Me & My Flu. A page full of whinging!
After an utterly dreadful five days of sleeping/sweating/shivering/shaking in a sweaty bed, my flu seems to be finally abating. I can stay awake for more than 60 minutes! I can walk again! (albeit tenderly)

One thing I've learnt after this miserable NYC-holiday-depriving episode of my life: I've never had flu before.
I may have thought that previous weekend-long collections of pathetic sneezes and snivels qualified as flu, but what happened this week was a whole different kettle of fish to any cold I'd ever had before. This mutha laid me completely out, and there was nothing else I could do but dose myself up with painkillers and sit it out.

If you're unfortunate enough to find yourself being hit with the same kind of shit, trust me - there's only one course of action:

Bed. Paracetamol. Aspirin (don't overdo them). Water. Juice. Sleep.

The second you feel hungry, get a piece of toast down your neck. Keep it simple. Let your body do the talking and if it says, "Bed! Now!", don't fight it!

And if you've got a loving girlfriend/boyfriend/parent/flatmate/pet-cat on hand, all the better.

One strange thing was that my food tastes went all medieval on me: all I could eat was boiled potatoes, toast and porridge. Old serf skool stylee! Broccoli proved way too exotic for me. And tea? Uuurgh! All I could drink was juice, water, juice and more water. Lots of the stuff.

Worst of all was the muscle aches. Lordy it hurt! If any of you unfit fellas (and fella-esses) have ever unwisely been talked into playing a 'proper' football match when you're completely out of shape you'll know how much your body can hurt next day, with unheard of muscles in previously unannounced parts of your body introducing themselves at every step. Well, flu makes those pains seem like the patter of a feather winged pixie.

But today I've managed to make it back down to the kitchen and I've stopped accompanying my movements with a selection of noises that sounds like a mutant steam engine on the tracks, "OOh!, Aah! Ooh! Ooh! Aah! Sssssscccow!"

Let's hope I get closer to full fitness tomorrow.

(Makes mental note to self: never take being fit & healthy for granted and consider yourself damn lucky...)

**Big thanks to Em for being such a wonderful nurse!

My Shite Friday
I can confidently state that this has to be one of my shittiest Fridays ever.
Here's what should have happened:
Up at 9, breakfast, pack my bags, train to Heathrow, arrive JFK, cab to Matt's in Brooklyn followed by a cocktail or two in Williamsburg.
Sounds good, huh?

Here's what actually happened:
Woke up still feeling indescribably dreadful, mid way through the worst flu I've ever had. Every bone in my body aches, I can barely walk, I've got a splitting headache and feel like I've been hit by a bus.
Optimistically hobble to the bathroom off hoping that a hot bath would sort me out. No go. Ring Virgin to change flight to tomorrow. ("Certainly sir. That'll be another £400 for the two of you")
Attempt a breakfast of toast. Can't eat it.
Retire to bed all day for a sweaty ache-a-thon.
Dinner: one piece of toast.
Still feel like shit.
Can feel my New York holiday slipping away.
Friday sucks

The Tax Return Has Left The Building!
Words can't describe what a miserable experience it was, but I finally managed to work through the hundreds of truck questions contained in the Inland Revenue's Online Assessment form, and sent the puppy off last night. Let's hope it's all OK.
Meanwhile, if you're feeling bored and fancy seeing if some Artificial Intelligence can outwit you, try this online AI guessing app! It's way smart (although my 'memory stick' guess outwitted it!)

The new bulletin boards are now working!
Phew! That was hard work! But the new boards look chuffing fantastic! Woohoo!

Aaargh! The Dreary Dullness of Databases!
I've just spent the entire day - just about every last feckin' minute of it - trying to install the upgraded vBulletin boards on to urban75. Ably guided by the ever-helpful 'miss minnie', this miserable task started at 11am and several panic-attacks, server freezes and immense server downloads later the task is finally drawing near to completion.

Well, at least I think it is: for the last three hours, it's been busy building a 'search index', with the total currently 'indexed' standing at just over a million. Which means there's another 2 million posts to index. Aaaargh!

Still, hopefully the wait will be worth it as vBulletin v3 looks like a fabulous piece of software, stuffed full of groovy gadgets shiny baubles and funtastic features....

Aaargh Tax return hell!
For freelancers there is very little worse that the annual deadly dull trawl through boxes of screwed up receipts, grubby invoices and indecipherable bank statements. I can't tell you how much I absolutely loathe the job. Dull, dull, dull! Worst of all, if the forms are filled in by the end of the month, the bastards slap a £100 fine on top, so there's no wriggling out of this tedious task.

Needless to say, all my attempts to get on with this brain-numbingly boring job have met with industrial scale distractions. I was supposed to start working it on today but only got as far as pulling my bank statements book off the shelf.
Then I thought I'd best go for a coffee to 'clear my head', ready for the job. And then I thought, seeing as I was out as may as well knock out a few 'Brixton, Then and Now' historical photo comparisons.

So, I went out, snapped some photos and created a load more pages including scenes of Windrush Square, Central Brixton and Atlantic Road, Brixton.

And what work-avoiding day could be complete without a pointless trawl around some utterly useless sites? And when it comes to useless, things don't get much better than the Virtual Stapler.

Such is my loathing of this tax form-filling endurance test that even hoovering the flat is looking like a more attractive task. Heck, I'd rather clean behind the cooker than spend depressing hours working out how much I spent on printer ink for the year.

And - of course - the time writing this blog is another handsome piece of work-avoidance.

But it's no good. I'm going to have to have another go at filling in these arsing forms. Wish me luck!

PS If you;re after a pretty desktop wallpaper calendar for your computer - check out this one.

Text-tastic
Fingers and thumbs must have been clicking like mad over the New Year when 111 million SMS messages were sent on all four main UK mobile networks between midnight 31 December and midnight 1 January - a new record!
I think I contributed about three to that total!

Todays bonkers site
Fans of cheap digital cameras, low res webcams, poor quality lenses with terrible lens flare will be delighted to see a huge collection of examples on this site.
The only trouble is that the authors are insistent that what you're actually seeing is not lens flare - it's hidden planets, winged globes and second suns!
Absolutely bonkers!
You can find a sane explanation for the equally loopylou 'comet plunging towards earth' story found on the same barmy site here.

On a more serious note, the NASA Mars probe successfully landed on Mars last night and is already sending back awesome panoramic images.

Now, if only the Beagle Mars lander would finally wake up!

Hideously hungover
Last night was as fabulously beer-tastic as planned, but I'm paying the full price today. Me 'ead 'urts!
Our ambitious four point plan crumbled, as expected, quite early in the evening at the second port of call. We started off with champagne at the Lounge and then walked to the Albert for the NY celebrations. Next stop was supposed to be the Windmill, but by that time the hogmany bonhomie had gone into overdrive, and one peek at the pissing rain outside said just one thing: stay where you are and keep drinking!
So we did. Till 4 in the morning!
And now I feel like shite!

Happy New Year everybody...