You may not have noticed my quiescence, because frankly James' is much more of a shock. I'm amazed he's been able to hold it in this long; entire weeks have passed with no post from him at all. Incredible.

However I have also been quiet, and probably will continue to be so for a while. I'm currently in New York, sitting in someone else's office (where the lights are on a motion sensor, so every so often they turn off, leaving me in darkness until I flap my arms around). This is "head office", the nerve centre of DoubleClick, my current employers. In some ways it's much like the London office I'm based in (which was until recently a separate company); the people are passionate, generally have a good sense of humour, all good stuff - but there are a few key differences...

• many more people, to a quiet terrifying extent; I could probably walk the corridors here for a week and still not have passed everyone (possibly because they'd be sat down working, not walking the corridors)
• everyone seems to be married; probably a surprise only because Tangozebra has a disproportionate number of people who aren't (draw your own conclusions)
• lots more whiteboards - as someone who loves whiteboards, and has been campaigning internally to get lots more, I'm really encouraged to see them around, not quite flocking, but at least in enough numbers that once the humans go home they can be gregarious, the way whiteboards should be

Damn, the light's gone out again. Off to flap.

Leading (technology) blogger Kathy Sierra has received death threats and sexual and violent intimidation both in comments on her own blog and elsewhere. As a result she's pulled out of a speaking/training engagement - I can only hope that the people responsible are found, and that she can in time regain some normalcy in her life.

My reaction to this is horror, but as I think about it, death threats, intimidation and inciting people to take matters into their own hands - despite the law - is what the UK tabloid press does best. It's awful that the blogging world has got to this point... awful, but perhaps not surprising.

I think people too often forget that the reason these things happen is that we are all people, and some people (quite a lot, as it happens) don't really respect everyone else. (Indeed, it's doubtful anyone ever respects everyone else.) That this hasn't happened in high profile blogging circles before certainly doesn't mean it hasn't happened in blogs (there's a lot that hides in the long tail); it has, after all, happened in one way or another throughout all of human history. We are mean people, and we do mean things.

Tim Bray, most often a fount of sanity and reasoned thought, calls for more information to be dug up, which while valuable still seems to fall into the trap of believing that blogging is its own society, and that we can police it internally. We cannot. Increasingly bloggers aren't even a separate community; blogging has become too broad, too common, too intertwined with too many people's lives - it is just another tool in the wider world. Saying that something is badly out of control and needs to be fixed, urgently, as Bray does, suggests that this is something internal to the blogging community, which it absolutely is not. The demons came in with us, and they won't leave until we leave: tackling them inside the small room of the web will at most damage the furniture.

If we want this to stop happening, it has to be tackled out in society, in the real world. I'm not convinced that this is even possible, although of course that doesn't mean we should not try as hard as possible.

(Anyone find any women-at-risk charities in the United States? Google fails me...)

How evil are you?

[Via Suzie Austin, who is evil.]

Or LOVEFiLM as we're probably supposed to capitalise it. I'm updating my rental list at the moment, as I do every so often, and I'm shocked at the number of features that they used to have (or at least the one they gobbled up, ScreenSelect, used to have) that now don't work.

For instance, although I can still hide a title on the recommendation list, it's no longer marked in a way that makes obvious sense, so I have to play around to find it. (And I'll probably forget next time, and have to play around again.)

And worse. Actually, each time I find something that is wrong or missing, it turns out that actually it isn't missing, it's just odd and not terribly obvious. And the recommendations system seems completely buggered: it's recommending the second half of Lost season 1, not on the basis of the first half of Lost season 1, but because I've selected 24 (yes, people might like both, but they aren't remotely similar or indeed terribly overlapping viewerships - are they?). And it seems to prefer making suggestions based on things I've expressed some interest in over things I've actually rated. Which makes me wonder why they want me to rate things at all.

And when you go back to a page having updated something, using their own buttons to get back to what you were doing before, the page doesn't contain the updated information. That's just shoddy. And their web layout is horrible and confusing. And they don't seem to take account of "please hide this" instructions in sorting out recommendations (with the result that I'm getting kind of tired of saying that I don't want to rent episodes of The Simpsons). It's like a service designed by bank managers.

Okay, time to chill out and go to bed. But L0v3f17m sux.

With sadness: Ian Richardson, RIP. (Via Rabbit Strike.)

Heaven help people who actually expect to learn something while studying for their be-like-us Britishness test. Ignoring for a moment the weird capitalisation (because neat English isn't terribly British), and instead boggle at the idea that a Britishness test - a way of determining whether someone has sufficient knowledge of British norms, culture and government to be able to successfully integrate in society - can be prepared for by a "life in the UK handbook", and assessed using multiple choice questions. Which of course you can practice beforehand on the official website, because otherwise it would be discriminatory.

I'm always amazed at the waste of time spent in preparing for these kinds of tests, given how spoonfed towards a pass you are. Then I remember that some people fail the Driving Test Theory, and I despair.

Over the weekend, James and I finally dragged our battered bodies in front of a computer for long enough to finish off our first Talk To Rex film, a whimsical little comedy about a dark and evil woman who terrifies people using her shiny necklace. It's written and directed by James, so I'll let him tell you all about it: Hide and Seek.

Over the next couple of weeks, Kevin is doing a number of shows at The Etcetera Theatre in Camden, including mask, improvisation and (unless he's cut that bit) puppetry using found objects - amongst other things. If you have a soul, you'll like his work, so please: go see.