#oneaday, Day 345: Leader of Men

I've never seen myself as the "leader" type. I follow orders well, but when I'm asked to take charge of something, I find myself thinking whether or not I'm "qualified" to make those decisions, particularly if they're on behalf of other people. Now, I'm a qualified teacher, so in the most literal sense of the term I am qualified to make decisions on behalf of other people. But if you're the sort of person who suffers a bit from self-doubt or a lack of self-confidence, then it's difficult to make yourself get into a position to "lead" others.

Which is why I've kind of surprised myself with stepping up to the plate for next year's One A Day Project. And also why I'm even more surprised that people—some of whom I don't even know directly (yet)—appear to be flocking to the cause. Apparently either my word carries some degree of influence, or people think it's actually a good idea.

I think it's a good idea. Yes, some may argue that the more relaxed rules of next year aren't strictly "one a day" in the most literal sense. And to that I say, "I agree". But it's a compromise. Those who do want to go the whole hog and commit to a post every day, I applaud you. (And yes, I am applauding myself right now.) Those who don't feel they can commit to a post every single day, that's absolutely fine too. Personally, while I am a fan of writing something every day and believe that both I and this blog have got something out of it, it's not for everyone, depending on work, family commitments and all manner of other things. So it makes sense to relax the rules a bit in order to allow as many people as possible to participate.

And that, I guess, is what heading up some sort of project is all about—listening to a variety of viewpoints, weighing up the pros and cons and coming to some sort of compromise that makes as many people as possible happy.

I'm really pleased with the amount of interest people have shown in the new project so far, and I promise I won't keep banging on about it over here too much. But I thought I'd just share the fact that we're up to 24 participants (with a few more sign-ups in my inbox that I'll be putting on the site once I've flown back from the US to the UK… boo) and we have had our first monetary donation to Cancer Research. We've also earned 153 minutes of crisis and suicide prevention services on behalf of To Write Love On Her Arms via ad clickthroughs.

It may not sound like a lot until you consider the fact that we haven't started yet. (Those of us who are starting on January 1st, that is.) Hopefully once everyone starts contributing, there'll be a wealth of content for people to enjoy, and said people will be happy to contribute their time or their money to the charities we're supporting to show their appreciation.

So yes; I know that "#oneaday" doesn't mean one a day next year. But that's fine; it's going to bring a bunch of people together to do something awesome. And it feels pretty good to be an important part of that.

#oneaday, Day 339: Looking Forward

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and make this pledge now, since I've been farting around with it for the whole day and don't want all that work to go to waste.

I will be continuing with daily blogging next year, whether you (yes, YOU) like it or not.

However, a couple of people pointed out that it's worth putting some kind of "incentive" in place for those who want to take part. I'm not talking about monetary gain for the participants (though if you want to fling a few quid and/or Steam/GOG games my way in appreciation for my hard work, I certainly wouldn't say no) — rather, as the fine, gorgeous and well-endowed Mr Daniel Lipscombe suggested, we should get sponsored. For charity, like.

With that in mind, I've set up a few things today. The first is this. I envisage this page being a central hub for our collective, where we can post all of our entries together and end up with a delicious archive of everything we've done together. This can also double as a jumping-off point for people to visit our individual sites, and contains the all-important donation buttons. I took an executive decision and signed up to benefit Cancer Research UK via JustGiving, and To Write Love On Her Arms via SocialVibe. Most people out there know someone or have been personally affected by cancer, so that seemed like a safe option. To Write Love On Her Arms is an organisation which helps those with depression, anxiety, crises and suicidal thoughts. Being someone who has suffered considerably with depression for many years now, this particular group held some personal resonance for me, and it's one of the more popular options to support via SocialVibe.

Here's what I need anyone reading this to do, and it's very simple:

Tell people. Get them to follow us on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Read the updates on the blog. And, for those who are interested in joining the party, signing up on this page.

Once things are up and running, I can co-ordinate everyone's work (and by that, I mean post their entries onto the Project's main page, not hassle people if they don't have time to write something) and we can all work on promoting blogging for a good cause.

Sound good? It sounds good to me, and as a co-operative effort I think it will work well. The fact that we're being sponsored for charity will give some people the push to carry on, and despite the name, I figured we can relax the rules on posting frequency a little bit.

By the end of another year, we'll have a huge body of work to look back on with pride and hopefully will have raised at least a little money for a couple of charities that are worth supporting. Plus it's certainly a more proactive approach than simply changing your bloody Facebook avatar.

#oneaday, Day 336: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. @shoinan (And Any Other Prospective #oneaday-ers)

The few of us who are still flying the #oneaday flag are closing in on the grand finale. 365 posts of non-stop bollocks, some of which might have been entertaining, some of which may have been utter nonsense. If you haven't checked out the fellow survivors' blogs yet, I encourage you to pay Jen, Mat, Mike, Krystian, Ian and other Ian a visit and support the awesome work (and endurance) they've shown over the last year. Give 'em a big hand, or whatever the Internet equivalent of applause is.

Now: to the point. I have tagged @shoinan in this post because he was specifically asking about it on Twitter at some indeterminate point in time that I'm confused about due to intercontinental time zone drift and watching Scott Pilgrim until 1:30 in the morning, then getting up at 7am to record a podcast. But this post is directed at anyone who wants to be Awesome Like Us.

#oneaday is something I intend to keep going with once my year is up. The others may feel differently. For some it feels more like work, for others it's a good habit that they've got into. Some are persisting out of sheer bloody-mindedness, some are passionate about the whole thing and want to succeed in it as a creative endeavour. In fact, most of us have fallen into some or all of the above categories at different times. And those who dropped the project partway through the year all did so for completely valid reasons, too.

It's a challenge, make no mistake, but it's one you largely set the rules for yourself. The only rule that everyone needs to abide by is this:

Post something—anything—at least once a day for a whole year.

Exactly what "something" means to you can be anything at all. It can be a photo-based post (I've done a few of those in the past). You can set yourself a minimum of at least a paragraph. Personally, I try to write at least 500 words a day, and in the last *mumble* days I've also been doing my comic daily, too. (All right, I couldn't be bothered to check. But I know it's over a hundred days now.)

But there's no hard and fast rules about how much you need to write, how good it needs to be or even what it needs to be about. The whole point of the exercise is to get you (yes, YOU) writing. Writing anything. Posting anything. Getting into the habit of being creative regularly. Creativity is something you need to exercise, just like your muscles. Spend your time not being creative and you'll stagnate, but it doesn't take long to get back on track. And there's no better way to exercise the creative bits of your mind than coming up with something—anything—every single day.

The other side effect that you might find is that it's a good outlet. I've had a shit year, by all accounts, and I know that one thing that has really helped me deal with said shit is writing about it, getting my thoughts out of my head (where they'd fester and eventually explode) onto the page. Saying things and knowing people are reading them—even if the things I've written aren't specifically aimed at anyone (or are, in some cases)—helps. It's a form of therapy.

I'm not saying you need to have something going on in your head to enjoy success at #oneaday blogging. But it certainly gives you something to write about, and I believe it's a healthy thing to do, too.

So for those of you interested in participating next year, I'm fully intending on continuing to take part and helping to co-ordinate everyone's efforts, too. Keep an eye on these pages for further details, and in the meantime feel free to get started whenever you like. If you do, be sure to let me know that you're on the case and I'll be sure to throw up some links.

Not in a vomity way. That would be weird. You know what I meant.

Anyway. Now it is time for pancakes. I hope those of you reading this who have a creative itch that is proving difficult to scratch will certainly consider joining me on another year of #oneaday blogging next year. Good luck to those of you who are in for the ride.

#oneaday, Day 291: Final Lap

As the year starts to draw to a close—seriously, how the fuck did it get to be November already?—lots of "projects" or long-term goals are starting to eventually come together and come to fruition. Unfortunately, none of said long-term goals will result in financial gain for myself (unless you want to sponsor any of them, which you're very welcome to do) but they will result in a sense of long-term satisfaction.

This blog thing, for example. It's become part of my daily routine now. I love writing something every day. And it's interesting to look back at how the year (a pretty shitty one, by all accounts) has gone, how it's changed and, more to the point, how it's changed me. I'm a different person to the one I was five months ago. I'm a different person again to the one I was eleven months ago. I'd like to think that these changes are mostly for the better, and there are a few people out there who can probably back me up on this one. That's not a request for ego-massaging comments, incidentally, though those are, as ever, welcome.

And then there's the running thing, too. Tonight I completed Week 6 of the 9-week Couch To 5K programme. Tonight's run was 25 minutes of non-stop running, bookended by 5-minute walks for warm-up and cool-down purposes. And it was… I hesitate to say "easy", but certainly well within my abilities. I feel like my speed is increasing, too, though my average speed readout from RunKeeper (awesome app, by the way, and free for iOS and Android) seems fairly constant at just under 4mph. Not very fast, I know, but considering that nearly seven weeks ago I was struggling to run for a minute at a time, I think it's pretty clear that I've made awesome progress. And I feel good about that and have absolutely no problem publicly displaying a bit of pride about it. So there.

I have blown the right headphone earbud on my iPhone though. Guess the thumping bass and drums of the Split/Second soundtrack finally proved too much for them. That or Apple make shitty headphones. Given that exactly the same also happened to the right earbud of the headphones on my old 20GB iPod, I'm inclined to think it's the latter. Fuck you, Apple, and your shitty headphones. But not too much. I like the iPhone just fine, thanks.

So here are the "deadlines", for want of a better word: By the 25th of November, I should be running for 30 minutes at a time comfortably, and presumably able to run the titular 5K in that time. And by the 19th of January 2011, I'll have completed a year of continuous non-stop blogging. Will I have a decent job by then? Given that I have an exciting and mysterious job interview next Thursday, I might.

Will I be in a position to say "yes, this is where I want my life to be" by then? Possibly not. But things are definitely on that upwards slope. Time passes. Things happen. And when you look back, it's difficult to imagine being where you are now, then. If that makes sense.

I know what I mean, even if you don't.

#oneaday, Day 270: Go Go Gadget, uhh, Gadget

I love gadgets. Anyone who knows me in "real life" will not be surprised by this revelation. But I'm always impressed by quite how much we can do with various little portable implements these days. And even not quite so recently, too.

The most recent mind-blowing moment I had was during this last week when I had my little expedition to the woods. I was standing in the middle of a forest with absolutely no trace of civilisation except a little crude wooden bench by the side of the muddy path. And somehow I had better mobile signal than I do in the house I'm sitting right now. So, without thinking, I popped out my iPhone and fired up eBuddy to say hello to my buddy Chris in California. He responded back and we had a nice discussion about music.

Let's just think about that a minute. I was in the middle of a wood in Cambridgeshire, England. Chris was somewhere in sunny California. And yet there we were, chatting away like this was a perfectly normal thing to do. That's awesome.

One of my favourite gadget moments, though, was a good few years back now. I was up in Edinburgh at the Fringe with the Southampton University Theatre Group, or "Rattlesnake!" as we'd inexplicably decided to call ourselves. At the time, I had somehow managed to end up with the responsibility of keeping the Theatre Group website up to date. I'd prepared a special Edinburgh page and everything, and I decided that it would be pretty awesome to keep an online diary. The concept of "blogging" was but a pipe dream for all but the biggest nerds (even bigger than me) at this point. And doing so via a mobile device was absolutely out of the question.

I did, however, have my Palm Tungsten with me, to date my second-favourite gadget after my iPhone. You could play Shining Force on it, for heaven's sake. That's awesome, if beside the point. No, the reason my Palm came in handy was that I could type up my diary entries into the Notes application on it and then use the handily-provided SD card (32MB!) to transfer said material to a computer in the conveniently-located Internet café we found one day.

One may ask why I didn't just type said diary entries straight into the computers. Well, the advantage of doing it on the Palm was that I could write things as they happened. I could write a rehearsal report. I could write what we were up to in the park. I could write about flyering the Royal Mile. The Frankenstein pub. (AMAZING) Being on top of Arthur's Seat drinking sake as the sun rose. (DOUBLEPLUSAMAZING)

Sure, I could have written about these things after the fact. But the immediacy of being able to write about it there and then was pretty damn cool. Each new generation of gadgets makes this sort of thing easier and easier to do. And while it has its downsides—the sea of people filming concerts on their mobile phones instead of actually watching the damn things being one—on the whole I think it's really great to be able to share life's exciting little moments (or, in the case of some of you out there, the details of your latest bowel movements) with people that you care about it. Of course some of this is vanity. But the other side of it is being able to share things with people that you don't get to hang out with as often as you like.

So gadgets are awesome. For everyone. Not just nerds.

#oneaday, Day 222: I'm Right, You're Wrong

Having an argument is a great way to ruin an otherwise perfectly lovely day. The argument could be over anything. It could be over whether or not you think the latest changes that Facebook have made to their site are good or not. It could be whether or not you think raspberry ripple is the best flavour of ice-cream. It could be over whether or not you think the Pope is a massive douchebag. And, if it's on the Internet, it's probably over something utterly irrelevant and useless.

So here's a few steps on how to do it better.

Step 1: State your hypothesis

"PS3 sucks!"

Step 2: Offer convincing evidence for your hypothesis

"Because Xbox 360 rulez!"

Step 3: Offer a source for your evidence

"My mate Joe said so, too."

Step 4: Await response

"PS3 doesn't suck!"

Step 5: Respond to response

"Yes it does!" (Return to Step 4 until both sides have been made abundantly clear. This should take approximately 30 minutes, or five pages of forum posts.)

Step 6: Make up a statistic and quote it

"80% of people who tried both consoles said that PS3 sucks!"

Step 7: Await response

"Well I think Xbox 360 sucks!"

Step 8: Quote Nietzsche

"Admiration for a quality, art or rival games console can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it."

Step 9: Await response

"You're a douche, do you know that?"

Step 10: Respond to response

"Your face is a douche."

Step 11: Await response to response

"Your mom is a douche."

Step 12: Respond with nonsensical, illogical response

"That's not what she said last night."

Step 13: Await confusion

"What?"

Step 14: Take advantage of confusion

"So it's settled then!"

Step 15: Gloat

"I win. Douche."

And so it goes. One of the strange things about this always-connected, everyone-has-a-voice society is that everyone feels the need to have a contentious opinion on something. This happens (albeit not always to the degree described above) on all manner of topics, from the most irrelevant of fanboy conflicts to far-reaching opinions on matters such as racism. And no-one will ever back down, because there's always another website that "proves" their point, always another statistic from some made-up society somewhere.

It baffles me sometimes, because all this time that gets wasted arguing could be far better used enjoying both things that are being argued over. Of course, part of the issue in some cases revolves around people defending the camp they placed their flag in first. In many cases, people can't afford to buy both, say, a PS3 and a 360. So they stake their claim to one or the other and then justify their choice to anyone who will listen, and a bunch of people who won't also. That way, by branding the thing they haven't got "crap", they feel better about not owning it, even if they're secretly bitter that they can't make use of its exclusive features, software or delicious strawberry flavour.

Of course, some people are just asses and feel the need to disagree with everyone and everything. And those people are called assholes.

(If you're wondering about the inexplicable German in the cartoon above, you can blame both me and RothDog. Drawing nonsensical cartoons involving German stickmen arguing was always an excellent way to pass the time in tedious German lessons back at school. This strip is a recreation of the first ever one we drew.)

#oneaday, Day 221: Remember The Fallen Bloggers

It's with some sadness that we've said goodbye to several of my favourite #oneaday bloggers recently. No, they're not dead, thankfully, but various life circumstances have meant that it's no longer practical or desirable for them to fit daily blogging into their schedule. So a moment of silence, if you please, for Rhiarti and Chris Schilling. And after that moment of silence, a big round of applause for their hard, thankless, unpaid, voluntary work on the whole project up until this point. I hope you will continue to write, guys, because I've always enjoyed reading your work, whatever the subject, and whatever you might have thought of the quality of your posts.

Although nowhere near as many people—if any—will make it to the end of 365 days as started, I know that speaking personally I'm very pleased to have made the acquaintance of some amazing people through this whole business. And I'm sorry that there are still more whose work I didn't have a chance to enjoy while they were still involved, too.

I feel particular mention here should go to Andy "Ultrabrilliant" Kelly, who started the whole thing off and Lauren "Atheistium" Wainwright, whose tweet about the whole thing got me interested in the first place. While neither of them are still taking part, they're still active on Twitter and on their own blogs and doing proper worky stuff too, so do pay them a visit.

I've made it 221 days so far. That's quite a lot—over half a year, in fact. I'm pretty pleased with myself, but if anything I'm more determined than ever to make it to the end of this year. I nearly typed "unscathed" there, but those who have followed me from the beginning will know that I am anything but "unscathed" after the events of the last 18 months. Scathing is very much in attendance.

But those who have been following me for this period will also know that this whole process has provided an excellent sense of release. There have been times when I've wanted to say things that were stuck in my head, and this was as good a place as any to say them. And there have been other times when I've been able to channel that energy into something creative or "funny". Whether or not you've found my attempts at being humorous to be, well, humorous is beside the point, really. (No offence. Though obviously I appreciate it a great deal if you do enjoy things I've done.) It's given me the opportunity to try out all sorts of things and to find different ways to express myself.

You only have to look at the way the presentation of my blog has changed to see that. From pure text, to text with a quickly-located and vaguely relevant stock image, to clumsily-drawn cartoons that are shamelessly inspired by Allie Brosh's work on Hyperbole and a Half, to daily forays into Comic Life; I feel that the opportunity to experiment with and develop my craft has been a particularly valuable one.

And the self-discipline required in order to keep this going has been immense. As I wrote about yesterday, I feel this is a skill that I've partly learned from the things I enjoy. As "Don Woods" (*cough*) pointed out in the comments, though, perhaps it's an innate skill, also. I couldn't say. I know that this whole process has helped a lot, though.

So a huge thanks to everyone who's ever been involved with #oneaday, whether I've had the chance to speak with you directly or not. Thanks to those who inspired me to write something—anything—every day. Thanks to those who have read every single one of these entries (I know there's a couple of you at least). Thanks to those who comment. Thanks to those who lurk. Thanks to those who have clicked onto just a couple of these entries out of curiosity. Thanks to those who have helped me through the toughest time I've ever gone through in my whole life. Thanks to those who enjoy my stupid drawings. And you, reading this right now, too? Thanks to you, too.

Ah, that was disgustingly profound, wasn't it? Whatever. I mean it.

While you're on, pay the fellow Survivors a visit and support them. And if I've missed anyone out, please feel free to harangue me in the comments or on Twitter.

#oneaday Day 116: Dear The Internet

Dear The Internet,

I am writing to you to express my concern about several people who spend their time on you. Not in a sexual way. Actually, sometimes in a sexual way, but that's beside the point. The fact is, there are people out there who do annoying things. I am aware that this is not your fault, nor are they doing it specifically to wind me and only me up. However, the fact is, I am wound up by them and I would like you to stop them, please.

People who comment first on things should be applauded for their tenacity. Assuming they have anything worthwhile to say. However, unfortunately, the sort of person who enjoys pointing out the fact they are the first to comment on something rarely has anything useful to say. This then has the knock-on effect of causing the following commenters to assume that the thing that has been posted is the sort of thing only enjoyed by twats and, by extension, is not something over which a reasonable, thought-provoking or entertaining discussion might take place. Please see what you can do to stop this happening.

The immediacy with which information is available on you is astounding. During the last paragraph, I was able to quickly look up the word "tenacity" to ensure it was, in fact, the correct word I was thinking of. (It was.) However, this does not mean that more lengthy prose no longer has a place in society. Whether on a message board, a blog post, an online news article or a Wikipedia article, the saying "less is more" is not always true. Consider these two sentences: "Pete is a dude." and "Pete is an awesome dude who likes video games and music, and has also recently taken to punctuating his blog posts with MS Paint stickmen representations of himself and numerous other anonymous people." Which of the two sentences tells you more about Pete?

As an aside, however, this does not mean you should ever allow your denizens to use text-speak in order to cram more information into less space.

Laughter is the best medicine, but it is not punctuation. We already have some perfectly good punctuation marks to use. Here is one: a colon. And a full stop. And oh look – a dash! And an exclamation mark. But what about a question mark? Or some sort of slash/"quotation marks" combination? All of these things are fine and serve to make our written communication more clear.

"LOL" is not a punctuation mark. It means "laughing out loud", something I genuinely doubt people are actually doing every time they type "LOL". I've heard a lot about privacy concerns around you, so could you make use of some of these loopholes to watch people through their webcams and squirt deodorant in their faces if they type "LOL" and they're not actually laughing, please?

I've bought things in the past. I once bought a copy of Oasis' first album Definitely Maybe the day before their second album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? came out. I didn't know any better at the time, as I was just getting into popular music, but I wasn't annoyed, because Definitely Maybe is a good album too. I was quite impressed that my friends at the time didn't feel the need to take the piss out of me for this, because they too knew that Definitely Maybe was still a worthwhile purchase even though the next album was on the way.

So if I buy something these days, could you see if it's possible to stop people saying what I've bought is not very good and suggesting something better instead? I happen to like the thing I bought. That's why I chose to buy it over the thing they're recommending. Maybe I spent a little more. I'm fine with that – I can deal with the consequences. I'm sure their thing is really good too, which is why I'm not suggesting that they buy the thing I bought instead of the thing they bought. Do you see?

Finally, Internet, I believe that one of your most exciting features that you told everyone about when you first appeared on the scene was the ability to bring the whole world closer together. Terms like "information superhighway" and "global village" were coined for us to all imagine one big happy family holding hands and enjoying things together.

I like this idea. Happy families are nice. We can enjoy things together. So would you mind doing something about the people who feel the constant need to say something sucks because the thing they think sucks does almost the same as the thing they think doesn't suck but maybe not quite as well in their opinion? Because that just invites other people to show up and say the thing that the other person thinks sucks actually doesn't suck because they think it doesn't suck and the thing that the other person actually thought didn't suck really sucks instead because the other person is a douchebag and their mother is a homosexual?

I have all the things that some people think suck and others think don't suck, and I don't think any of them suck. Could you spread a little bit of this love around please?

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, Internet. I'm sure it will provide you with some helpful feedback on how to make yourself work better. You might need to fire a few people, though.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Davison

#oneaday, Day 112: Hyperbole Squared

Sometimes you come across something – or someone – so utterly wonderful you want to share it – or them – with everyone. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will already know what – or who (okay, I wish I hadn't started this now, it's getting tiresome) – I'm talking about. Those of you who have been confused as to why I keep shouting "BAP!" at semi-regular intervals – well, consider yourself prepared for an education.

If you're wondering who the girl on the right is, this is Allie Brosh. Allie, a self-confessed "sexy lion", is 24, lives in Montana and has a Boyfriend with a capital B. She also has ADHD, a copy of Paintbrush and a gift for writing things so utterly charming that you can't help but want to follow the chaotic saga that is her life. Her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, ping-pongs around between heartfelt lucidity, infectious childlike enthusiasm and some of the funniest, most surreal imaginings you'll ever come across in your travels around the Internet. She also invented the term "mandatory sex party", which went from being a three-word Googlewhack (so not a true Googlewhack, but I'm not picky) to having 28,800 pages mentioning it in the space of a year. And she apologises for saying fuck a lot.

I have no idea how I found Allie in the first place. I was looking in my Bookmarks Bar in Google Chrome and saw that mysterious » symbol mocking me at the end as if to say "ORGANISE YOUR BOOKMARKS, YOU TOOL!" I clicked on it just to see what forgotten secrets it was hiding and saw a peculiar-looking entry in the pop-up menu that appeared.

"Hyperbole and a Half," it said. "Come and look. That's an intriguing title, isn't it?"

It didn't actually speak. That would be weird. But anyway, I clicked on the entry to see what it was and was confronted with this post. It made me laugh. A lot. Particularly because of the drawings. Well-done bad MS Paint drawings are always amusing, but Allie has a real talent for drawing hugely expressive faces with the simplest of shapes. This, coupled with the prose, made me know immediately that this was something I wanted to keep reading. So I checked out the featured posts she had in her sidebar.

After reading the first paragraph of this post and looking at the picture, I was literally crying with laughter for a good five minutes. That's not an exaggeration. Any time I look at the "BAP!" picture (in fact, any time I even imagine the picture) I start giggling uncontrollably. It was perfect – even more so because I know that I've done something similar before. The word "COCK!" became a useful, if moderately offensive, shortcut to fill dead air in a conversation for my friends and I some years back, and even as I creep closer to 30 I don't see that situation changing any time soon. (I'm in touch with my inner child. Sue me. I am rubber, you are glue and all that.)

Also, this.

Once the giggles had subsided, I decided to delve back into Allie's archives and read her posts from the beginning, which turned out to be the middle of last year. Her blog has evidently changed a lot over time, with it starting out as an opportunity for her to get the things that are seemingly racing around her head out onto a page and shared with the world as quickly as possible. She writes like I imagine her talking – quickly, enthusiastically, jumping from one subject to another and often getting distracted by something, veering off onto a complete tangent and oh look a squirrel that's nice isn't it? And she writes about everyday things people get excited about. Destroying snow. Getting drunk and going down a slide, only to find yourself giggling on the floor for a good few minutes afterwards. Grammar pedantry. Imagining monsters in the ice.

Okay, so some of the things she writes about aren't exactly "everyday" things. But at times, there's a beautiful, childlike innocence to the way she writes and at others, there's a wonderful sense of heartfelt sincerity and honesty. There'll be at least one story she tells on the pages of her blog that everyone can relate to, whether it's the description of her shower being incapable of anything except "lava water" or "liquid ice", the tales of her weird neighbour who always collars her for "therapy-time" or her account of the mission she went on to hijack someone's Wi-Fi just so she could post.

Peppered throughout the blog are more of her hugely expressive MS Paint creations, always there to support one of her stories in a hilariously visual manner. I haven't yet caught up with the "present day", but I guess (judging from the recent posts) at some point she started to move more towards the "humour" angle and further away from the "personal stories" angle. In some ways, this is a shame, as the stories she tells about herself are always incredibly entertaining, but fortunately she has a wonderful sense of comedy, too.

So if you're at a loose end, looking for something to read or want cheering up in a hurry, I strongly encourage you to go and check out Hyperbole and a Half. Be warned, though, once that sexy lion has her claws into you you won't want to let her go!

#oneaday, Day 85: The Artist Formerly Known as Top Searches

I was all set to do a post on the top search terms on my blog today, after Rhiarti did such a good one the other day. But it turns out that they're rather mundane, sadly. Still, I've started now, so let's get this over with.

Turtles in Time Reshelled

I wrote one post about this. One post about this game and it's been consistently in the top search results for my blog ever since. You really want to read it? Knock yourself out – it's here. Actually, you know what? I remember being quite pleased with that post. I guess I should be flattered that so many people are looking for it. Thank you for your support, everyone.

Pete Davison

My name! Amazing. I was genuinely surprised to see that the second-to-top search result was actually my name. Apparently people are looking for me. Given that I am looking for work, I assume that this is a good thing. That or my mother is taking an over-active interest in Googling me.

Divine Divinity

I was something of an evangelist for this excellent PC RPG a while back. It's excellent. Read more here. And then go buy it on Good Old Games. Avoid its sequel though, which is less good.

no.one.lives.forever

I don't know why the searcher put dots in the name. But this game is another that I wrote a few posts about a while back, and the term has stayed in my search results in various forms ever since. Also a great game, and a reminder of when first-person shooters had remembered what "fun" meant.

divine communication tumblr

Now this one I have genuinely no idea about. It's a kind of hideous cross-breed of several different posts – most likely this one, this one and this one. But quite why someone felt the need to search for those three words together is anyone's guess. Maybe they thought God keeps a Tumblr. Probably called "fuckyeahomniscience.tumblr.com". I wouldn't be surprised if that actually existed.

The next three are search terms just from yesterday. These are much more interesting.

doctor who spitfires won't work in space

Of course they won't. That doesn't stop it being awesome.

farmville co-op what happens if you let

No! Don't stop there! I want to know what the rest of that question was. Don't be shy. "What happens if you let…" what? Your sheep run amok? Your crops wither and die? Your child have easy access to your credit card for the purchasing of premium items?

highest lvl in borderlands

50. You're welcome.

Right. Enough. Good night!