Why do you never update you indolent bastard? is a question I'm frequently asked. The answer, of course, is that I'm bone idle. Also, I underwent a massive change in lifestyle which leaves far less time available to update this site.

Look, here's a picture of a purple dinosaur. Now leave me alone for another 6 months.

On The Road With Moose 2000. OK, so putting down the old Teletubbies for a while, I set about getting me a new job. That's a long and involved and extremely dull story. No no, perhaps some other time.
So I'm down in London scouting around looking for somewhere to live. Got my mobile phone for calling the landlords, got my digital camera for comparing notes with my intended flatmate. Got my Newton-o'-useful-contacts, and my Game Dot Com of idle past-times. Looking good.
Remembering the immortal maxim: "accessorise", I complete the ensemble with a small battery-powered modem.
Style tip number one, road warriors: If you have to decide between a modem and an enormous sack of AC adapters, rechargers and docking stations, go for the Mobile Battersea Power Station every time.

Day three of the search and the phone is down to SMS and voice-mail checking only. The games and the camera went on the first day. The Newton marches on, but there's only so much pleasure to be derived from repeatedly thrashing the version of Reversi I found in the Newtcase. Delirious from another day of hopping the car from parking meter to parking meter while waiting for yet another smarmy agent in a BMW to fail to turn up to the non-existant address I was misinformed about, and with an indeterminate number of hours to kill before I find out whether anyone's prepared to suffer me sleeping on their floor for the night, I stumble upon the slightly tacky graphics of an Internet Cafe, and seek solace inside. I realise that some of the symptoms I'm experiencing are probably the result of my previous job's continuous IV drip of caffeine having been abruptly terminated - either that or London traffic is fuelled by a mixture of nitro-glycerine and mescalin - and hold off the sweet endorphin release of net access while I order a large black coffee. It's lucky that I do this before looking at the menu board, since, while checking whether I'll have change, I see that this establishment doesn't offer such a thing as a large "coffee", and I'd have been paralysed by choice trying to work out which of the arcane sequences of letters on the board represented the least frothed-up and spat-in concoction available. The chap behind the counter is admirably clear headed, and without a murmer decants two of the only-size-the-machine-can-handle-cups of coffee into a milkshake-sized mug, and makes up a price which appears reasonable or at least consistent.
I make my way over to the 'Log In Station' (till) slurping greedily at the coffee, and check whether they do telnet. The overseer is young and sounds American, but he appears to know what he's talking about, so I venture online. With another gulp of coffee, I try to manouever the mouse towards the start menu, but my spastic hands jolt and skitter all over the desk. Two abortive attempts later I realise that in fact they have a substandard mouse mat, and switch to keyboard shortcuts. Much better. The coffee is really taking effect now. All I need is some sweet sweet TCP-IP and I'll be right as rain.
First stop - as always - the finger of fun. They've removed the MSDOS prompt from the Start menu, but they can't stop me from running command directly. Hah.

finger johnc@idsoftware.com

Bad command or filename

Anyway, having returned from my quest with nothing to show for my trouble but a cold and a nervous tic in my left eye, it looks like I'm living Alan Partridge style in hotels for a while. The Teletubbies blackout will continue for a while longer. It's come to a poor pass that I couldn't even find the opportunity to write up my meeting with Dave Thompson (the Tinky Winky of hearts) last month.

You get the picture. Things have been a bit fuzzy at Castle Moose for a few months. To those of you who have written to me and never received a response, all I can say is 'Big Hug' and hope you'll be satisfied being fobbed off in such a facile manner, you fools.

Where are they now? What previously passed for news.

Again!