Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Damn Dan (coincidentally, having been playing round with RSS, I am fully aware that I've been over doing the Dan-ness quotient. It's just that he posts good stuff regularly). He played with the fridge magnets, I played with the fridge magnets. He stopped, I forgot to.

This led to me producing a whole slew of mock-Ono musings [see end of post for a selection], most of which where defined by the available words (which are much less adaptable than single letters, where one can rotate an n for a c). However, I found it much more interesting to watch the patterns of use of the words.

Some people will go in and grab anything they want, regardless of whether it's in use already. Some scavenge from the edges and sentences already broken. Some pull a word backwards and forwards between them. Some seek to create full paragraphs, complete with punctuation. Some make short phrases. Some just make patterns out of the tiles. And some sort the words by type.

Most people only use words close to their sentence. The rate of drift of words is slow, as proved by the clustering of farming related words which lingered for days (I'd collected them all into something haiku-esque. The sentences changed, the words didn't). Some words stay fixed in position, with sentences ebbing and flowing around them.

It's odd how the patterns rapidly became much more interesting than the sentences made (an internet word toy containing the words sheep, beans and computer is pretty much a forgone conclusion). What surprised me is the development of analogous to genetic change. A sentence forms, but soon the verbs start flickering through other options. It grows as someone inserts a couple of adjectives. Someone else reorders the end and extends it. It splits; three words cling on together, the first chunk of the sentence is dragged off elsewhere, and the rest is pillaged for anything useful, as words buried beneath the changes reappear. The process starts again.

Moving on from unexpected evolution (is it evolution?) to geeky funkiness. LD has incorporated on his grown-up site a chunk of Google Maps to show the positions and topics of various sets of his photographs (hmm, not a good topic for something which is part of the internet, as I'm studiously avoiding posting a direct link which makes it too easy to match up the pseudonym and real him. Anyway, the other Dan is not too hard to find). I'm far too impressed and have no idea how he did it. Well, I know it's something to do with Javascript because he said so, but like most computer stuff, I only know things through peering at someone else's code, prodding it a bit, pulling stuff out and seeing what happens (usually not a lot).

So I browsed his site, wondering whether I should start up a commercial Anyhoo photography site (closely followed by a whole chain including the BOGOF-pavlova-heavy AnyFood; the DIY site, AnyGlued; the dating site, AnyDude; the porn site, AnyLewd; and the Google busting whois site, Anywho. I'm also considering the A-Team tribute site, AnyFoo'), although if I was actually paying for stuff I might have to do in in my own name (but then I'd have to lose all the potential referrals from here, unless I merge the two, which given how problematic the overlap of professional and not-in-[the-same]-public selves appears to be... Decisions, decisions).

Anyway, the commercial entity is currently filed under mañana, mañana (and I just so happen to have some wildlife shots taken near Lake Manyara - POA), with possibly a vague hint of "I might actually do it".

While perusing Dan's site, I was surprised to find that he didn't have his beer promotion shot filed under Brighton (just realised that all his geographical sets tended to be the local church or similar, rather than local people who could be anywhere [for some values of anywhere]. Besides, I'm not sure how it'd sell).

It's cheesy and daft, but that's why it works. But it is the wrong beer. Surely, given the event, the tagline ought to be "Whatever You Do, Take Pride"?

(Which happens to be a monumentally unfulfilled advertising campaign. I actually had to add "Fullers" before Google could get past "Take Pride in Mansfield, Ohio!", which considering they've been running the series since 1996.... For more information, try Fuller's frames-laden [how nineties; even I can code those] website)

Oh, and Dan, sorry to have to do this again, but Brighton's beach is not "it's beach", but "its beach". And being ultra pedantic, is it a good idea to list in one's portfolio a site whose first page states that the 2004 version is under construction and then in the same sentence entreats the viewer to "please come back soon"? It rather suggests that there's nothing to see here, move along please. I know content may not be your department (and that the period of your jurisdiction is rapidly waning), but there must be something less off putting one could use. And another thing [sic], the dogs under Features on your photo site aren't. But other than that...

In events elsewhere, this site turned up in the stats. I have no idea why she's linked to me (under the heading "Random Blogs" and the proviso "Blogs that could lead to anywhere or perhaps nowhere"), and to be completely honest, I'm just not sure. It hasn't grabbed me yet, but there is such a maelstrom of topics and stances that something might still. I'm just bewildered by how a blog founded last month could have over 5,000 visitors in August. I know I'm not exactly mainstream fodder (prolefeed?), but how is it possible? Or does she use the industrial recip-me approach, or perhaps a traffic inducing company or network?

There now follows a Ono-ist interlude/a load nonsensical, aspiring to be pretentious near random amalgamations of words [DAA].
cut seven now
help small dog first
plant the gingerbread close
build said sound where ! may move - Note the improv.
ground should follow number - Expressing my latent surveyorness.
thresh while playing answer - I didn't say they made sense.
live for never like infinity
write about who is here - That stayed up for a long time.
take any old thought
find point change story - Each time I went back someone had swapped the parts round, but the four words lingered together.
let me be
& y mill man - Referencing slightly patchy comedy? Oh dear.

Best line not by me (and just because it made me smile):
make pie not food

Anyhoo,