Avid Arrod fan James found this article on BBC news Virtual lab aids drugs research

Basically a networked community of scientists can get paid for an answer to questions posed by pharma companies. An interesting twist is the democratising effect created by ensuring that both questioner and respondent remain anonymous.

Dave is really intrigued to know how this might be expanded to all sorts of questions and answers, such as the model tried in Google answers. Imagine if we could all just stay at home, disseminate our wisdom via the net and get paid for it!

Inspired by the good people at www.wordspy.com, Dave has decided to invent a new word: annotophilia.

If you suffer from annotophilia you will feel compelled to carry some form of writing and recording device wherever you go. Not limited to older technology this include those people terminally attached to their PDAs. The text-book case will feel that he or she generates good ideas or has profound thoughts, but find that they forget them just after they strike: thus the notebook - electronic or otherwise - must always be with them.

Dave has now got to the stage of need to select which notebook might be most appropriate to take with him when he packs for a weekend away…

On a serious note, though, the experiment with the notebook is proving very useful in jotting down ideas that spark off articles and blogs here on arrod - guess what I was doing when I dreamed this one up…

In taking lots of notes Dave is (sadly) coming up with a rough format, and asterisk indicates something I have to do, for example. I'd love to know if anyone else has successful note-writing careers and if you have your own language of symbols as well.

Dave's in a reflective mood today, and thought that he'd do a brief overview of 2003...

Arrod started in May 2003 with just a few pages. No-one noticed it at first and Dave used the time to build up some articles and content. Dave then started telling friends and they dutifully visited and gave feedback and suggestions.

Dave then aggressively pushed arrod to the search engines and using his search engine optimisation skills was very successful - 88% of all visits in 2003 were from search engines

Over 7000 people visited Arrod in 2003 and viewed nearly 22000 pages. There are now some 150 pages on arrod and Dave is still writing! With all the positive things to look forward to (see below) I'm very interested to know what 2004 has in store for my little web-project...

Happy new year to everyone! Dave is feeling very positive about 2004, and it promises to be a bumper second year for arrod

As arrod enters it's second calendar year there are four (count them!) sponsorship deals in negotiation... Now obviously I can't reveal anything as yet, but stay put for associations to some very fab people.

Dave is also excited by all the new things happening this year: By May he will have moved house, started an OU course on systems, completed an A level in philosophy, achieved his goal of career happiness, completed two evening courses, attended three lectures at the RI, and have given up sleeping!

Dave's new years resolution is to read for an hour every day.