The large critter (from Purves & Purves) is very cool (although very expensive for what it is). Lots of fun though, and a necessary addition to any trendy gaff!

My mate Andy was good enough to give me a Sony EVI-D31 camera. It's a very nice bit of kit, with motorised tilt, pan and zoom (to 12x!). I haven't yet managed to get a picture out of it, because I don't have a video capture card in my PC. Anyway, if you're looking for more info on the EVI-D31, then take a look here: http://www.j3soft.com/webcam/evi-d31.htm (thanks for that Andy!).

So, is 'Rock' making a comeback to mainstream pop? (at least in the UK?). We've had a whole plague of boy bands, girl bands, kids, reality TV winners, christmas one-hit-wonders, etc etc. However, there seems to be a small amount of Rock coming along.

It seems Iraq is costing the US more than it seems to have bargained for (BBC News Article). If you start it with no friends, then you have no friends to call on to help you.

Apparently, Nelson Mandela has been temporarily knocked off the list of terrorists the US doesn't want to let in. He gets 10 years off the list, presumably then to be denied access once again. Seemingly, so long as you're in government somehow, you bypass the list, which is how come Mr. Mandela was able to fly to the US to receive awards for being a generally top bloke.

Blimey, this virus really seems to be knobbling email. Our werk email goes through MessageLabs (who were kind enough to call us to tell us there was up to a 45 minute delay getting through their systems). I'm starting to get emails sent at about 9.30am around now - something like 5 hours late! (not all MessageLabs, I'm sure - I guess everyone's email server is getting hit right now). So far though, no evidence of it getting into the company - which is a very good thing indeed.

Possibly good news at the BBC about Dell announcing a price cut of up to 22%. I don't know what effect this will have: I mean, Dell's service is awful - their delivery time is already about a month, even on off the shelf machines. Most other vendors can do about a week or so. Still, Dell do have some good lookin' kit, and I expect they'll do alright (possibly at the expense of other smaller companies).

We received a couple of IBM T40 laptops at work - these things rock. At first, I didn't like it too much, because it's got a whole different set of components that our T20/T21 laptops, and comes with no recovery CD (it's on a hidden partition on the harddisk). Still, having played about with it getting a ghost image sorted, I have to say, it's a very swish machine (and might make it into the "sexy pc" category ;-)

This is a good game. Not sure how to describe it - it's sort of skateboarding in a tunnel with obstacles. It's also pretty damn hard to do very well (at least, it is for me ;-).

On the subject of games - I watched the 25 minute trailer of Half Life 2 - wow. The game engine alone could very well be used to make just about any game you could think of. The detail of the images is awesome (although probably won't be on my crusty PC ;-). That's the sort of game to get a decent PC for - bring it on!

Thanks to everyone who made it over to my party the other night. I had a good time, hopefully you did too. I've done most of the clearing up now, two big trips to the bottle bank, lots of floor cleaning, etc. I got the bubblegum off the floor, and found that curiously someone had stolen all my razor blades. I don't get that - they even went as far as to take the manky one off the razor on the side of the bath. Well, thanks for that, who ever you are.

What the f*ck are the BBC putting 'allo 'allo repeats on for? It wasn't that good the first time around, lost a lot the second, and frankly was just pointless after that. BBC - stop it!