Automatic writing. Bowels direct to keyboard, unimpeded. Results variable.

• Is it Gay or is it Maxim?

• Holy crap HipHop is fast. Hosting companies sell disk and bandwidth; I can see them subsidising HipHopisation of popular PHP crapware just to save on CPU.

• Wikimedia blog: The Wikipedia/Wikimedia Press Coverage Bingo Card.

• NewsTechnica: Derby commuter hell named after Lara Croft; Socialist Muslim Obama meets Atheist hate groups to destroy US; Jaron Lanier: Why people should pay more attention to me and not Web 2.0; Apple admits using subtle and precise child labour.

My dad is very ill and I will need to dash back to Australia shortly, not sure precisely when. Basically, he's old and his body's clapped out. He had a bad turn before Christmas and has been on steroids since; these have masked something else, which has put him in hospital. He's currently in an induced coma while they try to work out what the heck it is and is stable. So far, no news is not bad news! Thanks for the messages of support.

(Where the hell did I put my driver's licence? No way I'm going back to Perth without being able to drive.)

The writer's block is slightly cleared — I wrote three NewsTechnicas in one day yesterday. I've also done a favicon. I've tested it in every other browser, does it work in IE6? It's a lower-case "n" in white on red.

We need a statue of John Peel outside Mark Thompson's office, looking up at him, as a gentle daily reminder.