I'm back from my travels, and it occurs to me that there's something I need to say here.

People regularly send me links to interesting news items via the "Talk to me" link on the front page. That's okay, although if you're going to do it you should be aware that I track the online tech news sources voraciously — if you've seen it, the odds are good that I have too. If it interests me you may prod me into writing something about my thoughts on the matter — but that doesn't happen often.

Slightly less frequently (a couple of times a week) people write to me and ask me to talk about their pet hobby-horse or news item. And I almost never do that, because this isn't that kind of blog.

What kind of blog is it, then?

It's a nine-year-old blog, is what it is. It's a blog I originally started because I'm a compulsive communicator, and usenet was even then going down the proverbial shitter, and it seemed like a good idea to have somewhere else to thump my tub.

Over the years I've talked about this and that, gotten wildly enthusiastic about some topics and bored with others