Thank you, my dear, I as always appreciate the support. And I enjoyed your Joan Rivers post, thanks for letting me know about it.

Thanks, Jordans. I am making a donation to the Non-Sequitur-itis Foundation in your honor. -ab

Ah that's some beautiful information, Brian, many thanks. During my lucky tenure of listenage, I was a little kid up late listening across the summer air to Beaker Theatre as it crossed time and space. I never got the chance to hear the players. I mostly remember Chandu. But that would have been great. Now those sounds are streaking well out to the edge of the galaxy, no doubt. I'd like to be there when they get picked up but that seems, shall we say, a possibility that is radically remote.

Thanks for posting, Mace. I too remember best of all Chandu, that wonderful series from the 1930s. Wikipedia has a nicely detailed article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandu_the_Magician_(radio)

Thank you. And yes, there is commenting and as always most welcome: I just tested it out myself and it seems to be working OK. Let me know!

Yes I read The Art of Memory some years ago, but haven't read anything else. Speaking of the art of memory, what did Frances say?

I hear you and I appreciate the sentiment. Like an old penny, I'll turn up again.

Many thanks! Yes it's going along swimmingly or rather sleddingly. Thanks again for the positive vibrations. -ab

No I didn't know but I'm glad to hear it. I was an actor in Shakespeare plays once upon a long ago and I guess you could say I'm a nut too, it's certainly a worthwhile way to spend life. Thank you for the link. I hope you enjoy the "problem play", it's a dandy. Now pardon, I must exit (pursued by bear).

I know! It's right up my backalley, ain't it? Sometimes I think maybe my Jekyll or my Hyde is actually writing it!

I agree with you in every respect except the last: when it comes to the App Store, not only is MS NOT the Man, they aren't even the son. They're like the kid who lives down the street and wants to be in the group so bad and tries so hard to do everything the Man does, with sadly pathetic results. No, when it comes to whatever you want to call the SmartPhone industry, MS ain't shit. Apple is the Man. Marketshare bears this out pretty clearly. And the Man with respect to its App Store approval policies, it's becoming ever more widely recognized, is making big big mistakes. Not mistakes of reason or totalitarianism, mistakes that literally make no sense (except Orwellian).

You're very sweet! Thank you for your support. You're my only fan. (!) I do have two other (alternate) blogs planned. I will let you know as soon as they're live.

His show, The F Word, also on BBC, is completely different format and also quite good.

Interesting and good to have evidence from natives. But I still don't understand how prices can be that different in England (London puts NYC to shame for housing, food, transportation, fuel, everything is outrageously expensive). In any event, it is some kind of reality check for me.

My response/impulse (as a happy viewer of Apocalypse Now that would not cut a single minute): this thing is too bloody long by about 90%. Fun idea, should have been encapsulated in 30-60 seconds tops. It's fun but it's nowhere near as fun as they (and I guess you) think it is. To me.

Grant, you know it was almost a decade ago that my cousin and I conceived your #3 idea, but by the time I got to thinking about it, and actually wrote a blog post about it 4 years ago (http://builttobe.typepad.com/destroyed/2005/12/nameshare.html), well, the estimable Grace Lee had not only beaten me to the punch, she actually made a film about her endeavors! (A book was as far as my enthusiasm was prepared to take me.) If you look in the comments to my post, you'll see links to the relevant material. As I said there, nothing new in the world, not that there's anything wrong with that. -ab

With PhotoBooth (using laptop isight).

@Miriam: your comments remind me, in part, of my own attitude toward MySpace some years ago (and truth be told, still): a place where I wouldn't do x (for x substitute whatever "serious" intention you like) because that's just not a place where you do that. As a musician, I put up a site there but more out of duty than anything approaching enthusiasm. There were add'l reasons for my tepidity, but let's just say I understand in part your angle toward Facebook, though I do not share it. Facebook (and Twitter), in contrast to something like MySpace, has built and is building tools that make it for me big enough and generic enough, or genre-swallowing enough, to encompass funny, stupid, serious, biz, light, heavy. Some of this is aesthetic, I must admit. Facebook is more like a well designed building and MySpace is more like a graffitoed shantytown. Further, some of my inclination is toward fewer webvilles and webapps rather than more specialization, especially when it comes to anything like social media. (I'm not this way in other aspects of technology.) For me it would be akin to having to own 3 or 4 telephone books for my town. (Oh Mildred isn't in this one, maybe she's in this one? No. OK, she's got to be in here, no? Impossible! Where the hell is Mildred?!) Social media should be as encompassing as possible. I do not happen to like LinkedIn. In fact I hate it. Perhaps precisely because it does what FB refuses to do: for all its tentacles, it narrowcasts. And I don't want that in socmed. I don't predict, but I shouldn't be surprised if Twitter ends up being the biggest swimming pool of all because it has so many tentacles you can't even see them, and the barrier to entry is just so tiny, even by Facebook standards.

I often store my passwords here too. Feel free, Georgey.

Ce serait excellent!