I’m from the US, and a rural area at that, so to me “rural” means “I can’t see any evidence of people no matter how hard I look and it’s a long drive to the nearest supermarket.”

As I discovered in the UK, areas classified as “rural” in the minds of the British are totally different than I expected or considered.

I was riding in a co-worker’s car and we were passing what looked to me like a pretty standard semi-suburban area – not that dense, but with a few dwellings and businesses around and off in the distance.

My co-worker commented something like, “It’s hard to find anything out in these rural areas.”

I looked around, but didn’t say anything. I could see a dozen houses, a pub, a restaurant and a hardware store. Where I am from, that’s a town!

But in the UK, it is “rural.”

Strange these differences that you’d never even begin to think about if you don’t experience them in person, even in two cultures similar in so many ways.

Here’s the iguana that’s been doing iguana stuff outside our place.

It’s over three feet long and looks fearsome, but they are docile vegetarians. Also their skin doesn’t really look pixelated like that. The resize algorithm in GIMP was written by that slow kid in 3rd grade who ate paste and whose parents encouraged him to run with scissors. At least as far as I can tell.

Nice gender bend: Streetfighter Sagat cosplay.

Streetfighter is one of the few video games I’ve played a lot of, because I can’t really stand puzzle or quest games. Sagat was my least favorite character to fight.

Love the scar and the contacts.

The copyright cops are making everything worse as usual.

If I had the power to do anything I wanted to the laws of the US, one of the first things I’d do is to eliminate copyright altogether. Not curtail it, not reduce its length.

Nuke it.

Yes, it’d be chaos for a while. But from chaos something new and better would be born – better because it could not get any worse in the copyright arena than it is right now.