8 Random Facts Meme

Alec Couros tagged me, so I’d better respond. I’m doing it here rather than on my teaching blog because I feel this is a more appropriate home. 🙂

1. Post these rules before you give your facts
2. List 8 random facts about yourself
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

Here goes (without, of course, me mentioning anything about how impossible it is for human beings to do anything truly random…)

1. My first pet was a fish called Banjo that spent more time swimming backwards than forwards.
2. I was brought up in Ashington, at one time the largest mining village in the world.
3. I bite my fingernails.
4. My political views swing wildly from fairly right-wing to quasi-communism.
5. I know every line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
6. I get really bad migraines from the colour annatto (and related orangey food colours), which can be found in Coca-Cola, coloured cheeses, etc.
7. As an undergraduate student I worked in HMV and developed quite an eclectic taste in music.
8. To my shame, my wife Hannah beats me at almost every game under the sun. Except cards. 🙂

Like Alec, I’m not going to bother commenting on the following people’s blogs to let them know they’ve been ‘tagged’. Instead I’ll leave it to the power of WordPress and Technorati! I’ll just go with those in my ‘edublogs – must reads’ folder in Google Reader:

• Chris Sessums
• Doug Noon
• Karyn Romeis has already posted hers
• Wes Fryer has already posted his
• George Siemens
• Clarence Fisher
• Karl Fisch
• Jeff Utecht
• Will Richardson