the opening of Star Trek: Enterprise (and also, bizarrely, those which Russell Watson blasted out at the opening of the Commonwealth Games this year). In truth, it has only been a month getting from there (no Dayorama) to here (an award, but not much Dayorama).

That will now change. After we realised that someone (The Guardian) actually seemed to enjoy reading the site, and considered it one of the Top 30 in Britain, we have returned to boldly rate what no weblog has rated before. The day. Join us on our continuing mission to find a day worth 0 points, find a day worth 12 points, find a post from OJ without a stupid link and find a blog-comments service that doesn't go out of business the moment I install it here.

It's a weblog, Jim, but not as we know it.

Occasionally Prolific

Admin

Well.

It's been a while.

So, neither of us has been particularly prolific since, oh, 2 or 3 weeks ago. Well, I say prolific, but I mean we haven't actually added anything since.

It's going to change. Honest. Why?

Well, we're both heading up to Oxford in a week or so, and after the initial freshers' week madness, we'll have settled in. Currently, my life consists of reading obscure history books, scrounging money of relatives and searching for suitable kettles (harder to find than you might imagine). In a couple of weeks, I'll have some form of consistency back in my life.

Also, we just got featured by The Grauniad as one of the 30 best blogs in Britain (or something like that). So, is this the spur we need to carry on and get back in the groove? Probably.

Stay tuned.

The Aftermath - A Chatlog

Admin

Instead of my usual blurb about the day (and OJ's), instead we present our conversation using MSN Messenger this evening concerning what to do with Iraq in the aftermath of a war.
The conversation extract here starts with me singing the praises of George W Bush - this extract has not been altered in any way to preserve the full flavour of the conversation (although my username at the time was actually a reference to the fajitas I had just eaten rather than 'Ollie', and they definitely had full flavour).

Ollie says: actually, after seeing him being interviewed in his bio, i've warmed to him even further
Ollie says: i think he really is a great guy to be in charge
Ollie says: sure, so his problem in life is he gets speeches cacked up
Ollie says: but i think he's handled 9/11 as well as anyone would
OJ says: fine
OJ says: but i dislike his demeanour
OJ says: and his policies
Ollie says: i think it's the best part
Ollie says: and his policies aren't really made by him
OJ says: obviously the folks thing goes down really well in the US
OJ says: which is fine
OJ says: but there are times when he just slips into it unconsciously
OJ says: subconsciously
OJ says: even
OJ says: or not
Ollie says: lol!
OJ says: you can never tell
OJ says: and i am not convinced about his willingness to attack Iraq
OJ says: not yet
Ollie says: i am
Ollie says: it's got to happen
Ollie says: there is NO WAY it will not happen
Ollie says: (see Dayorama column)
OJ says: true - he's got too much riding on it
Ollie says: not just that
Ollie says: but look at the options here
Ollie says: option one is he asks the UN to send weapons inspectors back with a deadline, on its own terms
Ollie says: is Iraq going to okay that? no
Ollie says: so we have a war
Ollie says: option two, Bush goes ahead anyway. thus war
Ollie says: there is no real option three
OJ says: fine in the short term
OJ says: but in the long term
OJ says: i think:
OJ says: a) a victory the kind that everyone expects ie. Saddam dies, the happy regime takes over is unlikely to happen
OJ says: indeed, i'd be surprised if they can kill Saddam
Ollie says: no one expects 'the happy regime takes over'
Ollie says: i expect them to get Saddam this time
Ollie says: they can't afford not to
OJ says: what do they expect then?
Ollie says: the end of Saddam
Ollie says: nothing more can be expected
OJ says: and then.....
OJ says: ....
OJ says: ....
Ollie says: and then we've got to do an afghanistan, leave people in there and see what happens
OJ says: not that way at all
Ollie says: there's not going to be an immediate westernisation and cuddliness all round
OJ says: in Afghanistan there was an opposition party
OJ says: an outcast government
Ollie says: no no no, don't rattle off old column material from other sites at me :)
OJ says: and the rise of the Taleban was recent
Ollie says: i'm well aware of that, but they were no better than the Taliban
Ollie says: there's still plenty of our troops in there
OJ says: Saddam
OJ says: as the Iraq Daily points out
Ollie says: get off my pet site
OJ says: has been in power since 1979
OJ says: and i doubt that anyone can remember what was there beforehand
Ollie says: so what are you going to do? leave Saddam in power because you can't think of anything better to do?
OJ says: it's a great site, btw
OJ says: i'd neuter him
Ollie says: i'd rather knock him out and then see what happens than leave him in full control
Ollie says: "neuter him", come on
OJ says: leave him in power
Ollie says: and do what? take his toys?
OJ says: but humiliate him
OJ says: exactly
OJ says: go in
OJ says: destroy his army
Ollie says: he wouldn't stay in power!
OJ says: his palaces
OJ says: his weapons
Ollie says: if he had no army and no form of enforced rule
Ollie says: the man would not stay in power
Ollie says: you think the generals, the officials, the ordinary Iraqi public are going to accept a humiliated, powerless dictator?
OJ says: and the people would overthrow him
OJ says: not the Americans
OJ says: even if in reality, they had undermined him
Ollie says: so you're saying let a rowdy mob get him rather than any semblance of law and order?
OJ says: think you have just as good a chance of an acceptable outcome as the American option
Ollie says: so why not go for the American option then?
Ollie says: at least then there is no chance of Saddam coming back
OJ says: becaue I fear
Ollie says: if you leave him to it, he may well have a way back
OJ says: that they would be, most likely, a more destablising influence than Saddam
OJ says: we all know that Iran just loves the US
Ollie says: ah, but that's a whole new ballgame
OJ says: nope
OJ says: same part of a bigger one
Ollie says: now we're into American status in the Arab states
Ollie says: that would not be the immediate focus of any war
Ollie says: if necessary leave the UN in charge
OJ says: it would be by default
Ollie says: or give Iraq to Israel and watch the fun begin :D

What, No War?

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Well, I waited and waited yesterday, but sadly the USA did not live up to my prediction and declare war.

That said, they're getting closer day by day and I don't think Bush will be able to hold out until the more conservative predictions of November - only today, Bush demanded Iraq be given a deadline of 'days and weeks... not years' to allow inspectors back on UN terms.

Two scenarios are therefore possible. Either the UN impose a short-term deadline at Bush's request, which Iraq will surely fail to comply with, and we have a war on our hands, or the UN impose or long-term deadline (or don't bother entirely), Bush goes it alone and we have a war on our hands. I do not see any way in which this crisis can end without there being a war, and frankly I believe that we may as well get it over with sooner rather than later. If not because it is inevitable, then because if we start now my prediction will still be closer than OJ's. Additionally, if we do start in November, I don't want my birthday spoilt by the unwelcome introduction of chemical bombs to the party.

CNN lead story: Russia gives positive reaction to Bush.
Iraq Daily lead story: Russia gives negative reaction to Bush.

Well, it's getting harder to accurately rate each day as though they are much the same - Bush threatens this, Blair murmurs agreement, other nations hum and haw, Iraq loftily waves two fingers - it is all still highly important and could spill over at any time. 5.0, methinks.

Motionless

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A year is an exceptionally long time in which to ruminate over and dissect a single event, but it will take much longer for any hint of an understanding to be reached about the events of this day last year. I was about the last person I know to actually see any footage of the towers after I scurried home that evening, and stood motionless in front of the set for almost an hour watching ceaseless images of the carnage and destruction. No doubt almost anyone else will have a similar story.

What really strikes me a year on is how vulnerable we will all become, once again, if we go to war with Iraq. Don't misunderstand me - I am, in general, an advocate of taking on Saddam and toppling him, despite one or two misgivings. However, it occurs to me that everyone is discussing Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction' without actually pausing to think what they mean. We are not playing around with some meaningless substance he might or might not have knocking around. If he does actually have them, then yes, it is a very good reason to go to war but also a very good reason to stay indoors if we do. Even if Britain hangs back from standing shoulder to shoulder with the US in any war, which I very much doubt Blair will shy away from, Iraq still considers the two nations effectively one and the same. If Saddam can hit Britain with something fairly potent while he still has the chance, I would not bet against him doing so. He is, after all, a highly irrational human being by all accounts, and not one we can easily predict.

One thing I would not want to do is go over to Iraq and become a human shield, as some Americans and a solitary Briton have pledged to do if we declare war. That, it seems to me, is a lose-lose situation - if the Americans don't get you, surely Saddam will eventually get tired of you.

Anyway, on this sad occasion no-one can forget the loss and destruction, or the impending war ahead. Today receives from me a 7.7, though estimating the true meaning of the 1st Anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks is really an impossible task. My heart goes out to everyone affected by it.

A Year On

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I remember when I was first told about the attacks. I was in the U6th Room in Evans house at school, sitting on the sofa having just finished my last lesson (History). Suddenly, two 5th years came in and started going on about a plane hitting the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. I didn’t believe them – firstly because they were the type of people who enjoy winding people up, and because it seemed so improbable. They were insistent, however, so I turned the radio to BBC Radio 4 where there were some unclear reports about a plane crash. Then I tried the TV in the house, which was pretty broken so I rushed down to the 6th Form Centre where about 30 people were crowded around the television. I stayed there, saw the second plane hit and tried to make sense of it all. The general feeling was one of shock – especially after it became apparent that the planes were hijacked and that it was not an accident. Few people said much, but a few of us tried to figure out what it all meant. I then went to the IT suite to check the BBC news site, but of course that was overloaded. Next I went to another house, Marshall, and spent the next hour watching the television. I missed the first tower falling, but saw the second – not that it mattered, due to the repeats filling the time.

In retrospect, the next bit seems silly on what was such an important day in history. As it was Tuesday, I had a prefects’ meeting to go to, where surprisingly little was mentioned of the attack. It all seemed so baffling and indescribable, not just to people like myself and Ollie who had what would be considered an above normal interest in current affairs, but to everyone. Then I remember driving back home, the traffic being heavier than normal for a Tuesday, listening to the updates on Radio 4 – although by now all the stations were tuned in to either ITN or the BBC. That was when I heard about the fourth plane that crashed on its way to what was assumed to be either the White House or Camp David. When I got home, I just crashed and watched the news, aghast at the pictures of people jumping from the buildings and on the spot reports. I made a few posts on a message board I frequent with some friends, the interesting part being the following:

Atli and everybody else who says it, I agree, this is like Pearl Harbour.
This attack is also the kick the American economy needed to get out of recession.
Bush will almost certainly be re-elected.
If ever there was an excuse for National Missile Defence, this is it. The military budget will surely grow again.
America will take a more interventionist role again, but this time take it more seriously and commit more troops.
Thank God it wasn't Anthrax or any other biological weapon.
Everything the '90s stood for - free enterprise, free speech, the messing around post-Communism - has been superceded. The moment the first plane touched the tower, our world changed. No longer is it 'anything goes'. To (part) quote Fight Club "Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War." We get terrorism. It's a new world order.
Looking back on others’ on the spot thoughts is interesting, but I had forgotten I had written this until recently. I seemed almost surprisingly optimistic. Yet in between times have changed. Who knew what Enron, WorldCom or Anderson were doing at the time? The NMD argument has pretty much disappeared. Anthrax did appear in a separate incident. Interestingly, no mention was made of Iraq, especially after it was confirmed that al-Qaeda were the Culprits. Although Bush’s argument is that it is all part of a wider force, it seems amazing how quickly we have shifted our focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. And Bush being re-elected? Well, we’ll see how that turns out, although the more questions there are over Iraq, the less I think it is likely to happen.

In many ways, this contribution is worth little. I wasn’t in the WTC when it was hit. I didn’t know anyone who was, or anyone else who know someone who was. I didn’t know anyone in the Pentagon. But I do remember where I was when it all happened, and I doubt I will ever forget.

Crow Bar

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Firstly, I, too, will be away for the rest of today so there will be no column for Tuesday. This is Monday's column, admittedly a little late due to various problems.

The Conservative Party must be highly amused. If the TUC and Labour carry on at their present rate, even the Tories cannot fail to get elected at the next general election. It seems that despite being supposedly on the same side, and in the presence of close ties that have linked the two organisations for decades, the TUC and Labour can no longer agree on anything. Most recently, the TUC has attacked Labour over Iraq and Union executive Bob Crow has done little, if anything, to further the cause of either side, pinning obscure and unworkable deadlines to his demands. Now, the TUC conference is being billed as a contest rather than a progressive debate, Blair versus the TUC at high noon.

Frankly, Blair has better things to worry about. Yes, domestic policy is of course crucial and the TUC, for all its whingeing, is representing the people. Yes, obviously, the Prime Minister has a duty to pay very close attention to the people, and the unions, and act quickly and efficiently upon their whims. But not in the immediate build-up to a war with Iraq and possibly the whole Arab world, surely. Understandably the TUC want to push their points home, but Blair is hardly going to stand or fall on their every word whilst he is busy sorting out impending military strikes with the world's only remaining superpower. If I was Prime Minister, I know where my concerns would lie.

On the other hand, there is a little suspicion in my mind that Blair would quite fancy a war right about now. Last year, the TUC conference was cancelled due to the attacks on the World Trade Center. Even then, before it was cancelled, it was being billed as the unions against Blair. This time round, the unions have had a whole extra year to simmer away and gather their thoughts, whilst Blair is unlikely to have been pre-occupied with the TUC for a whole twelve months. Blair is at a definite disadvantage, and a war with Iraq would probably be a very welcome distraction. It would most likely perk up manufacturing and the defence industry for obvious reasons, it would give the country a cause to unite and would shove the concerns of the unions very firmly into the back of the collective consciousness. Again, if I were in the PM's shoes, I would be quietly hoping the US declares full-scale war some time soon. Monday? A 4.0.

I Lost My Faculties To The Faculty

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Well, what can I say? There won't be much of a column from me today because I've been watching The Faculty all evening. I know, it's not what you have come to expect from me, but it was just that good... I can only apologise and promise a return to normal service tomorrow.

Not, of course, that much has changed today - Blair and Bush have strengthened their partnership, and that about sums it up. But you can't ignore the true gravity of the situation the world is now getting itself into - a 4.1 to keep things ticking over...

The Media Paradox

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Bismarck would have been so proud!

Not much happening again today – just further confirmation that Blair and Bush did talk, and that Blair is likely to face a tough audience at the TUC conference this week. These postings on the lack of activity on the war do hint at a new paradox of the modern media. Everything is so interconnected, the ability to post and publish – like this – so easy and quick to achieve that we seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about what’s happening, not happening or may happen. It makes the time between actions seem longer and longer.

I’ll be away for the next week down in Devon, and don’t expect to be able to post (not that there aren’t computers in Devon, rather I’ll be lounging by a pool and reading). I should be back on Saturday, although I’ll give Ollie my post for Wednesday.

Rating – 4.25

You Can't Back Iraq! What About My Minced Lamb!

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The financial crisis at British Energy, which I discussed earlier this week, is reaching a critical stage - now a full investigation into a possible cover-up of the true damage has been launched.

But that, of course, is not the focus of the media right now, though the news organisations (apart from the refreshingly enlightening Guardian) seem to be running out of different viewpoints and opinions concerning Iraq. Over at Iraq Daily (see yesterday's column for an explanation of the Special Relationship I am developing with this site), the big story is the promise of Lebanese backing for Iraq from their president.

I consider this to be bad news - I ate in a fantastic Lebanese restaurant in Oxford today, and Lebanese cuisine certainly agrees with me. I would be horrified to arrive in Oxford in a month's time only to find that the Lebanese had moved out.

Putting my less serious outlook to one side for a moment, I'm still not sure if I agree with my own earlier predicition that war will officially be declared on 12th September. Various experts (including OJ, who presumably stole it from somewhere else like he did his 'Iraq and a hard place' pun - do a Google search for it) have gone for November. I can see the reasoning for this, as I agree that it will take a long time for Iraq to jump through UN hoops and then be found to actually be circumventing them, and I also agree that the US military is not yet fully prepared for war.

But then, with Blair gallivanting off to the USA to talk tactics, I can't help but feel that the US has absolutely no intention of waiting for the UN to finish going through the motions. Bush can't afford to stand around while debate rages in his own country about whether to go to war or not - he needs to act quickly and silence the debate by making the question irrelevant. If he waits too long, the country will divide itself in two over the issue, his supremacy will be undermined and his judgement questioned if he does eventually decide to invade. With mid-term elections coming up, Bush needs to portray himself as strong, unflinching and decisive. Attacking Iraq to prove it is a bold move, but one I think the USA is currently prepared to make, especially with Blair providing his backing.

I give today a 4.0, as the action has died down a little but the dogs of war are still waiting in the wings.

Summit To Talk About

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Not suitable for children?

And lo, Bush and Blair are talking at a summit (although not at a B&B would could have been a touch more appropriate). Discussion, it seems, is less concerned with the actual how of an invasion but more with convincing others to support, if not follow suit. To be honest, there’s not much new here, but it will be interesting to see how it turns out. Watching Newsnight last I was interested by some comments by an ex-American Envoy (who’s name I have forgotten; sorry fella). In particular, he emphasised how hard it would be for Bush to back out now if he doesn’t gain further international support – even the grudgingly in favour attitude of the Russians over Kosovo has now changed to a “no”. Yet at the same time any unilateral or bilateral attack is less likely to be successful and also will change the rules of the game.

Bush, it seems, is between Iraq and a hard place.

Also, an attack on an American base in Germany was foiled not by meticulous searching and counter surveillance, but by a tip off by a friend. At the end of the day, we still have to rely on the fact that the attacker slips up, rather than proactive counter-terrorism. After all, no crime is perfect.

On a related note, it concerns me that Germany is not a permanent member of the Security Council, yet France is. The German military is far larger and better trained than the French, and is also usual more flexible than the French. However, it has just occurred to me that the UN was set up in the shadow of World War II and thus it was probably some form of punishment for Germany to be excluded, unlike after World War I. 50 years on, I would say it’s time for a rethink.

Also of note was a piece in today’s Telegraph picking up on Blair’s use of “pay the blood price” as noted here, first(ish) yesterday. Do not underestimate the influence of the Dayorama!

Rating – 4.8; the tension is building.

Iraqi News Agency

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Well, I don't think I can really discuss the current Iraq situation from a Western point of view any better than the hundreds of columnists and pundits in the mass media, or even OJ (who makes a very good point in his column for today), so I thought I'd take a different slant altogether on the current events.

In a rare moment of inspiration, I actually did a little online research myself for this. My first stop is the Iraqi News Agency. Though the site is a little unclear, I think it is safe to assume that the INA is a state-run affair (Uruklink.net being the 'State Company for Internet Services') - I went along to the INA to see what Iraq is saying about recent developments.

The most eye-catching headline is the one given a prominent position at the top of the main page, 'Stupid US Sanctions'. The INA does not mince its words. I should also mention that the wallpaper for the Sanctions sub-site contains some quite horrific images of children, too. Now, I am not going to be naive enough to be misled by what is blatant propaganda (the sanctions are the 'kick of a dying mule' according to the INA), but this worries me. How far does the Iraqi population itself buy these accusations? Do they know that the Western world considers these comments to be horrendously misleading and untrue? Or is this statement taken as fact in Iraq?

More importantly, how do we gauge the coverage our own media provides us? It may sound ridiculous, but what is there to stop the governments (or even, if you are a true conspiracy theorist, Majestic 12) of the Western world manipulating our own media? I hold the Guardian entirely exempt from this for no apparent reason, but I am concerned that if the media can be made to carefully guide the public into a set mode of thought in one country, then it can be done much more subtly in others. How many times have reports of major victories in wars, reported in Britain and the US, later turned into inquiries over some fiasco or other that highlights a much lesser victory or even a defeat? It happens regularly. When (not 'if' any more) we officially go to war with Iraq, I'm certainly not going to be believing the Iraqi point of view, but I'm not sure I'll be totally trusting of the British perspective either.

That said, there's certainly some interesting points to be made on the INA's sister site, Iraq Daily. Firstly, some pages and images are missing throughout (the 'About Us' page is ominously entirely blank), which smacks of an unprofessional attitude and also leads me to suggest that no one in Iraq can get the training or resources they need to provide an effective web presence. So I decided to check the source code to see if that would reveal anything - lo and behold, Microsoft Frontpage Express appears to be the software used! Surely that is a conflict of interests of the highest order. Also, I will be interested to see how often the name beside 'Editor-in-chief' on that page changes.

Should full-scale war erupt, I will be paying frequent visits to these sites with a more serious purpose - to see how Iraq is actually seeing and reporting events. It cannot be far away now. I predicted September 12th on Tuesday, then thought about it and decided I had been far too naive in suggesting such a close date, but with today's air strikes, Bush buttering up the UN security council and Blair pledging allegiance to the US, I'm feeling a little more confident in my clairvoyancy. Today receives a 5.3.

Iraq, For A Change

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That clear cut case in full.

So finally we have some action in Iraq. “Up to 100 aircraft” took part in a bombing raid in Iraq, the largest in four years: but no-one’s entirely sure why. The target, a command and control centre – and depending one who your read, it ranges from being the centre of the Iraqi defence system to just another command centre – is of a high strategic importance if one is planning an attack, yet the remit of the forces currently based in the Gulf does not, as far as I am aware, extend this far, only to ‘peacekeeping.’ Surprisingly, the coverage has still centred on debate on justification of a war; here is a piece on analysis of the attack, which I had thought would have been covered in a more detached manner i.e. focussing on the actual attack rather than how it links into the wider spectrum of things. Of course it does, I just think there’s room for factual reporting and analysis here as well.

In a related story (although most things, it seems, are related to Iraq these days) Bush has found that *shock* not everyone agrees with them, only this time it’s Russia and they sit on the Security Council and do have some influence. As much as Bush does want to go to war with Iraq, I imagine he and his wonks do not want to act in a unilateral or at best bilateral manner as that would have more serious consequences for relations with the rest of the Arab world than multilateral action involving Russia, France and China would – many heads of state of the smaller Arab nations, such as Qatar and Jordan are willing to listen to debate over the issue but not just sit on the sidelines and watch America act. Seems fair to me.

Finally, further to his speech in Sedgefield that was reported in the WP link yesterday, Blair now says that “Britain must be prepared to pay a "blood price" to secure its special relationship with the US.” Go through the article and you can see that he then tries to distance himself from the idea that Britain is America’s junior partner! I can accept that we must be willing to see British losses in a military campaign against Iraq. But securing the ‘special relationship’ usually involves policy agreements over cups of tea. It’s almost as if Blair became unpopular again in the international playground of diplomacy; it’s a very foolish slip of the tongue if he expects coffins to arrive in order just to be America’s best buddy.

Rating – 5.5: is this the beginning of the attack?

The Debate Of A Lifetime?

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More on the stiffing – I’m done with the Chinese joke now.

No one story in particular of special interest; a number of interesting stories, however. Firstly, the failed assassination of Hamid Karzai. Quite what would have happened had it been successful is anyone’s guess – it seems unlikely that this was not part of some wider agenda, so a revolt and/or riots is probably a good one.

Blair is refusing to recall Parliament in order to debate the Iraq situation – instead he’s going to discuss it with Putin. A link from Andrew Sullivan goes to an interesting article in the WP that presents a very “can do” attitude from Blair, certainly a change from the British press with their mostly ‘negative’ approach – negative in as much as they want to see some debate first. Tam Dalyell, Father of the House, argued on today’s JY prog that this was the most important debate in his lifetime and yet it was unlikely to go to vote; here is Sullivan’s approach.

Rating – 3.5

Going Through The Motions

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Chinese whispers?

So Ollie’s away and I have this all to myself. I’m free to mess around further with the rating system (see the witty footnote in the original concept page); alas I will settle for merely blaming him for missing Monday’s deadline by 10 seconds. Actually it was Blogger that was acting up and didn’t allow me to post – nevertheless Ollie holds liability for ruining my record of perfect posting.

Further to my post yesterday about Blair going through the motions, the BBC leads with the news that Bush is now doing the same thing (I’m obviously more influential than I thought). I caught some of Bush’s press conference on TV today and was summarily unimpressed. He may make slips of the tongue more regularly than is usual (see the Bushisms archive, and in the article "stiffing the world"), but his continued difficulty in presenting a clear case for invading Iraq, highlighted by the painful press conference where the noise of the cameras during the “pauses” was deafening, suggests that in fact his case is pretty weak and he knows it. Not of course that it will stop him. Many commentators said that the action in Afghanistan would become another Vietnam (or, more elegantly, another Afghanistan) in as much as it was not a “real” war with clearly defined objectives. I believe that the consequent actions – Tora Bora, not finding Bin Laden – support this theory; however it is obvious that the Bush administration was also aware of this. Hence the campaign was quietly moved to the back of the news cycle (technically, it’s still ongoing) and, by being neutered so early, it became neither a success nor a failure. There is too much at stake with Iraq – especially with the near universal condemnation of any potential American action by Arab nations (Kuwait excepted) – that means any American action will surely be limited, and consequently have little effect. All talk and no walk.

What’s that, you want a date? Novemberish, I’d say.

Finally, Tuesday Morning Quarterback is, um, back! Props to Ollie for picking it up on Nextdraft (I should really read it before deleting it) – my reason for not finding it being that TMQ has jumped ship to ESPN.com’s ‘Page 2’ without, it seems, telling Slate readers!

Rating – 3.4; Blair is going to publish a dossier on reasons for attacking Iraq, Bush is consulting world leaders, the Summit is ending. It’s all beginning to take shape.

Capable Hands

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I will be away from now until Friday night, so I do not expect to be able to rate either Wednesday or Thursday here. I shall leave you in OJ's capable hands as sole columnist for these two days, and I sincerely hope that nothing interesting happens while I'm gone.

Boiling Point

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Sooner or later, the Iraq crisis is going to boil over. There can be no doubt about that, the question is simply, when?

Today, Iraqi Deputy Tariq Aziz invited the USA to 'tell... the world that their concerns are genuine' and send officials into Iraq - he also extended the offer to Britain. Aziz made it clear that he thought the USA was using the issue over weapons simply as a 'pretext to war' with no real grounding, and labelled the previous weapons inspectors 'people who drag their feet for years without reaching a conclusion.'

Aziz ended by saying, 'there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.' Not so, says a panel of US experts, who maintain that Iraq possesses 'enough to kill thousands and thousands of civilians or soldiers'. Furthermore, they may have developed 'mobile laboratories' which would be able to elude US intelligence services. Tony Blair, too, has threatened Iraq with a dossier of evidence (why haven't we seen this before? Why keep it for a dramatic entry?) and has stated that the US and the UK need to 'face Iraq together'.

I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction right now. The USA will declare war against Iraq on Thursday, 12th September (they would do it a day later, but I fail to believe any president will declare war on Friday the 13th - additionally, Bush will be hoping to ride into war on a wave of patriotism after the 11th September anniversary). The UK will announce it is joining the war on Friday, 13th September (no superstition will faze Blair). Iraq will strike first, on Israel. And within five weeks, the USA will have won. Simple, really. I don't know why each side doesn't just round up 10,000 of their own people, kill them, exchange territory and have done with it.

A safe place to be if World War Three does erupt will probably be space. Sadly, 'N Sync's Lance Bass won't be making it, as he failed to raise the cash required for his high-profile jaunt into the beyond. Today is a 3.3 - Thursday, 12th September will be an 11.0. Mark my words.

Where Everybody Knows You're Namibian

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!ti hguorht ees reven lliw esenihC ehT

More on the Namibian president, who is now on a quest to become the most well known Namibian globally, trying to beat Frank Fredericks. He does have some excellent points however. Too much of the first world aid given to Africa, even the untied aid, is underwritten by an assumption that when we say we want Africa to “develop” we want them to become like us. However, as was on the op-ed page of the Telegraph today, “Wealthy does not mean healthy.” If we really wanted Africa to develop for sheer altruistic reasons, then a lot of the current strife over land reform that has degenerated into sheer bigotry and racism could have been minimised. Similarly, I doubt AIDS would be as big a problem had the patent issue concerning anti-HIV drugs not been stalled due to “concerns” by the drug companies. It seems we’re scared that if we give Africa a loose leash, then they may turn out to be different from us, or, dare we say it, better. But then the acts in Zimbabwe are hardly Africa’s best way of saying “give us a chance.” And so it will continue…

In other news, Blair seems ready to commit the UK to war. At least he’s going through the motions.

Rating – 3. Nothing spectacular.

Google Whacked

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I scored 4 as well.

So, the Summit is still ongoing, albeit tepidly. Highlight of the day was not the elephant dung, rather Mr Mugabe’s defence of his land policies and attack on Britain, followed somewhat curiously by the Namibian president saying “We here in southern Africa have one big problem, created by the British.” The real shame is that, according to the article, Mr Blair was not in the room at the time – if he had been, that would have been a debate worth watching.

The Summit’s primary focus, of course, is the environment – it being the official followup to Kyoto and Rio. Hence it was with some joy that the Co-op introduced the first totally degradable shopping bag. As I mentioned in a previous column, the proposed tax on plastic bags is an excellent idea, and now, even before the tax has been implemented, we have seen some action. One caveat – is there a difference between “degradable” and “bio-degradable”?

Finally, the Chinese authorities appear to have banned Google! Not exactly the most surprising development for an administration that seems intent on controlling every piece of information in the world’s second largest country, but I would love to see how they are managing how to do it. Besides, I wonder what “google” – a lovely word in English (that is based, IIRC, on ‘googol’ which is 1 with one hundred zeroes after it) - becomes when translated.

Rating: 2.5 and with parliament back soon, the coming of the mid term elections in the States and it being “back to school” things are bound to become more interesting soon.

The Boys Dung Good

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If you disagree with someone strongly enough, dropping a pile of elephant dung on their desk seems a good enough way of showing it (maybe they were snorkelling elephants... see OJ's column yesterday). But if your opponent is a committed organic gardener, your insult immediately turns into a useful gift. Whoops. What would make this even worse? Well, it would be pretty silly if it happened in the middle of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Other gaffes and gripes (arguments over sugar sachets, the lack of toilets and more) can be found in BBC journalist Alex Kirby's Summit Diary.

It seems that some, if not most of the delegates and officials at the summit lack a certain amount of culture. They aren't the only ones - the general media consensus appears to be that the British public are beginning to dredge the barrel of cultural prowess. London, certainly, is frequently derided as having a crime record that threatens New York's darkest days - Bjork's flat was burgled on Friday and Joan Collins has left for the Big Apple after deciding London was too dangerous (her daughter was mugged in the capital last year). Some people would argue that David Beckham's choice of name for his new son, Romeo, was culturally challenged at best.

But then, who am I to complain? I only scored 4 out of 10 in the BBC's 'How Cultured Are You?' quiz.

Meanwhile, having successfully confused everyone over his opinion on war with Iraq, Tony Blair has launched what is termed a 'thinly veiled' attack on the USA's decision to withdraw from the Summit. Then Mugabe launched a broadside at Blair, and the Summit threatens to become a slanging match - of course, given the events in that diary, it is already. Today receives a 3.0.

Don't Get Too Chatty

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A slightly shorter column today, and a welcome break for yourselves, as some recent posts of mine have been quite lengthy.

There is consternation over Karem Chatty, the Swedish man of Tunisian origin who took a gun on board an aircraft bound for Britain. Not only are the Swedish police in a hectic rush to form a water-tight case against Chatty, before the two-week period in which he is allowed to remain in custody without charge expires, but they are also suggesting he may have been just one man in a wider conspiracy. With the first anniversary of the hijackings of 11th September looming, I'm not sure whether the media have leapt at the chance for a sensation (Chatty's lawyer said the following: "He is Muslim, he is flying and he has a gun and it's close to 11 September. That makes people draw quick conclusions.") Alternatively, we could have narrowly avoided a macabre reminder of last year's events, as police suspect Chatty might have targeted a European US Embassy.

The air industry has not had a good week. Not only has Chatty cast fresh doubts over security in the air, but the scandal of faulty fuel pumps in thousands of Boeing aircraft across the globe has dented consumer confidence in flying yet again. The last thing the airlines needed, having only just begun to recover from 9/11 (see this special BBC report on aviation from last month), was a week like this. Can we ever be assured of safety in the skies?

One person I talked about last week found great safety in an aircraft - Faustino Asprilla did a runner when he apparently realised that Third Division football team Darlington were actually serious about signing him, and was last seen in the Middle East. He did, however, later apologise, saying that the wage package the club offered him was 'not enough to live on'. Somehow I expect the vast majority of people would have taken them up on it. Today receives a 3.4 as fresh questions have been asked about British security, and in addition to that, no one appears sure exactly where Blair stands on war with Iraq. The BBC says for, CNN says against.

Conclusions

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Down periscope and dive!

"He is Muslim, he is flying and he has a gun and it's close to 11 September," Mr Uggla said. "That makes people draw quick conclusions." Not the most surprising conclusion, it has to be said, but still another ominous event in the post-WTC world. As for the merits of the actual case, it seems to be an exercise in confusion and blame - no motive has been ascertained, and the idea of a gun on aeroplane and crashing into the US embassy seems to be an easy way out. You can draw your own conclusion. For me, the real story here is that no matter what the intent was, he was caught trying to take a gun on a plane. A year ago, I doubt that would have been the case. Maybe we are doing something right.

Rating: 3 - and rising as we come up to the first year anniversary of September 11.

Powered Down

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Let's return to the environment as it has been quite a topical theme this week, but today I'm going to focus on something a lot closer to British interests.

A couple of days ago, my house here in Buckinghamshire suffered a power cut for about an hour. That's not much, and there are billions of people around the world who would love to have electricity for one hour, let alone spend just one hour without it, but the effect it had on me was surprising. At first I only noticed because the screen on my laptop dimmed slightly as it switched to battery power - I fiddled with the power cable and started to curse the laptop manufacturer, until I realised that my digital clock and bedside light had cut out. I'd been planning to switch on the TV to what a programme in a few minutes, but suddenly I couldn't. I went downstairs to fix up some food whilst I waited, but then thought twice about opening the fridge because it would let out whatever cold air was still left in there and the food would start thawing even faster. I was going to call my Dad at work to see if it had affected the whole area, but I couldn't because the digital phone system was down. Hmmm. One short power cut therefore took out my ability to store food, my ability to communicate, my ability to tell the time (well, yes, there are other clocks in the house) and the life force of most suburban households, the TV. Had it been dark, I would have been in real trouble because I have no idea where there is a torch in this house, or indeed even a candle. I was also well aware that the laptop had about an hour's battery left on it, and once that went, I would be forced to (gasp) read something to keep myself occupied.

It needs a power cut every once in a while to make us appreciate the magic of electricity, but we could experience a lot more than that in the near future. I spent a good few years of my life being told by various science textbooks that our fossil fuel resources were going to run out some time, but I did not expect to start suffering gas shortages within two years. A report quoted in that article calls our government's attitude 'hopelessly unrealistic' where energy is concerned, and estimates that by 2020 we will have to import all the gas we need.

That wouldn't be quite so bad on its own - we all knew that fossil fuels were slowly on the way out, and it should shake the government into doing something like pressing on with nuclear fuels or natural renewable resources. But recently, British Nuclear Fuels announced that after 50 years of mismanagement of nuclear waste, the nuclear industry is now effectively bankrupt. So far from being free to plan an expansion to cope with rising demand in the face of the declining fossil fuel industry, our nuclear output is stalled at best and most probably staring down the barrel of the gun. Now BNFL has asked the government to bail it out, but if Blair agrees then where does that money come from? The fossil fuel industry can't stand to lose any cash, so surely what funding and plans exist for renewable sources of energy will be axed to make way for a nuclear rescue plan. That then binds the government inextricably to a policy of propping up a nuclear economy. Is that a wise idea?

On a related note, the USA may have more trouble defending its stance on the environment (see earlier posts by myself) now that Ford has axed its electric car plans. The reason? Lack of US government support for environmentally friendly cars.

As far as a rating goes, today was the fifth anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, and Blair appeared to subtly ease himself into a pro-American position regarding Iraq. I give it a 4.2.

The Sequel

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He looks pretty pissed. I would be, too.

It's a job that had to be done. A job that came through the family. SKG Dreamworks (this would be their kind of thing) presents: Gulf War 2: Revenge. Starring George W. Bush as Winston Churchill.

Dear God, I can not believe that someone at the White House thought that comparing Bush's position to Churchill's would ever be a good idea. This is the kind of thing that, had anyone apart from an American hawk been in the room, would have been laughed off the table. I know there are bright people in the US, and working in the Bush administration - even if he may not be one of them. But they expect us to believe this comparison on the basis that Bush has no support, and that Churchill didn't have any either before Munich? Riiiiight.

Let's compare them a bit more. Because, according to the White House, we should just accept the comparison as is - plus I'm a historian, so I need the practice. Churchill had championed the need for re-armament througout the 1930's, when Hitler became a threat towards Europe, let alone Britain. Bush spent the same time as Governor of Texas, where I'm sure the policies of Saddam Hussein were of the utmost importance to him. Hitler lead a country of nearly 100m people that was industrialised and well armed and trained that could - and did - prove a serious threat to the UK. Iraq is the other side of the world to the US, and is a country starving and underdeveloped that has a minimal threat to the US and only a slight threat to US interests through the oil supply. The case for NBC weapons was substantial and accurate concerning Hitler; the proof for Iraq is still shaky. I can accept that they have biological weapons - albeit crude - but I doubt that they have a reliable nuclear weapon, and much less a suitable platform with which to launch it from. Most importantly, I think, Churchill was an outsider during his time of isolation, whilst Bush is the most powerful man in the world. It's almost as if he's looking for excuses because he knows his position is so weak. Such a comparison, therefore, becomes a nonsense.

It wouldn't have happened with Sam and Toby working there.

Rating: 2.5 - we're near the end of the silly season, but Somerset lost today, hence the extra.

At Least They're Trying, Right?

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Well, it's going to be a rush tonight to get this posted before the clock flicks over to Saturday, so here goes...

Today, the USA came out fighting over its environmental record, which has of course been the subject of serious scrutiny since the Summit in Johannesburg began. Following on from earlier posts of mine, I'm going to take a look at what life must look like from the USA's point of view right now.

Certainly, if I was an American leader, environmental official, diplomat etc I would probably be feeling a little wounded and indignant. As the only remaining superpower, rather than go off on a domineering conquest of the globe (though some would argue they've done exactly that, albeit subtly and commercially), the USA has tried to broker world peace. Whenever they have sent a diplomatic peacekeeping mission (they rarely use force for these things, always the suits first) into a pretty dangerous situation, be it Africa, Israel, Asia or even on their own doorstep in South America, they find themselves harangued by sections of the media that consider it an unspeakable violation of all sorts of unwritten rules. To them. the United States is a behemoth of a nation that has become too big for its boots and seeks to impose its will on all forms of society across the globe. Hang on, what were you expecting them to do? The isolationist period ended with Pearl Harbour, and the USA is not going to sit back and quietly indulge itself in its riches whilst people elsewhere in the world are shooting each other for fun, then slowly but surely turning against the US. America is simply trying to put the world to rights as the only force (come on, the UN is going nowhere) able to do so.

But wait - is it possible that by setting off around the world, clutching a little white dove and riding on a wing and a prayer, that the USA has caused a sizeable amount of this conflict? Certainly, as I discussed yesterday, it would probably have far fewer enemies if its top officials could just keep their mouths shut. In an attempt to drag nations wrought with civil war and corruption into the 21st Century, the USA often makes the mistake of treating them as though they should damn well already be civilised shining examples. Thus, the name-calling and immediate mad rush for the moral high ground only serves to heighten the opposition of nations like North Korea and the Arab states, rather than making them realise they should know better. If America wound down the maternal scolding it issues to delinquent countries, then started issuing more aid and fewer threats, we might go places a little faster.

Iraq obviously feels the US is not going to learn any time soon, and that if they want a war of words as a prelude they are welcome to one. Iraqi vice-president Yassin Ramadan told reporters that the US has one crucial disadvantage that it avoided with Afghanistan - there is no Iraqi opposition movement. That could be a big blow if a full-scale war erupts. For now, Friday is a 3.6, but the US seems to be trying to push that up daily. Phew... I think I made it in time.

Meeting In The Middle

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Numismatists beware.

Note: the following link may require registration; if not then please don't screw up may account!

There was a brief period three or four years ago in the UK when fly-on-the-wall documentaries were all the rage; a fad that reached its peak, I think, with Driving School. Imagine my surprise this morning when I was flicking through the Telegraph to find this - choice quote from Ollie - "I wanted a world revolution. He wanted to be a Tory MP. We kind of met in the middle." To be honest, I wasn't particularly surprised, because at the end of the day it was just another news article, which one would expect from a newspaper, as opposed, say, to an edible puppy, which would have surprised me. Anyway, I was interested for two reasons. Firstly, I'm heading off to Oxford in 6 weeks or so, and the article was an interesting view on how some students spent their time, and my cousin graduated from St Hilda's, so I spent a good few minutes laughing at the idea of Anne prancing around in pyjamas at 8am (sorry Annie).

Secondly, I couldn't believe that we were back into the world of reality/fly television again. I mean, why? Surely our need for looking at how other people live or work was satisfied with Airport, Airline, Vets in Practice etc. the last time. By the end of that era, I thought programming was moving on to a better time. Quality shows - the West Wing, ER, Scrapheap Challenge, Return to River Cottage, 24 - were being made, and some oldies like Friends, Frasier and the X-Files were returning to form again. For the last couple of years, I've been inundated with TV I want to watch because it's so good, not because it's the new fad. So who decided it would be a good idea for this reality TV to come back? Well I blame Ozzy - The Osbournes, on MTV seem to have been the catalyst. But I'm pretty sure that when he came up with the idea of doing it, it was the result of a drunken bet (Tony Hawks and Arthur Smith - I'm looking at you). However, he still must be held responsible for the follow-through; the copy cats, and well, in general, Anna Nicole. I hope that the Anna Nicole Show is this era's Driving School, and that someone kills the idea of reality television so that it NEVER comes back (and so I can carrying on pretending to speak like Kiefer).

Rating: a 2; nothing really caught my eye.

I Have No Idea (Where The Comments Are)

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Having seen OJ's ruminations for today, I feel I should explain for people that don't follow US politics much - members of their equivalent of parliament represent either the Republicans or the Democrats (the Americans, wisely, eliminated their take on the Liberal Democrats a long, long time ago). They also represent a state (we have the MP for Little Spangleton West, they have one person representing Texas). As a result, where OJ writes 'R-AZ', he's not listing their number plate, it means McCain is the Republican member for Arizona.

Also, I have no idea where the comments have gone. If you want to comment, email me (ollie@gprem.com) and I'll post your comments for you.

So, where will Thursday 29th August stand in the ratings?

Well, the media are often easily diverted by the Next Big Thing (recently, war with Iraq), and they leave behind the old burning issues that they had been harping on about for ages beforehand. This is no bad thing, as the blanket coverage usually bores the public pretty quickly - it certainly does me. But now I find myself drawn to one old story, and one new story.

Firstly to Israel, where Palestinian sources say an Israeli tank shell killed a mother and her two sons, along with another victim, when it hit their home by accident. I am continually sickened by both parties in this dispute - of course no one can condone suicide bombing (not even the 'they've been forced to sink that low' argument, which is pathetic), but then, Israel should be far more ashame of themselves. They are in a position where they have barged in on the surrounding area and displaced thousands of people, religion or not, and I would love to see Ken Livingstone's reaction if a religious group announced its claim on their ancient sacred site of Westminster and drafted a proposal to move in. There has been enough controversy over the construction of Britain's first Jewish eruv, 'imposing the community's values on other groups', let alone an entire nation moving in. The Palestinian sentiments are understandable, even if their actions are not. Israel's disgraceful behaviour and hypocritical condemnation of the Palestinians, especially when in the superior position, backed as they are by an America which should seriously reconsider its own actions here, is deplorable. There can of course be no resolution to this conflict whilst both sides continue to wear their prejudiced blinkers, but how can we lift them? I cannot see an answer and, like Northern Ireland, I do not expect this conflict to ever end.

And secondly to North Korea, where the US diplomatic machine has launched into another ill-conceived outburst against the next nation down on its list of 'Axis of Evil' member states. It's not that I'm anti-American (although you could be forgiven for thinking so), but I wish they would go about being the world's only superpower with a little more tact and aforethought. This time, Undersecretary of State John Bolton has denounced North Korea as 'an evil regime... peddling missiles', which is exactly what you would want him to say with the US already losing Arab supporters against Iraq left, right and centre (see the end of my rating for Tuesday). The USA has for a long time appeared entirely unconcerned about the rest of the world - Bush, and to a greater extent Cheney have no problem with launching a war without the support of the UN, Europe or even Britain, and the nation has shunned this week's Johannesberg environmental conference. Now, with much of Europe sceptical, many Arab nations fuming and North Korea given fresh reason to oppose the US, America may soon find herself embroiled in a Third World War where the majority of nations oppose her. All well and good, but where does this leave Britain? Blair has been fostering the Special Relationship ever since he rode into power in 1997, but right now he is faced with a pretty tough choice. Does he back a winner with the US, or make a moral stand with the rest of the world? Ultimately, the fate of the nation may depend on it. Thursday receives a 3.4 because America may have begun the process of accumulating more enemies than it can handle.

Batting For The Other Team

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I ain't bad, just stupid and greedy.

American politics is something that I enjoy. When you can't find me on Slate, you'll find me watching the West Wing. So here is an interesting article on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), which is part of an ongoing "series" (previous arguments are referred to in the introduction) on the possibility of him running for President in 2004 on a Democratic, or Indepedent ticket.

Now, although I enjoy American politics, I am in no way an expert in them. I'm used to people swapping parties - both here and in the US, but to run for President from the opposition camp? That is something that, were I a voter, I would not be totally sure about. As the article says, McCain's record is almost Democratic, but he is, officially, Republican. Just because it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck does not mean it is a duck. Amongst the reasons why I would be suspicious, this comes to the fore of my mind; should McCain win the Democratic ticket, then it means that the Democratic party, since the 2000 elections, has been unable to find a leader that Democrats (and eventually Americans) support - and without that it suggests that their opposition has been little more than a farce. Sound familiar?

Rating: certainly a 3 - will be an interesting one to watch.

Turok! Remember Him?

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(This is Wednesday's post, which was a fraction delayed (around a day or so) as I was out most of Wednesday itself.)

Me Turok. You less stupid.

Well, it's another day where little if anything happened that would force me to crank up the rating unnecessarily. Meanwhile, over at the International Olympic Committee, there are changes afoot that could incense the Americans even more than a rogue Arab nation or twelve - they want to drop baseball from the Games.

Hooray, I say. For how long have the Americans shamelessly played out a 'World Series' that involved teams from no nation other than theirs? Aside from the Japanese, who care more about football now anyway, they are the only nation that bothers playing it to any real extent. Holding an Olympic equivalent was surely an insane move because the Americans would always win it. Not true, it turns out - when it became a medal sport in 1992, the Americans didn't even sneak a bronze. Why? Because no one in the USA cares about it. None of the Major League players can be bothered because the competition simply isn't there, so they lost first time out. But by 2000, despite sending a team of Minor League players (which is roughly the same as sending Peterborough United to compete in the World Cup), they still won the event. Their opposition? Cuba and Korea, true baseball giants. The first time baseball played a part in the Olympics, as a demonstration sport in 1912, the USA took on Sweden in the inaugural game and despite loaning them a pitcher and a catcher won 13-3. Then, in 1936, the US were the only team that showed up. They therefore split into two teams and, in front of 125,000 people, managed to scrape the gold.

And yet some Americans are distraught that the IOC wants rid of a sport (along with softball) that has become an Olympic farce, open as it is to very few nations with a remote chance of gaining a medal. Paul Seiler, executive director of USA Baseball, went as far as accusing the IOC of ignorance - 'Maybe there's not enough understanding of the sport among IOC circles,' he told USA Today.

The replacement? Golf. Now there may be a pretty large percentage of Americans (in fact it's probably a majority over the rest of the world) in the world rankings, but let's face it, there's a vastly improved chance of someone from somewhere else winning it. There are golf courses occupying every possible patch of green space the world over, and even ones implanted into the middle of deserts by absurdly rich Sheikhs - it is very easy to find a course, practice, and get to an Olympic standard if you start early enough. By contrast, I have absolutely no idea where the nearest baseball field to me is. I've never seen one in this country. I'm not saying I don't like baseball - I follow the Chicago Cubs and it's one of the most relaxing games to watch I know (you spend more time eating than they do playing), but golf is a far more popular worldwide. The Olympics are a participation event after all, and surely the goal is to give more people more of chance to participate in more sports. My vote is with golf, even if Tiger gets to call it another Major under his belt.

Greco-Roman wrestling and modern pentathlon are also earmarked for the chop - want to know more? Click here. Wednesday, by the way, receives a 2.5.

Captain Planet Can Wait

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Ollie has already posted on the topic of of the World Summit in Jo'burg; here's my take.

I'm idealistic in my belief that we should all recycle; we should all make an effort to help the environment out. However, like everyone else who hears this at age 11 (suitably accompanied by Captain Planet or whichever superhero the govt. expects to work this decade) I promptly went home and ignored it. And...I still do. Honest, when I get to uni, or get a place on my own maybe I'll start to be more like Mr Cutts (my old Maths teacher) who had a box for scrap paper. It doesn't stop me wanting the environment to be better though.

The problem - too many people like me and too few like Mr Cutts. The govt. could do a lot more to promote and encourage recycling at the moment - the tax on plastic bags from supermarkets looks like a good start (and one which, from my vast knowledge of A-level Economics, is a tax on a demerit good in order to correct or internalise the externality. Yessir, I even did case studies on stuff like this.) Moreover, I suspect we will only see a real increase in recycling in 20 to 40 years time, with a new generation (or two) who will have to take the issue more seriously; certainly more seriously than the summit in Jo'burg.

The link - an online poll on the environment that will be collated and published in time for the end of the summit. Give it a go!

Rating - certainly a 4; it will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few weeks.

More Star Trek, Less Star Wars

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I don't often drift off into the heady realms of politics, let alone anything emanating from politicians across the pond. Frankly, as I outlined yesterday, politics has become boring, and I'll continue that theme today.

Yesterday, I illustrated the ways in which the media portrayal, and public opinion of politicians was discouraging younger people to go into politics and suggested that we would soon suffer a shortfall of MPs. Now, fresh from the USA, comes evidence that not only are we not seeing enough new politicians, but all the good old politicans are going too. All the old, wacky, outspoken members of Congress are being kicked out - understandably in some cases as most of them had lived for years in complete disregard for the laws they passed, but even so. Take Jim Traficant, who quoted Star Trek in his speeches, or Dick Armey, who always wore cowboy boots and didn't hide his liking of country music in front of the nation. These are just two of the cases outlined in that article by CNN, and it is mirrored in Britain. We don't have many politicans that are truly enjoyable to watch or listen to any more - no Churchills with their grandiose mannerisms, no controversial Thatcher, not even William Hague, who at least brought his fiery attitude to PMQs to the job. Instead, about the most exciting MP we have is John Prescott, and only because he punches constituents and needs a Jaguar to go 200 yards.

That's depressing, because politics without a bit of panache and eccentricity is just not interesting. You cannot dress up the Removal of Domestic Waste from Septic Tanks (1994) Bill as riveting stuff. It needs someone to come out of leftfield with something equally odd but relevant to liven it up. Prescott isn't going to do that, even if he drowns a constituent in a tank.

Of course, the reason for this is obvious - non-conformist politicians, those that won't cling rigidly to the party line and won't hold back their own opinion, are being systematically weeded out by the forces of political correctness and spin. The politically correct brigade, which once forced Birmingham City Council to rename Christmas as 'Winterval' to satisfy religious minorities in the area, has long been derided and frequently goes quite clearly overboard. Sadly, it seems this is only evident to the ordinary people not in power, and these vigilante pedants wield tremendous power. Anyone who voices an opinion that isn't on their list of 'normal' thinking gets branded all sorts of things and sacked. Only last week, a nurse had to resign after simply quoting the old title of an Agatha Christie novel, 'Ten Little Niggers'. I'm half-expecting a complaint from the PC patrol simply for saying it here. In an age where individuality and personal liberties are more achievable than ever before, at least in the Western world, we are being pegged back by this insane institution. Political correctness is, fundamentally, politically incorrect - it discriminates against all sane-minded people.

Again, I have taken the time to write a piece about a topical issue that has no real bearing on the day's rating, because again, it was quite a slow day. I'm not going to be dragged into dissecting Iraq day in day out, but suffice to say that the Egyptian premier's statement that no Arab countries will back the US is important enough to warrant a 3.4.

Bwah! Ha!

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Another unnoteworthy news day. Or so I thought...

Bwah!

Ha!

Whaddyamean they aren't serious?

Rating: 5 for sheer comedy value. Usually I'm lucky to see one a day; two is just great!

So Long

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I should make it clear that the post below is for Monday, not Tuesday. Serves me right for taking so long over it again.

A Very Tory Birthday

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Every now and again a story comes along that would have been a Far Side cartoon in another life.

Now, it's your 18th birthday. You're damn excited, you're an adult now! What will the surprise present be... cash? A new car? A new PC? No... it's a birthday message from the Conservatives. Well, isn't that nice. Seriously now, it comes over as yet another hare-brained scheme from Tory HQ to win back at least one voter in the entire nation, seeing as they are close contenders for most ineffective opposition in the history of parliament. So why not try and collar every new voter? It does actually make sense. Let's face it, precious few, if any young people give a monkeys about politics - the media portray every politician as thick (getting education ministers to get sums wrong), sleazy (how many examples do you want?), greedy (Two Jags) or scum of the earth (Two Jabs). The public confidence in the political system is not just low, it's non-existent - politicians are figures of public ridicule, not the proud leaders of a nation. No one cares about them, and no one has a good word to say. And then, after five years of relentless criticism and finger-pointing, the media accuse the nation of apathy when the turn-out at the general election is down. Well, I wonder why that happened.

Jeremy Clarkson made a good observation (if one made before) in his newspaper column on Sunday - if everyone got A-levels and went off to university, there'd be no plumbers and the country would be up the spout. Well, hey, if there's no politicians there's no government - do you know anyone who wants to be an MP? Thought not. No one wants a job where no one likes you for a career.

Today gets a 2.4 from me as not much happened again. However, the day the government runs out of ministers that rating will be a lot bigger.

Jiggery Popery

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Until the funeral of Diana, I'd never experienced a Royal death, or a change in the family. The ensuing demonstrations of grief were almost something of a novelty. Since then, the Queen Mother has also died. And now - the Pope is becoming more ill. Again, I've lived in a period of relative stability, and the notion of white smoke coming from the chimney is something that has only been useful in quizzes, or seen in The Godfather: Part III. As this report, and the numerous ones over the last few years have testified, the Pope is in failing health and even he seems acknowledge that his time is near. Religiously, I don't have much interest in this; as an Anglican I was more interested in the new Archbishop of Canterbury, however I am interested in the ways in which the new Pope will be eventually elected, and what this will mean for Catholics to whom it will matter a great deal. To me, the Pope has been a background character - not of much interest, but always there. I anticipate an interesting turnaround period when he does eventually pass away.

Rating: Eventually this will be around 10; until then it certainly merits a 4.

Wrong. Badly So

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The remains of two Oregon teenage girls have been found. Parallels with another recent story making headlines in Britain are clear.
Sunday's rating is in this post - Saturday's is below, apologies for being late with it.

However, on with the rating, and the only story worth discussing is the World Summit on Sustainable Development, being held in Johannesburg. Frankly, as the media have been telling us, this summit is already doomed to failure with the USA happy to look after number one, and let number one look after the oil and logging industries. Litttle more needs to be said - this should be big news for the world at large, as it offers a way forward for society, the environment and the future of the entire planet. Now, I don't condemn the USA much, and I've fought Bush's corner innumerable times, but this is just wrong. Badly, badly wrong. It is depressing and frustrating that the short-term concerns of a dying industry are the priority, ahead of the long-term concerns of a dying world.

Sunday receives a 3.9 from me. It's not important because we've lost the chance to change anything - and that's why it is important.

The Darling Of Darlington

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First of all, apologies for missing Saturday, which was due to my strenuous work schedule and a little celebration of Manchester City's drubbing of Newcastle United, 1-0.

I will therefore start with Saturday, which will not take long as the only news of any real consequence was Faustino Asprilla signing for Darlington. I appreciate that I am football mad and that this may explain my inclusion of this article, but it is the one piece of news that may have an effect elsewhere. Everyone accepts that football is in financial crisis - clubs are struggling even to pay the wages of players, and several top notch footballers are playing at lower division clubs for nothing as they can't get contracts elsewhere and want to stay fit. Clubs desperate to sell players to raise funds cannot do so, as the players do not want to lose the massive wages they signed on for three or four years ago in favour of a much lower deal somewhere else, but with first team football tacked on.

Asprilla's decision to join Darlington is symptomatic of this. A few years ago he was plying his trade in the Premiership and was hailed as a wizard on the ball, a true genius. Now, he is keeping himself busy back in his native Columbia - financially decrepit in the first place - and is desperate to resurrect his career with Darlington. If Asprilla is reduced to this, what next? Football is the lifeblood of much of the nation, and as it spirals into financial oblivion, what effect will this have on the rest of the country? Will the Beautiful Game lead us into economic chaos?

Of course, this is all wild speculation. Therefore, the day receives a paltry 1.8.

Official Wizards

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I wish I was an official wizard.

Third and final point on Zimbabwe, and since it's a Sunday I'll make it quick. Another of the biggest shocks to me is the fact that many of the attacks on whites are based purely on a racial basis. I missed the mid-80's in the UK and US - since I was just working out how to walk - and with it the major anti-racism intiatives. Consequently, much like HIV, I have not really considered it a problem, as acceptance of others is widespread and now common knowledge - much like, I suppose, they hoped. Of course there are still many racist attacks. But the sheer brutality and hatred of whites by some blacks - those in power, it seems - in Zimbabwe, is quite the wake up.

Rating: 2.1 to push the average up.

TMQ, Megababes And Haiku

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Again, we're in the summer duldroms. Nothing much happened today. Although this did catch my eye; Tuesday Morning Quarterback will be back soon, along with Megababes and Haiku! Excellent.

Continuing on from yesterday's Zimbabwe discussion, this is the second point that came up from the JY discussion (remember, I did say firstly.) The focus was on British intervention. Although the the British press are divided over how to deal with Zimbabwe, they all assume that we a) have to and b) will. One assumes this is because of some relic of colonialism; the Commenwealth ingratiated in deepest Fleet Street. Fine. Use that as a reason, if you want, to intervene in this case - but what of the precedent. As Serria Leone showed, British intervention can be useful and successful. However, many, particularly in Africa, would see British intervention in Zimbabwe a result only of public uproar against the deaths of white expats. And they're right. Where were we when the elections in Zambia - corrupt and fixed - were happening? Because we didn't hear any reports on the news, or because there are no pictures in The Mail of a dog curled up by his dead master's body, everything must be alright, yes? Most likely because of this reasoning, it is unlikely that we will see any intervention by Blair in Zimbabwe - too big a risk for too little reward. And certainly it won't be the beginning of a new era of British foreign policy; a time perhaps, when we begin to take our responsibilities seriously.

Rating: sticking with a 2; no doubt Mugabe will be in the news again soon.

PS: The Telegraph reported yesterday's story as "Mugabe Sacks his Cabinet." Maybe the BBC were beign too generous in giving him the benefit of the doubt of his own constitution.

The Whole Zimbabwe Problem

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Well, this appears to be my first proper post, now Ollie has finished setting most of this up.

This is just another story to come out from Zimbabwe. Anyone who reads the international papers for the last 2 years, especially if you're a Briton, would have had to be foolish to have missed the whole Zimbabwe problem. It even was the first thing discussed on today's Jimmy Young program on Radio 2, which says something. Within the discussion - which involved Michael Ancram, Shadow Foreign Secretary and some other guy - there were raised a number of interesting points that I hadn't really considered. Firstly, the final question was what is the worst case scenario if the international community, and in particular the UK, just left Zimbabwe alone and stopped intervening? The answer - mass starvation for at least 6 million. Granted, starvation is nothing new in Africa. But what really made a difference to me this time, rather than the bi-annual ritual of Comic Relief, was the fact that I remember Zimbabwe as being a shining example of African independence. The fall from a country that provided and exported its own crops to one facing starvation in such a short time is shocking; moreso because much of it is down to one man - Robert Mugabe. Today he's dissolving his cabinet. Tomorrow?

Rating: just a 2 for the moment, but with expectations of a solid rise over time concerning this story.

Routine Scuffling

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Friday, 23rd August receives a 3.5 from me.

The ongoing conflict over Kashmir, which returned to the headlines with accusations of an Indian attack in the region (remember to hold down shift when you click the link), is the main basis for this. I consider the India/Pakistan dispute over Kashmir to be by far the most likely setting for a new major war, and Pakistan has now accused India of launching a large attack on an army post in the region. India has dismissed the event as 'routine' scuffling. With the US now sending in its usual (or, alternatively, useless) 'special envoy' to try to clear the air, the threat of all-out war could escalate back to its ugly worst.
Cadbury's have done little to help matters. Their misguided advertising campaign, which tried to sell Dairy Milk by comparing it to Kashmir - both 'too good to share' - was roundly criticised by all parties.

The Terror Of Lennon

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Thursday, 22nd August receives a 2.8 from me.

This is largely based on this article, from the BBC, which details the death threat made to Northern Irish footballer Neil Lennon. Sectarian violence has recently been kept off the media agenda by a sequence of events starting in September last year, but as we near the anniversary of that month's horrific terrorist acts, so another form rears its ugly head. The spread of sectarianism to the 'beautiful game' that is, or was, football, may well herald a renewed effort at peace in Northern Ireland at a time when the world had largely forgotten about the conflict. Thus I place today somewhere around a 3 - minor domestic importance in that it could be a turning point for the Irish conflict, but not quite a 3 as it may well be a false dawn yet again.

All The Kids Are Shift Clicking

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One final point - open links we post in a new window by holding down the shift key when you click on them, or right-clicking and selecting 'Open in New Window'. That way they won't appear cramped in this tiny frame.

Relinkage

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The link didn't work first time round, my fault. Google Search: "Dayorama". Hope that does the trick.

We're Unique

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I'm using the cunning right-click method of Blogging from any page to write this. Click on this link: - and be amazed that NO ONE ELSE has ever used the phrase Dayorama! It's ours! All ours! And it's now copyright so keep your mitts off, everyone else. Have a nice day :-).

Commence Comments

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This second post is purely to establish where the 'Comments' button will appear. Dayorama is slowly reaching operational status. (Ollie)

Welcome From OJ

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Welcome to OJ's ratings. This is Ollie writing to make sure we are ready for a little Dayoramatisation...

Welcome From Ollie

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Welcome to Ollie's Dayorama Ratings. Here, I'll be giving my rating (and an explanation) of the day gone by. I'll be using BBC News and CNN as background for many of my posts, and will try to include links where possible or relevant.