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As the web turns

February 3rd, 2004

I’m back from Ireland where I had an enjoyable, if somewhat rushed, weekend of seafood, stout and song.

I returned to find over 1,000 emails waiting to be downloaded, the majority of them being spewed out by computers infected with the MyDoom virus. Windows users, for the love of God, start using some secure mail clients.

In my absence, the internet has, it seems, just carried on without me.

There’s a new version of Safari out (and very spiffy it is too), a new issue of A List Apart and two new big CSS makovers: AOL and Sprint. The Sprint redesign comes courtesy of France Rupert who’s continuing to fly the standards flag over there.

Apparently something interesting happened at the superbowl too, but I haven’t managed to figure out what yet.

It’s information overload. If I had stayed away any longer I would have run the risk of missing the funniest thing I’ve read in ages: what do real kids think of classic guitar anthems?

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My favourite bit of the archive on this site is the link that says “on this day”. It’s of no interest to anyone except me, but I love going through this little time tunnel.

Using that link this month gives me a flashback to March five years ago when The Situation was unfolding.

I remember the build-up at the end of February. We were in Galway for a birthday weekend getaway. One morning in the hotel I saw the papers were running a story that seemed so Irish to me: because of this emerging virus, people were no longer to give the “sign of peace” at mass (that’s the bit where you awkwardly shake hands with the people around you). I chuckled. Nervously.

Then we were leaving Ireland, in the taxi to the airport in Dublin the radio was on. A medical professional was urging the cancellation of the St. Patrick’s Day parade because a grand total of 2 or 3 people in the country had this virus. The DJ reacted with incredulity. It sounded like a pretty far-fetched idea to me too, because St. Patrick’s Day was just over two weeks away.

The St. Patrick’s Day parade was cancelled.

Throughout The Situation I was keeping track of things in Ireland. It was like seeing an A/B test unfolding. Everything that England was doing wrong, Ireland was doing the opposite. It wasn’t quite New Zealand, but they put scientists front and centre of their decision-making precision. Whereas here, policy was driven by wishful thinking.

I was writing about it all here on my website. I also started recording a tune every day for 200 days. Here’s the first one. See how fresh-faced I am? I decided to stop shaving during lockdown. After six weeks, I looked like this.

But to really recall what that time was like, I recommend reading Jessica’s account of 2020. The first entry is called A Journal of the Plague Week and it was published five years ago. The final entry was A Journal of the Plague Week 52 a year later.

Previously on this day

23 years ago I wrote Photoshop Funny

23 years ago I wrote Pattern Recognition

A new book by William Gibson is always a cause for celebration. I’ll grab myself a copy as soon as I’m done with Cryptonomicon.

23 years ago I wrote London kills me

24 years ago I wrote The bleat, the pretzel and the president

One of my all-time favourite websites is lileks.com, home to The Institute Of Official Cheer featuring The Gallery Of Regrettable Food, probably the funniest thing I have ever read on or off the web.