Are you living in the same place as in 2004/05?
No, I have moved six times since 2004, and while one of those moves was transatlantic, two other moves were within the same apartment building, so I have experienced both extremes.
Would we recognise you if we passed you in the street?
Yes, although age has slightly withered me and custom may well have made stale my actually-quite-finite variety. My height has neither lengthened nor shortened, my weight has definitely heightened, and other relevant dimensions have decayed at what experts assure me is the appropriate rate.
What do you think is the best/most important new technology/online thingy to have appeared in recent years?
I’m not sure I can single out a particular technology out of so many in the past 7 years, but I think that what I find important is the ubiquity of technology in everyday life: the always-connected universal device (phone or tablet) that each person carries around and that links them to everything, everywhere, is still something amazing to me, even if I mostly take it for granted.
We all had a blog back then. Do you still have one, or are you mainly present somewhere else?
I stopped blogging some years back but I recently dipped my little toe in the tumblr waters to test the temperature. Otherwise, I am a sporadic tweeterer, instagrammater, and recently I even placed a drinks order in the comments of some long-lost, faraway blog.
What achievement of the last 7 years would you most like to celebrate here?
Let me see: I moved to America, got married, went back to university, became a US citizen, and recently had a son. So, I’m going to go with … staying friends in the human-physical-world-real-
Who would you like us to interview next, and what shall we ask them?
I would like you to rake the Diva of Troubledness across the coals and interrogate him about his prolific output and style. Or, as I prefer to think of it, how he write good and much.
I am both willing and able. Shoot!
As one of those friends in the physical-world-real-space (well okay he didn’t say he’d gone back to university for his flowery prose), I can attest that Mark has reached new heights as a person. He isn’t just aging with grace; he’s also the only straight man I know who can mix stripes and checks on the regular.
I have always admired his sartorial elegance.
I’ve always admired his statistical elephants. Those number-wrangling pachyderms are the shiznit!