Windy today. I can hear it outside the window whistling.

There's a man who's followed me Just about all my life Being to you what I couldn't be I call him my insecurity He was strong when I was weak Spoke outloud when I couldn't speak [ The Shadow, from The Masquerade Overture, by Pendragon ]

I get frustrated by record stores because they file things in non-obvious places, if they have the artists at all. I'm still not entirely sure what the 'Urban' category is meant to mean. Quite how they categorise some groups as Metal (or whatever, but basically nothing like what they are) is really beyond me. But Amazon seem to have followed the same line.

I don't use it much, but I thought I'd see what the recommendations were like for the 'Hard Rock and Metal' category on Amazon. It's not reassuring when the first two recommendations are Pendragon and Riverside. Neither are particularly hard rock at all, and definitely not metal. There's a few in there that I'd say were right, but I get on to the second page and there's Tubular Bells, by Mike Oldfield listed. That's just so very wrong. I know people's views of these genres will differ, but I find it difficult to believe that anyone would place Tubular Bells under 'Hard Rock And Metal'.

I got a nice SMS from Caroline this morning, thanking me for coming to the party, which was really nice. I must organise getting together with her sometime properly. That's bound to be difficult, but nothing good was ever easy.

Chris was looking at mobiles earlier tonight, so I thought I'd have a look at what he was looking at. And after doing so, I find that I fail to be even remotely excited by them. Apparently with some phones you can talk to other people. I say some, because I begin to wonder sometimes when I see the 'features' they list whether it actually is a phone or just a glorified... oh I dunno... 'thing that you use to show off to people that you've got something snazzy but never use more than 5% of the potential of'. There must be a shorter word for that. Yes there are some clever things in those phones, but... really... in a phone ? Maybe I'm just too old and simple in my needs .

Well, I've got a sore tummy tonight (making me wonder where the word 'tummy' comes from), which might be due to not eating much, or due to tonight's tea. Not really sure.

Another morning of sleeping almost as soon as my head hits the pillow and then waking at about 5am, and not being able to sleep properly after that. I just drift in and out oddly. Oh well. It does lead to odd, disjointed dreams. Tonight, I missed a bus somewhere and decided to hang around the building I was at and then it got dark and some people wanted to break in. A girl from the group had to get rid of me, and so we went off for a drink somewhere. Oddness abounds.

I fell asleep quite easily last night; I was asleep soon after midnight which makes a huge change. The only thing is that I woke up at about 5:30. And then I couldn't get back to sleep. I kept going over all the things that I should have done. Maybe I should have just left after an hour, just like I said I was going to.

The picture frames have changed And so has your name We don't talk much anymore We keep running from the pain But what I wouldn't give to see your face again [ I Don't Know You Anymore, from Affirmation, by Savage Garden ]

I love lyrics sites that proclaim themselves to be the 'largest archive of song lyrics'. It gives me great pleasure to see just how pitifully poor they are in the face of such claims. None of the sites is particularly wonderful, but some are worse than others. Today's is lyric wizard which failed the regular artist tests. The initial few that I tried - Grey Lady Down and Jadis failed. So I thought 'ok, let's try something better known', and threw in Yazoo. No results. So, back to the regular tests we try Riverside and get nothing. Zeromancer, however, does have results and knows about two albums - but only selected tracks, and not Zzyzx (ie only the first two); from Eurotrash it only has two tracks anyhow and not the title. Zero 7 gets two albums and is almost complete for those (it's missing the album 'The Garden'). Back to the more obscure and Celtus gets no results. Archive gets two albums - 'Londinium' and 'Take My Head', but not 'You All Look The Same To Me'. Arena gives two results, but those are Barenaked Ladies and Tina Arena so isn't useful. Fish doesn't do too badly, but has 'Clutching at straws', 'Fugazi', 'Misplaced Childhood', and 'Script For A Jester's Tear' listed under him which is wrong. On the plus side, the tracks off the Tony Banks albums are listed which is nice. Trying others, Sigur Ros gives no results, but I'm not sure whether that's a failure to match the accented characters - it's looking like they just don't have anything for them. John Wesley gets no result ('John Wesley Harding' isn't the same). Lacuna Coil does get a result and with the exception of 'The EPs' and 'Karmacode' looks complete. 'Within Temptation' also gets results, but only for 'Enter' and 'Mother Earth' - no 'The Silent Force'. 'Pendragon' gets no results.

So for the usual set of artists we look at (and some unusual ones) we get a pretty poor reception. Usually I look for the track 'Heart And Soul' by T'Pau because this is one that I know needs to be laid out sensibly because of the two parts being overlaid. Only, I can't check whether they have the two parts in the track because they don't even have it. Indeed it doesn't look like they have T'Pau at all - and in common with many of these database engine front end things they're exporting the name wrongly so that the user sees "Search results for 't\'pau' in the Artist's Name" (note the escaped quote which the user should not see).

All in all, it's not all that hot. I don't think I'll add it to the list of servers to search.

Yes, looking at a lyrics site is a distraction from other things. Gah.

I've got to throw out all the prototype cards that I made, too. Maybe I shouldn't have spent quite so much time on it. Note to self - next time you need a card for someone, just buy any old thing off the shelf. Whilst it might seem like a nicer thing to do, the effect is just the same - after all it's just a card.

Oh, I remember that when I did wake up, aside from having the Savage Garden track in my head, I remembered dreaming that Grandma had told me that Julian had been suspended from Uni. That's just odd.

Well, it's 1:20pm. I'm setting off in a few minutes to go to this party. I am incredibly jittery, but I'm going to be fine. I am. I am. I am. It's only a party. I'll keep telling myself that.

To be fair, I'm not actually scared of her, but... ok, what is it that I'm scared of ? Oh, I can't concentrate enough to put that in to words right now. In fact I may actually just have to think about something else for a bit.

Right; I'm back from the party. I didn't die. I did get to play with Jessica a bit which was great fun. I do suck at parties.

I had a cunning thought. Well, actually an obvious thought, but still a thought. Why not cover over the network switches little lights. Then they don't light up the room. How's that for astounding reasoning ? It's amazed me. I'm not all that bright.

Speaking of 'not all that bright', it's Friday now. Tomorrow is Saturday. These are obvious facts. However, the somewhat terrifying non-obvious thing is that I'm going to a party tomorrow. This is a party where there will be - I would guess - four people that I'm terrified of. And Caroline. At a party. Which means it involves lots of people. Actual people. For normal people in my situation (which isn't exactly a coherent thing to say, but we'll go with it for now) I'd be saying 'throw in a mad man with an AK47 and you've got the stuff of nightmares'. But for me, this is pretty much the nightmares on their own. A guy with a machine gun would only make the dreams lighter. So quite why I chose an AK47 is a mystery. I might as well have chosen a Phased Plasma Rifle In The 40 Watt Range.

But I'm distracting myself from the whole terror. Which, in reality, isn't all that bothering at the moment. Ok, so I can't sleep for worrying, but that's at non-specifics. When I get there I can get down to the real worrying, and asking myself 'what on earth am I doing here ?'. On the plus side, I can just leave when I want. Presuming, of course, that the scenario of being pinned down and beaten to a pulp doesn't occur. To be fair, the likelihood of that is actually pretty low.

Hmm. Saying that makes me wonder whether the likelihood of that is higher or lower than that of my actually enjoying myself. Which makes me ask myself why I'd do something that I'm not going to enjoy. Maybe it's some sort of perverse form of 'enjoy'. I was asked a couple of days ago why I was going. Writing this now (and wondering why I'm writing this in the first place) it's hard to find the answer. No, it's easy to find the answer, but it's hard to say it.

The reason I'm going is because I was asked to, and because I'd do anything for her. That's it. Well, no, not quite it, because I do want to go anyhow. Spending any time with her, even if it's in the company of loads of other people, has to be a good thing. I've given up trying to sound not-pathetic.

While I sit here trying to think of things to say Someone lies bleeding in a field somewhere So it would seem we've still got a long long way to go I've seen all I wanna see today [ Long Long Way To Go, from No Jacket Required, by Phil Collins ]

I just found that image on 'The Funniest' site and it seemed appropriate. [1st December 2006: It appears that the image has vanished now and I don't have a copy. It was a picture of a room full of people and a caption saying something like 'What happens when 200 people who really hate you decided to get together ? You'll find out tomorrow'. Which was kinda appropriate at the time. I've restored the image; the original can be found at the 'Parking Lot Is Full' archive at plif.andkon.com site, under 30 April 1999, or the same under the Wayback Machine.]

Greebo went to the vets today to have his shoulder looked at. Apparently it doesn't look like anything important; just a bad bite that's now healing quite well. So the attention he's been wanting and the way he's been acting isn't anything serious. I think he's just missing Grendel.

A few times yesterday I saw Grendel around the house, before I realised that it wasn't him and I was just imagining things. Unfortunately that led to him being in my dreams playing around the house. Aww.

It's now 1:45am and I'm getting very worried. I know I shouldn't but there we go. If there's one thing that I've learnt over the many years of worrying about things like this, it's that time doesn't stop. It rolls on and you have to deal with that. Which means that whilst I'm not at all worried about things like 'Sunday' because there's this whole world of worry and I may just die, it will probably still come.

Someone emailed me, a nice lady called Elissa to say that they had found a Blue Canary Night Light! It's not exactly what I was expecting, but I'm happy that one's been found. Johnnas Decorative Glass has a stained glass blue canary. The only thing is that it's from the States, so it won't work on our power. If I were to get one (if, of course) I'd have to find out about either changing the voltage or changing the night-light bit.

The most exciting thing today (ok, one of - it's not been a thrilling day) was learning, or at least re-learning, how to use hashes of hashes in Perl. It's simple, but I tend to over-complicate it by throwing references into the mix. The structure I've been using is actually an array of hashes, and some of the hash items may be themselves hashes. It's just a toy to throw around, but that doesn't mean that it's not useful to know how to work.

Do you believe that anything that I could say would sort your life out? What's the difference? Could you trust anybody with your heart, except yourself? What's the difference? Between sunsets and dawn, kings, queens and pawns, goldfish and clowns. Between what's right and wrong can a love still grow strong, What's the difference? [ Goldfish And Clowns, from Sunsets On Empire, by Fish ]

Took me ages to get to sleep last night as well. I tend to run over scenarios in my head and know that none will actually happen. It's kind of strange actually to be prepared for all these things that might happen but never do, and the things that do happen tend to throw me.

It's hard not to be jaded and think that nothing really matters, sometimes. Which, I think, is why it's good to hang on to those things that do matter.

Who am I To make a judgement of Your life I'm only Passing by [ Passing By, from When It Falls, by Zero 7 ]

Dreaming last night left me quite knackered when I got up. For some reason, walking the coast to Blackpool with a friend in your dreams really tires you out. And when I woke up, I had The Levellers' 'Beautiful Day' going around my head. Not sure what exactly that means.

Last night was strange; I couldn't sleep for ages - more so than usual - but I kind of expected that. However, when I woke up I actually remembered more of my dream than I normally do. At first I was chatting to Julian about stuff and ask him why he was unhappy. He was upset and frustrated at his work because he couldn't see a reason for a particular aberation in the results he was getting. Understand that I have - for specifics - very little clue what Julian's actually doing, mainly because it just goes straight over my head. I'm not all that bright, after all. In the dream, what I remember is that he had a 3-dimensional map of the interactions in the interior of something - an atom, or something like that - and there was a strange 'bulge' to one side that he couldn't explain and wasn't indicated by the values that he plugged in to the simulation. I asked him what the real-world results were to compare against before stopping and apologising, 'cos he's doing theoretical, not practical physics. He was really upset because he wasn't going to be able to finish his work because of it.

Later, we - a group of people, the usual suspects included - were visiting somewhere touristy. I said something and upset someone and then spent the remainder of the dream trying to apologise, but whatever I did she just wouldn't talk to me.

So it's 3am and I can't sleep. This is nothing particularly new, but the reason changes from time to time. Today it's the same thing as last year. I'm quite determined to not let it get the better of me this time. Which means, I guess, doing things differently.

I had the great intention of writing down what I was thinking. Only the server decided that it would do one of its full 'fsck' disc checks and was tied up for 10 minutes. After which, my mind's now blank.

Ever wondered why 'hamlet' isn't about a small ham ? It's nearly 4am so that's where my mind's wandered to. I've written a small email to myself of some thoughts and stuff. I've no idea whether it'll make sense in the morning, but it's there anyhow.

I had a day out in the big bad world today, which wasn't entirely unsuccessful. I managed to not get lost and to not die. These are both good things. I found out some disturbing things, and got to see some interesting places.

Greebo woke me up at about 7am this morning. He didn't want to go out or to have food. He just wanted a cuddle. He's not eating much either; but what he is eating he still leaves a little in the bottom of the bowl, as he used to for Grendel.

I've had a sore head and been really tired all day, too.

[Written about a week ago] I had a dream last night about a girl meeting my parents for Christmas. She'd got me a present. In it there was a bunch of grapes, a potato and some sliced carrots. I remember thinking that they were very strange presents.

Last night I wanted to find a Blue Canary Night Light. I reasoned that as 'Birdhouse In Your Soul' (They Might Be Giants) is about such a thing, there must be such a thing. As far as I can tell there isn't. That's amazing to me. Not only is the track so cute, but nobody seems to have capitalised on it. Ok, so it's not going to have a huge market, but wouldn't it be better to have something that has an association than just being what it is.

My thought is that you could easily give your kids such a thing to keep away the darkness and it would be another comfort. As a bonus, though, when they get older they may find the song, or you can tell them about it and they can remember the night light fondly. I think I said yesterday that I'm prone to go for the whimsical things, but I think that's really neat.

In any case, having turned up nothing useful in my searches on the Internet I noticed that one of the websites ChildrensLighting.co.uk had a number of nightlights and handily a form to contact them. So I did, explaining what I was looking for and asking if they had any suggestions. Being in the business they might have come across such things or know where to look.

I got a nice reply back from a gentleman called Stuart who said he'd not seen or heard of one so it would probably be hard to find. He did point me to another site that was selling a glowing purple pigeon. Not quite the same thing, but getting close. Sometimes it's strange to get real answers from real people. It shows that they actually do care about what you're asking.

So... do I now make it my aim in life to hunt down a blue canary night light?

What in the world happened today ? I can't honestly say. It seems to have gone. I read some specifications and stuff today. They were dull. That, however, is about all I remember.

Oh, and the diary has now completely migrated to linux. The migration actually happened a few days ago, but it wasn't really complete until today and there were one or two glitches that I had to fix this evening. So, no RISC OS is no longer required for the diary to function - not hard as 99% of it was in generic stuff - HSC or Perl. It's possible that some bits are bust still, but I've not noticed. I guess if they're bust someone will mention it

Oh my god. I just watched the first episode of Street Hawk (1985, ABC)Action and AdventureThe Man, the Machine... Street Hawk Street Hawk is an all-terrain attack motorcycle, designed to fight urban crime. It is capable of speeds up to 300 mph and has immense firepower. Jesse Mach (Rex Smith, As the World Turns), an ex-motorcycle cop, is recruited to uphold justice driving a powerful motorcycle named Street Hawk. This show was originally going to start in the fall of 1984, but ABC shelved it with a summer hit, Call To Glory.Street Hawk. Jesse's friend, who dies in the first episode looked very familiar. I was sure it was Chakotay from Startrek: Voyager - and I was right. He was also in a few other things I might recognise if I saw again - Midnight Caller (1988, NBC)DramaWelcome to the Midnight Caller guide at TV Tome. Midnight Caller is the moody drama starring Gary Cole as Jack Killian, a San Francisco cop who accidentally killed his partner. After leaving the police force, he ended up the host of a late-night radio talk show--with a penchant for getting involved with the problems of his listeners. Aired on NBC for three years, the show often tackled heavy issues with sensitivity and style and featured a talented cast of regulars and guests as well as strong writing. Awards & Nominations Aftonbladet TV Prize, Sweden 1991 ¢Won for Best Foreign TV Program Casting Society of America 1989 ¢Nominated for Best Casting for TV, Dramatic Episodic Emmy Awards 1990 ¢Nominated for Outstanding Cinematography for a Series ¢Nominated for Outstanding Editing for a Series - Single Camera Production ¢Nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series ¢Nominated for Outstanding Guest ActressMidnight Caller and Miami Vice (1984, NBC)DramaMiami Vice is one the most innovative and powerful TV series of all time. Focusing on the Miami Metro-Dade Police "Vice" Department and it`s continued battle against the illicit drug, prostitution, and firearms crime underworld of the city of Miami. It used fashion, color, and a varied musical selection in order to accentuate and amplify the emotional undercurrent of the drama it portrayed.Miami Vice.

I've just noticed a download speed of 2.4Mbps on something I was fetching. That shouldn't be possible. It appears that my connection speed has been upgraded. On the 9th it was 1152 kbit/s down, 288 up. On the 10th it jumped to 5472/448. And at the moment it's reporting as 5760/448. That's quite a difference.

Come to my arms tonight Just you and me together under electric light And she will dance in the poison air And we can stay together Two hearts under the skyscrapers [ Stay Together, by Suede ]

Stay Together has odd memories with it, so I don't listen to it much.

I've finished the driver archive today; it's been something of an uphill struggle, but I seem to have managed it. 12G of HD space has gone, but I think that should be offset by the fact that I may now be able to find the things that I want .

I mentioned to Dad that I was surprised that we only had one Bucks Fizz track and that wasn't Making your mind up. When I said that it was The Land Of Make Believe Dad wasn't at all surprised. I guess I'm just more into the whimsical.

Run for the sun little one You're an outlaw once again Time to change Superman will be with us While he can In the land of make believe [ The Land Of Make Believe, from The Best Of Bucks Fizz, by Bucks Fizz ]

Close your eyes and you'll be there Where the mermaids sing as they comb their hair Like a fountain of gold you can never grow old Where dreams are made, your love parade [ Dear Jessie, from Like A Prayer, by Madonna ]

I had a really cunning idea. Since I can never find driver discs when I want them, why not copy them all to the harddisc and then I won't have problems finding them ? Only then Julian pointed me at a Sand game and it distracted me. Damn.

The new wireless access point arrived today. I've decided to replace the old one. What seemed to be happening was that the router was rebooting regularly. That's by the evidence of it's statistics seeming to be reset quite often, and the actual use of the wireless network dropping out for quite a few seconds at a time. I don't know exactly what's up with it, but that it wasn't working properly seemed a good enough reason. So I've got a 802.11g router (instead of the old 802.11b) and it seems to be a lot more reliable. I'm less impressed, however, with the fact that it doesn't work properly in Opera. The configuration for the device is by the browser (as seems to be the norm) and this displays a lot of rubbish in Opera. Why ? God only knows. I presume that there's something in the scripting that fails. It'd be a whole lot easier if they didn't use scripting and so didn't rely on particular behaviours of browsers, but since when has that kind of thing actually mattered to anyone but those crazy people who actually want to use things on a non-standard system.

The installation disc was impressive at first, as well. It starts off talking you through everything you do and then... can't actually find the access point at all. In the end I gave up with the automated system and instead did everything manually with the web interface (after first discovering that Opera didn't work properly).

Another dream, 'cos I've nothing else interesting to write about. I was getting lost walking through streets that I didn't know in the dark, trying to find somewhere with a little map that was barely visible in the street lamps.

For Pete's sake, I've got 768M in this PC and it's running so much into Swap it's unbelievable. You would think after all this time of using Windows I'd be used to the stupid memory usage that it seems to have and accept that there's actually not all that much I can do about it. But every time I find myself in this situation - this situation being 'the system running really badly, swapping like mad and seemingly only using a few applications' I begin to wonder to myself WTF they're actually playing at down there.

It's strange to not have Grendel around. He's not there on the bed when I get up. He doesn't come running to say hello when I walk in a room. He's not there at the window when we go to bed at night. He's just not here.

I had three dreams this morning that I remember. Well, there were three, but I've forgotten one. The first, though, was meeting up with Caroline and Jessica for a day and having a nice day out at the park. That was a nice one. There was another in the middle, but I don't remember much about it. The last was Grendel playing with some string on the back of the chair in the living room.

Grendel died this morning. He cried a couple of times and then passed away. I'm too upset to write anything else really.

Grendel's lying on the landing at the moment. He's not quite made it out of the bathroom. He's still reacting to things, but not very much. He just wants to sleep without being disturbed. I think Greebo's upset, too. He's off his food and wants cuddles a lot. I'm goint to try to move Grendel into my room tonight and see if he'll sleep on the bed for a bit. He seemed a lot happier there last night for a while.

There was also some stuff about drawing pictures today, and a dream about an airport, but it's not important.

Grendel hasn't eaten much today. He had a minute or so nibbling at his food this afternoon, but I haven't seen him eat anything else. I've put him some food in the bathroom so that he can have that tomorrow. He doesn't like to be picked up and cuddled any more.

I tried looking at some tracks on Song Meanings earlier today. I was mildly amused whilst looking through Archive artist entries when I looked at the 'Fool' lyrics - I happen to like that track. Clearly I liked it so much I submitted the lyrics. I was more amused a moment or two later when I looked at the entry for 'I Will Fade', which I also think is wonderful, because it had a submitter called 'royksopp', and I think to myself 'clearly they're a fan of Royksopp, and I rather like them too, so let's see what they've submitted'. They've submitted a few tracks, by a few groups, but particularly Archive and Royksopp, and commented that 'What Else Is There?' is one of their favourites. It's amusing to find other people like the same things as me. Ok, maybe not amusing, but interesting. Or something. Oddly, though, 'I Will Fade' and 'What Else Is There?' - two tracks which I feel have a similar theme are both track 7 on their respective albums. Coincidence ? Or something more sinister ?

Whilst I've been here today, Grendel hasn't eaten a thing. And every time I've picked him up for a cuddle he's leant to get down again.

I don't watch telly much these days, but I saw an advert a few days ago that just made me cringe. I have no idea at all who it was for, but it definitely made me cringe. Why ? Because the person on it described an external USB harddrive as 'memory'. Now I'll accept that you can use the term to describe an internal disc like that, grudgingly, because you can use it as virtual memory - the 'swap space' that the system allocates. But it's abusing the term greatly if you apply it to a slow storage system like USB mass storage.

On the other hand there was an incredibly impressive Bravia advert I saw with lots of paint exploding over a number of houses. It's not as long as the 'cog' advert, but it may be about as memorable.

Grendel's so thin. He's eaten about a tin of Sheba today, and that's about all. He's still sleeping most of the time under the table, or in the shower. He came and sat with me for a little while today then went back under the table.

I chatted to a nice guy called Clark from Paisley who's 18 next week. It's nice to meet people that don't mind chatting and don't race around killing you in games.

I had a dream last night, but it was all jumbled because I don't sleep so well. There was a class I had with a load of people I used to know. They teacher had taken over from one of the other teachers we had. I have a feeling it was an Organic Chemistry class, though with little basis as I never did that, and never even sat in on any lectures like that at university. The teacher started talking about all sorts of things that weren't right and berated some people for not doing things. So they packed up and left. I stopped around for a little bit and then packed my bag. For some reason I had a lot of things and a blue pen got lost - a girl on the other side of the room brought it to me. I left and I knew I was being followed. I went into a large blue building - blue seemed to figure quite prominently that was full of corridors and staircases, all of which led down. I didn't know who was following me, or why, but everyone was being herded down into this building - whichever way you went you seemed to end up there. I knew there was someone I was missing whilst I was down there, someone that should be with me, and then I reached the end and there were no more corridors or stairs. Just this huge great chasm and no way else to go. As I looked back the way I'd come, all I could see were hundreds of people all coming down the same way. Having nothing else to do, I just stepped off the edge and fell.

A while ago, Chris pointed me to 'A Softer World'. I don't think I've mentioned it before. It's quite disturbing at times. In a detached sort of way - not in a way that you can actually feel related to. But one of those strips from it which I thought was excellent was one of those that I saw after Chris mentioned it to me. The other two that are cool from there are the Ducks and Pigeons. Which isn't to say that they're the only cool ones, but they were... less disturbing and more in keeping with sanity. At least A Softer World shows me that I'm still sane. And not that I condone the exploding of pigeons either.

He's eaten quite a bit of his food today, but certainly not enough. Poor kitty.

I tried out 'The Ship' earlier today. It's ok in its single player mode where you've got only the AI to play. But playing against real players on the Internet is impossible. It's so laggy once you actually get into a game that it doesn't seem playable. But that's once you get in to a game. All the servers are near permanently full. I did finally get in to a game that had a very very low ping time and played for a little while with people. That wasn't pretty fun, actually.

Grendel ate a little bit of his food today, and gobbled down some freshly cooked beef. At least that's better than he has been, but he's still not being to active.

I've spent this evening drawing pretty pictures. Might not be the most thrilling of things but it's what I've been doing.

Simon's home to see Grendel today.

I don't think Grendel's had anything to eat today. He's drunk a lot of water, but I'm pretty sure he hasn't eaten much - I don't remember having fed him. That said, I didn't have any lunch myself so that may not mean much.

I thought I'd try out Skype today; to see how well it works. Not bad, so far as I can tell. Certainly it's a lot cheaper to chat to Chris that way than by phone . It's actually set up a little oddly. I'm using the USB sound dongle for the headphones, and the regular sound output for the speakers. Why ? Because then when the phone rings I can hear it, but I don't then have to plug in the headphones afterward to get something useful. It seems to work quite well like that.

I wrote a little bit of an email to Caroline yesterday. I couldn't seem to make much sense. Bah.