Two more reasons to miss that deadline

A couple of things to which I'd like to draw your attention:

• The splendidly lugubrious Bête de Jour is conducting a survey of blogging practices. Yeah, yeah, all been done before, I know, but this one's good. Like the best surveys, it actually makes you think about your own actions and motivations as you're completing it. Although I suppose that's not necessarily a good thing, because it means the subject is affected by the act of being observed. Anyway, it's here, so just go and blimmin' do it, OK?

• And the fearsomely intelligent Dr Ian Hocking has come up with an interesting twist on Twitter. (It's cooler than Facebook; John Humphrys said so.) He's writing a novel, and he's having his heroine, Saskia Brandt, send updates on her triumphs and tribulations as the narrative develops, all in 140 characters or fewer. I do wonder what he'll do when he gets to editing, though. If he cuts something out, maybe Saskia will have to send a new message saying that, actually, that thing I did six weeks ago, involving the secret policeman and the teleport device and the tureen of borscht, well, I didn't. Social networking, St Petersburg-1907-style, starts here.