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So this has been a “meme” that’s been going round on Facebook like a virus. The idea is that you write 25 random things about yourself, post it as a note, and ‘tag’ a bunch of other people who then go and write a 25 random things note. They then tag people, and so it continues. The point of it is to get to know your friends better, apparently.

Anyway, I thought I’d post mine on my blog (which will then get imported as a note into Facebook) just because I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit recently and this will make it look like I’m doing something ;)

So here, in no particular order, are my 25 random things. I hope it gives you an insight into how boring I really am.

1. I once dressed up as Robin Hood for a fancy dress party (this was when I was about 7 or 8).
2. I’ve only ever been to two football games, both at Portman Road, to see Ipswich play Chelsea. I went with my Dad (who supports Chelsea – I ostensibly supported Ipswich although to be honest I’m not really into football).
3. As a university assignment I once programmed a robot to manoeuvre a football around a couple of obstacles and into a goal. Shut up, it was a proud moment for me!
4. My middle name is “Daniel”.
5. The first film I ever went to see at the cinema (that I remember seeing) was the animated version of “101 Dalmations”.
6. I performed “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” while I was at primary school.
7. I wasn’t a major character though. Actually I wasn’t a character at all – just a sort of backing singer. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
8. I’ve come to believe that every single person in the country performed “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” while they were at primary school.
9. I have only ever owned three cars. My first car was my Dad’s old car – a 1988 Rover 216s.
10. I’ve been DJing for eight years now. I started off playing trance in 2001, then moved to progressive house, then breakbeat (nu-skool breaks FTW), and finally drum & bass. It’s gone full circle now though because I recently bought some CD decks and starting playing my old trance CDs.
11. I started learning piano when I was about 12. But I’ve improved more in the last few years than I ever did during about 5-6 years of having lessons. Part of the reason for that is we didn’t have a piano at home, so I had to use the one in the (freezing cold) church next door. Guess why I didn’t practice much.
12. I’ve been learning to play the guitar since early 2008. I’m not great at that either – I can play a few chords but can’t really do much else.
13. Given the above two points, I have come to the conclusion that I’m not a natural musician. In fact I always feel like an imposter when I play at church, for example.
14. I have never broken any bones.
15. I am quite geeky when it comes to computers. I got my first PC, a 486 SX/25, when I was about 11. I’ve been messing around with them ever since.
16. I don’t use Microsoft Windows at home, I use Ubuntu Linux – although in the past I have used Fedora, Gentoo and even FreeBSD.
17. My favourite webcomic is XKCD, but my favourite cartoon is probably Calvin & Hobbes, with Dilbert coming second.
18. My absolute favourite TV sitcom of all time is “Spaced”. At uni we used to watch it all the time. Seriously, I don’t think a week went by without us watching at least one episode. And I love the newer Simon Pegg / Edgar Wright stuff (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz)
19. At Soul Survivor one year, a friend convinced me and another friend to do something slightly crazy. Soul Survivor is (or was) split up into different camping sites (“villages”) such as ‘orange 1′, ‘orange 2′, ‘red 1′ etc. Each one had its own sign. On the night before we left, we swapped a few of the signs around. Apparently as people were arriving the next day there was chaos as people were trying to find their villages. Good times.
20. My favourite band of all time is the Beatles (my last.fm page confirms this). I love pretty much everything they’ve done, but I particularly like their later stuff (from Rubber Soul onwards)
21. I prefer buying CDs to downloading, unless it’s an individual track I want. I like having a physical product, plus hard disks have crashed on me in the past. (Speaking of which, I must get an external HDD for backups…)
22. I enjoy learning theology and am currently finishing my third unit of the Moore Course (theology correspondence course from Moore College in Sydney, Australia).
23. I’m not really a sporty person but I do enjoy playing cricket and tennis. Haven’t played either in literally years though.
24. I used to be into gaming – particularly First-Person Shooters such as Half Life and Quake – and designed / ran a website called “Clan Factor” with a friend of mine.
25. It took me ages to come up with this list. I hope you’re happy. Thanks for tagging me, Ian :p

Something weird just happened on Facebook.

As some of you may know I have a Facebook Photo Uploader desktop application. I was looking about the “about” page for it (checking if there were any new death threats / hate messages on the discussion forum), and then clicked on the “Browse more applications” button.

I then clicked on the “Desktop” tab, to only show desktop applications. Nothing… no apps at all. I noticed the language was English (UK), so I changed it to English (US)… and still got nothing. So I changed it to English (Pirate) – and got a whole bunch?!!!

Ah well, at least Facebook has a sense of humour, apparently!

One of the annoying things about Facebook is the way it displays photos: at a very low resolution! You can upload photos at full resolution, but with Facebook you can only get a fairly low-res 600×450 (approx) resolution.

What I want to know is — why? Why this ridiculous restriction? Every other online photo service which I’ve used (Yahoo! Photos and Flickr) let you download the full resolution.

The only thing I can think of is that if people can’t download the full resolution photo from Facebook, they’ll be forced to use Facebook’s “Photo Prints” service (at least, I think Facebook has one!). But they could at least give you the option of getting photos in a slightly higher res (i.e., 1024 x 768) without too much fear of people doing that. And other photo sites offer you the option of getting prints and downloading the full-resolution version.

One of the predictions which Zeth made last month was that ‘Social Networking will become a protocol’.

I think that was half right: it’s not a protocol, it’s an API, developed by Google (of course).

Not that I think it’s a bad idea, mind, but I do wonder how long this social networking thing is going to last. There was an article on The Register recently about Facebook, in which they surmised that a lot of people use Facebook regularly for 4-5 months but then get bored with it and only check in from time to time if they get messages or the like. That seems to tally with my experience – I do log into Facebook daily, but only just to have a quick check of what’s going on!

But we shall see.

In case you hadn’t realised, Jesus is actually on Facebook!

This article explains…

[Warning: Article may contain humour]