grahambinns.com

From BBC News:

A prayer group in Washington DC is claiming the credit for the recent sharp drop in the US price of petrol.

Rocky Twyman, 59, a veteran community campaigner, started Pray At The Pump meetings at petrol stations in April.

So, market forces anyone? Well...

Mr Twyman is sceptical that market forces might be responsible for the lower prices.

But there is an upside to this silliness:

But he and his prayer warriors have changed their motoring habits.

"We believe not just in prayer - because we believe that faith without works is dead. So we've encouraged people to car-pool more and organise their days more, because it's a combination of faith with these other factors."

I just wish we could get the second part of this without people saying "but we need God to sort things out for us."

I have had various reactions to my wearing the above at UDS today:

• From Bacon himself: "Oh. My. God."
• From Julian Edwards: "Wh?"
• From Dave Murphy: "I hope you're not joining the Cult of Bacon.
• From one apparently insane UDS delegate: "Sexy"
• From two UDS delegates (including the aforementioned insane one): "Can I get one of those?"

The world is a little bit weirder than it was yesterday. Especially, I suspect, if you're Jono Bacon.

I don't do memes as a rule, but this one's been doing the rounds on Planet Ubuntu, so I thought I'd give it a shot, too.

So, the results of the query are:

graham@bloodnok: ~$  history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " "}}'|sort -rn|head
93 bzr
66 python2.4
46 sudo
44 cd
39 grep
22 make
19 ls
18 vim
11 tail
11 lpvim

So now you know.

So.

I'm writing this on a Nokia N95 with an iGo Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard. It's useful, but it's not exactly the most svelte of devices in the world and, to tell the brutal truth, it makes its user look several different kinds of idiot, sitting here with it perched on his knee.

There again, though, it does allow you the freedom to use your N95 as a communications device just about anywhere: in a (parked) car, in a cafe... anywhere that you may feel the need to construct something more than a short text message or email without the benefit of having a full-sized laptop around you. Plus, of course, it gives you the GPRS access, which is always handy.

In the end, though, the twat factor does weigh heavily on you when you're using it, and you find yourself trying to hide it under the table, at which point you become some saddo staring at his phone's screen and, apparently, fiddling with himself surreptitiously.

There's also the minor issue of my working out the best way of getting things off the phone and into a blog entry. Typing this in the Gmail client is okay, but the number of characters you can use is decidedly limited, which pretty much sucks any joy out of doing it at all.

Of course, how often I'll be typing n-thousand word emails on a phone is probably a pretty small number.

Graham Binns posted a photo:

Three hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 28

No, I have no idea what this is about either. You have my apologies.

On the other hand, I do love that wide-angle lens.