Welcome...

So I eventually gave up on Channel 4's 4oD service after about a week because the software crashed like 3 times a day (when it wasn't even supposed to be doing anything).

I recently installed the BBC's iPlayer download manager (or is it a delivery manager? They don't seem to be sure which word they're going to use from one piece of UI text to the next). I'd been a happy user of the Flash-based web version of iPlayer, but I thought I'd try out the high quality download thing.

Now, I had configured it to only share programs when the Download Manager was running. That's the options btw - ON or OFF. What do you mean, you want to control the amount of bandwidth? Sod off - do you think it's your internet connection or something?

Anyway, even though it was supposed to be off, sure enough, after about a day of having it installed, I get the same stuff that 4oD used to throw at me:

So that's good.

I'm told they both use the same Kontiki piece of crap system for p2p sharing, which I guess is why they both crash more often than Britney Spears on a school run.

Nice job, guys. The £5m was totally worth it.

Crikey. When did engineers start to talk like Gus from Drop the Dead Donkey?

Check out this post from the Google Maps dev blog:

Speak English, dammit!

I love the way he says 'transitioned' when he means 'moved'.

And don't get me started on 'empowers'.

This is the start of a comic series I've been planning called 'The J.C.', for which the concept is teen angst drama (Smallville, The O.C., etc) meets well, you can probably guess soon enough.

I had previously promised myself not to release the start of this series until I had written a certain number of scripts...but I wrote some more scripts recently which I liked, so I feel like I'm going to ignore my own prohibition.

I'm still way off my target, and so I won't release any more until I've hit that target (and learned to draw!), but this first comic has a Christmas theme, so what the hell!

So, let's get on and pitch issue #1 into the world:

With a bit of luck it might make you smile.

NB: the art style will change radically for subsequent issues. In other words, it won't be nearly as good.

I was watching an episode of The Bill a while back, and one scene gave me a flashback to that old Jon Pertwee TV programme:

"If you cannot afford a hairdresser, one will be provided for you by the court..."

I'm learning the programming language Ruby at the moment. Well, sort of.

I get the feeling whenever someone designs a new programming language, they have a sort of grudge that certain non-alphanumeric characters are not being used enough, so they push them in their language.

In Ruby, it seems that : and < are the new black.

In Python the emphasis was put on spaces and tabs, in a left-field manoeuvre that no-one saw coming.

Most famously in Perl, of course, they couldn't decide, so they decided to push all the characters they could find, for *%$@#&'s sake.