So the war has started (not quite in earnest) – it was rather eerie watching a BBC reporter in Kuwait wearing a full gasmask this morning on Breakfast News “War in Iraq special” whilst giving an update on the situation. Trying to scare the kids for life doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. War Websites have sprung up already including IraqBodyCount which is self-explanatory. Let’s hope the figures are low (already on 16…). The less said about StarSpangled IceCream the better.

Now we have 24/7 coverage of the war – seems strange. Even the last war the pictures of correspondents were from poor quality video phones, this time the troops are watching live Sky and the journalists are actually on the boats. Whats that all about?

Where is Raed ? is a blog written by someone actually in Iraq. It makes for very interesting reading. It’s hard to remember that people in Iraq have normal lives (well as near to normal as possible) – they buy CDs, the have families, the listen to the radio, they surf the web. This site will be very interesting when the war starts, what is actually happening on the streets (Apparantly today ear plugs have to be pre-ordered, water has tripled in price and petrol station queues are getting very long)

World of Ends tries to discuss what the internet is, why it is not like what the big corps try and tell us it is, and why it works so well. Good five minute read

Something has surprised and annoyed me today (and every day when the weather is reasonable). Most of my colleagues still insist on going down to the canteen to buy an two overpriced pieces of bread filled with some preprocessed meat filling (25% chicken, 15% pork, 10% rusk, 50% unidentifiable) and carry it back to their desk with them and eat it there while continuing to stare at their screens. Never leaving the aircon office to the fresh air outdoors.

Why?

Its a lovely day outside, it’s warm, it’s not windy, the river Thames is 2 minutes walk away, there is dry grass to sit on, the birds are singing, the sun is refreshingly warm on your face, all for the first time this year.

So why not make the most of it? I sometimes feel lucky to be alive, free to go where I want, buy whatever food I desire, talk about whatever I choose. Others (infact a huge majority of people in this world) don’t and never will have it as lucky as we all do in this country…

Two different grumbles seem to have interconnected there, but you can see what I mean I hope.

rightee.com updated once again. I’m calling this v2.0 – no idea why really, sounds quite good though. I’ve learnt lots more about PHP/CSS/Movabletype in the last few weeks so I wanted to try my skills out. Also with loads of new photos, had a chance to show-case some of them on the home page. As usual, if anything is wrong/slow/rubbish – send me some feedback, i’d appreciate it.. Things should change quite quickly around here before version3.0 makes an appearance!..