Where was James Bond in 2007?

It has been 364 days, and it only occurred to me just now ...

Has anyone noticed a lack of anything James Bond-related this year? A James Bond festival of sorts? Agent Of The Year front covers on glossy magazines? Personally I've not heard of as much as a James Bond Lookalike contest, or even a Give Us Your Best James Bond Quote In A James Bond Voice contest on radio.

There has, for crying out loud, not even been a James Bond MOVIE out this year!

What's wrong with this picture? It's the year two-thousand-and-seven, isn't it? Two-double-oh-seven. Did the British movie industry completely miss, or ignore, the symbolic value of this number, and the call for a special event of some sort in its honour?

If they did anything at all, they've been quite discrete about it. I, for one, certainly haven't caught whiff of anything at all. Though I have to admit that it took me 364 days and a few hours to come up with the connection myself.

And now, with only a few hours left to go, I guess it's a little late to do anything big about it at this point.

I'll just say Happy '007, James!, and lift an imaginary Martini glass in salute.

It just quit on me ...

I'm a bit sad, really. I've had this camera for the last few years, four and a half in all, taken thousand of photos with it, and now it has gone and retired itself. It just won't take any more pictures. It's a Canon IXUS 400 which I got in June 2003, and it has been with me just about everywhere I've been since. And I've taken pictures of just about everything I could find. The index number on the last shot I took with it, which was this last Christmas Eve, is 23790, and it decided to quit while I was trying to take a photo of the cat sleeping underneath the Christmas tree only a couple of days later. I've no idea what's supposed to be wrong with taking photos of cats under Christmas trees, or what the cat might possibly have done to the camera when I wasn't watching, but the camera obviously didn't like it much, got fed up with it all, and is now permanently no longer on speaking terms with memory cards.

So, my dear friend since summer of '03 and unto this fateful Thursday, Christmas 2007, I guess it's time to face the end of our working days together, to go our separate ways where you'll confine yourself to a desolate spot on the bookshelf for cameras and outdated technology of yesteryear, and I'll be on the lookout for someone younger, prettier and above all thinner, who will take your place to be at my beck and call and go even further in the quest to fulfill my every want and need.

No, seriously folks, it's a camera I'm talking to here ;-)

I think they may have the IXUS 70 at a reasonably reasonable price at the nearby electro shop. With a bit of luck I'll get hold of one before the fireworks on New Year's Eve.

It's in the words

How to tell the difference between writers who use a spell-checker, and those who don't:

Those who don't, publish articles that have words in them that can't be found in any dictionary, and only your imagination—if anything—can give you clues as to what the writer really intended.

Those who do, publish articles that have words in them that certainly exist, but appear in contexts that have nothing to do with what the words actually mean.

I'm not entirely sure which is worse.