Happy New Year to you all.

I know I'm a bit late, but I've spent the day (1) wandering Oxford St (which wasn't actually too bad people-wise, but the sales were rubbish: and (2) packing up the utility room. The flat is now full of boxes. Huzzah!

The sheer quantity of Chinese manufactured goods is breathtaking. I did my 10 items at random in Clinton Cards on Saturday, and for the first time got 100%. Not buying Chinese is possible, but not easy. Especially where tat is concerned ( Read more... )

I have foolishly volunteered to participate in a "Secret Santa". So just what *do* I buy for a fiver for a man I don't know?

Our local GP surgery has just entered the 21st century with a vengeance. They have installed a self check-in screen; you enter sex and date of birth, and it says "we have found an appointment at 1715 for a male of that date of birth. Is that you?" Tapping "yes" alerts the doctor you've arrived (hopefully by means of an electric shock), and means ( Read more... )

I was feeling really Christmassy and festive yesterday when I caught the first of Asda's yuletide "buy our crap" adverts ( Read more... )

Shan't be at B Movie as we'll be at the opera.

It really is about time I learned to touch type properly. I was of that generation which were never taught keyoard skills at school. I can type reasonably quickly, but my accuracy is woeful.

Can anyone recommend a half decent teach-yourself resource, either bought or online please?

Has anyone had probalems with the Mac Disk Utility crashing when trying to partition a disk previously formatted with either NTFS or FAT32? It's happened a few times now. I'd like to reformat my 500gb disk into 250gb FAT32 and 250gb Mac Extended. I can set up th epartition fine, but as soon as it gets to the "go" part, clicking it causes the ( Read more... )

We had a relaxing time in Lanzarote, and now after the shock of returning to work after a week off (and a work email inbox that went from 9% to 84% in 5 working days!), I've now got round to posting some of my photos from the island on Flickr. Go Look ( Read more... )

Between seven and 14 per cent of people in the UK deliberately harm themselves. MRC researchers have shown that those who identify with the “Goth” subculture are more likely to self harm or attempt suicide than other young people. Led by Robert Young of the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, the team tracked more than 1200 young ( Read more... )