Here's another of my creative Photoshop efforts. A variation on a theme, I'm sure you'll notice, but this puts me in with a chance of winning Carl's competition (head to Spoofworld if you want to find out more) with a combination of quality, original ideas and quantity. The stakes have been raised. No doubt Mark will come back fighting unless I can spill some beer on his computer later this evening.

In other news, this week's edition of the Mid Hampshire Observer printed a review I wrote plus a photo, also taken by me. I'll scan it tonight and post it here for your reading pleasure. There will be more to come which is encouraging a week before I have to prostitute myself to the construction industry once again due to the publishing world's inability to recognize real talent when they see it. I'd say it's their loss but that'll be scant consolation when I'm freezing my nuts off on the roof of some godforsaken building in Portsmouth (I know, of all places). Must find something to cheer me up now.

A couple of things to point you towards today: first up is Google Mars which is similar to Google Earth but slightly less useful. Still quite amazing in my opinion (which, as I have said before, is what you get here). The first person to spot the wreckage of the Beagle thingy that crashed there a couple of Christmases ago wins the admiration of his or her friends and a signed Busted CD single. Or something.

Perhaps even more amazing is the appearance of the Introspective Superstring , a new blog from a recent convert to all things blog-related. I was really looking forward to sending the author some abuse but as it turns out it's a sensitive and erudite offering and I'd have to be some sort of heartless sod to get the knives out. And I do have a heart, albeit one shrivelled and blackened with cynicism and barely-suppressed rage. There I was, expecting rants on how pointless all this technlogy stuff is, how the Brazillian football team is boring and a pale imitation of their 1970s forebears and so on. Nothing of the sort. As the man says: "Make people smile. Be happy. Enjoy life. Say thank you." That's is, after all, what this page is meant to be all about (today at least). Go see for yourself.

Oh how I would have loved to have been there to witness this meeting of minds. The great statesman, hero to a generation, promoter of civil rights, pushing for expansion at the very frontiers of freedom. And Nelson Mandela.

Who's the king now, Kong? Who's the daddy?