White china.

• The Britannia Hotel, Nottingham are not just crap, they're credit card fraudsters. Do feel free to propagate the link.

• Do not go to see The Science Of Sleep. Tell other people why they shouldn't go to see it either. (At least politicians aren't that stupid. Er.)

• Perhaps if we start telling crap programmers that "undefined behaviour" includes "may choose to remove your balls", they'll behave? (No actual balls removed at that link, worse luck.) (courtesy jdev)

• Scariest goddamn writer's guidelines ever. (courtesy sola cija)

I was talking about this with hirez on Saturday over too much beer. He's just off to a science fiction writer's workshop where he gets a chance to guzzle the holy pee of the Nielsen-Haydens and Doctorow and such, assuming he can fight his way to the holy pee first.

Anyway. I know damn well ideas are bloody everywhere. Since I got a digital camera that doesn't suck, I've started seeing photos that must be taken everywhere I go. I've become sensitised to pics that are good ideas. Smoke and Mirrors by Gaiman, half the bloody stories are about writing and getting and using ideas. So the question is not "where do you get your ideas?" but "how do you recognise ideas?"

I'm still working on that one for Uncyclopedia. I usually work by juxtaposition. Someone will say something or two words will fall together in my head. "Linux Pride" — you just need to think those two words together and the article pretty much writes itself. John says he was surprised to realise that he writes stories with the same bits of his brain that write code. This means I should learn to write code like I write Wikipedia or Uncyclopedia articles.

Recognising ideas is like seeing the Ballardian nature of too many things. What software is analogous to Vermillion Sands? (qmail is, of course, Chronopolis.)

How do I spot a photo? How do I recognise when a juxtaposition is article material? Anyone else? What do you do to pin yours (photos, stories, pictures, dollies, songs, fart modulations) down into usable form?