The experiment is working quite well.
On Friday night I contemplate again the fact that I had spent far too much time doing really unconstructive stuff. That means the catbox. So I decided to what I usually do when I detect a compulsion in myself. If I could stay off E2 entirely for a week I would believe that I was in control again. But when to do this? There is a nodermeet next Saturday, and I'd need to check in to the site to find out where it is. I don't consider meeting people face to face on a Saturday afternoon unconstructive – I'm on my own enough of the time as it is. So why not start right away? I was last online at work, say 5:30pm Friday. I could log on again the same time next week, and that would be that.
As I say, it's been good. I've been coding like a demon at work, and have also written a few new writeups (this included) I'll post them on the weekend.
Other (non-)news is I am doing lots of gym, have a new flatmate who is a French PHD student, and went to a great concert at the Barbican – "Tabla Beat science" – a group including Bill Laswell on Bass, Karsh Kale on Drums, percussionist Zakir Hussain on Tabla, Ustad Sultan Khan (sarangi and vocals) Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shibabaw (vocals) and
DJ Disk (turntables) jamming tablatronic style.
I'm nearly ready with another mix CD, to be called "Rapid urbanisation", mostly hard and heavy music. It's a fair trawl through what I'm listening to, except for the merzbow – that noise is just completely unlistenable.
Everything 2 and Kazaa continue to expand and define my musical tastes. This time it's a light and pretty American hard-space-rock band called 30 seconds to Mars. I read the writeup on E2, listened to the tracks on Kazaa, and now I have the CD via Amazon. They don't have a wide range of sounds or melodies, but their clean-wall-of-silver-processed-guitar-melody is rather good. We can hope that their next disk will be even better.
Even less newsworthy is the site http://www.yournotme.com/ which says that there 136 are of me. That is, there are 136 people with the same first and last name as myself on the UK electoral roll as of 2000. I knew of 2 or 3 of me worldwide from google searches, but this is a new level of non-uniqueness.