ODE TO A HAIR-BRUSH

Oh wondorous, sensational hair-brush,
Oh perfect, divine hair-brush.
I savour your smooth hard back which is a
base-ball bat.
I value your swirly writing on the front of your
Fat, round, gorgeous handle.
I relish your superb, fabulous bristles as they run
through my silky hair.
I treasure you as I fight my sister off under
the table with you.
I worship you when you're my very short
walking stick to hold up my back.
Oh, hair-brush, oh phenomenal, admirable hair-
brush.
I adore how you lie on my dressing table
and don't even twitch like a caterpillar
You are a hair-brush
You are the most special hair-brush in the

WORLD!

Olivia (aged 8).

What do I do with my battered 12" G4 powerbook?

It can't cope with Flash anymore - that's basically all it gets used for - web browsing (under the very easy to use parental controls for the kids). It feels like it should still be a great little machine, but it's just not quite there. But I can't bring myself to get rid of it - the form factor is still better than anything else (including the MacBook I'm using now)...

Not only that, but it's got the mini-dvi to S-video adaptor that means it'll display quite happily on my old Sony TV - and there doesn't appear to be an equivalent adaptor for the mini display port...

...sigh.

One of Deal Extreme's specials: a Stress Relieving Bikini Hen Squeezy Toy

A sad day - my pinball machine has found a new owner...

Back when the Playstation (the original) was the king of the consoles, there was a monthly magazine which featured a CD on the front cover with playable demos of upcoming games. Sometimes they also included 'homebrew' games developed on the Net Yaroze.

One of these homebrew games was a fantastically addictive, highly polished two player game, in the 'puzzle bobble' genre, called Super Bub which got played it a lot (I said it was addictive). It featured a great sound track which fitted the game perfectly, and a few days ago I heard it on the radio. I shazam'ed it (still can't get my head round how that works) and found out it was Higher State of Consciousness by Josh Wink. So when I got home I had a listen to it on YouTube and Sarah overheard, remembered what it reminded her of, and asked where the Super Bub game was. Ooops - no idea - must have lent it somebody years ago.

So, I started looking for the demo disc (number 43) on eBay, but it's apparently quite sought after now and nobody seemed to have it. Googling a bit further, it was apparently also included on demo disc 81. There was also a demo disc 108 which had 20 Net Yaroze games included, but I couldn't find a complete listing anywhere. After a bit of searching with various criteria and eBay's old search, I found a listing which included disc 108 along with a few others, so I stuck a 99p bid on.

A few days later, the discs arrived and there was a nice surprise when one of the boxes (disc 83) actually had an extra disc in - disc 81!

Mind you, it turns out Super Bub is on disc 108 aswell, so I've actually ended up with two copies, although I hadn't actually expected to get any...

After seeing a couple of sites with animated favicons, I thought I'd try one myself. OK, so it's probably right up with the MARQUEE tag, but I tried to keep it subtle - they're only supported by Firefox at the moment anyway.

I tried various different links in the header, but couldn't get it to fall back nicely for other browsers. Eventually I noticed that the Sky Sports site had one which I guessed would work with all browsers so I copied their links and it seems to work nicely now.

So, just in case anybody feels the need, here are the header links:



The first one should be a windows icon file, and the second one is your animated gif.

Hamsters running every where
All around
Might give you a scare
People screaming scared but why?
Seven little creatures giving it a try
Take it from me thair harmless and small
Each and every one of you don't think at all
Rats or mice or giuni-pigs
So say Hampsters once it'll give you the gigs.

Olivia (aged 7).