I'm sitting in a cafe - Fly One - in the City of London as I type this. I've just taken the photo opposite. And in a minute I'm going to upload this post and the photo to my web server, whereupon both it and the photo will be visible to the world, or at least the miniscule portion of it that will happen upon Brainstorm in a Teacup.

This is, if you think about it, a remarkable thing. True, I'm hardly spearheading a technological revolution, but a few years ago you just couldn't do this sort of thing.

Anyway, it's made possible by the fact that Fly One does free wi-fi. I'm in London because Em, my better half, is doing an accountancy exam round the corner, and I'm here for moral support. Since I'm trying to get to grips with this whole blogging malarkey, I figured I would find a wi-fi hotspot before I left (and did so with the help of the excellent Londonist), and Fly One was the nearest.

It's a pleasant enough cafe, but I would never have found it if not for the tip-off from Londonist. It probably costs less than fifty quid a month for them to provide wireless access, so if just twenty people come here who otherwise wouldn't, and spend a fiver, they more than break even (I'm assuming the profit margin on a cup of coffee is over 50%...).

The figure is probably more than that, so I daresay that providing free wi-fi gives a pretty good return on investment.

Back in 1989, when Al Gore Tim Berners-Lee invented the web, it was primarily used by academics transferring information between one another. The web was a means for transporting text across the internet, and as such, the standards that developed to allow it to do so were basic.

So were the first browsers. Mosaic, the precursor to Netscape Navigator and ultimately Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera et al, only needed to be any good at rendering text and a few static images, because that's all the web was.

But since the unwashed masses discovered modems, the web has been used for just about everything - commerce, banking, photo sharing, videos, gaming, education, writing documents, socialising, navel-gazing, emailing, job-hunting, listening to the radio...

And while the web's aging standards body (the W3C, still directed by Berners-Lee) has gamely tried to keep up, for the most part the web has become a hodge-podge of different technologies and standards - DHTML, XHTML, CSS, Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime, Javascript and AJAX, ActiveX, RSS, Atom, and so on - all tacked together to make the web do fun stuff. Like Facebook.

And yet, if you look at a screenshot of Mosaic, it looks remarkably familiar. For all that the web has evolved, the means of accessing its content - the browser - is fundamentally unaltered. For sure, Firefox has tabs, and integrated search, and all manner of twiddly buttons, but the basic concept - document is drawn in a rectangular window with a chunky toolbar across the top - is the same as it ever was. The interface is the same whether you're using Amazon or Zoho.

PicLens changes all that.

A few days ago we were cut off from the Internet - we're having some building work done here at Brainstorm Ranch, and a lorry delivering materials managed to sever the telephone cable.

It's worse than being without water - at least if the taps stop running you can go to the Spar and stock up. Though it did set me off wondering how long I could last without water if everyone's taps had stopped running (terrorism, perhaps, or a practical joke by a disgruntled Thames Water employee) and the Spar had run out. I don't just mean drinking, I mean washing, cooking, cleaning and so on - how long before everything begins to resemble a scene from Withnail & I?

I thought it might be interesting to find out. It's been filed under 'projects for a rainy day'.

Anyway, BT have put the tubes back together again. All is well.

As if Hollywood hadn't already proved just how completely it can destroy once-loved franchises (see: Rocky Balboa, Die Hard 4.0, Alien vs. Predator, Terminator 3 and the TV series), it's decided to wreck another just in case Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull turns out to be any good.

That's right, they're 'remaking' Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. For the love of God, why?

Bill & Ted is one of the greatest films ever made. It's the film that introduced me to George Carlin and Steve Vai. It's a treasured part of my childhood. And they're going to remake it with a 'funkier' time-travelling phonebox and a band called 'Atomic Gorillas' instead of the Wyld Stallyns.

Most non-bodacious, dude.

(Thanks, Moviehole.net)

Well, I've just had a nightmarish day trying to get things up and running with Internet Explorer 6. It's impossible to achieve the same visual layout in IE6 as in other browsers, because IE doesn't obey the web's standards. It puts things in the wrong place, forgets to render bits, and can't handle semi-transparent images.

IE users visiting this site will see a cut-down version - the width is fixed to 800px, and various visual features are disabled. They will also see a banner at the top urging them to switch to a modern browser, with a link to this article, explaining why IE6 acts as a brake on the development of the web.

On a more positive note, RSS is now enabled, courtesy of RSSPECT. RSS - Really Simple Syndication - is a way of viewing a website's content without visiting the website, which sounds useless but is actually a great way of keeping up to date with news sites and blogs that you follow. To get started with RSS, this page from the BBC does a good job of explaining everything.

To subscribe to this site, click on the link over to the right. At the moment there'll only be two articles in the feed - this one and the one below - but check back over the coming days.

Hi there.

After sitting on the sidelines for a while, I've decided to join the blogging fray. Right now, the front page is rather sparse - bear with me, I've only just moved in, and I've got boxes full of furniture all over the floor.

In some places, the paint is still drying - if you find any bugs, let me know. (Yes, I know this site looks like a dog's breakfast in Internet Explorer 6. Upgrade!)

In the meantime, feel free to poke around the rest of the site. And don't forget to click 'Add your comment' and say hello.