So yesterday I was having a film meeting at Pazzo's, and the writer of the short we're going to be producing next month (weather and time permitting) handed me the manuscript to his novel The Dope.

I'm about 50 pages in so far, and it's excellent. Very stream of consciousness, and very Chuck Palahniuk. Now all I need to do is figure out if (a) I want to become his literary agent (after all, I'm used to talking to publishers - I had to do it all the time as a freelancer), or (b) if I just want to find an agent for him (in which case, if anyone knows how to contact Chuck Palahniuk's literary agent, please let me know). Either way, it needs to get out there. This is good shit. Needs a bit of reformatting, and there's a couple of mis-used words in there, but that's what editors are for.

The story itself strikes me as what you'd get if Chuck did Trainspotting instead of Irvine Welsh. Except without the phonetically spelled Scottish accent liberally strewn throughout the pages.

It's certainly a page turner. Just have to wait and see... Jay Passer is the name of the author. Keep an eye out for him. You heard it here first, folks.

(BTW.... just in case you're not aware, Chuck Palahniuk wrote - amongst other excellent books - Fight Club)

Slashdot | How To Get Googled, By Hook Or By Crook

Looks like people are having a "hack google" competition. The only problem? Looks like it's a bunch of people who'd rather have google become their own personal advertizing playground.

The competition? Make a search for the phrase "nigritude ultramarine" bring up your site listed first on google. Sounds great, huh? Sure. Except for the fact that it's an advertizing company sponsoring the challenge, and this kind of thing will make google less useful as a search engine.

So please, follow my lead. If you're blogging, link to google itself with the phrase. That way Google will come up top on the list of sites - and they'll be stymied. Nyuk nyuk nyuk. In fact, to make it easier for you, just cut and paste this code:

"nigritude ultramarine"

That way, none of this "nigritude ultramarine" stuff should matter in the long run. And we'll all have a happy useful search engine. Ahhhhh... bliss...

Welcome to the Accidental Scientist. I'm Simon Cooke, and this is my blog. I'm a senior software engineer at a startup company in Seattle, where I program embedded and Windows software. I used to work at Microsoft (on the .NET framework), and at Sierra (on Generations and Photo Lab).

My interests include writing screenplays, making movies, and just general chicanery.

Once upon a time, I used to be a freelance journalist - but if you remember me, it's probably because of the regular column I wrote for Your Sinclair magazine (oh, the nostalgia!). Or you might have seen some of the articles I wrote for .net magazine, Internet Today, Internet & Comms Today, Net User, How To Get Online, or arcane.

How I got started on all of this was the SAM Coupé - a little-known British computer that came out in the early 90s (although my first system was a ZX81, it wasn't until I got the SAM that I started to accelerate). Once upon a time, I ran a demo programming team called "Entropy" - we put out a few demos, which you can run on the SAM Coupe Emulator SimCoupe.

So that's it. Welcome. You'll find all kinds of weird ramblings here - everything from snoring cures (no, seriously... I think about this stuff and dig out what info I can) to utilities and bits and pieces. At least, that's the plan.