Minimalist poet, minimalist lifestyle

A man's life was saved by a chance handshake with a doctor who diagnosed him with a life-threatening tumour.
Mark Gurrieri, 36, was working at a restaurant when a friend introduced him to his dining partner, GP Chris Britt, reports the Daily Telegraph.
The two men shook hands and Dr Britt noticed Mr Gurrieri's huge, spongy-feeling hand and his large facial features as symptoms of acromegaly, a tumour at the base of the brain, which can be deadly if untreated.
Mr Gurrieri had the 2cm tumour diagnosed last month after doctors confirmed the rare condition.
"My mum thinks Chris is my guardian angel," he said.
"I could have lost my sight, or I could have had a number of other ailments, so I think I owe my life to Chris - and a few meals at the restaurant."
Dr Britt, 46, of Woodford Green, Essex, said he hadn't seen a case of acromegaly since he was a medical student.
"It's the sort of diagnosis you might make once in a career if you're lucky. It's so rare most GPs wouldn't have seen patients with it."

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that I installed the Flagcounter widget a few days ago. It displays the flag of the country from which each visitor has accessed the blog. Unlike StatCounter and Sitemeter which only display the last 100 or 500 visitors, Flagcounter keeps a running total and displays a graphic representation of the twenty most popular locations. At the moment it shows that about 58% of my visitors are from the UK.

Flagcounter is very easy to install, it doesn't need you to submit your email address in order to receive the HTML code specific to your blog. I've not come across this before and haven't a clue as to how it works.

Because it's a leap year, and February has twenty nine days, yesterday I reset the date on my digital watch from 1 to 29. This morning I've had to reset it again; from 30 back to 1.

In response to the observation that volunteers are too often seen as amateurs: "Just remember: Noah's Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals."