I thought part of the point of London was that it's not small and cozy like Oxford... so how is it that on the way back from palm_of_my_hand's housecooling I encountered realdoll *and* theothermartin, completely randomly, in the Tube station / street? Not that I'm complaining, it was wonderful to see them, but it does make me wonder if someone is using an improbability drive nearby...

I have mentioned that I was moving. This weekend, amongst other things like going to London, seeing loads of cool people at irrumator's birthday, and being impressed by mrkgnao (and sentientfiction)'s l33t meat-cooking skills, I have finished all the moving (with help from several wonderful not-on-LJ friends, and handy advice from irrumator on chair disassembly) and am loving my new place.

Once the people I'm living with are back in town, I may do some kind of housewarming occurrence -- but for the moment, if anyone is in Jericho and fancies dropping by, just give me a ring :-)

Edit, next morning: I didn't realize quite how many people I know live within a half-kilometer radius of me now. And there is a wonderfully high pub density. Awesome!

...as some of you know, my current flat comes with a couple of odd-looking and surprisingly comfortable cushiony floor-chair-things. Does anyone have any idea where I might acquire another, to put in the new room to which I am (slowly) moving, for a decent price? I can find loads on the Internet, but in the UK the closest I've been able to find is Backjack floor chairs, which would be ideal if they weren't so damned expensive!

Also, if anyone can give me advice on disassembling an office chair, I'd really appreciate it. (The chair came flat-packed from Argos, and I've lost the assembly instructions, otherwise I'd just try to reverse the process.)

In my last post, I asked people if they found something offensive and wondered aloud how one might tell someone, in a comprehensible and reasonably non-controversial way that it's not cool. This is related to that, but not directly:

The blogosphere has just shown me an amazing example of saying "No, you're wrong" the way it should be done -- with respect, thoughtfulness, and logic. This is what all arguments should be like. And I am as guilty as most because I know I could never come up with something like that. I think one of the most telling things about that post is that there was only one recurrent troll (who is clearly just an irredeemable wanker). It almost gives me hope for the internets.

Reading a couple of syndicated sets of technical blogs today, I came across this entry (second sub-heading, with the picture). As you can see from the comments to the post itself, there's plenty of opinions on it, and this being the Internet there's enough immaturity and downright stupidity to go around too. My question is: do you think that's offensive? Why / why not? Slightly more importantly, how would you go about telling the guy "Dude, that's not cool"^[1]? (Some people's efforts have not been so successful).

Ah, the joy of the Free Software community. Compare this storm in a teacup to where one operating system's Benevolent Dictator for Life called the developers of another operating system a "bunch of masturbating monkeys", and they're apparently having a laugh about it.

[1] - For the record, that's my position. Over and above the thorny question of why it should not be posted on the Interwebs in the first place, it definitely should not be posted somewhere that's picked up by a news feed of blog posts about a Linux distribution!

Thanks to recently discovering that my latest Pointless Crush of Doom has acquired a gentleman, the last little voice in my head has reluctantly agreed to be quiet and let me get on with more constructive efforts. Particularly in light of my complete failure to talk to anyone I didn't know at Intrusion, I fear my attempts at self-improvement aren't going great. Anyone fancy going sarging any time soon?