Yesterday I transferred from MPhil to PhD status at the Institute of Cancer Research, where I have been registered as a part-time PhD student since Michael Jackson was black. (I would love to be able to tell the story of my viva, but can’t.) One mad year of frenzied experimenting and writing from today I hope to finish at last.

From October I am also going to be writing a related book. There will be a cash advance in my bank account as a carrot and a contract with a written 18-month deadline as a stick.

I’ve already mentioned this to a couple of PooterGeekers, but this is the official announcement: because of these two (admittedly pleasing) developments there will be no time for me to maintain PooterGeek properly.

While I can still compete with Dr Berlinski here’s the current score:

“Damian.Counsell”: 1940
“Claire.Berlinski”: 995

. Maybe I should install Movable Type at berlinski.com so Claire can gloat on her own ‘Blog as she reverses the balance of Google-power.

I’ll archive the existing content here and fold in all those old pre-Movable Type entries from the early days. I’m keeping the PooterGeek domain, but in a month or so I’ll shut down the comments system so that those Naked Harry Potter fans shut up. [Whoops, I did it again.]

It’s been fun. Thank you for your attention and contributions.

No, the date I chose to declare the end of this journal wasn’t a coincidence.

I’ll be back.