We just turned the TV over, to discover Newsnight was on. The voiceover started “—the self-proclaimed world expert in the condition, who has written extensively about his own symptoms.” Right at that moment I would have given anything for the condition to be narcissism.

Fortunately I was saved anything because that’s exactly what condition they were talking about. It’s now my favourite story of the year.

Periodically, morons add me to an MSN conversation. I’m powerless to stop them, short of blocking them all, and I doubt the RAM exists in the world to store every moron on the internet. Here’s an excerpt from a chat I had with a moron and some other people he roped into a group chat (I think it was probably Serban who invited everyone, but he didn’t say much, and I don’t think he speaks at all in this section):

Andrew: Oh, great. A group conversation. These are almost never boring.
Robin: ok how the hell you got my email?
Robin: get*
Boom Worm: ~
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: me? I don’t
Robin: no no serban
Boom Worm: I got stuff to do
Andrew: What the hell is your name supposed to say?

Boom Worm has left the conversation.

Robin: mine?
Andrew: No, not yours.
Robin: SERBAN
Andrew: No, not his either.
Andrew: The one full of weird ASCII symbols that’s barely readable.
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: my name? ah that ain’t ascii
Robin: SERBAN
Andrew: Well, whatever it is.
Andrew: What does it say?
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: it says “Apocalypse -|o|- The Hunter -|o|-

Boom Worm has been added to the conversation.

GcIuFrTsEeDd has been added to the conversation.

Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: shouln’d be too hard to read…
Andrew: Well, see, I’d thought it might, but then I thought, no, it says “Apocalypse the hutner” and that’s not a word.
Robin: what the hell is wrong with serban
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: a crap… ur right
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: it does say hutner
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: waaaa
Serban: nothing!!!!!!!
Robin: ok
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: *goes to change it*

It is perhaps worth mentioning that the word “Apocalypse” appeared correctly in MSN, but appears as “Apocalyspe” here becase some of the characters have a right-to-left reading order assosciated with them. Try selecting the name slowly and see what happens.

Robin: where you from guys
Robin: me canada
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: Holland
Robin: nice
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: (netherlands)
Andrew: What other holland is there?
GcIuFrTsEeDd(w): im half dutch
Andrew: No, you’re double dutch,

Serban has left the conversation.

GcIuFrTsEeDd: goodbye
Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: weird guy…

GcIuFrTsEeDd has left the conversation.

Andrew: Wouldn’t it be funny if we kept adding him?

I expect I’ll hear more from him in the future.

Update; 20050514

Дקּ¤¢дŁұקּﻯξ -|¤|- ŦĦ€ ћЦ†ηӘя: I say, ignorabce is blitz

Oh, yes.

Update; 20050515

Today he signed on and started sending me files he’d downloaded from wormsforts.com. It’s an amusingly common conception that I’m unable to find these files myself. Then inspiration struck him:

Serban: i got an idea
Serban: when we will have worms4 we can play online
Serban: i will kill you
Andrew: Nobody has ever thought of that idea!
Serban: in very good at 3d worms games

Serban: how old are you?
Andrew: 22
Serban: oooooooooooopsssssssssssssssssss
Serban: ………………………..
Andrew: What, have you been telling people something else?
Serban: no
Serban: but i never didint talk with tennagers of 22 years
Andrew: That’s probably because there are no 22 year old teenagers.
Serban: ok

Update; 20050609

This is the entirety of today’s conversation between me and Serban:

Serban: bye
Andrew: Bye.

Update; 20050624

I just blocked Serban. Guess why.

Serban just sent you a Nudge!
Serban just sent you a Nudge!
Andrew: What the hell do you want?
Serban: nothing
Andrew: Then stop nudging me
Serban just sent you a Nudge!
Serban:sorryy

Ï€ is a complex and bizarre thing. It goes on for ever, or at lest appears to. Some people are convinced that Ï€ means something, though personally I think it’s just Ï€. This kind of thing doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just there, like the sky being blue, or grass being green. I’m fairly certain you could study Ï€ for decades and have no idea what it means. You could study maths for decades and not understand Ï€. As Ï€ goes on it becomes less and less predictable, but it always remains very sure of itself, very black-and-white. Ï€ is one of the strangest things in the universe. You’d probably best just ignore it.

This is not a mathematical essay.

This is a film review.

It’s an old joke, and a bad one, that Thermos flasks must know whether their contents are hot or cold in order to preserve this state. It’s bad for a number of reasons; because the process is the same either way, because the contents are inside it and you would know if I poured hot or cold liquid into your insides, because the flask would actually be much more efficient if it did know… Conversely, it’s old for just one reason; that it was written a long time ago.

Carex Hand Lotion is a far newer concept. Carex Hand Lotion claims, on the bottle, to kill “bad” bacteria and help “good” bacteria. I have two questions:

1. How does it know which is which?

2. Would it be possible to make a version that worked on humans, and just release it into the atmosphere?

To my eyes, that would save a lot of money spending five months trying people wihtout any evidence when you could just give them a double dose of Carexine and see if they became more healthy or died instantly. It does rather necessitate capital punishment, but since there would be zero chance of any innocent people being executed, fewer people would complain.

Granted, they wouldn’t always be guitly of the specific crime you expect, but it kills bad people and helps good people.

This is clearly an area that requires further research.

This was some time ago now, but here it is anyway:

Rubbertoes: hi
Andrew: Hi
Andrew: Do you really have rubber toes?
Rubbertoes: no!
Andrew: You’re no fun.
Rubbertoes: is andrew taylor have ur real name
Rubbertoes: is andrew taylor ur real name
Rubbertoes: ??
Andrew: No, my real name is Lee Harvey Oswald.
Andrew: I didn’t think that would be a good name to give out.
Rubbertoes: okie dokie
Rubbertoes: thought it wasnt
Rubbertoes: coz
Rubbertoes: in worms 3d
Rubbertoes: theres a worm
Rubbertoes: on comouter team
Rubbertoes: called Andrew YTaylor
Rubbertoes: and u play worms so i kinda worked it out
Andrew: Yes, you did.

For those of you who don’t know, I spend more time than can possibly be healthy on Team17’s forums. When the time came to draw up a list of random names for Worms 3D, they included some of the forum users. This, of course, caused a lot of bickering about who was and was not in, so that wasn’t done for the following games. Although, some of the random names in Worms Forts Under Seige are mine — I’d come up with them for whatever version Goblins was on then, but clearly that’s never getting off the ground so I let Team17 have them. Anyhow, getting back to the story…

Andrew: What I did was, I bought Worms3D, saw that worm, and I thought “that’s a cool name”.
Rubbertoes: in worms 3d a worm on computer team called andre taylor so i thought hmmm u play worms so I was lead to suspision about ur real name
Andrew: Then what I did was, I travelled backwards in time to August 2001 and registered a forum account using it.
Rubbertoes: so why hide ur real name
Rubbertoes: u r a computer wiz u make games and laucnhers for games ur cool