Day 31

Any resemblance to real search engines, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Day 30

My first experience of computer games was Galaxy Invader 1000. My mum won a small amount of money and bought everyone in the family a gift, and that was mine. I can still remember the sounds it made. I can still remember the box!

I'm quite certain that kids today, with their Xboxes and Playstations, will never experience quite the same thrill as I did from destroying LCD aliens with that juicy red fire button.

Day 29

Day 28

Day 27

Why do people use banknotes to snort drugs? Or is it just in films? You'd think a serious drug user would have their own porcelain tube, monogrammed in a felt lined box. Or perhaps that would be a bit of a giveaway if they got 'busted' by the 'feds'.

I keep forgetting the bloody punctuation. That's a full stop, badly Photoshopped in.

Day 26

My nephew drew me this picture after getting some dinosaur stencils for Christmas. It never fails to make me laugh.

Day 25

Just so we're clear, those extraneous bits are not punctuation. Or even punch-uation.

Day 24

Day 23

I was chopping carrots the other day and one of the discs rolled off the worktop onto the floor. As I bent down to retrieve it I found, with a level of surprise befitting someone who doesn't get out much, that it had landed on its edge. It's not a particularly thick edge, as you can see. Perhaps it's not as improbable as it seems but it moved me to take a photograph. Because that's proof. Yeah, well, you'll just have to trust me.

It gets worse. I actually left it there for two days until it dried up and fell over.

Day 22

Day 21

I watched a great film recently, and I mention it because it was a pleasant surprise. The film was Remember Me starring Robert 'Twilight' Pattinson, or 'R Patz' as the kids on the street (like me, for example) call him. I expected it to be a cliché-drizzled teen romance, which was fine because I like those, but it is in fact a moving and thoroughly engaging piece of filmmaking with excellent performances all round and a very human heart. I won't summarise the plot because I don't think for a moment that anyone is going to watch it on the back of my flimsy recommendation, but it impressed me enough to want to give it a big-up (hey kids). In contrived summary: a film that will live long in the memory.

Day 20

And so we complete our first sentence, which seemed like a good time for me to tackle the problem of summarising all the posts to date. Instead of a slideshow, which would have soon become very tedious, or thumbnails that I frankly can't be arsed with, you can now view the story so far on a separate page that I've called, helpfully, 'The story so far'. You can find the link over to the right under the banner. You will notice that each word links directly to its image. All in favour? Carried.

Day 19

Day 18

This was the first draft for this story. One word on every page.

Day 17

Slideshow suggestions please

Can anyone recommend a good place to create an online slideshow? I'm soon going to need somewhere that visitors can go to recap the story so far at reasonable speed, so ideally the slide duration should be editable and its progress pauseable. I've tried Flickr but it's not suitable for this kind of thing. I have Adobe Flash CS5 if there are any good templates out there.

Day 16

Can I just say that my use of thought bubbles for the first two ancestors is based on research no more thorough than a five second consultation with my own sense of what felt right in terms of vocal development. The use of the Latin alphabet throughout, however, is historically accurate.

Day 15

I completely forgot about the comma so had to hastily add it as graffiti, but I don't think it looks too bad.

Day 14

Day 13

On the front it says 'back', so you have to be careful not to put it on back to front.

Day 12

You won't believe how long I had to wait for the right word to randomly form in the smoke.

Day 11

Did you see Stargazing LIVE on the BBC last week? As someone whose fascination with astronomy is tethered by ignorance, I found it thoroughly enjoyable. It answered some of the questions I raised in a previous post, including confirmation that the fuzzy blob I was confused about is indeed the Andromeda galaxy (well done barriejohn), some 2.5 million light years away and yet visible with the naked eye. Mind blown? Check.

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to illustrate something as short as paces by using the vast distances between stars.

Day 10

I toyed with the idea of making today's word almost impossible to read. Would you object to a few 'challenging' posts? Perhaps with a cheat option if you're stumped?

Day 9

Day 8

Day 7

Day 6

Day 5

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2

That's right, 'eeemrdg'. I did mention that the story was in Icelandic, didn't I?

Day 1

And we're off. Be sure to return tomorrow for that sensational second word.