If you are the parent of a teenage girl, I have some fantastic news for you. Good news - You will never have to purchase an air freshener for your car again. Ever. I kindly gave my daughter and three girlfriends a lift yesterday. As each young passenger boarded, pleasant smells and odours of various perfumes and fragrances wafted and swirled around the car interior until it resembled a perfume counter at Boots. ...

This year, like the previous three, we applied in the LTA ballot for Wimbledon tickets. This year, unlike the previous three, we were allocated two tickets for Court 1 for the middle Saturday in blazing June. I checked the Order of Play on Friday night. My wife asked me who was playing. I casually replied ‘Oh - just some ladies playing pit-a-pat tennis then Djokovic (Men’s #4 seed) against Kiefer followed by another ladies singles match.’ ...

During the week I am a boring IT consultant. However, at weekends, I transform into a massive, dance, trance, garage, hop-hip, mixmaster DJ, spinning vinyl, entertaining the masses at Glastonbury. No wonder I’m so tired every Monday morning.

This Bluehost powered blog is now FastCGI enabled. You may find the site faster but, then again, hyperlinks may return completely random articles. You will probably struggle to tell the difference. Which reminds me of a funny story… I am currently working in the North East on an ’escalation’. An ’escalation’ is characterised by frequent, lengthy conference calls with bi-hourly status updates, the phrases ‘high-profile’, ‘alternative technical solutions’, ‘severe degradation’, ‘impacting the bottom line’, ‘CIO visibility’, ‘options for the weekend’ and the perennial favourite: ‘any progress yet ?’ ...

I was wrong. I sincerely apologise. That wasn’t my worst nightmare at all. This is truly my worst nightmare.

On the face of it, the recent changes to the interface to Google Docs and Spreadsheets look trivial and superficial. Google’s official announcement is brief and understated but Google Blogoscoped hits the nail on the head (twice): ‘The file listing now resembles a more traditional view in the style of, say, Windows Explorer.’ …that ordinary mortals understand and are comfortable with. ‘Google D&S looks more and more like an office application.’ ...

Ten hours cooped up on a plane with facile excuses (‘just another 10 minutes’), no food and screaming babies for company. Love the cheerful musical score, the facial expressions and the way the video starts in daylight and ends in complete darkness.

No one ever asks me: ‘Hey, Norman - why haven’t you installed Movable Type 4 (beta) yet ?’ Well, I just did. The product is pretty impressive but I have invested too much time and effort in WordPress to switch blogging platforms.

That set list in full Theme from ‘CSI’ Track ripped off from ‘Quadrophenia’ Theme from ‘CSI: Miami’ Another track shamelessly ripped off from ‘Quadrophenia’ Theme from ‘CSI: New York (Series 5)’ Song ripped off from ‘Tommy’ Theme from ‘CSI: Special Victims Unit’ Encore: Terrible cover version of ‘My Generation’ by The Zimmers

A great weekend for the middle-aged, barstool musical correspondent. Music and chat from Iggy and The Stooges on Jonathan Ross. I never realised ‘Elves’ by The Fall was such a complete rip-off of ‘I wanna be your dog’. Seven Ages of Rock Black Flag, R.E.M, Pixies and Nirvana. ‘Some people can not do that and will not do that.’ (simple bass riff) - Kim Deal on ‘Where is my mind’ ‘It had to end right there. Right with that scream. Right with that song. Right with that howl’ - Scott Litt on Kurt Cobain’s final words on ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’ ...