OK, there are people who will try to market themselves on Twitter, just as there are people who will try to do that on any broadcast-style medium. In fact, we praise many people who market themselves -- pointing at those who have built up a large Twitter following (see Tracking Your Twitter Growth With Twitterholic, TwitDir, Tweeterboard & Others) or a company that uses it as a communication channel.

Marketing is not spam. For me, spam is unwanted marketing -- marketing that comes into your life almost against your will and adds no value to it. In the real world, it's like junk mail or telemarketer calls. On the web, it's email from people who got your address somehow, a search listing that's been shoved in front of you but has no real relevance or other crud that people are so familiar with.

So Twitter spam? How is an unwanted message getting in front of you on Twitter, to the degree we have this new Twitter Blacklist. By the way, these are not "known" spammers on Twitter as defined by Twitter itself. They are people who, as far as I can tell, the Twitter Blacklist has decided are spammers (in particular, this post leads to this discussion where Twitter says it has no public blacklist but does suspend accounts it feels are abusive or violating its terms).

I've long wanted to do a post about the "German village" that's about a mile from our home in Wiltshire. The British Army uses this as an urban training ground (and a few years ago, an "Iraqi village" sprung up next to it. Living in the middle of the Salisbury Plain training grounds, you get used to things like giant airplanes flying just above the house or tanks firing loudly only a mile away. But imagine my surprise to read on Techmeme that we're about to be invaded by robotic scouts! Well, the German village that is. News.com and New Scientist have more about the competition that's being held. And doesn't it figure -- we'll be gone by the time in August when it happens! Well, I'll get out to the village as I've been meaning to for ages to shoot some photos before it happens. Above, a close-up of the village (very out of date, not showing the Iraqi village). Below, our house in relation to the village.

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Only one more day left in Newport Beach before heading back to the UK, at least until the permanent move this summer. Below, a few random photos from beachside: the filming of Hard Breakers, the world's most expensive basketball court, a freaky weird cat and the deal with that picture above.

I twittered my surprise at the rise in lunch cost and was impressed by the reaction. Everyone wanted to remark! OK, not everyone, but it was a strong response. So I asked people on Twitter to tell me what they paid when they were in school and when that was. Below, just a fun round-up of what came back.