Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Well done that man.

[Or possibly: well done that Susan].

Neil at GfB posts a collection of links with a couple of worthwhiles. One describes a method for improving poor quality vodka, by using a Brita water filter. I have a couple of minor quibbles: A. Brita water filters are expensive, even the replacement filter sections, thus negating the apparent cost benefits of the process. B. Surely ground charcoal on a bed of cotton wool would work just as well (the cotton wall is there purely to restrain the particles of charcoal). This is because basically Brita filters use adsorption substrates to bind impurities. Charcoal being virtually just carbon does this well, especially when ground down to provide a large surface area. And I think one can re-activate charcoal used for filtering out organic chemicals by heating it. The only difficulty being grinding down the charcoal in the first place. Anyway, it's a idea that probably should have occurred to me (ok, so actually drinking enough vodka that I think about the taste and how to get rid of it might have been a good start).

Another is a blog, which links to [amongst many other things] these cards from the Earth Sciences part of Keele. One carries details of local geographic risks in the UK (the nearest to me appears to be contaminated land. Woohoo!), along with the Beaufort, Torino and European Macroseismic Scales [descriptive scales of wind strength, Earth impact events and earthquakes respectively]. The other is a rough geological map, along with a key to the common fossils in each age of rock.

Mr Armstrong also mentions that he has been playing with Blogexplosion. Working on the premise of "anything you can do ... I might be able to do", I thought I would to. It's nearly as much fun as clicking on Blogger's Next Blog link, although with less chance of hitting Tagalog. It does seem to be worryingly like a pyramid scheme (even the confirmation email was automatically classified as junk), although it appears to cost nothing, so I'll give it a try, linkwhore that I am.

But as the rest of the "click me, click me" traffic generators [sorry, peer-to-peer blogging communities] on the left don't seem to do much (although to be fair, I don't use them much, so by extrapolation...) I don't suppose it matters. The only two that consistently turn up in the referrals are Globe of Blogs, and Britblog, but the latter uses different referrer addresses, so it's harder to keep a tally on.

And so onwards.

What is it about Accenture which means they feel they need to invite me to the their recruitment events [in a Park Lane hotel, near "Green Lane tube". Wo ist das?]? As the accompanying blurb makes it clear I'm not what they want [damn erratic academic record], why do they bother sending me emails? And how did they get my email address? Actually, how did they get 3 separate email address all of which come through to me?

But at least it makes a change from the surprisingly novel spam, which has now started appearing in German. However while paying slightly more attention to said German spam than I should have done, I discovered that "Hi!", when in German, apparently means "Rear one!" [according to Babelfish].

Following the Hi! link, I've just got an email from my brother, in which he forwards an email of one of his friends bemoaning the problems of his social-cum-love life. The friend has apparently hit a hitch. He's currently texting and emailing two girls. Both have just sent emails entitled "Hi!". Both have the same name. Unsurprisingly the friend suspects it will end in tears [and the rest of us laughing].

I don't know what it is with that group of people, but each male seems to invariably only go out with girls with the same Christian names. Three of them each have one name and so every Jo ends up with X, every Helen with Y, and every Hannah with Z. Which leads to each girl having descriptive tags applied to them, which very often are based on the most obvious feature, and so aren't necessarily the kindest nor most flattering descriptions.

And while I'm mentioning brotherly emails, here is the latest forward. It's a Belgian site, which apparently is written in Dutch [Flemish presumably], but I can't figure where the images come from. The scenery looks like Scotland, the writing on the vehicles is in English, the names are English, but the number plates don't look quite the right format [and the rear plates appear to be white] and someone else looking at the pictures says the people look Cornish [er...how?]. So I don't know...unless it's somewhere in Ireland. Which would make sense. A quick Google has a firm called Michael Long in Galway, and Redmond Bros appear to be builders in and around County Wicklow. Which is on the other side of the country. Oh well.

Anyway, it's nearly as good as that tug vs bridge series.

Oooh, I'd forgotten there was an extra track on the Starsailor album. Er, ok, so it isn't actually an extra song, just some ums and a bit of laughter. Which makes waiting until 13:35 on the last track so worth it. Oh well.

Anyhoo,