Bit of a nasty fright at work today - halfway through the afternoon I managed to delete a whole bunch of important files that I was working on! I went throught the six stages:

denial:  No I couldn't be that stupid....

anger:  It's not my fault, it's this stupid computer!

bargaining:  come on computer please give me my files back, I'll be nice.

depression:  I am sooo fired...

acceptance:  they're really gone...

hope:  ...but wait...

It turned out I had the most important file was open on my desktop anyway (and they laughed at me for having so many windows open), so I didn't lose it, and it's even possible that systems might have backed everything else up a few days ago anyway - I love you systems!

And look! Even the ancient egyptians loved baboons!

Everybody loves baboon! (and baboon love Reese Witherspoonasaur!)

Yoinks! Here's my tribute to the mightiest of cartoon techniques: the double take.

I don't know what it is he's looking at, but he seems to like it.

It seems that last wednesday morning my flatmate woke up and said to himself 'it's time to move on'. So (after tossing a coin, just to make sure) he up and quit his job that day, and now he's moving out. The upshot of all this unusual behaviour is that I'm currently going through the process of vetting new flatmates (hence my recent lack of blog entries), and what a funny old game it is too.

I've been on the otherside of the flat hunting buisiness before, and I must say it's a lot more fun to be on this side of things. For one thing you don't have to go traipsing round one place after another, only to find that you'll be sharing the mould-ridden bathroom with the aging landlady and her 5 cats. But most importantly it's the power that being in this position grants - no more do I have to go around trying to seem nice and interesting to houshold after household of surly individuals. Now the power to say in or out is all mine - I get to decide who gets to snuggle into to our slightly lumpy sofas, and who gets hurled out into the dark and dreary night. Woohoo! I imagine this is pretty much how god feels when he's deciding who gets into heaven or not (though some may point out a slight difference between heaven and a pokey 3rd floor flat in clapham).

So for the last few nights our 'cosy' little falt has been inundated with visitors of all shapes and sizes - and it's kind of reassuring to know just how boring, unimaginative and just plain freaky some people can be. Now don't get me wrong - I don't usually go around judging people, but ... ah, who am I kidding - I love it, and this time I had to do it - finding new flatmates is cool!

Well, to kind of recap the situation, here is the table of results for the prospective flatmates:

(I hasten to add that the description "fuckin' fox!" was not my comment).

In the end we shortlisted Jackie, Linsey, Claire, Lizzy and Isabel#2 (and oddly enough, not Nick). It was at this point that the reality that I didn't wield quite as much power as I hoped began to hit - only Claire agreed to come back to meet my other flatmate, all the others having either (1) found somewhere else already (2) never returned our call or (3) in the case of linsey just saying 'no' and hanging up.

So tonight we saw claire again aswell as a few other new prospective flatmates. This is where things all went a bit odd. First of all Claire, who'd seemed pretty inoffensive yesterday turned up and spoke constantly for half an hour - I don't know if she was just nervous or maybe on speed, but it was all a bit much - when the phone rang half way through I had to fight my housemate for the opportunity to go and answer it just to get a break from the verbal barrage. Still - she wasn't that bad (an indication of the sort of people that we did turn down), and as the only person to come back, her implicit interest gives her a pretty good chance (just so long as I never tell her about this blog...).

And then there was Johnathan ...

I should have guessed that something was amiss as soon as he knocked. The distinctive 'shave and a haircut' rythm that he tapped out was a clear warning sign of things to come. As he blustered his way around the flat declaring everything he saw and everything we said to be 'very good' my panic began to rise. As we sat in the living room I pondered whether or not he might be an axe murderer, but as the conversation went on I decided that, actually, I'd quite like to cut him up with an axe. He offered us the deposit right there and then, but we managed to convince him we'd need time to think about it. Then he offered to meet us for drinks on monday - fortunately quick thinking on my part saved me and my housmate from this - I claimed we'd organised people to come and see the flat, so it wasn't really possible. Unfortunately he outflanked us by suggesting tuesday, and unprepared for such a maneuver I admitted we hadn't anyone booked to see it then. Eventually we left him with a 'we'll call you to organise it' and managed to get him out of the door.

Luckily we had a couple more people to see after that, who turned out to be, well, rather normal, so we'll be getting back to them tomorrow. But just so long as we don't end up with Johnathan I think I'll be happy.

I have a week off this week, and since my exciting european holiday plan fell flat on it's face (largely due to my inability to organise my way out of an already mostly organised paper bag), I'm stuck at home without much to do. Now this shouldn't really be a problem - I live in london, a city full of exciting opportunities, and I'd also planned to do some drawing, animation, finish the moose - all those important things I keep putting off. But the problem is - I lack motivation. I ended up spending pretty much all of today browsing the internet and reading web comics. This is a complete waste of my holiday (since that's exactly what I do at work all day anyway...), but I just can't motivate myself to get off my 'arse'. This is just why I had to take an animation class this year (see 'double take' below) - because unless someone actually tells me to do something (even if it's something I want to do) I'll probably just end up watching Quincy.

But I've struck upon a plan, I've instructed my flat mate to set me a target for tomorrow in the hope that this will create some sort of rudimentary motivational field. So my objective for tomorrow: I have to finish modelling 'Virtual Jimmy' (I'll explain this some other time) by the time my flat mate gets home or else ... well she might wag her finger and look disappointed - brr! But if this plan works out I'd like more suggestions - no, orders - for things to do each day.

I'm sure my flat mate can provide a few, but if anyone out there has anything they think I should do - anything cool I could draw, animate or make (eg ninjas/pirates/pirates fighting ninjas/robot pirates fighting ninja dinosaurs etc - I'm pretty versatile), somewhere interesting to go and see in london (eg the London Aquarium. Mmm - aquarium...), or just some dumb thing to do (eg buying something that begins with an 'l', or finding out if stickle bricks still exist) - that would be neat. I'm not saying I'll do anything - I won't eat cold baked beans for anyone - but if it's cool (and I actually bother to do it) I'll post some evidence of my doing it.

Ok, this will probably come up a blank in which case I'll have to rely on my old fall back: what would Quincy do?

(Actually he'd probably seduce a woman half his age - cool. Except that I'm only 25 - not so cool. Damn you quincy! That's it - from now on I watch Diagnosis Murder!)

Here's a picture of a little guy I came up with. I think his name is 'Amazing Power Boy'. I guess because he has amazing powers or something. Doesn't look much like a boy though. More like a sort of blue-dog-bug-thing. But 'Amazing Power Blue-Dog-Bug-Thing' doesn't sound so catchy.

Well here we are - the first of this weeks challenges, from a monkey lovin' (no - not that sort of monkey lovin') friend: to draw a picture of samurai monkey(TM) fighting an evil ninja squirrel (with spiffy photoshop gradient background - ooh.)

Kapow!

Todays challenge (as suggested by it's my limbo) was to go to see David Blaine hanging in a box. Ok, so I was actually challenged to make a scene so he'd get in the news, but I didn't much fancy that. However I think I have figured out how he's going to do it, so perhaps if I claim the £1,000,000 that will get him in the news and raise his celebdaq value.

Anyway, to prove I went here is my picture of David Blaine sitting in a box. I have highlighted a couple of area which are of particular interest, which I'll explain in a minute.

This all looks normal enough, just a guy in a box not eating anything for 44 days ... or is it??

I took this picture back home to my crime lab, where, using the power of science, I digitally enhanced the image and found that everything was not as it seemed ...

Take for instance the innocent looking pile of belongings on the right. Just a shapeless bundle right? That couldn't help with 44 days of starvation and boredom could it? But wait - take another look ...

And if this find wasn't enough to prove that something untoward was going on I made another even more startling discovery. By zooming in on the image of the seated Blaine I uncovered evidence that the famed illusionist isn't even in the box! Only visible to a trained eye such as mine, I believe that Blaine may be using a carefully constructed dummy to stand in for him. You probably won't be able to spot it, but if you look very closely at this zoomed in image you may be able to spot the tell-tale signs:

So what do you think? I'll certainly be getting in touch to see if I can claim my £1,000,000 reward. Riches here I come!