Gravity’s Rainbow contains some of the best and funniest textual stuttering ever. You might like Pynchon, if you haven’t already read him. Lots of arcane mathematics, drunkenness and obscene jokes.

Yeah – William is much more sepia.

I think there are photos of me. The only one I can find is one I cordially detest though. W-why?

Back on one of the secondary topics, on those few occasions where I get to use “grok” I’m such an anarchofascihippie that I attempt to pronounce it in fullness. You know how you can make a creaking noise or in extreme cases distinct glottal clicks by tightening your throat on a vowel? Yeah. But then I’m a pedant who’s far more strongly affected by Heinlein than is healthy.

I think I was getting slowly wodgier as I settled into the routine of my current job, and that’s what spurred the exercise efforts. It works fantastically if you jump into an intensive regime after not exercising for ages: you feel four times better at all times. But if you do it for too long at a stretch, you stop noticing a difference week-to-week, and you’re working to maintain a level of healthiness rather than obtain it. That’s much less fun, and probably why I keep slipping out of it. Plus, it’s more fun to gorge and vegetate once you’re fit.

All this might be related to my habit of changing coffee brands every time I run out. I think I’m trying to stave off the numbness of routine because everything is great right now when I’m awake to notice it.

This started out as a comment on my blog but it’s turning into one for yours. Unrelatedly, are there any photos of you online?

1: I’m disturbed by the revelation that you regularly play golf and tennis. I always lie there, on the sofa, eating carbohydrates, thinking “it’s OK that I don’t do any physical exercise because there are lots of people – my cousin, for instance – who probably don’t.”

2: Nice use of “grok”. It’s a sort of totem-word for Sam (who loves Stranger in a Strange Land). She’s the only other person I know who uses it.

Does anyone know how the controller works? To me it feels like there’s two things going on, one a gyroscope that communicates using Bluetooth, and the other an infra-red pointer that requires the controller’s black end to be pointed at the sensor bar without anything between the two. I’ve noticed that I can play golf or tennis from the kitchen (there’s a hatch), but when a menu comes up I can’t point at anything if I’m too far away, my knee is in the way or the angle is wrong. It makes Call Of Duty 3 rather erratic, since the FPS stuff seems to rely on the latter.

Oh yeah, when I said six people messing around was about as casual as gaming gets, I didn’t realise that the next day I would actually make and eat a sandwich in another room while playing competently in a doubles-match of tennis.

But still, ouch. Sorry to hear that.

Somewhat disapointing.