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I spent some selfish time on Tuesday watching Donnie Darko. I wasn’t giving the film my full attention so I had to watch it again, in between I spent some time on the website and reading the FAQ both of which are well worth going through, however they are full of spoilers, so best to watch the film first. Anyway, watching the film re-kindled my love of watching films with a complex plot, films like WALL-E], The Dark Knight and Iron Man are great to watch, however you hardly leave the cinema wondering what just happened… in a good way. It is a fine balance between creating a film that totally confuses, and makes you think. ...

20 hours of driving lessons completed now, and Kev and I took the time to go through the Driver’s Record that the Driving Standards Agency provides people who book a theory test for the first time. The Driver’s Record is broken down into twenty driving skills and four other skills related to car ownership. You can read more about the Driver’s Record on direct.gov. Each of the 20 driving skills are rated between 1 and 5, where 1 is Introduced and 5 is independent without prompts from the driving instructor. In total I have one of the skills at level 5, three at level 4, twelve at level 3 none at level 2, two at level 1 and there are two that I have not looked at yet (emergency stops and parking). I am pleased with the progress I have made although I expect I will need another 40 hours of lessons before I will be close to being able to take my practical test. ...

In Europe at least, Twitter was unable to come to an agreement with mobile phone operators to continue to send incoming Tweets to mobile phones via SMS, at least one person thinks that SMS is a deceptively profitable service for the network operators. Surely services that use SMS are going to generate more revenue as people pass funny Tweets onto non-Twitter users. After all, all of those jokes that zip round like wildfire whenever something happens in the news aren’t just the creative juices of the masses expressed in a short message, they are written by the networks to encourage people to send more messages (by passing the jokes on). ...

Well roundabouts went well today, I am still not anywhere near confident on them but I was bringing my speed down most of the time. I must admit I am itching to get out in a car again to practice more. I will have to wait as my two weeks of regular lessons have come to an end, could only book one lesson next week as Kev is off to Rivercamp on Friday, and has lessons the rest of the week. ...

If you are following me on Twitter you will have seen that Peacehaven was very wet this morning, of course by the time I have left my basement office it was bright sunshine. I was glad of it as we went off towards Shoreham and then onto the A27 to head back towards Newhaven. It seems that driving fast and overtaking comes fairly easily to me, perhaps being on my bike has provided me with practical practice. ...

I don’t have much time to blog today, so it is fortunate that much of what I described yesterday was practiced today. It was a narrower road and it was much harder to get it right. I have got the procedure down in my head now though, will need more practice but I am making progress. Tomorrow is “driving a bit faster” which should be fun, not to0 fun mind… I am not one for speeding… intentionally.

Today’s lesson was very distinctly split into two, Kev allowed me to drive off from work in Hove much to the amusement of the caretakers who didn’t know that I couldn’t drive. From there Kev took me through the area between the Old Shoreham Road (A270) and the coast road (A259) drilling the MSM-PSL junction procedure I had been taught previously. I have been having trouble linking up the stopping at junctions and starting off again, basically I spent too long at a junction that in some cases I shouldn’t have to stop at. ...

I know this is quite old news really, but I had not seen this until it was linked on Twitter, so I thought I would blog it on the off chance that some one else hadn’t seen it either. Essentially all it is three videos of some guy (Matt Harding) who travels round the world recording short clips of him doing a little dance (very badly - his own words), each video has been set to the lyrics sung in a dieing Solomon Islands. in the third, and most recent, video Matt is joined by thousands of people who wanted to dance with him. ...

I have been using StumbleUpon for a couple of years now, it is a superb way of finding websites that you wish you had known about a long time ago. Once in a while you stumble upon a page that you really wonder how they got there so fast. I am not sure if this person has underestimated the capacity of the Internet to spread information really quickly or if it is a marketing thing. I have decided to blur out the identifiable information until I can work out which of the above it is. ...

My tenth hour of driving lessons is over, and I am pleased with my progress. It takes a surprising amount out of you driving around, it is possible that because I am quite tense while driving I am making it worse for myself, I am relaxing more. My steering has improved and I am more or less getting everything done. That is not to say that I am not making mistakes - I am making a lot of mistakes - but that is okay mistakes are part of the process. ...