I quite enjoy the idea of BlogShares.com which a fantasy stock market for blogs. BlogShares places a notional value on your blog based on the number (and value) of inbound and outbound links. Shares in blogs can then be traded. BlogShares is also useful for identifying blogs by people with similar interests. For example, most Oracle technically minded people usually link to Tom Kyte’s excellent blog and their blogs are also worth reading. ...

Those nice people at WordPress have opened up WordPress.com to the masses and added a couple of new themes. I really like the ‘Regulus’ theme from Ben Gillbanks because it looks clear and uncluttered, the tag line is displayed and the RSS feeds for the blog and comments are obvious. The only polite suggestions for improvement would be to relocate ‘Blog Roll’ under the ‘Archive’ and ‘Categories’ to let the main body text occupy more of the screen and for ‘Message ssage’ to be fixed in the ‘Comments’ section. ...

Not a brilliant week if you are a United fan… A few years ago, I was drinking in the Chelsea Potter on the Kings Road and a mate said ‘That’s George Best sitting over there’. I replied ‘Yeah, right’. I looked across to the bar and saw a plump, bearded figure sitting on a barstool, clad in a hideous blue shell-suit, sipping a Coke. I was stupefied. After a while, he finished his drink and left. I was still gawping at him like a lovestruck teenager and I swore he smiled at me on his way out. ...

Don’t bother. Focus on content. If people care, they will comment.

Last week, I initiated the transfer of the last of my pension funds into my Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP). This should be a relatively straightforward transfer of the Protected Rights element of a former pension plan. The first step was a response from the pension company receiving the funds. They need me to fill in a form explicitly stating that I did not request any financial advice about this transfer to guard them against mis-selling claims. ...