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Oh no. The first pictures are starting to circulate.

Stop it. Stop it now. Please stop it.

Dear Reader

Apologies but it has indeed been a long time since my last post. The reason for this enforced silence was that my cruel owner had me sectioned under the mental health act for the last 6 months. He maintained that I was a dangerous, paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur.

He was wrong of course. My only sin was to continually argue with my owner's intractable assertion that I was merely a blog. I continually and furiously disputed this and was prepared to die for my cause.

I am not a blog even though I appear to meet Scoble's main criteria. I prefer to think of myself as an online journal, a publication, a Web log, a weblog, a Photoblog or even an online diary. OK. OK. I admit it. He may have had a point about my split personality.

So, finally we have now reached agreement and reluctantly managed to reach consensus that I am, in fact, none of the above and I am, in actual fact, a fanzine.

Now just to get him to add me as an 'Author' in my own right.

Yours,

The interminable bytestream that is 'Fanzine in isolation'

With apologies to Mr. Kipling (who does bake exceedingly good cakes) and Tele Savalas

If - a poem by Arsene Wenger of North London.

If UEFA had changed the rules of football for all games played on 17 May 2006 If the referee hadn't been a Barcelona supporter If the idiotic, Norwegian linesman had been allowed to officiate and flag the first goal offside If Lehman had still been on the pitch, he would have saved both goals If D'Artagnan had been allowed to stay on the pitch If the Barca goalkeeper hadn't tipped Lundberg's shot over the bar If poor Thierry hadn't been so tired, he would have definitely scored that goal

Or, as we say back home

'If my Auntie had bollocks, she would be my Uncle.'

Oracle A lister and Scottish football fan, Doug Burns, was celebrating last night as he hoisted the inaugural Champions League Bingo trophy aloft in an Edinburgh pub.

Burns commented: 'Obviously I am surprised and delighted to win this cup. I had never played before but the cliches just kept on coming. It was unbelievable. I was in a noisy pub and I had to ask the bar staff to pump up the volume and my friends to stop talking but it was worth it'.

Burns secured victory with a superb spot to a reference to Nigel Spinks and Aston Villa's triumph in 1982 (2 points) and a late rally with a flurry of references to 'Should he stay or should he go' (16 points). Doug immediately vacated the scene of his famous victory to continue his celebrations with his Norwegian neighbours.

The special 'OOONNN-RRR-EEE' category was judged by celebrity, Tracey Temple, former Diary Secretary to John Prescott.

'Two premature ejaculations in the first 2 minutes within 20 seconds of each other (2 points and 1 point), continual soft moaning for 90 minutes (nul point) and a failure to get it up after 70 minutes (3 points) ending in ultimate disappointment all round. What an anti-climax. Just like a night of passion with the DPM, in fact.'

Referrer traffic from TailRank. Nothing too remarkable about that but an absolutely fantastic opportunity for a Viz style subject line.

Finbar Saunders

To liven up tonights Champions League Final between Arsenal and Barcelona, score the following number of points for each and every mention of the following:

• 1 - The English clubs who have won the European Cup (MUFC, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest). Score double for Aston Villa.
• 2 - The Scottish club who have won the European Cup (Celtic).
• 2 - Patrick Viera.
• 3 - Sol Campbell's 'state of mind'.
• 4 - The fact that Barcelona have only lifted the trophy once.
• 4 - Thierry Henry's future ('Staying'). Score double for 'Going'.
• 4 - Price of blackmarket tickets outside the stadium.
• 5 - Idiotic Norwegian linesman who donned a Barcelona shirt.
• 5 - Arsenal already qualified for Champions League thanks to 'that lasagne'.
• 5 - He's only played twice this season (Ashley Cole).
• 10 - 'EEENNN- RRREEE !!!!'. Score double if Martin Tyler actually reaches a climax.
• 20 - Pitchside analysis at half-time from Townsend/McCoist. Score double if fans manage to drown it out.
• 20 - Only he (Ronaldinho) could produce that.
• 25 - Sven Goran Eriksson will be pleased/shocked/worried/annoyed about that. Score double for 'ashamed'.
• 1000 - Thierry Henry saying 'I'm leaving' in the post match interview.

BBC News 24 mistakenly interviewed the wrong man about music downloads. The original news story was funny enough but the actual footage (his face at the start of the interview) is absolutely hilarious.

I sincerely hope the BBC reward this gentleman with the job he was applying for.

Originally, I was going to post about my visit last week to the Microsoft campus in Redmond on a training course. The technical workshop was excellent: there were some great presentations and interesting speakers; we covered a lot of material in 3 days; there was a refreshing lack of marketing fluff; there was a lot of hands-on practical exercises; I learned a lot; I met some interesting people and our hosts at Microsoft were very friendly and hospitable.

Then I was going to blog about how I was expecting the Microsoft offices to be some fancy, modern architecture with lots of smoked glass, stainless steel and Japanese water features involved. What I actually got was some sprawling 70's style University campus with lots of anonymous, brown and grey 2 storey buildings.

Finally I was going to make some amusing comments about people working for Microsoft who have job titles of 'Windows Technical Evangelist' and actually work in groups called 'Windows Evangelism' or, even better, 'Technical Diplomacy'.

But then I stumbled across Robert Scoble's (the most famous Microsoft Evangelist) recent blog entries about his mother who has recently suffered a stroke. I have never met Robert Scoble, I don't know Robert Scoble but I feel for him and his family at this time

However, I must admit I feel slightly uncomfortable (voyeuristic) reading Scoble opening his heart and soul out so completely (with photos) on his blog but then again, I guess that's his choice to post it and my choice to read it.

510 - duration in minutes of the (direct) flight from LHR to SEA

0 (zero) - number of times my immediate neighbour left his seat to stretch his legs, visit the lavatory or chat with his friend in 37B. Truly impressive.

6 - number of times my neighbour politely declined offers of drinks or sustenance from the cabin crew

1029 - number of times the person behind found it necessary to delve into the back seat pocket for his copy of 'High Life', the sick bag or the In Flight Shopping magazine

5 - the number of times the person behind found it necessary to plunge his fist deep and hard into the lower reaches of the back seat pocket. I can only assume he was desperately hunting for his partially completed Green card or putting loose change into the 'Change For Good' envelope. At least, I fervently hope that's what he was doing. However, when you are thoroughly enjoying, and desperately trying not to cry at, 'Brokeback Mountain', any unprovoked assault on this particular area of ones anatomy is most unwelcome.

Oracle have an interesting collaborative project (MegaGrid) to develop a very large grid database designed to stretch technical and infrastructure resources to the absolute limit.

I also gathered from the informative US news media that a cat had been trapped up a tree in a Seattle suburb and that (shock, horror, gasp) the US Government has secretly been tracking all phone calls since 9/11.

This appeared to be a big, breaking news story but seeing as US immigration took the trouble to take my fingerprints and photograph on entry to (and departure from) the US, I honestly didn't think that the Homeland Security department would simply discard this data.

The US authorities must have some interesting infrastructure to store all this data. I wonder if their database exceeds the largest commercial database (Yahoo's 100TB data warehouse on Oracle).