On Friday, I was surprised (and honoured) to receive an email from Prince Philip.

A Channel 4 documentary about 9/11 and the controversial photographs capturing the final seconds of people who jumped to their deaths. Harrowing and yet compulsive viewing. Not for everyone and the sort of program you might expect a warning about the content (21:00-22:30) which some may find disturbing, upsetting or offensive. Instead, Channel 4 announce ‘This program contains images and video footage featuring repetitive patterns that may cause problems for people with photosensitive epilepsy’. Bizarre. Truly bizarre. ...

Everything was in its place. Then I went and changed everything (again). My therapist says this is a character defect and a sign of subliminal procrastination. Hard reset Palm Pilot. Download Thunderbird extension to sync address book. Doesn’t work. So now my Contacts are in Thunderbird (periodic manual export/import) and I am using the Palm for Calendar and Tasks. If it’s good enough for Dave Allen, then it’s good enough for me. Next Action: Wait for Thunderbird/Sunbird to fully support Palm synchronisation.

There is a terribly sad story in the UK about clinical trials that have gone (badly) wrong leaving six people critically ill in hospital. Radio 5 carried an interview with a person who has taken part in previous trials. He was so full of praise for Parexel that I thought he was a stooge. That was, until, he uttered the unfortunate words ‘So, 1,000 GBP for one trial and 750 GBP for the second. For a student, that is a lot of money and can actually be life-changing’ ...

Just went to delete ‘whiteside.wordpress.com’. Hit ‘Yes’ I am really, really sure I want to delete this blog for eternity. Yes. I acknowledge I will never be able to access the blog again or reuse the name ever. Or, in vi terms, ‘:q!’. Received an email from the WordPress Workflow Monitor Agent. Clicked the link to confirm I really, truly do know what I am doing and do indeed want to consign the blog to Room 101. ...