Two things: someone at work has contracted swine flu and id Software has sold up to Bethseda.

id Software has sold up!
Jesus. The last bastions of digital independence, programming heroes for whom innovation means freedom of the soul. When Frank Miller turned into a parody of himself and started strip mining his past rather than creating anything new or interesting, when Alan Moore seemed as petty as a six year old girl not being given a pony, John Carmack kept plowing the same path with zeal, integrity and ingenuity. He forced corporate behemoths to bend to his will, showed up his entire industry and became the de facto market leader in any segment he dabbled in. This is a man who is more responsible than any other for the longevity and adaption of OpenGL on the PC platform. Who bequeathed 3DFx, NVidia and ATI their entire (and lucrative) markets through sheer innovation and quality, who revolutionised gaming at every turn and very nearly went into space in his free time. I admired the man more than anyone else alive.

And now he has gone and (seemingly) sold out. More than George Lucas’ inability to realise not everything he does is great, more than Fatboy Slim releasing mediocre albums, more than bad films and dubious politics, this is the moment my childhood is laid bare and any certainty I had rent asunder.

Also, the lack of a sudo command in the command prompt in Windows Vista is really, really annoying.

I walked past two men sat on the canal bank, fishing. They had unfeasibly narrow and long rods. Too delicate for the litter and broken branches that makes up so much of the contents of his stretch of waterway; I suspect they are suitable only for minnows. But the chances of catching anything here seem slim. So they have basically decided to have a day sat in the late February sunshine on a canal bank. And they have probably been looking forward to being able to do this all winter.

The news is full of ‘orrible murders. No sooner has one depraved lunatic been found guilty than another joins him, awaiting the gallows of media assassination. Too many maniacs, the newspapers can’t wallow in the aftermath for the days they would like for fear of not giving sufficient column inches to the next madman. If the events were more media managed they would be spaced out more, no more than one a month.

Obama is, apparently, running Hillary very close in Texas. This must severely worry her. She has Ohio in the bag, and Texas would give her another couple of hundred of delegates to play with. Basically, it is the one she needs to campaign in. While the number of states may seem disparate and the popular vote tells a different story, American politics is very much regional and strong showings in key states (or just outright rigging them) can see you beat a more popular opponent.

We’ve turned so many corners and been privy to so many false dawns at work that I sometimes feel we’re walking around a circular tower in the Antarctic. But finally we have something quantititative to go with our gut feelings and outright optimism. We’re in the best position we’ve been in for months, and we’ve got fewer overheads to deal with.

Wayne, allegedly, no longer cares about building fast PCs. This is probably akin to Ferrari deciding to abandon their core market in order to make city cars or people carriers. Of no real interest to the vast majority of people, but something seismic and saddening to the few nonetheless.

This week has been fairly awful. As a business we’re still dealing with the fall out of someone committing himself to buying several pallets of vacuum cleaners from us and then reneging, which caused problems for our cashflow. We’re strong through this month but we need extra work for next month that we haven’t pinned down yet.

We’ve been without net due to a mess caused by either BT or our ISP that both of them blame the other for. Them blaming one another and playing dumb cost us several days on sorting the problem out, and it wont be fixed properly until the middle of next week.

I am flying out to Spain on Wednesday. Our bank and th postal strike are making certain things that should be sorted out skin of the teeth stuff for then.

The Simpsons movie is like several new episodes shuffled together, the narrative is disjointed and scene transitions and events wholly illogical. A lot of the humour is a good fit for Family Guy, a program I have never really come to terms with.

It is obvious to me now how to curb truancy and force parents to look after their children and be aware of where they are at any given time: feral paedophiles loosed onto the streets between the hours of nine and three, picking up truants and taking them back to their lairs.

ID Tech 5 looks truly incredible. A new computer beckons.

I have updated GreatWhiteHype.Com with my feelings on the budget and Gordon Brown. I will be working on my ideas for governing later, but at the moment I just want to sharpen my pitchfork.

I just had the single largest cull of my Trillian list I have ever had. I am looking at what to do with my sites in terms of a redesign and am hoping to work on a couple of other sites. I have finished a book on American politics last night and am going through a book on colour theory and application through the ages. The Victorians had much better colour sense than we give them credit for.

I really want to build a computer and say that it is this Summer’s iteration of what I believe a computer should be. Speed and silence and low power consumption and mass storage. And, unashamedly, Intel.

I hate the Apple adverts. If anyone is interested in the democratic response I have a few ideas. I think we should have an effeminate San Franciscan more concerned with aesthetics than actual practicality contrasted against someone doing a difficult job, improving their home and raising their family. All on a lower budget and with real time constraints. Macs are for deluded artists intent on spending too much money rather than people who want a computer that can actually do anything.

On Thursday night disaster struck. Tiscali, who I do tend to recommend to people based on low price and reasonable performance, had either no access to the internet or utterly unreliable access to the internet all night. So I didn’t get to see the new South Park until yesterday. To compound my abject misery at not seeing 300.

The new South Park is worth the wait. If anything, it is edgier than the last episode. It’s not quite as funny, because it beats the viewer round the head with its point from the expected and rote angle.

The fates conspire against me. They conspire to make me build a new computer. They send me emails about 2GB of DDR2 800MHz overclockable memory for under 100 pounds. They also conspire to make me sit and analyse the relative merits of the Core 2 Duo line up and how each of them overclock. For hours. On a Friday night.

I am at my parents’ for the weekend. I have fixed their back door (it was sticking and my mother was having trouble locking it), have got my comics and am hopefully seeing Hot Fuzz again tomorrow.

Comics-wise it is not a vintage month. Everything good is Warren Ellis and/or Image published. Marvel and DC are both going increasingly to their base and doing massive super hero crossovers that are continuity heavy. I couldn’t even pick up most of the books and understand them, and without patting yourself on the back or caring about some obscure character, there is nothing to recommend in them. It’s a bit like when Marvel bought Heroes World and I had no desire to read anything. I love the medium, but I don’t want to see it eating its own young.

Coming home on the train yesterday I heard a girl loudly talking about her religious beliefs and go on and on about them at length. I like to think the bloke sitting at her table who got off at Stockport fled because of her, but that could just be me transposing my reaction onto him. I hate people who wear their faith as a badge, as if it somehow makes them automatically better.

The new version of WordPress has a redesigned and utterly lovely entry creation screen. It also has a very attractive log on page. The latter detail should not matter but somehow it really does.

According to the BBC, smoking is actually very similar to drug use. It makes me wonder what the average journalist actually thinks smoking is, and if they have ever heard of nicotine.

The N73 is the odd bit of technology that doesn’t actually becoming irritating with use. At the moment I could recommend it to anyone without compunction. I love it.