[Obligatory hat tip to ‘How to stop defragmenting and start living’. As an aside, if you’re an Oracle DBA and haven’t read this whitepaper, please do so. Now.] I have used various devices and software over my 76 years on this planet to listen to music: Record player Cassette player Transistor radio Ears WinAmp SonicStage Windows Media Player 18 months ago, I finally caved in and bought an iTouch which I use a lot; mainly for listening to music and podcasts at airports. ...

This morning I commuted, Reggie Perrin style, from my leafy suburb into the heart of London by train. Nothing too unusual about that. After I paid for my daily travelcard, I took my place on an unusually crowded platform. An unusually crowded platform normally means only one thing. An lengthy delay inevitably followed by an overcrowded, late running train. Sure enough, I soon gathered that there had been a fatality on this section of the railway line last night which caused major delays and now had a knock-on effect to this morning. ...

Last Friday, Norman Junior III emerged from his bedroom, looked mournfully at me and pronounced in a quiet voice: ‘Dad - I’ve got the three red rings of death.’ ‘Just have an aspirin and sit down quietly for a bit. Your mum will be back soon.’ ‘No Dad - not me. It’s my XBox. It has the dreaded three red rings of death and won’t boot.’ And so we embarked on a prolonged saga that involved a fruitless hunt for a two year old receipt that revealed plenty of interesting long lost items but not the actual receipt from Game. ...

‘Not in my lifetime.’

I have experimented at various times with both Tumblr and Posterous which are hosted blog services. I tend to view them as useful services for a scrapbook style blog, a linkblog, a lifestream or even a fully fledged blog. If I was starting a blog today, I would probably use one or the other. Posterous, in particular, has been getting a lot of coverage recently and I like the ease of use, the ‘Post by Email’ facility and continue to follow developments with interest. ...